Shanghaied in Beijing

Wherever I have been in the world, there are scamsters and tricksters that pry on tourists. China is no exception. Already on my first attempt to buy something at the (in)famous Silk Market, I was fooled. Like most tourists I ordered a stamp with my son’s name. The girl I negotiated with was pretty and clever and I don’t think I paid too much more than double of what I should have. But when I picked the stamp up, it was handed to me by her boss. I could see on his face that he was up to something, but I did not figure out what until I came home and my son discovered that the ink container he had given me simply was too small for the stamp…..

Another day I was walking past the Oriental Plaza in central Beijing, which seems to be a favored place for tricksters. The location is perfect; an extremely expensive shopping mall next to a not so good neighborhood. If you shop at the Plaza, you are either very rich or a dumb tourist. I was approached by two girls from a far away province that wanted to practice their English. The tricksters always seem to come from far away. We started talking and they invited me for tea at a nearby dingy old tea house. It was an interesting introduction to traditional Chinese tea drinking. I took a couple of pictures of the girls, which of course made them very nervous. One of them borrowed my camera and tried to delete them, but not even I have figured out how to do that. The bill I got for the tea I do not even want to talk about. But the girls seemed so disappointed when I did not pay it all that I almost felt ashamed….

A couple of days later I was passing the Oriental Plaza again with a friend on my way to the railway station. Again I was approached by students from a remote province, but these were art students having a showing. They did look awfully old to be students, but we let them take us to their exhibit. They showed us all the paintings they themselves had painted and urged us to buy. All the paintings were of course copies we had seen on countless other locations. Obviously the students were not students and they knew little about art. But my friend still bought some drawings and it made us wonder why they do not try to make and sell something original instead of all the counterfeits. Surely they must know that most tourists will know it is just a scam. Perhaps it is the Bolex syndrome…

The Mao Conspiracy

I am not sure why, but I have always put Chairman Mao in the same category as Stalin, Hitler and Napoleon: powerful men but all small. Perhaps is it the foolish perception that some small men make up for the lack of size with enormous ambitions instead. In addition, the three men mentioned are perhaps not famous for being the kindest men that ever lived, and we westerners have a view of Mao Zedong as a despot and a foolish tyrant rather than a visionary and perhaps someone with good intentions. Besides, Chinese men are generally smaller than north Europeans, so surely Mao was smaller than me.

I was therefore very surprised when all Chinese I asked in Beijing said that Mao was very tall. Not only was he tall, they all knew that his exact height was 183 cm (6’0”), which incidentally is my exact height. I asked everyone from taxi drivers to tour guides to random people and they all know. Just the fact that everyone knows his height to the exact centimeter is puzzling. But there is more to the story. The embalmed Mao, who is at display at the Mao Memorial Hall at Tiananmen Square in Beijing, cannot, according to everyone I asked, be the real Mao. The embalmed Mao is simply too short. So for unknown reasons, there is some kind of conspiracy in where the real Mao has been subbed out with a look alike. No one had a good explanation for why, because everyone was exceedingly proud of the fact that Mao was not a midget.

My explanation was of course that Mao was short, because I cannot see why the government would like to portray him otherwise. Unless he was too different from the common people he was supposed to represent. With a height of 183 cm, he would of course be almost a head taller than most of his contemporaries. So I set out to try to find his height. In the process, I discovered that this is a big topic on the internet, with discussion groups dedicated to the topic. Many have strong opinions on the issue, but the estimates vary significantly. Chinese contributors generally insist that he was tall, while foreigners think that he was short. Most estimates comes from looking at photographs taken of Mao with other state leaders of know height. I set out to do the same, and scanned through hundreds of pictures posted on the internet. In many of the photographs it was of course impossible to verify that the person was indeed Mao. A number of Mao impersonators have their pictures posted too, or the Mao portrayed was too young to be recognized with certainty. Most times, the picture was taken in a way that his height could not be determined. One of the most famous pictures shows Mao with Richard Nixon. In this picture, Mao seems to be at least 15 centimeters (6”) smaller than Nixon. However, he is also quite old at the time and slightly stooping.

All in all, I never could verify if Mao was as tall as most Chinese want him to be. But the fact that the Mao in the mausoleum is small, can most likely be ascribed to the fact that he was 83 years old when he died. There is also an interesting anecdote about the embalmment of Mao. The Chinese got the crystal coffin and technology from the Russians, who had of course prepared Lenin for display. But the coffin was only 175 centimeters long and thereby too short for Mao. Designing a new crystal coffin worthy of such a great leader now became a major undertaking and a huge challenge.

Finding Grace

Grace is the English name of our guide in Beijing during our trip in March 2009. She did her best to herd a flock of middle aged business men and women through the jungle of a twenty million people city and feed us interesting information about China and Beijing. Not an easy task, as even well-educated middle-classers quickly turn into a mob when they do not get what they want.

Grace is 28 years old, but seem much younger. She is always smiling and as sweet as only Chinese girls can be. She is part of the new generation of China that never has experienced the hardship of the early Chinese Communism or the Culture Revolution. She graduated from a College in Beijing with a Bachelor in Tourism in 2002 and has since worked as a guide. A few years from now, she wants to go back to school and pursue a Master in teaching Chinese.

Grace is like all other young of the global revolution, but she is also a practicing Buddhist. She upholds Chinese traditions, including the strong respect for the elders. Hence, she seem slightly more conservative than many other young Chinese who would like to adopt the Western mode of straight forward communication with less focus on Guanxi and Face. There is today a struggle between the wants of the young and the ways of the old in China.

Grace grew up with her grandmother in a hutong in central Beijing. Up until recently, it was common that children lived with and were raised by their grandparents rather than their parents. I know several Chinese in the US who sent their young children back to China to uphold this tradition. Grace and her grandmother had a 120 sqft room that did not contain much more than two beds, a table and a couple of chairs. A kitchen they shared with other families in the courtyard. Numerous bathrooms are spread out through the hutong. I had to use one of those, and it was not particularly luxurious and fresh.

In 2002, when Grace was 22 years old, they had to move out. The hutong was demolished and the area developed. Grace believes that this was because of the upcoming Olympic Games, but more likely it was due to private real estate developers exploiting the emerging Chinese capitalism. Luckily, the destruction of the hutongs have now largely stopped and a walk through the area surrounding the Bell Tower in Northern central Beijing reveals a frenzy of renovation. The central location of these hutongs make them extremely popular and today only the very rich can afford to buy a courtyard. Grace's family got a subsidy from the government to buy a 700 sqft apartment in the outskirts of Beijing, which she currently shares with her grandmother and her parents.

In a couple of months, Grace will move into a new apartment with her husband. Her husband is not a Buddhist, but Grace does not think this is a problem as she is much stronger than him. He works with IT in a Chinese bank and will hopefully not be affected by the recession. They have already gotten the official marriage papers and are hence technically married, but they will wait until after the wedding celebration to move into the new apartment. They have hired a wedding planner to organize the celebration, which will take place at the Holiday Inn. The celebration has to end by noon. An afternoon wedding, according to Chinese tradition, would mean that this is the bride's second marriage. After the wedding, the couple hopes to take a honey moon in Japan. Grace has earlier traveled briefly to Malaysia and South Korea, but like other young Chinese, she would like to see more of the world.

11th NPC at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, March 9, 2009

Wu Bangguo: "...We must draw on the achievements of all cultures, including their political achievements, but we will never simply copy the system of Western countries or introduce a system of multiple parties holding office in rotation..."

Lin Qiang: "...With the explication of the characteristics of Chinese political system, we refuted the saying by some people that China's political restructuring lags behind the economic reform and the country should learn from Western countries in the political field..."

Zhang Liansheng: "...Now we have the opportunity to see how the Western democracy runs on Internet and TV. To my fellow villagers' astonishment, they saw foreign parliament members always quarrel, and sometimes they fight in a boxing way. We all do not want to see this situation in China..."

Dai Zhongchuan on disaster relief and the Olympic Games: "...But a lot of foreign countries, even some Western countries including the United States, sometimes can not do this job very well, because they are unable to concentrate their strength, an obvious shortcoming of their political systems..."

The Needham Question

Noel Joseph Terence Montgomery Needham (1900 –1995), 李約瑟, was an extraordinary man. The book “The Man Who Loved China” by Simon Winchester is a well written biography that describes eloquently his character as well as his life’s work; the history of science in China. Needham was blessed with a very rich life, but at the same time he made me sad because he seemed to spend so much time obsessed with work he would never be able to finish. As many significant men are, he was brilliant and blind at the same time.

The most important enrichment this book gave me, was an introduction to The Needham (Grand) Question: If China made so many technical innovations and gained so much scientific knowledge so early, why did they not use the innovation and knowledge to become a technological leader? Unfortunately, the book (and Needham) did not really discuss this question much. The question is of course much broader than that, because advanced civilizations with great inventions and philosophical thought have developed and disappeared in other parts of the world also. Only in barbaric Europe, did inventions eventually seem to result in permanent change and what we call “progress”. The answer to this question is probably complex, but I am still curious as to the role of the language. The Chinese invented a typesetter early, but the written language did not allow for efficient use of the invention. Hence, knowledge could not be broadly distributed. If you speak several languages, you have also probably felt how the language shapes your identity and thoughts. A complex language also takes longer to learn, time children could spend learning other things. Today, with the use of computers, the written Chinese language may be less of a barrier for the use and spread of information and technology.

Project Modifications

OK. So Dr. Erickson thought may project was totally superior and the best he had ever seen. Maybe not, but he suggested that I narrow my project a little, so I will focus on IPR for companies involved in medical research or biotechnology. There is where my interest lies anyway. For my research in China, I would like to meet with a lawyer firm, with SIPO or similar (the government agency overseeing IPR), and an American medical or biotech company that has an organization in China or a joint venture. Send me a note if you can help.

The man who loved China

So - I have always been fascinated by China, and I still remember the report I wrote about China and Chinese history in fifth grade. I usually like history books, but this book is so far killing me. I have managed to get to page 75 but I am not sure if I can go any further. If you think the book improves after this point please (!) let me know if it is worth while to keep on fighting.