I’m usually one of those people, but since I’m in the process of switching jobs at the moment I’m going to lose the opportunity to do that. And I can only justify using the day to catch up on work one or two times during the year. If I don’t have tasks to do then the day feels like a waste and the fact that it’s on a Sunday — a day that for me is one where I tend to just curl up with a book– something that I can’t do in the office.  

I don’t understand why the government can’t just give us the day off? As I’ve said the day isn’t a very productive one. I guess the reason is that if they did that there’d be more lost production but it’s only really three Sundays a year. The government should just throw us a bone and give us the time off. People here work really hard — and some don’t get any additional annual leave from their companies — so they should at least get a couple of Sundays. Six-day work weeks can just be soul crushing otherwise.

The book is about the events in the building to that June day in 1989, and told through the memories of a protester, Da Wei, who was shot in the head and is in a coma as the novel begins. His memories narrate the story of how he got to his present state.

Sounds interesting right? Wrong. It’s heavily political and reads more like a political history textbook. I’m a fan of Ma Jian and I loved his first three books, but I could not get past the first 160 pages of this book. He just got too political and he wanted to put all his problems and issues into the novel and just came out with a very dry text. The book doesn’t breath — I don’t feel like I know the characters, but I do know Ma Jian’s political views. And they’re a little too extreme for me.

I don’t want this review to sound like a total downer. I’m sure a grad student of Chinese studies will love this novel, but the casual reader or even the seasoned Old China Hand should avoid this unless they need to take a nap.

 As nice as it was above the street, the best part was that the old portion of the street with many of its famous traditional snack shops was still there. It was like old and new Shanghai mingling together. And that was awesome to see especially after five years of watching old Shanghai getting wiped away for another shopping mall or luxury apartment complex. Sometimes commerce can hurt an area as much as it helps it.

But when I looked over at the old section of Wujiang Lu, I saw that commerce was probably the reason the old section was kept open. When I was there it was 11:00am and most of the people were on the old section buying snacks. That made me a little disappointed. It seems everything old in China is only kept open or preserved for one of two reasons: a) it’s something to do with the communist party or b) it can still make money. Isn’t there a third option where something can be kept open just for its cultural value?

I know that this is an idea that isn’t really practiced in Chinese society. A lot of my Chinese friends are always surprised when I say I like old things like hutongs or Shanghai’s lao fangzi. But let me put it into a wider perspective that might be easier to understand.

For the last month all during the build up to and the two-week run of the Olympics, I heard that China is a country with 5,000 years of history. Well why aren’t more cultural sites preserved for their cultural significance?

This isn’t a a post saying save all the hutongs, but keeping one or two just so that people know that they existed at one time is a good idea. If a country destroys all of its history in the name of progress, it’ll destroy its culture too.

According to writer Naomi Klein in the conclusion of her book The Shock Doctrine: the rise of disaster capitalism, this turn is happening because China and its people are recovering from the “economic shock therapy” that the government put the people through since certain event in June 1989.

Klein says that the government used this event to push through some of the most anti-citizen-styled economic policies which were just recently corrected by the country’s new labour law that took effect on January 1st 2008. The inspiration for these policies was the economist Milton Friedman of the University of Chicago.

Friedman who advocated a pure form capitalism which was free of government intervention — and low taxes and little in the way of social services. Klein says that the only way citizens would accept a situation like this is in the wake of a major physical shock such a coup or natural disaster. The citizens would then be hit with a second economic shock in the form of Friedman’s economic policies and finally, violent physical repression would be used to ensure that those who tried to oppose the economic policies were effectively removed from society.

Klein details the history of this policy and how it was first tried in Chile with Pinochet and then through out other Latin American countries and then Indonesia with Suharto. In the late 1980s, the economic policy was pushed on Eastern European countries when they emerged from Communism. There wasn’t the same violence in Eastern Europe as in Latin America or Indonesia, but Klein seems to think that the drop in the standard of living of most of the population was just as bad. 

The final third of the book is devoted to the disaster capitalism complex, which Klein says developed mostly in the US and was able to reach its peak after 9/11 when companies such as Haliburton emerged fully prepared to help the newly established Homeland Security Department with protecting the US and the Pentagon with planning the war in Iraq.

The really reason the Bush government went to Iraq, Klein said wasn’t because of WMD or Islamofascism but instead because it wanted to use Iraq as a Middle East experiment. The Bush government wanted to open the markets of the Middle East and the easiest way they thought to do that was to destroy Iraq and remake it as a pure capitalist paradise.

The thing is you can’t completely clean the slate, people will always resist the attempts to erasing the old form and replacing it with something new. And as we know people in Iraq resisted. It didn’t help that the foreign contractors that came in such as Haliburton and Blackwater didn’t attempt to hire any Iraqis but instead brought in all their workers from abroad (something these same companies would repeat with the assistance they would give in Hurricane Katrina).

Klein concludes the book by saying that some countries are now recovering from the shock doctrine and replacing its economic theory with a component that is more beneficial to its citizens — such as the story with China I mentioned at the beginning of this piece.

In fact the opening paragraph really sums up all of the 10 or so pages that Klein writes about China in the book. China might of gotten a lot of mentions in book reviews and media interviews but it is really just a small portion of the book, but that doesn’t mean the book is not worth reading.

According to Dictionary.com the first definition for terrorism is “the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, esp. for political purposes.”

Even if the person had a local grievance didn’t he terrorize people? He used violence to intimidate people — two people died. But since the local Kunming and most likely the central governments disagree with me, that makes me wonder how does the Chinese government define terrorism? Is it a word only used to describe aggressors from outside of China or outside of what the government considers mainstream Chinese society? I notice that it is used against some minority political groups in the country — some of whom may have used violence to fight for more civil and political rights (a method I don’t agree with).

If what I am theorizing is true then I’d ask the Chinese government to reconsider. Not only does it hide the truth — that there are the possibility of terrorists in China that aren’t foreigners or minorities, but it also promotes the creation of terrorists in a way too.

Restricting the definition of terrorists to just minorities or foreigners encourages the view that all people from those groups are terrorists. This can cause people to exclude members of those groups from mainstream society making them feel like they don’t belong there. Therefore they choose to fight against a society that oppresses them sometimes by violent means.

The easiest way to stop this before it starts is to use more inclusive language. The Chinese government should be more precise when it describes these types of events such as saying a crime was committed by a specific person from a certain group and only labeling an act as terrorism when a group claims responsibility or grouping the domestic “terrorists” in with the minorities and the foreigners.

It’s a small step but a small step can go a long way to making a big change.

The book is subtitled “One Family’s True Life Adventure in the Global Economy” but it isn’t really about globalization either. The book is a story about commitment China and globalization are just background players. Nowhere is this more true than looking at Bongiorni’s knowledge of China. She keeps talking about Chinese factories as sweatshops but makes no attempt to examine major retailers’ supply chains other than to call companies and ask if the product came from China — which the forward to the book mentions most of the world’s products are completely made, assembled or have components sourced from China.

Bongiorni also gets around the difficulty of her boycott by saying that products from Hong Kong and Taiwan are okay. She mentions that HK used to be controlled by the British but now she doesn’t even know who controls it and not until almost page 100 does she admit that the Chinese government (and most of the world) considers Taiwan to be part of its territory. She mentions early in the book that she has a brother who traveled through Asia and speaks Chinese (he translates emailed interview requests from the Chinese press for her at the end of the book), but I guess she didn’t consult him on those questions.

China-specific complaints aside though the story is a fun read for a weekend afternoon and is probably a good gauge of the average North American’s knowledge about China which is not much. They know that many products they buy at Wal-Mart and other major retailers come from China and that China’s low product costs keep the prices of these goods low for them, but not much else about the country other than that. Unfortunately, A Year Without Made in China doesn’t do much to change that situation.

Now I thought that was something only The Shanghai Daily did — and even then the ads appeared in the back of its classified section not on the news stories of its website. Maybe I’ve still got my sense of idealism from journalism school but it seems to tarnish the work of the journalists that write for the paper to have the ads placed there.

But forget about me for a second, let’s think about the Chinese government. They’re trying to create an image of a modern China. Aren’t they sending home most of the migrant workers in Beijing and closing most of the brothels there? If that’s the case then why would The China Daily pick now of all times to put massage girl ads on their website? Is this just another case of the government unintentionally shooting itself in the foot? I sure hope not or there is going to be one clumsy image of China presented to the international attendees at the Games.

For the last month or so I’ve been really stressed out at work. When I get into a state like that I tend to look for books that help giving me a new perspective on the situation. That’s how I found Mo Yan’s Life and Death are Wearing Me Out, the story of Ximen Nao, a landlord from Shandong province who is executed by the Communists on New Year’s

 Day 1950 and spends the next 50 years being reincarnated as a series of different animals as he attempts to redeem himself and make his way back up the evolutionary ladder to become a human being again.

The hook to this story is Ximen Nao doesn’t drink the mind-erasing soup when leaving the underworld and he can remember his life as a man as well as all previous animals. This comes in handy as Ximen Nao witnesses the rise and evolution of the People’s Republic of China from a feudal society to a government-controlled state to something in between. He also sees the effects these changes have on his former farmhand and his two concubines and their descendants as they try to make their way and fight for their place within the new Communist state. 

Mo Yan makes sure that this isn’t only a history lesson or an emotional family drama, the story is also full of humor. It comes courtesy of Ximen Nao’s reactions to his animal attributes and Mo Yan who inserted himself in the story as a butt of many of the village’s jokes and criticism.

The one stressful factor about this book is its length. It clocks in at 540 pages and since it has a large complex cast of characters readers will be frequently stopping trying to keep who is who and who is married to who straight so it’s going to take a typical reader one to two weeks to finish. Translator Howard Goldblatt has included a cast of characters document at the beginning of the book as well as a guide to pinyin pronunciation, but I think only seasoned Mandarin speakers can easily keep the characters’ names straight due to the slight differences in the spellings of their names. Overall though this is a book that will help take you away from life’s stresses for a couple hours of fantasy enjoyment.   

Gifford’s book isn’t your typical story about China’s rise. There isn’t a lot about Shanghai and there isn’t really anything about Beijing in the book. Gifford, who was National Public Radio’s Beijing correspondent from 1999 to 2005, decided that right before he left China he was going to take a major road trip down China’s route 312. Route 312 is China’s major cross-country highway and that means that it is a major roadway for migrant workers and goods that travel from west to east and vice versa.

Gifford decides to start his trip in Shanghai and travel west all the way to the end of the highway in Xinjiang at the border with Kazakhstan. That for me was the real unique feature of the book and what kept me reading. Through the jobs that I’ve had during my five years in China, I’ve been able to see a lot of the places and factories where migrant workers end up first hand. What I haven’t been able to see so far is the areas where they come from. China Road allowed me to encounter them — at least through the printed page. But since Gifford is a radio reporter his writing is extremely descriptive and really brings forth the image in a person’s mind. I guess I really have a vivid imagination but it made me feel like I was almost there. Add in the fact that Route 312 also covers much of the old Silk Road and you have a journey that is not only about a changing society and economics, but one that’s also about a rich history of a dynamic people.

China Road is primarily a travel book, so its focus is on Gifford’s journey and his time in China. Gifford does inject his opinion into a lot of the stories he tells but this isn’t a political piece about what is wrong with China or saying that China needs to follow a certain path if it is expected to succeed. Gifford really follows the journalist’s motto of just telling what he sees and explaining the situation. If there is anything that he praises it’s the development of Western China and how though life is still hard for the Laobaixing — the common people — in the region, things have gotten a whole lot better than they used to be and that’s a good thing.

Gifford has a lot of love for the Laobaixing. They are the main characters of his adventure — I only recall him speaking with one or two government officials the entire trip. He is constantly hopping out of taxis to talk to farmers and people by the side of the road — at one point he even ends up leading a church service.

Gifford also loves China and it’s evident through China Road, but don’t just take my word for it, go download his speech from this year’s Shanghai International Literary Festival and see for yourself.

It was Gladwell’s argument that Canada was a nation that pulled me back in. He was making the “small as beautiful” debate. Gladwell’s method for arguing this was to use the experience of overseas Chinese businesspeople as in the communities they immigrate to. He says that Chinese are successful not by their Chinese but because they are outsiders in their new communities and don’t have the ties to that society. Therefore they are better able to succeed than their local competition who is tied to their communities.

When I heard that I felt that Gladwell was right, but that this success was actually due to Chinese culture. If you’ve lived in China for any length of time, you’ll know that China is not a monolithic block, but a mixture of 56 nationalities. It was only brought together by force and held together by emperors and now by the Communist Party. That history has made the people very regional. You notice it with migrant workers who tend to band together and construction bosses that tend to hire people only from their hometowns and provinces. So Chinese people have a lot of experience with being outsiders — all they have to do is travel outside their home region.

The thing is that the Chinese government doesn’t accept this argument. Instead they see it as a melting pot where everyone is Chinese with one monolithic culture. It’s true everyone is Chinese by citizenship, but by culture, as I mentioned above, is not — it’s a mosaic one.  There is the regional culture mixed with the greater national culture which is encouraged by the central government as a uniting force. With that cultural mix, the melting-pot nation framework the Chinese government is pushing doesn’t work (and hence the title). Beijing can try to use the nationalism that you see in the media, but eventually things will tip unless everyone is kept included and equal. That’s not happening in today’s capitalist China, as we all know people are getting left behind. Beijing is realizing this as it’s been trying to calm down the nationalist feelings in the last week. The problem is, trying to temper nationalism and then push it up again later isn’t sustainable.

What the central government could do is take a page from Adam Gopnik’s argument. Gopnik claimed that Canada is a country of people with a common hyphenated identity. Everyone is from somewhere else but they all live in a shared territory and subscribe to a shared set of cultural values of acceptance. I don’t know if the Chinese government will copy all those ideas, but I do think that if it stops trying to treat the Chinese people like a monolith and more like a mosaic the whole issue of nationalism will become much more controllable.