This is China! blog

I recently received an issue of the Economist Magazine in the mail. It was the December 4 – 10 issue, with the cover story “The Dangers of a Rising China”. The cover has a Chinese soldier dressed in camouflage, squinting through the eye piece of a rifle, taking aim.

I’m used to the issues coming a week or two late; they come by way of Singapore, after all, and have to pass through a gauntlet of Chinese institutions, I’m sure, before they arrive at my doorstep in Suzhou. I’m always excited to peek through the clear plastic covering at the next titillating topic the magazine has chosen to zero in on. My address and subscription information are printed on a piece of white paper inside the plastic envelope, covering the back page.

This issue, however, had no clear plastic covering and no address information attached to it. It lay, still pristine, at the bottom of my mail box, face down.

It was a considerate gesture, and I do appreciate receiving what is turning out to be a stimulating read. I’ll have to invite the postman out sometime and see what he thinks about the magazine’s take on China’s rise. And I’ll sometime have to thank the powers that be for passing the issue on to me, fully intact.

The days have been quite hazy of late in the Yangtze River Delta, even when the sunshine is working overtime to shine brightly. It’s the annual burning off of the fields in China, when farmers set torch to the chaff and detritus left behind after harvest. For the last month an inversion layer has pressed the smoke and ash from the burnings even closer to ground, reducing visibility to just a few meters, especially next to the lakes and rivers. It’s been near impossible to see more than a few yards round the Golden Rooster Lake (Jinji Lake) in Suzhou, across from which I live. One China veteran told me it used to be much worse ten years before, especially along the stretch of roadway joining Nanjing and Shanghai (the Huning). Fires used to burn wildly across the cropland. Now, there is less cropland, and more highway.

Still, a friend told the story of how he’d driven to Shanghai along the very same route just a few days ago. A stretch of road became thick with black, acrid, toxic smoke that poured through the vents in the car. It was impossible to see, he said, and more difficult to breathe. Now, farmers are burning their garbage along with the chaff in the fields. This means plastics and rubbers and all manner of noxious materials are going up in smoke and toxic ash, despite regulations to the contrary.

Modernization with countryside characteristics is not a healthy prospect.

image credit: all-china-agriculture.com

I recently attended the “coming out” party for a baby boy who did not attend the event. Neither did the mother. “The baby is too small,” the father told me, “only twelve days old.” The father is a tall, handsome fellow from a small town in Anhui province. He is still in the People’s Liberation Army, still barracked, separated from his wife and newborn. His wife lives and works in Suzhou.

I pushed my way through the throng of well-wishers, fanning away cigarette smoke and smiling politely at people I didn’t know. I asked my wife about the coming out party. “Why are they having a coming out party for a baby that’s only twelve days old? I thought the party in China happens when the baby is 30-days old – and then again when the baby is 100 days old.”

Coming out parties for babies in China are big deals; second only to wedding banquets. I think because in the past the mortality rate was so high in the countryside the townsfolk developed the tradition of celebrating the minor miracle of child and mother surviving childbirth – and mothers-in-law.

“That’s the custom in our town,” my wife answered matter-of-factly. “But I thought the custom was 60 days for boys in your town; not 30 days.” We celebrated our son’s coming-out on his 60th day, at the urging of my mother-in-law.

“Oh, this is another custom,” she said without irony. “Besides, the baby’s father has to return to the army camp at the end of 30 days.”

“So why not have the 30-day coming out party on the 29th day. Then, the mother and child can attend their own party. And anyway,” I said – ironically – “I thought you Chinese mothers are supposed to languish in bed – unwashed – for 30 days.”

“Well, his parents have come from the countryside to see their baby grandson. They brought chickens.”

“Chicken eggs?”

“No,” she said, her voice picking up in excitement, “chickens to eat.” We only got a lousy box of several hundred chicken eggs when my son was born. No  chickens for us. “They’re fresher in the countryside than in the city.”

“Are the chickens dead?”

“No.”

“They brought live chickens from Anhui to Suzhou? On the train? How many chickens did they bring?”

“Six, or maybe eight.”

“They gave us one,” my wife said brightly. “Tomorrow I’ll make stir fried chicken in soy sauce.” I had visions of a live chicken running round our living room, pecking out my infant son’s eyes.

“Is it still alive?” I asked half-seriously, afraid of the answer.

“No, silly,”it’s already dead and feathered.”

Which was how I felt at the end of the conversation.

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Related posts:

Maternal Wisdom from the Chinese Countryside

Welcome Home, Son

But I don’t Want a C-section!

The Market Value of a Daughter

Technorati Tags: china, expat life

Penguin Books is doing some literary lunches based on their Penguin Classics series (Penguin Classics Lunches) to celebrate their 5th year in China. The prolific and eloquent Paul French is doing one on November 19th in Shanghai and then again on December 3rd in Beijing. He’s going to talk about Andre Malraux’s excellent novel on Shanghai in 1927,  Man’s Fate – which is a Penguin Classic. I read the novel about ten years ago, and let me tell you, it’s one that’ll grab you by the throat and not let you go until the last pages. It’s also an amazing bit of Shanghai history.

Set in Shanghai, 1927, the novel tells the story of four people whose lives are altered against the backdrop of a changing Shanghai: Kyo Gisors, one of the leaders of the Communist insurrection; Ch’en Ta Erh, an assassin and terrorist; Baron de Clappique, a French gambler, opium dealer and gun runner, and Russian revolutionary Katov.

Shanghai
Friday, November 19th, 2010
M on the Bund
RMB 188, includes a three-course lunch with coffee or tea
Reservations: 6350 9988 or through the restaurant’s reservations page

Beijing
Friday December 3rd, 2010
The Beijing Bookworm
RMB150 includes a three-course lunch with coffee or tea
Reservations: The Beijing Bookworm

I’ve posted the posters promoting the Beijing event (top) and the Shanghai event (right). Strangely, the Shanghai poster de-emphasizes the juicy, descriptive bits about the novel; ie, “the blood splattered streets” and completely leaves out “the murderous suppression” hook. Guess Beijingers need their imaginations jogged a bit.

Anyway, I’ll be at the Shanghai luncheon. Maybe I’ll see you there!

I recently had lunch with an American housewife and a bright, stylish young Chinese professional woman. The American housewife is unusual in that she finds the expat wives scene uninteresting – I don’t think just in Suzhou, either. She’s lived on her own in other countries, as well. The Chinese professional noted that the Western expat wives in the compound in which she lives in the Suzhou Industrial Park seldom say hello to her. She noted, however, that expat wives that had jobs in China seemed to have no problem saying paying her a greeting. The phenomenon genuinely baffled the young lady.

My American friend offered that the trailing spouses had no interest at all in being in China. “They didn’t want to be here; they don’t want to be here; and they’re dying to get out of here,” she added. “They want as little to do with China – or anywhere else, for that matter – as they can get away with.” She believed that the wives who had work here were more engaged – and perhaps more interested – in the local culture. I would add they were also likely to feel less threatened by the unfamiliar environment.

The observation about the insulated housewives puts me in mind of quite a few male expats who have lived for years in China who insist to me they will only eat ABC: Anything But Chinese!

Insularity is gender indifferent.

image credit: precisionnutrion.com

“He’s not feeling comfortable,” my Chinese wife insisted about our infant son. Mucous ballooned out from his nose like a blown wad of bubble gum when he exhaled, then deflated when he inhaled. The poor kid had a head cold. In the States we give them lots of rest, lots liquids, lots of cuddling, a humidifier, maybe even a salt water blow up the nostrils to clear away all that gum. In China, they stick them with long very un-acupunture-like needles.

Chinese parents and grandparents take their children to public hospitals and have nurses shave away patches of hair from the children’s tender pates and stick intravenous needles into their scalps. Most of the time the needles are at the end of a long clear plastic pipe that is the conduit for a saline solution.

Personally, I hate the idea. And I hate the practice. I protested all the way to the hospital. And couldn’t watch while the nurse over a two-day course jabbed my son in the head with a needle. “That’s supposed to make him comfortable?” I quipped at my wife, who duly ignored me.

Public hospitals in China have huge rooms equipped with high-backed chairs studded with hooks from which patients hang their bags of saline solution. More serious cases are given anti-biotics, right away, no questions asked; like buying candy from a vending machine. Parents and grandparents sit in the chairs and hold their children in their laps while the solution drip drip drips into the needle.

The children’s hospital in Suzhou even built a new facility specifically to house the Coma-victims*. They were still installing lights in the ceilings while literally hundreds of families crowded into the drip-lounges (I should copyright that one) to find an available chair. Those who could not find a chair or knew they would not be able to  find accommodation had bought stiff-plastic rods – some blue, some pink; depending on the sex of the victim – at the end of which were hooks from which they could hang the medicine bags. Some of the porta-drip families walked aimlessly around the outer lobby of the hospital, while others sat in waiting rooms, with a parent or grandparent usually holding the porta-pole.

There was one moment of clarity I had during the hours of waiting: an aspect of Western medicine has become a Rite of Autumn for Chinese in Mainland China. Though flu season is upon us, it rather seemed to me there were only a handful of children in the hundreds I saw who were actually hospital-sick. Otherwise, it all rather seemed a social event to show to other parents/grandparents you were taking care of your child; and to have a merit badge (that is, the shaved patch on the child’s head) to show to the neighbors during social time in courtyards. I realized that my wife simply would not have been comfortable taking care of our son at home for a very mild head cold. Like preparing for Spring Festival, there was an act of seeing others and being seen by others in preparing for the season to come.

Thankfully, our little one survived the ordeal. So did I. And my wife feels worlds better than she did before the marathon sessions. She also had something more to talk about with the neighbors.

I hate to see what they’re going to do to him when he gets the measles, though.

*a reference to the movie of the same name from the 1970′s.

image credit: my mobile phone – i didn’t think you would believe such a story otherwise – bd

A British neighbor sent me a text this morning that read: “Suicide at our courtyard .. Girl jumped from the building.”

My wife sketched in some of the details for me when I returned home today from work: a young man and young woman argued ferociously on the patio of an apartment owned by the woman’s parents. They were boyfriend and girlfriend. The woman jumped from the 18th floor to her death. From our building.

The tragedy reminds me of an instance a couple years before when I called the police in Suzhou to adjudicate a dispute I was having with a taxi driver who was supposed to drive me from Shanghai to Suzhou without a one-hour detour into the Kunshan countryside the near-side of midnight. I was refusing to pay the full fare because of the detour. The police officer said, “Is that all this is? I’ve got a girl who’s slit her wrists and is threatening to jump off a high-rise.” He jumped in his car and sped off as another cruiser rolled up.

This happens all too often in China. Young people threatening or following through with suicides. Yes, it’s a difficult, confusing time for Chinese society. But there’s also a sense that many of the young people in the cities have not been equipped to deal with the disappointments and disagreements that are a part of life no matter where in the world one lives.

Unfortunately, the  25-year old woman who jumped to her death from my apartment building will never know more of this world and all it has to offer. And her parents now know only grief.

Related posts:

My Father-In-Law is a Hero

image credit: thechive.com

Of course, being a new parent makes one sensitive to the issues confronting other parents of infants: who’s child is bigger; who’s is showing some glimmer of intelligence; who’s are droolers? My wife told me last evening while we were comparing children in the courtyard in which we live she had seen reports on local Suzhou and national (CCTV) news shows that the number of fetuses diagnosed and infants born with disabilities in China had increased dramatically in the last five years. She reminded me that during visits to children’s hospitals in both Suzhou and Shanghai that doctors she had talked with had been astonished by the number of disabilities related to disfigured limbs this year compared to the year before. The reports and the doctors attribute the rapid increase in cases of disfigurement, malformation and retardation to increased pollution rates in the environment overall, as well as the chemicals used in the decoration of the interior of new flats: owners buy empty concrete shells that need to be finished with electricals, plumbing, sealings, painting and rest, usually with highly toxic chemicals.

The news items put me in mind of a BBC report from three years ago about how the World Bank cut from its own report on the economic impact of China’s pollution on its citizens its estimates of pollution-related death-rates:

High levels of air pollution in China’s cities leads to 350,000-400,000 premature deaths, it said. Another 300,000 die because of poor-quality air indoors.

Given our child was conceived and birthed here in China, we consider ourselves one of the lucky ones. Sadly, as we are increasingly witnessing in China’s hospitals, not every family is as fortunate.

Technorati Tags: china, expat life, social trends, urban development trends

Image Credit: zimbio.com

An American neighbor in my apartment complex recently told me how she has removed her daughter from the Suzhou Singapore International School (SSIS) because a large swathe of the student body has become militantly insular. “Only two Korean mothers showed up at a PTA [Parent Teacher Association] meeting. One of the topics under discussion was how to get the Korean students more involved with the rest of the student body. One of the Korean mothers offered,

‘Koreans don’t want to get involved with the other students.’” Koreans now make up about half the student body at SSIS, up from 30% in pre-economic downturn times. Most if not all the Korean students have followed their fathers to Suzhou, where the fathers work for large Korean companies.South Korea’s economy, like China’s own, suffered a downturn of only a few months during the global economic downturn of 2008-2009. Korean companies returned to the Yangtze Delta region with a vengeance. Nevertheless, the Korean students apparently prefer remaining in their tight clique, and don’t seem to have much use for the richness the international setting at the school offers. Also, the American neighbor offered, the children will inevitably return to South Korean schools, where they may well meet bullying if they are too different from the children who did not travel outside the country. The mother felt the education at SSIS was less and less “international” and was catering more and more to Korean predilections.

The same American mother told me the final straw that forced her to move her child to another international school in Suzhou came when her twelve year old daughter bought an attractive file folder from one of the male Korean students. He had assured her the folder could only be found in South Korea, and was worth two hundred yuan. The young girl bargained the fellow down to one hundred yuan. The next day they made the exchange, whereupon the Korean boy extracted several more of the file folders from his back pack and told her he had bought them at a local hyper-market in Suzhou for a fraction of the price he had just charged her. He then used the 100 yuan to buy sweets for his Korean buddies, which all of them ate in front of the girl while laughing at her. “The experience turned all her expectations for working toward a win-win agreement with people on its head. She was really upset,” her mother explained.

But then again, they didn’t used to call Korea before its schism “The Hermit Kingdom” for no reason.

Image Credit: Dante's Purgatorio

A couple of weeks ago at a dinner party with Chinese and expat friends talk turned to the difficulties expats seem to be having renewing their work permits. The topic came up after I’d asked how the visa process was going for a German friend moving to Suzhou from Nanjing. She believed renewal would be easier if she moved to another city in China than if she stayed in Nanjing to pursue another job offer: Nanjing authorities were asking for an unprecedented level of detail about her past working record in Nanjing than she had ever recalled. She’s lived in Nanjing nearly eight years.

A local American small business owner based in Suzhou seconded my Nanjing friend’s observation: he was having more difficulty than ever before in the four years he’s been in business in Suzhou in bringing onboard three other Americans in business support positions. His feeling was that it was not just foreign workers the central and local governments were targeting, but foreign employers, as well. Though he was no Microsoft or GE or Siemens, he definitely felt his business was being treated in ways it hadn’t been before the Great Recessison.

The consensus at the end of the meal was that foreigners increasingly needed to present themselves as not only indispensable to a China business, but also have a title that reflected a relatively high position in the organization. And that despite the central government’s assurances to the contrary, foreign companies in particular were in regulatory purgatory.

Further reading: FT, Bloomberg