About China blogosphere, travel, and entrepreneurship

First of all, excuse the gap — as in the gap, day-wise. Thursday evening looked like terminal illness for yours truly after a massive day’s all-in-ones: guiding people around the Planning Exhibition Hall, rectifying the Chinglish, hosting radio shows and translating files.

Onwards. Beijing is redoing quite a bit of those traffic signs. Yet in all of this sign mania, there’s a gap — between well-done signs and signs that looked like people were rushing through them. These signs are either hunong (糊弄) — as in badly done — or zixi (仔细) — as in Swiss-ish precisionism.

Why am I going into Chinese road signs for a start? Well, for a start (hate to use the same words time and again, but oh well), I’ve bumped into enough “things” (so to speak) in and around China (and in the wider world outside the PRC, too) that looked like they were — well, done with nary a second thought. At the other end of the spectrum, I’ve spotted true masterpieces that are more than deserving of coverage on the cover page (pardon the pun) of your newsmagazine — they’re that good.

Take a look, for example, at your average science book. Mom and dad left quite a bit of their science books with me at my big house in the eastern suburbs, and as a result, I’ve gotten around to browsing through them. The bit I love is how they describe things — as in things as “nice” “harmonious” as the different between cirrus and nimbus clouds — as well as less “harmonious” topics such as how nuclear bombs are being made. They describe it all in “people language” — the average guy in the street is able to pick the book up, read through it, and make sense of the whole thing. Books written in the Mao era are very much zixi things — they’re a pleasure to read because the lady or gent who wrote the book gave a something about the quality of the book. Nice pics make it like that icing on the cake.

Contrast that with hunong, which is — of course — something that looks like someone made in a hurry. Time is money, by the way (I think Marx said that first? Don’t quote me on that…), so some of us folks in China finish something that obviously looks that bit more “half-baked”. Whether that be traffic signs or Chinglish-laden announcement signs, it’s more than obvious: somebody wanted to do this quick. Maybe to get paid — quick.

My trips today through Beijing’s Subway system (sorry, I don’t have a second hobby for the moment) saw me take two snaps of the subway system. One hunong as heck and one zixi — oh heavens, platform art. I love that.

Let’s do the hunong bit. Somebody wanted to remove those signs up above the platforms. Unfortunately, the third rail’s only out of action from midnight till about 5 AM at the “latest” (”earliest” for the rest of us), so the only time some could afford to pull this stunt off (the stunt of removing signage located in the track area without risking electrocution) would be during these five hours. Sadder still, someone decided to take only bits and pieces of the signage off. Did the guy do this between his late night breaks with — we’re guessing here — Chinese chess and mantou (bread)? The result –

– kinda showed him pulling off a multitasking stunt poorly: only half the signage got removed, and that — in a very “half and half” manner. Not good.

One station up on Line 2, though, and we see those fantastic murals or wall art / platform art. Someone obviously took his or her time, did the artwork really well, and took pride in his or her work when the whole thing was assembled and complete.

In particular to Swiss people, I’d say, we are big fans of zixi people. We have plenty of those people on the ground here in Beijing. Unfortunately, we also seem to have a steady supply of hunongers.

It’s time to dump hunong and embrace zixi. China’s rising, and we want to see perfection rise as well.