White Tiger Path 1.0 - White Cat, Black Cat Theory: September 2019
There is a theory in China, first popularized for me, by Deng Xiaoping, about the White Cat and the Black Cat. The theory goes, that it doesn’t matter who it is that achieves the goal, or by what methods the goals are achieved, as long as they are achieved both the White Cat and Black Cat have agency to claim they are correct. As long as the both catch the mouse, they are both good cats.
I think the white cat/black cat theory is a good way to understand my time here in China. Here in Shanghai, it feels like there are a lot of different ways to get to know the city and the country and to find out what is actually going on here (to the extent that is possible). With over 100 international students from 30 different countries in my Global China Program (GCP) we seem to each have our own idea about what the best way to find these answers are, but in the end, I think they will all be correct for what we are each individually searching for.
These posts will be my 'White Tiger' path, (my own colour “cat” and my Chinese name; just as Chinese students pick English names when they come to the West, I was asked to pick a Chinese name), in Chinese it’s Bai Hu - White Tiger.
With a 16 hour flight in coach, from Pearson (Toronto) to Pudong (Shanghai), stuck in the window seat, next to a young kid and his mother, I was happy to have had a lounge pass and the opportunity to fire more than a couple Johnny Walker Reds into me before I boarded the plane. The flight was not comfortable, I watched a couple movies, tried to sleep, and ate some food. The way our flight path went, it was sunny the entire time, up until our arrival into China and our descent under the cloud threshold. From then on, and for the first week, I only saw the sky 4 times, and the sun once. It was rainy, and gloomy and overall a pretty uncomfortable and uncharacteristic introduction to Shanghai. Since that first week it has basically been summer every day, with 25-30 degree weather, I’m in shorts for the foreseeable future, baby!
After arriving on campus late at night, I was taken to my room in one of the international dorms, and with a campus population of 30,000 students, I was surprised, but happy to find out I would at least start out with my own room with a balcony, a rarity in China, where domestic students would often have dorm rooms of either 4 or 6 people. I have been setup with a bank account and cell phone plan here ($20 CDN total for 30 GB of Data/month for a full year) and I would be absolute lost without either of these things.
I think I will enjoy my classes and can’t wait to see what else is going to unfold during my time in Shanghai. Learning the language is going to be tough but interesting as I’m sure you can imagine. As an example of the difficulties I will encounter with the language: the word ma has 5 different meanings based on the tone used:
mā - mother
má - fibre
mã (with a v over the a) - horse
mà - curse
ma- question mark
As a group, we have ventured out into Shanghai and also a neighbouring community, Hangzhou, by train. One of the first thing I noticed on the different train trips I took was the ghost towns of China. In a seemingly desolate and uninhabited part of the country 50 to 100 condo buildings would rise up out of the earth announcing their arrival to no one in particular because no one was near, aside from the train passengers passing at over 300 km/h. Densely packed with only a couple roads in proximity, it was tough to imagine the crowds flocking to one of the hopeful mecca’s of housing the government had erected throughout the country.
Hangzhou is a beautiful place and is where Jack Ma, the creator of Alibaba (the bigger chinese amazon), is from. Jack Ma is one of the most publicly successful Chinese people and as such has brought a lot of pride and honour for Hangzhou. Hangzhou not being Shanghai, Beijing, or Shenzhen also means that it is a little less expensive to be there than in those bigger tier one cities mentioned above. Think about living in Oakville, Ontario, Canada as opposed to living in downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada. They are both very nice places, each with lots of wealthy people, but it’s cheaper to live in or operate a business in Oakville than it is in downtown Toronto. This creates the conditions for businesses to thrive here, thus attracting more wealth to come.
The metro here in Shanghai is very easy to use as long as you know where you want to go. The language barrier in certain parts of the city is more difficult than other parts and when ordering food, there is a lot of pointing and hoping that I enjoy what I get. It is very convenient to not have any dietary restrictions when travelling anywhere, and this is especially true in China.
I’ve eaten some different stuff so far, like cold chicken breast and pickled radishes doused in soya sauce, and for the most part the food has been pretty good. I’ll need to venture out to try more and different types of foods soon. Being able to use chopsticks is an absolute must.
We have found a nice bar here as well, close to campus that a whole bunch of us frequent and has cheap Tsingtao. We go there pretty often and play a fun dice betting game and also some cards. The service you can receive at Perry’s is beyond incredible if you have the money. And if you do, it seems like there is no ceiling to the level of service you can receive here in China in general. The clubs are fun here, and the first couple weeks have felt like a frosh week for the international students. We’d go, dance, drink, have fun and watch as wealthy Chinese youth had their cigarettes lit for them and were escorted when taking leaks to ensure they weren’t bumped into. There was a lot for sale.
The architecture in downtown Shanghai has been beautiful. On one side is The Bund, an area filled with old French and British buildings, a must-see for tourists visiting Shanghai. On the other side is the new, modern Shanghai, with tall, glass skyscrapers reaching up into the sky like metal trees fighting for their position in the sun. The growth rate is impressive with these buildings as is the growth rate of almost everything else in China. 3 floors can be built in one day, 1 full subway line can be completed in one year. The population of the cities where this stuff is happening is 15,000,000+ people.
It has also felt extremely comfortable here, like a big and Chinese Toronto. No one stares at you because you’re white, no one cares that you’re here, it’s extremely safe and I haven’t felt vulnerable once in Shanghai, though I did in Hangzhou; the metro is better than Toronto’s could ever hope to be, and people are generally friendly. There are endlessness corners of the city to explore. There are so many CCTV cameras here, it is tough describe, but from what I’ve been told it’s comparable to London. I think I feel so safe, because no one does anything to mess around and rock the boat. I have been told that this is because the consequences are so dire, should you get into trouble. The other reason it is quite safe is because family honour is so important here; it embarrassing to get caught and go to jail for something you’ve done, but the shame you bring to your family is a far worse burden to carry for most folks. My impression is that one’s family honour may be the number one motivator for doing things ‘right’ here in China.
One of the most interesting things I’ve done is a propaganda tour through Shanghai where we looked at everyday examples of propaganda present on the streets and on the walls. We finished off our tour at a propaganda museum that has posters and materials from the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s. They were pretty incredible and rare as most materials were destroyed by the government when they weren’t wanted anymore. It was an eye-opening insight into how the Chinese Communist Party (CPC) wanted life in China to be and how it wanted it to be portrayed.
In general, it feels as though there is a depressed and muted existence here for most Chinese. Aside from children, and people I actively engage and try to make smile, there aren’t a lot of laughs to be had. There aren’t a lot of smiles to be had at first glance. There doesn’t seem to be a joy to everyday life that I try to have when I can. People are on trains and in the metro or waiting on the street have their heads tilted downward and their eyes locked on their phone.
Their phones are everything here, from how you communicate, to how you pay, to how you entertain yourself, to your investment strategy, to how you rent bikes, to how you ride the metro.
There is definitely some hold over from a truly communist era here in China, or at least Shanghai, so I can only imagine it’s more prevalent in less international centres, and it’s in the small things. The collective is so important here; queue and wait your turn, don’t be too loud anywhere, everyone’s job is important, and everyone is expected to contribute regardless of how menial the job would seem to a westerner. There are flavours of capitalism too, as you would expect; people dress however they want, people run their own stores, people get rich and some people don’t get rich.
My campus at ECNU is beautiful and is now filled with lots of friends who were just friendly faces less than 10 days ago. That is an excellent feeling to have upon your first couple weeks in a different country. Life on campus and as a student will be an adjustment, but a pretty excellent one I’m sure. I’m hoping it will be fun and familiar in all the best ways, and my gut is telling me I’m probably heading in that direction.
-Bai Hú