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I went out for dinner tonight at a very trendy restaurant specializing in a region whose food we don’t see much in the West: Yunnan. Beijingese eat early, so when we finished at 10, we were the last party in the restaurant. We’d had a lavish multi-course dinner for 6 with beer, total cost: not quite $100. The kitchen staff were sitting down to their evening meal in their smart uniforms: a big tub of rice, served into plastic bowls, with a watery vegetable stew ladled over it. I got no sense that the staff in any way resented the enormous disparity between the luxurious feast they served to their (majority-Chinese) customers and their own spartan fare. But the difference must register.
One of the early surprises for an English-speaking visitor to China is how little enthusiasm for democracy – how much outright mistrust – is expressed by the highly educated, sophisticated, and globalized people he meets. They may sometimes feel oppressed by their rulers. It’s those below them that they truly fear.
sinz54 // Apr 18, 2010 at 6:13 pm
captn: My understanding of economics leads me to conclude that Chinese monetary policy is likely concealing large inefficiencies in the Chinese economy.
What is America’s $2 trillion debt (much of it held by the Chinese) concealing?
That America’s industrial base is eroded and antiquated?
That we’re trying to run a 21st century economy with entitlements designed for the conditions of the 1930s?
captn // Apr 18, 2010 at 6:37 pm
sinz54
The debt is more like $10 trillion, and I don’t think conceals anything. It brings into sharp focus that our spending and revenues are way out of balance. Landing on entitlements is astute, they are the biggest piece of the equation, and they will have to be brought under control. In fact, if we cut all other spending to zero we would still run deficits in 20 years. This is mostly due to the age at which benefits begin no longer relates to life expectancy. I’ve commented on this at length in other areas of this forum.
http://www.frumforum.com/gearing-up-for-the-vat-fight
http://www.frumforum.com/avoiding-the-deficit-trap
jg bennet // Apr 18, 2010 at 11:51 pm
ktward
have your friends lived in china or did they just visit? huge difference.. the little villages are great and there are beautiful places but the pollution, the crowds, the garbage etc. is hell and you have to find the little cultural enclaves to escape it. i travelled the length of china by train and one day sat looking out the window the entire day trying to count to 60 without seeing a person along the tracks, i never made it to 60. 1.3 billion people man that is a lot! after a couple of years never leaving the country i got a wild hair and set out on a long journey in search of a place where there were no han chinese….in china hmmmm? i wanted to experience china without the heavy hand of the han. why not? it was quite a challenge but i was determined and there are 56 different ethnicities there after all. i found found what i was looking for in remote tibet and it was national geographic amazing!
ktward // Apr 19, 2010 at 1:00 am
@jg bennet:
Steve, the airline rep, lived in China with his family for about 5 years. He was posted both in Beijing and Shanghai, but also traveled a lot around China. He experienced much of what you did, but his perspective was very different than yours: he viewed it all within context of feeling extremely blessed to experience what most Americans never do. His daughter loved her expat schools, and she had a rocky cultural adjustment when they were abruptly yanked back to the states after 9/11.
Robby, the photog, visits China for weeks or months at a time, about twice a year. Depends. The Chinese get such a kick out of him– he’s a 6′3″ blonde Scotsman. Not all that fond of the urban centers, though he has to put in some face time. He has his favorite rural areas, but not a chance I’d be able to name them off the top of my head.
Yes, the Han. My son’s Beijinger grad school friend, Bin, is of course Han, and he’s lovely in every respect. But I’m not entirely sure he recognizes the natural privilege afforded his ethnicity. It’s hard to tell, he’s been here for 4 years and loves Chicago. He returns home only once a year.
Tibet. I’m a live and let live sort, but for so many reasons China’s intrusion into Tibet is tragic. IMHO.
I’ve traveled extensively in the US all my life, but not abroad. So I soak up their stories and experiences like the culture-curious sponge that I am. I do plan on sharing with them your hilarious drunk Red Army Col. story. Not Steve so much, but Robby has plenty of drunk-in-China tales. (artists.)
sinz54 // Apr 19, 2010 at 9:42 am
captn: The debt is more like $10 trillion, and I don’t think conceals anything. It brings into sharp focus that our spending and revenues are way out of balance.
But the interest on that debt has to be paid. By us–either in the form of taxes or inflation.
Just the interest on that debt will soon exceed the entire defense budget.
China is building a modern infrastructure. Japan already did. India is industrializing rapidly.
We no longer have the money to invest in improving America–new highways, a new air traffic control system, 100 more nuclear reactors. Liberals claim that we could power the entire United States on wind and solar power–but where is the trillions of dollars to build enough of these going to come from?
Because we’re broke on a national scale. That’s what I meant by “concealing.”
I agree with you that the main problem is folks retiring at age 65 and then drawing SS and Medicare benefits for 20 years or more.
jg bennet // Apr 19, 2010 at 11:25 am
ktward
ahh that explains it your friend did not work for the chinese he was one of the insulated western expats. i knew plenty of those and even dated a few and they had a good life over there. expats like your friend thought i was crazy for living there with no lifeline and surviving on my wits. life is good in china if you get to live at the western pay level but it is as rough as a wood haulers leg if you don’t. me, i worked for the han then got fed up with getting cheated and started my own gig teaching western culture (how to deal & work with us laowai) to upper level chinese staff at multinational companies. my courses were, i must say, fascinating to me. i had the chance to talk about everything from mao, exploitation, the communist party (most were members), the weaponization of space, religion & of course democracy. democracy will never work in china by the way. man did i learn a lot, most of my students went to top universities in china, spoke mid to high level english and were no doubt living on the upper end of the chinese economic class. i have a paralyzed arm and i used to get a kick out of the way my han employers would treat me. two fired me because they didn’t want a broken laowai and several straight up told me they would not hire me because i was cripple. i’m not talking manual labor jobs i’m talking talking jobs! i’m telling you the expats like your friend thought i was crazy for winging it and often being broke as a roach but they loved my stories. it was a grand adventure that took me from being held captive in manchuria, to being an unemployed no visa illegal alien, to roaming the streets of shanghai, then to the himalaya and living with monks. i thought about writing a book called 1000 days in china but writing a book is a daunting task. it would be full of self deprecating humor and insight though. like this…when i finally escaped my captors in anshan i fled by train to shanghai (i spoke no chinese and had no idea what i was doing) i had a heavy as hell backpacking pack on and fell when i stepped off the train at the depot in shanghai in front of an always present large crowd. so there i was a spectacle of naivety rolling around on the ground like an upside down turtle with my pack and paralyzed arm. people were just looking at me like the fool i was and i agreed with them so i just laid there looked up at the ceiling and thought “my god what have i got myself into”. i went to china on a one-way ticket and had 475 bucks to my name and had spent a couple of hundred of it by the time i reached shanghai, so i was stuck. can you say fool? my experience in china was unique, i mean there i was a broke crippled laowai without a clue. 1000 days later i was one savvy sob of how to survive in china.
ktward // Apr 19, 2010 at 1:02 pm
jg bennet // Apr 19, 2010 at 11:25 am:
that explains it your friend did not work for the chinese he was one of the insulated western expats.
No, he didn’t officially work for the Chinese, but he had to work *with* gov’t officials on every level. Those are his drunken-buddy stories, which are really more like tearing-hair-out-in-clumps stories. But it’s true, he led a comfortable life.
You should write a book! Every country has an underbelly, but those who’ve lived it rarely tell the tale. China’s under a bright light these days, interest is high. All you need is a good editor. Go for it.
jg bennet // Apr 19, 2010 at 2:08 pm
i don’t know a thing about finding an editor and writing a book plus my grammar is lousy and it sure would be a lot of one handed typing
i would love tell the tale though hmmmm..
and it’s all true…..
there are plenty of tales to tell as well.. the whole sars thing was wild. i knew before the world knew that there was a deadly disease being covered up. my french diplomat girlfriend was getting emails from the french consul down in guandong railing about a cover up and a deadly disease 6 to 8 weeks before it hit the news. i was going to go to hong kong to get a visa and she said nooo don’t go down there and took me into the stairway of her building (her apartment was bugged) to tell me about the cover up down in the area. sars was a wild time in shanghai, the streets were virtually empty and the locals blamed sars on us foreigners. no taxis would pick us up, people would spread out as they passed etc. i used to pretend cough on the elevators just to freak them out giving them a little payback for the team. everything, i mean everything was washed in vinegar; elevators, water fountains, bathrooms everything. they believe vinegar kills germs and maybe so but one thing is for sure the vinegar shortage hit the headlines and the whole of china had the smell to prove it. the sars scene was orwellian in a way with empty streets & shops, uniformed guards at all of the buildings where foreigners worked and vinegar. the guards zapped foreheads with handheld temperature lasers to check for fever and if the reading hit 37 celsius or above you were gone, quarantined no questions asked, boom house arrest or hospital bed. the gov said sars never hit shainghai but that was crap and everybody knew it. what was once busy nighttime streets were prowled only by a few taxis, cops and ambulances with their sirens blowing throughout the night. i was in the middle of a real pandemic, had the inside scoop and i have to admit it was damned exciting. of course i ended up getting shanghaied and ended up flat broke during the whole thing with no way to find work. that’s a whole other story and includes a million dollar art theft and the fbi back in the states
ktward // Apr 19, 2010 at 2:33 pm
@jg bennet
Your memory is surprisingly impressive. (It’s been suggested more than once that I’m easily impressed, but I suggested they were easily a**holes. Good times.)
My professional curiosity is officially piqued. If you’ve a mind to, contact me here: aneasywriter@gmail.com