Foshan, etc.
Foshan, Guangdong Province, China, October 5, 2012
Salaroche

 

The perspective for the next few months looks OK here in Foshan. The weather is fine, my neighborhood is nice, my living quarters are spacious, modern, and comfortable, the Teaching Job I have is satisfying enough, and I even have some creative challenges regarding the Cloud Computing Programs I'm developing.

My allegorical sky looks rather blue most of the time and the few clouds that occasionally appear are nothing but minor, normal, customary matters of the unavoidable kind. My social life is not anything to write home about, but since it has never been that way anyway, that's not anything to worry about either.

Food-wise things are OK too. I like many Chinese dishes and I'm perfectly comfortable using chopsticks, but I have to say that I've only been having the regular things on the menu: Green Beans, Fried Cucumbers, Steamed Rice, Egg Plant, fried or roasted Chicken, some Pork, and occasionally some beef as well. But, frankly, the day that I may try more exotic stuff like Stewed Wild Scorpion with Caterpillar Fungus or Stewed Kangaroo Tail with Medicinal Herbs may never come.

After all, I'm presently living in China, which in and of itself implies being exposed to some minor cultural surprises every now and then. Politics usually carry lots of Cultural, Social, and Economic repercussions and, in this country, the case is perhaps more obvious than in any of the other top 10 or 20 economies in the world.

Just picture going to the local branch of your bank to ask them whether you can make PayPal payments using your account only to have the bank tellers look back at you with a blank stare in their faces. To avoid further embarrassment, they call the manager but the manager doesn't know what PayPal is either, so he gets on the phone to someone who apparently is equally uninformed, so that the manager's final response to you is "sorry, we don't know anything about that".

Excuse me? Bankers of the second economy in the world who don't know what PayPal is? As I said, politics carry lots of social and economic repercussions. With the exception of a very small minority, people in this country are highly uninformed about many issues that pertain to the rest of the world and to life within their borders as well, and that situation certainly didn't come about by accident, but by design.

Our Chinese friends haven't been raised to think outside the box, on the contrary, thinking along the official lines has always been the way to succeed in this country. Information that hasn't been fed to them through the official channels is information that they shouldn't try to get by themselves. Do as you're told and you and your family will keep your jobs, do otherwise and you'll surely get in trouble.

Just look at the case of Bo Xilai, the disgraced ex-Politburo member and ex-Party Secretary for the Chongqin region. Having been sent by the party to that dead-end position, he tried to carve his own path out of it by embarking on an anti-corruption campaign and even by cultivating sympathies among some elements of the Maoist community. Bad choice. Now he is set to face a Kangaroo trial of the sort seen only once back in 1981, when the Gang of Four were arbitrarily sentenced to serve different amounts of time in prison for alleged crimes of treason.

It is true that, judged by the company he kept, Bo Xilai was no angel at all, just look at the sad fate of his wife, Gu Kailai, who was recently sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of British Businessman Neil Heywood, or Wang Lijun, Bo's former Chief of Police, who sought political asylum at the US Consulate in Chengdu and who actually tried to implicate Bo in Heywood's murder. But the highest crime Bo appears to have committed was trying to bypass the CCCP's rules and edicts.

There's no two ways about it. China is China and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future. The United States, on the other hand, seems to be set for some changes of the ominous kind.

If the first Presidential Debate was any hint of what's about to come, the world better get ready for some more lunacy of the Republican sort: Give to the rich, take from the middle and lower classes, and then give more to the rich. And yes, then claim it's the Democrats who are waging classwarfare.

Such scenario, of course, is not a given yet. Barak Obama may well surprise us in the next debate and actually show some stamina and some real desire to serve a second term and not just stutter away like a debutante who is not sure whether whatever he has accomplished thus far is worthy of standing up for. Does he really want to serve a second term? If he does, he didn't really show it during the first debate. Wimp.

But the American Political system, and the social stability it entails, are perhaps the most resilient in the history of the world, so, barring another 9/11, there isn't really much that could happen over there that might keep me from sleeping. Back in China, however, I sometimes think we're sitting on a time bomb with a long fuse. Fortunately, some guys at the CCCP also seem to be aware of that and are doing something to avoid shortening it or to eventually diffuse it.

In the meantime, Foshan looks OK to me and, who knows... I might even stay here for a couple of years or perhaps even longer.

Until that happens, may everything be well with you.

Salaroche