Supporting Public Transportation to Accomodate Car Usage

You've seen the drop in bus prices in Beijing in the last two years. Enlightened move by the government, no? Increasing the usage of public transportation, right? Right, except for the fact that most of the new bus riders are actually people who previously rode their bicycles.
Some history: The major streets in downtown Beijing are composed of 3-4 lanes of traffic in each direction separated by a divider. Flanking each direction of travel is a separated bicycle lane about 1.5 car-widths wide. It's a dreamy, cosy setup for bicycles, roller-blades, etc. Well, too cosy in fact. There were mornings when you couldn't make it through the intersection before the light turned red again. You were stuck in bike traffic the same as the car traffic next to you.
It turns out that most of the people riding bicycles were actually cost-conscious commuters instead of civic-minded bicyclists/fitness freaks. When the final price cut to .8 yuan occurred, the bicycle crowd evaporated. Why bother biking when the bus is the equivalent of 20 cents? They all piled onto the bus. The bicycle lanes were uncongested, beautiful and ... short-lived.
The Beijing government took each bicycle lane and, with the addition of some paint lines (or a thin metal divider), created a single lane of traffic and a half-width bicycle lane. Think about it. For the cost of only (tens of) millions of yuan, the Beijing Municipal government has quietly added 1 lane of traffic in every direction at every downtown intersection. *genius*

Bleh! - The Most Disgusting Thing I've Ever Put In My Mouth

I've got a fairly strong stomach and very tolerant tastebuds. Part of the joy of traveling is to try new foods and new tastes. There is one place where this attitude has hit a brick wall. I have decided to draw the line at Chinese sausages. *never again*
When did this start? A few years ago I was in Hong Kong; one of the best cities for eating street food (I'm a big fan). I walked through some smaller markets, watched what people seemed to be eating and settled on trying some huge, long sausage thing that people were eating off a stick. I paid for the sausage and walked a little bit from the stall. The next set of events occurred with one smooth motion of my arm:

1. I raised the sausage to my mouth
2. I opened my mouth in anticipation
3. I placed the sausage in my mouth
4. I closed my lips and teeth in anticipation of biting off a piece of the sausage
5. My eyes opened wide and almost popped out of their sockets
6. I ripped the sausage from my mouth (faster than I could open it ... alas)
7. The sausage ended up in the nearest trash bin within arm's reach.

I was gasping at the taste and wondering if I'd been poisoned. Some quick surveillance of the stall indicated that other people were happily munching on the same sausage. *How is this possible?*
Back in Beijing, I recently had an opportunity to offer some excellent German sausage to a friend of mine (snide comments, as always, go here-->[] ). I thought that finally the Chinese might understand what they'd been missing. She ate some of the sausage, looked at me with a contorted face and said,"Bleh! That tastes awful."

Taxes - The Government Resorts to Bribery

Like any modern nation, China has to collect taxes from everyone. In particular, there seems to be a VAT tax (kind of like a sales tax) on all retail and commercial purchases. For all of its might and power, the central government in China knows that it, in the end, really donesn't have that much power over people's daily lives. Simple laws stating that you must pay your sales tax fall on deaf ears in a cash-based economy. There's simply no reason to pay if you are paid in cash, pay all of your bills in cash and your reports to the tax authority can't be fact-checked. What to do?
Well, the government tried telling people they had to do it (had about as much effect as it does in Europe). From what I can see, the government signs and slogans about this issue now range from appeals to patriotism ("It's your duty to pay taxes") to outright begging. The next step turned out to be ... bribery and coercion. I'm not sure of the order of things, but here's what's going on.
1) There is a special type of receipt call a Fa Piao. It's an official receipt that indicates all taxes on the amount of money on the receipt have already been paid. Some larger businesses have special printers and paper that create custom receipts with your purchase amount but most businesses have pre-bought papers of varying amounts (1,5,20,50, and 100 yuan). They buy these in bulk from the tax authority for the cost of the tax on that amount of money. For the government, the advantage is that taxes (when they are paid) are now pre-paid. Businesses pay taxes up front to cover the requests by their customers for official receipts.
2) All businesses were told that they couldn't deduct business expenses from their income unless they had a Fa Piao to back it up. Neat, tidy and a great way to coopt the entire business community (myself included) into asking for official Fa Piao's when they have business expenses.
3) To mop up the rest of the population, the government added a "lottery" to each of the Fa Piao's. Each Fa Piao has now become a scratch-off card. :) In the corner of each Fa Piao is a small, silvered rectangular box. When scratched, most of them say "Thanks" but every once in a while, you might win some money (e.g. a few yuan all the way up to 500 yuan). In all my time in Beijing, I've seen one person win one time (20 yuan). I've met one person who says they won 500 yuan.
The upshot is that many people now ask for Fa Piao's just for a free chance to win some money. This annoys the owners to no end since they are actually "losing" money each time a Fa Piao is given out. I don't feel all that sympathetic, though. People should pay their taxes. I've also met quite a few local chinese who feel that it is their duty to ask for a Fa Piao every time they spend money. They are genuinely offended that someone wouldn't pay their taxes (since most of the people I know are professionals who have taxes automatically taken out of their paychecks). Asking for a Fa Piao gives them a quick, painless way to make sure that everyone else out there is also paying their taxes.

The Bus - What Price Transport?

Some of you may have already figured out that I'm a bit of a nut for public transportation. Well, so labeled. The last two years have been really interesting for the bus system here in Beijing. Let's look at the prices of the bus over the last 2 years.
1) When I moved to Beijing in August 2005, I discovered that there was a bus that went straight from my apartment to my company (magical air-conditioned bus #731) in less than 1.5 hours. At that time, the bus cost 4 yuan.
2) The next step was the introduction of smart cards (finally). You can now just wave your transportation smart card at a machine on all of the buses and it will debit the cost of the trip. (!) To push people to use it, they offered a 20% discount on the bus trip. New cost: 3.2 yuan.
3) Air-conditioned buses used to cost double the price of non-AC buses. This was interesting because the increase of a few yuan was enough to create lots of space on the AC buses while the non-AC were packed to the gills. As one of the better off people in Beijing, I was troubled by the classism but truly enjoyed the luxury. The double cost for AC was removed. New cost: 1.6 yuan.
4) In order to accomplish it's larger goals (more on that in another post), the Beijing government paid off the bus companies to triple the discount for the card to 60%. (!) New cost: 0.8 yuan.

So ... there you have it. My commute cost for the bus has fallen from 4.0 yuan to 0.8 yuan in the space of 2 years. I think it's fairly cool. However, the hidden implications of this reduction are a bit more unsettling. You'll have to wait for that information in a future post. *sorry*

Erasing Traffic - No! You Can't Drive Your Car

The local government in Beijing is hell-bent on making sure that all problems that might give visitors bad impressions of China are erased for the duration of the Olympic Games. There have been rumours about all downtown construction being banned, no smoking in the downtown area, no personal cars in the central downtown districts and all of the factories being shutdown. In addition, the government is scheduling "practice" drills for various behavioral and structural changes to the Chinese people (yes, to the people).
Right now, we're in the middle of a four-day experiment to figure out how to reduce congestion on the streets of Beijing. From last Friday through Monday, the government decided that you're only allowed to drive your car on the odd days if your license plate ends in an odd number (likewise, even days if your license plate ends in an even number). They're doing it now to figure out if it really has an effect and to make sure the population has some practice.
From my perspective, it's been a huge success. The traffic has been a dream over these four days. Very few backups (relatively), fast moving vehicles and much less anxiety. *I love it.* Of course, not owning a car, I only stand to gain the benefits and none of the problems.
Initially, I thought that this would be impossible to enforce but the local government has done an admirable job (along with the cooperation of the population -- not always a given). They were actually handing out tickets and had police stationed at all the off-ramps in the downtown highways (trust me, there are a lot of off-ramps). I didn't see many violators (okay... I didn't see any violators) .
Municipal governments often have crazy ideas but I'll give this to the Beijing administration. Here's hoping they make it permanent. Of course, during the African Summit a few months ago, there was another practice session that was even more successful. They banned all personal government-issued vehicles for the duration of the summit. By one measure, one-third of all the cars in Beijing are government vehicles. Now that's crazy!

Maximizing Profits - Chinese Kama Sutra

Let's start with some background information. The Kama Sutra is not an Indian sex manual. Mostly, it's a treatise on how Indian women should behave in order to maximize their profits when separating a man from his money (my favourite line:"After spending all of a man's money, leave him for some time so that he can rebuild his fortune for the next time you see him."). In the same vein, many expats in Beijing have noted that prevalence of pot-bellied expat men who always have hot, young Chinese women hanging on their arms.
I've always assumed (along with many other expats) that this was the classic situation where the pretty young things are using their beauty and looks to attract men who are (relatively) rich and either drain them of their accounts or marry them and hope for a much better life (of course, this is repeated around the world). It seems like the best option for them to accomplish their goals.
I was recently talking to a Chinese friend of mine who ... well ... is in a position to know about these things and the subject came up. She told me that I was completely wrong and the women who go after the foreign men are fools and not part of the norm. Why? Apparently, there are a lot more rich Chinese men then rich foreign men. Beyond that, the rich Chinese are a lot more ... generous with their money and present much better prospects for long-term financial gain. Those women chasing after foreign men don't really know what they're doing and will have a lot of hard lessons ahead of them.
Never thought about it myself. To my eyes, I only see the obvious examples of older expat men and young Chinese ladies because it's obvious (and slightly distasteful). I guess I wouldn't really notice the dynamic of rich Chinese men and young Chinese women. I will confirm that there are a lot more rich Chinese than people realize. In a city like Beijing, I can pretend that I'm part of the well-off crowd (and I am, really) but the world above me is a lot larger than I can even imagine.
This is yet another lesson of how I can't really trust my own senses when it comes to understanding Chinese culture. The world I see is a tiny slice of the real world in China and without more time (and more guides), I'll forever be stuck with my expat-tainted view. Just because I see a pattern doesn't mean that it has any relationship to the Truth.

Er Bai Wu - I'm the Fool

Er bai wu : Literally means "250". Figuratively, it refers to the subject as being silly. Among close friends, it's a cute term but when applied to someone else, it's quite a malicious put-down (maybe it translates better as feeble-minded?). As a result, almost no local chinese will ever negotiate a price of 250 yuan for anything they buy. How did I find out? I bargained an item to 250 yuan, listened to the snickering and thought I was overpaying. Later, I come to find out that I had bargained to a fool's price (quite literally).

Usage: Ni er bai wu. (You're silly.)

Impossible - These Buns Are Made From Cardboard

  Many people have e-mailed me about the story in the local news media about shops in Beijing using acid-soaked cardboard as a filler (60%) for meat in the pork dumplings available all over the city.  It was the talk of Beijing.  Everyone was wondering where this shop was and whether or not their dumplings were cardboard filled.  I'll have to admit, I did make a close inspection of the next batc of dumplings I ate (and I felt so guilty, I mean, I can actually see them making the dumplings).
  For those of you worried about my health (or enjoying my comeuppance), the story has proven to be false.  A overly-eager reporter decided to generate a story when he couldn't find confirmation of rumours.
 All well and good then, no?  I don't think so.  The real point of this story (that no one seems to realize), is that everyone believed it.  It was well within people's sense of what happens in the food industry in China.  I met not one person (local or expat) who thought that this was impossible.  That's the real story.
  China is one of the few places where food poisoning is a normal reason for not coming in to work.  No one bats an eye if you call in from your toilet saying that you might need a few days.  This is the real issue.  Just because this one story isn't true doesn't have any impact on the actual situation on the ground in Beijing.

Price of War - Mao Sets Acceptable Losses

  In the West, we sometimes assume that the atrocities of the Cultur@l R3volut!on in China didn't provoke an uprising in the local population because they were never told of the magnitude of the problems.  I recently read a book of short stories that provided a different explanation.  Here's the story.
   "The atom bomb is nothing to be afraid of," M@o told Nehru, "China has many people. . . . The deaths of ten or twenty million people is nothing to be afraid of." A witness said Nehru showed shock. Later, speaking in Moscow, M@o displayed yet more generosity: he boasted that he was willing to lose 300 million people, half of China's population.
  From the story, the people of China were proud of this and wanted the chance to show their devotion to M@o when the bombs hit.  Of course, this never happened.  However, during the ensuing Cultur@l R3volut!on, more than 50 million may have been killed due to a wide variety of causes.  When the chinese characters in the story learned of this (and the outrage of some of their compatriots and foreigners), their attitude was:
  "What's the big deal?  That's only a fraction of the people he was willing to sacrifice to the western bombs."
  This kind of thought process had never occurred to me.  Stalin was right; the death of a million people really is just a statistic.  That I never realized the deaths of the r3volut!on could be easily excused (by anyone) based on the willingness to have even more deaths is probably an indication of my continuing naivete.  Perhaps I can cure this with more exposure but I'm starting to think I like living in my naive world.  This real world calculus is difficult for me stomach.

Chi Doufu - Eating Tofu

As I begin integrating (a bit) more into chinese culture, I'm finally becoming privy to a host of new and interesting slang. Here's the first gem:
chi doufu: Literally, means "eat tofu". Used in nightclub/bar settings to refer to a guy who just interested in eating a girl's tofu. Before you get worked up, the tofu here refers to the girl's skin (being that most chinese girls have the same white skin color as tofu).  Guys who are out just to hold, caress, kiss and grope a girl's body fall into this category.  I don't think there is a related term for the obvious next step in the relationship; even though english abounds with such food references.  I'm not sure I like the sound of "eat tempeh".
Usage: Ta xiang chi ni doufu (He wants to eat your tofu).