Hello to you, wherever you may be. It's a cold and windy tuesday evening in Beijing, and I've just had the strangest day ever. Seriously. I'll tell you all about it in a minute.
First, a bit of a 'hospital news' catch up. The last 3 weeks have been spent in the acupuncture department at the Zhongri (China-Japan friendship) hospital, which has been, well, really special actually. We seemed to evolve a really nice relationship with the doctors and the students who were translating for us. Not to brag or anything, but they kept telling us that of all the foreign groups (there were various other nationalities also doing a placement there), they liked us the best. (Bet they told all the groups that!) And when they like you, then they start to tell a few secrets... Here is a typical day:
7.30 - set out on the long cold cycle ride (ok so sometimes there may have been a taxi), arrive all glowy and red faced and numb-toed, get ready for day. 8.30- Dr. Yang - straight into it with the hard questions. 'So what is the difference in the functions of Fengchi, Fengfu, Fengshi, and Fengmen? (These by the way, are the names of acupuncture points - we tend to learn them by name rather than number which in my opinion is sooo much better as the names give you a lot of information - as well as being rather poetic. For example Feng means wind - wind gate, wind pool and so on, so all of these points are used to treat wind-based problems) We all look at our feet, mumble rubbish answers and are told off and enlightened. Next one...different types of facial paralysis? Nope, didn't know that either. Differences and similarities between Zusanli and Shousanli? Phew, between us we managed to cobble together a half-decent answer and managed to save ourselves from total stupidity! In the mean time we are seeing all sorts of different patients, and points used that we've never really thought about before.
11.20- lunchtime, and a whole two hour break, woo-hoo! So we go to the university restaurant with our student translator friends, Wangzhen and Bin (or 'teddy bear' as Thuy likes to call him') and after the usual meat vs. vegetables and tofu ratio debate (guess which side i'm on?) eat a sumptuous meal including mine and Thuy's favourite dish, fried potatoe shreds with a vinegary dressing. It's almost chips! I'm telling you, not having 2 hours lunch breaks is going to be a serious shock....
1.30 - back to hospital. Dr. Zhang is there, and as he does not have many patients, he takes us through needling technique practice. He also demonstrates some cool stuff - why did putting one needle in a patient's neiguan (on her inside forearm) and asking her to move her knee around make the knee pain immediately disappear? Why why why? you have to work it out for yourself, he says. aaarrrghh. I ask him to demonstrate his technique on me and he puts a needle in my waiguan (opposite side of forearm. Then I have to sit quietly for 15 minutes and see where there the sensation ends up. It goes to my opposite foot. Why is that?? I think of an answer. He nods, cryptically. There are probably many. He also talks a little about philosophy. To be an Chinese doctor, he says, you have to stop worrying about the surface things in life, and be content with simplicity (this is quite literal as doctor's wages are very low here). So many people in China now are obsessed with appearance, especially girls, he said. You must go beyond that. More about that in a minute.
On the last day, we saw Dr. Bai in action. She is one scary woman. From Korea, she is a fire needling specialist. This is exactly as it sounds - you get a massive needle, dip it in a flame and then plunge it into wherever your victim is suffering most. In Dr. Bai's case, this was mostly neck and spine problems, and whilst holding the sizzling needle still, she would make vicious adjustments by yanking at the vertebrae. Afterwards these poor people often had Gua Sha (scraping therapy) until not only were they scarred and burnt, but also bleeding and bruised. It looked like a torture chamber in there. But we met an Australian girl,another student, who had suffered from scoliosis (abnormal lateral curvature of the spine) since she was young, causing a lot of muscular pain and her wearing a back brace for several years. After 4 treatments, this 'incurable' problem ahd significantly decreased. Incredible....Dr. Bai also had her own special treatment for stroke and facial paralysis (which, incidentally, she is in the process of patenting!) This basically involves about a hundred needles in the head and neck, according to a complex theory or meridians, nerve pathways and so on. You think I'm exaagerating? I'm not! But again,as she claimed, she could treat people on whom everything else had failed...
Now we're back in the Xiyuan hospital, in the acupuncture department there, which si crazy in a different kind of way. the doctor we were with yesterday treated about 70 patients in a morning. Poor man, he barely had time to speak as he ran between beds! We're allowed to take out the needles at least - sometimes you just want to actually have something to do other than observe!
So today, i skived hospital. This is unusual for me. Usually I am a right keen bean, but this morning i woke up feeling that my feet were itching. i wanted to do something different for a day, to explore the city I'm living in a bit more. So I made the big trip into the centre, and found myself at the poetically entitled 'White Cloud Temple'. This is a large Taoist temple complex, complete with Taoist monks wearing their distinctive black robes with white legwarmers (that's what they look like), and top-knotted hair. It was mercifully tourist free, and I spent a peaceful, contemplative time nosying around the many temples with their golden gods and ornamental roofs, with the familiar smell of incense drifting through the air. Taoism can be described as China's only home grown religion, as Buddhism came from India, and Confucianism is more of a philosophy. It has become divided into two branches, the philosphical and religious, and its ideas of acceptance, non-action, non-resistance and essential formless simplicity have long attracted me, in what sometimes seems to be a confusing and multiplicous mish mash of gods, demons, and religions that are all around. The oft-repeated phrase 'The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao' is certainly applicable to studying here, as Taoist ideas can be said to underpin much of Chinese medical thought...worth bearing in mind when you're going mad trying to figure out what the right answer actually is!!
The interplay between Confucianism, which although originally a radical philosophy, is now seen to be a more systematic, rigid, practical set of ideas, with its emphasis on rules, social order and family ties (and let's not forget the more or less disregard of women) with the spontaneous, flowing, some might say metaphysical ideology of Taoism, do, to my mind at least, help to explain some of the contradictions that are always apparent here.
However, I suspect the practice of these two religions/ philosophies, together with Buddhism are nor so different in practice - religious Taoism evidently still involves plenty of god/ ancestor worship, as shown by the chatting chinese who wandered around absently rubbing bits of statues and lighting things at the appropriate moments. Much as I think it must be lovely to have these comforting and symbolic rituals to turn to - one of my nicest memories ever is waking up in the early morning in small villages in Ladakh to the smell of burning incense being carried through the rooms and the sound of soft chanting - I sometimes wonder if these really mean anything to the participants, or whether they are little more than a habit that doesn't require much thought or reflection, or at worst even prevents it. Call me a cynical existentialist but...
But back to my day. I chatted briefly to a monk who expressed much approval at my studies (that's about as far as my chinese conversation goes..), and gave me a sweet. I think it might be magic...After this I decided to tackle Tiannamen square, but first went to Wangfujing (the Beijing equivalent of Oxford street), to have just a little look at the TCM books in the gigantic bookshop..as I was walking along I was approached by two Chinese girls who told me they were on holiday from the northeast, and invited me for a cup of tea. We went to a posh teahouse and were served in an elaborate ritual, involving much swirling of tea leaves into tiny cups. They spoke perfect english and we chatted for a little while about this and that.
Chinese girls have started to be divided in my head into 'silly' and 'not silly', the silly ones being the irritatingly giggly girly ones who are preoccupied with boyfriends and appearances, whilst the others have something interesting and often very thoughtful to say. Hey, it's not that i have anything against giggling - some might say i'm guilty of it myself (-; , but from what i've seen, thought china might have quite a forward thinking attitude when it comes to professional equality, in personal relationships they're still pretty backwards. If I had a penny for every time I've heard a Chinese girl saying 'my boyfriend tells me not to eat or I'll get fat' or something similar...The emphasis on skinniness here is alarming, to the point where very thin girls will only pick at meals, and their boyfriends have no problem telling them how fat they are whilst wolfing down several bowls of rice. I've seen a lot of patients having acupuncture for weight loss here, it's a very popular therapy. Ok, so it might not be quite foot-binding, but I find the excessive emphasis on a certain kind of girly, delicate femininity pretty irritating. But is it so much different from the west? Maybe just in a different way. It's interesting, that post cultural revolution, with tis demands for homogeneity, masculine clothes and short hair, that this is so obvious. As we say in TCM, an excess of one aspect always turns eventually into the other, yang turns to yin, and so on.
So, back to these girls...they were of the 'silly' type, and sure they were a bit annoying but it's always nice to chat to someone from somewhere else, and they also both had a certain sort of sharp intelligence and ambition- one worked for an international company and the other was a language student. After the tea-drinking had finished, we asked for the bill and prepared to go our separate ways. It's worth mentioning here that when a Chinese person invites you for something it is always expected that they will pay- this can lead lead to some difficult situations, like when eating out with chinese studnets who insist on attempting to pay for their 5 western guests, it takes a lot to persuade them out of it! So, i hadn't looked to hard when they'd ordered a pot of tea and a few snacks, and when they announced that we would split it I was a little surprised, but how bad could it be?
Turns out they'd ordered what must have been the most expensive tea in the place, and the total bill was 1500 yuan. Which meant that my portion was 500Y. Which, in case you're not familiar with yuan, is about £35. Thirty five pounds. Thirty five pounds!! however many times i repeat that it doesn't become any less painful and shocking. That is a lot of money in england. In China, it's a fortune. It's 20 meals out, 100 dinners of street food, 200 breakfast pancakes. And to them it was obviously nothing. It struck me at last who i had encoutered; they were the rich kids, the equivalent of the spoilt LA blond using daddy's credit card. And they blithely assumed that it would be no problem for me either. What could I do? I was so angry I was actually shaking, but also so much in shock I just handed over the money and left. In retrospect I wonder if i should have just made a run for it. But in their defence, i genuinely didn't think it occurred to them that it would be a problem. I'm a westerner, right, and money grows on trees here after all.
You hear all the time in the British press about the growing gap between rich and poor, but I never before had it illustrated so vividly as today. The man who stands in the cold all day looking after the bikes at the hospital charges 2 mao (0.2 yuan) per bike. On a sunny day, there might be 40 bikes. You do the sums...The women outside my flat who search the dustbins all day for recyclable goods must earn a tiny, tiny revenue. And the countryside is a whole other story. even China's own researchers agree with this. I'm going to paste in a couple of articles.
This is from the New Economist
China's growing gap between rich and poor
Writing from Guangzhou, Reuters' John Ruwitch reports that China's wealth gap is reaching critical level:
Fancy imported cars, five star hotels and slick malls dot Guangzhou, the hub of a region that has blossomed into one of China's - and the world's - main economic engines.
...Persistent poverty in China's countryside, against the backdrop of fast growing cities, has sparked social unrest in some spots and elicited sympathy from the wider populace.
The public was outraged in 2003 when a driver in northeastern China ran over and killed a peasant with her BMW, but was given a light sentence.
The leadership in Beijing is deeply concerned there could be a wider backlash, threatening a decade of strong economic growth and the Communist Party's grip on power, says Wenran Jiang, a China expert at the University of Alberta.
"They have come to the conclusion that ... the regime will not survive if they don't address the growing wealth gap, and more importantly, the perception that the government only cares about economic growth and the urban rich," he said.
Deng Xiaoping espoused a trickle-down approach, saying: "Let some people get rich first".
Some have become gloriously rich. Next week, the Hurun Report, which tracks China's wealthy, will issue its 7th annual China Rich List on which the average wealth for the richest top 400 is about $200 million. Seven are billionaires.
To be sure, tens of millions of people have been lifted out of abject poverty since the Party came to power 56 years ago. But the wealthiest 10 percent of China's urban households now own 45 percent of the urban wealth while the poorest 10 percent have less than 1.4 percent, Chinese statistics show.
That has left Deng's successors, President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao, grappling with a wealth differential that economists say is wider than when the Communist Party came to power in a 1949 revolution. Average urban incomes last year were 9,400 yuan ($1,164) while rural income was 3,000 yuan ($372).
The Reuters story then cites the recent Central Party School newspaper report, warning that "social contradictions" are on the rise (see my previous post China wants less inequality, more 'social fairness and democracy' for more details). How has Beijing responded?
Beijing has taken steps to try to buoy rural incomes, allowing grain prices to rise and starting direct farm subsidies. It has also scrapped the agriculture tax, a centuries-old Chinese institution, and tried to abolish an array of crippling local fees.
But some of the measures, while lightening the burden on farmers, have bankrupted local governments, which are forced to raise cash elsewhere. The once robust Communist social safety net has vanished, and rural dwellers now pay for things like education and health care.
"In poor areas, there are a lot of conflicts between the government and the farmers," said Li Fan, director of the World and China Institute, a private thinktank in Beijing.
China's "Gini coefficient", a measure of inequality used by economists that runs on a scale from zero to one, is believed to be above 0.45, among the highest in the world. The closer to one, the greater the inequality, and the prospect for unrest. "That means it's already a critical time," said Li.
To escape poverty, country dwellers keep pouring off trains in cities like Guangzhou and the nearby border boomtown of Shenzhen:
...Liu Zhengde begs for change outside a candy store in a lively shopping district. Originally from the Henan province in China's heartland, Liu has drifted for much of his life. He has never married, and his last job was selling fruit in the central city of Wuhan.
That venture failed a few months ago, leaving the equivalent of less than 6 U.S. cents in the pocket of the weathered man with a wiry beard and wide eyes who, asked his age, says: "over 80".
"I couldn't even afford a steamed bun. Those cost five mao. All I had was four," he said. "Everybody said go to Guangdong."
The economic boom has made Guangdong one of the wealthiest places in China. But opportunity has been elusive for Liu who sleeps under bridges. "All I want is enough money to buy a train ticket back home."
And from the Washington Post
China Warns Gap Between Rich, Poor Is Feeding Unrest
By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, September 22, 2005; Page A16
BEIJING, Sept. 21 -- China's official media warned Wednesday that the gap between rich and poor has become alarmingly wide during two decades of economic liberalization, contributing to spreading unrest in towns and villages across the country.
While the income disparity, particularly between farmers and city dwellers, has been widely discussed and reported, simultaneous and extensive reports by the New China News Agency and the Communist Party's main organ, the People's Daily, suggested that officials wanted to call particular attention to the problem.
iots and other violent protests, which the government acknowledges are increasing dramatically, have become a major issue for President Hu Jintao's government. Hu and Premier Wen Jiabao have made calls for "harmonious society" and "social stability" watchwords of their speeches over the last year.
The reports on income inequality seemed to attribute violence to economic rather than political causes and warned that more unrest could be coming. Following this reasoning, the Standing Committee of the People's Political Consultative Conference, one of China's two legislative bodies, declared in July that the widening income gap "is the root cause of disharmony."
Some senior officials in Hu's government think that the economic reforms begun in the 1980s have gone too fast and that more attention should be paid to the people left behind, according to Chinese academics with ties to the government. Yang Zhaohui, a political specialist at Peking University, said the focus on income disparity shows that the government and Communist Party take the issue seriously.
"I think the purpose of these signals is to give the society a warning," Yang said. "The government might bring out some policies to mitigate the problem."
Since taking over 2 1/2 years ago, Hu and Wen repeatedly have emphasized concern for the poor, but without repudiating the movement toward a market economy. They have, however, sharply curtailed the sale of state-owned enterprises. Shutting down money-losing government factories may make sense economically but often results in large-scale layoffs. Those layoffs frequently generate protests by workers suddenly deprived of the health care, lodging and other benefits they were accustomed to under the socialist system.
The reports on Wednesday gave added weight to the subject by citing the Study Times, official organ of the Communist Party's prestigious Central Party School for training young officials. In an article last week, Study Times suggested that a major reason for the unequal distribution of wealth and opportunity was the alliance between party officials and private businessmen that has grown since the party abandoned doctrinaire socialism and made swift economic growth its main mission.
"There are many people, especially upstarts, who gained wealth through collusion with officials in power-for-money deals," said the writer, Che Haigang.
Chinese often complain about such corruption and about alliances between politicians and private businessmen who have stakes in joint economic development projects. This concern is frequently mentioned by rioters and demonstrators.
The Party School paper based its comments on a Labor and Social Security Ministry study published last month that said China's income gap could cause "destabilizing social phenomena."
According to U.N. statistics, the poorest 20 percent of China's 1.3 billion citizens account for only 4.7 percent of total income, while the richest 20 percent account for more than half. Moreover, that gap has been widening steadily over the last three years. It was cited as China's most serious social problem in a survey conducted by the Central Party School last year.'
So, back to today. It was truly a weird experience. But enlightening. Sometimes you feel like Beijing is one big shiny surface (at least it will be once they wipe all the construction dust off) without the structures underneath to hold it up, one massive advertisment to the world to come and spend. It's like, have you ever seen Beijing opera (don't), or traditional Chinese dance? They wear these fixed smiles, whatever may happen. Mostly the cheeriness is lovely - but - I never thought I's say this - I'm also almost craving some Russian rudeness. At least, if they're nice, you know it's real! Keeping 'face' is very important here.
After my disturbing experience, I made my way to Tiannamen square, and contemplated its bloody history over the last century. From the May 4th movement of 1919, that ended in the birth of the Communist party, to the mass protest after the death of Zho Enlai in 1976, to the infamous student protests of 1989 and the more recent 2001 attempts at self-immolation by 7 people who may of may not have been members of Falun Gong. The 1989 'incident' is the one that immediately springs to mind, I'm sure you know about it but here is what good old 'banned in China' Wikipedia has to say on the subject.
'Since 1978, Deng Xiaoping had led a series of economic and political reforms which had led to the gradual implementation of a market economy and some political liberalization that relaxed the system set up by Mao Zedong. By early 1989, these economic and political reforms had led two groups of people to become dissatisfied with the government.
The first group included students and intellectuals, who believed that the reforms had not gone far enough and that China needed to reform its political systems, since the economic reforms had only affected farmers and factory workers; the incomes of intellectuals lagged far behind those who had benefited from reform policies. They were concerned about the social and political controls that the Communist Party of China still had. In addition, this group saw the political liberalization that had been undertaken in the name of glasnost by Mikhail Gorbachev.
The second group were those, including urban industrial workers,[citation needed] who believed that the social and political reforms had gone too far. The loosening of economic control had begun to cause inflation and unemployment, which threatened their livelihood.
On May 4, approximately 100,000 students and workers marched in Beijing making demands for free media reform and a formal dialogue between the authorities and student-elected representatives. The government rejected the proposed dialogue, only agreeing to talk to members of appointed student organizations. On May 13, two days prior to the highly-publicized state visit by the reform-minded Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, huge groups of students occupied Tiananmen Square and started a hunger strike, insisting the government withdraw the accusation made in the People's Daily editorial and begin talks with the designated student representatives. Hundreds of students went on hunger strikes and were supported by hundreds of thousands of protesting students and part of the population of Beijing, for one week.
At the beginning of the movement, the Chinese news media had a rare opportunity to broadcast the news freely and truly. Most of the news media were free to write and report however they wanted to due to lack of control from the central and local governments. The news was spread quickly across the land. According to Chinese news media's report, students and workers in over 400 cities, including cities in Inner Mongolia, also organized and started to protest.[6] People also traveled to the capital to join the protest in the Square.
Although the government declared martial law on May 20, the military's entry into Beijing was blocked by throngs of protesters, and the army was eventually ordered to withdraw. Meanwhile, the demonstrations continued. The hunger strike was approaching the end of the third week, and the government resolved to end the matter before deaths occurred. After deliberation among Communist party leaders, the use of military force to resolve the crisis was ordered, and a deep divide in the politburo resulted. General Secretary Zhao Ziyang was ousted from political leadership as a result of his support for the student demonstrators. The military also lacked unity on the issue, and purportedly did not indicate immediate support for a crackdown, leaving the central leadership scrambling to search for individual divisions willing to comply with their orders.[citation needed]Soldiers and tanks from the 27th and 28th Armies of the People's Liberation Army were sent to take control of the city.
Within the Square itself, there was a debate between those who wished to withdraw peacefully, including Han Dongfang, and those who wished to stand within the square, such as Chai Ling. The assault on the square began at 10:30 p.m. on June 3, as armored personnel carriers (APCs) and armed troops with fixed bayonets approached from various positions. These APCs rolled on up the roads, firing ahead and off to the sides, perhaps killing or wounding their own soldiers in the process. BBC reporter Kate Adie spoke of "indiscriminate fire" within the square. Students who sought refuge in buses were pulled out by groups of soldiers and beaten with heavy sticks. Even students attempting to leave the square were beset by soldiers and beaten. Leaders of the protest inside the square, where some had attempted to erect flimsy barricades ahead of the APCs, were said to have "implored" the students not to use weapons (such as Molotov cocktails) against the oncoming soldiers. Meanwhile, many students apparently were shouting, "Why are you killing us?" By 5:40 a.m. the following morning, the Square had been "cleared".'
Of course, this is an abbreviated version, and the whole story is much more complicated. I'm not a historian, nor do I have a good grasp of politics.
'Scholars have pointed out that while many in Europe and America saw the events through their own cultural perspectives, the movement was not alienated from the Chinese culture that it arose from. It was not an expression of bourgeois liberalism promoting western-style democracy.[18] As one historian notes "Students elevated the principle of unity above that of majority rule, while their conception of democracy (minzhu) did not allow for a free competition of divergent ideas and was itself tinged with elitism. In many ways students in 1989, like the traditional Confucian scholar class, continued to assume that the leading role in society would be played by a virtuous and educated elite.'
But sitting in that enormous square with its portrait of Mao looming through the dusk, full of throngs of smiling tourists, and children playing, teenagers hanging and vendors selling, it seemed to me the saddest thing in the world to imagine those students, my age, being gunned down. And for what?
'Unlike the Cultural Revolution which people can still easily find information through government approved books, Internet sites, etc, this topic completely disappeared from any media (including books, magazines, newspapers and internet web sites) inside mainland China. It is a forbidden topic by the Chinese government.
The official media in mainland China views the crackdown as a necessary reaction to ensure stability. It is common for Chinese youth to be entirely unaware of the Tiananmen protests.[20] Every year there is a large rally in Victoria Park, Causeway Bay, Hong Kong, where people remember the victims and demand that the CPC's official view be changed.
Currently, due to the strong Chinese government censorship including the Internet censorship, the news media is forbidden to report anything related to this subject. That part of history disappeared in most of the Chinese media including the Internet. No one is allowed to make any web sites related to this.[citation needed] A search on the Internet in Mainland China largely returns no result, apart from the government-mandated version of the events and the official view, which are mostly found on Websites of People's Daily and other heavily-controlled media.
In January 2006, Google agreed to censor their mainland China site, Google.cn, to remove information about the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre,[23] as well as other topics such as Tibetan independence, the banned spiritual movement Falun Gong and the political status of Taiwan. When people search for those censored topics, it will list the following at the bottom of the page in Chinese, "According to the local laws, regulations and policies, part of the searching result is not shown." The uncensored Wikipedia articles on the 1989 protests, both in English and Chinese Wikipedia, have been attributed as a cause of the blocking of Wikipedia by the government in mainland China.'
How's that for self referencing? (-: Anyway, whilst we're on the cheery subject of the Cultural Revolution, here's another strange experience I had lately! I've told you already about my friendly landlord Jin. Well a couple of weeks ago he invited Lorena and myself for dinner with his family (it was just me in the end), the whole lot as before, this time plus his wife's parents, who were quite elderly. But not just any restaurant. Oh no. This was a theme restaurant..the theme being, you got it, the CR itself! I'm not just talking hundreds of people, waiters dressed as Red Guards, portraits of Mao and newspapers on the ceiling. I'm talking live performance of old communist songs, dances and little skits in the most earsplitting chinese i've ever heard. And everyone singing along heartily, waving their little red flags. Including my landlord. And his wife's parents, who, by the way, were persecuted due to being 'intellectuals'. I asked Jin whether it bothered them, but 'oh no' he said happily, 'it was such a long time ago'. (On the way out there were some old photographs on the wall. One of them showed a man on his knees holding up some kind of placard, obviously as punishment. The old man looked at it and chuckled. 'That happened to him' said Jin, merrily). How could they do this? I don't think there is any way that I could possibly understand. I honestly could not decide whether the whole thing was meant to be really ironic tongue-in-cheek like the Producers 'aren't the Nazis silly'-esque, or really a veiled mass exercise in nostalgia. You tell me.
On a lighter note, I did karaoke! (it is tantamount to a religion here). And it was so much fun I'm ashamed to confess to it, can't remember when I last laughed quite so much you get your own private room and full icence to be as truly awful We took two chinese students along and they sang so beautifully it was embarrassing!
Oh yeah, and finally, do you remember my obsession with the Russian religious orthodox sect, the 'Old Believers'. Well, i just heard that a load of them have locked themselves in a church somewhere in south Russia, awaiting the End of the World (which is apparently sometime soon) and certain demise. That's the spirit! That's dedication for you! There's the Russian soul! (-;
Ok, so farewell for now!!