Obstacles

One of the goals of studying abroad should be to learn how a different country works and how people from another culture see the world. Students should try to use the new perspectives they gain not only to examine the country they are staying in but also to reexamine their own nation. They should steer clear of open criticism of the country they are staying in and the people they meet. This was my attitude during my previous trips to Taiwan and to mainland China, as well as to Mali, but while in Harbin I often found myself harboring negative attitudes about the land and its people. This may be because I was in Harbin for a much longer time than I had been in Beijing in 2009. Furthermore, after having been to Taiwan, a country with a similar cultural legacy, it was harder for me to excuse annoyances as simply cultural differences between America and Asia.

My impatience with differences perhaps made my time in Harbin less enjoyable and rewarding than it could have been. I grew tired of the terrible drivers who ignored things like red lights, signaled the wrong way as they made turns or failed to signal at all, with no regard for terrified pedestrians. I grew tired of the terrible service at restaurants and stores. In grocery stores, clerks often didn’t know where items were stocked. In restaurants, waiters often got orders wrong. I grew tired too of the dishonesty of venders and the open corruption just about everywhere. Taxi cab drivers often tried to pull fast ones. On multiple occasions, I remember being harassed by train ticket scalpers trying to sell me fake or stolen tickets in plain sight of police officers. The officers didn’t care, most likely because they were taking a cut. Facebook and Youtube were blocked online by the government, but brothels and drug dealers could do business with few real impediments.

All of this was very stressful for me while in China, but maybe it helped me to gain a broader perspective on the country. China has a lot of people, and this is important for a foreigner to remember. People are often far in excess of jobs available and as a result the cost of labor is often quite cheap. The education system – especially in the countryside – is terrible and few people have good training in what they do. A massive bureaucracy tends to fan the flames of nepotism, corruption, and incompetence rather than bring the good oversight one would think a strict dictatorship could offer. Whereas in America a supermarket might have fifteen people working at a time, in China it might have thirty, all of them being paid maybe forty cents an hour with little training and no opportunity for upward mobility. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that they often do not know where things are located in the store. Waiters are also paid very little and unlike in America they are not given tips, so there is often little incentive to do a good job. Sometimes the Chinese drive to find the cheapest team possible to do a job baffles the mind, such as the crew of 4’10” subway construction workers, many middle aged women, who we saw in Dalian. They were from Guizhou, a very poor province in the southwest. Without a doubt hiring them was a lot cheaper than hiring Dalian locals. The irony is that Dalian is in the northeast with plenty of big strong young people to do construction work. But rather than hire locals, the City chose to bring in people from over four thousand kilometers away. The bad driving usually has its roots in China’s inequality. Private car owners are often relatively well off and do not care about the safety of pedestrians. Especially after seeing how bus drivers were able to manage the icy winter roads in Harbin and winding country lanes through hills, I have a lot of respect for China’s bus and truck drivers and know that China is certainly home to some of the world’s finest drivers. The bad driving of many private vehicles in the end says less about China’s drivers than it does about class tension, inequality, and entitlement in this rapidly growing country.

In the end, it’s best to be patient with dishonest street vendors, cab drivers, and others who may try to rip one off. Despite its recent economic growth, China remains a country where most people live in relative poverty. It is hard to make ends meet and many people have to work very hard to support their families and put their kids through school. As a foreigner, you stand out and invariably some people will try to rip you off. Whenever in one of those situations, I tried to think of how greenhorn Chinese immigrants are treated in America. Being overcharged a little on a souvenir pales in comparison to being paid well below minimum wage, being cheated by one’s landlord, employment agency, and snake head (human smuggler), or having one’s boss threaten to call immigration if one complains about unsafe working conditions, not to mention the host of scams someone with poor English in America will doubtlessly be confronted with, though maybe by this point no one is literally trying to sell them the Brooklyn Bridge.

CET-Harbin’s program often failed to plan reasonably around the realities of the country. They would allocate certain amounts of money to students to buy snacks for group studies on Wednesday nights or for students to go out with their roommates, but require receipts. This is China. Having to meet three layers of managers at the supermarket in order to get the receipts or getting receipts from the movie theatre or a restaurant could prove an extremely complicated affair. Most businesses in China cheat on their taxes, and as such are not used to always having receipts. Part of this is the fault of the Chinese officials whose taxes can amount to extorting as much as 30% from a small diner’s profits. For the student, the program’s requirements can prove very stressful.

At worst, obstacles and frustrations can make one’s stay abroad uncomfortable, but at best they can be used to better understand the country you visit and even your own country. During my stay in China, I learned never to make generalizations, because you always meet someone who shatters all expectations. One of those people was my roommate, who I called Brother Zhang. When speaking English or abroad, many Chinese nationals can be very nationalistic, hesitant to criticize China’s government, and defensive of a terrible regime, despite often knowing very well that much of what they are saying doesn’t match up to the facts, the Chinese feel an obligation to defend their country from outside attacks. Conversations with my roommate were a nice break from that. He felt comfortable talking about his life in China, and may have found in me the open ears of someone he could openly talk to, letting out decades of frustration and anger. He grew up growing onions in northern Jiangsu. He lost his father to lung cancer. As he explained to me, the Chinese government profits tremendously from the sale of cigarettes, which are produced and distributed by state-owned firms. “They make billions and give us cancer in return.” He had similar criticisms of China’s agricultural policies, nepotism, education system, and corruption. When it came to his views on Chinese society, he talked openly of how materialism had eroded traditional values. “Men today just want a trophy wife, women only care about a man’s car and real estate. It’s so sad, things like love and family don’t matter anymore”. Brother Zhang seemed unsure of his future in China: “An engineer here gets paid pennies. All the money goes to the boss. To get a good position, you need connections.” He was fascinated with Western ideas of meritocracy, however imperfect they are actually put into practice in America and Europe.

At one point, Brother Zhang applied for membership in the Chinese Communist Party, a necessary move for anyone hoping to boost their career. After examining his academic record and family background, his interviewers asked him to respond with all honesty if he thought China could achieve a Communist Society to which he responded, “No.” They were not pleased with his answer and said he could not join, so he changed his answer to “Yes”. They were satisfied and granted him membership. He found the whole episode hilarious.