China in the early 2000s

[abcdefg]

Split from discussion here.

 

On 4/28/2020 at 7:53 AM, imron said:

As someone who lived in China in the early 2000s, the reality of things back then wasn’t nearly like what people imagined either. 

 

What do you mean, @imron ? I don't doubt what you are saying, but could you expand on the observation a little. I arrived in 2006 for the first time (as a tourist.) Not sure what I imagined about China. Part of why I immediately liked it probably was that I didn't have many preconceptions. I discovered China on its own terms and wasn't trying to make it fit into some kind of preconceived mold. 

 

Had gone on a trip to Korea and Japan. Loved Korea, but hated Japan. Cut my Japan time short and flew to Beijing instead. Beijing was love at first sight. Resolved on the spot to find some way to come back. 

[Jan Finster]

1 hour ago, imron said:

4 hours ago, Nick Fisher said:

the China you imagine as a 17 year old in the early 2000s is certainly not the China in reality in 2020.

As someone who lived in China in the early 2000s, the reality of things back then wasn’t nearly like what people imagined either. 

 

Please guys, open another topic on the romanticism or lack thereof of China in the 2000s. It is unfair, if you are just implying stuff and we have no idea what you mean ?

[imron]

7 hours ago, abcdefg said:

What do you mean, @imron ? I don't doubt what you are saying, but could you expand on the observation a little

Before I came to China (first arrived in 2001) I didn't have much of an idea of what to expect.  What I knew of China had been largely informed by films, and news reports so I wasn't sure if it was going to be something like you'd see in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon minus the flying kungfu people (the film influence) or a draconian police state (the news reports influence).

 

What it ended up being was neither of the two - bleak industrialised cities and towns, but no real police state in any way (at least if you weren't trying to pull any sort of political stunts), and there was an energy and buzz about the place from people going at a fast pace to bring about change and improvement in their lives.  Life was constantly changing and there was a feeling that things were always moving forward.

 

I think it was that energy and buzz that hooked many people (myself included) because life would be total roller-coaster and you wouldn't know from one day to the next what random thing (good or bad) that China was going to throw at you.  Coupled with an interest in the language and culture, that feeling lasted for me until around the 2008 Olympics.  The shift was subtle, but noticeable in many small things - e.g. people starting to say 钱 instead of 茄子 when taking photos, numerous food safety scandals, old buildings being knocked down and replaced by new 'old-style' buildings, or being knocked down and replaced entirely by european-themed architecture, greater restrictions on security and movement (x-ray scanners introduced in subway stations as part of the security measures for the Olympics, staying in place long after they'd ended) and so on.  By that time my language skills had improved to a point that I has happy with, and it was becoming harder and harder to overlook the drawbacks of living in China (pollution, food-safety etc), and I ended up leaving in 2009.

[Meng Lelan]

I was there far earlier, in 1980. No iPhones no cell phone no emails. Life was just life in simplest form. Citizens got up to exercise, all of them. I remember a college girl running for exercise in a gauzy dress, every morning at 6am. Then citizens got on bikes and buses and went to work and school then came home. Windows full of steaming dinner and light. Then I came back in 2000, I couldn't recognize it at all, and it seemed like a gradual shift into bland be-like-the-Western-world shift was happening. Little things that imron described. I didn't come back after that because the China I knew in the 1980s just wasn't there anymore. 

[Tomsima]

1 hour ago, imron said:

people starting to say 钱 instead of 茄子 when taking photos,

I've never heard this before, only ever heard 茄子 and my first visit to China was 2008. maybe it was/is a Beijing thing?

[imron]

I first heard it in Hebei, but yeah also Beijing. Not sure how widespread it’s use was, but it seemed at the time like everyone had started using it.
 

I hope its usage has gone away. 

[ChTTay]

43 minutes ago, imron said:

hope its usage has gone away. 

Pretty sure it’s long gone. Never heard it in the last 8-9 years in Beijing and that includes a lot of posed photographs with classes of kids and parents ?   It’s just 茄子 or saying something relevant to what you’re doing. Like sports day say something sports related. 

[ChTTay]

1 hour ago, Meng Lelan said:

Citizens got up to exercise, all of them.

This is still sort of the culture for many University students but not so much early doors. At least when I attended Tsinghua all local students did was go to class, go to the library and play loads of sport. Basketball the most popular. 
 

I’d have liked to see China in the early 80’s but I wasn’t born yet. Even early 2000s would have been great but my family holidays were never that adventurous. 
 

what was the reaction to you like in the 80s? 

[Meng Lelan]

The reaction to me, oh wow, I remember that. China had just opened up after the Cultural Revolution was over. Crowds converged all around me if I stood for one minute. Kids pointed to me crying out "waiguoren! waiguoren!". Individuals would touch my reddish hair. One time I went out with a Chinese friend who was deaf like me, we went shopping in a department store and we stopped to looked at an item we wanted to buy. It was just an ordinary soap and towel set I was looking for.  Right then a crowd of over a hundred people were surrounding us. Friend and I couldn't get through and leave. So the police came in to disperse them all.  I don't think this happened as much in 2000 when I came back. Not even sure if this happens anymore nowadays. 

[imron]

1 hour ago, Meng Lelan said:

I don't think this happened as much in 2000

The only times a similar thing ever happened to me was once when I visited the very, very small hometown of a friend, and another time after disembarking from a boat across Qiandaohu on my way to Huangshan - both of them were in extremely isolated places where foreigners are not normally seen.

[ChTTay]

 

3 hours ago, Meng Lelan said:

One time I went out with a Chinese friend...

Amazing story!  
 

I always remember watching this TV talk show host from the U.K. called Graham Norton go to China for a special. I think it was early 2000s. He did this bit where he put a stereo on the floor and just squatted down to look at it. More and more Chinese people came to look as well. They just stood behind him looking at him and his stereo. At that time I wasn’t sure if it was set up but having lived here I don’t think it was. 
 

Things have changed a lot even within my decade of experience here. I’ve been the first foreigner in a couple of villages. The first time was several years ago (2014 or 15?) and the kids were interested. They came and found me to shout “hello” and just look. The most recent time was around 2018. No one really cared too much. They would look if I was passing but it was just like they’d look at any non-resident coming in. No one sought me out or moved to get closer etc. A few family friends called round and it was very obviously to see me ? but they probably would have called round anyway at that time of year (CNY). 
 

In 2009 when I was here as a tourist I got a lot more attention. Lots of HELLOS! And “waiguoren” with people pointing. People walking backwards to look at me etc. This happened in Beijing and smaller places as well. In 2011 Yinchuan it was a similar experience. Pointing a lot. Moving seats to get a better view etc 

I think one reason for the change is that there are a lot more foreigners on TV now. Not only that but foreigners who speak Chinese broadcast themselves on 抖音 a lot as well. 

 

I met a chap in a gym back in the U.K. once who told me he was in Beijing in the 80s when some kind of protest or disturbances were going down (I just don’t remember what he said!). He said he and another foreigner got taken to a jail cell and given a case of beer. They got released the next day. No way to verify His story but he seemed sincere at the time. He didn’t speak Chinese and they didn’t speak English. I imagine it was “for your own safety”. 

[Jim]

I worked based in a small town in a closed-to-foreigners county (because of its designated poverty status) in the late 1990s and could definitely draw a crowd out and about, though less so in the even more remote villages we actually worked in as I think people were more take as you find right down in the grassroots plus maybe something about knowing who we were and why we'd come.

[Jan Finster]

10 hours ago, imron said:

and it was becoming harder and harder to overlook the drawbacks of living in China (pollution, food-safety etc), and I ended up leaving in 2009.

 

The great thing is that China is constantly changing and even though it is non-democratic, they still try to please the people and take care of them.  China is tackling the pollution, switching to e-bikes and e-cars and there is a movement towards greenifying cities (https://www.martincurrie.com/institutional/asia/focal-point/the-greenification-of-china). I am super curious what China is going to look and be like in 10-15 years. 

 

8 hours ago, Meng Lelan said:

I didn't come back after that because the China I knew in the 1980s just wasn't there anymore. 

 

This is the romanticism of the past.  ? My father studied in Freiburg (Germany) in the 1960s.

When he went back there in the 1990s for a visit, he was horrified that his little "Sound of Music"-style fairy town now has lost its charme. I lived there in the 2000s and it was still beutiful ?

 

 

 

[abcdefg]

20 hours ago, Meng Lelan said:

Then I came back in 2000, I couldn't recognize it at all, and it seemed like a gradual shift into bland be-like-the-Western-world shift was happening. Little things that imron described. I didn't come back after that because the China I knew in the 1980s just wasn't there anymore. 

 

Such a huge change! I have to ask myself whether the China I grew to love during the last decade will still be there when the doors finally re-open after this crisis. 

 

Heraclitus: "You cannot step in the same river twice." 

[Dawei3]

On 4/29/2020 at 3:45 AM, Jan Finster said:

China is tackling the pollution, switching to e-bikes and e-cars and there is a movement towards greenifying cities

China is trying to tackle the problem.  However, 山高皇帝远 (the hills are high and the emperor is far away) is in effect, i.e., Beijing says they want green energy, but provinces still want to grow their economies.  As other countries use less & less coal, it becomes cheaper and more economical to burn.  Provinces in China are building many coal-fired plants.  

 

At a talk on air pollution in China, an American audience member said, in a conceited manner, "well you know that China is doing an excellent job building green power facilities."  To which the speaker responded "yes, but they are doing an even better job building coal fired plants."  They are building many more coal-fired plants than energy based on green energy. 

 

In 3/2018, China's imports of "thermal coal" (used for energy production) were up 50% from the year before(!).  “China is still the driver” for global coal markets, said Wood Mackenzie analyst Zhai Yu. The country accounts for around one-fifth of global seaborne coal demand."  (WSJ  15 May 2018).  

 

Last October, China announced the opening of "the longest heavyload railway in the world" which will be mainly used to transport coal. "In 2020, the line is expected to carry 60 million tons of coal from North China to the central regions, according to the China State Railway Group."  https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201910/05/WS5d97d87fa310cf3e3556ecde.html   Notably, this is new transportation to meet future increasing coal demand.  

 

Hence, even though China's investments in green energy get much press, the (unfortunate) focus remains coal.  To see it from China's perspective, everyone wants electricity.  While China has pollution, it doesn't have brownouts.  In contrast, India has both pollution & brownouts.  I wouldn't want to live in a place where there are brownouts, coal is the cheapest way to provide electricity, so I can understand China's view on this.   

 

 

 

 

[Jan Finster]

1 hour ago, Dawei3 said:

Hence, even though China's investments in green energy get much press, the (unfortunately) focus remains coal. 

 

Thank you for your post. This was informative. 

 

I am a bit ashamed that Germany, even though it wants to be "green" is also still subsidizing coal mining.

And I only recently read that Australia was the biggest coal exporter in the world...

 

Way to go for all of us!

[anonymoose]

Interesting thread. I really envy Meng Lelan - I can't imagine what an experience arriving in China in 1980 would have been.

 

My first foray into China was in 2000. Doesn't sound that long ago, but even then, things were very different compared to now. I couldn't speak Chinese in those days, and very few people spoke any English - even at the information desk at Beijing Airport (unthinkable now).

 

Part of the change since then is specific to China, but in my opinion, the single biggest change to China and the rest of the world has been the digital/internet/information revolution. I'm old enough to remember the pre-internet days (my schooldays). Yet, the internet pervades practically every aspect of our lives now, to the extent that it is difficult to imagine what the world without the internet was like.

 

Just to give a simple example, I don't know exactly when my interest in China developed. I just remember as a child playing a computer game called Repton (specifically Around the World in 40 screens - does anyone else remember Repton?), where part of the game had an Orient theme, where you'd run around amongst low resolution graphics depicting oriental-style architecture collecting rice bowls with chopsticks. That imagery piqued an interest and curiosity that I still remember. The thing is that in those days, the availability of information was extremely limited, such that even something as trivial as a computer game had this kind of significance. Just think about what other sources of information about China were accessible in those days. The television would have almost nothing to offer, as one was restricted to the four channels that were available at the time, and the only appearance of China would be when something like Tiananmen happened. The next best option would be the local library, but even then, you'd be lucky to find much specifically related to China (I don't think books such as Lonely Planet were available then), and almost certainly nothing about Chinese language. (Of course, larger libraries in London would have been better, but not so accessible to a youngster living a distance away - and it probably wouldn't have occurred to me to go to those lengths at that time anyway.) There would be essentially no chance of any direct contact with Chinese people, or people from any other country for that matter - unlike now when all you need to do is open up something like HelloTalk on your smart phone and you can talk immediately to and exchange pictures with people from any country you desire more or less. Or you can Google for information about any place, and language, and even see videos on demand of these things on YouTube. We take this for granted now, but it wasn't very long ago that none of this existed.

 

Of course the same thing has happened in China. In the early 2000s, as a foreigner, you'd attract a lot of attention anywhere you went. Most Chinese people's experience of foreigners was very limited - limited only to the occasional appearance of foreigners on the news, and perhaps a few years later, Dashan. Seeing a foreigner in the flesh would have been even more of a rarity (except for in the centres of the largest cities - which of course represents only a tiny proportion of the country as a whole). Yet now, many more foreigners go to China. And even in the remote regions, exposure to foreigners is still accessible on request through apps such as Douyin, as ChTTAy mentioned. Therefore the curiosity that foreigners arouse is much less than it used to be, and foreigners attract much less attention than before. In the early 2000s, frequently (as in many times per day), people would try to strike up conversations with me or ask to have photos taken together. I'd occasionally be invited to people's houses and so on. This still happens occasionally in the remoter places, but pretty much never in the larger cities.

 

In the same vein, previously on public transport, people would be much more aware of their surroundings. If I'd be reading anything in Chinese, this would inevitably raise a few eyebrows and elicit a few questions. Now people tend to be wearing earphones and have their eyes fixed to their mobile phones. Of course foreigners speaking Chinese is much less unusual than it used to be, but I get the feeling that people also care much less about what is going on around them when their main focus of attention is in the palms of their hands.

 

Another big change is the expansion of public transport, particularly with the development of metro systems in the large cities, and high-speed rail between cities. This obviously is of enormous benefit to the population, and makes travel much more convenient for foreigners. At the same time, though, places which previously seemed more special because of their inaccessibility no longer seem so special. On my first visit to Xishuangbanna in 2006, I visited a hilltop temple which was a bumpy drive of several hours on a mud road through the forest and remote villages. I was the only visitor to that temple for the time I was there. It was an amazing feeling to be in such a serene and inaccessible location. The temple itself has not changed much since then, but is now connected by a motor way to the main city in Xishuangbanna, and is reachable in in just an hour or two. Though Xishuangbanna has an airport, its connection with the rest of China used to be fairly limited, accessible by a short flight from Kunming, or a very long journey by road. Now, however, with the expansion of domestic aviation, there are direct flights to many more cities, and there is even a new high speed railway line stopping in Xishuangbanna on its way to Laos and Thailand (not sure if it has opened yet) which will inevitably bring a lot more outside influence and possible dilution of the local character.

 

With the development of China and rise in income for a large proportion of the population, I also feel the reverence towards foreigners has diminished. Of course, I'm not saying that foreigners deserve to or should be treated in any special way, but it is a fact of life that foreigners used to be viewed as wealthy and successful (regardless of whether that was in fact the case or not), and revered to some extent as a consequence. However, many super rich Chinese people have entered the public consciousness over the last couple of decades (Jack Ma and the owner of Wanda, for example), and the average Chinese city dweller has seen their net worth increase substantially (if they own any property). Whilst the number of people on low incomes is still large, with many wealthy Chinese people around, foreigners are no longer singled out as being wealthy, and consequently do not gain any special status.

 

Of course China has changed in many ways other than those outlined above. It is difficult to convey this to people who have not experienced China in the early 2000s - the saying 只可意会不可言传 comes to mind. The political situation has also changed, and this has its consequences for every aspect of the China experience too, but that is the subject for a different discussion.

 

[abcdefg]

1 hour ago, anonymoose said:

Of course foreigners speaking Chinese is much less unusual than it used to be, but I get the feeling that people also care much less about what is going on around them when their main focus of attention is in the palms of their hands.

 

I think this is huge. Used to be easy to strike up a conversation on a cross-city bus. Now it is so much less likely. Once I was reviewing small paper Hanzi flashcards on the bus. Three middle-school-age boys were watching closely. One finally asked what I was doing. I explained and then all three of them started "Practicing English." They asked the usual canned questions that "Practicing English" always seems to entail and I answered them patiently. (I am not usually so obliging, but they caught me on a good day.) When it was time for me to get off, one of the boys took off his red "Mao kerchief" (红领巾 -- Young Pioneers) and handed it to me as a token of thanks. 

 

[Jan Finster]

20 hours ago, Meng Lelan said:

I was there far earlier, in 1980.

 

That must have been mind-blowingly different than it is now. I just remembered this picture of Shanghai 1990 and today:

 

 

You were there 10 years before the picture on the top. ?

 

 

[杰.克]

These are really cherished memories, I have enjoyed reading them. Thanks for your contribution