The latest New Yorker magazine contains “The Grand Tour”, an article by Evan Osnos, who joins a Chinese bus tour to see Europe through the eyes of Guide Li:
“if [the bus driver gets caught working more than 12 hours/day, audited by an automated system], the fine starts at eighty-eight hundred euros, and they take away your license! That’s the way Europe is. On the surface, it appears to rely on everyone’s self-discipline, but behind it all there are strict laws.”
“We have to get used to the fact that Europeans sometimes move slowly,” he said. When shopping in China, he went on, “we’re accustomed to three of us putting our items on the counter at the same time, and then the old lady gives change to three people without making a mistake. Europeans don’t do that.” He continued, “I’m not saying that they’re stupid. If they were, they wouldn’t have developed all this technology, which requires very subtle calculations. They just deal with math in a different way. Let them do things their way, because if we’re rushing then they’ll feel rushed, and that will put them in a bad mood, and then we’ll think that they’re discriminating against us, which is not necessarily the case.”
Li made a great show of acting out a Mediterranean life style: “Wake up slowly, brush teeth, make a cup of espresso, take in the aroma.” The crowd laughed. “With a pace like that, how can their economies keep growing? It’s impossible.” He added, “In this world, only when you have diligent, hardworking people will the nation’s economy grow.”
“The European economy is in decline,” he said bluntly. “Times have changed.”
“Can a place where workers go on strike every day grow economically? Certainly not,” he said.
[Handy, a fellow tourist,] was a sanitation specialist by training, and he couldn’t help but notice Milan’s abundant graffiti and overstuffed trash bins. As Li had explained it, “The government wants to clean, but it doesn’t have enough money.” Handy tried to be polite, but he said, “If it was like this in Shanghai, old folks would be calling us all afternoon to complain.”
He pointed out the window to the highway and said that it had taken decades for Italy to build it, because of local opposition. “If this were China, it would be done in six months! And that’s the only way to keep the economy growing.”
He mentioned a Western friend who had quit his job to go backpacking and find his calling in life. “Would our parents accept that? Of course not! They’d point a finger and say, ‘You’re a waste!’ ” he said. But, in Europe, “young people are allowed to pursue what they want to pursue.”
More: Read the article.
It’s really quite sad that even as tourists Chinese have zero freedom.
Congratulations to the Chinese, who have managed to turn democratic process, personal growth, introspection, and relaxed mornings into collective, familiar, and personal failings.
ROTFL! pray, do coach drivers in China work more than 12 hours a day? what’s the death toll? And once a good Chinese citizen buys a property, is he (or she) fabulously happy to see its value go down to 1/10 of what was paid because the local Communist Party officials fancy building a motorway just outside the garden (and maybe pocket up some bribes in the proceeding)? The use of tills, and the fact they force shops to deal with one single customer at a time, seems not to be common practice in China either…
Isn’t there an expression, towing the party line?
Tekumse, Stephen, Federico: I think that you’re reinforcing Osnos’s point that inter-cultural understanding has a ways to go.
I do not think the issues that caused my hilarity are matters of (lack of) cultural understanding: if you think you can work a coach driver for more than 12 hours a day, every day, either you are prepared for the consequences or you do lack imagination.
Similarly, if you own property, and a nontrivial amount of *your* money is locked into it, you might damn well want to protect your investment. As the good farmers of Tuscany prove, you can sell “prime” real estate to foreigners, even if the locals cannot afford it, as long as everything looks pretty. Whacking a huge motorway in the middle of the landscape might increase the overall tax revenues, but impoverish the locals, effectively forever. Most people resolve the conflict of ‘greater good vs great economic damage’ in favour of themselves, China included (if they have the political clout).
So, my impression is that, while whining about ‘improving the economy’, the Chinese middle class tourist are doing their best to become fat, lazy and decadent as we are in the west — the fact they go on holidays in Europe is the first sign!
“In addition, every Chinese member of the tour was required to put up a bond amounting to seventy-six hundred dollars—more than two years’ salary for the average worker—to prevent anyone from disappearing before the flight home.”
Looks like Chinese freedoms have a ways to go too.
Federico: The same New Yorker magazine carries an essay by Yiyun Li, the writer, who was studying English vocabulary in China in the early 1990s and an army major told him: “Here’s a fact for you Americaphiles. The moon in America is no bigger or brighter than the moon in China.”
[In case that Red Army philosophy is too subtle for you, my point is that they’ve probably figured out how to operate buses in China in a way that balances safety and efficiency in a way that is acceptable within their society; the West is not free from fatal motor vehicle accidents and we do a lot of things that are, at first glance, dumber than anything that the Chinese have done (e.g., giving thousands of 17-year-olds the keys to 7,000 lb. rollover-prone pavement-melting SUVs). I’m not sure what the Chinese do with scheduling their airline pilots, for example, but it can’t be any more conducive to fatigue-related accidents than the U.S. system (see http://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2009/05/21/to-improve-airline-safety-give-all-pilots-the-same-schedule/ ).
Another way to look at it is that China, despite the challenges of rural poverty, a national smoking habit, and crowding 1.3 billion people into a smaller space than the U.S., has a life expectancy at birth of 74.7 years (CIA Factbook). The U.S. does better, at 78.4 years, but we’ve had a lot more time to build guard rails on highways, health care infrastructure, anti-smoking billboards, etc.]
LOL: The U.S. has the highest incarceration rate in the world, more than 6X the rate of China. The freedom to post a $7600 bond and travel to Europe is not available to any of the more than 2 million Americans who are currently in prison. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_rate ).
An awesome article. You know what amazes me the most? They’re travelling across Europe, and they’re only eating in Chinese restaurants!
“… Li briefed us on breakfast. A typical Chinese breakfast consists of a rich bowl of congee (a rice porridge), a deep-fried cruller, and, perhaps, a basket of pork buns. In Europe, he warned, tactfully, ‘Throughout our trip, breakfast will rarely be more than bread, cold ham, milk, and coffee.’ The bus was silent for a moment.”
I spent six weeks in China this summer, touring with my friend who, coincidentally, is a Caltrans traffic engineer. We spoke at length, as one does while traveling, about the differences in Chinese attitudes regarding touring and transportation.
I left China concluding that not all the differences between China and the West are expressions of the thousand year traditions of Chinese culture. Much of what we take for granted in the West, mass tourism, mass transportation, and personal property are very new to China and Chinese society hasn’t yet figured out how to deal with these things. Many of the reactions to these things are transitional accomodations, e.g. the Chinese haven’t figured out bus safety yet because they haven’t had buses for that long. I have no doubt that they will figure out these things, their solutions will be different than Western solutions, and they will do this relatively quickly.
The Chinese definitely seem like an industrious people, even enjoying the aroma of coffee is kind of a waste of time. Is there anything about the Chinese we shouldn’t emulate as Americans?
We should avoid being bad tourists IMO. The Chinese rank as the third worst tourists. However, surprisingly the French are the #1 and Indians are in second.
Phil, red army propaganda aside, you are comparing apples with oranges when you mention the US vs China in a discussion which is Europe vs China. In Europe the accepted level of traffic related accidents and deaths are decided by the local population in a direct or indirect way. I have my doubt that such decision (and decisions related to where to put motorways and so on) are based on a democratic process.
China economic boom is based on the simple fact that it is still a feudal society. The rulers are smart enough to understand that some level of personal freedom and the establishment of a middle class will ultimately benefit *them*. But the rulers also have no compunction having much worse road death toll, provided it will not decrease the returns and affect them in person — and similarly for where to put motorways and so on. It is pretty easy to have a booming economy when only a minority has guaranteed legal rights.
I also noticed chinese propaganda does work.
What would any fellow from America or Europe say, if he attends that bus tour? After been time-warped from 50 years ago, to the present?
The $7600 foreign travel bond was collected on behalf of the European consulates! It’s NOT a bond required by the Chinese government to make sure that they return.
European and Japanese do NOT want Chinese refugees, they only want genuine tourists who spends money.
The $7600 bond solves two problems: (1) an economic disincentive to abscond; (2) weed out those do don’t have the income to spend.
Ride a bike much more than 20 years ago without being retired. Don’t think it’s a waste.
“..to rely on everyone’s self-discipline, but behind it all there are strict laws”
LOL, Sign posts in suburb of Budapest: (sorry for the lousy translation) “Decent folks don’t litter, for the rest – it is forbidden.”
So at last i learn I’m not alone in perpetual shock at shoppers being slow at checkout. I have literally waited behind a “queue” of only two, oh, a good ten minutes to put it at the low end, to see them walk away with mere handfuls of provisions even between them. I was watching the clock, and going nuts.
Brits seem particularly incapable of considering that they might have to ahh, retreive their wallet, or find change, or think that paying for everything on plastic is prudent or anything but ghastly annoying as they shuffle about, look suspiciously over their shoulder at everyone they obviously believe is stealing their PIN, time to time get uppity enough to demand you move back in a rush hour packed store …
Personally, i put this slow motion passive aggressive ritual down to the English high tax, high living cost, anti service mentality. And maybe a touch of class hatred, because the last government here really sold a crock. There’s a kind of reluctance going on. I’ve gone so far, in a rush, to humorously (or i hope so, i’m probably just considred a nutter. speaking out loud is generally a sin, no doubt about it) call out “you don’t have to, you know!” Well, it does sometimes amuse the heck out of the shopkeepers.
Meanwhile, a Russian pal who has known me well enough over long enough, likes to claim i am a slowcoach at everything. Not with dull chores, i assure you i’m not!
Maybe it was my pop teaching me arithmetic any time we walked into a store, i guess to keep him from getting bored, and i might be a very rare Brit who walks up and usually has the exact money ready, to wait for a surprised teller to catch up.
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about the bonds, this is not uncommon across Europe. Some countries, such as France and Italy, IIRC, also require that is guaranteed by a local national in good standing, on top of proof of the traveller’s means.
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nice post, fun article, but i want to watch the road / tour movie!
Do it “Travels With George”, Alexandra Pelosi style, and take in some big trade fairs.
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Incidentally, this is totally OT, in the past week i have been told spuriously, but repeatedly, 1. That my current British National Passport is NOT VALID as ID., dealing wiuth a Tube ticket problem 2. Nor was a nearly complete list of indentifying documents (plus Passport) i had in my hand acceptable, despite them being printed on the counter to a doctor’s reception as being acceptable.
So i guess I now have to “agent surf” to prove who i am! These were such flat, outrageous, nonsensical denials, there may have been a personal angle. Which is wierd, i usually get on with about anyone. I think there is a much more complex social divide going on here in England, because this appears quite random. Incidentally i have a fairly posh accent, bordering “midatlantic” inflection, which i’d just say was rounding my vowels because of my origins , but i don’t roll high style.