About China blogosphere, travel, and entrepreneurship

Sorry for the late post — just got in as Wednesday wounded up my time (as in timezone). There was one big thing I noticed today when we (as in the thesis team) had a reunion; out of all the folks in the team, I was the only freelancer. And I was the only one doing what I wanted to do — and getting paid for this.

See, that’s the thing. For too many Chinese folks out there (especially for those “born local, grown local”), the first thing that they want to do — is to remain “alive”. They need to earn the money. They’ll have to accept the fact that they have to go through what is considered in the West as cruel and unusual punishment to get the money. As a result, many a modern resumé (by that I mean the resumé of the average guy/lady in their 20s) can easily span pages upon pages — they give up on their present job and look for new ones faster than you shift gears in your average auto.

The Chinese, by the way, have reason to do this: they’re more “reality-based” and are less likely to spend time what I call the “ideological ivory tower”. Folks like me pursue what we want to do (regardless of the econ results; it’s a miracle that I’m paid at all to do what I do, in the eyes of the average local), but folks in the Chinese world pursue what makes their ends meet.

There’s a saying that in the mainland job world, women are used as men, and men are used as livestock. That’s probably too grotesque and graphical, but it’s — well, how can I say this — true. Keeping people in the office over weekends, forcing them into millions of meetings, and making the receptionist stay until late (because the boss is there) — these are the things that many a Westerner probably won’t really come to accept, but many a local do. They “have” to, to some extents; this is how they get paid.

Freelancing is probably not viewed with a negative predetermination; the reason why freelancing hasn’t taken off in China lie mainly in two possible reasons. First and foremost, you have to make ends meet, and you need the money to live to the end of the month. Second, the “traditional bits” in the average Chinese, plus the relative “newness” of freelancing, has meant that few people get to try this new job — or collection of jobs — or few people even have a chance to freelance.

Yours truly, by the way, doesn’t think he’s a freelancer. He thinks he’s a multi-gig guy working from 8 AM in the morning to 11 PM in the evening. Now the only thing that prevents him from being a full-time 8-to-11-er are those Spanish lessons in the morning…

But seriously, can learning a new language be considered as a detriment to productivity?

Perfection is unattainable, as they say. So why live your life attaining the impossible? Some folks agree with the question — and end up churning out “crappy” things (if you must use that word).

Twelve years in Switzerland, however, made me a near-perfectionist. My best friend in China, Kevin, has taken me to task over this, by the way; in his eyes, I’m too much of a perfectionist. Even when alone, I find myself yearning for perfectionism; I simply am the kind who cannot afford to let even a tiny scratch get on my PowerBook G4.

It’s not that China is un-perfectionist and Switzerland is near-perfectionist; those points of views simply don’t work. However, something disturbing from the PRC come in the form of two words: hun (混) and hunong (糊弄), which all have less-than-perfectionist connotations. (They all pretty much mean to “rush through” things so that perfectionism is given little chance — if any.)

There’s a famous bit, by the way, regarding the hun bit in university:

What do you want to do when you’re in university?
Hun my way through.
And after that?
Keep on hunning.

Its hunong brethren, by the way, is all too familiar to yours truly. When I got 63% in my maths in 7th grade, mom and dad gave total vent to David Feng’s hunong practises in maths. They were of the view that I hunonged — or “rushed through” — maths (certainly without the bit of attention I would need to give in order to finish maths with flying colors).

Folks who come to China may be a bit surprised by the more-than-too-often appearances of hunonged things. All too often, road signs are banged into trucks and not replaced for ages; buildings that look they’ve been used for ten years when they only opened last year; and Beijing Subway Line 5 trains with bits and pieces of the purple livery already intertwined with holes and “eaten away bits and bobs”.

To many a Beijinger, some things are still a bit on the new side — but the good news as we close out this week’s Mind the Gap is that, to more and more people in the capital, perfectionism is become more and more familiar. We’re seeing better road signs, easier-to-read subway maps, and world-class quality airport terminals. Perfectionism is settling in here in Beijing — it may be a bit far from Swiss standards, but the gap is closing fast.

Those fine thin lines. Telling us where to wait while the guy in front gets served. Telling you what not to do lest you risk undesired consequences. Fine thin lines are part of everyday life in both the West and in China — and a quick comparison between the two is always something of interest.

The West: A Line is Always a Line

In the West, a line is always a line. In particular, the Swiss have taken it to perfected extremes; the Swiss are amongst the most law-abiding people I’ve ever seen. The average Swiss (by that I mean someone in his or her 30s or older) obeys all rules, never honks when not allowed to do so, waits in line, and pays his or her taxes on time. The Law is seen as something that is always present, always in force, and never to be toyed around with.

In probably what is the most extreme example I’ve experienced, I sent a letter to the US (this was back in 1999) with just CHF 1.40 of stamps (they needed CNY 1.60). The letter was forwarded to the US, but I got a reminder (a kind one at that) from the Post Office that I needed to stick in a CHF 0.20 stamp to repay the bits I didn’t pay before.

CHF 0.20 isn’t much — it’ll only get you ketchup at the local McDonald’s. Yet there I was, obediently sticking in a CHF 0.20 stamp — and sending the reminder back to the Post Office.

China: The Line is a Line, But…

In China, a line is a line, but — you see, I use the word but. The “but” factor is big in China. If there’s an exception, that exception will nearly always be used.

China does have a Constitution, which is regularly (but also healthily) updated, and its collection of laws is impressive, to say the least. Yet those fine thin lines are less visible to a Chinese. As a result, you get the “grey factor”: violations that aren’t grave, but are nonetheless troublesome — as they’re illegal. Did that taxi driver stop on (not in front of) a pedestrian crossing? The lady walks across the street, undeterred; nobody complains.

Yet the taxi driver did make a mistake. It’s just that it’s not too big. Nobody really notices. And that’s the odd thing in China: unless something is really big, nobody really cares.

Cuntrasts

I’m using the Rhaeto-Rumansh word for “contrasts” because of what you’re about to see below. You’d expect relatively more chaotic China to be a hotbed of flagrant violations of this or that rule or law. In fact, quite a number of people are keeping bus lanes the way they are — for buses only. A CNY 200 fine might be the deterrence here, but increasingly, more and more Chinese drivers are of the opinion that the traffic code is no longer written on toilet paper, and so are leaving the lanes for buses to use. (A few “special cars”, though — mainly those with folks “in power” — still dot the lanes from time to time…)

Something we’d like to see more: bus lanes that actually serve their real purpose…

Compare this with what seems to be shoufa Switzerland (shoufa (守法) being Chinese for “law-abiding” — I had to get the S’s right).

The Swiss… crossing the line, too…

You see that Beemer obviously flirting with that “verboten” (forbidden) hard shoulder. This is rare in Switzerland, where even littering can get you yelled at. Yet when I was in Switzerland late last year, I found a German car speeding past me at what must have been 170 km/h.

Which reminds us that even in a supposedly all-legal society, we still have those people not playing by the rules…

We’ll get back to the “regular” Mind the Gap articles next Wednesday (I can hear the moans, I know…), but this Wednesday, I’d like to remain a traveller, and get local… or, eh, domestic, rather. I recently (well, actually, just today) went on a trip to the “other” metropolis in the making — Tianjin, about 100 kilometers southeast of Beijing.

I tell you, ladies and gents, there’s quite a big gap between internationalized Beijing and still-internationalizing Tianjin. If you thought that Beijing was Western Capital-ist already (and nearby Tianjin, itself just a hundred magnetic kilometers away from the capital, is just as Westernized), well…

The first thing I noticed was that Tianjin was getting more and more — American. Those of you given to zipping away on your Interstate freeways probably recognize the font right away. The CBDOK, so Tianjin must be a city. And how do you define cities? At the kiddie level, a city must have “tall buildings”. The more, the merrier.

Here’s how the capital turns out in terms of stratospheric structures:

Here’s the Tianjin variant: OK — remember, when I first visited Tianjin back in May 2004, I saw a misty, somewhat spooky, and a little broken-down city back then. Just about a hundred miles from the capital, and I see that kind of stuff — you know, somehow, it makes me quite frown-ish. I was thinking, hey, this is Tianjin: it’s supposed to build stuff just as good as Beijing. They’re both municipalities. They’ve got the land. Tianjin’s even got the sea right next to it. Tianjin has to do better than that!Tianjin did do better — cranes in Tianjin are about to surpass those in the capital in terms of the sheer quantity.

Ah, but Beijing has the central part of the CBD still — unbuilt. Want to play catch-up, Tianjin? Beijing’s still thinking… of building better, and bigger, buildings…

And yes, at that, more and more jams…

The Subway

Having being stuck in horrible jams since Time Immortal, yours truly is now a devoted subway convert (and that’s the case more and more with Mozart in the subway these days — or did they remove it?).

The first thing I notice was just how similar Tianjin subway stations look to the Beijing counterparts. All cubes. The Tianjin one is, in fact, a glass cube through and through (given that, did Beijing play catch-up when it opened its “glass cube” entrance at Dongsishitiao recently?).

Meantime, the Beijing variant is still cube-ish, but not all glass: Once you’re inside, however, Tianjin seems to lose out. Here’s the standard set by your big bro — the nation’s capital: Tianjin’s reduced to just about this: I say reduced because two things were massively reduced: peace and quiet (they kept on playing some really annoying cartoons; when Tom and Jerry debuted on Line 5 in Beijing some time ago, they at least were a bit more quiet), and the platform screen doors (it’s only half and half — I have a tendency to absolutely abhor “half and half” things).Copied Names

Tianjin should be sued whole.

Either that, or I’m seeing Beijing names in Tianjin itself. Take, for example, Fuxingmen Subway Station. Both of these stations are on Line 1 in both cities!

Beijing’s variant is this:

In Beijing, Fuxingmen is an underground-only matter. It’s old, it’s got a central platform, it’s a bit dark at times, but it’s an interchange for Lines 1 and 2.The Tianjin version of Fuxingmen station looks like this:

Believe it or not, it’s above ground, new, looks like a Beijing Subway Batong Line station, and is — new (I think I just said “new” two seconds ago). And nope, no interchange facilities here.Scarier is the fact that you are reminded that this is a blatant rip-off of the Beijing Subway, station name wise, by the station signage:

OK — now out of the Subway, and back on the roads. It seems like the capital has indoctrinated the Heavenly Ford (that’s what “tianjin” (天津) really means in Chinese): we have Yuquan Road, too: Traffic LightsHaving being puzzled by Tianjin through and through (the roads were the worst: virtually nothing lies exactly due north, east, south, west, and stuff like that, unlike the capital’s grid), I looked for my escape outside this metropolitan madhouse.

That’s where the traffic lights got me. They’ve a “combo” traffic light system where they have only one centralized traffic light — but it’s one where the arrow changes colors. If you don’t look and are used to seeing the green in the rightmost part of the traffic light, you’re in big trouble:

At the end of the day, I made it out of Tianjin alive. When I saw the Beijing lights again, I knew that I had survived to live to another day in one piece…

When it comes to dealing with those in power in China or in the West, it can be a real… nightmare, if you’re not ready for it.

In the West, most of us assume or have come to terms that your boss is just about as equal as you are (although he or she still holds a slim yet commandeering lead over you). If your boss messed something up, he or she is expected to own up and say that it was a bad or stupid move. In China, the boss is just about always right — well, sort of. Criticism of a boss at just about any level is risky business: at best, you get stared at; at worst — wait, was that a pink slip — your pink slip?

Authority is more pronounced at the level of those in power — in public office. Having met the person who is supposedly there to nix all instances of Chinglish (to the tune of “Love road is the responsibility of everyone”) just today, I felt that it was real hard to keep an air of equality during our hour-plus-long conversation. To me, the incoming visitor, the lingdao (领导) or head wasn’t exactly un-accommodating (I loved the tea, by the way), but he had his agenda (of course I can’t blame him — do realize that the guy has a job on his hands). But can you say exactly equal treatment — every inch of it? Did I not sense an aura of “I know my bit, I’m just telling you” — that was just a tad more weighty on his end — and that I felt?

Authority sometimes falls flat on its face — of Chinglish signs that some guy at the top failed to correct…
Contrast that with Switzerland, where urban legends tell of the average man in the street approaching a Federal councillor or congressperson in a tram (or “streetcar”, if you must…) and telling him how Bern should be run. Or the case of a Federal official surfing the Internet — “just like that”, like the average Swiss citizen, of which I was a witness to. Or, better still, a meeting with the head of Macintosh Users Switzerland, where we were given total equal treatment. MUS is about 1,500 in headcount; BeiMac just managed to sneak over 600. Yet there we were, on totally equal terms; the scene, “old man versus young guy”, a scene where in China the “old guy” is supposed to “indoctrinate” the “young guy”, was one of complete equality.

Authority is a tacky issue. Yours truly prefers a very Swiss version, especially in the BeiMac user group which he runs: a semi-unwritten rule has it that 50 members (already!) can form a recall and put that to vote. If the President has to go, well, so be it. The President is always held accountable for big boo-boos, and he dresses just like any other guy in ordinary meetings.

Spot the President. No, seriously. Turns out he’s just another ordinary guy in the pack…
It’s not that only Swiss citizens in China can afford to get more “human-ish” as in more like the average man in the street; nope, there was a clearly well-reported case where even the former Mayor of Beijing, Wang Qishan, got a bit more “Swiss” (so to speak) than the average capital-ist expected. Word has it that Wang actually apologized for some policy botch-up (which one I forgot) over the airwaves, on radio. The average man in the street’s response in the street: What a nice mayor, saying stuff near and dear to many a citizen’s heart.

See, sometimes it pays to be human — even if you’ve all the “power joysticks” (so to speak) within your reach.

Before Swissair collapsed in 2001, one of its most well-known slogans was Time is everything. The Swiss continue to “brainwash” the Chinese as the nation of watches. To me as a Swiss citizen, time plays an extremely important role: persons near and dear to me know the effort I put just to arrive ontime.

To the Swiss, timing is crucial. The Swiss have, indeed, invented a new way of asking the time: “Wie spät isch es?”, or “How late is it?”, is heard much more often than “Do you have the time”? Swiss Federal Railways and Mondaine have come out with a very Swiss clock: the second hand stops for a full second at the twelve o’clock marker before the minute hand moves.

One of the most famous “Swiss timing moments” can be seen at Zurich Main Station. Before the big timetable shakeup in the mid-2000s, there was absolutely always a train at 17:07 bound for south Switzerland on Track 9. The announcement was always made at around 17:06:30 (in two languages no less — German and Italian), and the whistle always blew without fail when the minute hand moved to seven minutes past the hour. Within 15 seconds, the doors would be locked and the train would have left Zurich Main Station.

Were it not for the fact that I hold not just the passport of the Swiss Confederation, but have been literally indoctrinated (time-wise) to be prompt for the best part of 12 years, I would have never learned to stick to a schedule. The Swiss view timing as absolutely crucial — to the extent that the renqing wei’er, or human-ish factor (人情味儿 in Chinese), can sometimes get lost. Recently, though, in part to reduce traffic accidents, the Swiss traffic authorities have come out with the new slogan: Better late for a few minutes than an accident!

And this, indeed, is the sticking point — traffic. While the underground jaguar (that’s the Beijing Subway) runs without a hitch (with Mozart no less — or as that used to be the case), the rest of us, stuck on ground level, are used to seeing more and more of this:

It got to the extent that I, quite literally, brainwashed a Chinese friend (who lived in the US for quite a while) to nix a deal with an incoming guest. The incoming guest wasn’t late by 30 seconds; nope, the guy was late for a full 30 minutes.

For Swiss people, they’re pretty much used to ontime trains, ontime appointments and even ontime trams (I mention this because to stick to a schedule, some Zürich trams will actually slam the doors shut on people rushing to the tram because they’re about a second late). They’re like that because (like me) they’ve planned a whole day out, in order. For the Chinese, though, nothing’s really as well planned as things are in Zürich (I’ve had personal experience in this!), so they often have the tendency to “run late” and are less offended when one delay drags everything else back. Personally, I prefer that everyone arrive ontime (I guess I am Swiss enough to even SMS my girlfriend stuff like “We will meet in 30 minutes; let’s make it ontime today!”), but in the case of delays, I’ve got some “extra time” to let things run a tad late and still make it ontime for the next appointment.

Timing in China is a mad mix. Big corporate bosses, known (fearfully) as the laozongs (老总), don’t give each other hell for being about 15 minutes late. But if a fellow employee comes in just about a minute late, the laozongs can (at times; I’ve heard about this) let rip at will. There goes that extra yuan that would have belonged to the innocent employee if he or she arrived on time.

So how do you find your way around this? Believe it or not (I tried, it worked), the weapon is by SMS text message. Remind people that traffic will be more than ferocious. Remind fellow microphone maniacs that the KTV fiesta is tonight. They will know — and they’ll turn up on time. The last BeiMac meeting and the KTV fest before that started ontime — thanks to good communications by SMS. The point here is to send the SMS as a kind reminder — use language like “Let’s get together ontime” instead of “You must arrive at 15:00!”, so that they’ll want to arrive ontime.

It’s not that the Chinese don’t want to come on time — believe me, they do — but in a place where a thousand new cars hit the road every day… you know, sometimes the math doesn’t really work out.

(Yet. That is, until Beijing is home to 561 kilometers of subway.)

(Hey, can we wait?)

Queues. They’re just about everywhere in China. (No wonder the folks who made this nation in its current form in 1949 deliberately chose People’s Republic as the name of the state. It kind of makes sense, when you take a look at the whole thing.)

Queues are part of everyday life here in Beijing. It used to get really unruly. However, even in this day and age of the “Line Up on the 11th” program (where the 11th day of every month is “Line Up Day” — this program was announced in time for the Olympics, to make Beijing look more “genteel”), we can still have folks not queueing up with the rest of the pack. It’s bad enough in the human world. It’s worse in the auto world, where scenes like these are more frequent than ET sightings:

And remember, we’re supposed to host a nice, harmonious Olympics this summer! So having that in mind, here’s my bit on helping Beijing line up even better — and telling the outside world the Gap, queue-wise.

Queuing at the Doors

Be they the subway doors or the lift doors, the trouble with queues in front of doors is that all too often, locals rush to the dead center of the doors. In the subway system, they’ve kind of struck home the point that you wait at the two corners, and you let passengers off the train first. The bus system has an even better queue system: queue for your door (which is one-way, both for passengers leaving and entering the bus; you enter or leave through a different door).

The lift system is the one that can get some people more than annoyed. It’s not rare to see people wait right in front of the doors, only to see that the lift is overloaded — and that the cables are about to snap any attosecond. Unfortunately, at the same time, folks have to leave at the first floor — and you being right in the middle of the mess doesn’t make the whole thing a whole lot better!

There’s got to be a more logic-related “bit” to the whole queueing business, too. Isn’t it more logical to wait in line, let those off first, and then board the train or lift? It’s efficient. It’s logical. And, of course, much more genteel.

And Then There’s Those Who Play Foul

I haven’t seen this in front of my eyes yet, but if what I’ve read isn’t — you know, fake, there apparently exist people who will actually mix into queues and get your railway tickets faster if you give these people some money. Think about this — this is like buying yourself into the queue! To many a Westerner, it’s simply not on; yet the sheer size of the queue kind of lets them off guard and just hope they’d get their train tickets faster.

More foul behavior can be seen in Beijing’s streets. When lanes merge (or when ordinary cars are about to leave a dedicated bus lane), what you see is sheer dis-harmony as cars cram into each other — quite literally. It takes people ages to get from A to B — probably because the guy driving the van is at odds with the taxi driver, and they’re letting it out on the streets. At the end of the day, everyone is a loser. They really should just let each other get along better.

The Natural Queues

Hong Kong is probably one of the best places I’ve been to — queue-wise. You queue for absolutely every last thing — paying at the cashier, immigration, the pastry, MTR tickets, just about everything. Queuing is natural — nobody gets away from it, and everyone’s happy with it.

Hong Kong is pretty much close to the way things are done in the Western world. No Swiss, for example, would dare not queue in front of the railway station. And where Hong Kong has the queues “made artificially” (by erecting barriers), there are considerably less barriers in Switzerland. Jumping queues is a firm no-no to many a Westerner.

There’s a cultural aspect behind this, too.

What Queues Mean

Queues aren’t just displays of lines of people lining up in order. Queues test your patience (naturally), but it also tells people if you can fit into a system — if you’re willing to play by the rules. Play along, and you’ll go far.

Don’t play along — OK, once, they’ll probably let you off the hook. Twice — and it gets serious. There’s probably no chance for a third queue-skipping; to many, it’s just morally wrong. Of course, every society will have people that will ram in their wheels into an orderly queue. And to those who break the laws — well, what can we say? They just won’t expect anything good at the end of the day.

Because the good things in life belong to those who play nice. And play by the rules.

By queueing — for a start.

CNReviews Mind the Gap Wednesday focuses on the gap — or difference — between China and the West, in the technology, culture and business worlds, as well as other places where there is a large gap.

Take your average train station — Beijing Subway or Zurich Main Station. You see two very different systems at work…

• Beijing Subway: Someone has to stand (stand guard?) next to the machines where you touch in your subway transport card. Nobody is spared; if someone tries to break the rules, a very loud “Ay, ay, ay!” is uttered and the offender immediately isolated. If the going gets tough, more subway personnel or even the police is called in.

• Zurich Main Station: The Swiss trust you to either validate your multi-passes or to buy a ticket. Spot checks are rare, but they are not easily dodged: the inspectors sometimes are not in uniform and arrive unannounced, catching some folks unawares. Relax — you did buy yourself a train ticket, right?

From things as basic or as down-to-earth as checking your train tickets, we see the difference between the Chinese and Western worlds: the trust factor.

It’s not that in China, no-one trusts no-one; nope, that would be a national disaster. But those who try to spot tiny holes in the legal system or trust system often get their way, and if there is a way to “play dirty”, some do. It’s not that the Swiss never “play dirty”, either; but there are more folks in China who choose the “easy way” out. Unfortunately, not all “easy ways out” are necessarily “clean ways out”. An example that I’ve been through: some other Mac site in China helps me get the word out about a BeiMac meeting. When I’m really in need, though, I request them — kindly — to help me out, and they get tough, going, “Who the heck are you? Why should I help?”. In China, to make sure that your deal is indeed sealed, you need a jiandu or supervision factor — to make sure you get to sleep at the end of the day. That’s, to some extents, the subway lady checking if you’ve touched in at the stations.

China: Come on, come on, show us the ticket. Trust? Hmm…

The Swiss aren’t exactly the opposite — you can’t say that there are no liars or folks who take the “easy way out” in Switzerland. But the Swiss (the majority of the Swiss, at least) do believe that you have to be responsible for what you do — and that playing foul, or violating the law, is not a good idea. Try it; throw even a napkin around, and more often than not, the Swiss will express disapproval — instant disapproval at times. The Swiss believe in the law more than the Chinese do (it shows!), and if a Swiss agrees to something, it’s a done deal, no doubts about it. There’s less worries in the West; not a lot of effort is put into the jiandu-ing or supervising because most people trust each other.

Switzerland: We trust you, but if you play foul, you’ll be fined.

From things as basic as checking your tickets at train stations, we see the differences between trust in the Chinese world and trust in the Western world (with Switzerland as an example). The concept of trust is catching on in China, though, so for those in China for the long term — bluer biz skies are in the forecast…