During our years in Beijing and Shanghai from 2006 - 2009, I worked for about half the time researching internet use in China for the Pew Internet Project, an arm of the Pew Research Center. Unable to do my own fieldwork (foreigners are forbidden to do surveys in China without a Chinese partner), I gleaned what I could from survey work from my friend Guo Liang of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and from other helpful researchers at the China Internet Network Information Center, which has done its own surveys of internet development in China since 1997. For me, the most interesting (and surprising!) results I found were about the Chinese people's high tolerance for government oversight of internet use.
So, I am always interested when the Pew Research Center issues its Global Attitudes reports, which include information about China. Their newest report, called Global Digital Communication, was just released.
Like many other readers of surveys done in China, I look for the footnotes about data collection, survey methods, and any other tidbits I can find to bear in mind when I look at the numbers. Pew remarks that the 2011 Global Attitudes Survey was conducted under the direction of their longtime collaborator, the Princeton Survey Research Associates, -- except in China --, where data were purchased from the Horizon Research Consultancy Group (a private survey firm), based on their own self-sponsored survey, "Chinese People View the World". During my time in China, Horizon was the go-to survey firm among foreigners.
Another critical point to bear in mind is that the pool of respondents in china is disproportionately urban. As a matter of perspective, some of the so-called "towns", as opposed to "cities" where the survey was conducted include many I recognize as having populations in the millions. Urban, indeed. In China, I found the differences between city life and country life to be staggering in both recorded statistics and observable lifestyle.
With those caveats, here are some things I noticed about China this time around: 93% of respondents say they own cell phones. This is a hefty increase from 50% in 2002 to 67% in 2007 to the present. China is far from alone in the world in such increases in cell phone ownership, of course. But it is worth comparing with cell phone ownership in the US at 61% in 2002; 81% in 2007; and (now eclipsed) 85% in 2011
As for what people do on their phones, the Chinese numbers exceed the global median of 21 countries surveyed in all categories:
Do you--
make phone calls: 98% (China 99%)
text: 75% (China 80%)
take pictures or video: 50% (China 54%)
use the internet: 23% (China 37%)
Anecdotally, on the sidewalks and metro, in the elevators and markets of China, I saw more people more frequently texting than anything else. Texting is very cheap in China, and while people do talk on the phone, they seem to do it with less abandon than texting.
As far as social networking, among the 8 poorest countries surveyed, with a GDP per capita of under 10,000$, China has the highest percentage (over 30%) of social networkers. Social networking is off-the-charts as a social phenomenon in China; it is one of few ways to publicly let off steam, project your voice far and wide, become a presence. With China's newly proposed requirement that people post with their real names, rather than made-up names, the dynamics around social networking will surely change.
Showing posts with label China. Show all posts
Showing posts with label China. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Monday, May 23, 2011
Beijing by Subway
I figure that during the recent three years that my husband and I lived in China, I took about 1,000 rides on the subways of Shanghai and Beijing. That adds up to roughly 500 hours, 2000 RMB (about $300 by today's exchange rate), and an incalculable social experience. I also memorized the Beijing station arrival announcement, which is said in Mandarin and then repeated in English at every single stop, offering a useful, if tedious, language lesson.
Xia che de chengke, qing tiqian zuo hao zhunbei. "Departing passengers, please get ready for your arrival." Or more literally: Off car passengers please beforehand do something well prepare.
The subway system in Beijing ramped up quickly after a slow start: Two lines opened in 1971, two more at the start of the 21st century, four more just about in time for the 2008 Olympics, and another six since then. The expanded system had no discernable effect on the congested roads, which are clogged with nearly 5 million cars, a number that will grow at a (controlled) rate of 20,000 per month in 2011. But it opened new worlds to me. My husband and I were so excited when the new number 10 line opened right outside our apartment building that we rushed to the station to be among the very first people in all of Beijing to try it. (Such was our local recreation!)
The #10 line changed our lives. Suddenly, we could cross Beijing not only east to west on the old #1 line, which conveniently passes the stretch of western hotels (where we often had meetings), Tiananmen (where we often took visitors), the local shopping streets, the financial district, museums, the opera house, and other grand landmarks.
On the new #10, we could now zoom north from the Central Business District to the stadiums, past the expat dining and shopping streets, the diplomatic sections, the change to the airport, and swing around west all the way to the university district. With that trajectory, the #10 line boasts a fairly upscale ridership—lots of students, always a few westerners, middle-class workers with briefcases.
Back in Beijing for another long stay this past winter, I returned from my first outing on the #10 line, marveling to my husband how passengers' behavior had improved during our eight-month absence. This was important news: For about a year before the 2008 Olympics, Beijing tried to train its residents to put on a good show for international visitors by queuing in lines instead of pushing and shoving and forming a crushing wedge of humanity toward whatever spot was the common destination. The eleventh day of every month was declared stand-in-line day, when residents would dutifully practice. Now, it seemed to me, it had finally paid off.
Riders on the #10 line stood in two orderly queues along a painted stripe that marked the outside edge of the doors. As the train approached, no one budged. And furthermore, instead of the usual rush to board at the instant the doors opened, everyone stood like potted plants waiting for passengers to exit before boarding themselves.
Several days later, my husband and I were riding the #2 line, one of Beijing's oldest, which follows an inner loop of the city, a relic of an earlier era of a smaller Beijing. The #2 line also skirts past a messy, busy terminal of the long-distance buses, and is an access point for the Beijing train station, making it a favorite for migrant workers, who seem to be in perpetual transit.
To get home, we had to make the change to the #1 line at what I always dreaded as the worst station in Beijing, Jianguomen. I hate that station, because it's old, awkward, and always swarming with unruly crowds. This would be a real test of stand-in-line behavior.
We had just missed a train and were first in line for the next. During the three-minute wait, the line behind us grew into a throng. When the train arrived, we were swept into the car by sheer crowd momentum. My husband, by a head the tallest person on the train, was lucky, I thought, as he could peer out above the sea of black hair. But not so lucky, I realized, in another way. A migrant worker had slung his giant plastic grain sack (probably holding most of his worldly possessions) over his shoulder, thrusting the sack smack into my husband's stomach, doubling him over into an awkward, unwieldy C shape around the grain sack. I doubted he could maintain this posture to the next station.
After a moment, another migrant laborer, eyeball-to-eyeball with me, took stock of the situation, and motioned to his buddy to drop the bag. Fang di, "put it down", he said. The worker gently eased the sack off his shoulder to the floor, revealing a worn spot of fabric on his coat, rubbed entirely threadbare by the heavy sack—a telltale sign of how many miles this man had traveled, sack-over-shoulder.
We were gone in two more stops. But that image is always there, a reminder to me that the Beijing subway offers more than reliable and quick ride. It offers moments in real China. I have had 1,000 of them.
Images (top to bottom): lylevincent/flickr, Grace Liang/Reuters This article available online at:
http://www.theatlantic.com/life/archive/2011/05/how-to-see-the-real-china-ride-beijings-subway/238360/
The #10 line changed our lives. Suddenly, we could cross Beijing not only east to west on the old #1 line, which conveniently passes the stretch of western hotels (where we often had meetings), Tiananmen (where we often took visitors), the local shopping streets, the financial district, museums, the opera house, and other grand landmarks.
On the new #10, we could now zoom north from the Central Business District to the stadiums, past the expat dining and shopping streets, the diplomatic sections, the change to the airport, and swing around west all the way to the university district. With that trajectory, the #10 line boasts a fairly upscale ridership—lots of students, always a few westerners, middle-class workers with briefcases.
Back in Beijing for another long stay this past winter, I returned from my first outing on the #10 line, marveling to my husband how passengers' behavior had improved during our eight-month absence. This was important news: For about a year before the 2008 Olympics, Beijing tried to train its residents to put on a good show for international visitors by queuing in lines instead of pushing and shoving and forming a crushing wedge of humanity toward whatever spot was the common destination. The eleventh day of every month was declared stand-in-line day, when residents would dutifully practice. Now, it seemed to me, it had finally paid off.
Riders on the #10 line stood in two orderly queues along a painted stripe that marked the outside edge of the doors. As the train approached, no one budged. And furthermore, instead of the usual rush to board at the instant the doors opened, everyone stood like potted plants waiting for passengers to exit before boarding themselves.
Several days later, my husband and I were riding the #2 line, one of Beijing's oldest, which follows an inner loop of the city, a relic of an earlier era of a smaller Beijing. The #2 line also skirts past a messy, busy terminal of the long-distance buses, and is an access point for the Beijing train station, making it a favorite for migrant workers, who seem to be in perpetual transit.
To get home, we had to make the change to the #1 line at what I always dreaded as the worst station in Beijing, Jianguomen. I hate that station, because it's old, awkward, and always swarming with unruly crowds. This would be a real test of stand-in-line behavior. We had just missed a train and were first in line for the next. During the three-minute wait, the line behind us grew into a throng. When the train arrived, we were swept into the car by sheer crowd momentum. My husband, by a head the tallest person on the train, was lucky, I thought, as he could peer out above the sea of black hair. But not so lucky, I realized, in another way. A migrant worker had slung his giant plastic grain sack (probably holding most of his worldly possessions) over his shoulder, thrusting the sack smack into my husband's stomach, doubling him over into an awkward, unwieldy C shape around the grain sack. I doubted he could maintain this posture to the next station.
After a moment, another migrant laborer, eyeball-to-eyeball with me, took stock of the situation, and motioned to his buddy to drop the bag. Fang di, "put it down", he said. The worker gently eased the sack off his shoulder to the floor, revealing a worn spot of fabric on his coat, rubbed entirely threadbare by the heavy sack—a telltale sign of how many miles this man had traveled, sack-over-shoulder.
We were gone in two more stops. But that image is always there, a reminder to me that the Beijing subway offers more than reliable and quick ride. It offers moments in real China. I have had 1,000 of them.
Images (top to bottom): lylevincent/flickr, Grace Liang/Reuters This article available online at:
http://www.theatlantic.com/life/archive/2011/05/how-to-see-the-real-china-ride-beijings-subway/238360/
Copyright © 2011 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All Rights Reserved.
(This entry first appeared at TheAtlantic.com)
Sunday, March 6, 2011
More on Fat in China
BEIJING, China -- Within 48 hours of arriving in Beijing on this visit, three Chinese women I know opened their greetings to me not with the familiar "Hao jiu bu jian!" or "Long time no see!", but "Wo pang," meaning "I'm fat."
In one case, it looked to be true, although genially pudgy would probably be a more accurate description than simply fat. In another case, it was not at all true; this woman was as birdlike-frail as she had ever looked. As for the third, well, maybe just a little.
The use of the word pang (pronounced pahng) is a real cultural marker in China. Just a few years ago, I often overheard pang used as part of the usual litany of comments like "Nice shoes!" or "New haircut!" It was always a neutral statement among friends that carried no baggage of insult, cattiness, warning, or dismay that might come across in western culture.
But this new self-referential use of pang is different; there is change in the air in China around the word pang.
What's going on here? Paul French, a 14-year veteran of China research, a China historian, and author of his latest book, Fat China, has all the numbers to explain the fast-paced current trend toward fat in this video. The younger, urban, and affluent are leading China toward a heavier (nearly 10% of the population classified as obese) and already more diabetic (10% in urban areas) population.
To the casual observer, these numbers ring true. There seem to be more fat people on the streets and in the subways. And not just "little emperors", those spoiled only-boy children. You see pudgy in all ages and both genders now.
The newspapers report about the vogue of fat camps right next to the stories of internet addiction camps. Also in vogue are fast food places, of course. But McDonald's, KFC, and PIzza Hut are more than just exotic and efficient; they're upscale. Whenever we frequented Pizza Hut, we had to remember to make reservations, as it was one of the places to dress up and go for special family dinners. I'm not sure if McWeddings have moved from Hong Kong to the mainland yet, but they are mentioned with interest in the Chinese press.
What caught my eye this week were the giant posters advertising Fatburger! Coming Soon!, a franchise that improbably boasts Miami, Riyadh, Las Vegas, and many other international venues. This was splashed along the walls inside a high-end new mall, right next to Fendi and Shiseido.
Change in language follows change in culture, and this move of the meaning of pang toward the negative is, I think, a reflection of a few warning signs I have noticed in the culture.
On Chinese TV, programs often air with not-very-veiled messages of good over evil. I watch one cartoon show (hey, good for language learning!) about a little boy whose parents try to teach him moral lessons. The last episode was about learning that a caged wild bird would be happier being let go to fly away free. I've seen a number of TV shows about parenting, usually featuring pedantic professor-type hosts or nurses in white uniforms, and many geared toward teaching about feeding kids healthy snacks. No more sweets; bring on the apples!
In one of the countless articles about education, usually mentioning the university entrance exam, the gaokao, which Lucia Pierce wrote about here this week, there is talk about the flood of students toward the less academic universities for the arts, including a track in modeling, which requires not the gaokao but rather body measurements as part of the application process. Some girls, even those set on being models, are apparently balking at this.
And my younger sources tell me there is a small but growing awareness of anorexia. It is simply called "yan shi zheng", which means "hate food."
(this post originally appeared as a guest blog here.)
In one case, it looked to be true, although genially pudgy would probably be a more accurate description than simply fat. In another case, it was not at all true; this woman was as birdlike-frail as she had ever looked. As for the third, well, maybe just a little.The use of the word pang (pronounced pahng) is a real cultural marker in China. Just a few years ago, I often overheard pang used as part of the usual litany of comments like "Nice shoes!" or "New haircut!" It was always a neutral statement among friends that carried no baggage of insult, cattiness, warning, or dismay that might come across in western culture.
But this new self-referential use of pang is different; there is change in the air in China around the word pang.
What's going on here? Paul French, a 14-year veteran of China research, a China historian, and author of his latest book, Fat China, has all the numbers to explain the fast-paced current trend toward fat in this video. The younger, urban, and affluent are leading China toward a heavier (nearly 10% of the population classified as obese) and already more diabetic (10% in urban areas) population.
To the casual observer, these numbers ring true. There seem to be more fat people on the streets and in the subways. And not just "little emperors", those spoiled only-boy children. You see pudgy in all ages and both genders now.
The newspapers report about the vogue of fat camps right next to the stories of internet addiction camps. Also in vogue are fast food places, of course. But McDonald's, KFC, and PIzza Hut are more than just exotic and efficient; they're upscale. Whenever we frequented Pizza Hut, we had to remember to make reservations, as it was one of the places to dress up and go for special family dinners. I'm not sure if McWeddings have moved from Hong Kong to the mainland yet, but they are mentioned with interest in the Chinese press.
What caught my eye this week were the giant posters advertising Fatburger! Coming Soon!, a franchise that improbably boasts Miami, Riyadh, Las Vegas, and many other international venues. This was splashed along the walls inside a high-end new mall, right next to Fendi and Shiseido.
Change in language follows change in culture, and this move of the meaning of pang toward the negative is, I think, a reflection of a few warning signs I have noticed in the culture.
On Chinese TV, programs often air with not-very-veiled messages of good over evil. I watch one cartoon show (hey, good for language learning!) about a little boy whose parents try to teach him moral lessons. The last episode was about learning that a caged wild bird would be happier being let go to fly away free. I've seen a number of TV shows about parenting, usually featuring pedantic professor-type hosts or nurses in white uniforms, and many geared toward teaching about feeding kids healthy snacks. No more sweets; bring on the apples!
In one of the countless articles about education, usually mentioning the university entrance exam, the gaokao, which Lucia Pierce wrote about here this week, there is talk about the flood of students toward the less academic universities for the arts, including a track in modeling, which requires not the gaokao but rather body measurements as part of the application process. Some girls, even those set on being models, are apparently balking at this.
And my younger sources tell me there is a small but growing awareness of anorexia. It is simply called "yan shi zheng", which means "hate food."
(this post originally appeared as a guest blog here.)
Friday, October 1, 2010
Ai "To Love"
One of the great things for me about a book tour in the chance to talk a little bit with people who are interested in some curiosities of the Mandarin language.
Yesterday I learned something new about a question that has long puzzled me. I had been talking about the word “ai”, which means “to love” in Mandarin. I said that this word first caught my attention about 20 years ago, when we were traveling around China with our two then-small, blond boys. A Chinese woman scrutinized me, sized up our boys, and asked earnestly, “Which one do you love more?”
I was taken aback and responded as any American would, “I love them both the same!” “Ah," she paused, “but really, which one do you love more?”
Trying to understand her, I thought maybe her sense of love was not of a boundless, borderless whole, but rather as part of some zero-sum calculation, which should be divvied up and portioned out.
Last night, a young Chinese mom with her little girl in the audience in Seattle gave me a different interpretation. She said that not so long ago, when generations and extended Chinese families, including often dozens of kids, lived together in a shared housing compound, it was common to ask each other, “Which of the children is your favorite?” And that somehow -- if there were 25 children instead of just 2 or 3 -- it would be a less offensive and less personal question to ask.
I guess I see her point, although it also made me think about how Americans shy away from “playing favorites” in any size group, big or small. If a teacher or a coach seems to do this, people notice, and it’s the cause of some discomfort all around, often even from the “favorites.”
So, I have added this question to the list of those that often startle westerners the first time they hear them, questions like: How much is your rent? How much do you earn? What did you pay for your bag (or watch, or pearls, or scarf)? Now, Which child do you love more?
The good news: with China’s one-child policy, the question won’t be on the list for long.
Friday, August 27, 2010
Four more Reasons to study Chinese
Here are reasons 4 - 8 to study Chinese:
5. You can choose a Chinese name. Names are serious business in China. When we arrived in Shanghai to live, one of the first things people said to us was, "There are two things you need to be considered a real person in China, a mobile phone and a Chinese name." The first was easy; we just hit the Nokia store. The second was harder. The Chinese love to help you find a new name. They usually start by playing with your English name somehow, and then pack it with all kinds of innuendo and auspicious meaning. My husband's Chinese name is fang fei jie (last name, middle, first, in that order). Fang sounded about as close to our family name as you can get in Chinese. The other two resonated with his passion of flying small planes. Fei means "to fly". Jie mean "quick or victory". Together they suggest something like "ace fighter pilot". Quite a name! I was not so lucky. The best we could do was "jie bi", which sounds kind of like "Debbie" but actually means "to borrow a pen". I found it very hard to say Ni hao, wo jiao jie bi, "Hello, my name is to borrow a pen."
6. Unlock the mystery of tones and tell great stories. First, be grateful that Mandarin Chinese has only 4 tones, instead of 5 like Vietnamese or Thai, or 7 like Cantonese. In Mandarin Chinese, you have high tone, rising tone, falling-rising, and falling tone. You can get a leg up on the issue by concentrating on the high tone, which one friend told me to think of as the "mi" in do - re - mi. You aim for that high note and just hold it a while. There's no skirting the issue that tones are difficult to hear and to say, at least at the beginning. But they're also something that you can finally just get a feel for by lots and lots of exposure; lots of listening, lots of speaking, and lots of silly mistakes and encounters. Like when you think you're asking the waiter, "Could I have a doggy-bag?" and he hears "Could I have a hug?"
7. A chance to count your lucky stars. Chinese has over 40,000 characters. Nobody, not even the Chinese, learns all these. But they do spend their lifetimes mastering characters or at least trying not to get rusty over the ones they normally use. As an English speaker, you master just 26 letters, some tricky spelling, and if you're studying Chinese as a foreign language, you probably aim to learn just three or four thousand characters. There are fun and quirky things you learn with characters. Like that 人 looks like the two legs of a person and in fact means person. Don't be fooled, of course, because most Chinese characters are harder than this, and some take over 20 strokes to write.
8. Impress your friends and family. They'll think you're so smart if you learn a little Chinese, because everyone thinks that Chinese is really, really hard -- so hard that no normal person can learn it (never mind that 1.3 billion Chinese have learned it in childhood). Yes, OK, Chinese is hard. But every foreign language is hard. And few of them have as many payoffs as Chinese has. There are high-level payoffs, like how Chinese will open up a strange and important world to you and possibly even open up doors to your future that you can't even begin to imagine. Or the low-level payoffs, like picking up random bits of quirky information: that restaurants in China don't have fortune cookies; that Chinese has only 400 syllables (hu, ma, shi), while English has 4000 (prompts, stretched, climbs); or that lots of Chinese people couldn't understand Chairman Mao when he spoke because of his heavy Hunan accent.
(image from Coloursrun.com)
5. You can choose a Chinese name. Names are serious business in China. When we arrived in Shanghai to live, one of the first things people said to us was, "There are two things you need to be considered a real person in China, a mobile phone and a Chinese name." The first was easy; we just hit the Nokia store. The second was harder. The Chinese love to help you find a new name. They usually start by playing with your English name somehow, and then pack it with all kinds of innuendo and auspicious meaning. My husband's Chinese name is fang fei jie (last name, middle, first, in that order). Fang sounded about as close to our family name as you can get in Chinese. The other two resonated with his passion of flying small planes. Fei means "to fly". Jie mean "quick or victory". Together they suggest something like "ace fighter pilot". Quite a name! I was not so lucky. The best we could do was "jie bi", which sounds kind of like "Debbie" but actually means "to borrow a pen". I found it very hard to say Ni hao, wo jiao jie bi, "Hello, my name is to borrow a pen."
6. Unlock the mystery of tones and tell great stories. First, be grateful that Mandarin Chinese has only 4 tones, instead of 5 like Vietnamese or Thai, or 7 like Cantonese. In Mandarin Chinese, you have high tone, rising tone, falling-rising, and falling tone. You can get a leg up on the issue by concentrating on the high tone, which one friend told me to think of as the "mi" in do - re - mi. You aim for that high note and just hold it a while. There's no skirting the issue that tones are difficult to hear and to say, at least at the beginning. But they're also something that you can finally just get a feel for by lots and lots of exposure; lots of listening, lots of speaking, and lots of silly mistakes and encounters. Like when you think you're asking the waiter, "Could I have a doggy-bag?" and he hears "Could I have a hug?"
7. A chance to count your lucky stars. Chinese has over 40,000 characters. Nobody, not even the Chinese, learns all these. But they do spend their lifetimes mastering characters or at least trying not to get rusty over the ones they normally use. As an English speaker, you master just 26 letters, some tricky spelling, and if you're studying Chinese as a foreign language, you probably aim to learn just three or four thousand characters. There are fun and quirky things you learn with characters. Like that 人 looks like the two legs of a person and in fact means person. Don't be fooled, of course, because most Chinese characters are harder than this, and some take over 20 strokes to write.
8. Impress your friends and family. They'll think you're so smart if you learn a little Chinese, because everyone thinks that Chinese is really, really hard -- so hard that no normal person can learn it (never mind that 1.3 billion Chinese have learned it in childhood). Yes, OK, Chinese is hard. But every foreign language is hard. And few of them have as many payoffs as Chinese has. There are high-level payoffs, like how Chinese will open up a strange and important world to you and possibly even open up doors to your future that you can't even begin to imagine. Or the low-level payoffs, like picking up random bits of quirky information: that restaurants in China don't have fortune cookies; that Chinese has only 400 syllables (hu, ma, shi), while English has 4000 (prompts, stretched, climbs); or that lots of Chinese people couldn't understand Chairman Mao when he spoke because of his heavy Hunan accent.
(image from Coloursrun.com)
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Welcome to Deb Fallows's web site
Here we are with a first dispatch about life, language, China, my new book, and other things that matter to me. Stay tuned. In the meantime -- here is the American cover of Dreaming in Chinese, which will be out in September.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)