Trust, credit, and belief are all in short supply in twenty-first century China. This is really sad. I increasingly wonder how a society can hold itself together with this level of selfishness. Don't believe me? Well, let's take a look at some common situation:
1) A few years ago, I wanted saw money dropped. I wanted to give it back to the person who dropped, but a friend stopped me. Why? What's wrong with returning money to someone? Well, apparently there's a popular (perhaps the better word is common) scam in which people drop some money (maybe 100 RMB) on the street, and wait for some good samaritan to return it to them. Then they accuse the person (loudly and publicly) of having stolen from them. They will say "I dropped 500 and you only returned 100!" or something similar to that. They may have an accomplice who will attest to seeing you pocket the extra bills. People in Chinese cities love to kan re'nao (check out what's happening), and so this behavior will inevitably draw a crowd of under-informed people who may also pressure the good samaritan to remunerate the crooks. 2) More recently, it has become common for an old man or woman to take a spill on the ground. When some well-meaning younger person helps him/her up, the elderly man or woman will accuse them (again loudly and publicly) of having pushed him/her, and then demand remuneration for all hospital expenses, etc. Again, people will gather, the good samaritan will feel pressured, blah, blah, blah. The other day Tsomo and I heard a radio broadcast round-table discussion in which people were having a serious debate about whether or not one should help an old person who slips and falls. Seriously? This is something that really deserves serious debate? This is not the sort of debate a modern society should have. But here's the thing, despite the nation's continual attempts at encouraging loyalty to the party and the nation (almost one and the same) as the most trustworthy institution in peoples lives, the family remains in actuality the true locus of individual loyalty and trust. The powers that be have a relatively bad track record, and so people don't really seem to accept any institution larger than the family. That's my thought for today (this week?). IN other news, I learned a new C proverb (chengyu): eat bitter to taste sweet. I've found this written alternatively as chiku detian 吃苦得甜, and chiku tianwei 吃苦甜味. It kind of means "no pain, no gain." The idea is that doing the difficult thing might not be fun, but the results are worth it. Meanwhile, the easy op
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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 |