 | | |
| | |
|
Spaces home  Apothem TercetPhotosProfileFriendsMore |  Tools   |
Apothem TercetIn Search of Nina McKliggan part II - An Artychoke Contending with the Electric Minute
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
12/15/2007 Chinese Characteristics?[Extracted from one of my posts to an email discussion group] Much of what we see in China, much of that which is dying out, can find their parallels in European and other histories. Thus, for example, listening recently to a talk given on behaviour in the fourteenth century in Europe, the speaker told of people wanting large families, as many boys as possible, and of female infanticide being a regular occurrence. This is not particularly surprising. Child mortality in less developed societies is higher than in developed societies. Societies are largely agricultural, and the more individuals in the family the more the land that can be worked. Boys are favoured both because societies tend to be patriarchal, boys tend to stay 'in the family' rather than marrying out and because boys have more physical strength for labour. In developed societies, large families are not favoured. Rather than producing, children tend to consume resources. Child mortality is relatively low. In an urban environment, girls are as well-equipped as boys to serve as producers and families, tending to be increasingly nuclear, tend to 'lose' their boy children and their girl children equally as adults after marriage given that expansion of the household in an urban environment tends not to be an option. Japan and Singapore are two examples of places where not so long ago large families were the norm but which now are having to introduce governmental incentives to encourage people to have more children in the face of declining populations. Whatever their parents may think, I can't recall a student ever talking to me of wanting six or eight children, but I can think of many who have spoken of wanting one or two; some, now, who have even expressed the desire for girl-children over boy-children; and even the occasional individual who has said he or she doesn't want to have any children at all. Regardless of its history and culture, there is an inevitability about certain aspects of change that occur as any society becomes increasingly urban and increasingly developed. Smaller families is one. Other things that the Chinese feel is something that always has been Chinese and always will be such as guanxi, (connections), and mianzi, (face) have their own counterparts in the history of European culture and these too will change. Mianzi is an aspect of any strongly hierarchical society where complicated shows of adherence to the societal structure are required to reassure those with authority that their position is secure. What others may think of them is immaterial; it is the showing of respect that is important. As societies become increasingly reliant upon cooperation the hierarchy tends to break down and gaining the genuine respect of others becomes important. Guanxi secures the kinds of ties that are required both to keep one's position or to elevate oneself in the hierarchy but development leads societies more in the direction of meritocracy. The idiot son of a local official in one's organisation was once an asset in any society, but as societies developed - not only such that organisations within societies competed but also such that societies competed between themselves - such people became increasingly a drain on resources rather than an asset, thereby decreasing efficiency. Other forms of more apparent corruption become increasingly curtailed for much the same reason. My personal bugbear in China right now upon which I am inclined to blame all China's ills is the propaganda department and its related bodies. This, today, is China's most blatant anachronism and without its controls many of China's current ills would be rapidly extinguished; that, at least, is my belief but too complicated to justify here given that in a few hours I have visitors and I have to make my apartment look something less like a rubbish dump. Again, however, go back a few hundred years in England and you find much the same thing happening. Then and there the church was used as an organ of state for the dissemination of propaganda and church attendance was compulsory. The means of transmission may have changed, but the attitudes underlying CCTV and China's distorted history text books are further hallmarks of any underdeveloped society the world over. This is far from an exhaustive list of 'Chinese characteristics' that are far from singularly Chinese. The one-child policy today is a necessity. Soon it will be unnecessary; small families will be people's personal choice. In a century's time, perhaps the Chinese too will be introducing policies to try to encourage larger families as its population declines. 10/5/2007 The English Language IS a ToolI wrote the following some years ago in response to a fellow teacher in a discussion forum.
Fellow teacher: I heard the 'language as a tool' phrase many times... I was vaguely offended by the idea and wondered where it came from - now I know. This man obviously hasn't hear of the even more famous saying 'When you learn a language you learn a culture'... Me: I doubt the originator of 'When you learn a language, you learn a culture' was talking about a language taught as a lingua franca. To be sure, if we learn Chinese we must learn how to use it in a Chinese context and yes, understanding of the culture is thus essential. We will, after all, be using it pretty much exclusively in talking with Chinese people. However, a debate I have tried to start frequently in TEFLChina which has always failed to live up to my expectations is HOW we teach English given its purpose. Firstly, which culture? British? Australian? Canadian? American? And whichever we select, what is its value to a Chinese answering the telephone to a Peruvian, or to a Chinese from Xi'an talking to a Chinese from Hong Kong? I despair, truly, when some poor overworked student approaches me at English corner, having been driven through 90 minutes of cultural education, to ask me some trivial detail of the history of the city of Liverpool because he needs to know it to pass his exams. Well I don't know, I don't give a damn; why should he? And why should the guy from Oman give a damn, the guy with whom the student will be discussing an oil shipment as a part of his job when he graduates? Frankly, I have become heartily sick over the past four years of Chinese Christmases and Chinese St. Valentine's days and Chinese Thanksgiving Days celebrated by Chinese who know nothing of Ramadan in a land where native Moslems outnumber native Christians; Chinese who, in any case, have their own Lovers' Day and Spring Festival celebrations. As for Shinto, what's that? Of course culture should be a part of their education; they are learning English to speak to foreigners after all. But a healthy grounding in cross-cultural communication will be of far greater value to them in the real world where the vast majority of their dealings will be conducted not with native speakers, but with second-language speakers like themselves. They should be learning how to be sensitive to ALL cultural views as they come across them; to learn to expect the unexpected from their interlocutors and how to deal with it, not how to emulate the niceties of their chosen native-English culture and expecting the other to do the same... assuming of course that they have selected the same one as their paradigm. I can think of nothing more pathetic, quite frankly, than a Chinese pretending to be an American trying to have a conversation with a Japanese trying to be an Englishman to the consternation of a passing Korean who pretends he's from New Zealand. I want my students to be three dimensional people, and they can only be that by being Chinese. At the same time, I want them to be sensitive to those with whom they will deal in later life, and they're not going to get THAT from the minutiae of the history of the city of Liverpool. I want them to be called Wang, Fu and Li, not Tom, Dick and Harry, because Wang, Fu and Li are their names, and because if I ask Wang where Dick is he will not have a clue because Dick to him is Li. Indeed, Dick to Dick is Li. Dick is just a noise some idiot has told him he has to make when asked for his name because foreigners can't say 'Li' and won't be able to remember it for the life of them. The ENGLISH language IS a tool. It is a tool used to communicate across nearly all the world's cultural boundaries these days, if not all; and to have it constrained by one native speaking culture - or even limited to half a dozen - is an abuse of the cultures both of our students and those with whom they will speak it. I want my students to learn how to be Chinese when speaking English and to know the best way to approach a person from Papua New Guinea, Holland or Mali - even if they have never heard of Mali before meeting the person with whom they are speaking. I want them to be able to express their own culture through a well-chosen 'The mountains are high and the Emperor is far away' rather than informing a Yemeni that when the cat's away the mice will play, and to do it without thinking they are speaking Chinglish. I have a Chinese friend in Switzerland who has discovered - to her considerable benefit - that she can not only be herself more easily with the use of Chinese phrases in English, but also that she shines more brightly in company for so doing. Not for her the raining of cats and dogs, no sir. I want my students to adopt the language, to adapt it to their own culture without interfering with their ability to communicate, not to forever feel that they are borrowing English and that the only way to use it properly is by becoming a cardboard-cutout native speaker, forgetting their own culture every time they open their mouths... and, far more often than not, forgetting that the person they are speaking to too has his or her own culture that owes little or nothing to the British Empire. English drops out of all the old ways of thinking about language. English is a European language, an Asian language, an African language. Beyond parameters required for mutual comprehension such as pronunciation it cannot be standardised however hard we might try to turn our students into model citizens able to pass unnoticed through Oxford or Glasgow or Chicago or Perth every time they speak it. We can try, but we will fail. We should respect our students - and those with whom they will converse in their careers - too much even to try. Cages"Why do you keep the people in cages?"
"Because if we let them out they will be angry and destroy everything."
"Why will they be angry?"
"Because we keep them in cages." 8/30/2007 What's wrong with Christian evangelism?In the talk of the Korean Christian evangelists, evangelism itself is coming in for a bashing, but just for a moment look at it from the Christians' point of view.
I don't think we can blame Christians for their missionary zeal given what they believe. Were I a Christian I think I would be hysterical looking around me at decent people on the street envisaging what fate has in store for them if they do not convert. I'd probably be grabbing everyone by their shirt collars and pleading.
Just as well, then, that I don't believe.
If I did believe, what would I then be believing in? A God so despotic that he has created a universe in which, when homage is not paid to him, the culprit is punished with an eternity of hellfire and incessant torture. It makes any despot the world has ever known look like a pussycat in comparison.
What of all the people here in China who don't believe thanks to an accident of geography? Were a Chinese to be converted, as one young Chinese remarked to me after his own contact with evangelicals, how could he enjoy heaven knowing for an eternity that his grandparents, good people, were suffering moment by moment through no fault of their own? My second ever girlfriend was a Christian. At one point she spoke of marriage. I asked her how she would feel in heaven knowing her beloved husband was suffering and would suffer forever? 'Well,' she replied, 'that would be your own fault.' I hadn't considered marrying her before the conversation. After it there wasn't a hope I ever would. Sometimes it strikes me, given what they believe in, Christians are not evangelical enough.
Were I to believe in this version of God then I'd probably end up in hell anyway. I suppose it would be impossible for me to hide my disgust from Him. The problem doesn't lie with the believers. It lies with what they believe. If this truly is the 'justice' that governs our fate then here's hoping Nietzsche was right when he said 'God is dead'. 8/7/2007 FutilityA priest went to visit a man in prison. ‘Is there anything you want, my son?’ he asked. ‘I want to get out of here,’ the prisoner replied. ‘But you know you have been found guilty of a crime in a fair trial and must pay penance.’ ‘I have never denied my guilt,’ the prisoner said. ‘I know I must pay.’ ‘Then you know there is nothing you can do, nothing I can do,’ said the priest. ‘You must stay here for five years.’ ‘Yes, Father,’ said the prisoner. ‘I know I must stay.’ ‘So,’ said the Priest, ‘is there anything you want?’ ‘Yes, Father,’ the prisoner replied. ‘I want to get out of here.’ 7/9/2007 In China a Child is BornSomewhere in Guangxi province, China, a child is born. I hear the news from a friend of mine, a friend of the newborn mother, who witnessed the birth. The wonder was there in her first words, the amazement at what she had seen; birth. A new life from nowhere.
But soon the wonder ceased. 'Her mother in law is a very traditional Chinese. She told my friend she should throw it away.'
The child was a girl. Throw it away.
Throw it away. A human being. Her grandchild. Throw it away.
3.00am and a long series of messages began. The girl, the mother, was disconsolate. The father of the child, her husband, little better than his mother, said nothing. Only my friend wanted to be of comfort to her friend, a new mother who had just brought a new life into the world, who ought to have been rejoicing regardless. She wanted me to help, but how can I help change such warped, such insane, such barbaric thinking in a few words of advice in text on a mobile phone?
Propaganda people, you scan MSN blogs now thanks to the cooperation of Mr. Gates. You strip them of content you don't like. You educate, re-educate and re-re-educate your citizens in ways you consider to be righteous thinking... and with all that power you can't think to get across to some middle-aged woman that perhaps the best thing to do when a granddaughter is born to her is for her to rejoice and not to tell her daughter-in-law to throw it away?
What damned use are you to your country? What damned use are you to anyone?
UPDATE:
Next morning. The husband has sided with his mother. He doesn't want to keep the child... and so they won't. What will happen to her is anyone's guess. The new mother is, as anyone might imagine, distressed to the point of distraction. My friend is sitting by helpless.
This touches upon so many things here but education, surely, is one of the things most central. No doubt the grandmother, the husband have learned their lessons well when it comes to loving China, hating the Japanese, being wary of foreigners in general and believing China ever followed anything Karl Marx ever said, (which it palpably hasn't). Unfortunately, with all the smoke and mirrors, someone forgot to tell the people it is 2007; that girl children have as much opportunity in life as boy children; that a newborn child should never be simply 'thrown away'.
Claiming exclusive control over the thinking of a nation might be used for good as well as for ill. The paycheck would be the same at the end of the month, wouldn't it? The propaganda department is so damned busy trying to get people to believe black is white they've forgotten the basics, the very basics of human decency.
All that power. Power. Power for the sake of power in the hands of fools without a clue how to use it to do anyone any good at all. 8/27/2006 I'm being followed by a goon shadow... goon shadow, goon shadow...A plane carrying Cat Stevens in the USA was diverted to a closer airport and the Man Himself taken into custody for questioning on suspicion of terrorism. I read an article on CNN on the arrest believing that the US authorities had made a silly mistake.
Again.
Unbelievably -
... officials said Islam was on the watch list because of reported associations and financial support for Muslim charities with terrorist connections. But they would not disclose the names of those charities. Homeland Security spokesman Garrison Courtney would only say "the intelligence community has come into possession of additional information that further heightens our concerns of Yusuf Islam." Yusaf Islam is the name Cat Stevens adopted when he converted to Islam.
Now okay, sure, fine, anyone can be an Islamic terrorist, even the Pope I guess if he got out of bed the wrong side one day with a severe headache and started seeing the Wrong Kind Of Ethereal Visions. We should keep an open mind. But darlings, this is Cat Stevens.
Cat Stevens. Fer Chrissakes. The last I heard this guy would be afraid of going on a campaign march and raising a placard lest the stick snap and the cardboard sign fall and tap someone's poor little head. Cat Stevens - Moonshadow. Cat Stevens - Morning Has Broken. That Cat Stevens. The word 'wet' springs to mind. So here's the plan for any sensible, rational - and I do mean rational as against irrational here - government to consider. If you're going to start bandying around dark suggestions that the likes of Cat Stevens - Cat Stevens, Lord, you can't even say the name without gagging on all the excess of mellow - Cat Stevens on a plane is enough to divert that plane to another airport lest the guy blow himself up and his 21 year old daughter with it because he is Islamic, it might be an idea to show some evidence. (Get it straight. If they didn't think that he was a potential threat to the integrity of the plane then and there they'd just have picked him up at the other end, not diverted the plane to a nearby airport to get him off it as quickly as possible. That's a response to a bomber, not a sympathiser or a funder. It generates way too many problems and way too much in the way of headlines). The Cat is out of the bag. We all know now. Something rotten lurks in the Moonshadow, apparently. The guy is a potential suicide bomber, a bringer-down of crowded passenger jets into a tangle wreckage of blood and mayhem - apparently. We all know it now. It's been in the papers along with the dire warnings as to his attitude. Who are we keeping the secret of his suspicious behaviour from? He knows it, he grows it. His associates know we all know it because the scum (I'm being followed by a moonshadow... moonshadow, moonshadow...) would have been on the phone to all his evil terrorist friends and told them... and saved them the bother of reading the screaming headlines. So what's WRONG? Tell us. Go on, give us a clue. You do have clue, don't you?
Funny, innit? I've heard Cat Stevens being bandied around as an example as a Moslem with the undercurrent of 'You'd no more dream of accusing this guy of terrorism than you would Winnie the Pooh' and here he is... darkly tainted with that very accusation. Winnie the Pooh, suicide bomber. Okay yes. It's possible. The guy's been pretty well out of the public eye for decades and who knows what might have happened in the interim? But for God's sake give us something to chew on while we try to come to terms with the outrageous possibility otherwise you're going to lose all credibility... if you have any left.
I've given up saying 'Enough is enough'. Enough was enough a long time ago. A long time ago, more than enough became much much more than enough and travelled on still further into the realms of way, way too much. We long since entered the realms of the criminally insane and this is no more than another example to add to the pile which not only continues to grow but also shows no sign of stopping. All we can do methinks is set up one of them large countdown clocks for everyone to see so we can see how many years, months, weeks, days, hours and seconds are left of the Bush presidency so that when the nightmare passes we can be well prepared for the global party. Turn your minds back, cherubs, to the world pre-Bush. Try to imagine these headlines, pre-Bush. 'US Authorites Detain Cat Stevens As Suspected Terrorist Suicide Bomber' 'US Authorities Detain Suspects For Years Without Charge' 'US Authorities Kidnap German Suspect On Suspicion' 'German Kidnap Victim Flown By US Authorities To Middle-Eastern Torture Facility For Interrogation' 'USA Lies To UN About Nuclear Threat From Independent Nation To Justify Invasion' 'USA Lies To Own Citizens And Armed Forces To Justify Invasion' 'US President Instructs Investigators Of Terrorist Attack On Where To Pin The Blame' Surreal, huh? Add your own to the list. There are plenty out there, these were just off the top of my head. Pre-Bush, remember, this was a huge scandal. A terrible, terrible thing, a blight on the Whitehouse. 'President Has Sex With Whitehouse Aide' Well, gosh. This was so huge it outshone any scandal arising out of the Bush presidency as a nova outshines a match - a dead match given the fact that there seems to have been no scandal at all surrounding the Bush presidency. None. Sex, it appears, is scandalous. Killing, abuse of human rights, kidnapping friendly foreign nationals, unjustified invasion of sovereign nations on the back of packs of lies - these things are not scandalous. Either that, or the American public has become very tolerant of late. Heavens, they're even tolerating things their president tells the nationals of other countries they should find intolerable and should therefore rise up against their oppressors; a severe case of the Whitehouse throwing stones from the Greenhouse. Luckily Cat Stevens is my compatriot. He's one of us good old Brits. My government won't just stand by when one of their citizens is abused in this fashion by what is clearly - by the very definitions mouthed off by the President of the USA himself on the behaviour that characterises one such - a rogue state, an enemy of peace, a hater of freedoms, a wheel on the Axis of Evil. I am sure even as we speak that Blair is on the phone to Bush. 'Yo, Tony'. 'How's the sweater?' 'Fine, Tony.' 'Oh and by the way...' 'Yes, Tony?' 'Oh... nothing sir, nothing. Can I be excused for the toilet please?' Ee it fair makes thee proud to be an Englishman does that. Thank God for Tony Blair. He's set himself up as a moderating friend on the Bush administration, better in than out, better to have the President's ear so that things can be swayed before they go too far. Blair, the HERO! Blair will help the President go as far as he possibly can to perpetrate anything he chooses it seems, so that at the last moment he can step in and avert er... something even worse I guess. Clever thinking. What a guy. Well... maybe not. Actually it's the British press and public that make me proud to be English these days. I mean, look at the demonstrations on the street against Blair. Look at the way he has slipped to 0% in the opinion polls. Look at the way they've barricaded the guy into Downing Street. Look at the screaming headlines day after day after day after day yelling 'What the FUCK do you think you are DOING?' Look at the demands for full enquiries in our own part in the invasion of a sovereign nation on the back of packs of lies our own Prime Minister told to the nation, to the world. Of course, it's all very British which is why you can't see the opinion poll ratings, the demonstrations, the barricades or the screaming headlines or hear all the clamour for an enquiry but they're there. Aren't they? 6/23/2006 Love Is...I once loved a girl. She was young and beautiful. So beautiful she could make me smile by no more than my looking at her.
She went to Beijing. I was supposed to follow but there was a delay. Still, she would visit me and when she visited she would bring me cheese I couldn't find in the town where I stayed waiting for the day I could leave to be with her. Cheese and love and laughter and happiness and beauty.
But all was not well. Unbeknownst to me... okay, the rest is an aged, dull story monotonous in its variations so 'All was not well' is enough here.
And thus it ended.
I was distraught. I cried for days. But slowly I recovered, picked myself up and moved on with my life. Within a year the pain, the emotion, the love - all had gone. And yet something... one thing... lingered. Lingers on, even now, four years later.
I still miss the cheese. 2/16/2006 Chinese busesLiving as I do an hour and two bus journeys away from the university district, I've had the chance over the last year or more to experience the wonders of Chinese buses at sometimes too close quarters - and, more particularly, the behaviour of other commuters, most assuredly at too close quarters.
My first contact of a morning is in the relatively relaxed environment of a 99 bus. These air-conditioned beauties are twice the price of normal services, and though they may not play host to a better class of passenger as such they do at least attract fewer of them. At times they are crowded, but more often than not a seat is to be had given that the start of the 99's journey is a mere few stops before my own at Wa Yao Kou.
What the 99 lacks in overstuffing, however, it can at times make up for in the behaviour of its passengery.
It's a strange fact in China that the more bestial behaviour is to be found amongst those more monied. As in any feudal system, (which China in many essences remains, at least in the minds of the middle-aged), those with privilege don't have to concern themselves too much with refined behaviour save in the presence of their own superiors. What opportunities may be lacking in their lack of need to barge their way onto an overcrowded bus they can at times make up for in other ways. Most typically this takes the form of a fresh-air fanatic Chinese woman, (it tends to be middle-aged women here who are most bullish), opening the windows of the nicely heated bus on a freezing cold day or to lose all the advantages of the air conditioning on a hot day by the same means. In other arenas I have taken advantage of the fact that these people don't tend to be challenged - Chinese people don't like to cause a fuss though they're often happy to create the environment in which one deserves to be caused - to challenge antisocial behaviour myself to startling effect. An ill-mannered individual can be reduced to an embarrassed wreck with a public show of approbation, and providing the requisite moise has become something of a pleasing hobby of mine. Though I've largely held off doing so in buses, I wish I hadn't on the occasion one gent, showing off to his girlfriend, lit up a cigarette on one 99 to demonstrate the fact that he could. It mattered nothing to him that the woman in front of him silently moved two seats further down with her baby to keep it away from the smoke. It seems ever the way here that piggish behaviour is confused with demonstrations of one's superiority in flouting rules and conventions. The girlfriend, somewhat younger than the smoker and more in tune with civilised ways, was merely embarrassed at finding herself out in public with so blatant a fool. It's increasingly the way here that younger Chinese look with pained faces upon the behaviour of their elders and - ahem - 'betters'.
Generally, though, the 99 ride is an all too brief hiatus before the real battle when I get off at the railway station to await the number 10. For some reason the vast majority of Chinese commuters have failed to realise that the best vantage point is at the far end of the bus shelter commanding a view over the bend in the road from which the bus emerges so I'm often able to pip the majority to the post of the bus doors by watching out for it there in the hope it will stop behind two or three other buses. When this ruse doesn't work, however, the battle is set.
Boarding a bus is akin to battling for a ball in a rugby scrum, only with far fewer rules about the use of elbows, the weapon of choice particularly for those middle-aged ladies again. Some of the regulars at the bus stop treat me with deference, not because I am a foreigner and they are being hospitable but because they've witnessed of old what happens to anyone who uses their elbows too forcibly with me. The elbow back is less than gentle and the accompanying glare-and-curse routine precisely the sort of public spectacle that Chinese go out of their way to avoid. Unfortunately the majority at the stop every morning are new to the ways of this stand-no-nonsense foreigner and so I have to join battle with pretty much everyone else.
I confess to not being very good at it. There's a certain worming squirming approach one has to join in with in order to get on early and such a level of bodily contact too early in the morning with complete, often unattractive strangers is one that I can't put my heart into. Only the more obvious and forceful come in for my wrath else I'd be taking on a dozen people or more, so most of them get their way and around me. I'm not infrequently the last to board.
Fortunately the railway station isn't far from the start of the bus route and so I can often get a seat. However, most of the empty seats tend to be placed on the far side of a body. It may seem sensible to select the window seat, not the aisle seat when one has the choice of two but not so in China. The aim seems to be to try to get two seats for oneself, either so one can place one's bags on the window seat or so one can simply enjoy the luxury of hogging a scarce resource to the detriment of others. To that end the majority of passengers sit in the aisle seat and make it plain that anyone who may want the window seat is going to have a difficult time crossing over them to get to it. When one makes it plain that one is going to have the seat with or without their obstruction, (and few of the hoggers keep their seat pair for long in the scramble of the morning's commute), then minimal room is given by the disgruntled fellow passenger. This is the one time when I will allow myself a measure of infliction of actual bodily harm, and if the individual doesn't move his or her legs they come in for a bashing on the way in; refuses to lean back then a face-scrape courtesy of the front of my bag which I will helpfully push in their direction to make my point doubly clear. I've yet to draw blood in getting past one of these fleshly walls, but my unwillingness to be gentle in getting over them is made abundantly clear several times a week and by now I must have at least inflicted a few bruises. My hope is that I may gain a reputation for this too, and that a few of these fleshwalls may learn to move to the window seat to make room for me of their own accord.
Needless to say, when I have the rare option of two seats I will take the one by the window. However, the aisle seat I leave open, my bags clutched on my knees rather than taking it up so as to advertise its openness to all comers, is almost invariably the last on the bus to be filled, often only long after the aisle has become a solid block of suffering bodies. No one wants the seat next to the foreigners. Foreigners are odd. Foreigners are unpredictable. Heavens, look at this one, he's not even trying to hog two seats for himself for heaven's sake, is he crazy? I have even had odd occasions when I've completed an entire long journey on a crowded bus with two seats to myself, my bags needlessly on my knees, given the anxiety of every standing passenger brought about by my very presence. This is not even through a reputation gained by one of the many options open to me to enable me to keep my pair of seats. I could build this up perhaps by engaging anyone who goes for the seat in a discussion - in English - on non-Euclidean geometries... or, more simply, by making weird foreigner 'blip-blip' noises and pulling strange foreigner expressions. However, I am genuinely willing to have people sit there should they choose to. Or, rather, should they dare. So it is of late that I have tried to build a new reputation for myself by saying 'Hello!' to passing small children to their delight and that of their parents; or by giving a brief and hopefully unthreatening smile to recognised faces. All to no avail though. My fellow passengers are happy to enjoy me at a distance - some even staring here as everywhere - but they don't want to get too close and catch whatever it is they think I might have.
When I can't get a seat at the outset, then the fun and games begin. This number 10 bus is going to get ever more crowded from here on in as it makes its way through the city centre. One has to keep one's balance in the wild swings, the jarring stops-and-starts of the vehicle's journey which frequently leave passengers up-ended where they have the space to actually fall; dominoing other passengers into fantastic contortions of balance where they don't. Then one has to find a place to stand that's not been selected by too many other people, guard one's pockets and bag against the many thieves around and, when one becomes more professional as I have of necessity, work one's way to the Best Positions.
The Best Position Of All is right at the back of the bus. From there, one commands nine seats; the five at the back and - with a little less certainty - the two each on either side of the aisle. A departing passenger from any of these affords an opportunity to pounce.
The Next Best Position is at the start of the back of the bus where the floor raises up a step, just beyond the exit doors. From here the brave try to block all other passengers from passing so they can command all the back-of-the-bus seats and, well, if you're a foreigner you can often achieve the same aim with the inherent anti-magnetism. If the worst comes to the worst and others do squirm their way around you, at least you find yourself at the end of one's journey standing in a good position to battle one's way off the bus.
Another advantage of the back-of-the-bus position is that if one is fortunate enough to secure oneself a seat, one is less likely to have to give it up. If the portrait I have painted thus far has been of an ugly scramble that would be unseemly in the extreme back home, then the Chinese undoubtedly score well above us when it comes to deferring to the elderly and those with young children who might board. Few elderly people get beyond the first few seats on a bus without someone rapidly standing make way for them. In this, the Chinese are models of decorum and deference to an extreme I've never seen before. Indeed, I've had to work hard on my own manners in order to try to emulate it rather than give a poor impression of foreigner-kind. However, I do draw the line at nine and ten year old children who, as far as I am concerned, can take their chances with everyone else in the aisle. They have to wait for a Chinese to rise for them as they do more often than not, though not invariably as for the elderly.
When I do rise for an elderly gentleman or lady I have a 50% success rate. Sometimes my offering is taken with a grateful nod; sometimes amiably - but flatly - refused. The first time it happened I put it down to a communication breakdown until the elderly woman in question forced me gently but so firmly back into my seat by the shoulder that I was left with no uncertainty. I was also left with the feeling she had more strength for standing in a crowded aisle than I did myself.
I was refused, almost certainly, as a foreigner. On the whole this legendary hospitality towards foreigners is rarely exercised outside of the home but, as ever, it's the elderly, the young and the poor here who are most likely to exhibit it when it does happen; the young because many are genuinely seeking a new way of behaving, irritated by the boorishness of the generation above them... the elderly because, perhaps, their behaviour was formed in a time more refined than the scrabble of post-revolutionary China permitted; and the poor because, well, the poor do that the world over. It's relatively well-off, largely middle-aged city folk here that really let the side down. Unfortunately, they compose most of the commuters on an urban Chinese bus. I have had one junior middle school student offer her seat to me as a foreigner, bless her. I refused but made it as clear as I was able that I was gratified by her offer.
Of course, when a seat is vacated, more often than not it is snaffled by the nearest competitor in the aisle... but not always. Not infrequently, indeed, a strange thing kicks in over a newly vacated seat. The people around it pretend it's not there, almost embarrassedly, as if it were a stripper that had unexpectedly arrived and started her show at a refined garden party. This is ever the way with other cultures. You think you have them pegged and then they throw something your way which doubtless fits in with the overall picture in its own way but which appears to have come from a different jigsaw puzzle altogether. The only possibility I can think of is that the ignorers are amongst the more polite people who are the last to get on the bus and don't get involved with the scramble and they are indeed deferring to others, particularly any elderly that may board later perhaps... and, possibly, to me as a foreigner. After all, I have only ever seen this happen when I am there and have never been around to see whether it happens or not when I'm absent. When this happens I don't charge in, but I certainly don't allow the shuffling embarrassment to last for too long before I stake my claim and sit, to the seeming relief of those around me.
Journey's end brings with it the final scramble. Now, I can understand the logic - if not the manners - of people fighting to get onto a bus first with its limited seats and even limited standing room... but fighting to get off? They are fearful there will be no room on the pavement, perhaps? Or that the bus will pull away before disgorging half those who want to get off? Or... well, what? Suffice it to say that the unseemly initial scramble to get on being mirrored in the unseemly final scramble to get off again seems to make no sense, even in a land where dignity is so often sacrificed in the quest for advantage. What advantage can there possibly be in being the first to alight?
Ah, China... five and a half years on and still, still so full of exotic mystery... 1/31/2006 Blair, Iraq and Accountability[Adapted from a post to my discussion group - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/apothem_tercet/]
Gordon Brown wants us to be proud to be British? Well, he can start with this.
We Brits aren't very patriotic these days, but there are limits to the depths of mud we like seeing our nation - and ourselves by association - dragged through. Another book has come out to serious reviews in the quality press to say that Blair knew damned well there were no WMD in Iraq when British troops went in... and even before that when he was doing his 'goodwill tour' of heaven knows how many nations to sell the idea that there were. I read just the start of one of the reviews and didn't bother to follow through to the end. The news that Blair lied - to us, to the entire world - is such old hat that nobody even thinks twice about it.
I saw my nation going into that war believing Blair to be misguided but sincere. I felt personally conned when I read the Downing Street memos. And now the lie is out is my nation just going to sit back with all the evidence out there and project to the world complacency in the face of such an enormity? If anyone still trusts us, they shouldn't. And they should continue not to trust us until a formal inquiry is held, individuals in the British government and establishment in general being held accountable for their actions for once and for all.
It is one thing when your Prime Minister is complicit in the biggest lie the world has ever known. It is quite another when you find out the truth and choose to pretend that the lie never happened. I am utterly disgusted by my country right now and, on this score, ashamed to be British.
You want us to be proud to be British, Mr. Brown? Well so do I. But I don't want to be proud of fish and chips and winning the ashes. It's not compensation enough to offset our shame when it runs as deep as this. 1/20/2006 Welcome to the new Cold War[Extracted from an ongoing debate in Apothem Tercet - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/apothem_tercet]
We have come to regard certain things as our God-given right. It is our God-given right to have nuclear weapons. It is the God-given right of our friends to develop them and have them without us causing too much of a fuss about it. It is our God-given right not to negotiate away those weapons, something we are as obliged to do under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty as Iran is obliged not to develop them in the first place. If we have stopped setting a good example on that score, when precisely was it we stopped? More importantly, when was it we started?
Our right to nuclear weaponry and all that may all be as commonplace and as common-sense as a walk in the part for us... but we are not Iranians. For some reason they just can't seem to see it the way we do. The current loony was elected by a populace that was looking to become less radical only a few years ago, and his actions are largely supported by the people who voted him in. The Iranians know themselves to be an axis of evil in the minds of a nation with enough nuclear weaponry to broil everyone in Iran a dozen times over. They know that we - in the time we were setting the good example I guess - were not beyond supplying chemical weaponry to the loony next door so he could use them on the Iranian people, (having tested them on his own people just to make sure with little fuss caused by us at the time), and they know what happened to that loony when he fell out of favour. The result is they now have the axis-accusers sitting on their own doorstep turning up the rhetoric with talk of the Iranians training armed insurgents who come in on the rightful American territory of Iraq. They also know what's happening with North Korea, advanced enough in its own programme of weaponry that no one wants to mess with them too seriously any more.
So, if you're an Iranian, who do you vote for and what do you want?
I do wish we could stop all this 'holier than thou' rhetoric and at least begin to address the possibility - just the small possibility - that we may indeed be walking around with beams in our eyes while hollering about the motes in others. I don't think there's anything in the Koran that says America, the UK, France, China, Russia, Israel, Pakistan, India and North Korea are allowed to have nuclear weapons and the Iranians are not. In fact, I don't even recall that being in the Bible. There's not some natural law governing this, or something that means the world would tip on its axis were it any other way. Where did we get this impression that we are the masters of creation from anyway?
The only thing that stops Iran, the only argument against them or against anyone else, is an international treaty we ourselves have discredited. It was designed to rid the world of nuclear weaponry by ensuring that no one else got hold of the things while those that had them negotiated theirs away, something we have palpably failed to even begin to think of the vague possibility of starting to consider contemplating. Right now Blair is talking about an upgrade to the British nuclear deterrent, but to deter who? Where are we going to point the bloody things? It's not even as if it is a M.A.D. world any more. Whose destruction are we mutually assuring here?
Am I sorry that the Iranians might go nuclear? You bet your left buttock I am sorry. The rhetoric about Israel alone is a frightening obscenity; no better, indeed, than the mouthing we did at the Russians and the Russians at us for all those years of the Cold War when we appeared to be under the impression that it would be better to end humanity for once and for all than suffer for fifty years or so under the unlikely scenario of a Communist takeover, a failing system that would have failed in time even had it temporarily succeeded in some peculiar way no one has ever yet been able to explain to me. It was never explained to me though my arse was on the line as much as the other 4 billion on the planet... who doubtless didn't have it explained to them either why it was better they should all die and the world should end than Communism ever get past the New York customs office. Yep, the Iranians really are nearly as stupid as we were. Sickening thought, but there it is.
We have never set a fine example. And I don't think the way forward is sacrificing now even those examples we did set to some degree in terms of human rights, (for our own people at least), and not resorting to war but instead utilising colonisation-by-proxy through puppet dictators which at least made us look clean.
I say again. I do wish that we would do something about ourselves for once and for all here. If we, the Chinese, the French, the Russians and the Americans had actually followed their own end of the bargain with the non-proliferation treaty; if we hadn't between us allowed our pals to develop their own nuclear weapons; then we would have an unarguable moral right at this point in time to go into Iran and kick backsides if necessary to stop Iran becoming a nuclear power and we'd have been able to assemble an army from people contributed by every nation on the planet. As it is, we don't. As usual what will win this argument is 'My dad is bigger than your dad' and God knows that's the very argument, the very attitude that has the Iranians developing their weaponry - if indeed they are - in the first place. The fact is that if we didn't have nuclear weaponry ourselves, if we had got rid of them and not allowed our friends to have them, then Iran wouldn't even want them - even if it does indeed want them now. It's us behind this crisis. Again.
Is this over once we sort out Iran? Not a chance. This ain't never going to end at this rate because we're never going to end it and we're the only ones who can, so where next?
The world is getting so stupid now and the stupidity has been running for enough years that it's stopped being frightening. It's become normal. It's actually boring. Most people aren't even thinking about it much any more. This is the new Cold War - Iraq, Iran, North Korea today, God knows who tomorrow - and unlike Communism which at least put a stop to the last one by collapsing, no one seems to have any end-point in mind for this one. And why? Because in the end it ain't going to finish unless we Lords of the Universe shift our backsides and we aren't going to do that. Oh dear me no no no, the world is much too dangerous for us to sacrifice our God-given right to nuclear weaponry and the policing of the world any more than any of the other God-given rights we Gods have taken for ourselves.
The perfect vicious circle. Somebody's laughing at us here. Somebody somewhere is singing 'Happy Days are Here Again' while making a hell of a lot of money for holding the world to ransom and laughing their bloody heads off. Yes indeed, happy days are here again for someone. Welcome to the new Cold War.
Iran is bad. Yes, it is bad. But us? We are an obscenity. 1/16/2006 Iraq: where are the investigations?[An email contributed to my email discussion group - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/apothem_tercet]
I danced lightly on the previous thread over a point which I actually believe - and have believed for some time - to be utterly fundamental. Where, post-war, are the investigations into the war itself?
To be sure, investigations have been conducted... and yet again and again they seem to have managed to avoid some fundamental questions. * Individuals in the American administration appear to have profited directly from a war they made the decision to conduct. Should companies connected with individuals in an administration be permitted to bid for contracts that benefit directly from a war initiated by that administration?
* Testimony and evidence exists that falsified documents were presented in the case for the war, justified at the time by citing WMD and terrorist links within the Saddam regime. What was the source of those documents?
* Testimony and evidence exists that individuals in both the US and UK administrations were aware that there were no WMD from the outset. Is this the case?
* Communications in the UN were intercepted illegally by American operatives. Who authorised these interceptions and what punishment has been meted out to those responsible for the authorisation?
* In the continuing 'war on terror', what covert operations are being conducted that involve kidnapping and illegal detention of foreign citizens by American operatives and how can these be justified?
I don't want to go on and on here, I don't need to, the point is already made without an exhaustive list and the point is this. There is an overwhelming need for a comprehensive investigation into the Iraq war; or, perhaps, several investigations to be conducted in parallel and with mutual cooperation between them so the investigation doesn't run for a decade.
This should be an entirely neutral suggestion. Those for the war should have no concerns about these questions being asked; in the end the US administration will be exonerated on all points. However, those who support the war must surely acknowledge that these questions do exist, that the questions are valid, and that very many Americans - and, indeed, very many British themselves calling for parallel investigations - deserve to have the questions answered when the war conducted was conducted at their expense both in cash and - quite literally - in blood. Whether or not you are for or against the war, these are not questions that can be dismissed with an airy shrug as mere trivia.
The key word here is 'accountability'. Arguments have raged on the back of speculation. If these points can be cleared up to the credit of the US and UK administrations then they should be cleared up and the credit given. If not, then action should be taken against those who are discredited.
There should be no speculation. What we need - what the American people, the British people, the Iraqi people, the UN and the world are all owed as an undeniable right - are answers. 1/7/2006 More people unhappily referred here from baidu.comThree more reasons not to trust a Chinese search engine to get you what you want. The following searches on baidu.com resulted in people visiting these pages, presumably leaving again disappointed:
Apothem Tercet
schoolboy caught smoking behind the bicycle sheds. To indulge in such ill-informed ...sex appeal. She's not conscious of it - just thinks men are normally gaga, I ...Japan can... spaces.msn.com/members/apothem-tercet/ 125K 2005-11-17 Apothem Tercet the bicycle sheds. To indulge in such ill-informed and inflammatory rhetoric ...lifting the...ban on commercial whaling? Concerned with the livelihood of their citizens, ... spaces.msn.com/members/apothem-tercet/ 125K 2005-11-17 Chinese industrial relations[Extracted from an ongoing discussion in my email newsgroup - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/apothem_tercet]
XXX: I see this in adults too. [We had been discussing how Chinese students and children are 'bullied' into work rather than being taught it is for their own benefit and encouraged to work, something which happened not so very long ago in western nations too] The place at which I work was visited by the Big Boss from Hull recently. He suggested to the Big Boss from Chongqing that the workers should be given a carrot and not a stick. Instead of fining them for poor work, they should be rewarded for good work. A bonus system. The Big Boss from Chongqing nodded sagely, and rapidly forgot the idea. It would not work. Somehow, the Chinese brain is wired differently to the European brain, and being praised and rewarded does not produce better work.
Me: The big boss from Hull should have instituted an actual system and given it to the big boss from Chongqing to put into action dot-and-comma; otherwise yes, he is asking him way too much to think his way out of his own cultural loop.
XXX: When I tell my workforce that their work is crap, it will all have to be thrown out and they will have to do it again, and they will all be fined, they don't care. They carry on with no regard whatsoever for what anybody says about the quality of the work, only improving for a short time while being watched like a hawk. These people work like demons, and in appalling conditions, but have no concern at all for the end product or whether they can improve and become better.
Me: ... and why would they? I'd rephrase 'These people work like demons, and in appalling conditions, but have no concern at all for the end product...' as 'These people work like demons, and in appalling conditions, AND THEREFORE have no concern at all for the end product...'
In the bad not-so-old days of British industry, your average guy on the factory floor would rather sneak out to a stinking bog and smoke a fag for 30 minutes in unpleasant conditions rejoicing if the boss didn't catch him than use the time turning out another ten widgets, and why? Because the boss was the enemy. If he turned out another ten widgets then the boss got to have a more extravagant lunch at a five-star restaurant somewhere down the line while the worker would continue to live on bad potatoes.
The grand irony, of course, is that this is precisely the kind of stuff that Karl Marx used to rail about. We're in one of the few nations that puts Marx on a pedestal and raves about him... and equally in one of the few guilty of the worst of excesses Marx used to rail about, not merely in the widget-making sector but also in the mine-coal-to-hell-with-the-death-toll-safety-costs-money sector. It's always been my little joke in China that it won't progress until it starts to understand what Marx was talking about; that if there's one thing this country lacks, it's socialism. When I've said that to Chinese friends they've said 'We have CHINESE socialism' as if that is some kind of virtue. To which I tend to respond 'Well I am a EUROPEAN socialist', underlining where I feel the virtue really lies.
Mainland Europe - far more than the UK - circumvented Marx and came up with social democracy. Bosses started eating in the same canteens as the workers and the canteens improved accordingly. Office doors became open to all-comers. A worker who walked into the office saying that production could be speeded up on line 17 by decreasing the steam-overload factor by 15%, making the hurdle out of brass rather than iron and shortening the sluice so it ran into the third bay rather than the fourteenth was handsomely rewarded for the advice should it turn out to be correct. The whole workforce would kick off with a decent wage and, should recalls decrease and production increase, get a healthy bonus to boot. Books would be open to more general scrutiny so that it was seen they were getting a fair whack. And the boss was no longer called 'Mr. Bastard' but 'Harry the Bastard' and then, as people got used to it, just plain 'Harry'.
The crucial word here is 'inclusion'. It's damned difficult for people to see that they are 'part of the company' and have a stake in its health when the perception - quite rightly - is that they are working their butts off to make someone else rich because they simply have no choice; it's that or starve. Might as well spend that 30 minutes in the bog. Not going to make any difference to your paltry wages at the end of the month either way, but at least you know the boss will lose a few eggs out of his caviare and for that the fag tastes a little better, the bog smells a little sweeter.
In the early '80s I worked for the Trent Regional Health Authority, first in the Engineering Administration department; later promoted to Personnel. I found the attitude in Personnel disheartening, a kind of feudal empire approach. I'd not had any run-ins with Personnel or I'd never have gone for the post. (I went for it because the EA post was temporary; this post permanent). We ran a flexitime system and it was policed by us... but Personnel were concerned that I ate lunch with people in Engineering Admin and Architectural Admin, some of the worst transgressors.
They were 'right' to be concerned to their way of thinking. I found out through the back door that one of my friends was being watched. They were trying to gather enough evidence against her to hammer her hard for screwing with the system. I took her on one side. 'Better lay off, they're on to you.' And she layed off, became a good girl... and Personnel was furious. They wanted their pound of flesh. When I pointed out to them that the goal had been achieved, that the system was no longer being screwed by this individual, the taxpayer was saving money while under their system they needed her to swindle the taxpayer out of another ten or twenty hours of pay for no other reason than the delight of taking her into the office and screaming at her to show her who was boss, (they had no intention of sacking her), it didn't compute.
They couldn't sack me, but they pushed me out of my post using various pressure methods. I was the enemy within. A few days before I left, the elderly woman in charge of the typing pool came into the office for some reason and said - for the benefit of the entire office - 'I hear you're leaving us, Pete.' When I confirmed the fact - 'Well that is a very great shame. It was quite lovely to be able to walk into this office to a smile and a greeting from someone for a change.'
Personnel employees were sent off regularly for training courses on how to handle those in their charge and, if the general ambiance of the department was anything to go by, they weren't selecting courses on how to make friends and influence people. More like 'How to shout effectively' and 'The benefits and techniques of mild forms of psychological torture'. And doubtless the Trent Regional Health Authority's Personnel Department wasn't the only customer for the training courses.
Around the same period I heard an interview on Radio 4's 'Today' programme with a German economist. Germany at the time was truly THE powerhouse of Europe, this before the fall of the Berlin wall. The question put to him: Why is it that Germany does so well and the UK so badly. His answer was simple. 'It's the relationship between your management and your workforce that's the problem.' Boring liberal nonsense. They wanted to swiftly move on. 'What else?' 'Nothing else,' came the reply. 'That's it.'
Again and again and again, I repeat. You simply do not have to go back very far very often in our own social history to see China. In some respects yes, you have to go back a long, long way... but in this instance, Steve, you're going back a mere 20 years or so in UK history to see the same mentality in action. And as we know, things here change fast and BLOODY fast.
It will change fast here for the simple reason that it works. It worked in Germany which shot ahead of the UK. As individual companies pick up on the idea more and more, they will shoot ahead of the company down the road and put it out of business. Some of it will come from outside influences - I am sure your Big Boss from Hull hasn't finished with your Big Boss from Chongqing yet who may yet be out the door if he doesn't do as he's told - and though I can't speak for what happens on the shop floor at Haier or Gree they are at least forcing other competition out and down the toilet through doing nothing more than producing quality products that last.
Companies run more effectively with a sense of inclusion. This is my company. I am a part of this entity. If it does well, I do well. If it does badly, I do badly. There's a glass ceiling on China's economic development if this trick isn't learned across the board and certainly 'feudal' companies will disappear when faced with the successes of those companies that do learn the trick. Darwin works in the marketplace as anywhere else, and your Big Boss from Chongqing is a dinosaur. 1/6/2006 More thoughts on the Chinese Summer of Love[Extracted from an ongoing discussion on my email web group]
Punk was pu | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
Profile
Blog
Guestbook
Photos
Lists
Music
Friends
Files