“Betterment” 7Nov2009

In spite of vestigial sayings and doctrine about the evils of capitalism, accumulating wealth is not a shameful aim in China. People are striving for “betterment” in everyway they can, not only idealizing the opportunities that will come with education (driving their child nearly mad with constant rote studying), but also idealizing the nebulous position of “businessman.” You’ve probably heard that Chinese people are remarkable at saving money and I will tell you they are scrupulously thrifty. But more than that, they apply the same approach to business as to education: the ends are far more important than the means. Cutting corners is not only acceptable, but advised if you want to get anywhere. I have railed about achievement in school here being anathematic to thinking – process impedes progress, critical thinking creates diverse, ergo wrong, answers, problem solving leads to perversity.

Well, while being smart is not thinking, business is not entrepreneurialism. Our sense about needing to start with a good idea – a niche of market need, customer base, delivery system, and some sense of customer service – is bootless. If selling means getting someone to pay you for something, nothing else matters. This translates into the fact that 90% of the crap that is put into jars or bottles, wrapped up in packaging, shipped out to stores, street carts, markets and shops is totally bogus! You can buy a bag of ‘sugar’ that looks like crystal granules, but smells like yeast and tastes like vinegar. A jar of apricot jam that smells like meat and tastes like maltomeal. How about a towel that has terry cloth on the visible side and nothing on the hidden side (besides the ink bleeding through that says “happy snoppy” and has a really poor rendition of Snoopy the dog).Try our mop that doesn’t hold water, it goes with the three brooms with falling-off handles that I have purchased since living here. And all these clothes made by “Tomy Hifingr” and “Cavin Kine” look great with a new pair of weird shaped “Adaiddas.” I’m still flummoxed by a jacket that probably was trying to be Abercrombie & Fitch but was so far from it I’ll never know. There are 100’s of millions of computers on this country not a one of which is running on a legitimate piece of software, including none at the fine university where I work. Plumbing looks like pipes, but doesn’t hold water. Electrical fixtures look like appliances, but short out, fizzle, or just burst into flames. (Most of the outlets I have seen bear the black residue of previous combustions). Restaurants serve you with always wet but rarely clean utensils that have any number of chips, cracks, and dents in them. I bought an alarm clock that only works lying down on its side so that I can’t see the time. But all these people selling crap everywhere constantly are successful because they made the sale and there is nothing else.

These are annoying examples of cutting-corners, but there are far more insidious manifestations of this in the big-business world. Appearance is fact, and fact is what you say it is. Building equals development. Factories equal industry. Industry and development equal progress. Progress equals “betterment” for China. In construction, never mind that the building design itself is catastrophically inefficient, ugly, poorly conceived, and aesthetically and functionally inappropriate for the sites, the execution of the construction is so cheap, shoddy, ramshackle, and utterly craftless that no one could have confidence in the quality or integrity of the structures. But they look like buildings or bridges or roads or hospital or schools, and China is getting better at the tune of 100’s of these concrete monstrosities per second. In industry, pay no attention to the severe liberties taken, like no cooling towers or settling ponds because that’s what rivers are for and it would impede progress to have those things and there are no ill effects, the rivers are fine. Smokestack gasses and particulates? We are very modern and have all the modern technology. We win awards for environmentalism from the government. My eyes are burning, my throat and lungs are raked raw and it looks like a brown sunset all day long, but we are a modern nation.

So what about those sayings I mentioned that reflect the previous decades of mistrust of capital wealth? Here’s a gem: When a man gets rich, he has done something bad; when a woman does bad, she gets rich.