China
scares me for unusual reasons
On the train from Shanghai to Xi’an
an electronic sign in each immaculate car flashed the train
speed, which reached 264 kilometers per hour (about 164 miles
per hour) and was never below 120 mph until we slowed to stop.
I also like their silent, battery-powered bicycles,
which seem like a civilized, efficient way to travel to work
and around town.
China is doubling its gross domestic product every
six or seven years, and will pass us in total annual product
in the not too distant future.
China has more than four times as many people
as the US. The country has lots of problems, some accentuated
by their overpopulation, such as streets that are clogged with
people and streams that are clogged with oily, cruddy pollution.
The air envelopes you in a gritty, orange-brown haze except
when merciful rain cleanses the ambient environment, briefly.
Their political system stinks. You can’t
write what you want nor protest too strongly. The Communist
Party and its leaders, not the people or the courts, make the
big decisions and some of the smaller, intimate ones, such as
how many children a family can have.
Indeed, after one session with a group of PhD
students, all of whom are members of the Communist Party, one
of the students leaned over to my sister, who was visiting,
and told her, simply: “We think America is Heaven.”
But what scares me is their education commitment.
Here is what a couple of my students explained about their elementary
and high schools:
“We study from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Some
schools even have a longer study schedule. We study from Monday
to Friday and sometimes even Saturday.”
“We study Chinese, math, English, politics,
physics, chemistry and geography.”
“Some of the students don’t go back
home until 9 in the evening. Other students may spend 8-10 hours
a day studying. Primary school students seem to live an easier
life. But their school bags become heavier and heavier.”
“Most of these students are those who are
going to take part in the university entrance examinations.
The most important goal for most high school students is to
study to get high scores in the university exams.”
And back home, Peoria School District 150 is talking
about shortening its already short school day.
I hate to play the grinch who stole Christmas,
yet I think you can see what I’m getting at. If the competition
is studying hours more per day than our students, who is likely
to learn more math, science and foreign languages?
Sure, maybe they study so much that it is counterproductive.
Maybe studying for one crucial examination is not the best way
to get an education.
But clearly our education process needs to figure
out how to compete with China and other countries that put lots
more “time on task” in the classrooms. And shortening
our short school day even further is not the way to compete.
It is a cold, cruel world out there. All I can
suggest to parents and grandparents is that they push their
children to get absolutely as much education as possible, whether
in the skilled trades or in college and post-graduate studies.
Well-honed skills are the best defense, maybe the only defense
our children are going to have to succeed in the global economy.
So that we can continue to call America Heaven.
Letter from Shanghai
The CCP, society and students
Jim Nowlan and his sister, Alice Allen of
Marietta, GA in front of a Buddhist Temple of one of Nowlans former
students in a neighborhood of Shanghai (the small, worn buildings
immediately behind are indeed a temple with various small rooms
for worship of Buddha).
The
Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is nowhere seen, but is clearly
invisible everywhere. By that I mean the CCP is felt everywhere
but you don’t see it.
China
is a one-party state with a censored press. There are no elections
as we know them, which is why the students are so fascinated
by our presidential sweepstakes; maybe someday. . . .they muse
longingly.
The
Party is in charge of everything, ultimately, yet it appears
to rule with a light hand, at least in everyday life.
The Chinese people in the big cities appear to be sincerely
happy, even when standing in long queues that we wouldn’t
stand for unless it was for season’s tickets to the Cubs’
games.
The
economy is booming, doubling in size every six-seven years.
China now has more middle class citizens than the U.S. and its
economy will soon be larger than ours. The big cities are filled
with classy malls and glitzy hi-rise apartment buildings. The
Chinese love to eat out; restaurants seem infinite in number.
So
long as the economy is putting a chicken in almost every pot,
democracy can wait, the Chinese middle class seems to agree.
There
are 80 million members of the CCP, or only about 5 percent of
the huge nation’s population of about 1.4 billion.
On
the university campuses, the situation is much different. The
CCP wants its best and brightest to sign up with the Party.
Near the end of undergraduate years, students may make application
to join the Party. Most who contemplate careers in government
or higher education (which is government, as with our public
universities) apply.
Most
of the graduate students I have met on various campuses are
members of the Party, even though they criticize it roundly
in my classroom discussions. They belong, not because they believe
in the old Marxism and Mao so much as they believe in their
country and want to succeed in their careers.
Recently
I had coffee with two female graduate student roommates. One
belonged to the Party and the other didn’t, calling herself
an “independent.” Will you be able to get a good
job without being a Party member, I asked?
Yes,
no problem, she responded, confidently.
Apparently throughout the Chinese society both talent and Party
membership are important. Yet if the talent is superior and
Party membership lacking, then a person can get ahead. But how
far, I wonder, as at certain levels in government and Party,
membership would be required, I’m sure?
In
the private sector, which has fueled China’s stupendous
growth since 1979, even millionaires are joining the Communist
Party. This originally meant everyone would be equal and equally
provided for, which sure ain’t the case in today’s
China, where the gap between the super-wealthy and the awfully
poor is wide as the Grand Canyon and getting wider.
At
every level of life, there are parallel systems at work. For
example, the president of Fudan University has an “equal”
across the corridor who is the Central Party Committee Secretary
(CCP) for Fudan University. And the dean of the School of International
Relations and Public Affairs works with a Party (CCP) secretary
for the same school.
Everywhere
there is a major government official, there is a parallel Party
position. It would be like the governor of Illinois having an
equal who is the chair of the Democratic Party of Illinois.
(That might be a really good idea, now that I think of it.)
And
when push comes to shove on a tough issue, guess which side,
government or Party, makes the decision? If you guessed Party,
you move to the head of the class.
I
have had dinner with the Party secretary of the School of International
Relations and Public Affairs. A lovely lady, she comes across
as your favorite librarian, which she may in fact have been—but
she is boss. As a young woman, she even had to go into the countryside
and work with the peasants—backbreaking work—during
the Cultural Revolution, yet she is still a member of the Party.
I
write this not to castigate the Party and Chinese society. I
am their guest. This is their system; it has its good points
and its bad points.
Everyone
seems to want change to a more open, democratic system, yet
no one seems to know how to get there from here. Asking an entrenched
Party apparatus to give up power voluntarily is asking a lot
of human nature.
If
you lived in China and sought a successful career, would you
join the Party?
Letter from
Nanjing -
Fish head defeats editor
By Jim Nowlan
Chopsticks
and I have never been exactly friendly. Last week in Nanjing,
chopsticks and I became mortal enemies. (Nanjing is 90 minutes
west of Shanghai on a bullet train that reached a top-speed of
165 mph and was never below 120; each car tells riders how fast
the car is going with a ticker tape electronic display.)
After my lecture on American local governments with
Q&A about presidential elections, which fascinate the Chinese,
I was hosted for one of many huge meals by the big-deal dean of
Nanjing University. As is usual, we seven people sat at a round
table with an over-sized lazy-Susan in middle, on which ultimately
about 15 dishes are placed.
This evening our dishes included tender clams the
size of a linebacker’s thumb, down to the wrist; squid (baby
octopus), jellyfish, bittermelon soup (a bitter melon, in chunks,
with chicken pieces, bone included), and the piece-d’resistance—large
fish-heads boiled and covered with a slippery but tangy sauce.
I rarely eat Chinese in the States, so am not expert
with chopsticks. The basics are deceptively simple: rest bottom
stick atop third finger; put other stick between first and second
fingers and (try to) bring the points firmly together at the other
end.
By the way, chopsticks should be squared and unvarnished
at the ends, so you could actually grab pieces of food. Instead,
they are round and slippery, mine secretly coated ahead of time
with a special grease, I swear.
There are a few things to remember here. First, the
Chinese believe you should show respect, in this case by eating
with their chopsticks. Second, all eyes are on the honored guest,
in this case, if you can believe it—me. Third, if food is
spilled getting from the lazy-Susan, which seems an arm’s
length away, to mouth, you do not touch it, as it is unclean.
You simply leave it on the linen tablecloth.
I started out okay, as the seaweed was not too slippery
nor was the spinach, and you could wrap some around the chopsticks
and pull. Even if the trailing seaweed was a foot long, no sweat,
so long as you got it to your mouth.
Then came the slippery stuff. The huge clams looked
like a piece of cake (which is an awkward simile), but as soon
as I grabbed for one, it slipped out of my sticks. I tried again,
and it slithered out, coated a bit in oil as it was. By now, hosts
were again fixated on my efforts.
This time I thought I had one. Up from the large
plate it came, then I moved it slowly, like a sky crane. About
a foot in front of my plate, the sky crane (my hands and sticks)
drops it—splat, the world’s largest clam, I swear,
flat on its back on the linen tablecloth, untouchable.
Tisk, tisk, mumbles everyone, politely, but in fact
in deep disappointment.
Someone grabs a clam and sets in on my plate—humiliation
starts to grow. My forehead begins to perspire. But I recall that
not even the Chinese can always move food from lazy-Susan to plate,
so I figure the hosts will give me a pass—and they do.
We move the lazy-Susan, and right in front of me
comes the eel. Talk about slippery; I don’t even want to
try a simile for how slippery the long pieces of eel looked, it
would be too gross.
How am I going to grab and hold a segment of eel,
let alone eat it? Unfortunately, the guy to my right has been
handling the sticks so deftly that I can see him lifting a gallon
can of Sherwin-Williams paint by the handle with his sticks without
breaking a sweat. He makes the eels look like child play.
Not me. Splat, an eel falls to the right of my plate.
I try for a piece of vegetable on the eel platter, but it’s
coated with oil as well. Just as I think I have it to my plate,
the top chopstick flips over the stick beneath it, and I throw
the piece of vegetable like a catapult to the tablecloth to my
left.
By this time, we’re all concerned about my
eating habits. Every eye is one me and my chopsticks. The tablecloth
in front of me is looking like a child’s food fight, my
plate for eating conspicuously unadorned by food of any kind.
Now the biggest embarrassment—the host asks
the waitress for knife and fork for the really foreign guest.
I know this is what she is doing, as everyone who was fixated
on me now looks away, in embarrassment for their once-honored
guest.
I try to maintain my aplomb. Why should I worry about
how I eat in front of my hosts. I’ll just plow ahead with
my fork.
Then come the fish heads, on a platter the size of
first base. These are really big, clenched-fist-size fish heads,
with large mouths open in defiance, it seems, mostly covered in
a spicy tomato-like sauce.
As the honored guest I am first to try all dishes.
Well, let me tell you, there ain’t a helluva lot of flesh
on a fish head.
Perspiring freely now, the beer oozing out of me,
I try with my chopsticks first, to pull what looks like a piece
of flesh from the head. The piece slithers away, playfully mocking
me. So in desperation and disgrace, I do turn again to my fork.
But all I hit with the fork, under the sauce, is
the “click” sound of fork on fish head skull. I stab
again—click, more skull. Finally, I stab the fish head in
the eye, thinking I can lift up some of the head. And I do—the
whole head, and half a fish that was hidden underneath the sauce.
I don’t even want to suggest to you what happened
to the fish head. Let’s just say it defeated me. I’ll
probably never be invited again to lecture at Nanjing University.
I know somebody secretly greased my chopsticks ahead
of time. Probably an American-hater.
Letter from Shanghai
-
Cafferty riles Chinese;
“garlic heart fire”
By Jim Nowlan
Jim Nowlan poses with a class of his present
students at Fudan University.
I became caught up a bit in the controversy
Jack Cafferty created when he recently called Chinese products
“junk” and its leaders “goons and thugs.”
The Chinese have become enraged. Everywhere I speak, I’m
asked for my opinion on the tempest. A major daily, the Oriental
Morning Post, asked me to write a column on the topic, which was
translated and appeared Friday.
Different from the U.S., the Chinese hold their
national leaders in high regard and are strongly critical of local
leadership (generally the reverse of the U.S.). Further, most
of the Chinese I have met appear to have paper-thin skin when
it comes to criticism.
The lead sentence in my opinion piece went as follows:
“Welcome, China, to the world of major powers, where nothing
is sacred and everything and everybody are subject to brutal,
often unfair criticism—from a new world of shoot-from-the-lips
commentators who need shock value to garner attention.”
I go on to basically say that the Chinese had better
develop thicker skins and not respond to every criticism. I do
think the Chinese here and in the U.S. can effectively write letters
to the editors of major dailies in the U.S. to respond to criticism.
After all, the letters are the best read parts of the editorial
pages.
China is an undemocratic, one-party state and the
Chinese want this to change, slowly, gradually. They want to avoid
public tumult that could disrupt their economy, which is doubling
in size every six or seven years. So long as the economy booms
here, democracy can wait awhile, they seem to say.
I took to lunch several of my students from my
2005 teaching stint here. We gathered in a private dining room,
which is standard at nice restaurants for groups of five or more.
I asked each to order a dish or two for our repast. In retrospect,
I think the students politely ordered the least expensive items
on the menu, as we had two dishes of tofu, one steamed in a sauce,
the other fried crisp with a salty coating.
The best dish was the chrysanthemum salad, the flowers sliced
into long, thin, slivers and marinated in a vinaigrette dressing.
The flower had a mild, sweetish flavor, which was complemented
nicely by the tart dressing. Other dishes included an “egg
package,” which was an egg paste wrapped around chopped
meats, shaped into small cylinders about an inch high.
One dish of mushrooms and meat included a sauce
called “garlic heart fire,” which was not strong at
all. I love their translations of some of our words. A low-fat
muffin at a coffee shop is called a “skinny muffin.”
Next week, the editors at the newspaper mentioned
above are taking me to a restaurant in the center of the city
for spicy Sichuan and Hunan dishes. The editors include two, delightful,
tiny young women still in their 20s who refuse to call me Jim,
insisting upon “professor,” because of my advanced
age, I suppose, as well as the obsessive politeness of the Chinese.
Three Hooters have just opened in Shanghai, as has
a Wal-Mart a few blocks from the campus, so Western culture in
all its “glory” has arrived. The Chinese are quite
modest, so I wonder how the sports bars will go; maybe the Hooters
will appeal primarily to the 50,000-100,000 “expatriates”
(foreigners) in this city of 20 million. I was told Shanghai is
the most densely populated city in the world, fitted into an area
about the size of Stark County!
And I imagine the local market, where the chickens
are still live and in cages (talk about fresh meat), will soon
become history because of Wal-Mart.
The expats can live a life somewhat separate from
the Chinese. I have been invited to several social events such
as the Hungarian consulate’s reception honoring a dead architect
at an Austrian-style restaurant, and a book reading at an upscale
Australian restaurant. Most of the guests were American or European,
and English was the common language.
I met an impressive young couple at the former event.
In their 40s, she is a partner in a 750-lawyer firm, based in
Seattle but with a major Shanghai office; he manages properties
in Shanghai and Seattle.
Amy and Ted are both fluent in Mandarin (as are
their 12- and 9-year-old sons, who go to Chinese schools). Mandarin
is the official language (among many Chinese languages) of China,
which is a damnably difficult language, based upon thousands of
characters, each with its own tonal accents, pronunciations and
sometimes complex meanings.
If any of your children have an interest in languages,
learning Mandarin, Korean or Japanese would give them a huge edge
in business in the generation to come. For example, the young
woman lawyer gets about five calls a week from “headhunters”
(executive recruiters) who are trying to lure her away to new
employers.
I asked my PhD students how the Internet is changing
things in China. They were all emphatic that the Internet is opening
China up to much more information, which will give the common
Chinese toward a bigger role in government and society. The Chinese
are using the Internet, for example, to complain to government
officials on their official websites.
Recently, a female city mayor hit and killed a girl
with her automobile, but the official tried to cover up the accident,
as if nothing had happened. A citizen reported the truth of the
accident on the Internet, and the mayor was exposed and ultimately
charged in the accident.
The Chinese have Internet censors who monitor websites
and have blocked some, although I read the New York Times and
Chicago Tribune on line and use Google and Wikipedia without any
problem. After all, how can you monitor something as big as the
Internet.
The students did say that many young people are becoming addicted
to Internet games, which is a real problem, they say.
I am writing on Saturday (Friday night in Illinois)
and will go this evening to give a two-hour lecture (ouch) at
another university to 150 young government officials who are working
on master’s degrees in public administration.
My lack of Chinese language skills sometimes embarrasses
me, yet it would take months, probably years, to become really
conversant. As it is, I know just a handful of words to say thank
you, excuse me, “I’d like. . .,” among the handful
(I do know the word for beer: pei-jou).
I will use PowerPoint slides this evening (which
is new to me, so wish me well, after the fact), as many, maybe
most Chinese college graduates can read English even if they can’t
understand spoken English so well.
Letter from
Shanghai
Beijing Olympics—triumph
or tragedy?
By Jim Nowlan
Qiqi, age 6 and daughter of Nowlan’s
host family, plays an ancient Chinese musical instrument.
For years, China has been dressing
itself up for a coming out party—coming out at the Beijing
Summer Olympics as a major player on the world stage, with an
amazing story of economic growth to tell. Yet recent protests
along the Olympic torch route and threats by Western leaders to
boycott the opening ceremonies may turn the hoped-for triumph
into a public relations disaster that will affect China-West international
relations negatively for years to come.
The fundamental mistake that China made years ago
when it bid for the games was to think that the event could ever
be apolitical. Anything that draws world attention also attracts
people and groups with causes like gypsy moths to the flame.
For all its new-found wealth and modernization,
China in 2008 is different from the West which it tries so hard
to emulate. From our perspective, China is a closed society that
brooks no criticism of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the
government the party runs.
From Chinese perspective, their country is coming through the
first stages of economic growth in the quest to regain world respect,
following more than a century of cruel humiliations at the hands
of Western Powers as well as Russia and especially Japan.
Four or more thousand years ago, when our forbears
were running around, at best, in animal skins with clubs for weapons,
China had an advanced civilization that practiced high order mathematics.
The Chinese are understandably proud of their history and still
smolder about their treatment in the recent past (a century or
more in their context is recent).
In the late 1800s, English, American, French and
German interests forced their ways onto China to set up commercial
trading ventures. If I recall right, Russian and Japanese forces
intruded early in the 20th Century and in 1932, Japan launched
a full-scale invasion of China, raping and pillaging as it chewed
up much of China in its military maw. Then, the Chinese had their
own civil war going on simultaneously between the Communists and
Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists. A horrible time in China.
About 90 percent of the 1.4 billion Chinese are
descended from the Han people. So, while huge in number, their
people are somewhat homogeneous, proud and intensely supportive
of their nation, even if they would like to see their government
open up society more.
Thus, the Olympic Games are even more important to them than they
would be for us if Chicago wins the 2016 bid. The progress, or
lack of it, by the Olympic torch bearers is front page news almost
every day in their newspapers.
Any slight or criticism of the Chinese Olympics
is a sharp slap in the collective face of the Chinese, whose sting
will not fade quickly.
Western leaders would be wise to make their legitimate criticisms
known to the Chinese outside the context of the games. If the
games are a somewhat harmonious success, China will be more likely
to continue on its admittedly slow path to political openness.
On the other hand, if the country’s leaders are motivated
by perceived public humiliations to overreact into a strident,
jingoistic anti-Western stance, such could disrupt the lives of
both Easterner and Westerners for years. For example, China owns
nearly a trillion dollars in American debt. We have been delighted
that they would buy it so we could continue our debt-plagued lifestyles.
If, however, China were to start selling our debt, disastrous
havoc would reign in our economy and that of the world.
To the extent possible, we should leave the games
to the athletes, though I’m not confident we will.
Expectorating. Chinese men of
middle-age and beyond have the habit of expectorating or, put
more daintily, spitting. In other words, they gather up everything
in their throats and let fly on the streets. Awful, and apparently
Beijing is trying to get people in that city to break their habit
before the Olympic Games. Don’t bet on it, as it may be
as strong a habit as smoking, which many of the Chinese also do
with gusto.
So what was the “Word on the Street”
question this past week in a local English language daily: What
do you think of the government’s plan to extend the smoking
ban in public venues? The responses mirrored those given in the
Stark County News a few weeks ago. Some were for it, even though
a couple of the proponents smoked, and some were strongly against
it, claiming it was their “right to smoke.” Another
said the ban was a good idea, but doubted it could be enforced.
Basketball is played here day and night,
even in the dark on the student basketball courts outside my room.
For fun, I asked my students in an otherwise serious questionnaire
what team Yao Ming played for. They all had the correct answer
of the Houston Rockets, but one said he wished he played for the
Lakers.
Nor are the Chinese small, as we might think. I
see many young fellows on the courts who tower over my 6’2”
standing, and even girls of six feet and more. Overall, the Chinese
I see are smaller and slighter than Americans, yet not by much.
Unexpectedly, I needed another pair of shoes because
one shoe of my second pair for the trip came apart (guess I walked
it to death). In one of the three glossy shopping malls just down
the street from the campus, I saw a Florsheim shop on the 7th
floor and figured I’d get a deal—after all I’m
in China, where so much of this stuff is made. Cough, I figured
out that in dollars the pair I wanted would cost $270! Too much
for a broken-down professor, so I went downtown to Nanjing Road,
which is one of the world’s largest shopping areas—think
Michigan Avenue in Chicago with the cars out and the whole width
filled with people, and then extend it by twice its length. I
keep my right hand in my front pocket, on top of my valuables,
at all times on Nanjing Road.
I saw a “sale” sign, in English (lots
of foreigners on this street in the center of things), went in
to the store which was frantic with buyers, found a pair of shoes
that looked like me, and bought them—for $24 (normally $70,
the sign said, all in Chinese money terms, of course). My host
thinks I probably got scammed, that the quality is low, yet the
shoes have worked well thus far. I’m quite proud of myself.
Breakfast in China. My hotel rate
(which is paid by my host, so I don’t know cost) includes
free breakfast, so I have tried it several times. Nothing sweet
on the buffet except for a small plate of jam for toast, which
I think is the only gesture to the American, French and other
foreign visitors.
But it’s all healthy—dishes of “spicy
radish,” “spicy vegetable” and “spicy
slices of green peppers.” Spicy is not real hot, so the
vegetables, lightly turned in oil, vinegar and maybe peanut sauce,
were tasty, though not what I think of as breakfast. I was hoping
for two of Connie’s plate-filling pancakes slathered in
syrup.
The orange juice pours from a container and is steaming
hot, and actually tastes rather good that way (and it is sweet,
now that I think of it).
I also tried the “dried bean curd with celery,”
which was the best of the lot. I spied a plate of what looked
like whole English muffins, and thought they might be filled somehow
with jam. No, filled with seaweed. Again, not bad, but new for
me.
Dishes of hard-boiled eggs and rice porridge are
always available but I haven’t partaken yet.
Recently, I went with two of my host professors
to an upscale Chinese restaurant in one of the three side-by-side
malls. The dish that I still savor was a pot of tofu (soybean
curd, right?) and varied seafood in a buttery stew. Also enjoyed
chicken and herbs mixed with thin noodles and greens (they have
lots of spinach-family greens in China) and dumplings filled with
lightly spiced meats.
Saturday, I broke away from my work (editing a
book manuscript for back in US) and walked for a hour-plus to
a park in honor of a major literary figure who espoused the Communist
cause in the 1930s, when the Commies were fighting both Chiang
Kai-shek and the Japanese. The park was filled with people, as
park space is limited relative to the huge numbers of people who
can spill out of the 10-30-storey apartment buildings that are
everywhere.
The fuchsia bushes were in their glory—hot
pinks, brilliant cherry plum and another vivid plum coloring.
Men—and a few women—played gambling card games at
outdoor tables, with crowds looking on. I observed what looked
like a “Gypsy”-style of ethnic minority dance troupe,
all in colorful outfits. Everywhere on the lawn, young people
played at badminton without nets. At a small lake, children and
their parents were zipped, two at a time, inside water-tight,
big, clear plastic bubbles, and they bobbed around in the lake—looked
like fun, kind of a trampoline in the water, though if you tried
to jump inside the bubble, you would fall over as the soft bubble
shifts under the occupants as they try to move.
Weather has been in the 60s, so am glad I brought
sweaters and a wind-breaker.
