DEEP FUTURES:
Possible, preferred and alternative visions of tomorrow. Now.
It's the future, Jim, but not as we know it... There's more to tomorrow than robots, flying cars, and a faster internet. 22C+ is all about Deep Futures, futures that matter. Welcome to futures fantastic, unexpected, profound, but most of all deeply meaningful...
One of 18 passers by who ignored Yue Yue as she lay bleeding and unconscious in the street
I was so appalled by the following incident i wrote the following oped, which I have submitted to Hong Kong's 'South China Morning Post'... Marcus
This week within and beyond China observers have been shocked at images of passers by strolling past the still body of a two year old girl, lying unconscious in a small street in Foshan, Guangdong.
Neither of the two drivers who ran over the little girl stopped to help. The first driver got out of the car, then convinced that he had not been seen, drove away. Later he called the parents, refusing to hand himself in, but offering cash. After being arrested he defended his actions, saying that he only did what everyone else in China would have done in the same circumstances. The horrifying possibility is that there may be some truth in what he said.
Rightfully, both the media and the blogosphere in China have expressed outrage at the incident. Just how did society reach such a point whereby the only person willing to help a dying child in the street was, perhaps prophetically, a garbage lady?
Things have been quite on 22C+ for a while! And for good reason. I have a five week break from teaching in Hong Kong, and am now in Australia. Perhaps I should tell you that I went to Beijing first,which is part of the reason why I am feeling pretty good right now. Let me explain.
There are a lot of nice things about Beijing. The streets are wide. The pace of life is merely hectic, not frenetic like Hong Kong. The infrastructure is good. There are spanking brand new shopping malls, bridges and buildings all over the place. The subway - which barely existed when I lived in Beijing - is now half decent. People aren't exactly friendly, but they aren't hostile either. Oh, and there are beautiful women all over the place. Don't tell my wife that bit.
Here's a nice video of some Chinese kids playing in a fountain in The Village shopping Centre in Sanlitun, Beijing. It's a hot summer evening.
But...
The pollution in Beijing is horrific. For the first three days of my week there the air filth was at Armageddon levels. When I went out for a walk at midday (remember, this was mid summer), visibility was often no more than a few hundred metres. When the air cleared enough, I could actually see that there were no clouds in the sky. This surprised me as I had thought there was one hundred per cent cloud cover, so dull was the day. The air smelled and tasted awful. I actually felt concerned for my health, imagining what the stuff was doing to my lungs. On the fourth day a big storm arrived, and the air was much improved thereafter. Maybe the Beijing authorities just got tired of breathing crap, and ordered the clouds sprinkled with chemicals, to induce precipitation. This is, of course, what they did to create the illusion of a clean China for the Beijing Olympics. Check out the video, taken at luchtime. The temperature is in the 30s, and there are no clouds in the sky.
OK, so now I have absconded to Australia. And what a difference! Currently I am staying in Byron Bay in northern New South Wales. I went for a walk this afternoon and gazed upon a sparkling clear blue ocean. The air was crisp and so clean it was a delight to breathe. There were birds everywhere. People were playing with children and walking dogs. I walked along wide, quiet, tree-lined streets. As evening fell the clear blue sky dimmed to a darker shade of azure, the moon came out in a clear night sky and the sound of hundreds of birds chattering filled the evening. As I strolled around my mind became as clear as the atmosphere, and something dawned upon me. Some things are priceless, and no amount of money can ever buy them. No amount of relentless "You so handsome!" ego flattering from pretty Chinese girls can ever replace the quiet presence of being in a culture which values simply being present - no dodgy karaoke bars to compensate for non-touch relationships, no pop songs pumped through public sound systems and endless fiddling with mobile devices to anesthetise the pain of a soul numbing dash-for-cash culture and its face-obsessed society.
I never actually bought into the materialism on Hong Kong and China, but in the quiet of a small Australian seaside town I can see how it subtly brainwashed me. And I can see how it brainwashes almost everyone in the Confucian world. Chinese people are born into a society where their entire identity is determined by how far they can climb the social ladder, and how much cash and how many assets they can accumulate. Sound familiar? It is like the West on steroids.
Not for everyone. But true for far too many. There is discussion of all these issues in China, but the entire system is in a self-perpetuating vicious cycle. The legitimacy of the government depends upon continued high rates of economic growth, so it has no choice but to keep investing energy into the continuation of the system. But on the other side of the coin it is the people who are demanding economic growth, and many have bought into the consciousness of greed.
Don't get me wrong. I have met many wonderful Chinese people. But they are embedded in a very repressive political/social system (and I might add there are plenty of people in Australia who I wouldn't give the time of day). China is a fascinating country, but for me it is vital to get distance from it at regular intervals, to avoid being pulled into the consciousness of the place. It is, in my opinion, suffering from collective insanity, or perhaps we could simply downgrade the diagnosis to mass delusion. The charade will end, just as it is ending in the USA, Greece, Italy, Spain etc. The USA and friends are just showing how it is done. The entire world economic system is unsustainable. Either there is a massive restructuring of material values or there will be a very, very heavy landing for us all. It won't be nice anywhere, but I definitely wouldn't like to be in China when it happens.
Hmm, just a bit of food for thought for today's shorter than short blog post. Sometimes a picture tells a thousand words. The following videos are of the new SoHo shopping complex in downtown Beijing. The centre consists of about 10 high rises and hundreds and hundreds of shops. Well, there were hundreds. Six months after opening, the place is almost a ghost town. In the first video, I take my camera inside the building.
I see so many of these kinds of places in China now. How does it all hang together if nobody is buying or selling anything. I don't know, to be honest. Part of the answer may lie in what some Chinese have told me. These places are just a front for dirty money - places where cashed up Party members hide their cash.
I couldn't help but thinking as I was walking through this place that there is at least some chance that the entire China edifice is going to come crashing down. To be honest, I have had an intuition of this for some time. But I don't like making predictions. Having said that, I would not be surprised if 2012 was a major shifting point for China.
Here’s a confession. It’s not much of a secret really, and anyone who has read more than a few of my blogs will no doubt be aware of this at some level. So here it is. Sometimes I become frustrated at the typical mindset of people in China and Hong Kong. Ever since the late Chinese leader Deng Xiao Ping declared “It’s glorious to get rich” around about 30 years ago, China has been hell bent on modernization and in particular, the focus is upon materialism. Money and social advancement are at the forefront of most people’s lives. Within this environment, there hasn’t been a lot of scope for the kind of ideas I talk about on this bog and in my books (well, my blog is blocked in mainland China, anyway!). For example, about four years ago I met up with a youngish woman in Beijing, and she was trying to begin a kind of spiritual/ New Age company there. I am pretty sure that nothing came of it, because she soon stopped responding to emails and I never heard from her, nor of her, again.
Yet there are changes afoot in China, in terms of a deepening of awareness, and like most changes in china, they are coming fast!
During the last days of my Beijing vacation, I attended a three day workshop with Australian spiritual teacher Leonard Jacobson (www.leonardjacobson.com) at a beautiful “resort” about one hour out of the centre of Beijing. I really didn’t know what to expect, as I had only confirmed my place there two days before. I didn’t know who was attending, nor what Leonard was going to do. I just knew that I had to be there.
I should mention that Leonard’s thinking has inspired me much over the years. Before the workshop I had met Leonard on two previous occasions, the last time being in 2001.
I was driven out to the workshop by Amy, a Chinese woman who lives in Beijing with her American husband. I was expecting that there might be 10-20 people at the workshop. I shocked when Amy told me that there would be 130 people there from all over China, and I was the only foreigner attending! (not counting some Taiwanese).
Beijing is very urbanised place, and there is not a lot of green space in the city centre. However when we got to the grounds where the workshops were being held, I found myself in large open spaces. The whole resort was brand new, and I could actually smell the ‘fresh’ wood inside. The wide open spaces were bejeweled with large ponds (full of fish), and hot springs. Birds sang in the trees, and geese waddled around the walkways.
Once the workshop started, I was amazed at how receptive most of the Chinese people present were to Leonard's teachings and the simple - yet powerful - processes he used. Basically Leonard brings people into deep presence. His entire teaching centres on the single premise that “enlightenment” happens now, and that attachment to the past and thought of the future ensnare us in the mind and ego.
Incredible as it may seem, Leonard does no preparation for his workshops. Not even a four day workshop like this one! (I could only attend the first 3 days). Almost the entire event unfolds spontaneously. There was wonderful translator there, a Chinese woman named Tiffany, who had helped organise the event.
As the audience began to relax into presence, the same thing began to happen as happens with all Leonard’s workshops. Put simply, people's repressed emotional pain started to spontaneously emerge. I was quite shocked actually. I really didn't think Chinese people would allow themselves to be so emotionally vulnerable in public, due to cultural restrictions there.
Typically, what would happen is that Leonard would begin to talk about something, then someone in the audience would begin to sob or wail as their energy began to surface. Leonard would (on most occasions) then address the person, and quite often (though not always) he would invite them out the front. Leonard would then help them to connect with whatever pain they felt. This in turn would trigger some emotional release in audience members. Let me give just one example. There is something of a synchronicity involved in this one, for me.
There was a woman sitting right in front of me who kept putting her hand up. She was probably about late forties. I could see and hear that she was sobbing and shaking. She was a little scared, and kept putting her hand half up, but not high enough to actually attract attention. I wanted to help her raise her hand (the rescuer in me), but in the end she got noticed. The whole situation was perfect for me, because there was something I was meant to see (of all the people who could have been directly in front of me, it was her!). Finally, Leonard asked her what her problem was. The woman was terribly distraufght, telling of how childhood was a nightmare. She began to sob deeply. Leonard invited her out the front, and allowed her to express what she felt (the whole process was incredibly loving and gentle). Then the little girl inside her started raging against what happened during the Cultural Revolution (a hellish social movement started by Mao Ze Dong, lasting a whole decade, 1966-76). As she allowed the pain to surface, she raged about how everything around her was darkness and pain and suffering, and nothing was safe.
People started to shift a little uncomfortably in their seats, as you can imagine, because all talk of this period in Chinese history is effectively banned in China, right to this day. Soon the woman began to rage with full fury against the government and the Communist Party for the living hell they had created. I was deeply moved by her courage. She simply let loose her murdrous wrath, expressing what the wounded part of herself had been wanting to “do” for 35 years – to kill and destroy, to take revenge against those who had hurt her and those she loved.
Leonard then helped her bring that wounded part of herself into the present, which is so vital for healing (As long as we are stuck in the pain, the suffering and the blame, we cannot heal). The purpose is to allow the pain and its accomanying story to surface, but to bring to deeper understanding that the story is not real anymore. It is only the pain that is real. The past is gone, and only the present moment is extant.
I must say I was deeply moved by the woman’s personal courage.
The next morning I was walking to breakfast, and the woman "just happened" to be coming out of her villa at the same time as me. So I started talking to her, and told her how brave she was, and how China needed more people like her who could face the pain inside themselves and express it responsibly. She agreed. She told me that she had talked to a friend beforehand and decided it was OK that she brought it up.
The whole workshop made me realise that there are people in China, many in fact, who are now willing to make the spiritual journey. Other Chinese people I spoke with told me that these kinds of ideas are booming in China now, and in the last year or two it has really taken off. One aspect of this is that life coaching using spiritual or intuitive consciousness is now increasingly in demand. I was told that there were many middle class people in there 30s and 40s who are well off, but who are asking themselves why they are not happy and fulfilled.
During my time at the workshop I was invited to give public talks and workshops at several different venues. During my vacation I also met with another women who has a group of about 40 alternative practitioners in Beijing. She invited me to do some work with her group.
In short, it is an exciting time in China for this. And there is much need of healing of the past in the country. The energy of trauma cannot be suppressed by book burnings and internet police. As long as that energy remains unhealed, there will always be the danger that it will be projected back into the world via violence and chaos.
Yet the truth remains that those of us who do this work in China tread a fine line. The day after that woman had raged against the Cultural Revolution, I discussed the issue with some of the workshop organisers. They accepted the woman's behaviour, but clearly felt slightly nervous about the whole thing. There were uniformed police at the event at various times, and it is fairly standard to have undercover government “representatives” at such gatherings.
What I really liked about Leonard is that he is not trying to overthrow governments. He is just getting people to take responsibility for the own spiritual evolution. I feel the same way. I have no personal interest in challenging any power structures in China, merely helping people who wish to open their spirits to a greater awareness and understanding.
My Beijing trip was an eye opener. I feel I now have a greater understanding, respect and love for the the Chinese people, and their courage.
This is not much to do with the future, but I thought that for the sake of a light digression I'd drag up something from my not so distant past. In 2002 I was the Director of Studies at an English language prograqmme at Beijing's Number Two Foreign Language University (yeah, the second best one). Just to lighten the moment a little, here are a few things I collected from the students when I was working there. Just in case you are wondering, Peter is a teacher. Some of the excuse notes I received from students are particularly amusing, I think (the students had to write me a note if they were absent from class). Original spellings have been kept. I shared these with the students at the end of the year, but they didn't always know why native speakers found them funny!
Marcus
Excuses for being absent from class
These are all taken from notes students wrote to explain absences from class.
My father is come to Beijing. So, I want to play with him. Sorry, I can't get here. David.
Dear Marcus,
I was absent from your class yesterday afternoon. Because I felt headache again. Yesterday noon, when I got up from my short nap, I couldn't move further otherwise I would lose my head. My headache has been more seriously than before since last week. I mean maybe I felt so nervous because of the IELTS test. Yours Sincerely, Leon
"I had to help my friend find the Malaysian Embassy." Deborah (explaining her absence of one week. Hmm, someone should have told here there was one in China)
Dear Marcus,
I'm very sorry, I felt very bad. So I have to go to the dum. I can't come to Your class, Justin (he meant "dorm")
I'm sorry I missed so many of your classes this week. I had to go to the hospital for an injection. Justin (Hmm, they have loooooong injections in China)
Dear Marcus and Peter,
I did not take care of myself very well, so I caught heat at last. I think I need more exercises to improve my physical quality. All of my classmates suggested that I would better not present the rest of classes and I agree with them. So, please believe me, I am terrible sorry for absent your and Peter's lectures.
Yours: Hanson
Dear Marcus,
I'm sorry I can't go to your class because I got suntorke. Rose
Dear Marcus,
Today I can't come to your class. I'm sorry to tell you that. Yesterday, I slept in Hanson's dorm. His dorm is hell now. It's unacceptably hot. So I found I was sunstruck. I'm dizzy and adynamic now. Please forgive my absence. Thanks a lot. Your student Ma
Dear Marcus,
Yesterday, I was felling unwell, I thought I got sun-stroke. So I took a class. Thank you! Jessica.
Dear Peter:
I'm sorry for havn't been your class. I had have a temperature. Sincerely Your obedient student John.z
Dear Marcus,
I ate a lot of fruit last night. I got stomachache and felt uncomfortable that it made me sleeping too late. Now I feel tired and still stomachache. So I won't go to school. I'm sorry for absent your class. Yours: Cobain.
Dear Marcus,
I am still sick. I try to go to your class but I find it's difficult for me to concentrate in your class so I decide not to go to your class. I'm very sorry. Rose
Marcus: I was sick this morning and I was awful. So I want to take the morning's class off. I am terribly sorry. David
Dear Marcus,
I'm sorry, because two fuck guys fight each other last night, so it's too noisy. I feel bad this morning. Please forgive me. Yours, Amy (It seems I failed to teach them "informal" from formal English)
Dear Marcus,
I was absent from your class this morning because I felt so painful with my left buttock. Last weekend, I have been injured with my buttock when I played a football match with my senior school classmates far away from Erwai (university). Firstly I didn't mind it too much, but it became more swollen and painful. So I couldn't get up on time and went to school by bike myself. I am sorry to say that. Maybe the pain will last for several days, but I have prepared to get up earlier and ask my dormates to send me to the classroom. Leon.
General Quotes
"I spent my holiday in my mother." Xavier
"I spent my holiday playing stimulating games with my boyfriend." Winnie.
"Would you like to enjoy us?" Rachel, (inviting her teacher Marcus to join her and her friends in a game of darts. (Marcus' response deleted)
Radical Australian History
There was a short module about Australian history in the programme. Remember, these are Chinese students, and they don't know much about Australia, so forgive them... It just a short time. After this time, the inland (of Australia) was taken away by James Cook. Winnie
James Cook and the army brought a lot of unhappiness to them (the Aborigines). When they were only living the inland, they were happiness, but finally they were not happiness and peace. Winnie (again)
For this next one, you need to know that "yellow movie" means pornographic film in Chinese, the equivalent of "blue movie" in the west. This is from an essay entitled "The Major Cultural Influences in the West."
TV took informations for people, but took some bad things too. There were some channels show the yellow culture or yellow movies to the public. Young people and some people who has a bad mentality did some aberration when they saw the channel. They began to find some ways vent their appetence. Alaway their ways are criminal, it's bad for their lives. Xavier.
The ancient Greek people established the earliest and a more perfect feudal monarch institution in 11th century. Winnie
About 50 million years ago, the Aborigines were already lived in Australia. They never killed too much weild animals, they never throw the wasts in to the river, and they never cut down the trees for benefits. Toman (Revisionist History at its most radical - good to see benefits weren't taken advantage of in those times so long ago)
In yesterday’s post about Daniel Pink’s take on motivation, I took a quote from a YouTube video of his .The quote is from the founder of Skype, who said his prime goal has been “to be disruptive but in the cause of making the world a better place.” To be disruptive is of course to offer dissent. Dissent in turns requires us to say “no” at some level. It requires personal courage to challenge the system.
This reminds me of futurist Richard Slaughter’s imploring that futurists have a duty to offer dissent. I am in total agreement. It is not enough to predict the future, nor simply to praise those in power. The most noble end is to identify what is desirable, what is good and what is great. Those who wish to participate in the future (and not merely observe it) must decide what kind of future they prefer, and how that preferred future can be created. This is one reason why pop futurists who merely attempt to identify trends are not my favourite kind of futurists.
The perfect example is futurist John Naisbitt, author of the “Megatrends” books. Naisbitt now spends half of each year in China, and talks and writes much about The People’s Republic. In his recent book China’s Megatrends he describes a China that can do little wrong. A prosperous future for the Chinese Dragon is seemingly guaranteed.
A recent interview with the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong shows that Naisbitt’s stance has not shifted much. The interview reveals a Naisbitt who is mesmerizingly impressed by the changes taking place in the Chinese education system, and he effuses optimism about Chinese approaches to innovation. Naisbitt talks of department deans and professors who are ready to “forge ahead”, and curriculum is being reformed accordingly. There is, he finds, a new freedom to experiment. He talks of teachers at leading universities and high schools taking part in exchange programmes with rural areas. Knowledge is being disseminated, and are standards rising. Students show unbounded enthusiasm to learn, and they have a great “sense of purpose, and confidence in the future.
"The energy and enthusiasm is almost euphoric and makes us very excite. The generation coming up is very motivated and, for us, that makes China the most fascinating place in the world."
I confess I find Naisbitt’s comments at odds with my experience of life, work and education in China and Hong Kong. I do not question that a certain segment of the population is highly motivated, and that the vast majority are willing to sacrifice to get ahead. I do not deny that at many levels China's development is incredibly impressive. Just in terms of infrastructure and transport systems China is starting to outstrip many western nations.
Yet Naisbitt appears to be quite naïve as to what is going on at ground level in the country. At the risk of being a little too blunt, Naisbitt’s comments on China are often shallow, remaining locked at the litany or surface level. He consistently fails to offer any kind of deep analysis or critique of the political, social or cultural systems of the country. Nor does he identify or question the dominant paradigms, let alone get down to the depth of the consciousness/mentality which underpins much of China’s modern development. If we are to believe Naisbitt, everything in China is great, and China’s future is assured.
What concerns me most is that Naisbitt’s comments on China consistently mirror those of the Chinese government. This is something that no free- thinking westerner would do in their own country. So why is Naisbitt toeing the Party line in China?
Perhaps it is that he has decided that the best way to assist China and ensure a prosperous future for it is to focus upon the positives, and to work in league with the rich and powerful. After all, there are many who take the opposite stance and criticise everything about China and offer nothing positive about its development. Such negativity often emerges from jealousy, fear and just plain hatred.
Or perhaps he has just been wined and dined a few too many times. China is a place where foreigners can all too easily be blinded by power, money and comforts, and lose perspective of the big picture. The blinding lights of the big cities and luxurious 5 star hotels can easily lure one into a false perception of the fact that the majority of the country lives in very stressful and difficult circumstances. It is super comptetitive and super tough in the new China. There are 200 million migrant workers now living in the cities, and without rights to health care, social security, nor anything but basic education for their children.
My wife recently took a job in Beijing, and works up to 15 hours a day as an office manager. Her salary of RMB 8000 per month (US$1000) is quite high. But she rarely has time off for lunch, and often has to work on weekends. Her boss effectively gets two employees at US$500 a month, as she is doing the work of two people. But even on that wage she cannot afford to rent an apartment anywhere near her workplace. If she did, probably 75% of her income would go in rent. To top it off, there is no worker’s contract and she can be fired at any time, without notice.
There is an irony to John Naisbitt’s Pollyanna take on the New China. Naisbitt’s effusive praise of every almost every policy initiative put forward by Communist Party lies in stark contrast to that of Chinese premier Wen Jiabao’s recent comments, stating in deeply concerned tones that China’s present path to the future is unsustainable. China is in dire need of deep social and political change. In an unusually candid expression for a Communist party leader, Wen has called for greater democracy and accountability, saying economic development is not in itself enough to solve the problems of China's development.
Wen cited corruption as a great problem:
"To eliminate the breeding ground for corruption, we should carry out reform on our institution and [political] system. If we are to address people's grievances and meet their wishes, we must create conditions for people to criticise and supervise the government…. Political reform offers a guarantee for economic reform. Without political reform, economic reform cannot succeed, and the achievements we have made may be lost…It is only with reform that the party and the country will enjoy continuous vigour and vitality."
Having spoken to many Chinese people about China’s future, and having just returned from sharing meals with self-described peasant relatives, I have to wonder what they would make of John Naisbett’s “glorious China” depictions. Their egos may be stoked by claims that their place in the sun is guaranteed, but I know from firsthand experience that many would be deeply suspicious of his lack of willingness to address the genuine issues which lie behind China’s current path to the future.
I suspect that Naisbitt’s willingness to trumpet the Party line (or something remarkably similar), is because the system rewards such behavior. The fruits of guanxi (Chinese for “making connections”, especially in business) are many in modern China. The problem with guanxi is that one has to keep filling the tea pot of the guy the next step up the ladder. Compromising truth and moral behavior is almost inevitable. Indeed it is guanxi which lies at the heart of corruption in China. A social and economic system which relies upon endless mutual back slapping is recipe for self-delusion, and doomed to eventual decay.
For futurists and those of us passionate about the future, it is not enough to merely describe trends and praise the system. We must care enough to talk of both good and bad, darkness and light. We must offer dissent, no matter how uncomfortable that may make us, or others, feel.
Nice day for a walk... on the river (Chaoyang City, north-east China)
Well, I managed to make it back from northern China in one piece, and now I am safely at home in Hong Kong. I spent 12 days in the mainland, first flying into Beijing, then traveling onto Chaoyang city, about a six hour bus journey north-west of Beijing in Liaoning Province. This post doesn’t have too much to do with the future, but I thought readers might like to know a thing or two about my adventures. There are 3 short videos at the end.
After spending the first night in Beijing, I hopped on a bus for the 6 hour trip to Chaoyang City. Chaoyang is a small and nondescript city, and looks much like so many other cities in China. Of course “small is all relative in China – Chaoyang has 8 million people). If you have been to China you will know what I mean about the sameness. There is a kind of dull greyness about most cities. Still, I enjoy visiting Chaoyang. The lifestyle is relatively slow. The people you pass on the street are not friendly, but nor are they unfriendly either. They do tend to stare at me though, and mostly comment about my height. “Liang mi!” they often whisper (“two metres”). Actually, I about 5cm shorter than that, but who am I to deflate their sense of wonder?
I have never seen another foreigner in the city.
On the second night it was the first of many fireworks day/nights. The constant bang bang bang was enough to test the Buddha’s nerves. I actually wore ear plugs whenever I went out onto the street, as the explosions were often so loud as evoke a state of constant startling. In the second video, below, you can get an idea of what I’m talking about.
Perhaps the highlight of the trip was spending an afternoon visiting my wife's ancestral village. This is where she was born some 35 years ago. I had never been there, so it was a fascinating experience. We drove out from the city for about two hours, and as we got closer to the village, we made our way along bumpy old dirt roads. As we approached the village there were huge piles of coal stocked up perhaps 50 metres into the sky.
The village itself was a collection of a few dozen brick houses scattered about narrow dirt roads and paths. Eventually we made our way to my wife's uncle’s humble abode, which looked just like all the other nondescript little buildings in the village. There was a concrete wall surround the house and small yard. Several species of domestic animals were tamely resting in pens or standing freely about - pigs, geese, sheep, chickens etc. It was freezing - quite literally (about minus 5 degrees Celsius at midday), so I felt a little sorry for the poor critters.
Not quite a sorry as I felt for the ones we ate for lunch, though.
Inside the house it was as humble as you'd expect for the domain of self-described peasants; warmer than outside, but not by much. There were two basic squarish rooms with brick walls. The "bed" was actually in the large “central room”, which also served as a kitchen. Well, it was more like a raised wooden slab to one side of the room. This is where everyone slept, on blankets.
I was greeted by one of my wife's young cousins, a tall lass whom I knew from previous visits.
"You are so tall now!" I commented in Chinese (they spoke no English, of course). "How old are you now?"
"I'm eighteen!” she said, flashing a shy smile. "Piao liang ma?" she battered her eyelids ("Am I pretty?")
I said yes, and thankfully I didn't have to lie. One of the great things about Chinese girls of that age is that they are so innocent. In some ways it's as if you are talking to a child. If I said the same thing back in Australia to a teenage girl, I would probably be arrested for pedophilia.
The house was actually quite crowded, with about twenty people there that day, including many relatives. Everyone was happy and busy making food or just chatting. The kids (and some bigger kids) were letting fireworks off right outside the front door. And they were loud!
I was soon seated at a small table, conveniently located right beside several crates of Chinese beer. I asked how much a crate of beer cost, and was told it was 36 Yuan – about one Yuan per bottle! (that’s about 15 cents American). That beverage was soon poured into cups, and I managed to drink a glass or two myself (actually, I like Chinese beer - very light and low in alcohol, so you can never really get drunk). My male colleagues brought out a bottle of baijiu - Chinese rice wine. I can assure you that that stuff is not so gentle - like drinking the contests of a car battery, and just as potent. I declined.
Not long after the aforementioned animals were wheeled out. Sadly for them, they constituted the contents of the Chinese dishes placed before us. I'm mostly vegetarian, but eat a bit of meat on special occasions. This was one of those.
We stayed for several hours and it was a very pleasant day indeed. My relatives certainly treated me with great hospitality, and I would love to return there one day.
But before I leave you, here a few very short videos I took on my journey. Sadly, I didn't take the camera to my wife's village, so I have no images of that.
This one is the river in Chaoyang City. You can see people "rowing" those little sleds around.
This video is taken from the window of my sister in law's apartment, 9 floors up. You can actually see her in the reflection at the end of the video.
Finally, this is Beijing's new #3 airport, on the day of my departure. As you can see, I was lucky to make it out!
As I write this, I am sitting in Starbucks in Shekou, a satellite city of Shenzhen in southern China, near Hong Kong. Shenzhen is one of the biggest cities in the world. This is interesting for a number of reasons. Firstly, if you are not in China, nor a China watcher, you may have never have of Shenzhen. Shenzhen is actually the richest city in China, which is now effectively the centre of the world’s economy. Think about that: a city as big as London and New York combined, yet few westerners have ever heard of it. The world is changing, and fast.
I have no problem though, accessing information on the WikiLeaks saga, and there are certain eerie parallels between the way China has handled Liu Xiaobo, and the way Julian Assagne is being treated in the west. Both dissidents are currently detained by the authorities. Just how free are we really?
What are we to make of the Wikileaks saga? What does it mean for the future? What does it mean for those of us who have a commitment to a more conscious or spiritual path in life? (and many of you reading my blog have such a worldview).
Predictably, governments have been deeply disturbed by the breaches in security. Obama has called Assagne’s actions “deplorable.” Sarah Palin has called them “un-American” – which is one of her more factually accurate statements, given that Assagne is actually Australian.
Others see Assagne as a disciple of free speech, a neo-Neo (pardon the pun), a super-cool geek refusing to swallow the blue pill and be inserted back into the Matrix...
If you have been wondering why things have been a bit quiet around here lately, it's because I have been rather busy. Today I'm off to Europe for a one month holiday. There's a 14 hour plane trip, which I'm not really looking forward to, but the destination will make it worthwhile! I'll be in France for a few days, then Portugal, and maybe Spain after that. I'll be posting the odd thing here during that time, but not as much as usual.
Just to keep you thinking, here's a little more on the UFO incident, over Hangzhou, China. It's an interesting case. It doesn't really make sense for the military to come out and say it's a military operation. Since when have the Chinese military cared about what the public thinks? And why do this stuff over a major city? If its an experimental craft, it would make more sense to do it over a less populated area.
However I have to say it looks like a manmade vehicle to me, at least the one seen flying across the sky with a trail behind it. Compared to the UFOs I saw in Australia in the 1990s, it looks rather clumsy. The ball of light I saw had a much more etheric look and feeling to it, and looked to be moving without propulsion.
Every now and then I read a story which makes me take notice. I have to say that the story of Wang Lei, a 38 year-old Chinese-American woman is one such story. It is the story of how a bookish young woman became only the eighth person in the world to climb the highest highest mountain peaks on all seven continents.
Wang was born in Jiangsu province in China, and went to the USA in her twenties. Anyone who has spent a lot of time in East Asia will probably tell you that the Chinese are generally not particularly physical people. In the modern age, those in cities have little connection to nature, and most spend their time working, eating, sleeping, or attached to electronic media of some sort. I have mentioned that in Hong Kong, a large percentage of children never touch grass or trees before they reach the age of five. The internet has become particularly addictive to a culture which seems almost disembodied, at its most extreme.
While Chinese women can be quite assertive around the home (I speak from experience – my wife is Chinese!), they are generally expected to be quiet and obedient in social situations, at work, and in educational settings. This is particularly true of younger women. I often think that the Japanese cartoon figure Hello Kitty, is an expression of a social stereotype of East Asian women – small, cute, lovely, and to top it off, she has no mouth. In other words, she should be seen and not heard.
She's so lovely!
It must be noted that Chinese women are generally far more assertive than Japanese women. Mao Ze Dong once famously stated that women hold up half the sky, and believed that women should be an active part of Chinese society (mostly to slave away in factories, but let’s not quibble). This created more social space for women to express themselves than in some other Asian societies.
It seems that Wang was not much different from the quiet Asian woman stereotype. She was a self-described bookworm, and when she first went to live in Boston she was very scared to walk even one block to the subway, because she was terrified of the cold weather. What’s more, her life appeared to be a product of what I call the “money and machines” society - she worked in “IT and finance”. She had no experience with athletics or outdoor adventure activities whatsoever.
It is thus seemingly incredible that she just recently became the first Asian American to climb the “Seven Summits”, the highest mountain peaks on all seven continents. She completed the final hurdle last week, finally scaling Mount Everest. Incredibly, she also achieved her ambition to hike to the North and South Poles.
One of the more interesting UFO sightings in China. This photo was taken in Hangzhou, near Shanghai, according to the China Daily. Officials said the event has a military connection., and will make an announcement later. Rumour has it that officials pumped several tonnes of swamp gas into the sky to reassure disturbed onlookers.
Certainly it looks to be a very physical object. I have to say though, that the object looks rather terrestrial compared to what I saw in my own UFO sightings several years ago.
SHANGHAI - An unidentified flying object (UFO) disrupted air traffic over Zhejiang's provincial capital Hangzhou late on Wednesday, the municipal government said on Thursday.
Xiaoshan Airport was closed after the UFO was detected at around 9 pm, and some flights were rerouted to airports in the cities of Ningbo and Wuxi , said an airport spokesman, who declined to be named. The airport had resumed operations, and more details will be released after an investigation, he said. A source with knowledge of the matter, however, told China Daily on Thursday that authorities had learned what the UFO was after an investigation. But it was not the proper time to publicly disclose the information because there was a military connection, he said, adding that an official explanation is expected to be given on Friday.
For more details: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2010-07/09/content_10084698.htm
The USA has been the world’s single superpower since the collapse of the Soviet Union. But will China soon usurp it as the dominant world power? Before I try my hand at answering this crucial question, let me sidetrack a little.
I was leafing through the internet a while back and came across an interesting book titled When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order. I haven’t read Martin Jacques' book, but as I scrolled down the page on Amazon, a particular piece of text from the publisher caught my attention. It was this:
According to even the most conservative estimates, China will overtake the United States as the world's largest economy by 2027 and will ascend to the position of world economic leader by 2050.
I am a futurist. More precisely, I write in the field of Critical Futures Studies. Futurists like me question things in depth. We like to probe away, and get into the gaps, identify the assumptions, and ask questions that others may not think to ask.
Firstly, there is an obvious factual error in the statement by the publisher.
Take a look at this photo. What is happening? Now, take a closer look at the man in the background, the small figure just to the left of the tree. Recognise him? No? Here’s a hint. He is captured here just moments before he is about to commit an act of such unfeasible courage, that it will lead to his being named one the 100 most influential people of the twentieth century by Time magazine.
Here's a little more help. Turn your attention to what is rolling down the road, just a few hundred metres away from the man. Perhaps now you’ve got it. This fascinating image was taken just moments before the man confronted the advancing tanks, shopping bags and all. This video will help jog your memory.
Men armed with metal poles patrol outside a kindergarten in China
At 8.20 a.m. yesterday, 48-year old villager Wu Huanming entered the Shengshui Temple Kindergarten in Shaanxi province in north-east China, took out a kitchen cleaver and hacked to death seven children and two teachers. He also injured eleven others.
Shockingly, it was the sixth such attack in a Chinese primary school or kindergarten in less than two months. The first attack occurred in Nanping, Fujian province, on March 23, when former surgeon Zheng Minsheng, 42, killed eight children and injured five. Then followed four school attacks in April in Guangxi, Guangdong, Jiangsu and Shandong provinces.
The school attacks have all happened in towns or small or medium-sized cities and were committed by unemployed or underemployed middle-aged men. Most had personal grievances that they felt powerless to redress. The attacks have been escalating at an alarming rate, several of them being copy-cat massacres.
The locations of the recent school attacks
What are we to make of this very sudden shift in Chinese society, which has always seen itself as holding a deep love of children? What does it say about futures within and beyond China?
Is China destined to implode once again? George Friedman, in his book The Next 100 Years, dismisses China's rise. The chapter is entitled "Paper Tiger". He suggests that the historical issues which have plagued China in previous times will resurface yet again, once the economic growth begins to retract. The recent strong performance of China's economy in the Global Financial Crisis suggests China will continue to rise economically. But could Friedman possibly be correct?
Recently China's blogging community has been enraged by widely circulated figures which indicate that 0.4 per cent of the population possess 70 per cent of the PRC's wealth, while 91 per cent of those with assets of 100 million RMB or more are children of senior Communist Party cadres.
