Q&A time with Joe Flowers

why did she have to go to the hospital?

There are no general doctors here, so we have to go to the hospital for nearly everything that would require a prescription back home. There are little hospitals in almost every neighborhood. A visit can cost less than $10. The other option, which I prefer, is to self-diagnose using the internet and find the appropriate medication and go to the pharmacy to pick it up. I don't play around with antibiotics though.

why were you sent out of the interrogation room--for snapping what photo? why was anyone interrogating you/her about HER purse being stolen (shouldn't they interrogate the culprit)?

There's a photo on that post that Cody wanted me to take - of the guy asking her all the questions. I was kicked out because I was clearly taking photos official police business. No one really knows why they spend so much time filing police reports with inane questions, but the general consensus is that they just don't want you to file police reports. It makes the stats look bad, maybe. Who knows. It's happened with everyone, even a coworker who saw someone fiddling with his bike locks. One hour minimum in the police station. They tell you it will be quick, maybe 10 minutes, beforehand... which goes against the "they don't want you to file" idea. Who knows... really.

any definitive conclusion on the fetus eating issue?

Hera and my Chinese-American coworker maintain that it's real. My friends admitted they were playing a joke on Hera and I but said they have had placenta before. I don't think that last bit is a joke. That said, these guys eat everything. When queried about eating dogs, saying they're pets not food, the response I heard was, "Not these dogs. They're not my pet." People literally buy snake oil in the street. Someone's gotta think that fetus makes you healthier in some way, and there's gotta be some hospital in need of cash meeting the supply needs of the demand of someone with cash.

if everyone wants to be friends with whitey, how can you be sure that the girls (any girl) isn't also kinda/sorta influenced by the white-ness?

I don't completely follow this question, but I think you're asking how can I be sure Chinese girls aren't also victim to the Blanchaphilia? Many are and there's also a deep shallowness to it. I haven't had a Chinese girlfriend so I really can't speak too knowledgeably on this issue, but I think they're the same wavelength as many of the guys: they see us as curious two-dimensional objects with deep wallets.

Where many of the men might see a future business deal (even my good Chinese friends can't resist trying to get me to sell CCTV camera's [their business] to my filthy rich American friends, that's just one of the expectations in friendship here), some girls might see a potentially bright future for herself and her family. Contrary to the prevailing stereotype of Asian women, I think most Chinese girls aren't too interested in American guys outside of chatting, flirting, and maybe a little dancing at a club.

The one sorta-kinda girlfriend I had before Hera in Shenzhen was only interested in white guys. She saw us as much more than Curious 2D Wallets. She saw us as some sort of liberation from prevailing mindsets. For me it just felt like a fetish and spending time with her felt like wearing a crotchless polyester bunny suit. It was a sick and sinister role.

if you're NOT going to answer their phone calls, why give them your number? ;o)

One word: Face. You never, ever do something that might make someone look like an idiot. If I've used my phone around them and they ask for my number, I need to give them my number. If I said that I didn't have a phone when they clearly saw it they'd look like bad. The problem is exacerbated by the Dork Cord© connecting my phone to my belt loop. I leave my phone everywhere and it's good protection against pickpockets. So they see it. So I have to give my number or make them lose face.

Crowd Control

By Shuggiefisher

I don't envy any major policy maker in China. Every national policy decision affects 1/5 of the worlds population. Any egalitarian ideals forces a yuan to split 1.3 billion ways. It's precisely the same conditions that make China the world's factory that keep men and women in poverty even through endless hours, days, weeks, and months of labor. There's just too many damn people. A college degree in boomtowns like Shenzhen will earn about $250 a month. They move thousands of miles for this kind of wage. Anything less can easily place in a factory making 50 cents an hour, fourteen hours a day, six or seven days a week. They also move thousands of miles for this wage.

China's population is set to hit 1.5b by the end of this decade, which has China adding something like 1/3 America's population every year. So what's a policy maker to do? Welcome to one of two One-Child Policy nations on the planet (correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Vietnam is the only other one). Because the Communist Party of China isn't the strong top-down structure most people think it is, government policy is enacted differently in different parts of the country.

In Shenzhen, the policy seems only to act as a tax to the super rich. 1/3 to half the kids at my (boarding) school have brothers and sisters, if that's any indicator. I've read that most farmers get away the practice because they need the financial help that multiple children bring once they're old enough to work. In Tianjin, I have a friend who's father lost his job as a teacher because he had three girls to finally have a son.

Officials in Guanxi (the province of Guilin/Yangshou) took things a bit too far though. The NY Times writes that, "officials in several parts of Guangxi mobilized their largest effort in years to roll back population growth by instituting mandatory health checks for women and forcing pregnant women who did not have approval to give birth to abort fetuses." In addition to this, "[they] slapped fines starting at 500 yuan and ranging as high as 70,000 yuan, or $65 to $9,000, on families that had violated birth control measures anytime since 1980."

"The family-planning officials were just like the Japanese invaders during the war. They took everything away, and destroyed or tore down the houses if people could not pay the fines," said one villager surnamed Wu.

"In some families, even the gate and bowls were taken away, leaving them with an empty house." [Washington Post]

______

"....gangsters used hammers and iron rods to destroy people’s homes, while threatening that the next time it would be with bulldozers,” [NY Times]

The villagers responded by, "clash[ing] with officials and police armed with guns and electric cattle prods, pulling down a wall surrounding the government office, turning over cars and burning part of its main building."

"The government office was a big mess," a villager, who witnessed the scene, said by telephone. "The big gate and two cars near it were all burnt and black, and broken glass, bricks and rubbish were everywhere." [Washington Post]

Teaching

Photo by Lida Rose

As my juniors last year graduate from Greenwood this week, I've been pondering my own growth as a teacher. It's a strange and wonderful career I've chosen and in my two short years I feel like I've done it all. I've worked with little kids, adults, teenagers, college kids... everyone. I've given hour-long lectures, taught 40-minute classes, have one-lesson weeks now, did twenty lesson weeks last year. I've created my own courses from scratch, worked out of a book, and given one-to-one's in principals offices to explain how an American school board works. What have I learned?

Forgive. The most important thing is to never get angry with a class. It's pointless and you'll lose every time. Chances are if they're misbehaving, you've gone over their heads or your simply boring them. Never hold a grudge. Never expect the bad student (or class) from last week to be a problem this week. Allow them to redeem and redefine themselves. Reward instead of punish. Do this not only for your own sanity, but for the example you - as teacher - are supposed to set as a model behavior. Forgiveness isn't about accepting apologies. It's about moving on.

Entertain. That is, after all, why most students and parents think you're there. Let your personality fill the room and be the sole object of attention. You're competing against a lot of things. Flying paper balls, notes, books, and cute crushes have an advantage. Steal and co-opt them.

Think on their level. I once heard someone say, of teaching kids, that if you ever stop thinking like one, even for a moment, you've lost them. It's absolutely true. If your teaching businessmen, be prompt and efficient in your teaching. If you're teaching little kids, sing songs and be a ninja from time to time. Match the pre-existing vibe of the class and everyone wins.

Review. You'll be floored by how much they forgot. Make it as fun as possible though.

Meaning. Make sure they understand and believe that what they're doing means something and in some way will help them in a tangible way. Make them feel privy to some sort of inside information that others aren't getting. It works as well with history as it does with English.

The People's Democratic Dictatorship, Pt 2: Commuwhat?

One of my biggest pet peeves here is hearing people say, “that’s just communism.” I can see where they get the impression. There’s a Stalinist power-structure in place that calls itself the Chinese Communist Party that certainly has Marxist roots, but it has about as much a connection to communism today as the Republican Party has to the ideals of the old Roman Republic. Tenuous, at best. Not even very superficial really. One thing I’ll give credit to The Party for is not pretending to be something it’s not. Doublespeak is not a fixture in Chinese politics. Typically, the leadership says what they mean and means what they say and they say the revolution's dead, folks. They sent the memo in ’78, didn’t you get it?

Mao did create a communist society for a short while. During the Great Leap Forward in ’58 the villages were all leveled and rebuilt as communes. This might have actually worked except that alongside this came the remarkable idea that China was going to match England’s steel production in eight years. Wait, no, 4! Wait! Two years! We can do it in two! Someone said two months? Let’s do it guys! Just melt your shovels, hoes, rakes, plows, and jewelry in backyard steel mills! And then, you know, watch your crops die with thirty million dead peasants following. That's a tenth of the the current US population, by the way.

That didn’t work out so hot and his power slipped a bit. Plan B. Anarchy with communist characteristics. Ten years of it during the Cultural Revolution. Class struggle as defined by neighbors “struggling” against that bastard whose father was a rich peasant or whose brother served in Kuomintang along with your generic book burning, banning anything but revolutionary music, and sending anyone with an education to work as a farmer in the countryside. The general consensus is that it was Mao making a last ditch effort regain power and solidify his historical role as not just The Great Helmsman, but God Amongst Chinamen. Mao died. Happens to everyone, right?

Things changed very, very quickly after that. Deng Xiaoping, probably the most pragmatic political leader I’ve ever read about, came back from his small engine repair shop where he was exiled during the Cultural Revolution. He had a few ideas. The first, and most important today, was that “poverty is not communism.” Maybe sending educated people to the countryside for a few years can have a positive effect after all.

Well… turns out maybe poverty is communism when there’s not a lot of wealth to be shared. What’s a pragmatist to do? Rename communism, that’s what! But what to call it, what to call it… teacher! Pick me, pick me! If you said “socialism with Chinese characteristics,” you won! What does it mean? Well, whatever the hell it needs to mean. That’s its beauty. Did you notice how well the word “socialism” kept the relevance of the “communist” party. Didja also note that “Chinese characteristics” could mean anything? It’s kinda like saying Trey-style Chinese Cooking.

For Deng, it meant two things. Take notes, this well be on the test. First was that “to get rich is glorious.” Hmmm, interesting. That’s a bit of a change from the class-struggling fervor of Mao’s Little Red Book, the only literature allowed only five years earlier. The second was the pragmatic counter-weight, that “some must get rich before others.”

Right there communism died in China and the Chinese Communist Party was given a second chance to prove itself useful to the Chinese people before things got nasty. Nothing but pain came from the previous two decades of rule. While Mao started off on the right foot, The Party and its army was on its best red behavior while running from and fighting off the worse than useless KMT in China’s heartland, he left psychic and physical scars on this nation that will never be healed. Try to find a temple older than your grandfather in this ancient land.

So if China isn’t communist... what is it? That's for Part III: Survivalism.

Some Photos and Captions

Too much text lately, ey? Let's have some photos.

From top to bottom, left to right:

The view from my office. According to my boss, the red buildings on the left side were execution grounds about a century ago. The red keeps the bad spirits away. Behind that building is a massive park centered around Deng Xiaoping on top of a mountain.

We were walking back from Overseas Chinese Town [OCT] after a CouchSurfing meetup. We just got done telling our visitors that Shenzhen, essentially, is a safe city despite its stereotype of lawlessness and crime. Swinging her purse in circles at 2am, however, Cody had it snatched. I got kicked out of the interogation room after snapping this. She spent two hours answering questions like "what was your first pets name?"


A sea turtle. Being "protected" in a Haikou seafood restaurant. Yeah....

We've all heard of the One-Child Policy, right? Well, Pizza Hut in China has a One Trip To The Salad Bar Policy too. 1.3b people. One salad bar. Law and order, peoples, law and order! This is the result.

A group of Vietnamese/Chinese-American businessmen asked me if I wanted to go shopping with them. They took me furniture shopping. Something like $50,000 for this desk. "Wouldn't 1000 year old wood be better in a 1000 year old tree," I asked.

He was in the Chinese Army for years. He was also hit in the head with a pipe. The words "help me" are written on the dent in his bald and dented head. He jams, man. He runs loops through his keyboard by the crosswalk. Easily my favorite beggar.

People's Democratic Dictatorship, Pt. 1: My Bias and Observations

This might be taking it too far, but here goes. I'm reading a lot on the subject and really want to express my thoughts. There's a right way to do it and a wrong way to do it here and after talking with a friend in the Party I think I know where the lines are. Here's hoping I still have a visa next week.

Democracy. China. There... cat's out of the bag. Let's chat. For a censor reading this, please note this is an attempt to explain a situation to the Western reader and not some foreigners idea of how to change China.

I'll start with my own bias and ground observations. Liberty, fairness, and responsiveness are more important to me than the tools of democracy like elections. I'm inclined to think that elections are the most efficient ways of delivering those values to the people, but it's not a universal. Hong Kong is a good example of a place that never really had elections through most of it's modern history and today only grants the right to vote to a few millionaires and academics. Hong Kong citizens experience a great deal of liberty, fairness in law, and have an extremely responsive government.

Compare that to a place like Manila where elections are common but so are troops to harass socialist leaning parties wanting to represent the squatters and poor. Corruption is even more rampant in the Philippines than in China. Lonely Planet, in fact, advices backpackers to not report crimes to the police. You'll somehow loose important belongings before you leave their offices. Elections do not cure everything.

Liberty does exist in China in a limited form. People aren't terrified of talking politics and dissing old leaders like Mao in private. I've heard people in very high positions tell me they're not a member of The Party because they "don't believe communism will be actualized." Where it stops is the right to go into the street with a big sign that says that. Or march on Tiananmen Square. Or try to convince people of your ideas in public forums. There are no North Korea-style microphone systems hidden in people's homes that send the Gestapo in to throw you into re-education camps for bringing up your ideas inside your home or even office.

Fairness and responsiveness are two things the government in Beijing openly discuss and the leaders frequently cite as major policy goals. They know theres a fire brewing in the countryside and they know that it poses the greatest threat to the future of The Party. The cities are content if not happy as a whole. There's education, health care, jobs, and smart people can potentially make a much better life for themselves. None of that can be said of the countryside. Instead they deal with rampant corruption and stagnant incomes while the coastal cities boom.

Corruption isn't just about having to pay off the local cop to get out of a traffic ticket. It's about having your small plot of land appraised at a certain value. The developer gives the local government the appraised amount to buy the land from the farmer. The farmer maybe gets ten percent of that appraised amount, then the land is resold for tens or even hundreds of times more than the appraised amount [of which the farmer only got the sliver of]. This happens all day, every day. Add to this steep taxes on produce that are only now being revoked and you have a land of very edgy farmers that have been known to tear apart government offices.

Officials reported 74,000 demonstrations, or "mass incidents," in China in 2004, up from 10,000 in 1994, with the number of participants rising to 3.8 million from 730,000. - UPI

What's happening now is Beijing knows this problem needs to be addressed but there's no clear solution to it. The corruption isn't necessarily happening because of bad people in administration. It's happening in large part because bureaucracies are both bloated and underfunded. The previous president tried subsidizing rural administration payrolls and quickly learned it would bankrupt the national government. Cutting back on the bloating has serious political consequences within the party, as it creates more work and removes layers of separation between cadres and the unruly peasants.

Limited democracy had been one of their approaches. Contrary to popular belief, there are some relatively free elections in China to small assemblies for townships. Even non-Party members can run and often win. In effect it's giving a blow-off valve to the most disaffected without seriously disrupting power structure. It gives voice without much authority. And

Weekly Observations

Observation #1: Social Harmony

The universe demands it. Extroverts get along great with introverts and vice versa. People play certain roles around certain people. Around introverts I become an exceptionally boisterous, fun-loving, girl-gawking, funny kinda guy. Around overly extroverted people I become a serious, bookish, fact-touting weirdo. Coincidentally, almost every long-term girlfriend I've had is an quietish introvert. I'm most socially awkward around unpredictable or moody people because I don't know whether I'm the yin or the yang that day.

Observation #2: A Football Riot

Bus drivers and their attendants have a choice of what media to play on their bus. About half of all buses have TV's and all have radios. I've been on bus that played techno for my half-hour ride and now I've been on a bus that plays strange cartoons everyday. Whilst watching the cartoon, which had South Park-esque craftsmanship, a riot broke out. It was clearly a football [come on guys, no one else calls it "soccer"] riot] as witnessed by their signs with... footballs. Then the riot police came. And beat the crap out of everyone. The punchline of the cartoon involved two anthropomorphic pigs, with the female one accidentally being assaulted and abused constantly and thus very angry at the male pig. And the final scene the male pig tries to talk a cop out of swinging a billy club at him and instead only infuriates the cop. The cop swings, male pig ducks, and little Mrs. Piggy goes flying through the sky like a reverse meteorite.

"I think there's a lot of collective social experiences we missed out on,'' Grant says. So what, exactly, was that collective social experience being conjured up when those billy clubs came out? Wait, I don't wanna know...

Observation #3: Chinese Time

I've spent most of my first month as Head Teacher assigning order to madness. I started by taping three 8.5x11 printed calendars on our office walls. This has now evolved into a massive effort to enter all relevant data (visa expirations, class times, vacation requests, recruiting info) into Google Calendar and Google Documents (which I can't recommend enough for people needing to share up-to-date information). I've also spent a significant amount of time trying to explain why everything happens last minute. Why one can't easily find calendars in office supply stores.

The biggest reason, in my mind, is the hierarchal structure of decision making in China. Things are strictly top down 'round these parts of the world. Boss Man tells you that you need to be somewhere in 45 minutes, you need to be there. NOW! QUICKLY! And you don't ask later why he couldn't have given you a bit more heads up. Nor do you make the friendly suggestion that he shares information with you. Information is privileged and subject to change. Even in schools, perhaps the most structured environments outside of prisons, have no idea when breaks come or when semesters begin and end. It comes from Boss Man's boss too. It goes all the way to the government. You're typically informed of a decision when it happens. When do you know when your business visa is done processing? When they tell you pick it up. That's when. Bitch.

Book Review: The New Emperors

Pete Salisbury's The New Emperors is one of the best history books I've ever read. In reads like a Bill Bryson take down of one of the most complicated subjects in contemporary history: the rise and evolution of the Chinese Communist Party through the lives of it's two paramount leaders, Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping. It tracks the Party's rise against the odds - even the Soviets were backing the Kuomintang - to eventually take over and completely remold Chinese society. The remolding might be one of the most brutal yet intriguing social science experiments of all time: the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. This is where the books shines.

Instead of just telling you that the peasants were melting their farm tools in backyard steel mills during the Great Leap Forward while the crops rotted, it describes through firsthand account and interviews how these things happened, what Mao was thinking, and how his lieutenants fueled it. It shows the beginnings, starting with Peng Dehuai, of the purging that would define the Cultural Revolution. Like a soap opera it sets up the characters just to watch them fall. Perhaps venturing a bit too far into speculation, but supported with Mao's own words, Salisbury claims what was really going through Mao's head were literal pipe dreams. The opiate-laced sleeping medication that the old warhorses were dependent on fueled the imaginative perceptions of what flipping an entire society on its head would bring.

The book changes direction to chronicle the less interesting but more relevant story that brought Deng Xiaoping out of small tractor repair shop where he was sent during the Cultural Revolution and into Beijing to topple the Gang of Four. Like Mao, the book starts soft on the imminently flexible and results-oriented leader and ends with the rigidity and tragedy of his latter days, culminating in the Tiananmen tragedy where the author was an observer.

This is a must read for anyone interested in the roots of today’s China. Though I didn’t think so at the time, it was worth the Beat Reader I traded it for at Friendly’s Guest House in Manila. Get it.

One Chief

The always accurate Mr. Cheney today, in referencing Democratic congressmen acting on the will of the people to pull out of Iraq, that, "the United States military answers to one commander in chief in the White House, not 535 commanders in chief on Capitol Hill." Technically, he's right. But then his logic follows that the Congress must fall in line behind Presidential policy and thus they "expect the House and Senate to meet the needs of our military on time, in full and with no strings attached."

The President answers to the 535 men and women on Capital Hill. The President is the Executive, he makes sure the law and policy is carried out. And like any CEO, he answers to a Board of Directors. A freshly elected Board of Directors still covered in the raw stench of campaigning and opinion polls. Who's powers include [Article II, Section 8 of the US Constitution]:

To declare war, and make rules concerning captures on land and water; To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years; To provide and maintain a navy; To make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces; To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions; To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the states respectively, the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;

So yes, there is but on Commander-In-Chief "when called into the actual service of the United States." Guess who calls them into service? Three guesses:

A) Captain James T. Kirk
B) The US Congress
C) Lake Michigan

Mr. Cheney, the military answers to one Commander-in-Chief who executes the foreign policy of the United States as prescribed by the US Congress, who in turn answers to the people. I expect that you will fulfill their wishes with no strings attached.

The American Dream

Things made a bit more since today after having a class with a group of teachers and later with a group of principals with the same topic of conversation. What are the differences between American schools and Chinese schools? I begin by having them participate telling me what they imagine American classrooms looking like. Universally, they sounded like this:

• In American classes, students lounge around on the floor during classes.
• At most, there are 20 students per class.
• American students are more talkative in class, but that's to ask deep and penetrating questions.
• American students and teachers are always great pals.
• American classrooms are "more open," meaning few if any rules.
• American classes are extremely fun, involving lots of games.

More importantly, they all - every one of them - unhesitantly believed American education was better. An example was a principal who told me that 20 years ago educational scholars from China visited America and American scholars visited China. Both teams came to the conclusion that they well disciplined Chinese classrooms were better and the undisciplined American classrooms were worse. In those 20 years, however, no Chinese citizen has won a Nobel prize while Americans have won many.

With that, what we're doing out here makes since. I've often complained about feeling like the foreign teachers are expected to be English-speaking clowns. Come in, play games, make the kids have fun and love English and like magic the language will sink in. Disciplining children is not allowed. What we're doing, it seems, is recreating the Chinese image of the American classroom setting. They want us to come here and do to their students what they think was done to us. They want that magic spark that we were given to rub off on the next generation of Chinese.

Unfortunately, this image of the American classroom is incorrect. While Montessori schools and small private schools do exist, they are rare and most American students endure something very similar to the Chinese classroom.

While most American teachers would love the conditions that Chinese people are describing, the apathy and attitudes of American students prevents it from being a reality. I often corrected their notion of a rules-free zone by outlining each behavior associated with Childhood - horse playing, running, touching - that American teachers spend an extraordinary amount of time preventing for liabilities sake. Thus American teachers daydream of complicit and obedient [and imaginary] Asian classrooms where students want to learn and beg for three hours of homework a night.

In coming days and weeks I want to look at this issue more deeply. I want to more clearly identify, by the numbers, where the strengths of the Chinese classroom are and where the strengths of American education are. I'd also like to explore the idea of why, despite the huge number of science graduates in China, there have been no Nobel Prizes.

China: Economy 101

If you want to break things down into impossibly simple models, there are two competing views of where China's economy is going. The first, and one I give a bit of credit to, is presented in Ted Fishman's book China, Inc. In it he lays out how and why China is providing the proverbial Perot suction cup noise of industry fleeing not just America, but everywhere, to find a new home in China. A seemingly endless supply of docile unskilled laborers, infrastructure to move the goods, a government that's only talking of putting the breaks on uncontrolled growth at any environmental cost, a knack for copying coupled with laughable copyright enforcement, and a legal transfer of technology on a scale never before seen all conspire to give China an edge over any other country on the planet.

The first issue is the biggest. The sheer population of China is mind boggling. Fishman points out that the discrepancy between the official population of China [1.3b] and the unofficial estimates [1.5b] constitutes 2/3's the population of America. With that you have the largest migration in human history of people leaving the countryside in the interior to work in the coastal boomtowns, often trailed by a trail of savings from the villages to start small businesses. Labor is cheap and plentiful. College graduates work for less than $250 a month. Chinese companies don't need expensive machines to make cheap products more efficiently... it's easier to the labor. Fisher sites an example of an automobile company in Shanghai building luxory Jeep knockoff's for $8000 - with hand tools.

Eating lunch the other day my friends and I watched for half an hour as barrows of thrown out electronics dished out of the trash were brought to small workshop where the wires, casings, and other components were neatly shredded off and dropped into massive piles. Without a single any sort of Think Green-style motivation, China is probably the largest recycler on the planet. No task is too small or menial because no wage is too small.

Fisher sends out the warning over and over again that no business is safe from China's growing economy, especially as they move into more and more advanced technology like wide-body airplanes and their first indigenous jet fighter.

And then there's the other fear...

Economically, "too much of a good thing" really means something. Too much low interest money typically leads to inflation. Rising living standards in China mean rising costs of living, which means higher wages, which again adds inflationary pressures.

That's clearly dawning on Chinese leaders. `China's investment growth is too high, lending growth too fast, liquidity excessive and trade and international payments very imbalanced,'' Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said on March 16 at a Beijing press conference. He added that energy efficiency and environmental-protection issues haven't been properly resolved.

When even China's No. 2 official uses words like `unstable,' `imbalanced,' `uncoordinated' and `unsustainable' to describe the economy, you have to wonder why investors aren't paying more attention to the risks and are still buying ever more Chinese stocks.
-William Pesek

In the same article Pesek goes on to address longer term deflationary fears with business costs rising because of environmental degregation, volatility, and rising labor costs. Even the Asian Development Bank is saying that, "Should investment continue to run at more than 20 percent a year, what has been a source of growth for many years could turn out to be a curse."

My own thoughts side more with Fisher. I've been to Manila, I've lived in America during a recession, and I know what a growing economy feels like. I see the cranes on every street building new high rises, thousands of kids at my school getting a solid Western-style education. Though there are plenty of BMW's running around, most of the growth is building a budding middle class. It's no bubble that people hoping to get wages commensurate with their skills and beginning to get suckered into the consumerist game one cell phone, one DVD player, and one computer at a time. It looks and feels like almost everyone is getting a piece of the pie, even if only relatively more from starting point of worse squalor. On a street level, what else would you look for to check for a healthy economy?

Economists and market-types always like to talk about "market corrections." Well, folks, this is the biggie here. 1.3 billion consumers. 1.3 billion producers. All moving from the idle slack of horrific misrule dating from Qing Dynasty on through the wonderfully inventive ideas of Mao Zedong [it was only fifty years ago Chinese were melting their farm tools in useless backyard steel furnaces]. Here they are, arriving by the train load to work, buy, and join modernity.

McWorld

Exploitation: Taking advantage of an individual or situation for one's full benefit. It often has a negative connotation to it.


I'll admit to succumbing to the KFC down the street a few times a month when I'm pressed for time, but there's a lot of guilt involved in paying twice as much for less tasty food that's twice as expensive. A typical value meal at KFC is about 23元, 230% more than much tastier and fresher Chinese fast food. It's almost always packed for dinner and lunch. I assumed that because of the higher prices, they'd also be paying higher wages. Of course, I was wrong.

The claims first surfaced in a report by the local newspaper New Express Daily, which said its reporters... found that McDonald's, KFC and Pizza Hut were paying part-time staff as much as 40 percent less than the minimum wage for Guangdong. Minimum wages vary from region to region in China. The minimum wage for Guangdong province is 7.5 yuan ($0.97) per hour.The New Express Daily report said McDonald's was paying part-timers only 4 yuan ($0.52) per hour. It said part-timers at KFC earned as 4.7 yuan ($0.61) and Pizza Hut 5 yuan ($0.65).
Washington Post

There excuse wasn't that they weren't paying that low a salary, they were merely confused by just how low they could pay people:

"This was caused by a newly introduced regulation. We are working with the government to seek clarification of these laws," it said. "Yum has always strictly adhered to Chinese laws and regulations."

To be fare, it is almost assured that every restaurant in my neighborhood pays below minimum wage. In many ways China offers one of the freest markets on the planet, and the supply and demand curve for all labor - skilled and unskilled - is clearly in the employers favor. Even with connections into a family or friends business, a college graduate might only expect nine or ten RMB per hour. That comes out a little over $220 for six days a week of work. For the 工人, the workers, it's relatively well documented that the minimum wage often acts as a ceiling to the amount you can make in a week. The pay difference then amongst workers is how many hours you have to work, uncounted, to get it.

Yum! Brands and McDonald's clearly can afford to pay higher wages without significantly cutting into profits. It's a niche market and their restaurants are always packed. So why should it take a part timer almost five hours to buy one value meal. It would take an hour just to buy a single egg tart, nearly two hours for a cup of coke.

Bottom line: Western-run companies shouldn't try to cheat the infantismal Chinese minimum wage. That's low on too many levels.

Beggers

So most of us more giving foreigner types in China are a little bit conflicted the more we learn about the the realities of the situation. There are basically four kinds of beggars in Shenzhen. the first kind are the crippled or otherwise handicapped, the second kind are the elderly, the third kind are nicely dressed students with their heads bowed and a short descriptive reason chalked in front of them explaining why they can't their tuition, and the fourth involves children. I've made a rule not to pay children. Typically they'll be performing some kind of [often dangerous] circus act in the street and they're also the most pestilent. They'll come to you inside an open-air restaurant to collect for you merely observing their act.

The elderly and the students get most of my attention. There's an elderly woman camped out on the bridge I use to cross the street to my bus stop. She never really asks for anything, she just sits there all day looking half dead with a small box in front of her. Unlike the cripples, it's almost assured that they're not working for anyone and they get to keep the money you give.

Though I used to give to cripples a lot, I do it with less and less frequency now. Most Chinese will tell you that the Triads, 200+ year old gangs in the Pearl River delta, put them out and take most of the money. I took it as hearsay till I asked myself how the quadriplegic's and other severely handicapped make it to the top of the very steep steps of the cross-over bridge I mentioned before. On top of that, many of them exacerbate wounds so there's always a bloody appendage to wave around. There are many, many stories of Triads making the cripples what they are. Maybe they were kidnapped, maybe they owed some money. In any case, I have little faith that the money I give will be used by the person I give it to. I still give to them, just much less than before.

In the case of the first two pictures above, this woman spent two days going around Bai Shi Zhou. The first day she was wailing very loudly. Not a fake wail, but one of acute physical pain of pushing herself and her son across the pavement. She was being followed by a bunch of school children, as you can see. The situation itself didn't make a lot of sense. How could her son be really sleeping through all of the commotion? On top of that, she didn't stand out as particularly handicapped besides her dramatic method of transportation. But it sent chills down my spine [and I took a picture], so I gave money. I'm sure she needed it more than I do.

Twice I paid these kids in the bottom picture. The first time only because I took a picture, the second time because one of them refused to leave my table until I paid up. I'd love to give the parents a good whack on the head of the head. As you can see, the gimmick was to have one kid holding a metal ladder with her feet while ringing brass chimes like a trained monkey as another child did acrobatics on the ladder high above her. It really, really angered me seeing this. This week, the same kids are doing some strange variation of cartwheels in the street.

Zombies and The Midway Point

So I just passed my mid-way point in my year contract and I'm back from the [internet] dead. I needed a break from blogging. I needed a break in general. Luckily, I get one with a trip to Thailand, [maybe Laos or Cambodia], and the Philippines in two weeks. Basically, the past month has looked like this: my company told me they wanted me to be a head teacher in March, I accepted. This was coinciding with me getting more active in recruiting and my blog being a de-facto company PR tool. People looking up the company come here. I don't like that one bit. I'll slowly be removing all references to the company so I don't get pulled up at all.

Back to story, things changed pretty quickly. I don't know exactly what happened. The story, as was told to me, was that the guy who I was to replace found out he was going to be replaced and all bets were off. The offer was retracted. I'm still pretty bitter about that. Not that I think the guy should be replaced [especially after hearing his end of things], but that that's the way they wanted to go about replacing him. At the same time I had to retract an job offer they had me make to a retired doctor after offering him a contract. It was deeply embarrassing telling him we wouldn't take him two weeks after offering him a job. My word means a lot to me and I need to be careful who I speak for.

I have a strong suspicion that the person who offered me the job and also told me to offer the guy the contract really didn't know what was going on. In any case, there was bad communication all around.

I was bitter. I still am, but much less so. For awhile there I had a plan. A week after this all came apart I found myself walking to a one-to-one class and I had to stop and say out loud... "what the hell am I doing in China?"

I know how I got here. I know why I came. But I don't know what I'm doing. I'm 25 years old in a non-career job self-studying the hardest language on the planet [not really] without a real plan. And that bugs the hell out of me. As much as I detest the idea of being a businessman, working for my company on that level was really, really appealing for awhile. In an idealized way, it still is.

I'm trying to get my bearings now. It's hard for people like me. I have too many things I'm kinda good at, really interested in, and able to do. I'm so far away from home right now that I feel I can go almost anywhere on the planet... but for what? Why? I need that bigger purpose. I need some ladder I'm climbing to get to some goal.

So I called the Oracle last night. Collectively, I think all my friends back home consist of the Oracle spirit, but this time Jordan Schemmell was the shaman. Take it day, by day, week by week, year by year he says. What do I want right now?

The "plan" I'm putting together right now looks like this: First, I want to stay with Hera. Ya know that Filipino I keep mentioning? Yeah. She's good for me. We're going to burn her factory down and I'm gonna be her arson in shining armor. That keeps me geographically moored to Asia for now. That narrows choices, which is absolutely a good thing right now.

Second, I want that ladder... something to work on that leads to something bigger. I think I might have found it in the form of the University of Hong Kong. They have a two year, two day a week Master's of Education program meant for working teachers. Specifically, they have a Comparative and International Studies specialization. It merges political science and education perfectly. The guy who runs the program is President of the World Council of Comparative Education Societies. In other words, it's a serious program with well-connected staff that's relatively easy to get into with a specialization that I'm really interested in but a degree broad enough to get me into a lot of different places. Hopefully I can strut some of my brain fiber and get an invite to do research with them and work on an Ed.D. for free. Hopefully. Anyway, click on the "the guy" link and tell me that doesn't sound like that kind of research/work/teaching isn't perfect for me.

So that's where I am. Things could change quickly. I'm sure they will in ways I can't even think of right now. That's one thing about being here... you feel like your floating out at sea. Everything is so fluid and dynamic. Everything.

"Tie yourself to the mast, my friend,
and the storm will end."
- Richard Ashcroft

The Internet is Broken

The internet is broken. The earthquake I mentioned earlier ripped up some undersea cables outside Taiwan. I had assumed, wrongly, most international net traffic was now done through satellite. So accessing American web servers now is extremely difficult. All data is being rerouted to Europe and is getting clogged up, so pages hang endlessly. Blah. For some reason, Google still works flawlessly so I have this and my eMail working. I suspect they have an Asian mirror.

I've read it's going to that it's going to take at least two weeks to fix, so no calls home for about that long.

We felt that Taiwan quake all the way out here. They made us evacuate the Nanshan Education Bureau building in the middle of class. Thanks God there wasn't a tsunami going towards the Philipines as was feared. This is the third big quake on December 26th in four years... kinda strange, ey?

Night Run [Macau, pt 1]

I'm a liar. I've been peddling untruths to myself, friends, and lovers for years and it's time to come clean. Unless you're taking a day trip to a national park, traveling is never ever cheap. Ever. I've created the most elaborate Excel spreadsheets to spread my lies in slick emails. I've told countless friends the only cost of Bonnaroo is gas money and the ticket, and since each car is packed with people the travel costs are negligable. And, hey, food doesn't count 'cause you'd be eating at home anyway, right? Right?

This time I was absolutely convinced I could do a weekend run to Macau for under $60. Not just me, mind you, I also offered the trip as "my treat" to an initially reluctant travel companion. I had a website promising me they would ferry me across the Pearl River delta for 80rmb up till 9:30 at night and I had a quasi-reservation for a double room at a guest house for 150rmb. Add buses and meals, and wa la... an über-cheap side trip to that Portuguese bastard child of a forfeited colony opposite Hong Kong on the delta.

The other myth that's become obvious to me over the past few weeks is that I can plan. I can research and improvise just about anything... but plan? No. Not a chance. My "plan" was to look up the characters for "ferry terminal" and scout them out at the bus stop an hour before the last departure. That was it.

First we were running late because I had to conduct my first ever phone interview [I invite you to speculate what that means] so after making Hera wait outside my apartment in the cold for half an hour, we had to get a cab to the ferry terminal. 40RMB. We get there and learn a) my ferry company doesn't really exist, and b) the company that does exist sent their last ferry to Macau an hour earlier, and c) by the time we decided to ferry over to HK and take another to Macau, the last HK-bound ferry was pulling out of dock.

At this point a rational set of characters would have called it a night and tried to set out again in the morning. No such luck that your humble narrator and his guest were rational thinkers. We wanted to go to Macau. That was that, obstacles be damned. We decide to go to Lou Hu to look for a night bus to Zhuhai [Mainland border city of Macau]. For Jacksonville readers, imagine being in at the Gate gas station on A1A in between Ponte Vedra Beach and St. Augustine and deciding you need to catch a Greyhound in downtown Jax to Orlando at that very moment - 9:45 at night.

So we hopped another cab [add 40 RMB] back to Bai Shi Zhou to get on the subway to Lou Hu. When we get there we discover that, alas, all the buses were gone already.... but wait! A dashing young gentleman offers to have someone drive us to Zhuhai for 500 RMB. I turn to walk away. 350 RMB it is. We're now at 430 RMB [$53 USD], for those keeping score at home, and we haven't even left Shenzhen yet.

So at 11am on a Saturday night I get into a strangers van with my Filipino friend for a two hour drive through China's industrial wastelands to a city I've never been to. Though expensive, I know it was a good deal because our driver was angry. Very angry. He drove fast and blared his Sino-Techno out of a small 8" sub in the back of his can [take the most mediocre house music you've heard, strip away all but the barest of melody, run it through a $20 Radioshack keyboard to get that 4-bit MIDI effect in full, increase it to a happy hardcore 250bmp tempo, and wa la! You're a Chinese DJ!].

Guangzhou, the third most populous city in China and shoe factory capital of the world, was the mid-way point at the north corner of the Delta. Our driver pulled off the highway here and into a dark parking lot of what, in America, would look like an abandoned strip mall near MLK Drive. Businesses closed but people hanging out in the shadows outside. Our driver stepped out and was swarmed by six or seven men who looked angry. He disappeared inside the mob.

"Should we be worried, Trey?" Hera asked.

It was a very reasonable question.

"Yes. I think so, maybe a little bit anyway," I giggled back. I was worried a little bit. The situation was weird and becoming a bit too fluid. We had bitten off a little more than we could chew when hired a driver who didn't speak any English to drive us two hours in the middle of the night to a town I was familiar with through Wikipedia. But that's precisely what made the situation so fun [and funny] to me.

Our driver came back, opened the side door, and grabbed Hera's backpack. We correctly assumed we were switching drivers. We left our nightclub-on-wheels and drove off with our curious new driver.

"Ni hao, pengyou [hello friend]"

No response.

"Where are you from?" I asked in Chinese.

No response.

"Do you like Zhuhai?"

No response.

"Friend, do you speak Chinese or only Cantonese?"

No response. Nice.




- - - - too be continued [with pictures] - - - -

Yellow Smocks

Before I went to Amsterdam I'd never seen a prostitute before. Well, I have a memory of a prostitute coming and putting her leg on our families rental car when we were in Miami in '93, but that's just too weird to have really happened. In Amsterdam they were more like zoo exhibits than anything else. They were presented as tourist attractions. I'd never seen one in her natural habitat though.

Even on the famed Emerson and Phillips intersections in Jacksonville, which I once lived not too far from, I never saw one. Ever. Everyone said they there with the crack dealers but I never saw them either. I think my parameters of "normal human behavior" are just too wide to spot someone dressed eccentric enough to scream, "approach me for solicitation of sex and drugs."

Everyone claimed that the late nigh barber shops in Tianjin were all sin dens, but every time I looked while driving by they were doing legitimate business. But Shenzhen. Wow. Different story. Obvious isn't even the word. Apparently, we compete with Thailand on the sheer numbers of women coming to look for work and deciding the indentured servitude at a factory just wasn't what they had in mind when they left the farm.

Within a five minute walk I could count at least ten businesses of scandalous intent. Juries out on what they really are, precisely, but they're neon lit establishments with big glass windows with couches overflowing with bored young girls in short white dresses. There's always one booth for cutting hair and not a single customer. For that matter, I've never seen anyone coming into or out of one of these places. They're just kinda there. Existing.

Though prostitution is against the law, I've never seen a crackdown on the brothels like I've seen with street vendors [or reporters, or...], so it came as some surprise to read this in an article about prostitution in China in the International Herald Tribune today:

At the end of November, officials in Shenzhen, the southern boomtown, got the bright idea of reviving the Cultural Revolution for the purposes of temporarily cracking down on its prostitutes.

This came to pass as a face-preserving measure after a regional television station broke with decorum by mentioning the existence of this industry in a city famous throughout Asia for its sex trade.

To send the message that Shenzhen was actually a clean and proper place, the police dressed several dozen prostitutes in identical yellow smocks and marched them through the streets of Futian district, to be shamed by a jeering crowd and have their names and hometowns announced to all.

What's even stranger is no one I know had any idea this happened until we read about it on international websites. The news here is strictly "happiness abides," so things like this rarely get reported. Curious though, ey?


Tags: Treyopia current events news prostitution Shenzhen China Chinese Asia Cultural Revolution persecution

Multi-Post

I've been a bit sick, hence my slowness of posting. I was warned about eating the fried street food, but did I listen? Noooo. When I saw a dude frying banana's I just had to have one. And fried chicken on a stick. And now I'm paying.

It wouldn't be so bad if they Chinese didn't have an entire system of make-believe medicine. Err, "traditional medicine." When I was battling a cold earlier in the week I went to 7-11 to buy Children's Tylenol. They girls almost refused to sell it to me. The side of the box for their preferred medicine had written in plain English, "pear seed extract, grape stem, apple root,...". I got my Children's Tylenol with an orange Fanta Slurpee. I won.

As I type this I hear my roommate shout across the apartment "hot water!" every time I sniffle. Cold water, of course, is bad for your health. Dontcha know?

What's wound up saving me is Google's English-Chinese translator. Just find the scientific name for the medicine you need.

_____________________


Shenzhen is the land of homesickness. I just realized it after Hou Li told me one of her friends here from her home province is going back. It was too much being so far away. For my own part, I've had two bouts of acute homesicksness. It's not at all what I thought I'd be. It's short, spiky, and acute. It makes its attack and runs. It comes when you least expect it.

_____________________

And alas, the pictures I promised. Hera and I went hiking on Lamma Island last weekend. Great hike. Both of us being from beach towns, we wanted to find the nicest beach Hong Kong had to offer. Along the way we perused abandoned villages, which I'll write more about later.

Breakdown

It finally happened. I snapped in class. A breakdown of sanity and will to go on. Wednesdays are my longest days flush with 8 classes. I couldn't fall asleep last night so I came to work with about four hours of nocturnal slumber. I'm also fighting off a chest cold with Chinese traditional medicine. Advil Cold and Sinus > Flower juice. Trust me.

A strong KFC coffee and a lot of tea propelled me through the first part of the day, but then I had my afternoon nap. It was just a taunt, I needed more. Then third graders. Love the little tykes, but they take everything out of you.

And then one of my one of my favorite playful 4th grade classes. I wanted to play 20 Questions. It's a surprisingly useful game in that when the kids get into it, they're clamoring over each other to speak English and rack their brains for adjectives so they can win.

With sixth graders it takes about three minutes to explain it. Usually a light will go on in one kids head and they'll start stammering "I know, I know!" and I'll have them explain it in Chinese. With this one last fourth grade class that never happened.

My first trial game is me thinking of someone. I make it easy.

"I'm thinking of someone in America...", I begin.

"When is your birthday?"

OK, so they have the question part of 20 Questions down. I ignore it and move on. I whisper into a different kids ear, "ask me if it's a boy or a girl."

"It's a girl! Great question!"

Hands raise. They get it!

"Teacher, what is your favorite color?"

No... no they don't.

I pick another hand. "Who is your wife?"

I played politician and pretended to hear the question I wanted [hey, maybe they're taught to answer Jeopardy-style], and responded, "Nope! Not my wife! I don't have a wife."

"Is it a Panda?!"

I put my head into my hands. I had two choices. Weep or laugh. So I laughed until I weeped. All the fatigue hit me at once, all the frustration of the language barrier. Everything. I wanted to walk away and sleep in some damp corner underneath the stairs.

I picked another hand, hoping.... hoping...

"Do you like Chinese food?"

I walked to the door. I remembered a sign I gave Jordan Schemmell a few years ago. He's the man who got me into education. It was a bulls eye and said, clearly, "BANG HEAD HERE." I picked it up in a gas station on I-95 coming back from a Radiohead concert in West Palm. Actually, it was less a gift than him taking it from me. Several times last year I would draw just such a bullseye on my whiteboard and bang away. American kids understood that it was a perfectly rational response to irrational situations. They would draw it for me sometimes.

So I banged my head on the door unable to stop laughing.

"Teacher, what are you doing?!?" they said. Three kids pulled on my arms to drag me away from the door.

I tried explaining the game again. I had the brightest kid explain in Chinese. I asked in Chinese if they understood.

"Yessss!!!"

I went over what we had so far... a girl... in America... and she's not my wife... why doesn't someone ask me if she's in my family?

"Do you like hamburger?"

I went back to the door for sweet, sweet catharsis.

I remembered I came prepared today. I had backup. The educational equivalent of an air strike, napalm to an inattentive classroom. It was a bright, shiny, fast but long overdue DVD from the school library. It has an airplane drawn on the disc so I assumed it had something to do with aeronautics. I hadn't seen it, but it was in my bag for just such an occasion... either for a really bad class or if I was too tired or sick to really teach. I had never used it. It was more there for comfort, a soft hand to hold and bring me out of bed on tired mornings telling me "it's OK... you have me if things don't work today. Get up, cowboy, take that shower and get to the bus stop!"

Bottom line: teachers, bring backup!