Empty the brain of all things random

Well folks, it's December in Shenzhen and after 4 months of being away I found myself telling mum today that it's not America that I miss right now, but my family and friends. If I could just sea freight all the people I care about into the PRC, then I'd be just fabulous here indefinetely. I also kinda miss limitless news sources at my fingertips and Crystal Light, but other than that.....

A friend of mine went to Shanghai a couple of weeks ago from Beijing on a business trip and was humbled by the fact that overt censorship was still present. She'd be watching CNN and then the TV would go all blue and silent when EU or US members of parliament/gov't would begin to talk to of the necessary opening up of China and the dreaded word, democratization.

Mum asked me today if I thought that China was going to end up being the feared nation that the US is painting it to be in the next decade or so and even though I remain largely uneducated on the matter, I would hazard to guess that no, it will not pose the threat to world hegemony that the US predicts. I say this for two reasons. Number one: While China is no doubt turning out 6 times more engineers each year compared to the US (350K vs.75K and in that 75K in the US 25K of them are foreign-born) each year which is completely worrisome, the R&D and innovation in the US is unparalled. In America it seems to me that alternative thinking and imagination is praised and even incouraged from a rather young age. Children are taught to put words to their dreams and create stories and build models. This translates, I think, to later in life men and women being great innovators. In China, creativity is not strengthened as a child. You are taught through repetition and copying other's thinking. Thus, the Chinese can become great engineers, but I don't think they are as yet great innovators. I joke that China may be one of the only places in the world where a degree in reverse engineering might actually be an option. B/c if some poor guy spends 9 years creating something groundbreaking in the US or India or wherever, I guarentee some guy sitting in a garage here can take apart said apparatus, put it back together and in three months know how to copy it exactly. I came to this rationalization while teaching middle schoolers here. I highly encourage the use of imagination and creative thought in my classes and finally, after three months, my students get it. They understand that they don't have to stand up in class and give me a response from a book they've read, that they are allowed to let their mind wander and engage the fantastic. My mother then said to me, well if 25K people are coming to America each year to obtain higher education, then they're no doubt coming into contact with great innovators and therefore will learn to become an innovator. I agree with the first part of what she said, that overseas students will be in the presence of innnovation, but I don't think it'll awaken some innate force of innovation inside themselves. I think innovation and the creative mind comes from years of development and 4 years of advanced degree study will not yield the same kind of R&D that 25 years of progressional development will. However I could be wrong; time will tell.
Point Two: Everyone and everything here is too darn disorganized and unplanned for it to be a serious threat to the world at this point. The concept of Nowism would not fly too well for a nation aiming to be a hegemon.

Here's another random observance of mine of recent. I was running the other morning, incidently falling and tearing my sweatpants and doing some serious scraping of one knee was also part of this run, and I run about the time that 500 or so women walk to work in the factories near the highway where I live. They are always very pleasant to me and smile and move aside while I run, however I noticed yesterday their apallingly messy eating habits. Roadside breakfasts are usually baozi of some sort and they're put into little plastic baggies and you eat out of the baggie so your perpetually (and i do mean perpetually) dirty hands dont screw with the sanitation of your breakfast. Well the access road along the highway that I run on has trash cans about every 75 or so meters....very nice...one for recyclables and one for reg. garbage. Well not one of these smiling polite women ever manage to get their bags into the trash. They finish off their breakfast and toss the bag on the ground, or leave it on the chest-high bushes to the right of the pavement. The same happens at lunch with bamboo chopsticks and styrofoam containers. It's a bit disheartening really, no one ever throws anything into the trash can.

On the topics of trash cans, I was talking with my tutor last week about the beggars in the city. I had heard a rumor that all the deformed people asking for money downtown were actually bussed in from far away and that all their money went to a company. John told me that this was true. You may be astonished at the commercialization of begging, but it was the same a decade ago in Jakarta while I was living there. The old women with babies who would tap the windows of vehicles at stoplights in the Jakarta suburbs were part of a large money-making scheme. The old women would rent out the babies from poorer younger women, then proceed to starve the child such that it would elicit more heartache from car passengers and thereby increase the likelihood of giving money. Well here in Shenzhen most of the beggars downtown are deformed...missing arms, legs, many appendages twisted into very unnatural positions etc. They apparently come from two regions of China and bosses will go up there, find people with physical disabilities and bring them to Shenzhen, b/c there is money to be made here. People are rich; they have a greater liklihood of making money here than in some village in the countryside in Central China. Often these bosses will further disfigure the beggars by pouring scalding water on their bodies so they will have pocked and burned skin. They are placed in about 500m increments along the 'beautiful road' that runs through the whole of downtown. I realize that some foreigners here feel very sorry for them and give them money, but you have to understand that the beggars don't get that money...it goes back to the laoban or 'boss' who lurks in the shadows. That money will just finance the bringing of more disfigured people into the city, the laoban don't care whethere these people live or die. If you all saw the scene it would become obvious to that someone works behind the scenes.....how could a man with no legs and only one arm climb up two flights of stairs to lay down at the top of a pedestrain flyover? It's really sad. Sometimes my friend Jesse will give them his baozi if he has extra. At least with food there is a greater chance that it will benefit the beggar and not the boss.

However, there is a rather interesting 'beggar' who literally resides in front of the trash can on either the north side or the south side (depending on the day of the week) of the KeXue Guan metro stop downtown. She sits in front of a trash can from morning till night eating from the trash can. Now I've seen this many other places in Shenzhen, but this women does not look like a beggar....there's not other way to say it but she's fat...therefore she eats...alot...not the mark of a starving homeless person. Every time I walk by the metro stop she is there eating, but she doesn't have a cup for money, so she's not your typical street vagabond. Well I didn't notice this, but friends of mine have....she's a fake beggar. You see, when you pass her you notice that she's only ever eating white rice and the rice is along the front panel of the rubbish bin, not actually touching anything in the garbage....she dumps her own rice into the garbage only to eat it out again herself! It was documented by a friend of mine who saw her open her bookbag and take out a container of rice, dump it in the garbage and slowly feed her and her child. I've seen men with fancy cameras snap photos of her and except for widespread recognition, I'm not entirely sure what she gets out of being the Garbage Can Woman at KeXue Guan stop.

Final odditity for today. I noticed in a class of 30 students yesterday that 21 of them were wearing glasses and the 9 that weren't were sticking their fingers in their eyes (do i know anyone like this CARLY?!) while watching the American Commercials on the overhead that i brought in for a class on Advertising. That seems like a wildly large percentage of people who cannot see, and that class isn't special, it's the norm. The glasses industry here is HUGE! Incidentally, it also seems that every single woman in this country has bangs too.

Oh wait, one more. I was in Wal-Mart two days ago and all their christmas stuff was out and they had Santa hats. I was going to buy one to wear to class this month, but all of them have these stupid blonde braids sewn onto the side. I say stupid for two reasons....did Santa have blond braided hair? and 2.....who in this country actually has natural blonde hair? The workers in the store, men and women alike were all sporting this braid-hats with their naturally black hair sticking out in all directions...ho ho ho...Merry Christmas China!