TBV wrote:
Storm:
China and Taiwan are very interesting indeed and it's a credit to you that you're trying to understand them. As someone who's traveled there many times over the past 30 years, let me add a few points:
1) A single family home is rarer than hen's teeth in Asia, especially so in China. So, virtually all homes there strike Americans as being "centrally planned apartment buildings." Truth is, even where there is far less central planning (like in Taiwan or Korea) homes are built more or less the same way.
2) You are not the first to notice the social differences between peasant migrants to urban centers and native urbanites. This is fodder for much discussion and humor in China. However, former peasants have usually not cashed in on the sale of "their land" because it was never theirs to sell. Farmland in China has been collectively owned either directly by the state or by communes. Many communes have invested in factories, or allowed members to lease their share of land to neighbors, or they've imported migrant laborers from poorer provinces to actually do the farming. This has enabled many former peasants to seek their fortune in the big city, as urban workers or small-scale entrepreneurs, but not as Beverly Hillbilly style tycoons. In Taiwan, on the other hand, where farmland was owned by the farmers, many have cashed in big time. In China, those unlucky to have farmed on state land can fare far worse if local officials choose to redevelop.
3) If you think air pollution in Beijing is bad now, you should have been there six or seven years ago (not to mention Taipei or Kaohsiung in the early 80's.**) The government has actually done wonders shutting down old factories and power plants in the Beijing area, but the explosion of the car culture has cut into many of the visible gains. To be honest, many parts of China are overcast to begin with. Even worse, in the spring, the northeast is hit with the dreaded yellow sand dust storms that travel from Mongolia all the way to central South Korea. So, like in LA, air quality is bad, but some of the causes are "natural." [**Wiping one's nose in Taipei back then would get you a handkerchief full of soot!!]
4) The use of regulatory schemes to leverage political power and encourage "donations" to officeholders is well known. In China, the politically connected gain access to favors via what is called the "back door", through which they and their "outside money" or "wai kwai" reach the decision makers. Here, the process of exchanging political contributions for favors is currently known as "granting waivers."
5) There is no one, "real China." The Chinese middle class is every bit as real as the rest of the country. Last year, the government's National Bureau of Statistics reported that 25% of the population was middle class. That's close to 325 million. Their footprint is no Potemkin village mirage, since a "big city" experience can be found all over China, from Lanzhou, Chongqing and Wulumuqi in the west to Xiamen, Dalian and Shenzhen in the east. Are there stark differences between locales? Sure. Just as there are between Rodeo Drive and South Central LA.
6) The proximity of big development projects to old neighborhoods is typical of China, but come back in a year or two and those old neighborhoods will be gone. The process is especially far along in Beijing where the traditional hutong neighborhoods with four-sided walled compounds are an endangered species. The outcry was such that the government built phony old-style developments, complete with fiber optic infrastructure. Two year's ago, we visited a store in a city in the far west. When we returned one week later to shop some more, the store and the entire city block had been emptied and cordoned off for demolition. The US hasn't been able to match that since the days of New York's Robert Moses (or pre-2008 Las Vegas.).
7) People displaced by urban renewal are usually given new apartments in the suburbs at discounted prices. This is common because home ownership does not involve ownership of the land. It's also common for apartment blocks to get knocked down every 20 years or so, though with the rise of market-rate condo projects it may become too expensive to continue doing that.
BTW: The "real China" street scene in Shanghai shown above reminds me of a back street near the Xujiahui area of Shanghai (an upscale shopping district.) We could get free breakfast every day in our hotel, but we never ate it. Instead, we'd go down the street to get steamed buns and Chinese fried donuts from the corner stand. Yummy. Stuff like that is more common in Shanghai than Beijing where traditional morning street vendors have been driven from the main streets. I hope that such scenes are not supposed to elicit a negative reaction. If so, then there's no point in visiting the famous Shihlin night market in Taiwan, or the massive Jukdo Market in Pohang South Korea, or Maunakea Market in Honolulu, or the Temple Street Market in Hong Kong. Crowded street markets are a delight to Asians of all backgrounds, and much sought after.
TBV,
I truly hope I didn't offend with some of my descriptions of China. I'm a tourist that doesn't speak the language, although my wife is native Taiwanese who translates very well for me, and allows me to see parts of China and Taiwan that most foreigners might miss.
I have to agree with you about the night markets and food in particular. I hope you didn't think I was denigrating the real China vs. the New China. Personally, I like the real China (and Taipei night markets as well) much more than the fake western malls and department stores that have popped up in their place. When we were in Taipei I could go to the street vendors and get an awesome breakfast of scallion pancakes with egg, Tofu-wah (or Doh-wah as the Taiwanese call it), and rice milk for under $100 NTD which is the equivalent of about $3 USD. This was way better tasting and healthier for me than anything I could find at McDonalds or some other western restaurant.
What I find offensive is that China is aggressively bulldozing the real China to make it more like America. Sooner or later China will be completely strip malls with all the western stores and a good part of what makes it unique will be gone.
I have to say that I found a distinct difference between Taiwan and China that probably didn't come across in my post. Regarding pollution, I think Taiwan is much cleaner now. They have the problem of millions of motorized scooters that pollute the air, but they don't have the industrial pollution that China has, or the car pollution to the extent that China does. Also, in general, I found that the Taiwanese people were cleaner than Chinese in the sense that they had more manners (less smoking in public places like hotels and restaurants) and were more courteous in general.
The "new China" pic I posted is from Shanghai, the financial district, as you mentioned. The "real China" pic I posted is actually from Xi'an near the Muslim district. It is truly a unique place. I wish I would have taken pictures of the hotel we came from, because it was really unique how you could be on what looked like western streets with cars and traffic lights one minute, and go down an alley and instantly be in a city from 1000 years ago the next minute. Unfortunately I mostly took pictures of temples and other historical monuments and artifacts.
I found it truly remarkable that in Xi'an was also where we saw the most construction on new apartment buildings. In one case they were actually building 2 new apartment buildings within a few hundred meters of a coal burning power plant. You literally would have smokestacks billowing smoke right outside your window. Would anyone willingly live in such a place?
"I came here for financial advice, but I've ended up with a bunch of shave soaps and apparently am about to start eating sardines. Not that I'm complaining, of course." -ZedThou
