Explaining China to Americans

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Coming in to Hong Kong

My Irish Husband Tony and I recently were privileged to sail on Semester at Sea to Asia. In addition to teaching two classes of university students, I wrote a weekly blog to my fellow Americans. This is the entry about China.

Will they be able to control it?

In Michael Palin's BBC series about the Pacific Rim, Full Circle, he states that the economy of the People's Republic of China had averaged 10% growth per year for the previous ten years. That was in 1996.

Our political science professor on board Semester at Sea, Dr Wonmo Dong from Washington University in Seattle, tells us that over the decade since, the rate has stayed the same. In the past two years it has increased to 12% per year.

What happens if the Chinese government can't control this growth, I asked him. 'They will have to deal with the foreign investment coming in,' he says. 'So many foreign companies want to invest in China now. It is growing too fast.'

Last week we docked in the middle of the busiest harbour in the world, Hong Kong. Almost ten years after the British ceded control of their colony to the mainland Chinese government, it feels like an equal mix of British formality and Chinese chaos. Operated as a 'Special Administrative Region' by the Chinese, capitalism is rampant, fuelled by the Hong Kong dollar - 7.7 equal to US$1.

Hong Kong is a canyon of glass and metal skyscrapers. To emphasize the point, every night at 8 pm, the skyline produces a symphonic light show. Corporations and the government coordinate their buildings' lighting for a 12-minute extravaganza seen throughout the harbour and heard from key locations.

On our visit to the English-language South China Morning Post, the editors we met with assured us that they have felt no pressure to change their content to please their new rulers. The only evidence of control is when an edition is pulled from distribution points in Beijing, mainland China, because of sensitive stories. Many full-time reporters cover the People's Republic and the editors feel free to publish what they alone decide is important. In Hong Kong.

For two of our five days in this port, My Irish Husband Tony and I decided to cross into mainland China to see for ourselves. As a Ramada employee, he is entitled to inexpensive 'staff breaks' at any Ramada worldwide so we arranged to take a train to Guangzhou, formerly Canton, the closest of Ramada's 15 Chinese hotels. Thursday morning we packed our haversack, put on our walking shoes and took a taxi to the Kowloon station, along with Shawna, one of the students sailing with us.

Unlike our train excursions in the UK, here we needed cash for our tickets - about US$50 each, round trip, for premium class - and had to specify the exact time for our return the next day. We turned in our Hong Kong departure cards and our China entry cards, showed our special Chinese Entry Visas and walked through the yellow painted lines for immigration, then customs, then to board Coach 3, seats 31, 32 and 33. Oh look, those seats are better. Couldn't we sit there if no one... oops. No. Sit in the seat you are assigned.

Most of the other passengers were Asian, well-dressed and loaded with fancy shopping bags from Hong Kong's upscale stores, going home to Guangzhou and environs after a Western-style shopping trip. The 90-minute train ride winds through Chinese countryside, past glistening rice paddies and filthy warehouses. 'There's Wal-mart!,' Tony said. We'd seen lots of vertical five- and six-story malls in Asia, but I was surprised to see America's favourite retailer built straight up. Then I realized—retail, hell! That ten-story building was Wal-Mart's administrative offices. Well, how do you think all that stuff finds it way to America?

In the Guangzhou station there was the mirror image of our previous queuing: Past the duty-free, past the signs warning to report respiratory infections, as I slipped throat lozenges to a coughing Shawna. Then customs, immigration, show our special Chinese Entry Visas, again.

Outside, hotel courtesy desks greeted us and the hotel van whisked us to the Ramada Pearl, right on the mighty Pearl River. Modern, elegant, and a bit more upscale than the Ramada Tony works in back in the UK. From our room overlooking the river we could see more skyscrapers on Ersha Island. The porter, complete with 'Call-for-Phillip-Morris' red uniform and pillbox hat, showed us how to insert our key into the slot to get electricity, where the hotel stationery was, and how to find CNN International on the TV.

Shawna, a child of the 21st century, had tossed her laptop into her backpack and shelled out the extra 35 yuan - about US$4 - to have 24-hour broadband access. After we changed clothes in our room and checked e-mail in hers, we asked at the front desk where we should go and the concierge pointed us to the shopping district. Oh, good — more malls!

Because the staff in Guangzhou's hotels speak more English than the taxi drivers, they provide cards that say, 'Please take me to...' Our taxi let us out on Beijing Street, a pedestrianised area built over the original Guangzhou roads from as far back as the 6th century AD. You can view these thanks to a glass-enclosed exhibit sponsored by Coca Cola.

The other side of Guangzhou

After I took pictures of the unique Nike billboard and the faux-Nike shop opposite, we explored the 'Guangzhou Catering Exhibition Hall'. No sign of any catering exhibition, but we did see a middle-aged, fairly well-dressed Chinese man grabbing his female companion — wife, we assume — by the arm and twisting it. Whatever he wanted her to do, she didn't want to and put up quite a fight. The only people who seemed to notice were my feminist self, my equally shocked Irish husband, and Shawna, making mental notes for the Human Sexuality class she is taking on board our ship. Her assignment is to find examples of how women are treated in the cultures that we visit. Should we report this incident to nearby police? Would they do anything? Would they understand what we were trying to say?

Having absorbed enough cultural differences for one afternoon, we treated ourselves to dinner in the elegant Chinese restaurant back at the Ramada. The main cultural difference was that we had three to four staff waiting on us every minute. Labour is still cheap.

From the menu and the assistance of the attentive staff, we knew the offerings were authentic and I had an outstanding kung pao chicken. In lieu of his usual duck, Tony tried crispy fried goose, but Shawna went the less-risk route with chicken fried rice.

Friday we wandered through the overgrown neighbourhood outside the hotel. On the side streets we saw how some Guangzhou residents live; not Ramada standards, but working class housing. Tall apartment buildings, a different shop for every need, locals crossing streets and greeting each other. Like Manhattan's Upper West Side.

Having abandoned my practice of extensively researching every stop on a trip, we were left to the suggestions of locals, who continued to send us to malls. Because everything was so cheap, we loaded up on presents but we found few souvenirs of the 'My grandparents went to Guangzhou and all I got...' type, readily available elsewhere on our voyage. Guangzhou is a city for Western businessmen, not doting grannies.

After visiting the Coca Cola store, whose clerks had the best English, we tried to hail a taxi to take us back to the Ramada for our luggage and then on to the train station. After many empty cabs flew by, we realized we were standing too close to a staffed police car for any driver to want our business. Walking around the block worked.

The driver didn't understand tipping, despite Shawna's efforts to force extra Yuan - also 7.7 to US$1 - on him. While she and Tony went to have outdoor cigarettes, I sat in the waiting area and watched three military officers with secure metal boxes and a rifle come by. I was guarding our luggage in the safest spot in Guangzhou.

Retracing our steps through yellow painted lines to customs, then immigration, past the duty-free shop, we turned in our China departure cards and filled out new Hong Kong departure cards. We boarded a luxury double-decker train and were handed complementary bottles of still water. Shawna chatted the whole way back with the Chinese-American businessman from San Francisco next to her, gathering more info for her Human Sexuality class, I assume.

Shawna's respiratory infection had transferred to me, so our next day in Hong Kong was spent walking and sniffling through non-stop rain, eating dim sum and riding the MTR. As in the equally well-controlled Singapore subway, yellow lines on the pavement showed where to line up when you get on and where to walk when you get off. The Chinese version also has lights on the subway maps showing which doors will open. Very orderly.

Sunday, our last day, though cloudy, had enough warmth to let us truly enjoy this amazing city in full bloom. Tony and I took the tram up to the Victoria Peak, much longer and steeper than our beloved Incline back in Pittsburgh. After going on and off the tram via yellow painted lines and metal barriers and making our way through the upscale shops sprouting on the peak, we used the free internet at Starbucks-rival Pacific Coffee. Although some students reported that Google on the mainland gave restricted results, we encountered no obstacles surfing through our e-mail.

From this glass-enclosed vantage point we were able to gaze down on the booming, growing, well-controlled harbour of Hong Kong.

How many more malls, how many more people will fit into this tiny space? Or into the sprawling space of Guangzhou? How much farther up can they build? How much longer will the Chinese government be able to control its 1.3 billion shoppers?

Cloud over Hong Kong skyline

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