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.

Best Friends Forever

I don't know if it's the language or the culture, but the concept of friends is much different here than in America. I present to you, the reader, three examples. The first was last week when I was riding the bus to class. I was tired. I was grumpy. I wanted my nap to be a little longer. I'm still not used to having 8am classes. In the midst of my radiating grumpiness the lady behind me wanted to strike up conversation. I was browsing through a Chinese language book and she wanted to confirm that that's what I was studying. I agreed and went back to reading. Fifteen questions later her stop was coming up and she wanted to exchange numbers. This is very, very common. She asked, "You and me - Friends?" I reluctantly agreed and had to spent the next day ignoring her phone calls. I take Brian's line. If the only reason they're interested in you is because you're white, they're not worth much time.

Case two. I found an alternate Muslim noodle shop the other day. I love Muslim food but my local shop is relatively expensive, so I've been on the lookout for cheaper places. I found it. When I finally ate there, I spend the next twenty minutes being baraged with half-English/half-Chinese questions while I ate. My more-than-subtle body language of turning to face the wall didn't work. My new friend, who would be mistaken for a coke feign anywhere else on the planet that actually had drugs for poor people, still kept asking questions and doing weird things - like putting his hot sauce on my table despite the fact that I already had [and was using] the exact same sauce. I had the pleasure of being chased down and screamed to in a crowded alley when he saw me pass by tonight. He had his own little street-food stand selling bakery goods and I tried to buy a small cake, but had to force money into his friends hand. He really was trying to be friendly, but man... come on.

Case three. Eating a table with a stranger is common here. If a restaurant is full, you find a table with a roughly equal number of empty seats as people in your party. Thus, you and a friend can sit at another table with two strangers. I can sit at a table with another loner, like I did tonight. it began well. We shared our dishes and conversed a bit in Chinese. We even split a beer at the end of the meal. He wanted my number. It's normal, so I gave it to him. This is an aspect of Chinese culture I just don't get. We have very, very obvious communication difficulties. We barely made it out of whether we had girlfriends or wives, which part of town we liked, where we were from, and what our respective jobs were. What in the hell could we possibly talk about on the phone? I gave it anyway. I spent the rest of the night answering texts with him ascribing us to be brothers. I replied that no, we were new friends. Not brothers. I received only silence. Somewhere in the Middle Kingdom a heart broke.

* * *

I do have Chinese friends here that aren't part of the company. It took a long awhile to acquire them. We hang out the same way I hang out with friends back home. I go over for a few beers, maybe watch TV and complain about work or women or the weather. The fact that I'm a foreigner means little to them anymore, at least compared to almost everyone else. I might not call them every night [largely because the words "I really need to get home" mean nothing before 11:30 at night to them] but we enjoy each others company because our personalities mesh. They get to practice English, which they like, and I get to practice my Chinese. It's nice. They've even flipped my own sense of humor around on me. They were there for me when Hera needed to go to the hospital and I'm there for them to provide American music other than John Bolton and Michael Jackson. After all, what are friends for?

Book Review: The Rum Diary

I’m glad I finished it because I almost didn’t. It didn’t demand my attention the way other Hunter S. Thompson books have done, but on the other hand the subject matter was a bit richer than I gave it credit for while reading it. The storyline, without much deviation and outlined in the first ten pages, follows a fictional Thompson to Puerto Rico to work for a dysfunctional newspaper with a horrible crew. It’s not meant to be a humorous setup and it’s not about workplace antics or cartooned bad employees. It describes, in one way or another, almost every workplace I’ve been in. It talks about being just a suckerfish in society, “trying to find the shark with the biggest stomach and smallest mouth” and never really being anything but that. It talks about “The Fear”, the fear that back home there’s just nothing for you. The same Fear that catapults clueless Puerto Ricans to New York City and drunkard writers to San Juan.

The story is mellow and plot twists expected. You can see why it took almost 40 years to be published. But I liked it. In the end, I couldn’t help but making two comparisons. First, who was I in that story of trying to find luck in a foreign land? Though I didn’t strongly identify with any one character, I think I fit the editor/manager archetype - the only one who takes the gig seriously, one of the few actually concerned about the future of the company and willing to put the time, heart, and money into making it something bigger and better despite the odds. What I wasn’t, in any case, were the free-willing shiftless drunks personified and maybe a little glorified by Thompson and the other main characters - running from The Fear further and further, paycheck to paycheck, one mediocre workplace to another, and drink to drink. In the end, the only thing that separated Thompson from the rest of the pack was his razor-sharp wit matched with a rock star charisma and attitude that sold a lot of Rolling Stones back in the day.

The second comparison, or question, I kept running through my head was why Thompson wasn’t part of the Beat Generation – that clique of pre-hippy bohemian artsy types that dominated the counter-culture scene of the 50’s, when Thompson was in his 20’s and getting his start as a writer. The simple answer, I think, is that by that time Thompson wasn’t part of any counter-culture. He wasn’t trying to create an alternate definition of morals or aesthetics. Though disgruntled, he was mostly dealt with those sentiments alone and not part of some bigger picture of collective discontent. He was just an intelligent drunk. He was still trying to fit into American society. He was still trying to sucker up to the man, in his own words, and get his fair share. He was still trying to find his place and despite his pessimism hadn’t fully given up hope that there was room for people like him in the big picture.

Perhaps that’s why I like Thompson a bit more than the Beatnik-types. He finally managed to force his own style into the system and actually made a lasting contribution to journalism. He worked inside the system as much as he could – preferring to submit “The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved” to mainstream magazines and later writing for Rolling Stone – instead of writing in the ‘zines of the day, like Northern Lights out of San Francisco. In the end, he won, and I like that.