A Tale of Two Cultures

What is shocking me most in the United States?
Not tall building, fancy cell phone or high technology which I am sure China have or will have but some words Americans use everyday
“Excuse me”, “sorry”, you can’t live a single day in America without hearing these words repeated dozens of times. They are simply everywhere. No doubt they are neither 100% sincere nor substantiated, but they can quickly and efficiently deal with innumerous minor unpleasant situations in the real world: an accidental bump into a stranger, a cough in a serious meeting, etc. They make life easier for everyone. These magic words we Chinese can not help admiring.
We don’t use them.
We Chinese don’t usually say sorry to a stranger today. For example, when somebody crush on you in a loaded bus, you look at him expecting some kind of apology, 90% of times you see a guy not even looking at you but anywhere else, he would even not bother talk to you, as if nothing happens. If you are determined to extort an apology from this guy, chance is that it may evolve into a quarrel, then into a fight, or anything.
Why? Isn’t China supposed to be a land of politeness and courteousness?
Actually, courtesy does exist among those who are acquainted with each other. People know how to treat you only when they learn who you are. The way they talk to you, deal with you is defined by your position in a given society. These do not apply to a stranger.
A bigger truth is: China may used to be a land of politeness and courteousness, not anymore. The courtesy system imbedded in the traditional society has gone, replaced by universal camaraderie since 1949. However, during the rapid economic and political change in the last 30 years nationally and internationally, Chinese people are struggling to find a new interaction interface with each other.
An excuse to explain away the “no excuse” is that, we try to convince ourselves that you should not be “too polite” toward those you are familiar with, because if you treat your friends too politely, you regard him not as one of your own. However, a contradiction is that when those who are really not one of your own appear, there is no need to be polite to them. Either should not be or need not be polite, we end out treating other people rude. There is simply no excuse not to say “excuse me”.

Who am I, where I am from and what I am doing now.

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Last week I received a comment from a reader on my video “A Glimpse of Chinatown”:

It said:

"The problems mentioned in your video could be common in almost every Chinatown around the world. It's hard to solve these problems. It's some kind of Chinese problems. Anyway, I don't think Chinatown is an elegant place. In most cases, Chinatown means cheap and dirty."

I partly agree with him that it is a problem of every Chinatown. Though Philadelphia’s Chinatown proudly ranks among the biggest Chinatowns around America, it gives visitors the same impression as all Chinatowns: ubiquitous smells of Chinese food, trash everywhere-in short, a dynamic business atmosphere, but dirty. To find a decent and clean restaurant in Chinatown is not a easy job. It is not only the same in every Chinatown, but has been the same, say, for 30 years, if not longer. Chinatown never changes.

Some Chinese Americans living in Chinatown for 20 years regard it as a cherished tradition, but their argument is not that “We Chinese lived and will continue to live in this way," but that “Laowai (the foreigner) is addicted to this exotic image of Chinatown so we keep delivering it to them." Is the argument correct?

An American friend echoed agreement. He claimed Philadelphia’s Chinatown is exactly what he saw in China. He may have a point here. He had been to Gansu and Hunan-two provinces in China’s hinterland. Gansu is especially famous for being poor.

However, Gansu and Hunan do not represent the whole picture of China. There are Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, which stand out as truly international metropolises. Actually, China’s southeastern seashore region has become very much modernized. Moreover, even Gansu, Hunan and other inner provinces have improved a lot.

Grown up in Southeastern China and working in Beijing, I have found Chinatowns and China are two different worlds. Restaurants are a good example. The food, decoration and songs played in the restaurants, though authentic, are outdated by 20 years.

The real thing is that China has changed, but Chinatowns have not. Why?

Maybe that is because in the past 30 years, since China has opened its door to the outside world, those who come from China to the U.S. usually don’t live in Chinatown anymore. Unlike their predecessors, they are educated from American universities, find decent jobs and settle down in mainstream society. They may sometimes go to Chinatown for Chinese food. And that is it.

In the same time, Chinatown is boxed in by more and more public construction in different directions, has limited housing or public service. New people come and move out. It becomes a working-class transitional community but not a good neighborhood for long time settlement.

Maybe that is why you don’t frequently see highly educated young Chinese in Chinatown. Maybe that is why Chinatown's population obviously gets older and older.

Before I went to Philadelphia, I have already been prepared to answer a lot of questions about China and myself. To my surprise, different people ask very different questions.

In Chinatown, the first question people tend to ask me is always like this:
How can you stay here after you finish your program?

My response is always:
I will leave.

They feel confused and try to encourage me to stay in the United States, saying like:
“Don’t worry, you will find a job here.”

A woman working at a non-profit organization for refugees even offered an interpreter job and working visa.

I said: No thanks. I want to go back to China.

“Really? Why?” the woman asked.

“Because my 100,000 readers are waiting for me,” I said, “they miss me and I miss them too.”

She paused for a second and said:

”You must love your job very much.”

Yes I do love my job. Though China’s journalism environment is not fully developed, it is a land of opportunity for journalists not only from China but also across the world. There are so many interesting stories to report, so many exciting and important moments to witness and so many people out there reading your stories. Different from what I have seen here, almost every newspaper in China is recruiting reporters. With a decent job and happy family and promising future waiting for me, why should I break my words, even illegally?

As a reporter, most stories I wrote are problems China is facing. By talking to people in Chinatown who came to the States to escape the suffering life in their homeland, I realize how lucky I am living today’s China, a rising, peaceful land with many problems but more hopes.

It seems that Chinese outside Chinatown have more interest in China itself. Most of them are from mainland China and came to the States only about five years ago.

Their question always begins with:
How is China now? How do they treat Haigui(Meaning Sea Turtle in Chinese, Common green turtle in Chinese, tubbed for returned Chinese with abroad education background)? How much do you earn in China? (If this guy is more Americanized, he will not ask the question directly) Will you be promoted after you finish the program?

I will introduce them the website of the magazine I work for. As for my own future, my answer is:
I don’t know whether or not I will be promoted. It is not up to me. But I am sure that I am pretty unique for the fact that I have worked for both the Chinese media and American newspaper in the United States.

To my surprise, Americans don’t ask me about China. They tell me:

“China will be the next global leader.”

I am shocked.

I have never thought of China becoming the leader of the world, economically, politically or militarily. On the contrary, when I was in China, we always talked about the barriers in front of China’s future development.

For example, we are afraid that China cannot continue its world factory strategy in the next 20 years since it maybe difficult to provide a lot of cheap and sustainable resources like labor, land and electricity.

If true, what’s the alternative option? With problems on intellectual property protection and inadequate higher education, Can China change its focus to intellectual intensive industry?

But here it seems Americans are so fascinated and at the same time scared by China’s development.

Personally I believe one’s own effort is much more important than the outside
environment. However, confronted with so many different questions, I begin to understand how important a peaceful, thoughtful and objective attitude could help each other, whether for people or for their nations.

Lou Yi's story about ChinatownGate :
http://www.philly.com/philly/hp/news_update/20070514_Big_plans_to_awaken_Phila_s_faded_dragon.html

Does some one from China feel like home in Chinatown?

To me, the answer is no.

The narrow streets, the smell of restaurant kitchens, the sweet songs of Lijun Deng, the Cantonese dialect-all make me feel like I am in a small town of southern china, or in a Hong Kong movie, but not where I live.

However, there is someplace makes me feel like I am home. That is Starbucks.

Last night when I sat in a Starbucks on the Market Street with a tall cup of mocha in hand, I really feel as if in Beijing.

There is one Starbucks on the Chaoyangmenwai Street, close to my office building. When I am in Beijing I go to Starbucks very often, to interview people, meet my friends, write with my laptop or just hide from piles of works. There is also a wide road in front of me when I look through the window, just like what I saw from the Starbucks at the 12th and Market Streets in Philadelphia.

One difference between the two Starbucks is the one in Beijing is much bigger and noisier. The other difference is that Starbucks in Beijing offers my favorite chocolate cakes and tiramisu, which I never find in Starbucks here.

There is also a Starbucks close to where I live in Beijing. Though it is in a residential area, it is often crowded even on the workdays. Sometimes I go to Starbucks with my book or laptop, sit at an outdoor table, and play computer games or reading.
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Then I realize how globalization is changing China and my own life, which I think is good. But some Chinese don’t think so.

Last year, a Chinese TV anchor found a Starbucks in the Forbidden City, the royal palace in Beijing. He got so angry that he urged in his blog to drive Starbucks out of the Forbidden City, “to protect the Chinese culture”.

He said it is OK to have Starbucks in any other place in Beijing. However, while acknowledging that Starbucks is more comfortable than any of the Chinese food vendors in the Forbidden City, he does not want to see it there. Because as a symbol of tasteless American culture, Starbuck’s presence in the Forbidden City is a culture invasion to China. " It is a laugh stock in western upper-class society,” he said later in a interview.

I am at least as proud as he is of the Forbidden City many times, but I would be glad to see a Starbucks after an exhausting walk in such a large palace, especially in winter or summer. I would rush into the café and I don’t care how the western upper-class society thinks of me at all.

In my view, the point is not if whether Starbucks should be in the Forbidden City. The point is whether any food vendor or commercial site should be in the Forbidden City. If they should, then the question is how to harmonize its existence with the environment as much as possible and at the same time serve tourists well.

But the idea of throwing out the Starbucks and being satisfied with the remaining Chinese food vendors, by itself, is ridiculous.

Actually, Starbucks is very popular in China since it provides a pleasant place for people to meet and have a rest. It doesn’t force people to come in. If you really don’t like it you can just enter a Chinese teahouse or suggest building one in the Forbidden City. That is the fair play.

The TV anchor’s idea, as many Chinese call patriotism, in my view is a kind of aggressive nationalism or protectionism which may impede a country’s development.

Unfortunately, as a reporter covering trade, I find stronger protectionism in the name of patriotism both in China and the United States in recent years.

Once I saw a red banner in a supermarket in Washington DC which encouraged people to buy a brand of wok because it is made in USA. It said something like: buy the brand and save our jobs.

It will only cost customers money and the jobs in the supermarkets!

I am tired of so much criticism on Chinese goods for trade deficit. China doesn’t force Americans to buy Chinese goods. You buy it because of its low price and good quality.

There is intellectual property right or other problems, but the main reason that China becomes a export machine is because it enjoys real comparative advantage on labor and other key resources. Therefore resisting Chinese goods would not help the American jobs. Open up to Chinese investments, say, to allow CNOOC, a Chinese oil company, to buy Unocal two years ago may help.

"This time it was thousands of pets but what if the next time it is thousands of humans killed by a counterfeit or contaminated product."

This is what I received from a reader about the pet food crisis recently. I read the stories about tainted pet food and toothpaste. These stories remind me of my stories on BaiYangdian lake which used to be a beautiful lake in northern China. However, last spring people found a lot of dead fish floating on the lake. There were different explanations, including the rapid change of weather, the lack of air for such huge numbers of fish in a limited space, the polluted water dumping into the lake from Baoding, a nearby city. I went to the cities and counties around the lake and finally I found that it was the combination of many factors. But the biggest reason is the pollution generated by continuous development of industries around the lake, first in the city, then expanding to nearby villages. There is a lack of recognition and no efficient way to solve the problem of pollution when rapid economic development is occurring.

I agree with my reader; I worry about the health of people and animals, of course, not only in the States but also in China.

In the comment, the reader also said:

"If you did a hard-hitting investigative story and it hit close to high ranking officials, would you get a Chinese "Pulitzer" or imprisonment?"

My answer is:
As a reporter, I have written a lot of stories on health and environmental issues. Most of them are cover stories or special reports for my magazine. Some of them did hit high ranking officials and helped to change the situation.

That is why I love my job and why journalists are so important in today’s China. Because you can make a difference to people’s life.

Though I got no Chinese”Pulitzer,” I am still working and writing blogs in English and columns in Chinese.

Another thing I worry is about the China bashing emotion from this comment.

If my cat or dog got sick because of the food, I may also get angry. Actually in China, there was also a lot of foreign bashing when cats and dogs got sick because of pet food from Mars, an international company; Or when people’s eyes got sick because of the product of Bausch & Lomb, an international company based in N.Y.

Several days ago I had a hot debate with a scholar on trade on intellectual property rights. Reluctantly admitting this problem exists in China, he criticized big foreign companies for monopolizing intellectual property and said that it is the high price of luxury products from such firms as Armani that drives people to steal intellectual property.

So ridiculous!

If we don’t realize the serious problem of intellectual property in China, there will never be rapid development of high technology industries in the country. We must protect intellectual property not because of the pressure from the States but because it is the key to the development of our country.

I cannot understand why this guy just wants to criticize and fight Americans but not emphasize the importance of intellectual property in China!

As for my reader’s angry comment on so many issues, I would like to say that we need to focus on the solution of a specific problem to really solve it.

If we expand the complaints from pet food to slave labor and even to Chinese foreign policy in Sudan, it raises the emotional temperature without solving the problem. We need solutions, not slogans.

Before going to America, I learned some American table manners. And then I held my first dinner party and even learned a new word:
B.Y.O.B
We had a wonderful dinner. At the beginning of the dinner, I welcomed them to my “cold cottage” and said sorry for “not treating you well”, as Chinese usually do, to show my humility. At the end of the dinner, everyone shake my hands and thanked me, as Americans usually do.
However, the next day, one of my colleagues came to my desk and thanked me again for the delicious food. I was a little bit surprised that he was so polite.
Then a strange thing happened.
My colleagues who attended my dinner came to my desk one by one and thanked me again. One colleague who did not go to office called me and thanked me again.
Do Americans always thank twice for a dinner?
“Not always,”my friend said:” Maybe they really like your food.”
But another friend said it is also one of the rules to double thank.
That night I could not sleep and kept accounting how many dinner parties I have attended and how many “thanks” I didn’t say.

Yin Jiang, a Phd candidate of Peking University is riding with his bride on the Garden Street in Beijing, China. It is a picture from Caijing's website.

Unusaly wedding, isn't it? In China's tradition, the trip fof the bride from bride's home to bridegroom's home, is a very important part of wedding. Forexample, the vehicle that they use shows the economic conditions of the couple's family, especially the Bridegroom;s. That is why many families try their best to find a luxry limousine for the weddings so that they do not lose their faces.

Besides the complicated wedding process and expensive banquets, the wedding is also a huge burdern to guests who must give red packages of money to the host. It could be from $50 to $5000 ! So a joking goes that wedding is a tool for making money and invitation to wedding is a notice of fine!

However, more and more young people tend to get rid of the huge burden of the wedding and simply enjoy themselves.

Every time I walked in Chinatown, I noticed the grocery shops window with different brands of cigarettes. In some big grocery stores outside Chinatown, the cigarettes are usually locked in a glass box but not put such visible location. Does that mean Chinese Americans have higher rate of smoking than other ethnic group in Philadelphia or Chinatown shops sell more cigarettes?

I learned from some research from Temple University that culture is one of the main reasons of smoking, which reminds me of the fancy packs of cigarettes in China with panda, dragon, flower and even the house of Zhong Nan Hai, the location of the central government.

Actually cigarettes are important gifts in social life. People light cigarettes for each other when they first meet to show friendship, bride lights cigarettes for each male guest on the wedding to show gratitude, junior people light cigarettes for seniors to show respects.

That is one of the reasons tobacco control in China is so difficult.

Read my recent opinion on tobacco control in China and you will learn more:

There is no free lunch in the world.
It is a Chinese saying I learned from my childhood and I believe it.
Now I find it is not completely true, at least on the bus to Atlantic City.
Last Sunday I went to Atlantic City to meet my friend by greyhound bus. I paid $18 for a round trip and got $20 refund at the destination. I understood that it is a way of attracting people to the casinos. But I was a little bit surprised when I found my friend got $25 refund and a free bowl of noodle. She was from New York City and only paid $15 for a round trip!
Then she told there are some people making a living by taking bus everyday. They take a round trip in the morning and another one in the afternoon so that they got $18($2 for tips) and two meals everyday.
“But it is not enough for renting house,” I said.
“They don’t need house, “my friend said:” they sleep on the bus or everywhere and bring their belongings with them,”
I still suspect if this kind of life could stay for a long time. You need working not only for survival. You need to work to developing yourself so that you can make a better living and also become part of the society.
Of course you can also make huge money by gambling with the $18 you earned. But it is a dream that never comes true for most of the people on the bus.

Can a well designed corporate governance structure completely guarantee a well run company? In China, the answer is no.

Look at a major player in China’s life insurance market.

It is a big company, with asset of RMB 94 billion, about $12 billion. It collected RMB 26 billion (about $3.3 billion) premium in 2006 and it enjoys a above average growth rate at 20% to 30% in the past 11 years.

It also looks like a company with a nice governance structure, at least in paper.
It has a balanced shareholding structure: 15 shareholders present a nice mix; a little less than 50% of which are private enterprises; 20% of which are big state owned companies; 25% of which are foreign insurance giants.
It has a sound board with 15 directors, including 10 shareholder with above 5% stake gets representation and 5 independent directors with solid background .
Everything is nice?

No.

If you look closer, it is a mess.

First, the The chairman of this company is a fraud. He has channeled about RMB10 billion(about $1.28 billion ) into outside investments profiting not the company but himself, RMB2.7biilion ($ 340 million) of which are not yet paid back.

The company has a simple way out: fire him, call the regulators, and let the police do the rest. Why not?

On the contrary, no Board of Directors took action.

Why?

Because the board’s legitimacy itself is in question.

If you look closer, you find:

The current board of directors should have expired before the end of 2005. It remains because the key shareholders has different opinion on how to elect a new board during a 18 month deadlock.

So why the current board does not rebel against the chairman?

Because it is a manipulated board.

First, The board is being dominated by chairman’s cronies. Even more important, several key shareholders are secretly owned by the Chairman, with the fund channeled out of the insurance company.

Second, the big state owned companies and the foreign insurance companies, though own nearly 50% of the company, have only 3 seats. Their protests were ignored.

What about the independent directors? Did they speak out?

The independent directors named by the chairman himself are largely silent.

Finaly, the regulators took action.They summoned a a meeting of senior management , declared that a “routine on-site check” is going on, demanded the chairman transfer all his responsibility to the president and fired him two months later.

All that the regulators have done are not supposed to be done by the regulators but the justice is served. It looks the regulators intervene exceedingly heavy handed in one way, but not really tough enough in the other way.

For example, they tried hard to downplay the crisis, using “routing on-site check” to avoid public recognition. The regulators also try to arrange a paid back deadline for the chairman. But it is not working. After 6 months since the regulators involved in, there is still RMB 2.7 billion ($340 million) not paid back. So the deadline had to be rescheduled again and again.

Most surprising, there is no business crime investigation involved so far.
Whaterver a nice governance structure it looks like, it may simply do not work.

And that is why media is so important.

If , like in this case, the board of directors, the shareholders, the regulators, are not doing their job or doing their job well, we news media can tell the ugly truth, a nightmare to investors, but a fascinating and illuminating story.

Click the picture of the chairman and read the story:

If someone steals your gun and kills people with it. Who should be responsible for the murder?
The answer is obviously not you but the person who steals the gun.

However, in the case of Panama’s poisoned medicine, China’s role is more complicated.
A report by New York Time in early May said the counterfeit glycerin from China is responsible for the death of hundreds people from Panama.

But the investigation result by the Chinese government is: the Panama business man who sold it killed people by changing the name and the expiration date of the product.

As a reporter covering international trade, I like this kind of report linked to above. I read the report of The New York Time several weeks ago. I think it is a story with a fatal flaw.
That is: who changed the label of the product from industrial use to pharmaceutical use?
This should be the key to the story. Only when you get the details of the whole trail can you figure out what happened. If someone changed it from the beginning, the Chinese company should no doubt take responsibility. If not, the one who renamed it is the killer.
Unfortunately I cannot find the answer from the New York Times.

There is a paragraph about it but far less than enough:

“The counterfeit glycerin passed through three trading companies on three continents, yet not one of them tested the syrup to confirm what was on the label. Along the way, a certificate falsely attesting to the purity of the shipment was repeatedly altered, eliminating the name of the manufacturer and previous owner. As a result, traders bought the syrup without knowing where it came from, or who made it. With this information, the traders might have discovered — as The Times did — that the manufacturer was not certified to make pharmaceutical ingredients.”

If the report can disclose the process of changing labels during its trip through three continents, it really exposes big problems behind international trade during this time of globalization.
That would be a fantastic story!

Instead of articulating the process of changing labels, The New York Times’ report then quickly turned to a case that happened in China last year and the big holes in China’s food and drug system which are astonishing but have nothing to do with the Panama case.
Another interesting thing: instead of reporting the results of the Chinese government’s investigation by itself, The Times uses Reuter’s news and emphasizes “China Blames Media For Food Safety Scaremongering” while Reuter’s version’s blames mislabeling for the drug deaths in Panama.

In my view, there are still a lot of questions to answer.

For example, is the trade involving the three traders just a one-time occurrence or is it more frequent? Is it a conspiracy? What about the Panama trader who sold the product? Does that firm always rename the goods or did it do this only this time? Why were there no tests on entering each of the three continents? What are these customs officials doing?

Also, the Chinese company should also take some responsibility for the death.

According to the investigation by the Chinese government, although the Chinese company did sell it as for industrial use and told the Spanish trader that, it gave the product a vague name _ TD GLICERINE _ and even changed its packing mark as GLICERINE.

It was cheating.
I am wondering how many Chinese companies are using these “tactics” when they sell goods at home and abroad.

I like the story by New York Time. It warns people of the danger behind a flawed international drug trade system; it tells Chinese government and companies they should take more responsibility while they enjoy huge export growth; it also warns the Chinese government of the importance of media and the public relations hit they will take if they don’t respond efficiently and sincerely to media!

I am gaining weight here.
It is really surprising because I stop gaining weight since high school.
Before this May, I wore trousers of size 2 and now I wear trousers of size 6. I find a tire around my waist when I sit down.
Why do I begin to gain weight after more than 10 years?
Too much American food?
No. Most of the food I have here are Chinese food I cook myself or buy from Chinatown.
Too few works?
Maybe a little bit fewer than I have in China. But I am still busy with assignments, English blog everyday and Chinese columns every week. Plus, I am working on my research project and learn to take video.
So what is the reason?
I guess it is because there is less stress on me though I have the same workload. Most of the stories I’ve done in China were sensitive, difficult, complicated and very demanding. However, the stories I am working on here are easier, softer. I am really relaxed here.
The other reason of my gaining weight could be the dessert.
We have no habit of having dessert after dinner in China but here it seems a normal thing. Having a dinner without dessert is like wearing a evening dress without wearing high-heel.
However delicious the dessert is, it really does a lot to the gaining weight of not only me but also other American women.
When I was in China, I always wonder why American women don’t stop eating dessert while they exercise aggressively to lose weight.
After I try the chocolate cake here I get the answer.
Now I run every morning and continue to eat desert. Why? I Not for losing weight but for more chocolate cakes.