China

On Tuesday Stacy suggested I might enjoy attending her class. The topic was family law in China, taught by Professor Warren Binford http://www.willamette.edu/wucl/faculty/binford.htm
from Willamette University. Stacy promised it would be interesting and I was not disappointed.

Over the years I have picked up bits and pieces about China’s One Child Policy (OCP), but until this week really didn't know much about it. While there are still many unknowns, Professor Binfords classes opened a window into Chinese society.

First promulgated around 1980, the goal of the OCP was to achieve zero population growth by the year 2000 and government statistics declare it a success. The policy stemmed the traditionally high birth rates (5.81 births/woman in 1970) encouraged in the 1960’s and 70’s by Mao Zedong, and brought China to near zero population growth.

While addressing overpopulation was viewed by many as a positive step for China, the country has been criticized for how the OCP has been and continues to be implemented. Local governments are responsibile for ensuring compliance with the OCP. The result has been inconsistent enforcement and abusive tactics due to national pressure on local officials.

To understand the means of enforcement as well as consequences of the OCP, it is important to grasp the nature of China’s registration system. As a Chinese citizen you are required to register at birth, marriage and death. A person must be registered to attend school, receive social welfare benefits, get married, attain legal employment, and to have a child. Registration also costs money, frequently more than many rural families can afford.

Registered married couples in cities are allowed one child. Rural and minority families may have two if the first is a girl. There are a few exceptions to these rules, but the permits cost money. In one province a person who qualifies to have second child must pay $500 for the permit. This is half the average annual income in China and 10 times the average annual income in rural areas.

For families desiring multiple children and for those that cannot afford the registration process or permits, the only option is to have a child “out of plan.” Violations of the OCP are punished harshly. The offending couple are usually strongly “encouraged” to have the pregnancy aborted. Methods of encouragement may include disqualification of social welfare benefits, administrative demotion, deprivation of farmland, withholding of family food rations, beatings, forced late-term abortions, and forced sterilization. One village razed the homes of six pregnant women with out of plan children and forbade local residents from sheltering the now homeless women.

While such treatment is egregious, perhaps more devastating in the long term repercussions for children born out of plan. Such children are ineligible to register with the government. This is the equivalent in the U.S. of being denied the ability to ever have a birth certificate or social security number. Out of plan child are disqualified from all state subsidized services including education and health care. In the eyes of the government, they do not exist.

But the unregistered do exist and in large numbers. Studies suggest that well over half the rural population of China is unregistered. A statistical analysis indicated a 40% error for a census conducted in a rural province due to the exclusion of the unregistered. It is unknown how many of the unregistered are children, but some estimates are in the 100’s of millions.

While the Chinese government has acknowledged that there are problems with the policy, there is little indication that there will be a significant shift in tactics any time soon. One problem is that the country’s weak social welfare system is struggling just to support its registered population, let alone handle the millions of unregistered. Additionally, the frenetic growth in the last 20+ years has only been possible with China’s abundant supply of cheap labor.

Since the late 1970’s the Chinese economy has been shifting away from state run work units responsible for providing employment, housing, food and health care for its workers, to a market driven economy that allows an increasing number of private enterprises who are only responsible for providing employment. Given the pace of the shift, the transition has been remarkably smooth, though not without cost. To avoid punishment by the government millions of unregistered workers must settle for low paying and often dangerous jobs. Shanghai is nearly finished constructing the world’s tallest building. The 24/7 construction schedules for this and other projects often rely on the cheap labor available from unregistered workers who have illegally migrated to Shanghai so they can eek out $1/day working 12 hours a day 7 days a week.

The unregistered population issue in China has more than a few parallels with the United States’ struggle to address illegal immigration. In the political sphere, there are those who argue that the unregistered/illegal immigrants should be given an opportunity to be full members of society. Since the vast majority of non-citizens are hard working and would chose to be lawful participants in society, why not give them that opportunity. Others maintain that non-citizens chose to disobey establish rules and should not be rewarded for doing so.

A significant difference between China’s and U.S.’s scenarios is that children born in the U.S. have a right to a birth certificate, whereas out of plan children in China are forever relegated to the status of unregistered. As such they are more susceptible to trafficking and enslavement for work and/or more licentious purposes.

This Washington Post article is a good follow-up read if you are interested.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/23/AR2007012300398.html

In response to some foreign critics, China has published an interview discussing its general strategy for population control. http://www.china.org.cn/english/2002/Oct/46138.htm

Wikipedia provides a fairly comprehensive overview as well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-child_policy

The Shanghai Museum is a wonderful archive of art and culture with items dating back to 6000 BC and perhaps earlier.

I found the pottery exhibit especially interesting given the many parallels with dad's work.

China potters are proud that in English we call fine porcelain china. Doing so is a recognition of the impressive abilities of ancient potters in this part of the world. The Shanghai Museum has many examples of fine porcelain, as well as other types of pottery created in the different regions of this vast country.

When I was young, dad experimented with the blending of different colored clays that when rolled together formed agate like patterns. Mom would do the same when making beads out of femo. Rolled out snakes of different colors would be combined a larger roll. The roll would then be sliced like a refrigerator cookie and applied to a pot or bead.

The Chinese used a similar method to create ceramic pots that resembled carved wood. The example below is about the size of a small sugar bowl. What appears to be wood grains are actually thin layers of brown and tan colored clays.

I always assumed celadon only referred to the light green color dad uses on some of his pots, but it applies to a range of pale greens and yellows as seen in the picture below.

Ge Ware is characterized by crazing (glaze cracking). The jinsitienxian (gold thread, iron wire) style of Ge Ware has wider black cracks and thinner yellow cracks.

The oil drop glaze is very similar to a black glaze dad refers to as Ten-moku. If I recall correctly, the key ingredient for dad’s Ten-moku glaze was obsidian. I wonder if the Chinese had a similar methodology.

One of the most difficult high fire glazes to achieve is the copper red. In China they call it Jiangdouhong, which literally means “cow-pea red”. Here are a few examples of some reds made during the Qing dynasty.

Similar reds can be found earlier during the Ming dynasty, though these have a slight pinkish hue to them.

Equally striking was this yellow glaze, also from the Ming dynasty.

Towards the end of the exhibit there was a blue platter that reminded me a lot of the dark blue glaze dad uses for many of his pots. If you look closely you can make out the intricate designs, including a ferocious dragon.

Finally there were a few unusual pieces of note. These four vases melded together are odd in shape though the blue and white glaze is typical of china porcelain.

In addition to utilitarian pieces some interesting figures. This old man smoking a pipe caught my attention.

The entire exhibit was a treasure trove following the history of pottery in china through the ages. For an album view of these and other pictures check out the link below.

http://picasaweb.google.com/towangle/ChinesePottery

After a week here and frustrated with my inability to make much progress with the language, I put new energy into finding a local Chinese person with which to do a language exchange. Soon I stumbled across a website (www.expats.com) that allowed free classified postings. There were several language exchange requests posted from all over the world (many in Dubai). I gave it a shot and by Sunday night I had been emailed by a young Chinese mechanical engineer, who uses the English name Ryan, on summer holiday and looking to improve his English.

Ryan is 21 and in his last year of university. He lives with his mom and grandmother on the Puxi side of town, just north of the East China University of Politics and Law (ECUPL) where Stacy has classes. Though he is an only child he has a few cousins close by who he refers to as sisters. Dad hasn’t been in the picture for a while. Fortunately for me Ryan has been studying English for nearly 10-years and was more than able to negotiate a time and place to meet in English. Through a series of cell phone text messages we were able to connect on the ECUPL campus early Monday morning.

We met up three times last week for a few hours each time in the afternoon. While I got some much needed language practice, my interest in learning more about the culture and politics of China and Shanghai tended to trump my language practice. When my brain tired of trying to hear and repeat the different tones, I fell back to English and explored the details of Chinese life through his eyes.

joe
Often we were joined by Stacy or one of her classmates on break (or skipping class to avoid an uninteresting lecture). We hit on topics like food, health care, news coverage, standard of living, minimum wage, pollution of waterways, using roundabouts instead of signalized intersections, credit cards, saving money, houses vs. apartments, pirated software, earthquakes, the apparent rudeness of Chinese people, and frequently his dissatisfaction with life in Shanghai / China.

Like many people in their early 20’s in both China and the US, Ryan is disillusioned with government and media. Coming of age in a world filled with hypocrisies and injustice is enough to make anyone wish for the greener grass that must exist outside.

Surely more equitable places to live than Shanghai exist, but the discouragement I sense in Ryan could be found anywhere in the world. As a future mechanical engineer, he will be better off than most. Still, the idea of joining the rat race and being stuck in a position in which he has little control over the political and economic systems in which he must subsist is understandably disheartening.

I am curious to see how our relationship develops over my remaining two weeks here in Shanghai. As time allows, I will explore some of the conversations mentioned above in future posts.

I wanted to point out some pictures Joe posted of Zhongshan Park - the one I walk through to get to class. Actually - after looking again I guess they don't show up. I'll check on this...

Also, some of our favorite sayings/ mistranslations, etc:

When asked a question by a student, one professor asked if the student was Canadian. When the student said yes, the professor responded that he could not answer questions from Canadians. We finally figured out he could not understand the Canadian accent! After the next student asked a question, the professor responded, "This is a very good question... because I understand it."

One rather large foreigner kept getting approached by Chinese people asking his wife how many bowls of rice does he eat each day? The wife's favorite comment was: "His parents must own a rice factory. There's no other explanation." (Luckily the husband did not speak Mandarin.)

And my favorite ancient Chinese philosophy about marriage (at least for women who were not allowed to apply for divorce): "If you marry a chicken, you must follow a chicken forever."

After today I will be half done with my program!

Getting across a town of ~15 million people is no small endeavor. While the number of cars and taxi’s in Shanghai are multiplying faster than anyone predicted, few people can afford to have their own. Getting a drivers license is expensive and difficult. Those who can afford it, mostly expats, hire a driver. Starting at 11 yuan ($1.50) for the first 3km, taxi’s are a relatively affordable for travelers and business folk. Four yuan ($0.60) will get you across town on the metro, but many places in town are not near a metro station.

Motor scooters are a popular choice for personal transportation. I am not sure if a license is required to drive a scooter or not. Bikes are common, as are suped up bikes with small electric motors. All three of the two wheeled options travel at relatively slow speeds, 5 to 15 miles per hour. Significantly slower are the oversized tricycles carrying everything from a dozen or more 5 gallon dinking water containers, to a couple recently slaughtered pigs.

More interesting than the types of transportation roaming the streets, is how pedestrians, cyclists and motorists interact. Descriptions vary from chaotic, to self-centered, to disorganized but practical. Lane lines, modern traffic signals and other traffic regulations are followed if convenient. Generally people stop at red lights. That is except if you are turning right, in which case a red light treated as a yield.

I am reluctant to use the word “yield” here for that suggests that there is a sense of right-of-way for some vehicles over others. Yield in China means that someone else got to a space first and you have to wait for him to proceed otherwise you will cause an accident. Everything is first come first serve – pedestrian, bike or car, if there is an opening you take it. The resulting flow of humanity through the streets can be harrowing. Taxis dart through crowds of pedestrians in the cross walk. Merging vehicles push adjacent cars half way into the next lane. Rarely used in anger, horns warn a forward vehicle or pedestrian not swerve in front as you are passing. The prevailing rule is to avoid hitting others. Beyond that anything goes.

Several people have described this mode of operation on the streets and in other parts of life as selfish and inconsiderate. There is some truth to that, though I think it has as much to do with population density as cultural norms. Swimming in such a large sea of people, I find myself adopting similar me-first behaviors. Just yesterday in the produce section of Carrefore (supermarket) I found myself jostling for position in the “line” to have my bananas weighed and priced. As others arriving to the station after me tried to vie for position, it was clear that I had to be assertive or I would lose my turn...even if that meant me outmaneuvering someone who was in “line” before me.