A Chinese poem on Western bias: "What do you really want from us?"

A poem originally written in Chinese and called "What do you really want from us" has recently been making the rounds on the internet, both in Chinese and in its English translation, and it has caused much debate. Although its authorship has not been confirmed, it is rumoured to have been written by a retired Chinese professor of physics in an American university.

The poem is directed at Westerners and complains about the double standards they employ when they view China. Although I don't think all the points raised in the poem make sense, I feel at least some of them really hit home. It certainly gives voice to the general feeling among many Chinese that Westerners are basically biased towards them and unwilling to accept China becoming a great power which is able to compete with them on its own terms. Here is the poem itself, in both English and Chinese:


The Poem (in English)


What Do You Really Want from Us?

When we were the Sick Man of Asia, we were called The Yellow Peril.
When we are billed to be the next Superpower, we are called The Threat.

When we closed our doors, you smuggled drugs to open markets.
When we embrace Free Trade, You blame us for taking away your jobs.


When we were falling apart, You marched in your troops and wanted your fair share.
When we tried to put the broken pieces back together again, Free Tibet you screamed, It Was an Invasion!

When tried Communism, you hated us for being Communist.
When we embrace Capitalism, you hate us for being Capitalist.

When we have a billion people, you said we were destroying the planet.
When we tried limiting our numbers, you said we abused human rights.

When we were poor, you thought we were dogs.
When we loan you cash, you blame us for your national debts.

When we build our industries, you call us Polluters.
When we you goods, you blame us for global warming.

When we buy oil, you call it exploitation and genocide.
When you go to war for oil, you call it liberation.

When we were lost in chaos and rampage, you demanded rules of law.
When we uphold law and order against violence, you call it violating human rights.

When we were silent, you said you wanted us to have free speech.
When we are silent no more, you say we are brainwashed-xenophobes.

“Why do you hate us so much”we asked.
“No,” you answered, “we don't hate you.”

We don't hate you either, But, do you understand us?
“Of course we do, ”you said, “We have AFP, CNN and BBC's.”

What do you really want from us?
Think hard first, then answer. Because you only get so many chances.

Enough is Enough, Enough Hypocrisy for This One World.
We want One World, One Dream, and Peace on Earth.


This Big Blue Earth is Big Enough for all of Us.




The Poem (in Chinese)


　　给西方的诗〈你究竟要我们怎样生存？〉


　　我们是东亚病夫时，我们被说是黄祸；


　　我们被预言是下一个超级大国了，我们被指是主要威胁。


　　那时我们闭关自守，你走私鸦片来强开门户；


　　我们拥抱自由贸易了，你责骂我们抢走你的饭碗。


　　那时我们风雨飘摇，你铁蹄犯境要求机会均等；


　　我们要整合破碎的山河，你说我们“入侵”…… 叫喊“给西藏自由”。


　　我们试行马列救国，你痛恨我们成为共党分子；


　　我们拥抱资本主义了，你又恨我们当了资本家。


　　当我们的人口到达十亿，你说我们在摧毁地球；


　　我们要限制人口了，你说我们践踏人权。


　　那时我们一贫如洗，你视我们贱如狗；


　　我们有钞票借给你了，你怨我们令你国债。


　　我们发展工业了，你说我们是污染者；


　　我们有货品卖给你了，你说我们是地球暖化的因由。


　　我们购买石油，你说我们取兼灭族；


　　你们为石油开战，你说是为了解救生灵。


　　那时我们动乱无序，你说我们没有法治；


　　现在我们要依法平暴，你说我们违反人权。


　　我们静默无声时，你说我们欠缺言论自由；


　　我们不再缄默了，你说我们是被洗了脑的仇外暴民。


　　为甚麽你这样憎恨我们？我们想知道。


　　“不”，你说，“我不恨你们。”


　　我们也不恨你；只是，你了解我们吗？


　　“当然了解”，你说。“我们消息多的是，有 AFP、CNN、还有BBC……”


　　其实你究竟要我们怎样生存？


　　回答之前，请仔细的想一想…… 因为你的机会不是无限的。


　　已经够多了……这个世界容不下更多的伪善了。


　　我们要的是同一个世界，同一个梦想，靖世太平。


　　这个宽广、辽阔的蓝地球, 容得下你们，容得下我们。

Discussing politics in the Yellow Loess Plateau.

During my stay in the village in Shanxi detailed in my previous post, I had an interesting chance to hear the political views of the father of the friend I was staying with. Her father spends most of his time working in cities as a labourer, although he comes back to his home in the village regularly. One evening he started telling me how when he was a child, Chinese schools stopped teaching foreign languages for a while because Jiang Qing, the wife of chairman Mao and a member of the Gang of Four that was behind the Cultural Revolution, said that in her opinion learning other languages was not necessary.

Since he obviously didn't think the Cultural Revolution was a good period, I decided to ask him why there was a medallion of Chairman Mao dangling over the bed where I slept. He told me that he admires Chairman Mao, because when he took power he redistributed the land to the peasants. I have often heard this mentioned as a reason why the Chairman is still held in high esteem. He started telling me how Mao Zedong fought against the Guomindang, who wanted to exploit the people. Even though he made some mistakes in later years, he is still basically a positive figure. I then asked him if he also admires Deng Xiaoping. He immediately shook his head, and said the Deng Xiaoping improved the economy by starting the "reform and opening up", but at the same time the society's "security" got worse. I asked what he meant by security, and he answered that political corruption has got much much worse. Nowadays most politicians are corrupt, and the ordinary people can do nothing about it. The man's anger at the politicians' corruption was obviously very strong. He also said that since Deng Xiaoping got into power, people's attitudes have changed. In the old days people would help each other out, but nowadays they only think about themselves and about making money. My host also quoted the famous saying by Deng Xiaoping "it doesn't matter if the cat is black or white, as long as it catches the mice". While the phrase was usually understood in the West to mean "it doesn't matter if the economy is socialist or capitalist, as long as it works well", his understanding was rather different. According to him, the saying's real meaning is "it doesn't matter if you make money by honest or dishonest means, as long as you get rich". The way he sees it, this philosophy caused a big decrease in public morality.

The man's views rather confirmed what I read in a book by prof. Mobo Gao, "the battle for China's past", in which the author stated that in rural areas of China people tend to have a generally positive image of Mao, but a negative one of Deng Xiaoping and of the current leaders, who are seen as corrupt and developing the country at their expense.

A week in the Yellow Loess Plateau

I have just got back from my Spring Festival travels. As you can see I managed to make my way out of Beijing in the end, although I had to take a plane to do so, since buying a train ticket turned out to be simply impossible. I initially flew to Xi'an and stayed there a couple of nights, taking the chance to see the fabled Terracotta warriors. After that I made my way to the small village of Dong Hou, in Shanxi (山西） province. A Chinese friend of mine comes from there, and she invited me to spend a few days at her family's home.

The village is located in the depths of the Yellow Loess Plateau, the plateau that straddles the Yellow River and covers 640.000 square kilometers of Central-Northern China. To get to the village I first took a train to the town of Sanmenxia, where I was met by my friend and we travelled by bus to her home. As the bus crossed the Yellow river and made its way through the countryside along dusty roads, houses and cars started to get scarcer and scarcer and I realized with pleasure that I was headed for somewhere quite remote. The village in question turned out to be the last stop on the bus line. It must have consisted of a few hundred houses.

Although I have been to the countryside in China on other occasions, before this experience I had only ever been to rural areas in Southern China, where the villages and the landscape look remarkably different. In the North, houses tend to contain their own private courtyards, as my friend's house did. As I expected from my previous experiences in rural areas, the living conditions turned out to be quite rough. There was no heating, no possibility to shower and no running water. There was a tap in the courtyard, but it was frozen, so we had to rely on containers of hot water. The bathroom was the usual hole in the ground behind the pig sty. What I found hardest to stand was the constant cold. Since this was Northern China the temperatures were often bitterly cold, only slightly better than Beijing. Although in Shanxi central heating does exist in the cities, it still hasn't reached such small villages. I spent every waking hour with a heavy coat on. At night I was so cold that I slept with my hat on, as well as three thick blankets over me. Towards the end of my stay I got a cold myself. The food I was given was good, although it was pretty much the same for every meal. Rice is not usually eaten in rural areas of Northern China, and I never eat it once while I was there. Instead, the staple food which is eaten with every meal is Mian Bao (a kind of bread bun). Another interesting fact is that the family I stayed with only eat two meals a day (one around 10 AM and one around 4PM). I was told that in the summer they eat three times a day, but in the winter only twice because they days are shorter.

My friend's father works as a labourer in cities during the year and only returnes to the village during holidays, while her mother lives there permanently. As a result the father could speak relatively good Putonghua (Standard Chinese), while the mother only spoke in pure local dialect, which I could hardly understand at all.Of course, on the first evening of my stay they displayed much curiosity towards me and asked me many questions, including "what special food do people eat in your country for the Spring Festival?". During the following days, relatives of the family would pay visits to the home for the Festival, and I would also be taken to the homes of other relatives. I found that most people could speak to me in Putonghua, except for the elderly. Among the many questions I got from people, there were certain recurring ones: "is it true that England is very developed/more developed than China", "is it true that in your country you don't have the Spring Festival, but only Shendangjie (Christmas), "Can you get used to our food" etc... One rather unusual question which I was aked by various different people was if it is true that in the West when a person turns 18, their parents will stop looking after them. Although nobody has asked me this anywhere else in China, it seems to be common knowledge throughout the village that Westerners turn indipendent at age 18. Perhaps they had just had a program on a local television channel which implied this. Various people also asked me if I thought their village was "luohou" (backward), to which I was forced to reply that yes, the economy is not very advanced there. (In the photo, some rather dramatic scenery next to the village where I stayed)

What really struck me was the apparent level of adherence to traditional folk religion and customs. The house where I stayed and many others displayed a shrine for the local gods in the living room, and a little shrine to the "earth god" near the entrance. My friend's mother is apparently a strong believer in these gods, while she herself said that she "would like to believe in them", which I take as an indication that she doesn't. There is a little temple to the gods located on the edge of the village. The road going towards the temple from the south was blocked for the following reason: more people than usual have died in the village over the last two years, and a Feng Shui expert suggested that blocking the road might lead to better luck. Feng Shui is clearly still followed and taken seriously by everyone.

My friend's family belongs to a clan which was begun by a man who arrived in the village 200 years ago. On the first day of the new year, all the members of the clan gathered together, and the men conducted a religious ceremony to commemorate the clan's ancestors. The ceremony is forbidden for women, and I was given the chance to observe it. I followed all the clan's men to the courtyard of a house where the ritual would take place. Sitting among the others was a man who I immediately supposed must be a religious figure of some kind. He had long hair gathered in a pony tail, a long beard and big round glasses, all of which made him very conspicuos in the context of a Chinese village. Indeed, he turned out to be a professional Feng Shui expert. On my arrival he looked at me with curiosity and asked me where I was from and if in my country our ceremonies are the same. The ceremony consisted in all the men (about 40 people) bowing down in front of a shrine and praying under the guidance of the guy with the pony tail, while someone lit fire crackers on the side.

All this doesn't really fit in with the commonly held opinion that religious practice is almost absent in China. Even many Chinese will tell you that most Chinese people have no religion, however in rural areas such as the one I visited traditional folk religion is clearly alive and kicking. As well as shrines to the gods, many homes displayed a picture of Chairman Mao. My friend's grandfather had a bust of the chairman in his bedroom. The bed I slept in also had a little medallion with Mao's face danggling over it. Considering that many Chinese gods are actually former generals or other historical figures who were turned into gods after their death, I wonder if Mao might not just become another Chinese folk god in the run. It would be a funny end for a professed Marxist.

I also observed some interesting traditions related to the Spring Festival. Ash was scattered outside the door on the first day of the year, to prevent evil spirits from coming into the house. The usual red strips of paper contain 对联 or Chinese lines wishing luck and prosperity were pasted around the doors of the houses on the last day of the old year, just like everywhere in China. I noticed that one home had white strips and not red strips pasted around the door. When I asked why, I found out that it means that someone has died in the home over the last year.

Talking about death, someone actually died in a home next to the one where I was staying on the first day I arrived. He was only 60, and died of cancer. My friend told me that there has been an increase in cancer deaths in the area over the last years, which she blames on increasing pollution. However, she said that most local people have no awareness that there might be a connection with pollution.

Another interesting feature of the area are the yaodongs, or homes inside caves. Many people used to live in rooms carved out of the rock below ground throughout the area, and a few elderly people still do. I myself visited a home in a cave in which and elderly couple live, in the middle of the village. It was necessary to walk down a flight of stairs to get to the cave's entrance. Seeing how warm the cave was inside, I wished my host family lived in one too. Apparently when my friend was a child, a big proportion of the people still lived in such dwellings, but nowadays most of them lie abandoned.

All in all, the experience was interesting and fun, if a bit trying because of the constant cold and lack of conveniences. Once I got back to Beijing after a 12 hour train ride, I suddenly had a new appreciation of living in a flat with heating, plumbing and a shower. (In the photo below, me with my friend's grandfather, and a little grandchild of his)

On the greatest annual human migration in the world, and my failed attempts to join it.

Do you know what the greatest annual migration of people in the world is? Anyone who lives in China might guess: it is the hundreds of millions of Chinese who go back to their homes to celebrate the Spring Festival. Every year around this time, countless numbers of Chinese travel across the country to go back to their beloved 家乡 (hometown) to spend the Chinese new year with their loved ones. This leads to the dreaded 春运, loosely translatable as "Spring festival rush". In 2008, the total number of rail journeys undertaken during the Spring festival was 2.26 billion. All the country's transport systems, and especially the trains, are overloaded like mad, and getting hold of train tickets is incredibly difficult and frustrating. I have just found out how difficult it can be myself.

This year, I am (or was) planning to go to Shaanxi province to pass the New year's eve (which will be on the 2nd of February this year) in the home of a Chinese friend. The closest towns to my friend's home are Yuncheng and Sanmenxia. There are two trains a day from Beijing to Sanmenxia, and one to Yuncheng. According to the current system, train tickets only start to be sold five days before the train leaves, so as to avoid the tickets running out months in advance. Since I was planning to leave on the 29th, and today was the first day that the tickets for the 29th are on sale, I got up early and went to the ticket booth near my home to attempt to find a ticket. I was not surprised to see a long queue of people waiting outside the booth. At around 8.30, I got into line and started waiting. I waited for about two hours in the open in sub-zero temperatures, while the queue painfully moved forward at the pace of about 1 meter every half an hour. My feet were freezing despite the thick socks I was wearing.

At around 10.30 I finally reached the front of the queue, and guess what, I found out that the tickets for soft sleepers, hard sleepers, and seats had all already sold out for both the destinations. They had only started selling the tickets on the same day at 9 in the morning, and by 10.30 they were sold out! The only tickets left were for standing. Although I am pretty enduring, standing for over 10 hours in a ridiculously crowded train during the Spring Festival is more than I can bear. The incredible amount of people makes even going to the bathroom a huge struggle.

I left empty-handed, remembering how I used to live in a country where all you need to do to take a train is go to the station on the same day you want to travel and buy a ticket. This is the kind of thing that millions of Chinese need to put up with around this time in order to buy a ticket to go back home, unless they can afford a flight. In the last few days, the Chinese internet has been full of articles on how a man in Shanghai streaked almost naked through the train station in protest, after he could not buy a ticket to go back to his hometown even though he had started waiting in the station the evening before the day when the tickets were first put on sale.

As for me, I have not made up my mind on my plans yet. Flying is far more expensive, and buying a ticket is an uphill struggle. I will now consider how to get out of Beijing for the holidays (something I am determind to do).

The differences between China and Germany in pictures.

I have come across a series of pictures which rather cleverly capture the differences between life in China and in Germany. The artist who made them, Yang Liu, was born in Beijing but moved to Germany when she was quite young.

Below are some of the pictures. The blue part represents Germany, and the red part China:

How emotions are expressed



How the weather affect emotions



The position of the Boss



How problems are tackled



Noise level in a restaurant



Relationships between people



Lifestyle


Sense of self


Modes of Transport in 1970 and 2006


The life of the elderly



The position of the child



Queueing



Punctuality



Although the series of pictures is specifically meant to represent the differences between Germany and China, most of them could also be applied to the differences between China and Britain or any other North European country, or the United States for that matter.
Interestingly, some of these pictures could also represent the differences between Germany and Italy, or between North European cultures and Mediterranean ones in general. The ones on punctuality, queueing and the noise level in restaurants certainly could be applied to Germany vs. Italy as well (actually when it comes to punctuality, I think the Chinese are somewhat more punctual than the Italians. However there's no beating the Germans on that one). Other pictures are more specific to China and Eastern cultures, for instance the ones related to expressing your feelings, the sense of self and the role of the boss.

The first case of anti-foreigner hostility directed towards me in China

A few days ago I had the experience of witnessing a case of open hostility directed against me as a foreigner, for the first time since I have started living in China two years ago. The setting was the small city of Chengde (承德） in Hebei province, slightly to the north of Beijing. I went there with a few friends over the holidays for the Chinese national day. Chengde used to be the summer resort of the emperors during the Qing dinasty. The Manchu rulers would come to this place to escape the heat of Beijing, but they would also use Chengde to hold talks with the nomadic groups who lived along China's northern borders, making use of the town's location on the northern fringes of China. Emperor Qianlong (1735-1796) commissioned the building of twelve temples around the town, eight of which survive today. One of the temples is an exact replica of the famous Potala palace in Tibet, once the residence of the Dalai Lamas.

It was outside the entrance to the 避暑山庄 (bishu shanzhuang or literally the "avoid summer town")，the summer resort of the emperors, that the unpleasant incident occured. My friends and I were waiting in a queue to buy the entry tickets, which were ridicolously overpriced (120 yuan each with no student discount!). Our group included two Chinese, a Tibetan girl, a Dutchman and myself. While my Dutch friend was buying the tickets and I was nearby, a Chinese man buying his ticket in a different queue suddenly blurted out in an angry tone in Chinese that he had seen so many television programmes about how the foreigners burned down and looted the Summer Palace in the last few days, that he really couldn't stand foreigners. After that he took his ticket and walked away. The comment was clearly directed at my Dutch friend and probably at me, as we were the only foreigners on the scene at the time.

For those of you who don't know the background: the Summer Palace the man referred to is the Yuanmingyuan complex in Beijing, also know as the old Summer Palace, not to be confused with the new Summer Palace which is still a famous tourist attraction. It was built in the eighteenth century, and it used to be a magnificent complex of palaces and gardens where the Qing emperors resided, until it was looted and destroyed by British and French troops in 1860 during the Second Opium War. This act of wanton destruction is still seen as a potent symbol of Western aggresion and imperialism in China. The 150th anniversary of the looting of Yuanmingyuan falls on October 18th this year, and a series of activities and events will mark the anniversary (all of them under the theme of "peace, cooperation and friendship", including the Sino-French cooperation society donating a statue of Victor Hugo, who wrote about the looting in a book). I suppose that there have been a lot of television programmes talking about the anniversary in the last few days, and this is what set the man off.

To be clear, the destruction of Yuanmingyuan was a barbaric act of destruction which deserves all our revulsion. It was theoretically done as retaliation for the torture and execution of twenty foreign prisoners by the Chinese (in the context of a war of aggression started by the British and the French). On the other hand, when the British troops finally burned down the palace, 300 eunuchs, maids and workers were unable to escape because the gates were locked, and they were burned to death. However, all this happened 150 years ago. It is clearly not a good reason to go abusing Westerners one meets nowadays. Not to mention that the man had no way of knowing whether my friend and I were British or French, but clearly in his eyes one white person is worth another.

As I said this was the first instance of open hostility towards me as a foreigner which I have come across in China, and it is certainly not a common occurence. In my estimation it is actually far more common for foreigners to experience hostility directed at them in Britain or in other Western countries. One has to live in China a long time before coming across such a thing. A friendly kind of curiosity is a much more common reaction to foreigners. The man at the center of the incident (which was after all very minor) has most likely never had any interraction with a foreigner throughout his life, which partly explains his attitude and the fact that he sees all foreigners as an undistinguished mass. However, the incident is significant of the fact that the memories of the "century of humiliation", the Opium wars and Western colonialism are still strong in China, and they can still generate a certain resentment of Westerners, which the recent commemoration of the destruction of Yuanmingyuan obviously brought to the surface in the case of this man in Chengde.

Inside the imperial resort in Chengde, there were more reminders of the history of European imperialism in China. The resort turned out to be the place where the emperor was forced to sign the convention of Beijing in 1860, under which the Chinese ceeded to the British part of the Kowloon peninsula which now lies in Hong Kong. Next to the spot where the signing took place, there was a plaque entitled "never forget the national humiliation".

Cuba's double currency

One unusual fact about Cuba which I had already heard about before going there, but whose significance I didn't realize before arriving, is that the country has two different currencies in use. There is the National Peso and the Convertible Peso. The Convertible Peso (CUC) used to be pegged to the same value as the US dollar, although it is nowadays slightly more valuable. The National Peso is exactly 25 times less valuable than the CUC. This system with two different currencies has basically created two parallel economies within the country. As I understand it, basic goods and services are bought using the national peso, while any luxury items can only be bought with CUC. Items sold in national pesos tend to be extremely cheap by Western standards, while items sold in CUC tend to have similar prices to what you might find in Europe. Basically, the CUC is the currency of the rich, and the national peso is the currency of the poor. Most ordinary Cubans are paid in the national peso, which means that a whole host of goods and services are off-limits to them. Foreign tourists generally only use the CUC during their stay. The result is that Cuba is not a particularly cheap country to travel around in for foreigners, since taxis, hotels and good restaurants have prices in CUC and are no cheaper than they would be in a Western country (although the service is not necessarily as good).

Personally I only used national pesos during the last two days of my stay, and that was only because I and the other foreigner I was with wanted to do things in Havana like taking public transport and going to the cinema, which require the national currency. Both services tunred out to be extremely cheap: the bus cost less than one peso (remember, 25 national pesos make up one dollar), and the cinema cost exactly one peso. When my friend went into a bank in Havana and said he wanted to exchange two CUC for national pesos (that being quite enough for all our needs), the bank clerk gave him quite a surprised look, since very few foreigners ever use the national currency.

The moment when I got a real inkling into what it is like to live in Cuba only using the national peso came when my friend and I went to Coppelia, a famous ice-cream parlour in the middle of Havana. There is a large hall where the ice-cream is sold in national pesos, and a stand outside where it is sold in CUC. On the first day we went to the CUC stand, where there was almost no queue and lots of different flavours, although the price was 1 CUC (in other words one dollar) for a scoop. The next day we went to the section where the prices are in the national peso. We had to wait one hour (literally) in a queue just to get in, since the place is extremely popular with Cubans and there are huge queues to enter the building. When we did finally manage to get in, we sat down in the hall and had to wait quite a while for a bad tempered waitress to come and serve us. When she did we found out that there were only two available flavours (and since one of them was chocolate which I don't eat, I had to settle for one flavour). Apparently, the two flavours vary from day to day. On the other hand, the ice-cream was extremely cheap, with about five scoops costing 5 pesos, or 20 cents.

Basically, when you pay in national pesos the service and the queuing times are reminiscent of the former Soviet Union, while if you pay in CUC you get Western standards and Western prices. Most Cubans' wages are in the national peso, and the average wage amounts to around 400-700 pesos a month. This would translate to only 17-30 CUC or dollars a month. That is why using the CUC is out of reach for many Cubans. It also gives you an idea of how precious tourists' tips are to Cubans. When I was staying in a resort in Playa Jibacoa, I gave a maid a 10 CUC tip to wash my clothes for me (admittedly it was a very large tip). She was extremely grateful and told me "esto me va a ayudar mucho" (this will help me a lot). Later on I realized that I had given her about half her monthly wage just to wash a few clothes.