09 January 2005
Luckily Someone Else Said it First
The days of the kind of travel writer who flies in for a brief trip around a country he or she has never previously visited, and of whose language he or she knows nothing, ought to be over by now. In the past most of us travelled to China by reading titles written by such people. In the present many of us can go for ourselves, and there are many resident observers who can give a more detailed and accurate picture (although many a foreign correspondent sees China through ignorance and pre-conception—or that of his editor who demands, for instance 'China Rising' stories, whatever situation may have been found on the ground). Travel books certainly by now should have progressed to giving a more detailed view from longer exposure and cultural familiarity, acting as a foil to headline-driven, 30-second pieces of light entertainment currently called news. It's a shame that there still seems to be a market for pieces of meretricious fluff such as The River at the Centre of the World, which is about as dire as travel writing on China gets unless it's the propaganda-driven product of the Chinese themselves.
But back in 1923 there were big markets for people like Harry A Franck, and his Wandering in Northern China. Never having visited China before, he touches in his introduction on the general problem of knowledge in China, perhaps wanting to defend himself from inevitably criticism from Old China Hands, before it could even start. Knowing about China has always been a highly competitive industry with conversations between know-nothing diplomatic spouses trapped in the expatriate air-conditioned (or fanned) bubble as well as those between long-time Mandarin-speaking residents equally given to attempting to trump the other party with claims of greater experience, greater sensitivity, or greater understanding. It's still the same story between struggling English teachers accompanied by their xiaojie on drunken evenings in wannabe-Western bar streets from Beijing to the back of beyond. In Franck's words:
Lafcadio Hearn said that the longer he remained in the East the less he knew of what was going on in the Oriental mind. And "old China hand" has put the same thing in more popular language: "You can easily tell how long a man has been in China by how much he does n't know about it. If he knows almost everything, he has just recently arrived; if he is in doubt, he has been here a few years; if he admits that he really knows nothing whatever about the Chinese people or their probable future, you may take it for granted that he has been out a very long time.
But as I have said before, the "old-timer" will seldom sit down to tell even what he has seen, and in many cases he has long since lost his way through the woods because of the trees. Or he may have other and more important things to do. Hence it is up to those of us who have nothing else on hand to pick up and preserve such crumbs of information as we can...
In its overall fatuity this resembles what I like to call the argument from Lonely Planet: a defence of the complete unsuitability and staggering ignorance of many of that series' contributors made by some ordinary back-packers on the grounds that they are 'just like us', and so therefore better able to write for 'our' needs. Needless to say, the independent traveller, whether her luggage is on her back or on wheels, desperately needs accurate information in order to make travel arrangements, and someone who can read timetables, interrogate bus drivers and ticket clerks, and listen-in to the chicanery of guides is rather more likely to provide this than someone who has just flown in for the first time, with a previous career as a slot machine repairman, as long as he is properly motivated and diligent (which is very rare in guide book writing). For guide books certainly, ignorance is not bliss. For travel narrative it hardly seems desirable either, and I doubt that Franck's pre-emptive strike spared him caustic comment from self-appointed experts.
It is true to say, though, that expatriates in general are often profoundly ignorant of the realities of China, seeing only their own routine, believing everything they tell each other, and which they heard from their drivers on the daily ride from their mock-European residences in secure compounds to their equally air-conditioned offices. They know everything about the latest French restaurant in town, and nothing about eating Chinese food outside the restaurants of a few big hotels and certain other larger restaurants recommended by the English-language magazines which cater for them. Confident, since they are resident, that their knowledge is accurate, they declare that the Great Wall cannot be visited for less than ¥1000 (about ¥20 will do it, and even in a taxi hired for the day ¥300 is enough). They know where the airport is but not the cost of tickets since they are liberally overcharged by the agent that someone else recommended to them, and who uses his reputation for reliability to overcharge all the foreigners who come his way. The railway system is believed to be unmanageable. Some do indeed have the justification offered by Franck, that they are just too busy doing whatever they have been employed to come to China to do.
There are others, of course, who immerse themselves completely in the culture, and whose advice is unmatched.
But returning to the original theme of how past writers on China often seem to be writing on the present, Franck (an American) goes on to say:
In our own land there are many very false ideas about China; false ideas that in some cases are due to deliberate Chinese propaganda abroad. While I was out in the far interior I received a clipping outlining the remarks of a Christian lecturing through out Middle West, and his résumé left the impression that bound feet and opium had all but completely disappeared from China, and that in the matter of schools and the like the "republic" is making enormous strides. No sooner did the Lincheng affair attract the world's attention that American papers began to run yarns, visibly inspired, about the marvelous advances which the Chinese have recently accomplished. Such men as Alfred Sze are often mistaken in the United States as samples of China. Unfortunately they are nothing of the kind; in fact, they are too often hopelessly out of touch with their native land. There has been progress in China, but nothing like the amount of it which we have been coaxed or lulled into believing, and some of it is of a kind that raises serious doubts as to its direction. For all the telephones, airplanes, and foreign clothes in the coast cities, the great mass of the Chinese have been affected barely at all by this urge toward modernity and Westernism—if that is synonymous with progress. As some one has just put it, "the Chinese still wear the pigtail on their minds, though they have largely cut it off their heads." How great must be the misinformation at home which causes our late President to say that all China really needs is more loans, thereby making himself, and by extension his nation, the laughing-stock of any one with the rudiments of intelligence who has spent an hour studying the situation on the spot. England is a little better informed on the subject than we, because she is less idealistic, more likely to look facts in the face instead of trying to make facts fit preconceived notions of essential human perfection. China may need more credits, but any fool knows that you should stop the hole in the bottom of a tub before you pour more water into it.
Let's make a few updates:
In our own land there are many very false ideas about China; false ideas that in some cases are due to deliberate Chinese propaganda abroad.
Satellite-delivered CCTV9 now available on cable across broad swathes of the West, spewing out a constant stream of lies and half-truths disguised as news and features. The inclusion of Xinhua 'news' reports in China news summaries compiled by Google and Yahoo! The constant uncritical repetition of economic figures produced by the Chinese government, and the uncritical treatment of the announcement of new laws as if that meant the same thing as in democracies. The treatment over the last few days of the announcement of the birth of the 1.3 billionth baby in China, as if the Chinese had the remotest hope of knowing how big their population already is; as if population experts outside China haven't been saying for years that it might already be far more; as if the 1.3 billionth would magically and conveniently appear in Beijing rather than in some remote country hamlet with poor communications which constitute rather more of China; as if the Chinese remotely cared about getting such clumsy propaganda right if dumb Western journalists will swallow it as it is.
While I was out in the far interior I received a clipping outlining the remarks of a Christian lecturing through out Middle West, and his résumé left the impression that bound feet and opium had all but completely disappeared from China, and that in the matter of schools and the like the "republic" is making enormous strides. No sooner did the Lincheng affair attract the world's attention that American papers began to run yarns, visibly inspired, about the marvelous advances which the Chinese have recently accomplished.
Our own insistence on seeing China as deep, mysterious, and incomprehensible (the polite modern way of saying 'inscrutable') continues to bring such commentators into existence. Outsiders drop into Shanghai bare of any advance research, and write gushing pieces about the high rises and high standard of living of Shanghainese, without even a glance at the government's own figures which although falsified still show a far less rosy view. Shanghai is Shanghai, and completely different from the rest of China. It has the highest average per capita income in the country. Most of the country is still down on the farm on a fraction of these amounts, and with no prospect of improvement.
Such men as Alfred Sze are often mistaken in the United States as samples of China. Unfortunately they are nothing of the kind; in fact, they are too often hopelessly out of touch with their native land.
Chinese living abroad now crop up in chat rooms, websites, and interviewed on radio swearing blind that pollution has vanished from Beijing, that China only has peaceful aims towards Taiwan, and anything else falling into the general 'production is up, the minorities are happy' tone of the Chinese media. Some of these, abashed at the ignorance of and indifference to their country they find when they settle in their new homes, want to save face and gain respect for themselves and their nation. Others seem to have a more sinister agenda to mislead: everything in China is as good as it could be; China will progress towards more openness at its own speed (it is currently heading in the opposite direction); Hu Jintao is the best possible leader for the times; the Chinese are not suited to democracy (but whisper that one, and only if pressed).
There has been progress in China, but nothing like the amount of it which we have been coaxed or lulled into believing, and some of it is of a kind that raises serious doubts as to its direction. For all the telephones, airplanes, and foreign clothes in the coast cities, the great mass of the Chinese have been affected barely at all by this urge toward modernity and Westernism—if that is synonymous with progress.
Exactly. 88-storey towers and magnetic levitation trains in Shanghai do not a continent of contentment make, and only a short ride into the interior the water buffalo still pulls the plough. And it's not clear that the introduction of pesticides and chemical fertilizers, the looming monster of Monsanto and its mutated seeds, the introduction of low-nutrition processed foods and unhealthy foreign fast food outlets can be synonymous with anything except degradation rather than progress. Appalling living conditions, pitiful wages of US$500 per annum, and long shifts in unsafe and highly polluting and carcinogen-emitting factories producing goodies for the West at rock bottom prices can hardly said to be progress from working the land.
As some one has just put it, "the Chinese still wear the pigtail on their minds, though they have largely cut it off their heads." How great must be the misinformation at home which causes our late President to say that all China really needs is more loans, thereby making himself, and by extension his nation, the laughing-stock of any one with the rudiments of intelligence who has spent an hour studying the situation on the spot. England is a little better informed on the subject than we, because she is less idealistic, more likely to look facts in the face instead of trying to make facts fit preconceived notions of essential human perfection. China may need more credits, but any fool knows that you should stop the hole in the bottom of a tub before you pour more water into it.
For credits, read foreign investment, and the urge to throw good billions after bad in a headlong rush to bankruptcy directly parallels the dot-com boom and bust, although it's been going on intermittently since the 1860s. But there's no longer (if there ever was) a difference between the U.S. and U.K. position. The lack of 'the rudiments of intelligence' is now global.
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