China Is Not Japan

It is hard to believe that when I chose to come to China a few years ago, I actually had the option of spending my Far East experience in Japan instead. I even went as far as to learn basic Japanese language skills and became endeared to that country's culture and history. In fact, while factoring-through my decision to come to Beijing, I made the mistake of considering Japan and China as similar in a lot of ways: I thought China was a modern, technologically-advancing, economic powerhouse with cities filled with skyscrapers and people busily moving into the 22nd century.

Living in America, so far away from the region, causes you to think these things. Of course, it turned out that the two countries could not be more different in every respect, and China was more like the Flintstones than the Jetsons.

I could have understood it sooner by looking at the recent history between China and Japan. The imperial Japanese of the early 20th century took over China in a brutal occupation, a fact that today's Chinese will never forget. But then, after Japan was beaten in World War II, the country rebuilt itself into a world-leader in business and economics, something that China could have done if it wasn't for its political system, its huge and fractious population, and its failure to open up to the rest of the world.

But it goes a lot deeper than that. The Japanese are simply a kind, humble people. They seem to value kinship and sacrifice. They are even polite when they crowd each other onto subway trains. They are friendly to foreign investment. Their bullet trains don't crash into ravines.

In short, Japan seems to be everything that mainland China is not. There are no hip Chinese kids getting their radical fashion groove on in the flashy shopping districts. There are no unbearably cute Chinese television programs featuring young female pop singers. There are no cosplaying people randomly performing on the urban sidewalks. There are no computer scientists inventing robots to help the elderly live a better life.

In the end, of course, it will all come full circle. Japan's work force continues to shrink; its birth rate keeps falling, and its elderly population is growing fast. It has newfound qualms about high technology and nuclear energy. China is destined to take over as the region's dominant nation.

It all just points to the obvious fact that China is not Japan. And don't get me started comparing it to South Korea.

The Culture Shock Trifecta

I recall Beijing tried a civility campaign in the months preceding 2008 and the Olympic games. The city hoped to improve the general manners and attitude of its residents, and make them more welcoming to the foreigners who would soon show up for the event. It even tried to convince taxi drivers and police officers to learn English.

Now that a few years have passed, I figure we can pretty much declare that little experiment a total failure. Leave the lessons in good manners to London 2012. Who knew that England would need them more than China ever did?

Be that as it may, business and tourism travelers arriving in Beijing brainwashed by the stories of modernization and development should take note that China still inflicts a high degree of culture shock. It's a shame that so many Americans stroll through the financial district of Hong Kong or Shanghai and come home bragging that they've seen China. You have no right to make that claim until you've experienced China's Culture Shock Trifecta in an inland city like Beijing.

Spitting: I've actually met foreigners who have lived here long enough to ignore this nasty habit, until they think about walking anywhere barefoot, including indoors. Even wearing sandals won't make you safe in the Capital.

Public Urination: I place this habit behind spitting, because Beijingers don't have enough public restrooms. In a city with more than 15-million residents, there could be an indoor toilet shack on every other block and it still would not be enough. On the other hand, people of Beijing, why not at least walk behind a bush or a tree to do the deed? Just pretend there's a door, and imagine using some make-believe toilet paper while you're at it.

Busting In Line: This is at the top of the list, by a huge margin. You can always bet on a jet-lagged foreigner arriving in Beijing, already weary of waiting in a line for everything from airport bathrooms to baggage claim, finally getting a chance to hungrily queue up at a fast-food counter, only to have some stranger just barge-in as if he OWNS the hot-dog stand.

The overt, non-blinking rudeness of Beijingers is what will drive the traveler over the edge every time. Of course, just getting to the edge might be tough. Imagine the crowd he'd face there.

Doraemon

Over the years, I've been trying to come up with the definitive symbol to represent things, thoughts, or ideas that are utterly foreign to Beijing visitors, but widely familiar to people who live here. You know, things that cause the locals to consider you stupid for NOT knowing about, like using chopsticks or interpreting calligraphy. In the United States, these things would be rules like "don't break in line," and "look both ways before crossing the street." Things that we consider to be common sense, but concepts which Beijingers have never heard of in their lives.
I finally found that symbol in a ubiquitous cartoon character called Doraemon.

Doraemon is, for lack of a better description, a blue talking robot cat from the future. It is probably more-recognized in Asian countries than either Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck. Why Doraemon does not have its own dedicated theme park chain is beyond me, but it does have a hefty endorsement deal, visible on all sorts of products ranging from refrigerator magnets to boxes of instant noodles.

One thing that makes Doraemon most interesting to me is this: it is just about the only thing from Japan which Chinese people love. Keep in mind that the Japanese will never be forgiven, especially in Beijing, for their imperial reign of terror during World War II. But somehow, the cartoon cat and his pals have risen far above it and become idolized for generations, ever since the series was introduced in manga form and proceeded to regional anime stardom some 40 years ago.

The biggest problem I have with Doraemon, with the exception that it doesn't have ears yet apparently enjoys perfect hearing, is that everyone expects foreigners to know about it, and they are idiots if they don't. If I ran into someone in Beijing who had never heard of Garfield the cat (and there are a lot of Chinese who haven't, believe me), I would be happy to explain everything about the feline furball from Muncie, Indiana. When I profess ignorance about Doraemon in Beijing, all I get is:

"Doraemon? Of course, it is the blue talking robot cat from the future. Everyone knows this."

Me: "But what's his story? What's with the goofy theme song? Why do his friends look like they were bused from Fat Albert's neighborhood in North Philly?"

Beijinger: "Doraemon? Of course, it is the blue talking robot cat from the future. Everyone knows this."

Me: "How far in the future? And why doesn't he ever say anything in English? Don't they have English in the future?

Beijinger: "Doraemon? Of course, it is the blue talking robot cat..."

Me: "Oh, never mind."

The point is, as usual, when you are in an Asian country, just about everyone there is from that country. Immigration, at least the way we know it in the West, has never happened. In mainland China, the chances that you will be born, grow up, go to school, live, work, and eventually die without meeting anyone from another part of the world are still way up there. The idea of running into a non-Chinese person in China is a crazy notion that ranks barely below science fiction.

Speaking of which, I finally found out that Doraemon is from the 22nd century. Hey, that's not all that far from now. I'm sure the Chinese will have invented flying cars by then, which means no one will need to learn any silly rules about looking around before crossing the street in Beijing.

Fashion Update!

It is the end of another summer in Beijing, and the conclusion of another entertaining season of English-language t-shirt messages. To be honest, there weren't as many mirth-inducing misspellings this year. The charm lies in the occasional lack of context, which means they are not that different than those worn by young people in other countries.

Among this year's best:

Give Me Time To Break Your Heart
How Am I Supposed To Know What To Do
Take Me To The Party
Jojo Could Not Be Contacted
Too Young To Regret, Too Old To Be Naive
More Respect Less Attack

and

Everything's Amazing And Nobody's Happy

Much credit to the t-shirt makers for copping Louis CK's routine. Even I would have worn that one. Amid the thick air and high temperatures of a Beijing summer, sometimes I am amazed that anybody's happy.

Tale of Two Cities

I could not pass up a recent article from The Atlantic, just from glimpsing the lightning-rod title alone: "How to See the Real China: Ride Beijing's Subway."

This article was written by Deborah Fallows, and has all the marks of an author whose husband told her to sit in her Beijing villa and do something halfway-useful. And I'm generous in using "halfway". If she wanted to see the real China, she should have sat on the subway platform floor and made herself a target of every drop of saliva and worse that came her way.

She cites all her years of living in Beijing and Shanghai, two of the new Chinese super-cities, and writes about how subway passengers' behavior has improved during the past 4 years: upscale business-people quietly and dutifully standing in line, not pushing and shoving, following every rule of law and order and fairness.

What a crock.

Fallows admits she based these experiences on riding the new Line 10 through the Beijing central business district, arguably one of Asia's most modern and civilized areas. She manages to write a lame follow-up that documents the jarring counterpoint of riding Line 1, the oldest subway line in the city, which is always packed with people from, as is the favored term here, "all walks of life." Her husband gets doubled-over by a migrant worker struggling to carry his plastic-grain-sack-full-of-everything onto the crowded train. This is the true Beijing subway experience, and the one she should have started her story with.

I like to contrast Fallows' article with the book written by Tom Scocca with the similarly incendiary title, "Beijing Welcomes You." Scocca arrived in the alleged city-of-the-future at roughly the same time I did, and his account is rock solid, from the forced evictions in old neighborhoods, to the people crowding to get aboard a bus refusing to let the disembarking passengers get off first. ("Habit was stronger than etiquette, or numerology," according to Scocca. True.)

Scocca is at his best when he describes the what I would call the life of a typical Beijing resident: "A 30-year-old Chinese citizen has seen more disruption and change than a 60-year-old American has; a 60-year-old Chinese citizen has seen more than a 200-year-old American would have."

Think about that the next time you look at the Fodor guide.

I Know They Mean Well, But Still

There is a massive billboard near our apartment compound, meant to block the view of yet another monstrous modern construction project. The billboard boasts an illustration of young children riding a rainbow, which is just fine, except for the fact that the dark-skinned child looks like he just stepped off the stage of a minstrel show.

At first, it was a miracle to me that there was a place in the developed world that was so culturally-insensitive to allow something like this to happen. Then, I started to think, apparently someone needs to explain to the Chinese that this is insulting, degrading, and just wrong. And I'm not just talking about wrong from the African-American perspective, but from the general perspective of dark-skinned peoples from Brazil, to the Horn of Africa, to New Guinea and beyond.

It's clear that the artist's intent really was quite innocent. What better way to show China's inclusiveness than to depict children representing all the world's continents enjoying a thrilling journey aboard a multi-colored sled. But even this is a farce. The fact is that mainland China does not fully understand that there is a whole 'nother world out there that swings to a different beat, and the chances that a difference-making number of Chinese citizens will not get to experience that fact is between slim and none.

That is one of the tragedies of the so-called New China. The current generation of 20-somethings on the mainland is slowly beginning to realize that they will only share the same quality of life as their parents, despite all the modernization of Chinese society, the new buildings and the airports, and the annual lucky 8% GDP growth. Traveling to another country to live and work will still be a distant dream, one that they will pass on to their children. Maybe then, Beijingers will find out about the world beyond China's borders, and get a sense of what real diversity is all about.

Beijing and The Karate Kid (2.0)

I've just watched 2010's "The Karate Kid" for the first time.

It updates the 1980's classic starring Ralph Macchio and Pat Morita by putting Jaden Smith and Jackie Chan in the key roles, and moving the action to Beijing. Otherwise, the story is basically the same: small kid gets picked-on and bullied, older Asian man teaches him discipline, kid enters martial arts tournament, endures opponents' brutal tactics, and kicks butt to win the championship.

It's a good movie, with a satisfying ending. And as far as re-imagined remakes go, 2010's "The Karate Kid" is way above average, despite the fact it has absolutely nothing to do with karate. But that's another story.

The first several minutes of this film, which shows the Kid's relocation from Detroit to Beijing, filled me with sickness and sadness. Because as an American adult, I know that Detroit is just about the only city in the USA that would make moving to Beijing an improvement. Still, the child's trading the danger of living in Detroit with the insecurity of being in Beijing. It is a choice between being victimized by violent crime versus psychological torture: of a total lack of familiarity with what you are seeing and what others are saying, and knowing that it isn't going to change anytime soon.

"The Karate Kid" gets more cruel by the minute. It forces the Kid to face both scenarios at the same time: he suffers one of the worst neighborhood beat-downs captured on film, and gets humiliated in Mandarin by the bigger kids pummeling him. Ultimately, the Kid gets his revenge and earns the respect of the Beijing bullies, but it's a fish-out-of-water story which, for me, strikes too close to home.

At one point near the beginning of the film, the Kid meets a friend, realizing the rare occurence of seeing another American in Beijing. The new friend asks the kid if he knows any Chinese, and the kid answers, "no." The friend responds, "you're in China. It would be a good idea."

I have a good idea, too. In my idea, you don't need to know Chinese to live and work in China's capital city. But you do need to know how to beat the crap out of bigger kids, and if you're lucky, Jackie Chan will be around to teach you how.

No "I" In "Team"

A few days ago, China celebrated Yunnan Province native Li Na's ground-breaking win in the women's final of tennis' French Open. It was the first time that a Chinese had emerged victorious in one of pro tennis' Grand Slam events. Worldwide media was filled again with hyperbolic headlines about the start of global domination of the sport by Chinese players, considering that there are probably 5 million Chinese playing tennis right now, and millions more likely to be motivated by Li Na's success. One local article began with the bombastic claim, "You Will Hear China Now."

Never mind the overblown hysteria created by the big numbers of tennis players somehow produced by the writers (did anyone really bother to count?), and forget about the unique circumstances that allowed Li Na to rise above the Chinese sports system to achieve her feat. Li Na and three other top players were allowed to leave the system and strike out on their own, improving their skills, finding better competition internationally, making money, improving their skills further, finding even better competition overseas, making even more money, and getting better all the time.

But another reason Li Na and her fellow players have succeeded is because tennis is not a team sport. I find this very appropriate, because while there is no "I" in team, there is one in "China." This is a country where teamwork is hard to come by.

Consider the fact that, barely more than a generation ago, Chinese villagers and city residents were pushing and shoving to get the last scraps of bread and vegetables being thrown off the back of a truck. If you waited patiently, or worked out something with other folks to get the food, you might go hungry. It made sense to get what you needed, no matter what.

It is exactly the same kind of behavior that you see at train stations in Beijing. As usual, there is a line of people waiting to climb on board. But no matter how orderly the line seems at the beginning, it dissolves into every-man-for-himself chaos once the train arrives. Pushing, shoving. Agitated men shouting "zou wa!" ("move!"), mowing-down women, children, disabled people, the elderly. Hardly the sign of a society with 5,000 years of development behind it.

Teamwork seems to set-in here only when it is presented in a life-or-death situation. As in the case of the workers who built the Three Gorges Dam, the world's largest, along the Yangtze River.

Organizer to workers: "You will work together to accomplish this very difficult task."

Worker: "What if we don't?"

Organizer: "You will be killed."

I have no doubt China will continue to produce some of the world's top engineers, scientists, artists, and athletes in the coming years. Just don't look for it to deliver any standout achievers standing in a group of more than one.

Search for the Suburbs

A friend in the United States asked me, "are there any suburbs in Beijing?"

The short answer is, of course, yes. Anywhere there are cities, there are suburbs, even in China. But they are not the kind of surburban living spaces we are familiar with in the USA. There are no Schaumburgs, West Nyacks, or Farmington Hills in China. Remember that in most countries outside the USA, the "suburbs" are places choked with overcrowding, poverty and joblessness. And near the big cities that anchor third world countries, the "suburbs" look like American inner cities, not Levittown. There's no sense talking about a "car in every garage" unless you are considering blowing up the car -- and the garage -- to make a political statement.

Hence, I chose to search for a well-known Beijing surburb one recent evening, a mystical place called Shunyi. I had heard that this was not just where the well-off Beijingers and foreign expats live, but it was where you can find imported foods and other goods in abundance. In fact, I was outraged to read some articles in the free English-language magazines, which noted that people in Shunyi were living the same kind of lifestyle -- cars, homes, gardens, modern toilets, etc. -- that I used to take for granted in the USA.

According to the latest city maps, I expected to find Shangri-La, er, Shunyi, at the end of one of Beijing's newest subway routes. Predictably, it was the one which ran closest to Beijing International Airport. Shunyi was sounding better all the time. I boarded a train that was refreshingly free of the serial spitters and snot-slingers of urban Beijing, and sat among the nouveau riche of New China for the journey to the Promised Land.

I took the train to the end of the line, disembarked at the park-and-ride, and found that the area looked about the same as the station where I'd gotten on. Old high-rise apartments, trash-strewn countryside, abandoned factories, and the occasional import car dealership; plus taxi drivers and bicyclists for whom traffic laws were just a joke.

The line had ended several kilometers short of the surburb itself. I was so disappointed. Like the author James Hilton wrote in "Lost Horizon", everyone hopes they'll find their Shangri-La. I don't think I ever found Shunyi.

Problem Solving

I remember the case of a journalism student at a major university in the United States, who was given an assignment to attend a city council meeting and write a story about it. Upon his arrival, notebook in hand, he discovered there had been a fire at the city hall, and the meeting was cancelled. In a panic, the student called his professor and said, "there's been a fire, and there's no meeting tonight. Now what do I do?" The professor, dumbfounded, told the earnest young student, "find out what happened and write about the FIRE! That's your STORY!"

I am convinced the same kind of thing happens a lot in mainland China. When a taxi driver in Beijing is confronted with finding an alternate route to get around a traffic jam, he always scratches his head. As a rider, this is when you know you are in real trouble. The problem of getting from point A to point B is just too much for the driver to handle, and hopeless confusion is setting in. It is at this point that I usually dive out of the cab and start looking for the subway.

Maybe it is the result of the 50-year challenge of trying to quickly educate millions and millions of children in ramshackle schools, but problem-solving is not a Chinese strength. Some writers say the political system has stifled innovation and critical thinking, and that's why China will lead the world in making things for sale at Wal-Mart, instead of inventing things like Facebook.

This in a country where a guy came up with a way to produce hybrid rice, preventing starvation and famine, and where launching satellites around the earth has become almost routine. Workers are building the world's biggest dam to counter flooding along the Yangtze. The contradictions are staggering.

"With our grand population, there is no reason why we cannot be world leaders in 21st century scientific research," someone said on one of the many television talk shows extolling the virtues of the Mainland's education system. "Everyone knows this."

I've noticed people from all walks of Chinese life struggle with finding creative solutions to all sorts of issues. On the other hand, I've watched a man pile a hundred plastic jugs aboard a hopelessly-overloaded motorized wheelbarrow and take off down the freeway, disappearing into the smoggy Beijing traffic.

Maybe in China, folks know they can indeed overcome bad situations without suffering panic and confusion. They just haven't figured out how.

Year of the Rabbit

This is the Year of the Rabbit, and so you should naturally buy something with a rabbit pictured on it.

Playboy merchandise does not count, but it's interesting how much popular stuff carries the Playboy corporate emblem worldwide. In China, the Playboy bunny ears are just another innocent, cute symbol of Western enterprise, like the Nike swoosh mark. You can get shoes, socks, shirts, hats, childrens' clothes and even a ladies' purse with the Playboy logo slapped on it.

In mainland China, you can probably buy Playboy-everything...except porn. Playboy magazine is banned in China, and when you tell a Chinese man about Playboy Enterprises and how it originated, he's shocked. Women are even more shocked.

Of course, for me, one of the best things about the Year of the Rabbit is seeing how young adult Chinese ladies like to wear the Playboy-style bunny ears and tail, just because it looks modern, trendy, and fun. I've actually seen girls on the subway wearing the ears, the tail, shape-hugging sweater and mini-dress, plus the tight leather above-the-knee boots with the dominatrix-inspired spiked heels. Yikes!

2012 will be the Year of the Dragon. I'm sorry, but from a fashion standpoint, it doesn't sound nearly as cool.

The New Mercenaries

It is the Chinese New Year, and every year at around this time, the Chinese company for which I work for invites all its foreign employees to a special dinner. The Chinese food is excellent, and the festivities include singing, dancing, and other entertainment provided by the staffers. The foreign staffers are required to perform on stage in front of the group, each contributing some of their country's unique cultural flavor.

It is a cute throwback to the days when China was so thoroughly closed off from the rest of the world, that the people were desperate to see what was happening in other parts of the planet. They marveled at how the Spanish wore colorful outfits and fought bulls inside massive stadiums. They were amazed how, in Germany, men and women enjoyed drinking beer at meeting halls every evening. The Americans gave the world the gift of jazz. All these aspects of international society and more were to be provided by the entertainment portion of the New Year's dinner program, as narrow and stereotypical as it might be. For Chinese citizens at the end of the 20th century, it was more than enough.

These days, such displays are at best, anachronistic. The reality is that fewer foreigners who come to China are interested in sharing their culture. They are here to make money. They are the new economic mercenaries, traveling in search of opportunities that will improve their lives. It just so happens that, in the second decade of the 21st century, those opportunities are in China. It was the same way for immigrants who showed up in America during the second decade of the 20th century. Ironically, people from the United States are coming to China to help the Chinese build computers in 2011, just as men from China came to the United States to help Americans build railroads in the 1800s.

This development must seem particularly disappointing to intellectuals who still hold on to the quaint view of foreigners enriching Chinese culture through social exchange, but the economic realities of the modern age are rather blunt. People must go where the jobs are. Many workers who have patiently watched their jobs outsourced to Brazil, India, and China have no choice left but to follow them there, and there's little use for a culturally-enriching lunch, dinner, or spot of tea when they arrive.

African-American In China

My wife runs her own English school on the Beijing west side, the part of the city where she grew up. She makes arrangements with low-income parents who otherwise would never be able to send their kids to an English-language school, and sets up after-class instruction at her old apartment. It is the classic case of giving-back to the community, a phrase that gets a lot of play in the U.S., but really means something in China's big cities.

I decided to visit the apartment one afternoon, and meet some of the children. They are around 8-to-10 years old, and I was clearly the first dark-skinned foreign person they'd ever seen in-person. A few of them just freaked out: "what part of China is HE from?!"

After dealing with a few attempts by the little hoodlums to lock me in the bathroom and turn off the lights (and turn on the heating lamps -- the switches are unaccounatbly on the outside of the door. I don't want to get into that), I told my wife I felt much safer and more comfortable back at my office a few blocks away. The walk back gave me some time to think again about being African-American in China.

A writer for the Atlanta Post website asked me some questions about this in an interview for a story about business in China. I said that Chinese don't look at me as African-American. To them, I'm just African. (Or, in the case of a 10-year-old troublemaker, I am a Chinese person from who-knows-where that's worked-outside-so-long-that-his-skin-got-really-dark-and-his-eyes-got-really-round.)

Prior to the 2008 Olympics, it seemed that the only things Beijing Chinese knew about black people was 1) they were from Africa, and 2) they sold illegal drugs. After all, that's what it said in the People's Daily.

Rumors circulated across Beijing that nightclub owners were shutting their doors to black customers as the Olympics drew closer. Police stopped me at my apartment compound and asked for my identification a half dozen times. I traveled to Hong Kong on a visa renewal run and heard the same stories, not just from citizens of Nigeria and Kenya, but also from Indians, Pakistanis and Brazilians. So really it wasn't being African that made you suspect in the eyes of the authorities, it was being non-Chinese, period.

In truth, China has its own race issues to solve, managing the demands of more than 50 ethnic minority groups, and it will be interesting to see how it all develops. Keeping foreigners comfortable is the least of this country's concerns. Besides, we're all considered wealthy, regardless of skin-color, otherwise we wouldn't be here. And so I guess that's what being African-American -- or African-anything -- in China is really all about.

I keep that in mind, especially when my wife and I try to catch a taxi together in Beijing. Most drivers won't stop. Others nearly crash their cabs because they can't stop staring. I now tell my wife to stand by herself, and when the driver stops and lets her in, I will run out from behind a telephone pole and slide into the back seat with her, cackling like Eddie Murphy in "Beverly Hills Cop."

When she asks me "what's so funny," I simply tell her I've seen this movie before.

China and Basketball

Travel east of the Forbidden City along the Chang'an main drag in Beijing, and you will find an outdoor schoolyard with about a half-dozen basketball courts. The courts are filled with people engaged in basketball games and you can easily imagine being in an American metropolis like Brooklyn. But right next door is a single soccer field, and it's always busy too, even during winter, when the basketball courts are empty.

The point is that while basketball is growing in popularity, it is in no way comparable to the love the mainland Chinese have for soccer.

In fact, it's almost the opposite of what you'll find in North America, where multitudes of kids play youth soccer, then give it up for hoops when they approach puberty. In China, young people are done with basketball once they become adults. It's definitely a teenage obsession, like the X-Box.

But that's not what you hear from the various American sports scribes who land in Shanghai, take a look around for 4-to-6 hours, and quickly crank out another story proclaiming "BASKETBALL MADNESS SWEEPS THE MIDDLE KINGDOM", before hopping on the next flight back to New York City.

In the words of another great Empire State wordsmith, John McEnroe, "You have got to be kidding."

While I'm not a big fan of soccer, I can tell you that "futbol" outstrips hoops for Chinese sports fans every time. Not to take away anything from Yao Ming and Yi Jianlian and what they've accomplished by becoming NBA talent, but basketball is and always will be the exception here. A basketball is easy enough to acquire in Beijing, but you still need a hoop, and a high ladder to install it. For soccer, you just need to find an object, preferably round, and kick it. That simple equation explains why soccer is the world's number one sport. Find two kids and a rock (a real rock, not The Rock), and you've got a soccer match. No ladder necessary.

The NBA is consumed by the same marketing insanity that hits anyone who discovers mainland China happens to enjoy your product. A dozen NBA stars make trips to Chinese cities every summer, allowing themselves to be treated like freaks as they earnestly open youth centers in the cities. But when they go to the countryside, they find that basketball is a luxury, and discover that the real heroes go by the names of Messi, Beckham, and Cristiano Ronaldo.

When the Chinese national soccer team lost two out of three games in the recent Asian Cup tournament, the country was plunged into a sports depression. I heard the term "national humiliation" more than once. It's proof enough for me that soccer rules in China, and second place is not even close.

Mainland China TV

One universal rule about television worldwide is that audiences are drawn to stories about two types of people: police officers and medical professionals. The daily routine for TV cops is always action-packed and prone to some kind of barely-explained mayhem. Television doctors engage in an on-going battle to save lives. It is no different on television in mainland China. And just to show you they have a sense of humor about these things, law enforcement and hospital work is regularly lampooned in the familiar two-man stage comedy routines known in China as er ren zhuan.

A lot of foreigners hate television in China, but in fact, it is no worse than anywhere else. You will find the familiar staples: the formulaic reality shows, documentary programs, sitcoms, historic dramas, and multi-part romantic sagas. I am fascinated by what I see on the air over here. There is, for example, a lot of gunplay in the police and war dramas. The Chinese are never shy about presenting a violent resolution to a gripping story of corruption or conflict, and it's not just on TV. One of the most recent popular theatrical movies goes by the none-too-subtle English title "Let the Bullets Fly." Medical TV dramas are infused with the most overwrought cliches: a patient (typically a young girl) is brought to the hospital in a coma, and does not recover until the all other family members come to recognize the faults in their lives. Then she wakes up and everyone lives happily ever after.

That's not to say mainland Chinese viewers do not enjoy imported television programs. One channel shows a foreign film (although not usually an American movie) almost every day. And romantic comedies or dramas from South Korea are extremely popular in China and throughout Asia. Some years ago, South Korean TV producers took the Latin-style telenovela and pushed it to another level of emotional, angst-laden hysteria: families in generational conflict, unrequited love issues, terminal illnesses that strike without reason or warning. "The Koreans have no mercy," said my tearful wife after watching one such episode. "Everyone knows this."

Sure, it doesn't have any real connection to real life, but that's what television drama is meant to be about, right? And in modern China, escapist fare ought to have a special appeal, considering true escape from reality is unlikely anyway.

Wal-Mart

I live near one of Beijing's biggest Wal-Mart stores. It is, like many stores, stuffed in the basement of a much bigger building, and the place is always crowded and chaotic. As such, shopping in a Beijing Wal-Mart is a claustrophobic's nightmare. I couldn't wait to buy my stuff and get out of there, but each of the checkout lanes had at least 20 people waiting in line, and it's like that...all...day...long.

The successful transplant of Wal-Mart stores is one of the biggest business success stories in modern (post '90s) China. But it wasn't always that way.

One sensation you get when you walk into a Chinese Wal-Mart is the stench of rotting meat. That's because it became necessary for Wal-Marts here to include a butcher shop, similar to the ones you would find on the street. A location where you can find a man wielding a meat cleaver, merrily chopping up fresh chunks of sheep, lamb, goat, cattle, chicken, fish, and whatever other dead animal lands in front of him. And the butcher's table would be surrounded by dozens of customers, noisily bargaining for the best cuts he had to offer. This is precisely the atmosphere that has allowed Wal-Mart to survive and prosper in China. Certainly not the imported brands of electronics, clothing, or hardware.

Legend has it that when Wal-Mart opened its first superstores in China, nobody showed up. That's because the customers were all outside the building, haggling with the butcher on the street. So the Wal-Mart bosses did the smart thing and brought the butcher inside, and all the customers followed him as if he was the Pied Piper himself.

Now, if you think you will find all of the made-in-China products in a Chinese Wal-Mart that you would find in an American Wal-Mart, think again. Practically everything sold in stores here is indeed made-in-China, but it's not the same stuff. It's generally stuff that is a lot cheaper -- and a lot lower in quality -- than anything on the Supercenter shelves in the U. S. suburbs. No one cares, because it is the best that anyone here can afford. Considering how hard life was in China only a generation ago, it is no surprise how popular the chain is.

In the U. S., many consider a Wal-Mart experience the worst, most low-rent shopping trip imaginable. But for Beijingers, it's like going to Macy's. And that's all you need to know about life in modern China.