A Peak Behind the Curtain

Dear America,

Today I was walking along the street. I had walked down this street before, but the streets near my school are not many, so I walk the same streets every day. In past years and in other places I have waxed eloquent on the joys of Beijing, but in those times I lived in lively hutongs or large school campuses. The east campus of the Capital University of Business and Economics, however, is tiny, a small outpost of a much larger school designed for graduate students, and as the school's name may suggest, the district I am in is related to business and ecomics. As a result, there are large towers full of offices, and large towers full of apartments, and not much else.

It is telling that possibly the most exciting thing I see on my daily desolate walks to find a new restuarant in this wasteland of wealth is a small shop selling clothes and toys for kids. I have not yet gone into the store; I'd like to save it for a day when my need for something new is greater. For now, I peer into the window as I walk by and see all the miniature pastel-colored outfits and other childhood paraphernalia and see the young-looking (but then, in China everyone looks either 17 or 100) woman sitting in the doorway. "Is she married? Does she have a child herself? What does she think of the things she sells? Is she happy with he job, just sitting there every day, or does she have greater ambitions?" Again, I haven't asked. Someday maybe I will.

In other times, and other places, I have asked other people similar questions; last year alone I asked nearly 200 people many such questions. People fascinate me, and the ways in which culture, social standing, and education change people -- andother ways in which humans remains the same regardless of anything else -- is a subject which holds endless possible questions I wish to explore. You can travel across the world, and yet somehow ocne I've done that I find it more interesting to talk sit in the guardroom and talk with thegate guard than enter the palace.

Somes it is the small incidents that reveal large differences. On this street I saw a sign with a small cactus beneath it. The sign was advertising "Yellow-white [something] only 1 RMB" I thought maybe that the [something] was the cactus, which surprised me, as I had asked another flower shop (again, on this same street) how much a similar plant would cost, and I was told 25 PMB. Thinking I would definitely take the plant and liven up my room with a hardy bit of life (perhaps I could pretend that the cactus was my roommate, even giving him a genuine Chinese name and all), I caught the eye of the fellow behind the glass. When I asked what the signed referred to, he took me into the shop and showed me a yellow and white flower. Chinese has proven itself to be a tricky language, and so I have learend to keep an open mind about things, but sometimes stuff really is what it claims to be: a yellow and white flower really is yellow and white, or a chicken-heart shish kebab really does have a chicken heart on it.

I was distracted by the flower, however, by the activity on the futon-like piece of furniture inside the shop. Two people of opposite sex who had been napping in each other's arms somewhat quickly disentangled themselves and made themselves a little more presentable. Somewhat embarrassed by the episode and having found the answer to my quey I bid a swift farewell and retreated to the safety of my familiar street, where in my long walk back to the school I had time to mull over what had occurred, and what it symbolized.

It's hard to talk with Chinese people without their rapid pace of economic development cropping up (to get a two-for-one bonus, you can talk with Chinese people about how the 2008 olympics is related to China's economic development). Rpic econmic development, a phrase which rollls off the tongue well in Chinese, is the explanation of Chinese pride; it is the apology for polution, corruption and copyright infringement; it is the whispered sweet nothings of Chinese lovers.

This economic development brings with it many other things, such as globalization, international influence, insanely fast change in purchasing power and lifestyle standards, creating a sort of wild-west like undercurrent to life, especially for the young in the big cities. The Chinese have embraced their savior, and their savior had a golden gleam to it. Again, in Chinese, the phrases "looking to the future" and "looking to money" sound exactly the same, and for most Chinese, they are the same. Let the old and the poverty-stricken fall away.

One of the "olds" which falls away, however, is a governing sense of morality. Some of Chinese traditional morality is questionable, other parts of it are outright reprehensible, but some things, such as a generally conservative opinion towards sex, are worth retaining. As the man whose eagerness for a potential customer meant he brought me into his shop and disturbed the slumbering couple instead of simply brining a flower out to me reveals, modesty has been pushed aside, sometimes almost literally, to make way for that $0.17 flower.

Furthmore, my thoughts turned to the young couple. Quite possibly they are married, and yet equally possibly they are not married. Though exact figures escape me now, I recall reading a surprisingly high number of Chinese young folks sleep together before getting married, if they get married. Similar activity certainly occurred in the past in China, and yet never before has such a liberal attitude to sex been held by Chinese society. Readers may be interested to know that as recently as a few decades ago, under earlier incornations of Chinese communism, sexual behavior was restricted even more than any recent point in Chinese history, and possibly ever. Times have changed.

It is the feeling that times have changed, ushered in by Deng Xiaoping's "reforming and opening up" policy, and the subsequent sweeping influx of every type of foreign good (and foreign bad) which sparked this feeling of freedom. The sudden loss of Socialism as a guiding moral and ethical force -- which had by this point effectively eliminated religion as an effective moral agent -- left a moral vacuum for the Chinese people, with only the faint marks of past moral codes left. F illing this vacuum is economic success.

After all, economic success, from the Chinese perspective, is what westerners most enjoy. It is why we can have expensive goods; it is why we can tour through China; it is what makes up happy; and, after all, it's what we want too. So, the Chinese have embraced capitalism (and will probably soon embrace materialism, with the space constraints of a large population the only obstacle), jsut as before they embraced Socialism, and before that many others.

And that is why almost selling a 1 RMB flower is more important than allowing a sleeping couple their privacy.

Cheers,
Chris