TripDingo

I recently had the pleasure of meeting Elliot Ng, the VP of Marketing for Kango.com (who sponsors this blog) and having quite a few exchanges about the China blogosphere, entreprenuership, travel, technology, Shanghai nightlife, and the flows of information between China and the West (amongst many other things). Fantastic guy and I want to bake cookies for him already but I’ll jump straight into what I want to talk about in this post by referencing a post of his over at his blog, CNReviews.com:

There is an incredible one-way mirror (technically a two-way mirror) effect in the world today. People (ok, educated elites) in China have a high degree of awareness about what is going on in the US. But most people (including educated elites) in the US have a low degree of awareness of China.

Elliot then goes on to give an “especially clear” example of this one-sided “awareness” where a marketing director for a Chinese company shared that she watches the American TV shows Prison Break and Entourage. 

I have a few problems with Elliot’s statement (which I’m sure likely stems just from the lack of precision when using certain terms). For one, how are we defining “awareness?” Awareness of what? Of popular media entertainment? Social trends? Political trends? Societal values? Business environments? Professional norms? History? What? I could go on and on. Granted, there are more Chinese (absolute and per capita) who have exposure to American popular media than vice versa but is that sufficient to generalize “awareness?”  (more…)

Foreigners tend to fall into two categories when it comes to their preconceived notions of China. On one end, they think China is still some horrid backwards country mired in oppressive totalitarian communism. On the other end, you have those who see a picture of Shanghai’s Pudong skyline and marvel at how fantastically modern China has suddenly–and magically–become.

The former comes to China and pretty much sees everything as a confirmation of their prejudices. They usually cannot help but feel profoundly superior to the locals and natives of China. The men, at most, might help themselves to the many pretty young things as their wallets overflow from an advantageous exchange rate. The women, however threatened they feel by a nation full of women several sizes smaller and oh-so-exotic, console themselves with their false prudish civility.

The latter comes to China and is almost instantly disappointed by how right the former was. “Dear God,” they say to themselves, as they witness migrant workers beneath the gleaming steel and glass skyscrapers hock a fat chunk of phlegm onto the sidewalk. They watch the mob rush to get on the subway before letting anyone in the subway get out first and are appalled by the lack of logic or common decency. They line up at McDonald’s only to be utterly disgusted when a local cuts right in front of them and places an order with no regard whatsoever to those waiting.

If you’re lucky, these foreigners will have the decency to be politically correct and try to offer some positives to their experience. If you’re not, then you just have to put up with their douchebaggery until you can offload them.

Yet, do the foreigners really have the wrong perceptions of China?

To some degree, we can blame some for sheer utter ignorance. The former group, those who persist in thinking China is some third-world country totally devoid of any freedoms, opportunities, or smiles certainly qualifies as simply being uninformed to the point of idiocy. The latter, we can blame them for being so barren of any historical context that they’re foolish children for buying into propogandic postcard imagery. 

But, the interesting thing about China is that it lives up to both conceptions. It is both incredibly modern…and incredibly not. It is a place where technology has outstripped society. You have five star hotels and high-speed magnetic levitation trains but you also have rampant littering and the lack of service culture. China can look good from afar, as a whole, but don’t look too close. Admire the economic growth, the advancements in technology, or the shiny new buildings…but don’t look too close. If you do, you’ll see the disparate growth, the pirated technology, and the poor quality of contractors who cut corners and construction workers who only understand “good enough” and not “just right.”

China is not a country of abject poverty and repressed citizenry. Nor is China a land where the exotic, mystical past meet a cutting-edge modernity. 

China is a place of change and contrasts. Both good and bad. For better and for worse.