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.