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.