I had been meaning to post a link to this story - Liu Qi on Civic Responsibility - for a while, but for some reason the 'archives' on the excellent Danwei site have been inaccessible for the past few days.
A few of my posts last week lapsed into what is known in the trade as the 'China rant'. I try not to do it too often. I try to do it with humour, rather than just invective. I try to do it with a certain self-awareness and self-mockery of my own faults and failings. I try to derive general principles that might be of use and interest to a wider audience, rather than just bitching about my 'bad' day. But, yes, from time to time, I do it. It is a vice that all foreigners here fall into. China is an awesomely baffling and irritating place in many ways, and sometimes you just have to vent.
And then, of course, we beat ourselves up with post-colonial guilt, and apologise for our intolerance, insensitivity, and 'cultural elitism'.
It's liberating, then, to be reassured once in a while that the Chinese - well, educated, middle-class Chinese, anyway - experience the same phenomenon, share exactly the same pet peeves about their fellow countrymen as we laowai, and occasionally like to indulge in a cathartic bitching about them.
Liu Qi is a Chinese newspaper columnist based here in Beijing, and this piece is his personal list of the things that really get his goat about Chinese social behaviour - his '17 hates' (the Chinese just love numbered lists).
It's a fascinating piece.
It does, I think, raise many questions about how far some of this disdain is a product of unconscious Westernization (or conscious, aspirational Westernizing) - 'vices' like spitting and queue-jumping are seen almost as often amongst white-collar workers as they are amongst unlettered peasants, and you didn't see much public criticism of such behaviour until recently (ah, the Olympics - the major driver of social change in China..... for one more glorious year!). And you could find most of these problems, or their close equivalents, even in the more advanced, industrialized nations. Liu's comments on the callous impatience of a crowd of bystanders waiting for a suicidal ledge-jumper to make his fatal leap reminded me uncomfortably that such unworthy impulses lurk within us all; and, while I'd hope that such a response would not be so widespread amongst the British public, I am quite certain that you would find it in a significant minority.
Liu's main criticism, though, the thread running through his whole article, is the quietism of the Chinese, the paralysing reluctance to make a scene about anything, to speak out in criticism, to try to get things changed. That's been a problem in China for perhaps thousands of years. China's greatest modern writer, Lu Xun, was making similar points in his essays 80 years ago.
It may be a more deep-seated and more troublesome phenomenon here in China, but again, it's not unique to this country. Similar criticisms are often levelled against the British national character - who can forget the classic Fawlty Towers episode where Bruce Boa's loud-mouthed American guest gave all of his shy, reticent English fellow-sufferers an inspiring lesson in assertiveness? That, however, was 30 years ago now; and Basil Fawlty's sensibilities were rooted in a period a couple of decades earlier than that. I think the British today are far more outspoken, assertive, willing to complain - we haven't perhaps caught up to the Americans yet, but we are getting there. If we can do it in one generation, how long will it take the Chinese?
Anyway, do please go and check out Liu Qi's article (translated into English, of course): it's a very good read.
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