A great one today from Chris Arnade, about Walking in Beijing. I will quote a few paragraphs but there is much much more:
To someone who has been raised on horror stories written in foreign papers, there is a surprising anything-goes attitude in China, outside of a few institutions. The internet firewall is annoying, but everyone gets around it, and everyone knows everyone does. Very bad things do happen in China, but the overwhelming majority of people also go about their daily lives much like anyplace else, focusing on daily tasks, local gossip, sports, family matters, career advancement, love lost and love wanted, rather than the political maneuverings of the political class. The Chinese are chill, fun, and open—at least about as much as you can be when living in a city with the aesthetic of an overly engineered corporate business park.
There is, when you look closer, a great deal of chaos in Beijing, some of which is simply about incompetence or a lack of care from the vast array of minor officials and bureaucrats, but most of it is from the surprisingly optimistic attitude of the residents. China doesn’t feel like an oppressive police state the way the Soviet bloc once did, because the Chinese, rather than being corrupted by anger, are sincere, thoughtful, grateful, happy, warm, efficient, genuine, and caring. To the degree that they are cynical (an attitude that dominates most oppressive authoritarian states) there is a playfulness to it, not a bitterness. An “Oh, did you see what silly thing the party did again?” rather than a sense of living through an existential terror.
So far so good. But:
Simply put, it’s unclear what China’s ultimate goal is beyond accumulating wealth and expanding its cities—eventually stretching its metro system to the 98th expressway ring, then the 400th—until the entire country fuses into a single vast urban sprawl. What is the end game? What is the Chinese guardian class working toward? Anyone who still believes it’s the old Marxist vision of eliminating capitalism and creating a classless, stateless society is deluding themselves.
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I’m currently writing this in Korea, and the contrast between Beijing and Seoul is fascinating, mostly in an unflattering way to Beijing. Despite what I wrote above, I am happy to be out of Beijing and in Seoul. It is refreshing to be able to quickly read whatever I want and talk to whomever I want without having to jump through all sorts of hoops, regardless of how ineffective and symbolic they are.
Some good photos there too. Seems to be a place that’s better for living in than visiting — the anti-New York.