Category: China Emails

The left turn in China

Mr. Xi has moved Chinese politics significantly to the left since 2012. Party theory and Party loyalty are again of supreme importance, and fear is again daily fare for many people.

But another left turn is more important for daily life in China, and that is the traffic left turn signal at stop lights. The theory and practice of left turn signalization in China needs immediate attention. Short explanation follows.

American engineering practice

No need to beat around the bush on this. Standard traffic engineering practice in the US is for the left turn signal in a multilane, two-way intersection to turn green before the straight-proceeding green light. Left turn light first, then green. I think this is an American universal. 

American driving practice

Left turning traffic clears, or mostly clears, before the forward green light. This makes it safer for people just going forward because there are only forward movements for drivers to expect – except for that last guy waiting in the intersection to turn left.  Occasionally, someone in a go-forward lane will try to sneak a place ahead in the left turn lane, but that is considered quite outre. Ostracism, if not gunplay, can result.

 

Driving practice in China

A few oddities –

There is the occasional bicycle or motorbike going the wrong way on a three or four lane (each direction) 50 mph arterial.  Its less dangerous for all if the motorbike is sticking to the furthest left or right lane while going the wrong way, but this cannot be taken for granted. It might be coming at you down the middle of the road.

My colleague Scott Peters notes that the Chinese government wastes a lot of money by painting lane stripes on streets. Drivers ignore them in any case.

There is the driving on sidewalks and the blocking-in of cars in the shopping mall parking lot and the cars driving the wrong way up or down the parking garage ramps. All de rigueur, and theoretically fixable with some police presence – but that does not happen anywhere I have ever seen. In any case, these are transgressions by drivers.

 

Chinese engineering practice

The more serious left-turn problems are caused by government traffic engineers directly. The problems take two forms. Bear with me on this.

Problem 1 – standard engineering practice in China is for the left turn signal to come after the green go-forward light (at the end of the cycle);

Problem 2 – occasionally the left turn signal ignores the fact that oncoming traffic has a green light. Say what? Read that again.

Problem 1 – Stealing a march on the left turn lane

This is the same problem as that which would cause ostracism in America, but made far more common and serious by poor signal timing. Picture a four way intersection with left turn-only lanes and signals.

This problem is ubiquitous in China. Eager prospective left-turners use the green light to pile up two or three lanes of left-turning cars in front of and blocking the left turn lane. These cars of course have to go first when the left turn signal comes on. Often, there are so many cars attempting this maneuver that at least one, perhaps two, of the go-forward lanes are blocked by cars piling up to turn left. That way, cars cannot go forward on the green light unless they maneuver to the right around the eager illegal prospective left-turners.  

At the left turn signal, all the left-turners jockey for position in achieving the one or two lanes on the perpendicular street. The car in the most dangerous position is the first car in the legal left turn lane.  When the signal comes, that driver must contend with the others piled up ahead and blocking him. The driver in the second car in the actual left turn lane will occasionally get anxious as well, and – this is good – steal a march to the inside of the first turning car. That is my favorite move. The first driver never sees that car coming on his inside. It is a blind side hit – or not, but still a blind side move.

These problems are of course fixable by putting the left turn signal before the go-forward green light. But nevermind. There is one added element of interest to this left-turn-signal-last sequencing. 

When there are a lot of vehicles turning left, it is easy to create a traffic jam of left-turning cars – if, for example, some of the left turners experience some problem just as they complete the turn – some car moving into or out of a driveway, a truck blocking a lane. Since no driver in China has ever been known to yield to circumstances except in the last moment, you can easily get two or three quarter-circle rows of left-turners stopped in flagrante delicto blocking all the traffic from the perpendicular direction once their own light turns green. Nice. 

My Way on the highway

Left turn problem 2 means that signalized left-turners and the oncoming traffic have a simultaneous green light. This is a bit of a “no one expects the Spanish Inquisition” problem. 

You’d think this problem 2 would be a grievous mistake in traffic signal programming, done by some young traffic engineer who didn’t properly think through the timing and the movements.

That might be true. A recent college graduate is unlikely to own a car, so he lacks experience of driving. He has the traffic design manuals, and plenty of access to instructions for programming the software for light timing and sequencing. But this stupid and really dangerous mistake is far more common than you would think. And not just in small towns.  I have experienced this in Hangzhou, in three different locations, and in Wuhan. Mixing left turning cars – with a left turn signal – and oncoming proceeding cars – with a green light – should be a rookie mistake that is corrected quickly. But the correction doesn’t happen, at least not for months. In two cases I can think of, not for years. 

This phenomenon does have a traffic calming effect.  Those who know the procedure proceed cautiously, since no one knows who will prevail in the cross-traffic – except for the more insistent driver who is unafraid of conflict. 

The novice driver at this corner is most likely to have an accident, since the novice driver thinks the signal they follow provides them with exclusive access to their move.

Segregation

There is an additional traffic engineering wrinkle. China has done a very good job accommodating the huge number of bikes and motorbikes on the streets. In many places there is a segregated and physically separated right lane for two and three wheel vehicles. Excellent idea – except for those bikes and motorbikes turning left and competing with the cars two or three or four lanes to the left doing the same thing. Motorbike drivers in China are fearless – or oblivious. In any case, they are frequently injured. It might help to give the motorbikes their own left turn signal, but there is just no reason to expect compliance.

Learning curve

These common roadway confusions are not discussed in the driver’s ed manuals. The manuals pay a lot of attention to understanding the meaning different colors and striping on curbs, and meaning of traffic policeman hand signals, which in five years of daily driving in Hangzhou, I never saw used once. But those are book learning, the theory of driving. The theory is near useless in practice. Hobbes would recognize the state of nature on Chinese streets. Even if not solitary, life on the streets is nasty and brutish and occasionally short.

Let the driver beware.

Power of Prayer

Notes from visiting my government students in China

Kuandian County is in Dandong in Liaoning Province, and sits on the border with North Korea, across the Yalu.

It is one of the semiautonomous majority-minority counties in China. The population is mostly Manchu, one of the barbarian tribes that pestered China for centuries. In 1644 the Manchus took over Beijing, established the Qing dynasty and began elimination of the Ming dynasty. Kuandian is one of those dongbei, northeast China areas from which the Manchus came.

During the Korean War, American planes bombed the bridge between Dandong and Sinuiju on the North Korean side, and the bridge has remained in its destroyed condition as a memorial. The Chinese side was rebuilt long ago. 

There is another bridge over the Yalu, over which flows Chinese gasoline and oil and other supplies to the North.  Not much flows the other way.  No need for a bike lane or sidewalk on the bridge – there is no person traffic either way, and both sides want it that way.

 The border with North Korea is heavily fenced, with barbed wire on heavy steel fencing – in some places.  Our student was the vice mayor of Kuandian County, and he knew the border very well. Part of his job entailed having to send fleeing North Koreans back, a job he did not like to do, but was absolutely necessary. Chinese don’t want a million North Korean streaming over the border anymore than Kim Jong Il does. 

In some places, the border is defined by an imaginary line between old concrete posts.

Where the border is not heavily fenced, it is guarded, without a physical barrier. Our student got us a couple of steps into North Korea at one of those places. He said not to go too far, though, because he could get us into North Korea, but not out. Guards are everywhere.

At some places, the border is a rivulet, two meters wide and a good six inches deep, with easy sloping banks from about six feet above. North Korean women wash their clothes in the water, and an energetic Chinese man could leap across and not get wet.  There are no energetic North Koreans who could do the same. If one of the North Koreans does come across the border, the Chinese guards must send them back. 

The North is right there, steps away, separated by water no wider or deeper than one would encounter at some Chicago street corner after a big rain. 

South Korean Christians are strongly moved by the injustice, immorality and cruelty beyond the border. Even now, there are families split by the border, and grandparents wanting to see grandchildren, uncles to see nieces and nephews. The families have no way of seeing each other; prayer is their only connection.

There is a tour bus turnaround at this spot on the border, and busloads of South Koreans come to China to sing and pray at the border. My colleague Scott Peters and I watched a busload of South Koreans disembark, line up and sing to and pray for relatives in the North. There was no one to hear them on the other side, except possibly a guard. The South Koreans are in the upper right corner of the picture.

They stood and sung for a good half an hour. No North Koreans were able to line up on the other side.

The power of faith moves people – in this case, from South Korea across the Bohai to Shenyang or Dalian, where they rented a bus and rode a couple of hours to the border, taking half an hour to pray for family they will never see.   

It is remarkable to stand on one side of a rivulet and be free to come and go, then step across and be … not. Where you stand on the earth can make an enormous personal and political difference.

The South Koreans could not move their family members across the rivulet, but they moved us. Freedom, as they say, isn’t free.

I m Perfect – Picture at an Exhibition

Until at least 2016, there was a fascination with western looking models in China, just as there has been with Asian looking models in the US. Women’s clothing stores are a major venue for other-looking models in ads and store windows. This upscale women’s clothing store at our local mall in Hangzhou featured a beaming, perhaps ecstatic sophisticated western woman, with long curled hair – the store’s image of perfection.

The photo is from 2016, and from the angle, one can miss the apostrophe. But this is 2020. Given the efforts in China now to eliminate western influences, perhaps the store would be required to eliminate the apostrophe in any case.

SFSU kills Confucius Institute Program

In May, 2019, San Francisco State University (SFSU) announced it was closing its Confucius Institute program that had been in operation since 2005.

Closure was not due to concerns about academic freedom, freedom of speech, or even any suspicion of ulterior motives on the part of the teachers sent from China.  In the SFSU case, the National Defense Authorization Act of 2019 denied federal funds for an intensive Chinese language programs if a university also hosted a Confucius Institute, and SFSU has an excellent DOD funded language program.

Sure, DOD can kill Confucius Institutes.  But DOD has nothing on me. I helped kill another SFSU Chinese program ten years earlier.  That was not on the basis of politics, but solely academic rigor.

In 2010, Chinese and American universities were near their peak desire for joint exchange and degree granting programs.  Many of the best US schools – Harvard, Yale, Stanford – had programs in China, for both American and Chinese students.  Second tier American schools were eagerly establishing joint programs or 2×2 programs (two years in school in China, two years in the US, perhaps resulting in a highly valuable American degree). 

In this frenetic academic lovefest, San Francisco State University (SFSU) approached Zhejiang University of Science and Technology (ZUST) about a joint undergraduate civil engineering program.  An administrative official from SFSU – I don’t remember who – came to ZUST to promote the as-yet not completely defined program. He spoke in Chinese to our students – “Two years at ZUST, two years at SFSU, possibly a joint degree, possibly a SFSU degree.  A valuable exchange program in any case.”  He made a convincing case.

The fit was pretty good on paper.  ZUST had a new undergrad civil engineering program taught all in English, for both Chinese and foreign students.  There were about 35 students in the first year, with more to come.

SFSU had a large Asian student population, so it was accustomed to dealing with foreign students.  Foreign students paid full tuition.  There were a number of Chinese civil engineering faculty, so language problems could be minimized.  The SFSU civil engineering program was internationally accredited by ABET (Accreditation Bureau for Engineering and Technology).  No Chinese undergrad program in civil engineering was internationally accredited, so a joint degree would look mighty fine for a ZUST graduate looking to work outside China.

Even in 2010, there was extensive reporting of academic problems with Chinese students in exchange programs.  Yale cancelled its ecology and evolutionary biology program with Tsinghua in Beijing, after extensive plagiarism by Chinese students.  Everyone understood that Chinese learning, even in the best schools, was dominated by repetition and attention only to the book.

SFSU wanted to make sure ZUST students could do the work.   An SFSU core requirement was – still is – a course in American history.  I was a foreigner, so I was tapped to teach.

The ZUST administrators told me I should teach the course “American style”- to me, that meant quizzes and homework and writing and, above all, no cheating. I told the civil engineering dean that was a mistake.  I knew the quality of the students from prior courses, and cheating was rampant.  The school reiterated – “yes, just like you would in America.”  Reluctantly, I said yes.

There is a saying in China about universities in China compared with those in the US – “in China, it is difficult to get into the university, but once there, everyone graduates; in the US, it is easy to get into the university, and easy to flunk out.”

No need to belabor the details.  We had a standard textbook, the Eric Foner Give Me Liberty! with quizzes and very short – five page – writing requirements.  The English listening, speaking, and writing abilities of the Chinese students were adequate.  Their cultural preparation was not.

First off, no more than one or two of the eighteen Chinese students purchased the textbook.  It was expensive by Chinese standards – about $40 – but in the US, students would be buying six or eight of those each semester.  The twenty or so Chinese students were also roommates – they probably occupied a total of four or five dorm rooms – so joint studying would be possible, although tough.  But not possible for two students to read the book at one time.  They were unaccustomed to homework, written short answer questions from the chapter covered that week.  Most tried to copy the homework in class or right before class.  We had a quiz every week on the chapter – ten or fifteen minutes, to see if they had read – anything.  Most had read something, probably just looked at the powerpoints, but the cheating in the quizzes was blatant.  I tore up some quiz papers when students were looking at their phones and writing answers.  There were a lot of low grades on quizzes.

Paper submittals were very disappointing.  I spent more than one entire class – 135 minutes – on how to write – five paragraph essay, formatting and references, APA style. References and citations were a … let us say, foreign … concept. Students had powerpoint notes, other notes from me, and examples.  I emphasized the importance of good references and avoiding plagiarism.  This was not a completely wasted effort.  But mostly.  Papers came back in two or three different color fonts, with different size fonts, with the plagiarized sections often in one of the unique colors or sizes so there was no need to do any checking.  I didn’t know whether to feel discouraged or insulted that the plagiarism was so poorly done. 

References were often simply to “Baidu” the popular online source in China.  This was like using “Google” as a reference.  To be fair, Baidu did not provide good citations for its published materials, and there were few other sources for the students to use. The library was useless as a source for materials in any language.  Students had no access whatsoever to academic journals.  All blocked.

But they needed to know how to write an acceptable five page paper, even as engineering students.  A couple of the Chinese students got the idea.  A few more of the foreign students did.  I allowed students to rewrite papers after my comments.  Some did so.  Most did not.

I point out again that these were not problems with English language. These were cultural differences, and unwillingness to make the changes necessary if they were to venture, as is said in China, outside.  

With the plagiarism, refusal to correct the plagiarism, cheating, and general mopery, we had a lot of failures in the course.  About two-thirds of the class.

I had earnest meetings with several levels of faculty and administrators and deans.  They had warnings before and during the course.  But I had given them what they wanted.

The civil engineering students learned the wisdom of the second part of the saying about universities in the US, without having to actually attend school in the US and spend thousands of dollars for nothing.  No civil engineering student applied for the 2+2 program with SFSU.   The program died a natural death before it ever went live.

I think I did good work on the SFSU program.  Curiously though, no one ever thanked me.  Sometimes, teaching is a thankless job.

Give Me Liberty! in Hangzhou

There is a saying – with guanxi, you can do anything.  Without guanxi, you can do nothing.  Sometimes, with guanxi, you can get Liberty! in China.  A story about ordering textbooks in China.

In 2009, I began teaching fulltime at Zhejiang University of Science and Technology (ZUST) in Hangzhou. I had a joint appointment with the business school and the engineering school.  For the business students, I was to teach micro and macro economics; for the engineers, courses in urban and environmental planning.  My students were a mix of Chinese and foreign students, mostly from Africa, a few from the middle east and Indonesia.

This was the era when Chinese schools were looking to form cooperative relationships with school in the US, England, Germany. In the fall of 2010, the president of San Francisco State University came to ZUST and delivered a promotional talk – in Chinese – to my engineering students.   The proposal that had been worked out was a 2+2 deal – two successful years of study at ZUST could lead to two, possibly three, years at SFSU and a joint bachelor’s degree in engineering.

This was an excellent opportunity for ZUST students, since a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering in China was not worth much outside of China.  With the possible exception of one program at Tsinghua, no Chinese engineering bachelor’s degree programs were internationally accredited.  This meant that a graduate could not apply to take the professional engineering exam in most of the world without substantial additional study or years of practice.  There was no guarantee that the SFSU joint program would receive accreditation, but there was certainly a chance.  Basic courses in math and science would be taught in China. The more substantive courses would be in the US.  This was not unlike a junior college transfer program into a major American university.

SFSU wanted a couple of core courses taught at ZUST – an American history course and an American politics course. My background is in civil engineering, urban planning and policy, economics and organization.  But I spoke English and looked American, so I was tabbed at the instructor. As they say, what could possibly go wrong?

No other teacher at ZUST had ever taken, much less taught, American history.  It might be fair to say that this was the first time such a course had ever been taught in Zhejiang Province.  It was a historical first.

These were still heady days of openness in the second half of the Hu Jintao administration.  I was at ZUST because I had just finished six years of teaching midlevel CCP officials in a graduate program in public administration at IIT in Chicago.  I wanted to see what teaching in China would be like, so I went.  The director of the international program at ZUST was a student of mine in Chicago.  She was smart, open, and interested in making deals with foreign schools and foreign teachers.  It is fair to say that I was the face of the foreign program at ZUST at a time when such programs were much desired.

Textbook selection was going to be a challenge.  In the US, book ordering need not be more complicated than an instructor sending book details to the ordering department of the school, and a few days or weeks later the book shows up in the school bookstore.  Students buy the book, and the course is in business.

I knew that would not be the process at ZUST.  There was a book ordering department, but of course that was mostly for Chinese books.  There were a few American books used – most notably, the Greg Mankiw Fundamentals of Economics books, but those were published legally in China, so the Mankiw books had already been vetted for content.

The course was to be American history since 1865.  No other details provided to me.  There were many book from which to choose, and Eric Foner had written more than twenty of them.  His Give Me Liberty! is still the most used American history survey course text in the US.  For the instructor, the teacher’s edition provided powerpoints, which would save me dozens of hours of work (no one teaches in China without powerpoints). The book was also used at SFSU.  I chose the Foner book.

I emailed my book choice to my former IIT student, the head of the international program at ZUST, now my colleague.  If she had been drinking tea when she saw my email order, she probably would have done a spit-take.  Give Me What?

These were heady days of openness, but come on, there are limits.  Give Me History would have been ok. 

My former student was the head of the international program, but she was not the No. 1 – that was the Party leader, who was ultimately responsible for all my actions.  She could not speak much English, and could certainly not read the book, so vetting fell to my former student.

This is where the guanxi worked.  We were teacher and student in Chicago, and we had many chances to talk.  She saw me as at least reasonably trustworthy – I was not going to be running down China in the classroom.  Give Me Liberty! was the SFSU book.  The whole point of the course was to expose these Chinese students to American style courses and teaching so they had a chance to go to the US in their third year.

But still.  We had meetings.  My former student had to look up the book online, and read what she could from the W.W. Norton website. She had to convince herself that the book was ok, just an unfortunate title. I had to promise her that there were no passages suggesting that China or CCP were implicated in the bombing at Pearl Harbor or responsible for the Great Depression, and that destruction of CCP was not an integral part of American history since 1865.  She took me at my word.

There was a more serious vetting process on the ZUST side than I know.  My former student was putting herself on the line, and her Party leader, in ordering such a book.  She could not order the book herself – that had to be done by someone in the civil engineering department, and that woman was putting her reputation and that of her dean on the line as well.  I had more than half a dozen meetings with various of the parties.  I sent long emails, with text of my discussions with the WW Norton rep in the US.  I don’t know if there were provincial education bureau discussions before the book order could be placed, but I would not be surprised. Liberty was not a censored word, but it wasn’t on everyone’s lips, either. If something went south with the book or me or the course, the jobs of several people could be on the line. 

Then there was the money.  Students are supposed to pay for books. In the US, the book sold for about $46 at the time, about 300 yuan.   Three hundred yuan was the book allowance for one ZUST student for an entire semester. We could not order CD copies – those would have been illegal to ship and WW Norton would not send them anyway- as the rep told me, they didn’t have good IP protection in China.  We could not order used copies – Chinese only wanted new, and could only order from the publisher in any case. Illegal copying was still common in China, but the school did not want to engage in that itself, so ordering one copy was out.  A real world example – the Mankiw Fundamentals book was about 790 pages.  The book printed legally in China was sold for 79 yuan (about $12).  In the US, the book cost over $100.  But photocopying in China cost 0.1 yuan per page.  You do the math.   The school was going to have to buy the books, about 9000 yuan, and eat the cost.  That was a couple of months salary for some teachers.

I could have put together notes, and taught without a book.  But Chinese teachers are expected to use a book (presumably so it can be vetted, and so the school has some assurance that the teacher is at minimum reading something to the students).  For my course, a book was most certainly going to be necessary.

There were time constraints.  Shipping on a boat would take about six weeks to get to ZUST, and this was after whatever approvals and vetting were needed outside of ZUST.  WW Norton did have a relationship with one of the required Chinese book importing companies, so paper copies of the book could be sent to China. But time was getting short. We had been having the meetings and email discussions all through the spring, the school closes down in the summer, and I needed the books by about August 1.

I thought perhaps I could just order the books myself from W.W. Norton in the US – thirty or so copies, wrap them up, put them on a boat, they would arrive in six weeks or so.  But that wouldn’t work. The Chinese government still controlled book ordering.  Books could only be ordered through one of the designated import agents.  If my thirty books had just shown up at Shanghai port, they would have been seized and tossed.

I gave the school a deadline – I needed the books ordered by July 10.  My guanxi with my former student worked.  Give Me Liberty! was ordered by ZUST.  The books got delivered, and we used them – or I should say, the books were in the bookstore.  Only a few students purchased the book.

ZUST did not repeat the course.  Very few – perhaps none – of the Chinese students wanted to pay the American tuition to SFSU, and they did not respond well to an “American-style” course, with quizzes and exams and papers to write.  The students got a taste of liberty, taught American style, and judged it wanting.

I ordered other books from America for other courses.  None of those were the existential crisis of ordering Give Me Liberty! in English, for use with Chinese students, with such a provocative title.  When the course was over, the unsold books were delivered to me in my apartment.  Perhaps they are still there. Anyone interested, contact me.  I’m at liberty to make a deal.

浙江科技学院教材预订表

院、部、(盖章)   建筑工程学院                院教学主管（签名）：           教研所所长（签名）：        联系电话：           填表日期：  2011  年  6 月    日  

序号

课程名称

Course name

教材名称

Textbook name

主编姓名

author

出版社

Press name

版次

version

书号

ISBN

价格

price

使用对象

预订数(册)

Order volume

库存

合计

征订人

签名

使用

时间

备注

 

学生

student

教师

teacher

1

American

History Since 1865

Give Me Liberty!

Foner

WW Norton

2nd Edition Volume 2 Paper

ISBN 978-0-393-93256-0

$37.00

William D. Markle

20

2

     

2

     “

Norton Media Library

WW Norton

WW Norton

CD-Rom

 

free

William D. Markle

  0

1

     

3

      “

Instructors Manual and Test Bank

Valerie Adams

WW Norton

CD-Rom

  

William D. Markle

  0

1

     

4

       “

Studentt Study Guide

WW Norton

WW Norton

       pdf

 

free

William D. Markle

  0

1

     

注：一份送教务处教材中心，，一份系部留存.                                                           

My First Protest

February, 2015 

We are in Jingzhou, Qing’s home town in Hubei Province. 

We went out with Ben for a walk, and the Jingzhou district government compound is less than a block away.  The district is an urban subdivision, akin to a ward in Chicago, though much bigger than a ward.

The district compound is a series of small buildings, like a small university campus, some offices, some residences.  Leafy, low key, surrounded by the usual wall with three entrances, or gates.  Buildings look old, a bit decrepit, although probably built in the early 1980s. Qing says this area was pretty and clean and orderly when she was growing up.

Now, it is different. 

Everything in Jingzhou is dirty, bad construction site dirty, all the time, everywhere.  Leaves on trees and bushes are covered with a film of greasy dirt.  You can see the green under the dirt, but it is not leafy green.  Some unfamiliar green.  What was built in 1985 has suffered from 40 years of no maintenance, at all. All of Jingzhou suffers from the tragedy of the commons problem – no one is the owner of public space, including buildings, so no one  takes care. But the district is the hub of local government.

Never let it be said that everything in China is better now than it was before.

At the district main entrance about 30 or 40 men and a few women were protesting. I asked Qing to get some details, and we talked to the leaders for a few minutes. They were protesting not being paid – for a year – on a construction project that has been taken over by the government.   The original developers of a wholesale shopping mall fled, the government took the project over, and promised to pay workers.   They are apparently owed several million yuan –  maybe ten million yuan – for themselves, their employees, and suppliers.  It was now close to New Year’s, workers were going home, and they needed their promised wages. They had a cloth sign that blocked the exit for district government employees to leave in their cars.   They had been there for several days, they told us.

Main entrance, Jingzhou District headquarters, after clearance

About 4:30 in the afternoon, the police showed up, two personnel vans, a few cars, some police in riot helmets with the pull down plastic visors and heavy vests with heavy guns, some not.   About thirty policemen to match the protesters.   Police stood around their cars, waited for a few minutes.

The leader walked up separately.  Chengguan is the term for the non-uniformed thugs employed – or let us say, arranged – by the government to break up protests, beat up old women and men, and occasionally murder protesters.   The leader was a thug in anybody’s book.  Big, fleshy, jowly. Scowl. No uniform, just a pullover shirt and a light jacket.  Right out of casting, but this was not rehearsal.  Qing and Ben and I were standing right around the protesters and the police – this entire event was unfolding in the driveway in the picture, between the building entrance and the street, about 30 feet of sidewalk and parkway.  We were taking pictures. The thug threatened Qing, didn’t know what to do with me. 

Qing told the thug that if he wanted trouble, that was ok.  She said she was American.  She was not in a mood for cooperating.  Police wanted us to go away, but we were slow.  Qing said that my presence might have calmed the police a bit in their later action against the workers.   The thug shook his head first, as if telling his subordinates he had decided not to proceed as planned.  He then nodded, the police moved in, tore down the sign, pushed the protesters out of the way, to either side of the driveway.   They broke the protesters up into small groups, and surrounded them against the walls of the entrance. Pretty well organized, like they had done this before.  Very clear that any resistance would be met with overwhelming violence.

The protesters did not react much, at least not much compared with being physically shoved out of the way. The concept was to separate the protesters, and then the police formed a line on both sides of the driveway, so the government officials in their cars could leave on time at 4:30.  

Some people standing around, watching, but most passers-by just kept passing by.  Either not news or not news they want to be a part of.

About half a dozen cars left the compound, moved into traffic.  The police hung around for about 20 minutes, gathered, got back in the vans, left.  No arrests this time, no bloodshed.  The protest was finished for the day. Qing said that the thug was not chengguan, but a representative of the central government security force, a somewhat secretive unit that exists in each city.   I did not know about them.   But the central government has a security presence even in the cities.   I have a couple of pictures, nothing juicy.   I will go back tomorrow, see if the protesters are there again.

My first protest in China.  Things you can learn by going out for a walk.  I knew that it was common for migrant workers to work for six months or a year and then not get paid, and there is little recourse. The blue roof shacks you see on all construction sites are the housing for the farmers who do the work, on projects big and small, and they live on the site, and usually get a little money for food, but they agree to get paid when the contractor or the developer gets paid, and so they work and exist on scraps for a year, waiting for the big payout at the end.  Often, the big payout never comes.  If the workers get half, or 25%, of what they are owed, that will be a good outcome. 

The CCP says that China is in the beginning stages of socialism.  I guess that is true. The worker’s paradise is not here, just yet.

Life in School – and Beyond

November, 2009 


note:  This was written more than ten years ago, when I began teaching full time in China. Some slight editing and updating.  My students were all undergrads in business, marketing, civil engineering, or urban planning.  These notes are early observations on student life at ZUST in Hangzhou.  I can’t say this email feels inaccurate years later.   Life goes on, in and out of school, but the beat goes on, too – stress upon stress, and not stress of one’s own making.   Smoking and environmental cancer are big contributors to early death.  But stress is also an environmental constant.

The middle class Chinese diet is full of the stuff that doctors in the US tell us we should eat- lots of fish, lots of vegetables, fruit, a little liquor (ok, maybe not a little), a little meat, nuts, grains.  But adult Chinese die at about the same rate as Americans, and now, from mostly the same causes – heart, and cancer.  Why don’t Chinese people live forever?

One reason is stress.   When life is about guanxi (relationship and who you know), then official lines of responsibility mean little.   The official lines do matter, but what is more important is the friendships established over a life of school, and work, and after-work events, and weekend trips, and friend-of-a-friend contacts.    So it is possible to get many things done that could not get done otherwise, because you Know People.  Sort of like being related with the government in any American city.   Or, better, being the one high school senior who knows the name of the maintenance guy who can open the gym a little early so the tables for the dance can be delivered on Friday night, instead of waiting for Saturday morning. 

Stress Relief in Dalian

A Chinese government friend and I were driving to a museum in Dalian when she got stopped by the police.  They were conducting a city sticker search- you know, the annual sticker you buy for $75 or $100 from the local government.  Same in Dalian.    Her car was brand new- I mean, a couple of days old.   She did not have the sticker, since the car dealer is supposed to handle that, and the sticker comes a week or two later.   She had the paperwork showing the car was new, and the sticker was applied for, and  true to police form (anywhere, I think) they still gave her a ticket for no sticker.

She was miffed.   She decided to fight City Hall, instead of just paying the $15 (which I would have done, all day long, and I guess most people in China would have done, also).   She didn’t know anyone in the police department- no direct guanxi there- but her job was sufficiently large that when she went to the police station, the guardians of not letting people see the Chief did not want to mess with her.  So she got to see the Chief, and pleaded her case, and got the ticket dismissed.    She got to see the Chief, she said, when other people would not have gotten that far.   Two lessons here- guanxi is based not just on who you know, but also who you are, and does this sound too different from how any American city works?  Stress relief is possible, some times and for some little things.  But a ticket is just ordinary annoyance stress.  Much of Chinese school and business life is pressure, pressure, pressure, all the time. 

Relationships can make projects easier, but at a cost

It is possible to get a ticket fixed in Chicago, too (so I have heard).  What may be different in China is how extensive the guanxi networks are, and the willingness of everyone to use them as needed.   Just like in Chicago politics, you can’t be using your Chinaman for every little thing, and you can’t pull the race card, or whatever trump you have, at every instance.   But the networks are the life blood of Chinese government, and business also.   Anyone who thinks rule of law in China is just a couple of court cases or law changes in Beijing away from implementation should think again about what 5,000 years of history means.  Networks are as deeply ingrained in China as my disgust with Tony Cuccinello for sending Sherm Lollar, the archetype of slow running catchers, home from first base on a double by Al Smith in the second game of the 1959 World Series, and Lollar was out by – oh, about 85 feet- and the White Sox lost that game that they could have won, and they could have gone to Los Angeles 2-0 instead of 1-1, which would have changed the outcome of the series, and life forever after.   That ingrained.

In China, the proper power relations can get things done – real estate projects, infrastructure projects that require cooperation across governments, business perks. But along with the ability to get things done comes the stress at relationship maintenance.  How many dinners, how much late night drinking, how many hongbao, how much self-denial and relationship sucking up do you need? 

Think of the second string baseball catcher, who plays, but not that often, and the team trades for a young catcher who can hit and has gotten a lot of press.   Or the number 3 member of the girls’ in-group at high school, and the new girl shows up who is prettier, has more money, a bigger smile, and a more winning way with numbers 1 and 2.  Think Mean Girls – The New Queen Bee.  New Queen Bee Stress is constant. There is an ex-queen bee, too.  What is your strategy in these situations?  As the second string catcher, do you talk to the manager more, or the team leader, or just try to play harder, when you do play?   What will you do if they put you to third string, or cut you?  As the number 3 member of the girls’ group, do you try to get more time alone with number 1, or find some other group to belong to, or just hope the group can expand to four people? You have to keep up the network, or the network will leave you behind. And that means phone calls, and little gifts, and remembrances, and doing for others before they do for you.  This is the part that would keep me digging ditches on some farm in China. 

You do not have one boss, or one leader.  There are usually two or three, and they need not agree. The Confucian model of respect for authority means that you must do what your leader asks, and you don’t object.

So when your leader calls, and asks you to do something, you cannot say no.  You may be able to find someone else to carry out the task, but that is your obligation to find.   And when the teacher assigns homework, no one says, wait a minute, we all have a test tomorrow.   We must do it.

It starts in primary school – or before …

One of my colleagues was worried about his daughter.  She is seven, in first grade.  His daughter refuses to go to school, and cries every day about going.  The reason given is that  she must complete 100 addition problems before she can engage with the rest of the class.    The daughter is a smart enough kid, but she is wilting under the pressure from the teachers.  Teachers pass the stress on to parents, who get blamed by teachers if kids fail to keep up.  And, it is China – none of this, “well, you tried your best, you can do better next time” American soft soap.  If you aren’t keeping up, you are told so, and berated in front of all your classmates.  “Why can’t you do better?”  And none of this throwing money at programs for  kids who fall behind in class.  Teachers will publicly berate parents for not monitoring homework, and not requiring extra work at home.  Parental responsibility, seemingly a … well, foreign – concept in the US. 

At home in Hangzhou, we have a little kid audio toy, a letter, animal sound, and addition machine that we bought in China.  On the addition segment, the kid is asked to push a button for the correct answer.  In the US, an incorrect answer is indicated by a raspberry, or a plink or a quick low note.  On our machine, a voice tells the kid in Chinese, you are very stupid. 

The stress starts in primary school, and extends into high school.  The later primary and high school day is generally in the range of ten to twelve hours, from about 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM.   There is time included for phys ed, and lunch, and certainly art and music.   Chinese high school students, at good schools, are well-rounded.  And in college, they learn to sing, and dance, perform, and do art. Maybe not well, but they know the concept.  Once, we had that idea in the US – you know, humanities.   

I have visited a couple of Chinese high schools, and talked with a number of kids, sons or daughters of friends.   My sample size is too small to generalize too much, but let me tell you what I saw.   At the No. 2 high school in Fushun, in Liaoning Province, the school building is new and clean and has a big closed campus, with tennis courts and basketball courts and outdoor performance areas and lots of nice landscaping.   This is a residential school, which means that most high school students live in the dorms, and only a few are day students, who are picked up and dropped off each day. 

The hallway are pasted with big portraits and lists of accomplishments of political leaders and scientists and giants of philosophy.  Yes, Mao and Confucius and others (that, pointedly, I do not know), but also Plato and Aristotle and Bell and Einstein and Edison and Fermi and US presidents and Franklin and Kant and Hobbes and Freud.   High school.  In China.  And these students know who these people are, and when they lived, and what they did.

Everybody learns English, starting at various times but generally about age 7.   I have seen the English workbooks for high school students and for college students.   The high school workbooks, in English, rival what I would expect to see in English in the US.   Participles and mood and future perfect and obscure terms and phrases.   Long passages to decipher and get the meaning.   The college workbooks are harder.  Long passages in technical fields, economics or engineering, to decipher, along with differences between US English and foreign English.   I am teaching three courses right now- a negotiation course, an economics course, and an environmental course- in English, of course, and the student level of understanding is pretty good.  But the technical terms in these three courses are a little daunting for American students, and the only way for Chinese students to keep up is to study, all the time.

… and continues in college …

I just now talked with one of my students, a third year student in marketing.  She would like to do fashion design, but as she says, “I cannot do that.”   She has obligations to her parents and to the school, now, and to the society.   Students in college in China select a major in their first year – or have it selected for them – and stay in that major for four years.  There is one chance to switch majors, at the end of first year, but only if you are in the top 15% of your class and the program to which you want to switch will take you.  How many majors did you have in college?

Ms. Liu is a smart kid, and her English is very good (although she thinks it is not) and the other students look to her for interpretations in Chinese but also for information about other happenings at school.  She is always prepared.

I asked if she had ever been unprepared for an exam in college.  “Yes,” she said, in her freshman microeconomics class.    “How did you do?”    “I got a B,” she said, ashamed.   A whole country of Type A people.

But lots of them don’t want to be Type A people.  They know that going to university in China is a big privilege, and the society is investing a lot in them, and “from those to whom much is given, much is expected.”   But Ms. Liu does not feel free to change her major to fashion design, and she feels that she now has no motivation to do the things that she must do.   Now these are not unfamiliar complaints to any of us, and it is easy to use one student as a metaphor for millions.   Ms. Liu will certainly do fine, and she will snap out of her funk.

But the story is one I hear repeated over and over again, not only from students but from faculty and government officials and people in business.   The sense of obligation to the group, or the greater good, is important and useful to building a society – we have seen that in the last thirty years.

Costs of obligation are passed on to parents, students, employees

But I don’t doubt that the stress, expressed in the form of heart conditions, and blood pressure, depression and lack of motivation are one reason why Chinese do not outlive Americans.   When Americans work sixteen hours a day, 7 days a week, they do it because they want to, or because they know it is a temporary condition – get this project completed, and we can go back to normal.  But in China, it is a constant sword of cultural obligation hanging over everyone’s head.  It is the constant, I must do it.  (2019 update – it is now common for companies in the US to demand that some employees be available 24/7 for texts and emails.  That is certainly Chinese.  But there is now a movement in the US for the “right to disconnect” during a good part of the day.  That will certainly not be Chinese).

I have a friend, a Ph.D. from my school here, who is spending nine months at a school in Houston.   She is unhappy about her living arrangements, and feels trapped by the situation, and not able – culturally – to do anything about it.  She is on a nine-month sabbatical, in school and supposed to be learning some things, but she is in the US and one thing I know is that she should be having some fun.  She is not, and all because, as she says, I must do it wo bi xu zuo.  An American friend of mine recently returned to the US from a six-month academic fellowship in Scotland.  I don’t think he wore a hair shirt for six months.

college and beyond …

Lots of Chinese students apply to college or graduate school in the US.   A lot of the Chinese government students I have had in Chicago have a leader, or a friend, with a son or daughter who is 12 or 17 and wants advice about admissions.   So far, so good.  But too often the parents have given the student a high bar – “if you cannot get into Harvard, or MIT, or Stanford, then your life is a failure, and you are a failure to your parents and family and nation,” or something to that effect.

Now there are parents like that in the US.   But I think there are more in China, and not just because of the population difference.  This is the meritocracy gone mad, the sense that the perfect is in fact the enemy of the good, and individual achievement and wishes matter less than societal approval and the ability to find a job that will make a lot of money. 

Amy Chua, the NYU law professor, is the poster woman for parental stress, passed on to her kids.  As a law professor at a major American university, she is not going to display a laid back, devil-may-care attitude.  But her Tiger Mother book is a call to arms for parents whose approach to parenting does not intentionally impose severe stress on their kids.  It is no doubt true that parental encouragement, even stress, can make kids better at whatever task is demanded, and usually the long term effects seem inconsequential.  The question is always for whom the kids are being pressured – for their own long term benefit, or that of the face and glory of the parents?  Even for Amy Chua, the answer to that question is not so clear. 

And lots of Chinese students do end up in the US, or Australia, or England, or Germany, at small schools and big schools that are not ranked in the top 20 schools in the nation.  And everyone seems to survive that diminished status.   But the stress and shame are not good things, for the kid, or the family, or China.  The suicide rate for Chinese students is far higher than that for American students. 

Students- at least at my university- have between 35 and 40 class periods a week, at 45 minutes a pop, so about 25 to 30 classroom hours a week.   This is the demand for 10 or 12 courses per semester.  On top of that is homework, of which there is quite a lot.   Papers and tests and assignments, just as in any college course.   I have told you before that fun does not seem to be in the course catalog.  I still think that is true.   College students seem tired in the US also, but here the extent of sleeping in class (not so much in mine, I am happy to point out) is remarkable.   And there seems a general sense- not universal, of course – of simply walking through the motions.

That is supported by ideas about entrance to schools in the US and China.  Faculty here tell me that in the US, it is easy to get into college and easy to flunk out.  In China, they tell me, it is hard to get in, but once in, you are assured of graduating.   College is almost like the reward for the intense work in high school (30 class hours per week, and no sleep, and lots of stress.  All effort is focused on the Gaokao, the one-time only college entrance exam taken in senior year.  Midway through junior year – “only 335 days until the gaokao!”). 

I don’t mean that there are no students playing basketball, or tennis, or ping pong, or singing in the singing contest.   All students here just had two days off so freshmen could participate in the annual sports day, which is kind of like the senior class games weekend.  Everybody goes to the stadium and there are vendors and student cheering sections and flag waving for some group’s favorite student athlete, and 110 meter hurdles and sprints and broad jumps and other events.  China is full of contradictions, so I can’t claim definitive knowledge.  But this is what I see, and what I sense.

the system grinds away, through adulthood

Students like Ms. Liu pick a major to study in their freshman year, and for the next four years, the students in that major take all their classes together, study together, and live together in the same dorm and with each other.  Four college girls in a room about the size of your bedroom, with their clothes and books.  For some students, the school picks the major for them, and that major is where nearly all of them stay for four years. So when Chinese people come to America, and say that they have a college friend to see, they are going to see more than someone they were buddies with for a year or two.  These are the lifelong, guanxi networks operating, at long distance and years apart.   When was the last time you spoke with your college roommate?   One of my government official-students from IIT in Chicago, someone who was in Chicago in 2004, called me from Nanjing.  He is at a training seminar for a week, far from his home in Shenyang.   He was going to get on a bus, travel for four hours to see me, and take the bus back to Nanjing for more training.  While I am flattered that I have such an impact on people, I am sobered by the idea that someone would think such a thing thinkable.   But guanxi, and networks, and respect for authority, including teachers, runs deep.

Two days ago I  attended the alumni reunion, in Hangzhou, of all the CCP government officials from Zhejiang Province who have been to IIT in the last 6 years.  A lot of people came- my guess is over a hundred and fifty.   There was the big screen repeating slide show, pics of government officials at IIT, when they were in college, and maybe more recently.   And below one of the repeating slides was the reminder, We Are Family.   This is not just some pop music line, or a marketing campaign.  Far more than in any fundamentalist family in the US, here the family is the primary unit in society.  And family extends to CCP as well. The government students in Chicago had a leader then, and he is still a leader in their minds, with lesser status over time obviously, but still a person of respect and honor.   Another leader to honor, among the two or three or four that everyone has already.   The beat goes on, for good and ill, in everyone’s heads, all the time.   

The National Day Singing Competition

Zhejiang University of Science and Technology, September, 2009


note:  this post is from 2009, a few weeks after I came to ZUST to teach full time and I was still awed by most everything.  As it turns out, there were no more singing day competitions. This one was part of the celebrations of 60 years since the founding of the PRC.  Still, an impressive event.

One of the emcees wore a black tuxedo with diamond –  I wanted to say rhinestone- studs along the collar and piping.   The other wore a white tux with black piping.  The women emcees wore serious prom type dresses, or serious I-am-a-grownup-take-me-out-dancing dresses- a slinky reflective gold long dress for one, a more demure white for the other. 

The rhinestone reference kept running through my head because the between performances music was the theme song from Ponderosa. 

This was the annual singing competition between departments at ZUST.   Each school department- economics, marketing, civil engineering- puts together a group of about 50 students, generally about half and half by gender, and practices for weeks before the big night.  So for days before tonight, it was like walking past the music building at Northwestern, and hearing beautiful voices floating out from classrooms.   Except these were 50 voices, and lots of the men sounded like men- deep voices and big and almost scary.

I am not going to keep you in suspense.  I am pleased to report that for the 5th year in a row (?), the computer science students beat every other department, including the architects (who came in second this year). 

Every department has money in their budget for clothes for the singing competition.  The standards vary a little, but generally tuxedos for the boys, fancy dresses for the girls, and all the same for each department. 

The competition started about 6:00, and ran until 8:00.  Each department did one number, generally a song built around love of country or home.   One was about the Qiantang River, in Hangzhou, as having come from very far away, and being the mother of all Chinese.  Another was about someone climbing a tree, and when I asked for clarification, I got back a finger pointing at a dictionary entry, “guerilla,” and I didn’t want any further clarification.   But it is still not clear. 

Every department sounded as if they had practiced for a long time.  The men were forceful, the women sweet and a nice  counterpart to the men.   Everyone on stage- this was on a temporary staired stage in front of the library entrance- sang, and loud.  No one looked embarrassed or too cool to sing.   It was a competition. 

There were stage lights, a lot of them, and videos, and a couple of the groups had small sparklers or fireworks as part of their song and a couple of the groups had some slight choreography, as  much as they could do  while standing on temporary stands under hot lights outside in big clothes.   The judges sat at tables in front of the stand, and hundreds of students were behind the judges, standing on small chairs and on planters at the library entrance.   The library has a six story covered entryway between two buildings, so we were shielded from the light rain and  there was plenty of room for hundreds, and the voices carried.  I could hear the groups clearly from my apartment, across the lake from the library and a good quarter mile away.   Somewhere, someone was selling or handing out t shirts inscribed with “music has no borders”  and “nations without foreigners.” 

At the end, after the awards, the winning group came back for an encore and brought in the front row another twenty or so students in ethnic costumes, mostly from the west of China, and an American student from NYC who I know, and one of the German students who is in my urban economics class.   The song was about love of country, and everybody sang.

So for Scott, and Jim, now you understand how the Chinese government IIT students have such wonderful voices, and use them, and how they can put on such performances for spring festival.  They have been doing it every year since they were small, and they practice, and they believe in the value of it.   So much for individualism and do your own thing.   One of my students in the urban economics course said she had heard some things about the development of economies, from slavery to feudalism, to capitalism, to socialism.   But, she said, socialism did not have enough money to do good things for people, and capitalism helps.  But she was worried that capitalism might harm the socialism in China.   I said that was a good question, but that no country was purely capitalist or socialist.   In the US, we have a socialized safety net for health care for the elderly and poor, for people who get hurt on the job, for retirees, for housing for poor people, and for schooling.    China does not have any of those in a nationally uniform way.   But they can really sing, and when they get together to do something, it works.   I read an article yesterday expressing fears about the China future- you know, economic stimulus and corruption and too much infrastructure spending and no democracy.   One of the comments to the article provided the usual “it’s all a sham, and it will collapse any day now”  view.   Another commentator noted that in his experience, the people who claim the sham argument have invariably never been to China.   Or heard them sing, organized, for fun, in a competition just for themselves.

I wish Rachel were here.  She would have loved it.

An Evening in Middle Class Life

October, 2009 

There is a pattern in the west of seizing on negative China stories as definitive proof than revolution, or collapse, or the Second Coming are just around the corner.   Debt and moral vacuum and lack of trust and cheating.  But China is a big country, with a big middle class that is vested in ongoing stability.  This is just a dinner story from ten years ago, with government friends from Hangzhou and Shaoxing.  This is just middle class people relaxing and enjoying the holiday.

This story is also about middle class CCP members, and such an observation seems sorely overlooked in most discussions of China’s future.  I have no systematic data, but my educated guess is that a Venn diagram of Chinese middle class – however you wish to define them – would show great overlap with CCP membership.  There are about 90 million CCP members.  With some dual member households, let’s speculate that comes to 60 million households.  These are the people holding nearly all government jobs, heading up non-government organizations, teaching in high schools and universities, and owning many small and large businesses.  Let’s give those 60 million households one child and a grandparent or two, or four, and that is roughly the same as the size of the middle class.  CCP is the middle class, and when writers talk about emerging democracy and civil society and middle class demands for voice, we should remember who we are talking about.  The CCP is the bourgeoisie.

I went to dinner last night at Jennifer’s apartment, with Stone, and James, and Morgan, and Shelly from Shaoxing.  Alice was there too.  Jennifer and her husband and son live in one of the new developments on Zijinghua Road, just past the xixi wetland national park and about fifteen minutes from ZUST.   Like many or most new developments in China, this one is gated, with a seven foot high wall at the perimeter.   There are problems with burglary in china, not so much robbery, but historically towns and developments of all kinds have been enclosed, in a cellular pattern, so gated communities now are partly for security but also a historic design legacy.   Since this is a pretty fancy development, and mostly for government people, there are two uniformed guards at the gates, who check for who you are visiting and act as building doormen for the residents- get this package, give directions to your aunt when she comes visiting, tell the plumber where to go to find your apartment when he comes to fix the toilet.

Like most any new development, this one is very big.  I don’t know the number of buildings- I will say, thirty- a mix of four story walkups with others, surrounding a driveway that curls around behind buildings and leads to an underground garage, as well as a fair amount of parking at grade level adjacent to the buildings.  The landscaping is pretty, bamboo and rocks and other green stuff, not as extensive as at some projects where there is no at grade parking, but still thoughtful.   There is a community building which has a dining room and a party room, and a slightly raised agora, with stone and landscaping that serves as a meeting point – “meet me at the agora in ten minutes.”   Buildings are close together- the driveway is really one way, except in a couple of places where it doubles back on itself, and the feeling is that of close-knit, though expensive, community.   In the short two way driveway from the gate to the buildings, there are eight or ten small stores on each side of the street, on the first floor of the first two buildings.   A fruit stand, a dry cleaner, a grocery store with a few more essentials, I think an insurance office.    Think self-contained and walkable and low stress and low key.   The world is outside and tense, not far away, but inside, the tension melts.   At least that is what I saw.

Jennifer’s family has the top floor and the fifth floor finished attic, really another entire floor, of a four story walkup.  The apartment has all the tricked out stuff typical of an middle American family with a ten year old boy.   The big screen tv set to video games of wii tennis, or baseball, or badminton.   Soccer ball in the corner, which we used a little in the dining room.   (I can beat the ten year old, no problem).   Plastic basketball net set up facing out from the middle of the railing on the stairway to the fifth floor, at about six feet high.   The kid is a good shot from behind the dining room table, but it is his court.   And he seldom has to drive past somebody twice his size, so I was able to hold my own.

Stone, who is an administrator at a college about an hour away from ZUST but still in Hangzhou (east of the river and the Hi-Tech Zone) picked me up at school.  When we walked in to Jennifer’s apartment everybody there was already making dumplings.  Alice joined in, and this was her entre to the Hangzhou group from one year later at IIT.   You know that many city governments send people to IIT each year, some from the same departments each year, but the group loyalty is to the group that comprises your year, not the group from your city.   So Shelly, from the same year as Jennifer in Chicago, was Alice’s contact to get invited to this dinner.   But Alice was making dumplings with everybody else, and chatting away, and this is one way to get accepted into the group.   If I were crude, I would say it was sort of like dogs sniffing to see if the new person acceptable.  Everybody laughed at my attempts at dumpling making, which was fine.   Some of theirs, notably some of the guys, were not too great either, but my job is to be the clumsy foreigner.

Jennifer’s inlaws cooked dinner. In a way I have seen repeated many times, the parents cook, behind the closed parting doors to the kitchen, which are standard because so much Chinese cooking involves oil, and frying, and fish, but do not join us for dinner.   Dinner the usual- big cherries, not from China, but probably from Australia, maybe US, she said.   (Prices on cherries are down a little from the peak of spring festival.   At the peak, they were 65 rmb a pound, she said, which even if she meant a kilo, is still pretty expensive).  Everyone said they missed the prices on cherries in the US.  Big strawberries.   Little shrimps, which are easy to eat if you pull off the heads and the rest of the shell comes away easily.   Chinese are able to dismantle the shells in their mouths with their tongues, which must under different circumstances be a great comfort to Chinese women.  A fruit like a grape, but with a tough skin that must be peeled, but is good.  Of course, the dumplings we all made, by the dozens, when we got to the apartment, and is a source of much community building.   A shared food making experience that everyone’s ancestors did.   Dumplings are what you eat at  the beginning and end of an event, so this was standard end of spring festival fare.  Also, since it was Lantern Festival day (eve, actually), we had fish balls, which are not nearly so repulsive as they sound.  A little sweetened dough with a little bit of tasty fish wrapped inside the ball, cooked for a moment.   Cabbage and mushrooms, and chicken feet and …. corned beef.    Also specially treated pork, that Jennifer confessed to buying frozen, because it is better than she could make herself, but was tasty with a dark sauce and lots of darker meat.   Alice brought a flagon, I think is the word, of Shaoxing rice wine, which is only from Shaoxing, and is famous, and is tender and drinkable without being sweet or killer in aftereffect, and is the head fake drink that Linda, one of our government students in Chicago, sometimes drinks to get through the nights of business dinners and drinking (One Third Coke, Two Thirds Sprite) in Shenyang, a thousand miles away.  When she is not surreptitiously mixing coke and sprite.

Fireworks on National Day

After dinner, the ten of us or so went downstairs to the agora.  Morgan had brought several boxes of fireworks, and tonight was the last night to set off fireworks during the spring festival.  Morgan and Stone were in charge of placement of the skyrockets and firecracker strings.  They placed some, held others in reserve.   Several of us took turns lighting the rockets, which were bursting in air just like in the song.   Not too high, maybe three or four stories, but pretty and loud and smoky and fun.   We stood around, talked, some other people stopped with their two year olds, and watched, others went about their business.   The other apartment buildings were not more than 30 or 40 yards away, but no one was yelling out the window or calling the cops or fussing at us.   Given the age of Jennifer and Morgan and the other students, you have to think of our parents at age 35 or 40, in the backyard with the neighbors, shooting off fireworks in 1955 or 1960.   Everybody the same age, everybody the same situation, including having parents live with them, everybody pretty happy to be where they are, everybody happy to let someone else be happy.  It is true that fireworks in china are part of the culture, and it certainly is true that I do not see a lot of what I am looking at, but I am telling you what I did see.   There is a lot of paper and mess to clean up after a fireworks display, but we did not have to worry about that, presumably because the cleaning people would be there in an hour or tomorrow morning to take care.  It is part of the deal.  They would do a good job on the cleaning, because that was their job.

A digression-  there is a lot of writing and observation about how difficult it is to get Chinese to work.  Response to instructions is literal, and no one does more than minimally acceptable. The Chinese version of the Russian, “we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us.”  I see some of the literalness in students, and some of the mule mentality – “we will work if you beat us” thing.    Maybe the positive side of that description is that people respond to incentives, and maybe the literal instruction is “pick up every visible scrap of paper you see,” but I have a hard time reconciling the mule mentality with the cleanliness of the agora as I know it will be tomorrow.   Maybe having to work is a great incentive- the cleaning people are never twenty or thirty years old, but look to be seventy.   Though they might only be forty.

The evening stroll

After the fireworks, we walked toward the front gate, Jennifer chatting with a couple of neighbors on the way.   it is fascinating to see Jennifer this way.   In Chicago, she was the academic monitor of the Zhejiang students – the person in charge of making sure schoolwork got done and serving as liaison with the school faculty. My image of her was always this nice, not overdressed, but nicely dressed and together but tightly wound woman with a friendly but still Chinese seriousness about her.   Like she understood everything, just her range was intentionally limited.  Anyway, here she is in slightly faded jeans that are a little worn, and a floppy grey sweatshirt, and tennis shoes, and she looks relaxed and happy and the entire group of us is just a bunch of friends going for a walk after dinner and fireworks.  No agenda, no face, no guards.   I kid Jennifer that my one hope in China is that some night I take her out to some jazz club on Nanshan Road, and by the end of the night see her dancing on the table.    But with this Jennifer, the one last night, that does not have to be the hope anymore.  This is hostess Jennifer, and mom Jennifer, and daughter Jennifer, and wife Jennifer, and friend and colleague Jennifer, and the package is so much more interesting than the IIT academic monitor Jennifer.

We walked a few blocks down Zijinghua Road, to Wen’er Road and Xichen Square, name of a neighborhood and a retail district.  There is a big department store I have been to a couple of times, and next to it is the actual square.  Nothing too fancy, just a fifteen foot tall sculpture to the moon month goddess, and a flat square surrounded on two sides by apartments and one by the department store.   The department store has a pizza hut and KFC on the first floor, and both are crowded.   This is Saturday night, so the KFC is busy.   That means that there are five lines of customers to place orders, each line four or five people deep.   Not because the busload of tourists from Naperville just arrived.   This is everyday busy.   Upstairs from the KFC and Pizza Hut is the strategically located health club.

We stopped and got ice cream at KFC for Jennifer’s son and his buddy, and walked over to the square, which was fitted out with a bunch of displays, all about celebrating New Year’s year of the tiger and spring festival.   There were stands selling huge amounts of cheap Chinese junk- the same stuff we buy at street fairs and at the beach- the colored trinkets that spin, or blow in the wind, or pop up and down, or just look pretty, or colored light sticks.   We thought there would be fireworks at the square, and maybe there were later, but we left after about 45 minutes and a bunch of pictures of us together in front of the big plastic and paper tiger than moved its head and body on a small motor.   We could have stayed, but I think Alice and Shelly had to get back to Shaoxing, which is about 90 minutes away, and Alice had kept her driver the whole time in Hangzhou, so she wanted to give him a break and let him get home to Shaoxing before midnight.

We walked back to Jennifer’s apartment, past her son’s grade school, and past several other restaurants and apartment buildings.  It was a beautiful February night, about centigrade 10 or 12 degrees, so you needed a jacket, but no scarf or gloves or hat.   There were lots of people out, and stores were all open, and traffic moved, and couples walked by holding hands, and couples were out with their kid, and if you tell me that the entire chinese economy is a ponzi scheme, and will collapse next week, well, you have to account for the incredible normality of daily life.   I suppose we could be sitting in the eye of the hurricane, but the burden of proof is going to have to be on the extreme skeptics.   Can there be slowdowns in growth?   Can real estate prices drop some, and construction take a tumble, along with local government revenues?  Can there be news stories about why didn’t we see this coming, and who do we blame, and what do we do now?   Can the PBOC have to step in and recapitalize some banks?  Can the central government have to restructure fiscal relationships with the provinces, to bail out provincial and city developments?   Can a mountain of debt be a problem for China, too?  I just don’t think Xichen Square is going away, nor the KFC, nor Jennifer’s apartment complex or lifestyle.   Michigan Avenue is still there, and stores are still open, and I bet the beach will be crowded on a hot day in July, when I come back.    We have very tough times ahead in the US, but I don’t think we are going to look like 1932, and  there can be tough times ahead in China, but most everybody will weather the storm. There is a big differences among a financial crisis, an economic crisis, and a depression. There is froth in the financial and real estate markets in China, and that will lead to a tough financial crisis and a minor economic crisis at some point, but it will be contained, because of the ability of the government to act and because past growth, real estate excepted, has been based on realities, not hyperbole.   Yes, the infrastructure may be too advanced to suit the economy (an argument I have heard made by some macroeconomists, and which I get but I think is wildly academic in this case), and there will be some empty office buildings, maybe a lot of empty office buildings, and the apartments are empty because Chinese are long term investors, so the crisis from a drop in apartment prices will be confined to developers mid project and to a few individuals who will need the cash, but their units will be snapped up quickly, and the office space crisis will be limited to the owners, some of which are SOE, who will be bailed out, and when the economic conditions change, the migrant farmers can go back to the farms in the rural provinces, where the government is already building infrastructure and encouraging FDI, and some loosening of investment laws will unleash the next wave of consumer-driven investing and spending in China, so some power shifts will take place.   (Another digression – I disagree now with these early speculations about the Chinese macroeconomy.  That is another story.  I leave these observations as they were made in 2009 to remind myself of how radically different my own views are now.)

I know, I know- I  am seeing Jennifer’s China, not the China of 800,000,000 peasants, but the people in Xichen Square are not all of Jennifer’s lifestyle, but they are there anyway, and the Chinese Dream is well and alive throughout China, I think, so the government has a couple of generations to make good on its promises, riots and disruptions and google and corruption on land taking and blocking of facebook and persecution of activists figured in.   This is by no means a perfect society, Jennifer’s lifestyle notwithstanding, but it is not fragile and not going to hell in a handbasket.   It is 5,000 years old, with pretty much everyone the same culture, and zero history of democracy, and a cultural expectation that the government will provide, which it gladly does, cynically if you wish, to keep the powers that be the powers that be.   With  the legal ability to protest, and strike, and democracy, and far worse metropolitan conditions relatively than in China, and far worse economic prospects for the next decade, the government in the US seems able to buy off those damaged by the crisis with some references to capitalism and free markets and hope and making sure everyone is tuned in to American Idol or the next blonde teenager disappearance national crisis.   Somebody ask Lubet what he thinks about the status of protest in the US now, compared with that in 1968.  And the Chinese government is very well practiced at controlling protest.

Are you getting hammered from the typhoon?

The constant question from the US in fall of 2015 …

Hangzhou, Xihu District, Shui Mu Qing Hua residential development.  Reporting from the front.  On the fifth floor.

Liu hé lu, the street right outside the school and our apartment complex, was flooded today. That is the only exit from our development.  Late in the day, there was occasional traffic in each direction in the west bound lanes only; a few of the brave drivers who made the attempt did not stall or get flooded out.  Other major local streets were also flooded, and closed.  There is no other way in or out of our development, and all the other developments to the west of us.  The thousands of us were stranded, at least for the rest of the day. The street floods a couple of time a year anyway, so this was not unexpected. 

Source: Englishsina.com

Source:  chinadaily.com.cn

We have no school tomorrow morning, since the school felt that many teachers, who live just a few minutes away but have to travel liu he lu to get here, will not be able to make it. Maybe have school in the afternoon.  Contact everyone by wechat, and teachers should stand by, ready to respond.

Literally closer to home, we had some ceiling leaks coming from the apartment above.  We are on the fifth floor of a six-story walk-up.

So, lessons about real estate in China –  the apartment above is owned by a woman from Guangdong, in the south of China.  Currently, no one lives in the apartment above.   The owner will not decorate it – do the buildout – because it is not worth it to get the rent.  One reason why apartment construction is so much faster in China than in the US is that the work done by the developer is so much less – excavation, foundations, concrete block walls, plumbing risers with stubs into units, same for electricity, poured concrete floors, stairs, windows, exterior doors to apartments, c’est fini. At a point when an American developer would be about 50% complete with the project, the Chinese developer is walking away.  The apartment above us is left in its pristine original unfinished condition.

The owner above us rents the apartment out as is, bare concrete walls, sort of a makeshift squat toilet and tiny sink.   No kitchen at all.   No furniture, of course.  No lights, no gas.

She rents this apartment to students, and to construction workers (farmers) working on local projects.   The rent is clearly unstable, and the apartment has been vacant for a few months now.   When students were living there, the owner had divided the apartment with makeshift walls and doors into five or six separate units, each about 10 square meters, that student couples rented.   Sort of “starter” apartments for couples.  The students or workers run some bare wires, attach some light bulbs.  Take some plastic tubing, lay it on the floor, and that is water supply to a sort of kitchen and a bathroom.  Tape some plastic pipe to the concrete wall to get a shower effect in the bathroom.  You get the idea.  Not quite up to code.  But no problem in libertarian China.

With no one living there, the owner gave the key to the management company for our development that hires people to take care of landscaping, general cleaning, trash removal, and the guards.

It appears that people from the management company, or their contract workers, would use the apartment from time to time.  In any case, it appears that some of the windows above us were left open during the typhoon, hence the inch or two of water on the floor, hence our ceiling leaks.   Since the apartment above ours is the top floor, it is also distinctly possible that the leaks are coming from the roof, probably not the flat parts but from flashings or places where pipes go through the roof, maybe with little or inappropriate flashing.   There are also a couple of windows out in the unit upstairs, certainly a big source of water in a typhoon. 

Whatever the source, the problems became evident yesterday morning, when the dining room ceiling began to leak.   Qing called the management company – three times – before someone came over to take a look.   First call – call answered, promise to send someone over, but no physical response; second call, not our problem, call the owner;  third call, this time a bit more insistent, then five people show up, with little dust-cleaning pans and brooms that one might use to sweep the kitchen floor. Very light duty if all one were doing is mopping the floor as part of a daily routine.  This was ceiling leaks in five or six places in our apartment. Chinese response -lots of labor, few or poor tools. 

But sometimes throwing labor at a problem works.   In about an hour, they had the floor about as dry as it was going to get.   The leaks have stopped in our apartment.  We asked the management company to keep the door to the unit open, so we could inspect over the next couple of days.   They agreed.

Joking, I told Qing to call her insurance company.   There is no property insurance.   The owner of the apartment above does not have insurance either.   In these cases, as with the car accidents, the parties are supposed to meet and try to come to some settlement, on their own, without lawyers or police.   There is no concept whatsoever of government building or housing inspectors.

The bureaucratic response of the management company to Qing’s phone calls is familiar.  Qing finally resorted to the “I pay you, you should do something”  approach, and that seemed to work.  In China, many of the people who own apartments do so at no out-of-pocket cost, other than the mortgage – there is no property tax, they carry no insurance, and they refuse to pay the small monthly management and maintenance fees.  There are apparently some abilities to get owners to pay the maintenance fees, but the measures are not used much, as I understand it.   Just too hard to go after people.   So property management companies tend to be underfunded – not only a Chinese complaint – without recourse.   Garbage gets picked up, guards function as guards, some cleaning is done – but anything else, apartment owners are at the mercy of whether their fellow owners have paid their dues, in addition to the usual bureaucratic delay.   It should go without saying that the budgetary processes are opaque.  It is not at all clear how to find out whether the property management company is getting money and not spending it, or just not collecting, or just using it elsewhere.  

The owner of the apartment above will send over a friend, today, to have a look and discuss some settlement.   The friend, and Qing, will use their extensive construction expertise to decide on the costs of fixing our ceiling and remuneration for any problems that might show up next week.

So, lessons –

  1.  owners have no responsibility to take care of property.  Nor do management companies.  All is caveat emptor.
  2.  management companies do not maintain “common areas” beyond some light cleaning.  If the roof leaks, the owner below the roof should fix it.  This is one reason that the top couple of floors in a building tend to be priced less than units a few floors down – more risk for maintenance costs.
  3.  “local knowledge” can be effective at solving problems – lots of labor and no proper tools does work, sometimes
  4.  bureaucratic response is bureaucratic response, no matter what country
  5.  owning apartments is easy if there are no – zero – costs of operation
  6.  but zero costs of operation means that the common elements, even the landscaping and the guards, are at the mercy of how many people decide they will make the (ridiculously small) monthly dues payments
  7. so China suffers from standard tragedy of the commons problems – it is in no one’s personal interest to make dues payments, hence the property as a whole suffers
  8. in libertarian China, problems should be resolved by discussion and negotiation between the parties.  How charming!  How civilized.  How ignorant of the details of problems, and their resolution, and particularly, how ignorant of the role of power in personal negotiations.  It is not clear to me that more lawyers and legal processes always make the world fairer, or better.   But no lawyers and no rules certainly constitute a libertarian heaven. 
  9. it is important to see these elements – construction, management, repairs, evaluation of performance – operating as a system.  As a result, poor performance in construction, or anything, is excused – a solution can always be negotiated later, when the problem occurs.  This reminds me of the “fatalism” thought to be part of eastern culture.  There is little thought to the consequences of actions, or impact on others.  What happens, happens.  Who could have predicted?  In the US, friends of mine had a fire in a townhouse they own, the result of poor wiring.  They are considering the liability of the original contractor who built all of the units, in their fire discussions.   There is no such concept here.  
  1.  In the system, you see the importance of face – landscaping is well maintained, the guards have uniforms.   But real maintenance – painting of railings on fences or balconies, roof repairs, repair of broken sidewalks, securing window openings with no glass – those things are never considered.
  2. there is the ultimate tragedy of the commons problem – it is assumed (as we do in economics, generally) that everyone is doing the best they can, most or all of the time.  It is assumed that people do not intentionally do less than that of which they are capable.  But the bar for “the best that one can” is very low here.  As a result, everyone goofs off.   There is no inspection, evaluation, auditing, testing, checking up – that is worth the time spent doing it.   There is a lot of reporting, and checking, and looking over somebody’s shoulder – but the results of that are often left in the pile of monthly reports, and never make it to real action in the world. I have some knowledge of this beyond experience with our own apartment. Qing’s brother-in-law, who lives with us, is a construction inspector.  So is his son, and I have interviewed both at some length. To confront someone with not having done as good a job as is possible is a loss of face.   I am making a bit much of this – there is plenty of yelling and screaming at each other over quality – but that seems to be discussion about work in process.   Discussion of what has already occurred is considered too difficult – requires expertise and power, and often best just to preserve the relationship and accept the consequences.   So, anything in which quality is difficult to assess at the point of purchase – construction, teaching, cars, food – is suspect.

Anyway, this is what I was thinking about while I watched women use dust pans to scoop up water that was otherwise going to be coming through our ceiling in a few minutes, if they did not move quickly.

So which is the more civilized – that the government regulations force behavior, with ability to sue and be sued, or that people should talk with each other, and discuss, and come to some agreement about a solution?   Are people born good, or not?  Do people learn goodness, or evil?  Does regulation remove moral responsibility?  We talk about this all the time in the US.

The key issue is power – tenants cannot turn on the heat in a central heating plant, and they don’t know a good roof from a bad one, a dangerous situation from a benign one.   When functioning well, the government serves to equalize power relations, which includes technical expertise. 

And you see the enormity of the Chinese development model problem – I mean, with so many people, you expect capital to garner a large share of profits. Scarce capital is worth more, relatively.  But even now, how can so many people be kept so poor, even in the face of opportunities to make money and improve – fix buildings, test for quality, provide evaluation services?   The answer lies in both culture and organizations.  Chinese organizations work for the benefit of capital – it is illegal for a group of us to put money together and build a building, even in the face of enormous demand. It is illegal for us to organize to get better treatment.   It is difficult, if not impossible, to sue over poor conditions. 

 And Chinese do not want to trust a small company over a big one.   A big company has power, stemming from obvious relations with the government.   A small company has no relationships.    So the culture biases in favor of the big over the small.

And one more note on our leak problem –  four inches of concrete serves as a decent water barrier, in these conditions.   Socialist concrete construction works better in poor water conditions than American capitalist three inches of concrete on steel joists.   That is one reason why roof coverings are so poor in China – no one feels they need to maintain roofs, because the concrete does an ok job, except at joints, and any leaks are either the responsibility of the person suffering the problem, or are in common areas, which no one cares about.

And yes, on the scrutiny of consumer products – I have seen many people do that here, students from IIT and Qing and others.   They are looking for an indication of quality,  expiration dates, some hint that the product they are buying might be ok to use.   I saw this among IIT students, and Qing, in stores in China.  In the grocery store in the US, I grab a bottle of milk or bread from the shelf, and pay and walk out. Chinese pursue the fine print. Government regulation and culture.