蚁族 (Ant Tribe) is a term coined by the authors to refer to the masses of young university graduates from the provinces that struggle to survive in the Chinese big cities, living in cramped “Ant nests” in the outskirts, and taking unstable and underpaid jobs that are often not related to their studies.

This social group has sometimes caught international attention, especially during the 2009 crisis, when many papers sent their correspondents to interview jobless students, and pundits even saw there the seeds of a new Tiananmen. But it is Beijing Uni doctorate Lian Si who directed in 2008/09 the first comprehensive study, and “Ant Tribe” is a collection of some of his most interesting results, repackaged for the big public.

I have quite strong opinions on this book that I want to write about. In particular these opinions are two, and they are opposite, so I will divide the review in two parts: First Sociology, then the Chinese characteristics.

1- Sociology: A great piece of pop science

For any non-specialist [1] interested in Chinese social problems, this book does a great job of explaining the phenomenon of the Ant Tribes. Lian Si is a talented researcher, able to push an original idea through the minefield of Chinese academia, and to motivate a team of 15 odd postgrads of different disciplines to work for him for free, performing an impressive research effort spanning various cities.

The book has two clearly differentiated parts. The first chapter is the scientific one, where Lian Si presents and analyzes the main data obtained in the visits to the Ant Nests. Although it is only a summarized version of his study, it goes quite deep into details, including the internet surfing habits or even stats on how much sex the Ants actually have (if you need to know, the answer is not enough!)

That first part is conveniently brief and light, and starting in Chapter 2 “Tales of the Ant Tribe” the book goes on to tell the life of a few selected Ants, including some touching anecdotes. The next chapters follow in the same spirit, telling the adventures of the team during the research and explaining the backstage process of the book. I suspect it is these chapters that are making the book so popular among Chinese post-80s, although it hardly contains anything that students here don’t know.

The anecdotes included are relatively tame, and the impression we get is that it is indeed a vulnerable group that we should watch, but it is still better off than the migrant workers or the miners. Most of the students live in relatively OK apartments and have jobs, some even have a room of their own. The only slightly scary anecdote is the one about thugs regularly asking for the “water fee” in Tangjialing, and beating anyone who refuses to pay 10 RMB. Lian even shows some pictures of the receipts issued by those thugs, which, believe you me, come with cute little pictures of the Fuwas and of Mickey Mouse!

The weak point here is that all the stories are taken from the Beijing “Ant Nests” like Xiaoyuehe and Tangjialing, in spite of the prologue announcing research in other major cities. From what I have seen, this phenomenon is not really restricted to the Nests, and in Shanghai there are Ants living in crammed apartments and old houses all over the place, like my old neighbours in Beijing Road. As a Shanghai resident, I was disappointed that the book didn’t cover those Ants.

The problem of the Graduate Students

The book gives more comprehensive explanations for the origin of the Ants problem, but a main point seems to be the state policy of popularizing higher education.  This 扩招 process started in 1998 and it pushed the proportion of university graduates from an exclusive minority to 21% in just a few years. The final objective is set at 40% , taken from statistics of some developed countries.

Ant Tribe mostly sticks to the field of sociology, and I missed some wider conclusions from a political and economic perspective. It seems clear that at the root there is an economic problem: a country selling cheap labour and imitation electronics will never need 40% of higher graduates in its work force. Unless China manages to move its products one step up the ladder and develop some international creative companies, the problem of the Ants can only get worse in the years to come.

In fact, many in the West may be familiar with this problem because in its source it is not unique to China: a similar phenomenon of university graduates exceeding demand happens in Western countries, where history graduates end up working as office receptionists. The main difference between the Chinese and Western situation is due to cultural factors, related to traditional family values and the immense prestige traditionally attached in China to university studies, especially in the less developed countryside where most of the Ants come from.

In this respect, some anecdotes in the book are telling, like the guy who got highest marks in his hometown and gave lots of face to his parents by going to Uni in Beijing, only to find that 5 years later his small brother is thriving with business back home and he is stuck with low-paying menial jobs: how can he have face to go back to his hometown?

A man has face like a tree has a bark, the old phrase goes, and indeed these people don’t want to live without honour. I can only admire the pride and determination of the young village Chinese who go through the harsh competitive system of Chinese education, and still find energies afterwards to continue the struggle in the “Ants Nests”. I can’t avoid comparing with many in my own country who would just happily go back to live on their parents and enjoy a life of beach and clubbing.

Next time I hear a China expert ramble about the spoilt post-80s generation I will point him to this book for some seriously needed clue.

2- The Chinese characteristics

I leave this part for the end because I liked the book and I didn’t want to pollute the review with the same old political discussion. But a review cannot be complete without mentioning this point that Western media have ignored.

Brave and determined as Lian Si sounds, from very early on he has counted with the support of the Beijing Political Committee and the central organs of the party, which explain why he is getting so much coverage in official media, or why he was was even granted authorization in the first place to publish on this thorny subject. A large part of Ant Tribe’s success in China is unquestionably due to this support.

What really bothers me here is not the support of the party, but the absurdly smug stance that Lian adopts from the beginning. In fact, a single phrase in the prologue spoilt the book for me. When he was looking for initial funding for his research, some  colleagues suggested that Lian apply for some of the wealthy Western programs, but he rejected them because it was “very clear for him that foreign funds have ulterior motives”. This phrase echoes the classic CCP line applied to all democracy movements, “别有用心”, and speaks clearly of how comfy Lian is with the establishment.

To be completely fair, I agree with Lian that many of the Western funds are given as much for the political content of the research as for its intrinsically  scientific value. But what I find inacceptable is that he so proudly declares his independence from foreign funding, only to openly show its complete subservience to party interests. Is admirable to be independent, Lian Si, but this only works when you are independent from both sides.

Indeed, the shadow of the party is heavy along the book. All anecdotes are devoid of any disharmonious content, the Ants have no political opinions, and there is no serious questioning of party policies that might have lead to the situation. Perhaps the most obvious is the section about  the internet behaviour of the Ants, stating that internet users tend to show a loss of personality and responsibility (去个性化与责任分散), and focusing on the risks to stability from these groups that may be prone to “believe internet rumours” and “stir trouble”.

Fortunately, most of the content in the book is not directly related to politics, so it can be consumed safely.  But when you compare Lian’s accommodating work with the brave investigations of Xu Zhiyong on the Black Jails, which went unknown to the Chinese post-80s public, it is difficult to avoid the feeling that there is something very wrong with the Chinese publishing system.

The problem here is not with Ant Tribe, which is a fine piece of work, but rather with the dozens of other books that should have been published and never made it through the party’s filter. Many of those books would have reached an ever larger success and significance among the Chinese public than this party supported, politically neutered work.

If government control affects so seriously a scientific book, how can it not affect other branches of literature? I will leave this discussion for some other day, but Ant Tribe has just reconfirmed my initial idea: that we will not see any great work of literature coming from China until the country gets rid of the absurd CCP surveillance.

1. I am not a sociologist, and I am not evaluating the methods used for the research, although they look good enough. I would suggest any serious sociologist to get a copy of the original study instead of this science popularization book, and give me a break in comments.

The serial is WoJu, the Snail’s House, stupidly translated to English as Narrow Dwellingness, or whatever. It has been red hot in China since its first broadcast in November. Alice Liu of Danwei and the Youku buzz blog covered it recently.

As those blogs noted, this has been the most explosive success we remember in Chinese TV serials. In less than a month it sparked heated debate on the internet, attracted millions online and off, and with that came the hideous hand of the censors. One reason for its rapid success is the central theme about the problems to buy a house, which just hit the spot among the young Chinese audiences.

But Woju is much more than a tale of real estate and corruption. It is a gripping drama, with rich subplots evolving around a central love triangle, populated with very real characters. A sharp critique of the modern Chinese society, and by far the best product I have ever seen on the mainland TV. Originally it was a novel published  in 2007 by Liuliu, a Chinese writer that we should be watching more closely in the future.

Here are my impressions of the serial now that I have finished the first 15 chapters.  I will focus on the two main points of interest: the informative contents for anyone looking to understand China, and the quality of the product independently of other considerations. In the end are also some funny things I observed related to censorship and others.

Content

This serial is the paradise of the 中国通, the aspiring China experts.  Anyone trying to understand China should watch it. If the characters are not exactly real (no fiction can ever be) their worries, their problems and their motivations are a hi-fi amplified reflection of those moving the young citizens of China today. It is a concentrate of Chinese reality.

All the elements we have been speaking for the last years are there, not a single one is missing: guanxi building, cadres’ 二奶 (lovers), shanghai men bullied by their wifes, working parents who can’t see their babies, illegal high-interest loans, collusion between developers and local officials, the conflict between shanghaiers and outsiders, the overnight rich of Wenzhou, the ethics of the new China, the 拆迁 or "destroy and move", the "nail people" who resist, the shanzhai mobile phones… you name it.

And all is so precise that you can even see how much the characters are earning in their jobs, what interest the loan sharks ask, or how much it costs a party cadre to get his first little 二奶 (lover).

There are surely better books that depict the Chinese society in the past, but the subject is changing so fast they are all outdated. I do not think there is any other work of fiction today that reflects more precisely the Shanghai society circa 2010.

"Hello, I’m Secretary Song of the Municipal Party Committee  (and I just shagged your girlfriend)"

If you are learning Chinese, the series is a double must for its great idiomatic mandarin. If you are not, then stand by for the DVDs with English subtitles, hoping the pirates get a human translator with his TOEFL levels this time. There is definitely a market for this, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they come up with a movie next year, provided the government doesn’t stop it.

Quality

But more important than all the above is the quality of the product. It is good fiction and good entertainment.

The story is driven by an intense love triangle centered on the young Haizao, played by beautiful actress Li Nian. All the elements listed above, including the winners and the losers of the Real Estate craze, gravitate around this love/hate story that puts in contact two different worlds: the laobaixing and the cadres, the two classes of urban China.

But perhaps the best aspect of the serial, a breathe of fresh air on Chinese TV, is its absolute lack of moral lessons for the public. There are no heroes or villains here. The covetous developer, the unbearably vain wife, the fainthearted Shanghai husband, the enigmatic, outrageous Shanghai girl played by Li Nian. Every single one of them is just human, with weaknesses and ambitions like all of us. Every one of them can be up to the best and to the worst.

Even the corrupt official is all too human. A weak man in a midlife crisis with too much power in his hands and a system that doesn’t check his acts. Corruption, like love, happens as a natural course of events, the result of a sick society and not of an evil personal plan. And Jiangzhou, the Chinese Gotham that stands for Shanghai, is the mighty whirlwind of action where all the characters are hopelessly adrift.

Censorship

Not surprisingly, the serial has been censored by the government. However, it has been censored in ways that strike me as prudish, if not plainly idiotic.

Since I am in Europe now, I have been able to watch the serial on YouTube and compare with the censored one available on the Chinese site YouKu.  There was no censorship on the image above, where a Shanghai Party Official brazenly chats with the boyfriend of the girl he has just raped making free use of his political muscle.

Instead, the images below were censored:

See the original scene, and below the censored version as shown in China.

This is the first proper sex scene of the serial. In the original version you see the moaning face of Haizao in one quarter of the screen, while the other images correspond to the respective wife and boyfriend, who are shown at home worrying for their loved ones, while they are being made cuckolds of Olympic category.

Is the moaning face of Haizao more obscene than the happy Mr. Song shown above? Draw your own consequences. Also interesting is to note that the producers have participated in the censoring process, and the hot scenes are not merely cut out, but edited and substituted by other originals, as in the larger image of the wife above.

Other Details and Questions

I will come back with more details when I am done with the serial, but for the moment I have 2 questions for the public, and especially for the many Chinese I know who have already watched the whole 35 chapters:

1- Why does the serial show so prominently the "Coogle" shanzhaied phone of Haizao, is it just to make it more realistic or is it a revenge because Google refused to sponsor?

2- There is one part of the plot I just can’t understand: how can Haizao be a virgin when she first sleeps with Song, if she has been living with her boyfriend for years? Is this a gap in the plot or am I missing some serious (and worrying) element of the Chinese culture?

It is the latest super production of the “Red Army against Capitalists” kind, called 冷箭, or “Stab in the back”. The first chapter was launched the day of the 60th Anniversary, on CCTV 1 prime time, proving that it was born to be big. Even if it didn’t live up to expectations (it was switched later to CCTV 8 nights), I am guessing that more people have watched this than the “Foundation of the Republic” film that so excited Western minds. Admittedly, there is little buzz on the internet about 冷箭, but that is just because the target audience is a different (and much larger) group than the internet community. My own investigations with taxi drivers indicate that it had a very strong following, at least in the first weeks.

For all those who complained about political propaganda in the “Foundation of the Republic” (or in Independence Day, for that matter), those are just amateur efforts next to this “Stab in the Back”. Because the Stab is not concerned with distorting facts, but with edifying and providing a complete moral system for the people. And like most of these widely watched Chinese TV serials, it still follows loyally in the spirit of the first moralizing plays organized by the 1930s partisans in Shaanxi.

A Little Critique

Regarding artistic merit, I will just briefly say that, although this looks like one of the highest budget “Red Army” serials to date, an improvement in quality does not follow. The main problem is the visible incompetence of its producers and actors almost without exception. Knowing that Chinese are very well capable of doing good films when they are given some freedom, I can only suppose this is the result of dead imaginations bureaucratically selected and nurtured by CCTV mummy-cadres.

In this case the main story is about — surprise– a Long March towards the West, where the Captain discovers that there is a Capitalist enemy spy infiltrated in the team. In fact not only one, but two, and three, and more are found in every chapter, until by the end of the serial the largest part of the brigade are actually undercover agents. This gives the poor captain played by borderline Huang Zhizhong countless occasions to run his fits of histrionic paranoia, apparently a main selling point. One can’t help wondering why all those spies don’t just get together to kill their clownish captain, rename their brigade with the KMT star, and get on with their counter-revolutionary business.

I don’t know if you have experienced this before when watching a film, but it is one of those instances when deplorable script and performance manage to kill the suspension of disbelief right from the first sequence. Then, suddenly, you find yourself watching a bunch of adult people walking around in funny clothes and uttering pointless nonsense. The result is embarrassing.

I have never been much of a TV watcher, but I do understand that TV films are substandard anywhere in the World, and nonsensical plots or braindead dialogs are by no means exclusive of China. Even the fixation with the deeds of the Red Army marching West is not necessarily more ridiculous than, say, the fixation with illiterate cow herders during the golden age of Westerns. But there is something in these Chinese serials that makes them unique beyond the obvious propaganda and quality issues, and that is the complete set of values that they embody for the edification of the masses.

Edifying the Masses: A Communist Catechism

This is the first time, (and most surely the last) that I watch a complete Chinese propaganda serial, but I believe that the effort is not wasted. Because only getting inside these long works one can appreciate that deeper level that flows underneath, the construction of  a public moral system that is very much akin to Religious Instruction.

Here are a few of the points I noted while watching the Stab, for the benefit of those who want to understand these works without throwing 22+ hours of their life down the drain:

• Love: The scenes of love are tacky to nauseate an armored brigade, with perhaps the best example in this scene in minute 40 chapter 4, when the captain “falls in love”. In general, love among the communists is virtuous and innocent, and always secondary to the interests of the organization. There is not the slightest romantic indulgence, no concessions to passion other than for the party. When the communist lover is told that her beloved is a Capitalist spy, she abandons him on the spot, and volunteers to kill him if necessary.

• Sex: Of course, this puritanism does not stop the young lieutenant from having proper sex (under the sheets) starting chapter 25, in a clear effort by the authors to attract more audience. “乱搞男女关系!” (disorderly do man-woman relations!!) chastely exclaims the captain when he gets the news through a disgustingly virtuous informer. But worry not, the ethical purity is safeguarded. These two sinners have betrayed the higher cause, and they receive their deserved punishment without further delay: death at the hands of some brigands.

• Violence: We have  seen enough of the likes of Eastwood in Alcatraz to have some expectations about the frightful fate of new prison inmates (especially if they are male!). I don’t know to what extent this violence is consistent with reality, but what I am pretty sure is that prison wardens do not tell off the inmates screaming “don’t be naughty”, and major disputes in the common cells are not settled through pillow fights. This is exactly how things are done in 冷箭, making the whole experience for the high level KMT prisoners like a children’s Summer Camp. This is one of the most puzzling parts of the communist ethics, and the most difficult to grasp in a movement that was imposed largely through violent revolution. It seems to come from a belief in molding mentalities through peaceful labour, but, as we will see below, it has little to do with the Christian notion of “turning your other cheek”.

• Class virtue: Virtue is presented as a characteristic of the proletarian class, and salvation must necessarily follow. Like the ancient Christians looking for consolation in the Bible before they were thrown to the lions, so the Chinese Laobaixing today seem to find solace in these serials, while they wait for the next corrupt CCP cadre to come and tear their homes to serve a rich developer. The notion of a Final Judgment that accompanies this kind of teaching is represented through the iconic verses of the Internationale, sung at several points in the serial, with the main theme conspicuously inspired in the melody of the first verse.

• Forgiveness and Revenge: There is an appalling scene of revenge (ch 31 38:00) when the main spies are apprehended, that completely shocked me after 20 hours of mellow bloodless harmony. The righteous blows of the officers are completely devoid of mercy, enjoying the raw pleasure of revenge. In my observation of the Chinese, this represents very well the paradox of their ethical system: Chinese are by nature far more tolerant than any Western people, but –perhaps as a necessary consequence – once a certain level of crime is attained, this sets off a mechanism of ruthless punishment where the object ceases to be seen as human. This is perhaps the most important difference with Christian influenced ethics, where our less tolerant natures were softened by the love doctrines of the New Testament. The whole discussion of death penalty in China vs. Europe is an interesting modern development of this difference in outlooks.

Some Conclusions

There are many ideas here worth commenting further, perhaps one of the most interesting would be to see how this communist system of ethics is working (or failing) to keep the always delicate balance between 道德 (virtue) and Deng Xiaoping’s 致富 (getting rich).

Clearly, Chinese are not the only ones to introduce ethics into their TV serials. Popular Western serials have long been educating us with teachings as varied as respect for minorities, tolerance of homosexuality, patriotism or democracy. But crucially, while the Western system of moral instruction has evolved with the times and deals with problems facing today’s society, the Chinese system has remained stuck in the 1930s, with the characteristic rigidity of Religious ethics. As a consequence, there is a growing, insurmountable gap in China between the ideas preached and the real needs of the ordinary citizens. This may be having the catastrophic effect of eliminating all ethics from mainland Chinese life.

When we speak of problems like perceived racism, corruption, lack of respect for the public goods or environment, how much of these are related to a lack of a realistic, up-to-date moral support, or to the hijacking of ethics to serve the single interests of the CCP power elite?

I would like to say more about this, but unfortunately this post has got out of control already, and I know nobody reads past the first 1000 words. Write your ideas below about any particular point and if we get some interesting discussion going on we can try to expand the subject in a new post.

But the surprise came when we went to town for lunch, and I found out that the river that flowed into the Yangtze at that point was called the Wu. I hadn’t realized before, because the industrial park takes a different name, but sure enough, our client confirmed this point: we were in the riverside town of Fuling.

If you have read the classic China book “River Town”, you know why I was so thrilled. If you have not, then go and get it now. Since you are reading my blog, chances are you are one of those crazy Westerners that seek to understand the Chinese. This books explains them all for you, and in the process it gives you a rare glimpse into the life of inland China. It is fascinating, especially if you don’t live in the country already.

The Book

I am taking this chance to do a little review of River Town, so I can start to catch up with my old plans of running a book reviews section. Considering this book is relatively old and already well known, I will just stick to the main points and try to keep this post reasonable.

The story is very simple, it tells the experiences and feelings of the author during his 2 year stay as Peace Corps in Fuling, a third tier town on the Yangtze.  Nothing really happens, except that it is inland China in the 90s, and everything happens. The book is enjoyable from the beginning, almost every page right to the end.

Here are the key points as promised:

- Very enjoyable natural writing, with vivid descriptions of the places and the people. One of the best examples I know of literature meeting anthropology. Memorable is the description of the Fuling streets and their “stick-stick soldiers” in the initial chapters.

- The author is a fine observer, and he has the advantage of direct access to his students, who write down for him their opinions about a variety of subjects. One of the main highlights of the book is the contrast between the Fuling and the Western mentality, expressed on the background of the classics of English literature.

- For the sake of balance, some points I liked less: towards the end the  book looses some strength (not surprising, after the great first half). The scientific detachment of the author can become a bit exasperating, and sometimes it feels like the anthropologist has taken over the writer. The last dramatic scene with the mob doesn’t help to fix this, and I couldn’t help feeling that it was an unnecessary addition. But then, that is only my opinion, and I was never in Fuling in the 90s.

The River Town

From what I have seen today, the town of Fuling is doing pretty well, changing so fast that it is almost impossible to recognize it in the descriptions of the book. For one thing, it took us less than an hour to get there from the center of Chongqing, which qualifies it as a close suburb. This is in great contrast with the backwater river town of the 90s.

Now the Fulingers are going to have some World class production facilities, and a good part of the population will be working there, with thousands more coming from all over China. It feels strange to realize suddenly that I have become myself one of the characters (although a very secondary one) in the story of the transformation of Fuling.

There seems to be only one thing eternal in China, and that is the masses of the working people, the “laobaixing”. Sure enough, the stick-stick soldiers are still there and in good shape, running up and down the stairs with massive loads hanging from their bamboo poles. For them, nothing has changed.

The event was announced – and recommended – on the Shanghaiist calendar, so I thought I’d get there a bit earlier to catch a seat before the masses arrived. Actually, apart from the collection of smiling ladies with cups of tea that populate all these literary events, the attendance was pretty moderate. It came as a shock to me, but I suppose not everyone is interested in fascinating expat stories that happened 100 years ago.

Too bad for them. The evening went really smooth, with a bit of blues by the big man Earnshaw, great atmosphere and free drinks just for showing up. But what I enjoyed most were the two presentation speeches. If you have been to literary festivals you know how boring these things can get: people who can write are not necessarily good speakers, more often than not they are timid individuals who find themselves forced to deliver hour-long speeches, and they take ample revenge by boring the public to the marrow.

This time it was different. The presentations were brief, well prepared and yet spontaneous, and with their repertoire of pirates and big-eared gangsters they managed to catch our ear. Suffice to say that I ended up buying both, in spite of my firm resolution to not bring any more new books to my home on the verge of collapse. But let’s have a look at the babies:

The author of this book, Yvette Ho Madany, is originally from Shanghai, and she draws from her family connections and from her own research to guide us in a series of story-walks around the city. She told us the tragic life of Mrs. Dong and the spicy beginnings of the JinJiang hotel. A must-read and must-walk.

Expat intelligentsia hero Paul French spoke for the original author Mr.Lilius, who was unable to attend, presumably due to his demise in 1977. Mr. French gave us a well-rounded speech with some good pirate jokes and enough teasers to make me run to the stalls and get the product. Then, like usual, he scolded us for being XX century citizens and paying attention to the GDP instead of to Pirate Queens, and if you ask me he was damn right on that one, arr!

The reading List

Now, I know what you are thinking and you are right: I am brazenly posting a Book Review post when I haven’t read a page of the books in question. I sold my soul for a free glass of Chinese red wine and some good vibes, I admit it. But frankly speaking, the efforts of Earnshaw to bring us of those old gems, first on his website and then on fine quality paper editions, deserve already all my praise. And let’s not forget that I owe them the discovery of the inimitable Carl Crow.

As for these 2 new books, I will read them and I will walk them, and I promise I will get back to this post and update it with my frightful reviews.

On a side note: These last 3 months I have dedicated an absurd proportion of my free time to reading in Chinese. I have just finished my third novel, and I am very proud of that, but in the meantime normal reading has been on hold, and the List has got completely out of control. I am afraid I will not catch up with myself before the Summer holidays. More about my experiments on Chinese reading in coming chapters.

You might be familiar by now with Blacksmith books of Hong Kong –  the same Blacksmith that did the Asian edition of Apologies and other gems like King Hui and Business Republic. I am, and I have come to expect good surprises from them;  many things can be said of their books, but surely not “hackneyed” or “banal”. Pete Spurrier, the man behind the company, is not afraid to go with first-time authors, and he seems to have a knack to find intriguing writers with original points of view. Jonathan Chamberlain is perhaps his best find.

Indeed, in terms of surprises, this book delivers from the preface.  First, you discover it was actually written and self-published by Chamberlain 30 years ago, inspired by a series of painted glass figures he collected from local markets. It goes on to describe an unusual interview in Bangkok with British mystical writer John Blofeld, a reference in Asian religions, who agreed to give the book a prologue in articulo mortis. And then suddenly, before you realize it, you are swimming in the thick soup of China’s beliefs, following the author in his daring quest to make sense of  all the Gods.

The book

Most books I have seen about Chinese religions are centred on the three main systems: Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism, often giving an interpretation of present behaviours in the light of the teachings of the sages. From the outset, this book is radically different: it holds that, for the majority of the Chinese, there has never been more than one unnamed religion,  which absorbed all the other masters and deities  - including, in some extreme cases, Jesus Christ and Muhammad (!). Based on this premise, the author explores the main aspects of this religion, analyzing the ways in which it created its Gods, and explaining these Gods as a projection of the Chinese society rather than the opposite. 

The book is divided into two clearly differentiated parts:

The first part is the one properly dedicated to making sense of it all. We see how the Dao De Jing and the teachings of Confucius (which obviously have, as philosophies, an existence of their own) were absorbed by the popular religion, the masters deified and given attributes that they surely never asked for in life. Buddhism is a slightly different story, as it was already a religion before it came to China. But, as the author explains and illustrates with examples, in the imagination of the people, the buddhist Gods were little more than a colorful addition to the already overpopulated pantheon of China.  

And what is this original, “untheologised religion” that predated and absorbed all the others? It consists of a series of very ancient beliefs, at the core of which is the worship of ancestors and the parallel worlds of the living and the dead. And it created its Gods through a double process of deifying existing humans and inventing human lives for adopted deities, thereby preserving the connection between the two worlds. This process usually happened first at the popular level and later received the sanction of the Emperor, who would liberally endow the new God with supernatural powers and appoint him to an official position in the complex bureaucracy of the Chinese heavens. 

The second part takes the form of a handbook, with twelve chapters dedicated each to one different God. It starts with the ubiquitous Guan Yu, and it includes some fairly rare specimens that I had never heard of before. Each chapter explains the origins of the God and its main attributes, and all include large colour pictures of the original glass figures that inspired the book.  This is, of course, only a tiny part of all the existing Gods, but it works well to get the general picture.

It is easy to get lost in the chaos of the characters’ lives and deaths, and I wouldn’t recommend any sane person to read all these chapters in one go. Rather, I read separate portions now and then and I am keeping this section as a guide book, with an eye to impressing the locals in our next temple visit.  Not that this would impress them much: as the author notes, the Chinese exhibit an incurious acceptance of their Gods. “They are to be worshipped. The rest is superfluous.”

My conclusions

Jonathan Chamberlain can write, this is hardly news after what we have read of him lately. Judging by this book, the good news is that 30 years ago he could write just as well. His prose is intelligent and fluent, no objection here. But this being an essay, and dealing with subjects that are – on account of the shortage of university research – close to the forefront of knowledge, one might want to ask how scientific his methods are, and how much value to give to his conclusions.

There is a general sense of chaos around this book.  Chamberlain’s narrative is logical enough, but there are still some points where you want to go back and restart from zero to see whatever happened to make you feel so lost. To be fair, it is not an easy subject to deal with. Gods have many names, and names have many Gods, and Gods share and copy cheerfully from each other’s lives.

To give just one example:  in Chun Kuei’s chapter we learn that he failed the public examinations and committed suicide on the steps of the Imperial Palace, eventually being appointed to serve as God in the Heavenly Ministry of Exorcism. Three pages later, in a different account, the same Chun Kuei is a brilliant scholar who passed first in the official examinations and grows to become the God of Literature. 

Perhaps the my real objection is the lack of a rigourous method.  Some of the deductions sound a bit on the wonkish side, like the various times where the parts of a Chinese character are analyzed separately for their meaning, ignoring that often components have a phonetic rather than a semantic value. More important, in my opinion, is the almost total lack of citations, which makes it impossible to discern which ideas are set forth by the author and which are already in the mainstream of research. 

Fortunately, the few references given in the text work do back the main ideas,  and the underlying hypothesis -that there is only one religion for the Chinese people- is endorsed in the prologue by a figure like J.Blofeld.  In addition, the author seems to take his own character parallels with a pinch of salt, and important conclusions reached in the book are mostly drawn from well-reasoned and well-grounded paragraphs that sound convincing enough.

In conclusion, this book has earned a place on my recommends shelf. If nothing else, because it is the first one to give me a simple, rational explanation for the coexistence of all those Chinese Gods. Having said this, I declare myself perfectly incompetent in the field of religion, and if any reader wants to raise an issue or point me to a book with alternative theories, I will be glad to mention it here as well.

Over the weekend I spoke with a few friends about the book and I could  feel some resistance. Some China hands clearly disapproved of the cover’s pop approach to a grave subject like the Middle Kingdom – a friend of mine from New York even warned me against what looked like “an East Village poser”.  All this probably explains why the few  who had actually read the book were so excited about it:  they weren’t expecting it to be readable in the first place.

Not having any kind of prejudice against pop illustrated covers, I found the price tag fair and the promise of a fresh perspective on China exciting enough to give it a try.  Here’s the results.

The best

There are some very good points.  First of all, like the author claims in his foreword, this books tells about an aspect of China that is neglected by most of the China books. These typically divide the Chinese population in two categories: peasants and citizens, forgetting that somewhere in the middle there is a no man’s land populated by strange, colourful characters: the underground world of the unadapted.  Artists, gangsters and other creatures that Zach Mexico, with obvious communication skills, brings to us from a street level perspective.

As should be expected from a work of its kind, Zach’s writing flows. Its short paragraphs take you swiftly through a succession of anecdotes and conversations, intertwined with little bits of analysis. Here the author doesn’t judge, he just tries to explain. An analysis part that is rather light, but it has the virtue of adding some necessary background without breaking the rhythm. This is precisely another strength of the book: it consistently beats the “curse of knowledge”, stopping briefly every now and then to provide some basic information on China, and thus making it useful for uninitiated Western readers.

The book feels like it has been arranged to captivate the reader.  One of the best and most balanced chapter is the first, where we see the daily tragedy of workers and miners in the North East through the eyes of a grassroot photographer.  It is followed by a well dramatized episode with the Qingdao mafia, and an eyecatching -albeit weaker – one about prostitution. Follow a series on artists and bohemians, the best of which are probably the musician chapters, like the one about the Wuhan punks who sing political lyrics in unintelligible Chinglish. It is clearly in this field that the author feels most confortable.

The weaker points

On the weak side, many will probably point at some imprecisions in the book. This is obviously not meant to be a reference work, but perhaps it could have used some more attention to check obvious errors,  like Uygur language as a variant of arabic. As a whole however, the general background  about China is -if unoriginal- pretty accurate, as mainstream China books go.

A more important flaw in my opinion is the somewhat irregular quality of the chapters. Some parts of the book, like the one about the Qinghua University student, are so shallow and out of place that one wonders why they were even included in the final edition. Maybe they were just an attempt to give a more comprehensive view of China, working  in contrast with the gangster chapters — a good idea, but clearly some more field work was needed.

Finally, some instances of misplaced self-consciousness, like in the chapter of the prostitute, render the author’s presence somewhat obstructive. Perhaps the best example of this weak side is the chapter about “the Most polluted city in China”. The author visits Linfen only to run away immediately with the excuse that his throat is sore and the noodles taste bad, failing to interview any relevant person there. Self sacrifice is clearly not in Zach’s agenda, and this chapter can disappoint even the hippest of East Village hipsters.

The bottom line

This is an enjoyable read by a promising new author, which delivers this China book rarity:  a different perspective on the country, together with glimpses into an intense expat experience. Zach is a talented writer,  likeable in print and in speech, as we saw in the literary festival. If he is serious about writing China we should see some good stuff coming in the near future.

For the moment I keep my hard-earned status of fastest fan, and I recommend this book to anyone who wants to enjoy a good read and taste a different side of China.

Today I am starting my review section with one of the books on Chinese economy that has impressed me most in the last year, “Capitalism with Chinese characteristics”, by MIT professor Huang Yasheng. It is a book that clearly stands out from the recent China books, and it might be destined to become one of the big references in the field.

There is no shortage of good China books in the last years. Many are written from a business perspective, by people with first hand experience who will tell you exactly how things are done here. Others look at the available economic data and build interesting theories to explain them. Few go deeper than this, to look into the heart of the matter: the politics behind the Chinese economy.

The problem is:  it is so difficult to obtain reliable information on Chinese policy that most efforts in this field turn into circular arguments over the same limited data. Professor Huang breaks the circle by going back to the sources and questioning directly all the mainstream assumptions, leaving many of them upside down. The situation in China requires this approach, as he says in the preface:

In studies of American economy, scholars may debate about the effects of, say, “Reagan tax cuts”. In studies of the Chinese economy, the more relevant question would be, “Did the government cut taxes in the first place?

By going back to the archives of what, in his own words is “some of the world’s most medieval record keeping”, Huang Yasheng is able to come up with a whole new picture of Chinese economic policy in the last three decades. This book is the result of painstaking archival research into rarely examined files, such as a “22 volumes compilation of internal bank documents” or the archives of the Ministry of Agriculture.

A qualitative leap from the classic tea leave reading, and one that deserves some careful consideration, even if the conclusions drawn will not be to the taste of every reader.

The book

“Capitalism” is the work of an academic, it is published by the Cambridge University Press and it comes with all the scholarly bells and whistles. But the occasional reader should not let this scare him off it. It is a readable piece, with chapters drafted following the tested formula: attractive anecdote – presentation of the argument – easily skipped statistics – groundbreaking conclusion. Add to this some juicy celebrity bashing (including Nobel J. Stiglitz) for just the right spot of gore, and you get a read that you can thoroughly enjoy. Selling for a surprising  23$ (cheap for a Cambridge Uni hardcover) this is clearly a book designed to be read.

I will not do a detailed summary here, you can find some more in this excellent review posted last month on China Beat. Instead, what I will do is highlight some of the points that Huang makes that I find most relevant. These they are, as I understood them:

• China is much less capitalistic today than most observers assume it to be. The real miracle of private entrepreneurship happened in the 80s, but has since been deliberately suppressed, largely through financial repression.

• The 90s and 00s policies favour FDIs and large SOEs against privately owned Chinese companies on one hand, and the cities against rural areas on the other, with very negative effects on some aspects of the economy. These aspects, which are not represented in the sexy GDP figures, are essential to ensure the sustainability of China’s growth. They include: education, productivity, creativity, entrepreneurial spirit.

• The large developed cities, and Shanghai in particular, are Potemkin metropolis. The sparkling new infrastructure of Shanghai and Beijing, from the Maglev to the recently burnt CCTV tower, are for a good part “white elephants”. While these investments -mostly executed by SOEs-  have helped boost the economy in the 90s, they have questionable returns in the long term, and their opportunity cost will have to be paid dearly.

• China is failing to develop the necessary “soft infrastructure” to ensure a sustainable economy. Worse still, it has actually regressed in this field during the last decade. This spells trouble for the future. The “soft infrastructure” – a term used in many China books and which I suspect originates from previous Huang Yasheng works – refers to those immaterial conditions such as the rule of law, open financial institutions, a civil society and entrepreneurial spirit that many consider essential for the long term development of an economy.

Wrong Shanghai: Observations on the Ground

The book opens with a statement that is sure to catch the eye of many living in China: there is something wrong with Shanghai.

Yes, no less than Shanghai, the city that has been fooling us for years with its aura of dynamism and openness. Huang Yasheng arguments, with precise data in hand, that entrepreneurship has long been eliminated from the city.  Shanghai’s wealth is made of SOEs, FDIs and transfer of resources from other parts of China. It is in fact an economy of CPC members and risk averse “iron bowls”.

From my viewpoint of an observer on the ground, it is this statement that I found most exciting. I went straight to chapter 4 and then I went straight to ask all my Shanghainese friends what they though of it. The response I got almost unanimously: “No kidding, do you need to read a 300 pages book to see this?”

Which led me once again to this reflection:  We continue to pay too much attention to foreign experts, and not enough to the Chinese themselves. In spite of the growing efforts of bridge bloggers and media, there is still a massive divide between the two worlds. The successful China books are mostly written by foreigners who don’t read and write Chinese. It is still too easy for an old China hand to position himself as an expert in everything China. And the circle feeds itself.

And the sheer dismalness of it all

It is always amusing to read these scholarly works in social sciences, where findings are measured against some -ism pattern, and where partisans tear each other apart mercilessly.

Reading this book one cannot help feeling that there is an underlying model in all of its arguments. A conviction -some might call it an ideology- that free markets, a small state and liberalism are the fundamental bases upon which a healthy economy is built, and that there can be no long-term “China miracle” based on exclusive “Chinese characteristics” if it doesn’t follow this model. A line of thinking that is understandably very critical of the Chinese policies in the 90s and early 00s.

On the other hand, while this partisanship may lend the book a more unscientific feel than one might like -and what is so scientific about economy anyway- , it also makes for a more compelling reading, not unlike watching a football match where the author scores a spectacular hat-trick. Should anyone be ruffled by the treatment of authors like J. Stiglitz, I would suggest a read of his own popular book “Globalisation” to get a taste of what it means to tear apart your opponent.

Of course, the problem with all this is that it makes all works very vulnerable to world fashions. “Capitalism” was written before the financial crisis developed, and unfortunately for Huang Yasheng, the winds of economics are since blowing in the opposite direction. The moment marked last year by the fall of Lehman Brothers  and the crowning of some other partisans have tipped the scale to the Big State ideas. More importantly, China’s economy is still holding strong compared to the West, and this is feeding the side of those who feel that China’s miracles can save the World from the greedy free-market ideas of the Washington consensus.

While I am of the opinion that China has still a lot to offer to the World, and I certainly see some sense in the famous Beijing consensus in the field of international politics, when it comes to economic policy I tend to agree with Huang Yasheng’s point of view. Being based here and working daily with Chinese companies, it is just too difficult to believe in the soundness and “entrepreneurialness” of China’s economy.

In any case, and whatever the opinion of the reader, Huang Yasheng drives his points home with argumentative skill, and making good use of an admirable research work to shed light on some of the least understood aspects of China’s economic development. Moreover, it is to his credit that, based on the new data, Huang goes against his own previously held ideas -namely, that the 90s reforms were more far reaching than the 80s. It is always comforting for this humble, unenlightened engineer to see that, in social science too, empirical data can change a theory rather than the opposite.

Who knows, it is very possible that the economy’s Wheel of Fortune will turn again sooner than we expect. Then China’s  economic system might suddenly show all its contradictions, and people will need to turn to books like “Capitalism” to try to understand what has been going on all this time.