The following tidbit is making the We-rounds on China's popular messaging service Weixin (Wechat):
全国刚建设最牛的小城市--玉树。建设的跟欧洲似的,规划的跟迷宫似的,消费跟上海似的,挣的工资少得跟非洲难民似的,但一个个穿的却像明星似的,物价贵得跟纽约曼哈顿似的,节日去逛荡商场的人像看演唱会似的,喝酒跟喝水似的,买东西的像大款似的,卡刷的像捡来的似的,打车跟求爷爷似的,路上的豪车多得像蚂蚁似的,菜价涨价跟愚人节似的,找个好大夫看病检查跟抽奖似的,看完不转就跟不住在玉树似的 The country has just built the coolest little city: Yushu. It's built like Europe, planned like a maze, consumption is like Shanghai, and salaries are low like the poorest people in Africa, but everyone dresses like stars. The price of goods is like Manhattan in New York. People walk around the shops on holidays like they're going to watch a concert. They drink liquor like it's water, buy things like they're big spenders, and swipe cards like they're collectors. getting a cab is like begging grandpas (for their property) [difficult], the limousines on the road are many like ants, and the price of vegetables has increased like April Fool's day [to ludicrous proportions]. Finding a good doctor for a check-up is like winning a prize [again difficult]. If you've read this and don't pass it on, it's like you don't live in Yushu. The translation is rough. I'm not going to take the time necessary to polish it, because frankly I have alot to do. Nonetheless, there are some interesting things here. It's a Yushu person's take on Yushu. It's obviously meant in jest, and much of it is exaggerated (I didn't see too many limousines the last time I was there), but alot of truth is said in jest.
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So, my wife and I were walking down the street a few days ago and overheard two girls from my wife's home are chatting on the street. One of them saw me (apparently) and had the following to say to her friend:
naya ngaxa song zhu tshijia ru ba zig nyao go That's how you might write it in their dialect. In a more written form, this might be intelligibly transcribed as: མནའ་ཡ། ང་ཡང་གཞུག་ནས་ཕྱི་རྒྱལ་བ་ཞིག་རྙེད་དགོ mna' ya, nga yang gzhug nas phyi rgyal ba zhig rned dgo Which translates into English as: Sworn sister,in the future, I too will find a foreigner. There are a couple of interesting little things embedded in this: 1) Holy cow the Khams dialect grammar and phonetic system are crazy different from A mdo. 2) Mna' ya is a word you use to refer to your best friend int hat dialect. A mna' is an oath that you swear. Your mna' ya is someone with whom you have sworn an oath. Kind of like your sworn brother or sister. This is the literal meaning. In practice, people use it to refer to their best friends regardless of whether or not an oath has been sworn. 3) What's up with wanting to find a foreigner? For some, I'm sure it has to do with the (altogether mistaken, in my case) perception that foreigners are wealthy. But it al In the early 2000s, a handful of scholars led by one who writes under the sobriquet of Zhogs dung (Morning Conch) wrote a series of editorials and articles openly criticizing the T religious establishment. It set off a firestorm of debates, town-hall meetings, death threats, and still raises passions when discussed to this day. I will refrain, at present, from delving too extensively into the history of that particular firestorm of a moment, as it has already been very nicely documented by Lauran Hartley in an article entitled "'Inventing Modernity' in A mdo: Views on the Role of Traditional Tbtn Culture in a Developing Society.* I will, however, briefly summarize the points being made: primarily that there was some negative "propensities" (the word Hartley uses to translate bag chags) in T society, primarily relating to an unflinching faith in religion and willingness to give up almost everything in the name of that religion that ultimately keeps the people of said society from participating within the larger society in which it is located on an equal social and economic footing. Now, in the West, we love to romanticize the culture here, particularly on the grounds of the depth and penetration of religion into the every moment and action of daily life, but it's a different world now and the situation is far more complex than that (a fact to which my decidedly secularly focused blog may hopefully attest). This is one reason why a number of tourists to the region express disappointment, because the place is not so mystical as their imaginations had led them to expect. Opinions about the importance of religion and ways to fruitfully practice religion are changing as well.
Some say that Zhogs dung's anti-religious stance is basically no different from State propaganda, and yet, I feel that there's something more at play here. Instead, it may be equally indicative of some growing fault lines (in some places generational, but not necessarily) within the society. Religion is increasingly put forward as being an essential element of T culture, but it is no longer so much the all-encompassing religion that appears to have once existed, as (for many) a belief in religion, but also a belief in the importance this worldly life. This was struck home by a friend, a strong believer in Buddhism, who was recently frustrated when the family patriarch donated some extremely valuable antique relics to a monastery (and by extremely valuable, I mean probably over USD 150,000 each) as part of his end-of-life preparations. He did this without consulting his family, and his family would have no right to make a dissenting opinion anyway lest they be seen as greedy. Rather than trying to put his family in a better position, or leaving them with a rare and not-quite-priceless-but-close heirloom, he donated them to the monastery. In itself, donating to the monastery is a fine thing to do. No doubt. But it can also, ultimately, be seen as an act of selfishness wrapped in the veneer of charitable giving. The part that was so mystifying to my friend, was that the money raise from selling that relic could have benefited hundreds if not thousands of people through actually donating money to charity, helping the less fortunate, donating to under-funded schools (of which there is no lack), etc. There would also be money left over to help ensure better futures for direct family. But instead, the statues went to a monastery, where they will be kept under lock and key, generating merit for the people responsible for the donation, but not exactly providing worldly benefit to the community at the same time. I can see my friend's point. I have also been around enough elders to find the patriarch's decision unsurprising. In the end, which one will ultimately be the better decision? It's a tough ask, but I, for one (if I may editorialize for a moment), agree with my friend in thinking that the donation of money to help people in need and schools and the like has to generate more merit and have more lasting social effects than giving to a monastery. But maybe that's just me. *If you wish to obtain a copy of said article, I might be convinced to brave copyright laws to share a pdf, but please contact me separately. For those of you compiling a list of Khampa folk beliefs, here is one you might enjoy:
If you keep the corpse of a deceased turtle in your home, it will help keep evil away from your home. That's all I've got for the moment. I was reading about Oscar Wilde a couple of weeks ago. There are many reasons not to imitate Oscar Wilde's either life or literature (and he famously reminds that life more often than not imitates art... especially a propos in the modern world where things passing for "art" are ubiquitous and penetrate everywhere thanks to the media), but I'm not sure the western world will ever see such an epigrammist again. Anyway, there was a quote in the introduction to one of his that struck me about editing. It said that his experience editing a newspaper in his post-Oxford days led him to become a indefatigable and fastidious editor of his own work. This is interesting and somewhat inspiring. If I look honestly at myself, my own experience editing has led me to just want to get the thing done and out of my hands. But since I have read this, I have felt compelled to at least look a bit more closely at my writings before showing them to anyone else.
In other news, my wonderful wife and I went to the hospital today for some routine checks. There are signs all about that warn people that they ultrasounds for pregnant women will not reveal for them the sex of the baby. This is not on scientific or even moral grounds, so much as legal ones. One of the fallouts from the One Child Policy is that people have preferred boys to girls, and even gone to such lengths as getting abortions to avoid being restricted to having a daughter without any hope of someday getting a boy. But don't worry, there's also a sign addressing this warning people that it is strictly forbidden to abort a fetus on the grounds of its sex. Thank goodness for Malthus for providing a sufficiently convincing economic model to give this country the excuse to be even more draconian in its policies. Then again, people here are creative and clever enough to get around nearly any regulation. It is not uncommon for little stands to exist right outside the hospital grounds for the lucky couples to check the gender of the little package. It's very James Scott. By playing on the average person's lack of knowledge about the system and the way that the system uses technology, some savvy con-artists have taken to the telephone lines in Western China to bilk people out of their money. I suppose it is not substantially different from scammers using email accounts in most parts of the world, but these opportunists realize that there are still many people in this area who do not yet have consistent internet access, and the best way to make some money off of these people is to stick to the somewhat older technology of the hardline telephone.
Such scammers have called my home four times in the last two weeks. They only call home phones, not mobiles. The phone calls general take one of two forms. In the first, they say that they are the local police and that you owe money, and you should transfer it to an account. If you go to the local police station, they will have no record of this. In the second kind of phone call, the kind which we received this morning, the recipient is told that they have a document from a lawyer. We were in a hurry this morning, so we didn't pull this thread to its (most likely) inevitable conclusion, but I'm sure that, if you wanted to receive said document (and we don't have a lawyer here... so how could we be awaiting a document?) you would have to put some money in an account. Only a nominal fee, maybe 2,000 RMB. (in case the voice didn't come across there, I was being sarcastic). but it certainly pours...
This could be said about many a thing (not least my recent blog posting activities), but I'm speaking specifically about my recent work. The last two weeks have featured: 1)Meeting my first sketch comedy performer (finally) 2) being in an area experiencing substantial (actual) rainfall. 3) Since my return to the fine city of Xining, I have realized that my local criminal background check will not be enough to secure my visa and am left with trying to convince my local psb to figerprint me (and do a good job of it). I'm still within a possible window, but it's closing. 4) Meeting a second sketch comedy performer (but in a place too loud to record, so I come home and have to write everything I can remember) 5) Coming home that night and realizing that my (six-month old) computer's track pad is possessed, doing whatever it wants, and making life difficult. This then inhibits my ability to do anything until it is "fixed" (it still isn't. The problem comes and goes). Since typing this last sentence it has randomly opened power point, preferences, and changed to the right click (twice), and moved to another screen. No joke. Goodness. Hoping you all are better than I am here. I generally try to stick somewhat on topic in this blog, but I'm going to switch things up for a second. Wrestling has been a vital element of my education and life. Without wrestling, I think a number of very important life lessons on physical and mental toughness, hard work, attention to detail, and finishing what you start may not have hit home. I'm very pleased to see wrestling reinstated to the Olympic games.
I love stereotypes. I don't particularly enjoy using them or making them. But I do love learning about them. I think that there a fantastic way of learning the way one group sees another group (and itself in relation to others).
Here are some for the plateau: 1)Ethnic --Hui people are good at business --T people are rich (and within this, Nomads are rich) 2)Regional 1)There's an old adage that Dbus gtsang is the land of religion, Khams is the land of people, and A mdo is the land of horses. This adage has more recently been updated to be more like "Dbus gtsang is the land of politics, Khams is the land of wealth, and Amdo is the land of scholars." 2) When people from Dbus gtsang fight Khampas will help them. If people from Amdo fight, Khampas will help them. When people from Khams fight, the people from Dbus gtsang and Amdo run away. (from a Khams informant) 3)People from Khams don't speak pure Tibetan and are violent (from an A mdo informant) 4)The beautiful woman and handsome boys mostly come from Yushu (from an Amdo informant) Sub-regional 1)People from Khams are violent, but it's the people from Sde dge and Nangchen who are really scary (an informant from Skye dgu mdo) 2)Nomads are rich and bad (says a farmer) 3) I have heard at least one person from Rebgong (Amdo) level accusations against clergy in Mgo log (Amdo) and Yulshul/Yushu (Khams) for deliberately seeking out wealthy patrons in Inner China and even deceiving them about religious doctrine in order to gain patrons. This is, in all actuality just the tip of the iceberg. I'm sure I've heard others, but I can't remember them at the time of writing. So last week I was in the country side, in a pastoral area. It was fantastic. Truly fantastic. There were horse races. I was called Mr. Jersey (in reference to a popular and well-known sketch). Good stuff. But in the course of my time there, something hit me: there are an amazing number of unemployed college graduates on the plateau at the moment, and the number is only increasing. They no longer want to be pastoralists or farmers. Their educational experience has given them a taste for the city life. But the city life has a limited number of job opportunities, and even fewer for which they are actually trained.
Don't believe me? Let's break it down. A vast majority of T people out here who are fortunate enough to obtain university education, do so at a "normal school" (for the training of teachers), or a nationalities university (for the training of cadres). Neither of these schools have much in the way of science, engineering, or even math. They focus on language, education, policy, and the like. This results in a situation in which hundreds of students graduate each year, with the same basic education. They are the prides of their families (not infrequently the first in their families to attain such an achievement) and communities. Many of them are proud to study almost exclusively in Tbtn. It shows loyalty to their ethnic group, and a keen thirst for knowledge of their native culture. Do you see the problem yet? Maybe not. Education is a good thing. No doubt about it. But the resulting social situation is actually far more ambivalent (as I suppose it likely is in many places including the USofA). At present, a large number of people, accustomed to urban living, and reluctant to return to their previous lifestyles graduate each year. They are trained in a very limited set of skills: Tbtn literature, C to T translation, English, linguistics, etc. Because of this limitation, they are left competing for a narrow range of jobs: frequently NGO work, gov't jobs, or teaching. NGO work is drying up. As China gets wealthier, less money comes in from the foreign sources that traditionally underpinned the NGO field on the plateau. The second and third options are stable positions. In order to "fight" corruption, they've turned the job-search into the semblance of a meritocracy wherein a battery of tests decides job placement. But the tests require Chinese language proficiency, which arguably should not be part of the job requirements for, say, an English or Tbtn teaching position. Chinese language proficiency is difficult to come by when you With hundreds of graduates each year and a very limited number of job openings available (I have heard of 500 people taking the tests for 10 positions), you have an ever-growing number of unemployed literati. This is also a problem all over the country, but particularly here in Qinghai. Surely, one would think, it would be in everyone's interest to increase the education options, broadening the fields available for study both at the secondary and post-secondary levels. It would be a slow process, and would require training an even greater number of people with this sort of education. As far as I can tell, Math and Science training are particularly poor in these areas, though. And this is perhaps the biggest obstacle at all levels. And that's my USD .02 |
About TimAs you can see elsewhere on this webpage, I conduct research on ethnic minorities in western China. This blog offers semi-academic musings on the minutiae of daily life out here--the sort of information otherwise destined for footnotes. Categories |