Symbols are everywhere and important in contemporary China –\u00a0the buildings placed precisely on the meridian extending from the ancient Forbidden City,\u00a0 the representations of status hierarchies in all the monuments, the numbers and colors that have well-understood meanings,\u00a0 the construction of 55 huts in Olynpic Village to represent the 55 ethnic minorities in contemporary China.\u00a0\u00a0In my sleepy haze as we rode to our hotel from the airport, I noticed a rainbow arch over the road.\u00a0 Its colored lights extended from both ends, but did not join in the middle.\u00a0 Later in the trip I saw\u00a0a second such arch.\u00a0 On the last day, I remembered to ask our guide about the meaning of this construction.\u00a0 She explained that the rainbow will remain unjoined until Taiwan is reunited with the Mainland.\u00a0<\/p>\n
If one visits China with images of a tightly controlled rule-bound society, one is quickly disabused of such notions.\u00a0 There is near anarchy on the roads and in public places.\u00a0 It takes courage to cross the street in China because crosswalks and traffic lights appear to be merely suggestions for the drivers.\u00a0 Drivers take the arts of aggression to heights unseen in the U.S.\u00a0 The concept of the queue is virtually nonexistent in public places.\u00a0 Bus companies employ people to organize and shepherd people onto the buses.\u00a0 Behavior in museums and restrooms is similarly unrestrained – from the student who leaned her notebook on the glass display case, thereby blocking everyone else’s view, to the women\u00a0who entered the restroom and went straight to the front, ignoring the Americans who had organized themselves into a queue.\u00a0 That rules exist to be broken was also indicated by the wink and the nod given to ignoring prohibitions against photography and to the oft-repeated aphorism that “heaven is high and the emperor is far away.”\u00a0 The general idea appears to be that corruption is endemic and people are always susceptible.\u00a0 In ancient times, the Emperor employed eunuchs to avoid competition for his concubines and he dared not leave the palace for fear of a coup.\u00a0 In recent times, the 10-point bonus given to superior athletes on the national university entrance exam had to be eliminated as more and more overweight and unathletic young people had certificates as marathon champions.<\/p>\n
Some aspects of life in China were incredibly familiar.\u00a0 I was\u00a0amused to learn, for example,\u00a0that sociology undergraduates at Fudan University in Shanghai complained that they shouldn’t have to learn statistics.\u00a0 I was less amused to hear that internal migrants were viewed with hostility: the areas where they live were viewed with disgust by local resident for their poverty and crime and the local authorities do not want to use their funds to support the education of the migrants’ children.<\/p>\n
Ironies abound too.\u00a0 If we in the United States are often critical of Walmart for not giving workers adequate health insurance, how interesting it is that in the People’s Republic of China, health insurance serves as an inducement for workers to take jobs at Walmart.\u00a0 Elites in the PRC hope that the next U.S. Administration will be Republican because they fear that Democrats might place restraints on world trade.\u00a0 Despite the real fears that the aged are no longer adequately cared for by their children (one local area was considering legislation that would mandate that children maintain regular contact with their parents!), the retirement age is 55 for women and 60 for men.\u00a0 Nevertheless, senior discounts are offered only to people over the age of 70.<\/p>\n
One fascinating moment in our meeting with sociology faculty and students: a graduating senior noted that Americans she encountered always ask about the democratization of China.\u00a0 “Do they really care,” she wondered.\u00a0 Her own concerns and those of her fellow students were more mundane, she explained.\u00a0 They worried about getting good jobs, for example.<\/p>\n
Finally, it is hard to describe the awe with which this New Yorker viewed Shanghai.\u00a0 Not only have they managed to build some 4,000 high-rise buildings since 1990, but they have managed to make them architecturally fascinating by employing well-known architects from around the world.\u00a0 It is unbelievably impressive.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Symbols are everywhere and important in contemporary China –\u00a0the buildings placed precisely on the meridian extending from the ancient Forbidden City,\u00a0 the representations of status hierarchies in all the monuments, the numbers and colors that have well-understood meanings,\u00a0 the construction of 55 huts in Olynpic Village to represent the 55 ethnic minorities in contemporary China.\u00a0\u00a0In […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":75,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/china\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/china\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/china\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/china\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/75"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/china\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/china\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/china\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/china\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/china\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}