The Boston Bachelor

Up next is a long-awaited article from a good college buddy of mine who’s currently residing in China. The following is his uncensored personal account (hopefully the first of an ongoing series) on living and working in China as a businessman and entrepreneur; in other words, the stuff that The Wall Street Journal and Businessweek won’t tell you. For reasons understood he asked that I not use his real name, so without further ado I present to you the adventures of “Roger Smith.”

PS: If you enjoyed this and am interested in hearing more, let us know!!

-The Boston Bachelor

Accounts of an American in China: The Knife and the Heart

By ROGER SMITH, THEBOSTONBACHELOR.COM / September 7, 2007

SHANDONG PROVINCE, CHINA – Since the recent rise of China people have been speculating as to how soon China will become the next superpower–or the reasons why China will end up going down the drain. For those Americans whose jobs have moved to China and the politicians who represent them it is always easy, and in my view, relatively fair, to blame the Chinese for some of our woes. However, looking at China from the inside brings an entirely different perspective on the opportunities and challenges that China faces.

Sometime last month I was having hot pot for lunch with some my colleagues (all of them Chinese) in a small city in Shandong province, the province that gave birth to Confucius (if you were to transpose a map of the US with a map of China, Shangdong would be roughly located in Virginia).  My coworkers were in the process of throwing the raw meat and vegetables in the boiling stew.  I say “they,” because my stomach had been complaining for hours that day and I had no intention on eating any of the chicken, pork, or tofu chops floating in the boiling pot.  It could have been the beetles and scorpions from the day before, or perhaps the stuffed dumplings that made my stomach turn and my head look constantly for the nearest restroom.  Frankly I think I just had too much to eat; authentic Chinese food, although not very attractive at first, is rather addictive once you get used to it.

Decorated with a few small red lanterns, the ceiling was strewn with pieces of colored paper.  From black and white pictures hung on the walls, people of distant places and times curiously gazed at customers as they indulged in their respective foods.  In the kitchen, workers in dark yellow uniforms toiled over cooking the food, carrying the plates, and bringing water and beers for the customers eating the spicy hot pot as grayish cigarette smoke rised slowly into the air.  The clanking of ladles and spoons on pots and woks, along with the hissing of fresh food thrown in boiling oil, wafted from the kitchen and across the large room.

In the big cities most restaurants’ labor force comes from rural areas around the provinces, and this particular restaurant teemed with them.  You can distinguish them by the way they stare at foreigners just a bit longer than the Chinese from the city do.  Men who come from the countryside also have darker skin and rougher hands, the product of an entire life toiling the land or working in construction sites.  One of these men caught my attention in particular.

He was in his 40s, short, with defined arm muscles and a weathered face.  His eyes reflected the gaze of a man who had suffered plenty of setbacks in life, and who had resigned himself to his station in the world.  What piqued my curiosity was a tattoo drawn on his otherwise clean forearms of a single Chinese character.

This character is pronounced “ren” and it is written with two radicals.  For those unfamiliar with Chinese characters, most Chinese characters are composed of several parts, and each part represents something that gives the whole character its meaning.  This particular character has two parts, one on the top and one on the bottom.  The top character represents a blade, a sword, or a knife.  In ancient texts it also meant “to grind.”  The lower radical is composed of one curved line and three dots, and represents a heart. The complete character means “to endure” or “to tolerate.”  But the closest meaning, I believe, is to bear suffering in silence, a suffering that pains your heart as if a knife had gone through it.

In Chinese literature the “ren” often refers to the common people’s necessity to tolerate suffering without protest, for in most cases protest leads to a worse fate.  Ancient Chinese history is riddled with corrupt imperial officials, wars, famines, natural disasters, and abuse of the common people by those in power.  That is why the common people used this character to refer to the necessity of tolerating pain in hope of better times.

Times have changed a lot in China, that’s for sure.  The imperial system is gone, totalitarian communism is slowly giving way to a more market-oriented socialism, and jobs are slowly raising standards of living.  However it is the common people, and more specifically, the rural people, that have to bear the burden of these changes by losing their lands, being displaced, and having to search for a better life in the cities.

Although the imperial system was technically dissolved, most of the communist bureaucracy that exists today was built from that very system.  And along with it comes the baggage of corruption, which in imperial times was always the cause for insurrection and dynastic change.  The imperial system inherently had the ability to corrupt due to the fact that officials were handpicked by the imperial court, much like how most Chinese officials today are chosen by the communist party.  This lack of accountability to the people, compounded with the opportunities to make a fortune by dubious means, have always characterized the Chinese administrative system.

In today’s China immigrants are filling the increasing demand for labor in Chinese cities. They are the ones that construct the buildings, staff the restaurants, take care of city children, plant the trees, and cut the grass in the mega cities that are growing at a dizzying pace.  All societies that have a large economic growth coupled with a shrinking labor supply are bound to have immigrants to fill the gap, and that rule can be seen at work in China.  All cities are crowded with people from the countryside who are looking for a better life.  More often than not, they do not find it and go back home, while others stay and endure the harsh life of the city as an immigrant.

Those immigrants who work in the service sector–restaurants in particular–have to endure the rudeness and bossiness the city people treat them with.  Endless times I have seen waiters and waitresses being treated in a way that would make Americans cringe.  Some foreigners, as well as some Chinese, argue that it is simply a matter of culture.  I don’t think this is the case; but if it is, it is certainly not taken as such by those receiving the treatment.

Looking at this waiter it suddenly dawned on me that he was the reason why China has come all this way.  It is because millions of people like him have been willing to endure and wait for China to grow strong so that they can share in the progress.  The communist party, despite all its shortcomings, has done an amazing job in steering the Chinese economy for the last 15 years.  Common people know that.  They are proud to see the rebuilding of their country after the turmoil of the last century.  At the same time, however, they are very unhappy when the rich flaunt their money in front of their eyes; when they are mistreated and looked down upon by their fellow Chinese; when China grows but their lives don’t seem to get better.  In fact life has been getting harsher for some who relied on the central economy to survive, as State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) have gone bankrupt and the social net has deteriorated.

This is not to say that capitalism is evil; but when a country changes its economic system dislocations are bound to happen, government officials are bound to get rich, people who worked in SOEs are bound to get fired, rural workers are bound to emigrate, huge income gaps are bound to appear, some of the poor are bound to get trampled upon, and some of the poor are bound to get better lives. Every country that has gone from communism to capitalism has experienced this to one degree or another.

How long it takes the economy to ease the pain of those that have been trampled upon, and how long people like the waiter will be willing to endure will determine whether China sinks or rises.  The party knows this, and that is why they are so reluctant to cool down the economy, or to give in to our demands and the Europeans’ demands to change their exchange rate.  There is discontent in the countryside, and there is discontent by immigrant workers in the cities.  There are thousands of revolts against corrupt officials every year.  But for the moment most common people endure and wait for their time to come.  If there is something to be admired of China’s rise it is these people, because they are the ones bearing the pain of the mistakes and successes of the government.  But if the day comes where they have endured enough and see no change with their station in life, if corruption remains rampant, if bureaucracy keeps making people’s lives miserable, if they are treated with the same disdain as before, then, I think, China will be in deep, deep trouble.

As we left the restaurant and went back into the polluted streets of the old city, my stomach pain almost forgotten, I took a last look at the waiter.  He looked at me.  I smiled.  He smiled back.  Then he busily moved on with his work.  Maybe they are willing to endure just a bit longer.

-Roger Smith