Bon mot for the week

"A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams."

John Barrymore, Snr. (1882-1942)

I don't think that's me yet...

Yes, oh dear, it's my birthday later this week. And the total is getting worryingly large.

Staring into the abyss

A week from now I shall be one year older than I am today. Because we only count the passing of the anniversary, like the laboured ticking over of a mileometer, a whole year's aging smites us on this one day.

And, though I have long sought to deny the passing of the years, and have flattered myself that I can usually pass for 5 or 10 years younger than I really am, even this is becoming a feebler consolation. I long ago passed the half-way point on my advance to the traditional span of 'three score years and ten'; now, even at the most wildly optimistic estimate of enhanced life expectancy our generation might get to experience, I am well beyond half-way to my end. In all probability, I'm more like two-thirds done. And it is a depressing fact to reflect upon.

Can the eternally effervescent Billy Collins cheer me up? No, apparently not. But perhaps he can at least cheer me down in a useful way. I find it useful sometimes to accelerate my slump into a morbid depression because the momentum will usually carry me out the other side faster as well.

If I get this out of my system now, I might be able to enjoy my birthday next weekend. Maybe.

Forgetfulness

The name of the author is the first to go

followed obediently by the title, the plot,

the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel

which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor

decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,

to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

Long ago you kissed the names of the nine muses goodbye

and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,

and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,

something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,

the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.

Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,

it is not poised on the tip of your tongue

or even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.

It has floated away down a dark mythological river

whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall

well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those

who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.

No wonder you rise in the middle of the night

to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.

No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted   

out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

Billy Collins (1941- )

Fantasy Girlfriend face-off: Who was THE FIRST?

I suggested long ago that the very first woman on whom I formed a romantic fixation must have been Emma Peel of The Avengers, one of the earliest entries in this series. However, on deeper reflection I have realised that there are two other very strong candidates for this dubious accolade, also actresses/characters in cult late-60s TV shows, almost exactly contemporaneous with The Avengers (although I suspect my memories are mostly based on slightly later re-runs, since I would only have been about three or four when these shows first aired), and - just possibly - slightly predating Mrs Peel in my affections.

One was Sharron Macready. Like Mrs Peel she was a glamorous superspy; and, like Mrs Peel, she was rendered sexually inactive by the plot device of recent widowhood (was this a widespread trope of the era, or were these two shows just copying each other, I wonder?). As well as being glacially beautiful (she was played by a gorgeous actress/model called Alexandra Bastedo, who had the kind of cheekbones that could give you paper-cuts) and impressively capable in tight situations, she had one further distinction, something that gave her rather an edge even over the formidable Mrs P: she had superhuman abilities! 

Yes, the unique gimmick of the show she was in, The Champions, was that she and her two male colleagues began the series being almost killed in a plane crash in the Himalayas. Rescued by a reclusive Shangri-La-like community of mystic monks, they were miraculously nursed back to health; and, on returning to their jobs with the spy bureau, were surprised to find that not merely were their injuries completely cured by the monks' mysterious remedies but that they had also acquired enhanced strength, sensory acuity, and co-ordination - and even a limited form of telepathy shared just between the three of them. It was indeed a rather silly premise, but irresistibly beguiling to a young boy. And, in retrospect, though innately implausible, it was in fact a bold and surprisingly effective way of justifying the invincibility of its protagonists - always somewhat of a problem in these superspy capers (Roger Moore's James Bond was for me one of the most egregious examples: he didn't look as though he could punch his way out of a paper bag, and yet he routinely prevailed against much stronger opponents). I particularly liked the super-coordinated ability, and the slick teamwork this often enabled between the trio: there was a great gag I remember (probably repeated a number of times) where one of them disarmed a bad guy with a well-aimed kick, not merely knocking the gun out of his hand but sending it spinning across the room - to be neatly caught by one of his colleagues. [This blog post has a fine appreciation of the show's appeal, and includes a few excerpts.]

The lovely Alexandra was not much of an actress, and tended to have to play second fiddle to the two chaps most of the time. She also had to suffer some truly horrendous '60s hairdoes and '60s fashions.

Yet, despite these handicaps, I still found her absolutely captivating; and the memory of that captivation lingers strongly to this day. I'm not sure if it was her exquisite features or the superpowers that did it.

Much about the same time, I was also rather smitten with Valerie Scott (played by Deanna Lund). If this were a contest simply on looks, or on the appeal of the character, Sharron would win hands down. But if I'm delving back through the mists of time to rediscover my very first erotic fantasy figure, I have a feeling Valerie might just have edged it.

I am rather ashamed of myself for having allowed myself to be so easily swayed by such obvious male weaknesses. Valerie's fashions were pretty much as naff as Sharron's, but her dresses were usually much shorter. And she wasn't a very impressive character either for the most part - a spoilt rich kid, vain, impulsive, always getting into trouble. But she had a nice figure. And she was a redhead (again that foible of mine! Did it start with Deanna Lund or was it an innate predilection?).

Valerie Scott was the principal eye-candy - and perpetual damsel-in-distress - in an Irwin Allen show called Land of the Giants. The premise was a little shaky: a commercial space passenger shuttle somehow got lost (wormhole?) and crash-landed on a planet that seemed strangely identical to Earth (in fact, nearly identical to '50s/'60s-era America)... except that the human population were about 100ft tall. Again, utterly silly; but again, utterly ravishing to the imagination of a young child. There's a deep-seated fascination in us for thus changing scale, finding the familiar rendered suddenly unfamiliar as everyday household items are transformed into huge objects (The Incredible Shrinking Man is my favourite of the classic '50s sci-fi B-movies).

While Sharron Macready maintained a strong presence in my memory over the years, I confess Valerie Scott had pretty much vanished from my mind.... until (in searching online a year or so back for the term 'spindrift' - as you do), I stumbled upon this picture. You see, the spaceship that brought her and her companions to the Planet of the Giants was called the Spindrift (I'm not sure that I'd ever known that; the spaceship didn't feature very prominently in most of the episodes). 

That unleashed a fair old tsunami of long lost - suppressed? - memories. I'm such a slut for mini-skirts and knee-boots! And perhaps for the woman-in-peril motif....

How did that happen??

A building near my apartment bears this strange scar near its top.

This is 50ft or so up. And each segment of this cladding is about 3ft x 2ft, and made of some sort of metal. It's going to take a really hefty clout to crumple it this badly.

I think this must have happened in situ. A crane would seem to be the only likely culprit - although I'm not aware of any tall cranes operating in this vicinity, and I have lived here or hereabouts for the whole of my 10 years in Beijing.

Safety in crane operation does not seem to be very impressive in China. Only a few months ago, I saw two super-tall cranes over in Sanlitun smack their booms into each other. Luckily, no serious damage appeared to result; but it was quite a heavy collision. You would think, wouldn't you, that you wouldn't normally place two such large cranes in such proximity that they could hit each other? And if occasionally this is necessary, you'd think that there would be procedures for ensuring that they will not both be rotating at the same time. And if they are rotating at the same time, you'd think they'd at least try to make sure they rotated in the same direction. And heck, if they must contra-rotate, you'd think their operators would keep an eye out to make sure that they weren't going to come into contact with each other. But where would be the fun in that?? Oh, no: this is China. If it is possible to come up with a really stupidly unsafe way of doing something, you can rely on the Chinese worker to find it.

Haiku for the week

The want of a woman

Returns on the autumn wind:

Blanket against the cold.

Yes, rather than in Spring, traditional season of male randiness, I find that it is often towards the year's end that I find myself starting to pine for female company. Is it really something so primitive and basic as seeking warmth and comfort, protection against the sharp chill - both physical and psychological - of the dark winter months? Perhaps so.

Favourite posts from the 4th quarter of 2011

What was I wittering about at this time last year? Let's see....

Pick of the Archives:

Favourite Posts, October-December 2011

1)  Sometimes the Post Office gets something right  -  5th October 2011

I am gratified to discover that the Irish Post Office has issued a stamp in honour of one of my literary heroes, Brian O'Nolan.

2)  Cities where I might have lived  - 8th October 2011

Quite a diverse selection for my latest 'List of the Month': all the places where I nearly took a job at one time or another.

3)  Crestfallen  -  13th October 2011

Froog in more philosophical mood, discoursing on the pitfalls of nostalgia, and on how hard job rejection hits him.

4)  Driven to abstraction - 14th October 2011

Some examples of the rather odd photographs I took on a recent holiday. [More of the same here.]

5)  Looking the other way  -  19th October 2011

One of my most serious and painful posts, examining a notorious recent Chinese news story - the appalling death of a toddler in a multiple hit-and-run incident.

6)  My Fantasy Girlfriend: Sheree J. Wilson  -  22nd October 2011

Another actress! Another redhead! Am I getting too predictable? Well, this month's pick was largely an excuse to post a fantastic clip from Sam Raimi's slapstick comedy Crimewave.

7)  Who are you pointing at?  -  25th October 2011

One of the more important entries, I think, in my occasional 'War on Chinglish' series - attacking the unfortunate Chinese propensity to use 'those' all the time, even when it's painfully inappropriate. [Another one here, on the even more annoying vice of the constant 'maybe'.]

8)  Chinese landlords  -  28th October 2011

My landlord's sudden demand for a 35% rent increase prompts some observations on the property market in China.

9)  Film List: Quotations  -  29th October 2011

Another little trivia challenge for any film buffs out there.

10)  Say what?  -  9th November 2011

A favourite mondegreen - which ingeniously ties together an observation on my brief, unhappy experience of trying to be a barrister with a rather lovely album of 'world music'.

12)  Letting go  -  12th November 2011

A minor disaster (losing quite a large wedge of cash) finds me in surprisingly philosophical mood. I reflect calmly on something the great Tom Waits sang about money. [Another great line from Tom here.]

13)  The Chinese Way strikes again  -  19th November 2011

Amongst the myriad vexations that beset me around my recent moving day, this was one of the most bizarre (and most vexing!).

14)  My Fantasy Girlfriend: Jane Seymour  -  10th December 2011

The lovely English actress was one of the first ladies to enslave me with her beauty in my early childhood. Never mind Dr Quinn, Medicine Woman; I remember her from an early 1970s British period drama called The Onedin Line.

15)  Film List: pleasant surprises  -  17th December 2011

I am enjoying have a cable film channel in my new apartment, and this prompts me to produce a survey of some of the 'happy accidents' of my recent impulsive viewing.

16)  A new job possibility?  -  19th December 2011

My increasingly desperate search for new employment possibilities at least leads me to unearth a fine Gary Larson cartoon.

17)  There is an acronym for it  -  21st December 2011

For the super-wealthy elite of society, that is. You learn something new every day. The phrase they apparently favour in business circles doesn't seem to me all that appropriate for China's billionaires.

18)  No EFFIN way?  -  22nd December 2011

A news story about a hamlet in Ireland that Facebook refuses to recognise prompts some recollections of my own experience of the Emerald Isle.

19)  A holiday treat  -  24th December 2011

I discover a rare early recording of classic winter song Baby, It's Cold Outside by its composer Frank Loesser and his wife (and throw in a couple of other versions for good measure).

20)  Just what I didn't want for Christmas!  -  27th December 2011

Another bizarre Internet find: two very odd doll designs that would surely traumatize any child.

21)  It really is incredibly HARD to learn  -  28th December 2011

Another in my 'Why I don't learn Chinese' strand: I discover a witty but devastatingly thorough examination of the language's difficulties for the would-be learner by academic (and Sinophile) David Moser.

22)  Making a point  -  29th December 2011

A rather spectacular fit of petulance from one of China's 'more money than sense' tycoons.

My kind of physics!

I stumbled upon this last week and found it rather diverting.

It's a demo reel from a new software development company called BeamNG showing off their revolutionary 'soft body physics engine', which can realistically model damage from motor vehicle accidents in real time. This could revolutionise driving games (which are about the only kind of video games I ever play). Well, car manufacturers and racing governing bodies have traditionally been rather snooty about making crashes too realistic, and I suspect they will continue to be so for quite a while yet. So, we're unlikely to see the benefits of this sort of software in the F1 or rallying games I usually favour.

I imagine the next instalment of Grand Theft Auto, though, will be all over this. [More examples available to view via the BeamNG Youtube account.]

Hitting a wall

It looks like I have come up a little short of the first weight loss goal I set for myself a couple of weeks ago. I had aimed to be at - or, hopefully, at least a smidge below - 92kg (roughly the weight I was when I last attempted a full marathon six or seven years ago). Alas, I am stuck at around 94kg (93.5kg at absolutely the most flattering measurement I can procure from my bothersomely inconsistent scales; not sure quite what the problem is with that - wildly uneven Chinese flooring?!).

Now, this might not seem so bad. I have lost at least 3kg, possibly 3.5kg in only two weeks. The thing is, I'd lost a similar amount over the previous three weeks just through severe dieting - but without doing a great deal of heavy exercise, and while still drinking, at least on occasions, quite a lot of beer. Once I gave up beer completely, ramped up my dieting another notch, and began running 12-15km every day, I thought I'd be able to lose weight much faster. And I did, for a short while: I got at least 75% of that weight off in only three or four days. But since then - NOTHING. For 11 or 12 days my weight has been rock steady at just below 95kg. I've only finally made a small dent in that again today - by going for a very long run in rather humid conditions; hence, it's probably just water-loss, and will go right back on.

Now, admittedly, I'd had to take a rest from running during that time, because of a calf strain. But I have tried to compensate with doing more exercise of other kinds (lunges, sit-ups, press-ups, light weight work; stair-climbing; and LOTS of walking). And I've been eating like a sparrow. And NOT DRINKING.

But my metabolism, it seems, has had enough. However much energy I might burn off when I'm out of the house or exercising, the rest of the time my body seems to lapse into a state akin to cryogenic suspension. I sleep, I read, I watch TV, I work on the computer; and it seems I do not burn off one single calorie while I'm doing any of this.

At least now I seem to have shaken off the muscle injury, so I should be able to get back into a full programme of running. And I'm trying to make my other exercise more plentiful and more regular (conditioning myself to get up from the computer at least once an hour and do 20 reps of something or other).

But my BIG GOAL (getting back down to 88kg - the weight I was when I came to China a decade ago - before my birthday in two weeks' time) is obviously out of reach. And even that would supposedly still be borderline "overweight" in the view of those unrealistic health fascists who tout the Body Mass Index as the ultimate touchstone of well-being.

I am going to continue to make efforts to get down closer to that weight. But it is beginning to look ominously as though 95kg (+/- 1kg or so) has become my 'natural weight'; I fear it is going to be all but impossible to get much below that, or to sustain that new level if I do. Particularly if I start drinking beer again - which I had hoped to do after my birthday. Bummer.

Middle age - I DO NOT like it!

Ominous signs

The temperature has been peaking up in the high 70s Fahrenheit for most of the National Holiday week just passed here in China. But it hasn't been peaking there for very long; and the fall-off in temperature at dusk has often been quite dramatic. Even during the day, when the sun is shining and the mercury is quite high, I've sensed a distinct nip in the air, an intimation that we're going to be in for a chilly autumn this year, and perhaps an early onset of winter. And a couple of days ago I noticed that the street snack vendors have started selling roasted chestnuts already. This heralds the approach of winter, just as surely as the first appearance of pineapple sellers in April indicates that spring is transitioning into summer.

There was another even more worrying sign of things to come last night: after a few weeks of clear skies and low humidity, the weather turned clammy and overcast again. The cool mists of autumn I find even more draining - and, often, even more smoggy - than the sweltering humidity of summer. I hadn't realised quite how bad things were when I went out in the early evening, but by the time I was returning, towards 11pm, I found that visibility was down to a couple of hundred yards. And the fog was an unearthly ochre colour. This wasn't just a smog, it was the first of the autumn dust storms. Quite a bad one: this morning, all the lanes and alleys in my neighbourhood have turned brown; everywhere is thoroughly coated in a very fine silt.

And of course, this sort of thing plays hell with the respiratory tract. After 20 minutes or so of walking through this, I was feeling the rasping tickliness in the windpipe that threatens to develop into a permanent cough lasting days or weeks at a time - an unlovely phenomenon that those of us who live here in China's horrendously polluted capital have come to know as the 'Beijing throat'.

Bon mot for the week

"It is the duty of a citizen in a free country not to fit into society, but to make society."

John Holt (1923-1985)

And in a non-free country, come to that...

List of the Month - Why China will never be a great power

After a week of battering my brain with "academic" papers on China's foreign policy (mostly written with the level of research you'd expect from a senior high school student, and often framed in the whinily histrionic language of a pre-schooler), I am deeply fed up with contemplating "China's rise".

It's over a decade now since Gordon Chang gave us his notorious book The Coming Collapse of China. He invited scepticism and ridicule by overstating his negativity, giving insufficient attention to a number of factors that might ameliorate or delay his financial disaster scenario, and, above all, by committing himself to a definite and very short timeframe for his prediction - only five years. Once 2006 had passed, with China's economy seeming stronger than ever, Chang became a bit of a laughing-stock. But just about everything he said in that book was perfectly true, and nothing has changed. The fundamentals of China's economy and its political system are unsound. The question is not if a crash is coming, but when. More and more of my foreign friends here, even those who were the rosiest of China optimists until quite recently, are now fretting that the crash is looming. Suddenly, in comparison to this great upsurge of doom and gloom, I find myself in the relatively 'moderate' camp on this: a qualified collapsist - I think it might be gradual rather than sudden and catastrophic, I think it might still be two or three decades distant. But it is coming, it is inevitable. China is NEVER going to displace America as a dominant global superpower. I think it's extremely unlikely that China will even be able to maintain its integrity as a single country of the size it is now.

Here's why....

The Top Ten (or so) Reasons Why China Is Never Going To Be A Superpower

Too big to be viable

China is unwieldy. It's roughly the same size as the United States, but with a far less developed transport infrastructure. It's now catching up very quickly in that regard, but I don't think the country is ever going to work. Much of its peripheral territory is ethnically and culturally (and, in some cases, geographically) quite distinct from China proper. The "autonomous regions" of the far west, in particular, were forcibly annexed during the early years of the People's Republic and have had to be maintained by military occupation ever since: China is a neo-colonialist power within its own borders. That alone doesn't bode well for its long-term stability. The CCP myth of a China that has been one and indivisible since the dawn of time is nonsense: even  during periods when China was united under one rule and nominally 'stable' (and for much of its history it's been fractured into multiple kingdoms), in practice there was a high degree of local autonomy - with warlordism and banditry rife, and the Emperor's representatives often behaving as a law unto themselves. "The mountains are high, and the Emperor is far away" has been a favourite proverb about the ineffectuality of central control for centuries. And any attempts by the capital to bring things under a tighter rein usually resulted in mass insurrections.

It's not just China that I think is too big. All large countries have a problem, and may break up into smaller units over the next century or so (the division of America's Federal Reserve banking system might provide a template for a breakup of the USA). Russia, Canada, and Brazil are only viable because so much of their vast territory is unpopulated. India and the USA are only viable because their federal systems of government allow a large degree of regional autonomy. (A federal model might save China, but I doubt if the CCP would be willing to countenance such a thing.) I've always been a sceptic about the European Union because it seems to me to run counter to the trend of the times (a tendency towards increased devolution of power to regional governments, and, in many cases, towards large countries splitting up into smaller ones), and counter to human nature (we like to keep our societies on a 'human scale': we like to define our cultural identity with reference to quite narrow geographical areas [well, in Europe, at least!], and we like our governments to be accessible and responsive because local - in tune with our particular needs and desires); you can achieve trade liberalisation without administrative integration; only megalomaniacs want a bloated superstate. China, unfortunately, is run by megalomaniacs, and is thus likely to remain a bloated superstate - until it collapses under its own weight.

Too many people

Again, this is not just a China problem. Almost every country - and the world as a whole - is dangerously overpopulated. Most estimates I've seen of a world population that might be 'sustainable' with the lifestyle of the advanced nations are no more than 1.5 billion, and some of the more pessimistic assessments conjecture only a few hundred millions. China aspires to become "fully modernized" and to attain something approaching the American or Western European standard of living for most of its citizens by the second half of this century. The planet cannot support that - never mind China being able to support its population at that level of development, the planet can't support it. (I confess, I tend towards the gloomy view that - absent a near-Extinction Level Event such as an asteroid strike or a supervolcano or a massive plague that wipes out 70% or 80% of the world's population - the human race is f***ed. It's probably not just China that's going to go belly-up in the next 50 years.)

Inadequate resources

China is massively dependent on imported oil. China is becoming a net importer of food. China has an acute water shortage. China struggles to meet its ever-rising demand for electricity generation. It's amazing that the country hasn't come off the rails already. But give it another ten years or so, and these problems will become critical.

A rickety financial system

The Chinese academics and politicians I've been reading all week love to gloat over the embarrassment of Wall Street by the sub-prime crisis and to crow about the innate superiority - the moral superiority - of the Chinese economic and development model. They turn a blind eye to the fact that the Chinese banking system has many of the same problems as America's and more besides. The 'economic miracle' here is built on straw. Well, it's built very largely on fraudulent loans. But non-performing loans can easily be swept under the carpet; the banks are all propped up by the government (well, the major ones are; some of the lower-tier banks might well be allowed to fail, and that would trigger an unholy shitstorm); and, since the government owns everything (well, all of the land, nearly all of the heavy industry, and most of America's foreign debt), its coffers are almost bottomless and the surreptitious bailouts can continue ad infinitum. Well, except that nothing can continue ad infinitum. And if you keep pumping more cash into the system, you get runaway inflation.

An awful education system

People point to the achievements of Chinese academics in a handful of fields (maths, applied science, computing), and to the numbers gaining acceptance at prestigious overseas universities as an indication of how formidable the Chinese education system is. But, given the size of the country, these few egregious successes are in fact pretty rare, almost statistically insignificant. The Chinese education system is overcrowded and underfunded, and hobbled by poor quality teaching, poor quality teaching materials, antiquated teaching methodologies, and an ongoing requirement of ideological indoctrination. Some Chinese kids are becoming high achievers as a result of their parents' hothousing efforts (it's more to do with the private lessons forced on them outside of school than with the teaching they're getting within the state school system), but the scope of this success is rather limited (it's not doing much to foster creativity or self-reliance in today's youngsters), and it comes at the cost of a 'lost childhood': thousands of hours of exhausting and miserable enforced studying that is likely to lead to burnout, rebellion, or long-term psychological problems.

An obsolete ideology

The CCP has abandoned every element of communism except the central planning of the economy (and even that's increasingly just for show; I note that, following the wisdom of Bill Murray in Ghostbusters, official translations here are often now referring to the Five-Year Plan as a Five-Year Guideline), yet still obstinately insists on trumpeting its communist heritage. It's a curious hypocrisy - or, as they would call it, a 'contradiction' - at the heart of this country: it is now the most ruthlessly capitalist society on earth, and yet it still purports to uphold the ideals of Karl Marx. This doesn't do much for the government's credibility. And it leads to a stifling inflexibility of thought on certain issues.

An acute intellectual and emotional immaturity

China cannot engage effectively with the outside world because it is crippled by an inferiority complex that makes it suspicious and contemptuous of outsiders, and excessively defensive; it is locked into a 'them and us' siege mentality. The country's "finest minds" in the sphere of international relations rarely attain a level of debate that is anything other than puerile.

No rule of law

And without a reliable system of law, there is no certainty in commerce and no confidence in the future. China's successful entrepreneurs almost invariably emigrate as soon as they can. Social trust, the belief in your government's ability to provide for your welfare - healthcare, schooling, old age pensions, etc. - is almost non-existent in China as well. I suspect a very large percentage of the population would quit the country if it could; but, at present, this is an option that's usually only available to the very wealthy.

The one-party state

The CCP's continuing stubborn rejection of plural democracy and effective separation of the powers of government means that China is a gangster state. The Party controls all channels of influence, all opportunities for enrichment, allowing the cadres grow fat at the expense of the ordinary citizen. This isn't just corruption; all countries have corruption. This is a system which is entirely corrupt by its very nature, and cannot ever be otherwise. [I went into rather more detail on the political shortcomings of the Chinese state in this post a year or so ago.]

No moral centre

You would think that the basic tenets of morality were grounded in universal human instinct and would be found everywhere. But it seems that these instincts need to be codified somehow in order to really take root, and need to be supported by the surrounding culture. If you have a thoroughly immoral government, perhaps it's no surprise that the rest of society seems so thoroughly immoral too. Opinions differ as to whether Chinese culture may always have been somewhat deficient in terms of its moral infrastructure, or whether basic ideals of decency were crushed by the privations of the Mao years, and then by the subsequent explosion of unfettered get-rich-quick materialism. Whatever the reasons for it, lying (often not even for any transactional advantage, but simply as knee-jerk tactic for attempting to "save face"), cheating, bribery, and theft are endemic here. Not just endemic, but in many cases normal, routine, not even perceived as being 'wrong'. A country where everybody is constantly cheating each other surely can't survive and prosper for long.

I've never seen any evidence of a true work ethic here either. Some people will work hard out of a desire to make money. Many uncomplainingly accept unreasonably onerous conditions of working, because they are powerless to oppose them. And many office workers quite happily spend long hours at work because they have free Internet access there (and they don't have much to entertain themselves with at home). But, in my experience, Chinese people very seldom work conscientiously or efficiently; they will bunk off entirely for long stretches of the day, and aren't usually all that productive even when they are working. They are not inspired by any sense of pride in their work, they do not seem to recognise the idea that it is intrinsically more satisfying - regardless of any censure or reward - to do something well rather than to do it badly... or, in the typical Chinese way, to do something to the minimum acceptable standard ("chabuduo"; also check out an excellent [translated] Chinese satirical essay on the connotations of this word).

And, of course, the language....

The antiquated writing system used by Mandarin Chinese holds the country back in so many ways, as I expounded just the other day.

Are you goin' to bark all day, little doggie?

I included Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs in my rundown of great film posters last Saturday, and mentioned that there were quite a few variant versions and assorted promo art inspired by that film that I would have liked to have added if space permitted. Here's a selection for you now. [I'm not sure how many of these were actually commissioned by the distributors for advertising campaigns and how many might just be 'fan art'. The 'ear' one at the bottom is one of a selection of 'Minimalist Movie Posters' by artist Grischa Stanjek on the Atomic Popcorn website.]

This week, on The Barstool....

I have been distracting myself from the crushing tedium of an extended Chinese public holiday (and the crushing tedium of a job rewriting some articles on Chinese diplomacy [and boy, was I tempted to put that in inverted commas!]) with an impromptu festival of my favourite musical form - a 'Blues Week'.

So far, I've posted some terrific Youtube clips of Fleetwood Mac (their original 1960s incarnation), Cream, ZZ Top, and AC/DC. And there's some more great stuff lined up for Saturday and Sunday. Go and take a look.

Haiku for the week

Before the crowds come

Light on water, wind in trees

Early morning run

Oh, it's lovely when it works. But this week I have been sidelined with yet another calf muscle tweak. I have happy memories of many great dawn Houhai runs in the past; and hopes of some yet to come.

It's holding them back [Why I don't learn Chinese - 20]

Previously in this intermittent - and wilfully provocative - series of mine I have concentrated on the aesthetic shortcomings of the Chinese language (sorry - but, to my ear, the sounds of Chinese are extraordinarily ugly) or its surprisingly limited practical utility, or on the purely personal circumstances that militate against me putting in the hard hours of study on it (I'm old, I'm lazy, my brain is tired of learning languages). However, there is also a political element to my aversion to the language. I get fed up with Chinese chauvinism about their language, with their delusional conviction that it is already a major world language and may one day displace English, French, and Spanish as a pre-eminent global lingua franca; I am even more irked by the government's relentless emphasis on promoting the learning of Mandarin as a central element of their 'soft power' offensive to increase Chinese influence around the world; and I am positively nauseated by the way that so many foreign Mandarin students here in China naively play along with this agenda (sucking up to the Chinese Communist Party amplifies their megalomania, you ninnies!).

But even more than I believe that the Chinese language isn't any good for foreigners, I believe it isn't any good for the Chinese either. There are many fundamental deficiencies in this language that, I think, have been stifling Chinese progress for centuries, and are becoming a critical problem for the nation in this new century of giddyingly fast change. And so, perhaps the strongest reason for opposing the study of Mandarin by foreigners is that it bolsters a sense of satisfaction, of complacency in the Chinese about their language, and makes it less likely that they will ever start to contemplate the kind of radical language reform that I believe they urgently need. [What shape that reform might take I'll try to address briefly in a footnote.]

Here are some of the reasons why I say this.

How the Chinese language stunts the development of China

It restricts communication with the rest of the world

Mandarin Chinese is almost uniquely difficult for most other nationalities to learn (the most difficult language to learn, according to the US government's Foreign Service Institute). Therefore, despite the huge worldwide fad for Mandarin learning over the past decade, it is highly unlikely that more than a relative handful of foreigners will ever achieve a high level of fluency in Mandarin. This wouldn't matter so much if the gap between Mandarin and other languages, especially the European languages, were not so wide that it is also extraordinarily difficult for the Chinese to become highly proficient in any other language. I have spent most of my ten years in China working with very bright and highly-educated Chinese who have devoted a big part of their lives to English study and, in most cases, have spent a substantial amount of time overseas in English-speaking countries: all of them still have severely flawed spoken English, and hardly any of them can write English to save their life. And this is probably the top 1% of the top 1% I'm talking about here. The majority of Chinese who slog through years of compulsory English study in middle school and high school and university fail to achieve any worthwhile functional proficiency in it at all.

It restricts learning about the rest of the world

Mandarin is terrible at representing the phonetics of other languages. Hence, the attempt to transliterate foreign names into Chinese characters results in them being mangled beyond all recognition. Chinese  textbooks rarely if ever print foreign names in their original language/alphabet, or use the international phonetic alphabet as a guide to pronunciation, which leaves the study of foreign history, science, and culture hamstrung: Chinese students don't really know any of the names of the famous foreigners they read about. And so, even if their English has reached quite a high level, most Chinese are severely limited in what they can converse with foreigners about. This basic (and relatively easily solvable) problem is compounded many times over by the generally poor quality of foreign language learning in China over many years (resulting from a lack of funds to recruit native speaker teachers or provide overseas textbooks; and from a nationalistic arrogance that convinces them they don't need this kind of help, they can be completely self-sufficient in the teaching of foreign languages!), and by the miserable rates of pay offered to academic writers in general and to translators in particular. Very few people in China are able to read foreign books in their original language; and many of the Mandarin editions they have to rely on instead are utter travesties.

It restricts the ability to adapt to the modern world

Because of the character writing system, Chinese is hobbled when it comes to new word formation. The generation of novel characters is pretty much impossible, or rather, treated as impermissible (there are way too many of them already, after all). So, new words can only be created by the novel combination of pairs or triplets of existing characters. The possibilities for this are limited - well, certainly finite; whereas the scope for innovation in vocabulary is almost completely open-ended in alphabet-based languages. The intended meaning of the new combination is often not unambiguously evident from its component parts. And you don't get extra clues as to the etymology, grammatical function and so on of such a new word from its morphology alone, as you do in most other languages. Thus, in this Information Age, Mandarin is struggling to keep up with the demand for new vocabulary to describe the rapid changes we are experiencing in technology and society; more and more often, it is simply having to borrow words from English.

It limits the time available for the study of other subjects

Mandarin isn't just hard for foreigners to learn, it's hard for the Chinese to learn as well. I haven't been able to dig up authoritative figures on this (and there'll be quite a bit of variation at different levels of schooling, and between different parts of the country), but anecdotal accounts from the many students I've worked with suggest that learning their native language - particularly the grinding slog of memorising thousands of characters - eats up a massively disproportionate amount of class time, particularly in primary school, but to some extent on into the middle school and high school years as well.

It limits the capacity for thought

This is probably the most controversial assertion I have to make here (and I don't want to get sidetracked into a discussion of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis). I merely observe that the very limited grammar of Mandarin does seem to result in a lack of specificity on many occasions. And I have encountered quite a few scholarly asides to the effect that Mandarin seems ill-equipped for the tight framing of laws or for the more abstract realms of philosophy (the Chinese philosophical tradition almost completely ignores logic - and that's rather too apposite a metaphor for the way the country seems to run today!). In my own extensive experience of editing Chinese-English translations (in the spheres of academia, business, and general news), I have lost count of the number of times when I have come across an irresolvable ambiguity in the copy the translator has given me and then, on referring back to the translator and explaining very carefully the two or more possible meanings that are suggested by their English, have been told that it is impossible to distinguish between those meanings in the original Chinese.

I don't know quite how bad this problem really is, but it's certainly an issue - and one that's no doubt been exacerbated over the past half-century or so by the wilfully vapid political rhetoric of the Communist Party, although there it's more a question of the language attaining an elaborate meaninglessness (I've had A LOT of exposure to this over the last few days). Many Chinese seem to operate in a permanent fog of 'fuzzy logic' (no, that's dignifying it undeservedly; it's not a useful flexibility in regard to category distinctions that I'm talking about, much less a more general sort of open-mindedness, but just incomplete comprehension): they are frequently uncertain what anyone has said to them, but they rarely challenge or ask for clarification - they just accept this uncertainty and muddle along with it. Some might argue that this is potentially an admirable characteristic, a Daoist sort of laidback philosophy of going with the flow. I fear, however, that this frequent lack of clarity about things is perhaps one of the roots of the very attenuated quality of debate and analytical thought that I have experienced in China (and I'm often dealing with senior academics who contribute to government think tanks). I admit it's hard for a non-Chinese speaker to tell, though; is it the language itself that's at fault, or just the way that it is used? I can't say; but, in closing, I would mention that several of my Chinese friends who have achieved the greatest fluency in English tell me that they have come to prefer it to Mandarin as a medium of expression.

Footnote

So, there we have it. Mandarin Chinese is a liability to the Chinese nation, something that is severely impeding its progress towards becoming a fully modernised country and a major world power. In linguistic terms it is a bizarre throwback to an ancient era, an evolutionary dead-end which - but for China's long history of comparative isolationism - would probably have died out or undergone radical changes many centuries ago.

What are the alternatives? Well, over a couple of hundred years or so I imagine that global communications via the Internet will lead us towards a single world language. That language will probably be predominantly English (I say this without any element of national pride; it's just an historical accident that English has achieved a position of unchallengeable eminence as the world's No. 1 language; and the Internet is only likely to entrench that advantage, rather than undermine it). Chinese, and most other national/regional languages, will naturally wither into almost total disuse.

However, that's still a long way away. And I might be overestimating the extent to which 'local' languages will be rendered redundant by a dominant global language. A century or so from now, pretty much the whole world will be speaking "English" (though it is likely to have absorbed elements from many other languages as well, perhaps to the point where it is barely recognisable as a descendant of the language we speak today), but native languages may yet survive; perhaps we'll all be bilingual.

So - what hope for Mandarin Chinese, for the next century or two, and perhaps beyond? Well, most of my misgivings about the language arise from its writing system. It is chiefly that which makes it so incompatible with other languages, so restricted in its ability to grow and change, and so damned hard to learn (for Chinese and foreigners alike). Adopting an alphabetic system of writing would be enormously liberating for the language. It would certainly allow for more freedom in word creation. It would make the language vastly easier to read and write, and thus much easier to learn. It might even, over time, allow for the evolution of a more sophisticated grammar. I suspect it might possibly even facilitate a gradual abandonment of the tones (another particular bugbear of foreign Mandarin learners; although I have observed that many Chinese make mistakes with them as well), as the more flexible writing system provides for greater differentiation in the phonetic representation of sounds - and may thus find ways of distinguishing pronunciations other than the tonal system (thereby, perhaps, also opening the way for an expansion of the vocabulary, by, for example, incorporating more regional dialect into standard Mandarin).

It would be sad to see the disappearance of the character system, which of course has a long and rich history and undoubted aesthetic appeal. However, it's just not practical for a modern language in the modern world. I honestly believe the Chinese are going to have to learn to let it go. (Scholars will, I'm sure, preserve the knowledge of characters; and calligraphy may continue to be a popular art hobby, even if the meaning of the symbols has faded from popular knowledge - which in many cases it already has, anyway).

It's only my sense of humour that keeps me going

This week - a 7-day national holiday in China - I find myself having to edit (substantially rewrite!) three very long and turgid articles on China's international diplomacy, and do the groundwork on two hefty new business articles. All of these projects landed in my Inbox last Friday: this is how people with regular full-time jobs treat freelancers!

Ah well, I'm grateful for the money, I suppose. And I've got bugger-all else to do this week.

It is one hell of a slog, though.

It is only the unintentional hilarity of Chinese rhetoric that relieves the tedium for me. This little gem just made me choke on my coffee:

"The seemingly bright and colourful overcoat could not possibly cover up the patched underwear beneath."

Is this a common Chinese idiom for "Appearances can be deceptive"? Weeble, can you assist on this?

Oh, god, I'm cracking up again. This is the most ridiculous image I've come across in years.

New Picks of the Month

Looking back at October 2009 (gosh, is it really three years ago already?), I find that it was a particularly busy month - at least on Froogville. This was mainly because I was kept indoors for much of the month by the protracted 'celebrations' of the 60th Anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China (something about which I curmudged quite extensively, here and here and here... and here).

I think my top pick for this month will be this post, Up yer bum! - one of those in which I revisit my Classical education, pondering on one of the great mysteries of 5th century BC Greek literature: why is threatening somebody with a radish such a terrifying prospect? (Although, in an uncommonly rich month, I find myself compelled to remind you also of this quip about the tortured English of many TV presenters here, this anecdote about my latest acting job, this post on my philosophy of teaching, and these Halloween ghost stories.)

From The Barstool, I'll pick A new idiom, a simple but painfully memorable little text message joke.

Traffic Report - the blog stats for September

Despite having a lot of time on my hands last month, I didn't succumb too badly to the temptation to over-blog; it ended up being a fairly 'typical' month.

There were 35 posts and around 17,500 words on Froogville.

There were 30 posts and nearly 7,000 words on Round-The-World Barstool Blues.

I've just added sidebar links for my recent series On Writing here on Froogville, and for the Potted History of the Beijing Bar Scene that I wrote in June for The Barstool.

However, unfortunately, I have had to remove the 'Recent Post List' links from the sidebars, because Blogger appears to have terminated that useful feature.

Not that much of interest happening with the stats, except that there was a bit of a surge in visits to The Barstool in the middle of last week (WHY???), almost all of them from the States.

Oh, and we've seen our first visitors from Greece and Moldova. My 'model United Nations' is almost complete!

Nature note

While out on a run a few days ago, I saw a fish jump in the moat beside the North 2nd Ringroad near Deshengmen. Well, more heard than saw. But I am pretty damned sure it was a fish: they make a rather distinctive plop. And there was no-one and nothing else in the vicinity that might have fallen (or thrown something) into the water.

This is a moment of some excitement. In ten years of living nearby the 2nd Ringroad moat and the Houhai lakes, having spent many, many hours watching local fishermen hopefully cast their lines into these waters, I have NEVER seen a fish - landed, being reeled in, or at large in the water. NOT ONCE.

The only fish I've ever seen being caught within the city were in the little lake in Ritan Park, where there's long been a fishing concession hiring rods out of a hut opposite the Stone Boat Bar. I believe that lake has to be articially restocked pretty regularly.

Fish living wild in Beijing's foully polluted waterways? I'd always been a sceptic about the possibility.

But perhaps things are finally looking up; maybe the water is becoming cleaner, and fish numbers are increasing.

This may come as an uncomfortable shock to Beijing's legions of fishermen, most of whom probably haven't seen a fish in decades, and wouldn't have a clue how to land one when they finally get a bite.