The Shrubbery Divide

During the dinner we chatted about the difference between the US and China. My friend said that in the US, the poor are tucked away in some hidden rundown neighborhood so the middle class can continue their glamorous life without too much of a guilt; in China, however, the rich and the poor often find each other within breathing distance, so one has to learn how to not pay too much attention to the divide of a shrubbery.

To get my hukou back

Many of my fellow countrymen have problem figuring out who I am, cause I don't have a hukou. I got the "Are you still Chinese?" question a lot. Each time I had to explain that no, even though I have a US green card, I still hold a Chinese passport and thus am still Chinese; and yes, green card allows one to live in the US permanently, so it is kinda like a hukou.

In China, however, hukou is a lot more than a permanent residency--at least it used to. Before I left China in 1992, a local hukou was still required for most employment, education for one's children and other benefits. But the system gradually broke down as the economy sped away and more and more labor migrated about. Now one could live and work anywhere; nobody is counting on the government to dish out benefits based on hukou anymore.

As many of the migrant workers, I have been living "illegally" without a hukou in Beijing since 2004. I did not even bother to register with the local Public Security Bureau as a "temporary resident," since the police does not intrude on posh apartment complex to check on the registration unless for far important reasons. It suited me fine until now, until I joined a proper company and have stable income coming in but the stable income could not be invested in the red hot stock or real estate market cause I don't have a residence card, and I can't apply for a business visa to Hong Kong cause I need to apply locally where my hukou resides; and that's in addition to the 15% salary's worth of social security and housing benefits I'm foregoing cause both accounts need to be linked to one's hukou.

So I began to wonder where my hukou went. Back in 1992, three years after the student movement and with the leadership jittery of too many students going overseas to study, the policy was that one had to give up one's hukou before moving overseas. The inane policy lasted only for a couple of years, which explains why few could understand me being still Chinese but without a hukou.

So after a few phone calls, I decided to get my hukou back. Here's what happened last Thursday:

7:20 Fight left for the city where I went to university.

10:15 Found the university hukou office. The officer gave me a paper slip with a university stamp on it certifying that my hukou had been cancelled.

10:30 Arrive at Police Station A where my hukou used to be kept. A female officer checked my record on computer and put another red stamp certifying that my hukou had really been cancelled.

10:45 Arrive at the Municipal Public Security Bureau's Border Entry & Exit Office. Told to visit the local CDC to get my health certified.

11:15 Finally found the CDC office after having been directed away to a different health exam facility. Told to visit the AIDS office on the 4th floor of the dilapidated old building. Found an old guy and a young guy in the dark AIDS office stuffed with newspaper and medical records. The old guy told me the checkup would take 2 days and then turned back to the computer screen filled with stock charts and quotes. I thought OMG this would be a bureaucratic nightmare so I begged--please I came all the way from Beijing; please I have a super important career-making meeting the next day; and look, I brought the certified results of the pre-employment physical prior to starting my current job; it's what you want, right?

The young guy checked the booklet of my physical result full of all sorts of red stamps. He said maybe the checkup could be shorter in my case. The old guy said make sure the physical had checked everything. The young guy said everything except for his HIV status.

11:35 The young guy took me to the 6th floor of the brand new building linked to the old building. A female nurse took my blood. Told to come back at 2:30pm the earliest.

14:30 Woke up from a nap in the lobby of the new building. Went to the AIDS office in the old building. The young guy had gone out for business. The old guy was still checking stock charts. Told to visit the blood lab.

14:45 Saw the female nurse just starting the antibody test on my blood. The entire 6th floor was empty except for that blood lab. Waited.

15:15 Called by the nurse. She gave me a paper slip with a red stamp on it certifying that I am HIV negative.

15:30 Back at the dark AIDS office. The old guy filled in my HIV status on a form with my name and photo on it. Had the urge to ask what if I was positive but decided not to push my luck. He gave me a paper slip with a red stamp on it certifying my health check was ok. Thanked him profusely. He said many Chinese were returning to China and reclaiming their hukous. Their healths had all been ok. Saw their forms piling on the desk and wondered if they would all go to the garbage bin in a month.

15:45 Back at the Entry & Exit Office. Got another stamp on the original paper slip certifying that my hukou had really truly been cancelled and they recommend that Police Station B reactivate it. How about the business visa to Hong Kong? Told to get my hukou reactivated first.

16:05 Arrive at Police Station B that was keeping all new hukous associated with the university. Told to go back to university hukou office to get my hukou file.

16:20 Called the university hukou officer a second time. The office only opened in the morning. Begged profusedly--please I came all the way from Beijing; please I have a super important career-making meeting the next day; please I'm sure that your kindness would be duly rewarded. He finally said ok.

17:00 Arrived at the office with a fancy box of mooncakes and a plain box of Nestle instant coffee.

17:15 The officer arrived. Gave him the multi-stamped paper slip. He found my original hukou record and gave it to me. Thanked him profusely and gave him the mooncakes and instant coffee. He said I couldn't accept them. I said you must accept them.

17:30 Back at Police Station B 30 minutes before closing time. The female officer, a young girl, said I could get your hukou reactivated but you had to come back tomorrow for the residence card--too late to take the photo at Police Station C. Begged profusely. Finally a different girl officer relented. She typed on the computer and printed out a form. I said I would sprint to Station C. The girl rolled her eyes at me--if you don't sprint who would sprint for you?

17:40 Sprinting to the nearby Police Station C with the form.

17:45 Arrived at Station C but the photo room was locked! Panting, freaking out, asking everyone where the heck was the photo guy!

17:50 Photo guy came back. Took photo. He photoshopped my hair and viola, it's done--image automatically transmitted to the residence card database.

17:57 Sprinted back to Station B, 3 minutes before close time. Everyone cheered. The girl officer gave me a red-stamp receipt and told to come back to pick up the residence card in 2.5 months. Given another form with my basic info printed on it. Told the form is my hukou and I can take it with me but I have to take good care of it. What if I lost the form? Everyone giggled--guess you'd be a Black Resident, an illegal resident. Left thanking them all profusely.

18:58 Bought ticket for an overnight train back to Beijing!

Now I have the activated hukou hidden safely in my apartment. Isn't it amazing that so much could have been accomplished with just some profuse begging and some token gift-giving? A decade ago this level of efficiency would have been completely unfathomable, not to mention the smiling customer-centric police officers and the stock-market-obsessed yet not-unreasonable old AIDS officer.

Seriously, China is indeed improving, and I seriously hope not only for those who had studied overseas and have important business meetings in Beijing and are HIV negative.

Harmoniously Competitive

Compare to our competitors, my company is very late to the Olympics bandwagon. We don’t even have a channel dedicated to 2008, only a sub channel. The day before yesterday, one day before the 1 year count down, a VP mentioned that we ought to have at least a count-down clock on our home page. So the web team scrambled to get it up, a few hours before the start of the official celebration party on Tiananmen Square.

During the brainstorm on how to get on the bandwagon, I suggested that we leverage our global network: we could translate into Chinese content from other territories and call it “Laowais on Olympics!”—god knows how we Chinese treasure foreigners’ opinions—and feed original user-generated content, made here in Beijing and translated in English, back to those territories as “Live from Beijing!”

I thought the idea brilliant and the group considered it interesting—we have to differentiate ourselves somehow from our competitors who are bigger stronger and have started much earlier. So I did more research. Our Taiwan partner site was blocked. Our US site cited an AP story that called the Beijing air “filthy,” the pollution “choking,” and the government “authoritarian.”

OMG, my idea wouldn’t work! No way the censors would approve “(disgruntled) Laowais on Olympics!” posted on our site. Come to think of it, no way either for foreign audience to enjoy “Live (but sanitized) from Beijing!”

Either we remain incredibly conventional and lose to the conventional but bigger competitors, or we could become incredibly innovative within the limits of being positive, prosperous and harmonious.

The question for the latter is—how?

Impression: Lugu Lake

The Lugu Lake on the Sichuan and Yunnan border was a bumpy 7 hour bus ride away from Lijiang. Relatively few tourists visit there, and those who do, usually take the two-day tour arriving at the lake around 4pm and leaving the next morning back to Lijiang at 10am. Most of these tourists stayed in Luoshui, Falling Water, the most developed village around the lake, for staged bon-fire parties and a peek at the much-hyped "last surviving matrichal culture in the world!" With the supposed promiscuity of the pretty Mosuo women, a single guy just might get lucky and receive an invitation to a private chamber for a "walking marriage" at night.

Daba, the owner of the hostel on the Lige peninsula where I stayed, said it was simply not true. "The so-called ‘walking marriage’ is actually serious for the Mosuos,” he said. “Even though the couple in love don’t own or owe each other anything, that doesn’t mean they switch partners all the time. Relationships tend to be long term, and when the couple no longer love each other, they part ways.”

“In fact,” he continued, “this system is far superior to the ones you have in Han regions. There’s no haggling over child custody or financials in case of a breakup. Everything stays with the maternal family.”

Daba was proud of his tradition, yet he had “legally” married according to Chinese law. He had attended university in Beijing, and had his first job in the local government, so a “legal” marriage helped him appear less “minority.” But he stressed he had never used his marriage certificate, and though he helped out with his wife’s family, it was his maternal family to which he held the utmost loyalty.

Daba’s Inn seemed the last old structure standing in the Lige Village, the village closest to Luoshui. All around the lake villages were undergoing intense transformation, the fierceness of which rivaled that of the Olympic-frenzied Beijing. The Mosuos live with their big extended maternal families. Now every family in Lige has a two-storey inn standing in front of the old family quarter. Most of these inns were built by Han people who migrated here and leased out land from the locals.

“My people…” Daba sighed and shook his head. “They just want the 50,000 yuan a year from the Han businessman. They don’t know how to protect their culture. And the county government is not providing any guidance. The Han people come over here, build an inn, and then start selling our culture like fast food. How could this be sustainable?”

To be fair, the local government had implemented strict preservation rules: every family and every inn must have a sewage line running to the nearby treatment facility, which kept the lake water crystal clear; every new building had to conform to the local architecture style (unfortunately, like construction elsewhere in China, all the new faux-traditional buildings look exactly the same). Most of all, the locals were happy. They welcomed the tourists and the Han businessmen who had a much better sense in running the inns.

But Daba was most concerned with the culture itself. “There are so many beautiful aspects about our culture,” he said, “but the Han tourists only knew of the walking marriage, and even that was mostly misinformed. They knew nothing about our religion or our language. The central government itself mistakenly grouped us under the Naxis in 1950. We need to learn to show the outsiders the real Mosuo.” Daba was one of the organizers of a local cultural preservation foundation; but no fund was coming in.

Unsurprisingly, few tourists seemed to care. During my three nights staying at the lake, Daba’s one-hundred-year-old building had the lowest occupancy every night. The rooms were dark, the communal shower rudimentary, and there were bed bugs. And Daba was the most morose among all the inn keepers. Tourists wanted bigger rooms, hopefully with private bath.

“Those tourists,” Daba snickered, “they are not true travelers. True travelers, like those foreign backpackers, they love the authenticity of my place.”

Authenticity was what attracted Old Wang to the lake as well. The next day I hiked along the lake towards the Grass Sea—a beautiful expansive marshland on the Sichuan side of the lake—and had lunch at Old Wang’s guest inn. Old Wang and his wife had several successful businesses in Manchuria. They loved traveling, and a year ago when they traveled to the Lugu Lake, they decided to stay. The people were authentic. The natural scenery was beautiful beyond description. They asked their relatives to take over their businesses, and they built an inn and stayed.

That’s at least the official version of the story from Old Wang, a theme I had heard repeatedly in Yunnan—wearied Han people found inspirations from the scenery and the peole in Yunnan and decided to stay.

It was right before noon. There was only me and Old Wang in the dining area which had huge windows overlooking the marshland. Old Wang told me stories of the local Mosuos, stories he claimed that the Mosuos themselves had forgotten. The rice porridge tasted great after a good morning’s hike. Flies were bombarding us despite the burning incenses. It was a enchanting breezy day by the lake.

Old Wang said he didn’t care about money. He just loved the tranquility. I said I noticed that the Sichuan side of the lake had built nice asphalt roads—unlike the bumpy stone roads on the Yunnan side of the lake—which made me worry a bit that the Sichuan government was intent on bringing hordes of tourists in. He said that’s not the end of it—an airport was being planned and supposedly would go into operation by 2010.

That would be the end of the lake, I lamented. He said no worry, we’d have moved to a different tranquil place by then.

Then immediately, he started bragging about how he turned a profit after only 5 months. He was thinking of building a chicken pen and raise tons of chicken. He would charge tourists to shoot the chicken with real rifles and cook for them immediately afterwards. He could get the chicks for X yuan a piece, and charge XX yuan a piece to shoot them when they grew up. He would end up with XXX yuan profit with XXXX chickens in the pen.

I was silent for a beat, then I asked, “Wouldn’t that ruin the tranquility?”

“Oh,” he said, “by then I would have moved on to another piece. I would let someone else manage the place and collect the money for me.”

That night Daba invited his friends over for a drink. They were three young Han businessmen who were loud and friendly and loved to drink. They were building a fancy inn with bathrooms looking out at the lake in the village. Three young Chinese tourists and I joined them. We told stories, drank barley liquor and sang songs. Daba said he had begun contemplating some renovation work, perhaps repainting the entire building and remodeling the two big rooms to add in private bathrooms. His friends all said it’s about time. I concurred—after three nights, the bed bugs at Daba’s place had really started bugging me.

The gentle waves of the lake hit the banks as the night’s merriment went on, and stars slowly came out until they filled the entire sky. I was happy being half drunk and in Yunnan. It was not my place to lament the encroachment of Chinese TV and American soap operas in the Mosuo village. It was not my place to criticize the travelers who want comfort and the innkeepers who want to make some money by catering to that comfort. It would be simple condescension if I were to note the irony of the Mosuos who had traveled far away from home wanting to preserve the tradition that the true locals seem indifferent to leave behind. The forces of the people coming and going, of them chasing the next fad destination, of locals marketing themselves to outsiders, of conservators striving to conserve and radicals fighting to shed their skins; the changes, the unstoppable changes, the scarily rapid changes sweeping everywhere—Mosuo, Yunnan, China, and everywhere else—they are beyond my comprehension and judgment. I can only observe, it seems, and appreciate the fragile scenery and people while they last.