The Last Mile

 

Has China arrived?

My answer is No. It still has a last mile to slog.

I have just returned from a packaged tour of Zhangjiajie of the Avatar fame, which included two other destinations – Furong and Fenghuang. They are in Hunan, where Chairman Mao Zedong was born.

I have already been thoroughly convinced that unless the US can come up with a visionary statesman soon, it will in no time be overtaken by China in every aspect of science and technology. The US is doing everything possible to stop China from replacing it as the world hegemon. This is their own fear and hence their paranoia. All except the West know that it is never the intention of China to replace the US in the world order.

However, China does want people to live a better tomorrow. It wants to help usher the world into a more harmonious order through exchanges of goods and services. Regrettably, the principle of the World Trade Organisation has now been cast aside by the US leaders, and Biden is ganging up with his hoodlums to try to contain China. The cold truth to America is that all their sanctions have instead prompted China and its enterprises to defy gravity. A case in point is Huawei’s reemergence in the smart phone market. (It is also making extraordinary headways in other fields.) There are many other enterprises, especially in the EV frontier, that are making political leaders in the West lose their sleep. (The Chinese EV phenomenon has even resulted in Janet Yellen forgetting the ABCs of macro-economics. China is having an “Overcapacity” issue, she says. (And, strangely, the rest of the “West” is also parroting her!)

China’s Chang-er 6 has just blasted off. It has just been reported that Huawei has filed a cutting-edge lithography pattern called Self-Aligned Quadruple Patterning (SAQP) which may disrupt the semiconductor industry. China is simply unstoppable, thanks to its sage ruler Xi Jinping, which can emerge once in a couple of centuries.

However, it still has one last threshold to cross, and as long it remains, China will continue to be viewed as largely an alien society, even by the people in the Global South. This last threshold concerns its man-in-the-street’s habits and behaviours. And from my recent visit to Zhangjiajie, I am afraid China may need a Lee Kuan Yew to help run this last mile.

April is probably the beginning of the tourist season in this part of China. Foreigners can be forgiven to think that half of China’s population was visiting this region! Long columns of tourist coaches could be seen at every tourist attraction.

China's CCTV has been running footages to exhort Chinese to cultivate better habits and behaviours. While most restaurants do provide common chopsticks and serving spoons, some still need to be reminded. You still see people spitting and puffing away, even though there are clear “NO SMOKING” signs displayed. These are usually older folks, probably from the more rural environments. Always a kaypor (Ming-nan term – busybody), I would always move forward to remind the transgressors of the need to conform. Most would comply without protest. (They must be wondering who this kaypor was. I believe they conformed out of suddenness of being told. I suppose to most people, public smoking is something that one should not waste time complaining about in China. We could even smell cigarettes in our hotel room.)

What irked me most was their tendency to jostle ahead. They do queue – thanks largely to the guardrails – but some would edge pass you if you allowed a small gap. And many of them were young folks. The worst was when you had just emerged from the long queue to board the shuttle bus. These busses came frequently, but no sooner had one stopped to load, everyone – men and women, old and young – would surge forward and jostle to enter. There were guards, but they would just look nonchalantly at each surge. The shuttles clearly said, “Strictly No Standing”, but no one seemed to be bothered by the warning at all. And many of the drivers of these shuttle services think they are F1 contenders in these moutainous circuits!

I was particularly disturbed by what I experienced when we were ushered into the Bailong (Hundred Dragons) elevator, which is said to be the world’s tallest outdoor elevator. When our turn came, we were packed like sardines into double-decked carriages. I could hardly breathe. Disasters will happen one day! Again, this is not the type of safety image China should be showing the world.

There were some foreign visitors. But I suspect they have dedicated entrances to cater to their “class”. I saw some did queue as we did; what sort of message would they bring home, I wonder?

Toilets are still another source of disgrace. WCs in public toilets are usually the squatting variety; some can be badly soiled, thanks to users who do not see fit to clean up after doing their business. And many doors cannot close.

So much about the 文明 (wén míng – Be civilized in your conduct!) slogan that is being displayed all over the places!

Zhangjiajie is a relatively new city, its tourist destinations are very well illuminated at night. Everything is nice from far; but you know they are far from nice when you look closer. Chinese are always proud of their engineering prowess; but strangely, even their more recent residential blocks have utility pipes and wiring running on the outside walls. Don’t they have decent architects and engineers to design them? They are certainly unimpressive aesthetically. Ditto their houses, though obviously utilitarian and adequate, are almost universally square or rectangular in shape and devoid of individuality or good taste.

My wife is a yellow banana. She signed up Sri America because it offered “English-speaking” guide. As a person, we could not have a friendlier and more helpful guide in Bobby, the local guide. But his English was atrocious. Every sentence must have these three words/terms: “Yah”, “Okay”, and “How to say?” and interspersed with bouts of irritating laughs. He hurt my ears each time he spoke. Fortunately, he had some urgent personal things to attend half-way through the tour and a Tu-jia (a minority tribe in Hunan) lady took over. She spoke and explained things with greater clarity.

The ”Bobby” case is also a sign of soft-power weakness in China. Those responsible for tourism in China should realize that their Mickey-mousy tour guides can do a great deal of harm to the image of China in the eyes of foreigners. In Furong, I asked Bobby for the age of the wall that he was taking us to see. He said it was a Tang Dynasty’s relic, when the plague says otherwise: A mud structure was first put up during the Ming dynasty and the solid wall was built during the Qing period. What a miscarriage of information! (Tang 618-907, Ming 1368-1644, and Qing 1644-1911)

What does this last mile entail:

1. The need to eliminate bad habit and behaviours:

Remember the chewing gum law introduced by Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore. You need the cane to change bad habits and behaviours like smoking and spitting in prohibited areas. China public spaces are full of security cameras. They should come in useful to help enforce this law. Once it is strictly done, I bet this problem will disappear within a year.

2. The need to train its people who are dealing with foreigners and visitors.

We Chinese have a tendency to behave like Ah Q, a character which I used in my earlier book China’s Arduous Journey to Earn its Place, From Mr Q to President Xi Jinping (2022). Recently I watched a video of a panel “debate” between Dick Cheney and China’s ex-ambassador to the United States. Cheney was in his typical form – cynical and patronizing – and began by painting China as an ungrateful adolescent and despite all the nurturing and facilitating by the US, it was now trying to usurp its benefactor in every field. Of course, the Chinese ambassador did not buy this rubbish and hit back. While his points were valid, his tone was not quite convincing. You could see the Arab listeners in the audience exhibiting impatience. (The forum is held somewhere there, I suppose.) But most Chinese got so exulted that they lost no time to forward the clip regardless – as if the ex-Chinese ambassador had dealt Cheney a knock-out punch!

They should seek the help of people like Kishore Mahbubani to train its senior diplomats to deliver better. (George Yeo may be more suitable; but I doubt he will oblige.) Chinese tend to be too anxious. In the Cheney and ex-Chinese ambassador encounter, maybe the latter should speak in Mandarin and have his message translated simultaneously, instead of allowing himself to struggle with a foreign language.

For Chinese tourists going overseas, the tour operators should conduct an hour of “Don’t Do This and Don’t Do That” briefing before these tourists depart. And people like Bobby, who represents 99% of the reality in Chinese tourism, should be made through a course conducted by its tourism authority to overcome all these ear-irritating habits.

These are the last two hurdles Chinese need to cross. They may sound trivial, but they will certainly transform China. Do Japanese have these problems? Why are the Japanese being so well praised by those who have visited Japan?

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Zhangjiajie, a city in the northwest of China's Hunan province, is home to the famed Wulingyuan Scenic Area. This protected zone encompasses thousands of jagged quartzite sandstone columns, many of which rise over 200m, as well as caves filled with stalactites and stalagmites. Wulingyuan also encompasses forests, rivers, waterfalls and two large natural land bridges, as well as endangered plant and animal species. Furong is a town in Yongshun County; it is a tourist attraction in mountainous northwest Hunan. Fenghuang County comes under the administration of Xiangxi Autonomous Prefecture. Located on the western margin of the province and the southern Xiangxi, it is immediately adjacent to the eastern edge of Guizhou Province.