This Generation

by Han Han

  Although the competition has yet to begin, I can tell you right now that the international car league and the Chinese car league are not at all on the same level. Competitions abroad only make a fuss about inspections—because my driving shoes had a hole in them, for example, I almost failed the inspection. In China, on the other hand, you’re completely free to compete in a race wearing dress shoes. Our car inspections just involve checking the manufacturer—if you apply to drive a Subaru, say, and turn up in a Subaru and not on a kangaroo, then you will pass the inspection just fine. There’s plenty of wiggle room on stuff like engine displacement, upgrade, and model. The international standard of inspection is simply too rigid, too lacking in flexibility: It doesn’t allow enough room for individual preferences and wreaks havoc with one’s profits. Also, every time I go somewhere in China, the local leadership warmly greets me and expresses the hope that I’ll help promote the development of the local economy. “Sure,” I tell them, “I’ll be happy to take a picture of the city government offices and post it online to show how well you’re doing.” I don’t know why, but they always modestly decline this offer. But I spent a full three days in Australia, and never had the chance to meet the local leadership. I feel this is a shocking breach of etiquette. Most discourteous of all—I was never able to locate their local government offices, for I often mistook them for portable toilets. A country like this, so indifferent to the image of its government—how could it ever run a proper competition?

  Australia’s World Rally Championship is staring failure in the face. On China’s behalf, I invite the Australian rally stages to shift their location to China. I can guarantee you will find absolutely no “unharmonious” phenomena here. Instead, there will be cars to drive, meals to savor, cash to spend, and whores to bed. Of course, if you take a fancy to our country and get the idea of living there permanently, better forget that—there’s no way you can afford to buy one of our homes.

  November 21, 2009

  The day before yesterday I gave a little speech at the Jiading Expo Forum. Normally I never attend any forums whatsoever, but the organizers made a very earnest appeal and on September 30 even came in person to deliver the invitation—and gave me a little present to boot. For me to receive a gift from the Party and the state on the eve of National Day came as such a surprise that I decided to set aside my principles and accept the invitation. I made a point of preparing my remarks in advance, fearing I might say something out of turn if I ad-libbed. “This is the first time I ever heard of you ever giving a formal lecture,” a friend said to me. “I don’t want to miss it.” He sat down in front of his computer to watch the live video feed.

  So there, thirty miles away, I introduced my theme—“The city makes life more miserable”18 and expressed the view that for most people the pressure of life in Shanghai is becoming unbearable. After the talk I asked my friend what he thought. “Hell,” he said, “the broadcast went dead as soon as you announced your topic.” Those of you who want to read the full text are just going to have to wait.

  This reminds me that a few days ago the U.S. Embassy called me up. When President Obama visits Shanghai there will be a chance for him to interact with young Chinese, and they asked if I’d like to take part in the dialogue. I declined, saying I had a race that day. Actually, whether it is the American president or the Chinese one, there’s nothing I particularly need to ask or say. But the main thing is, I have absolutely no interest in sharing a room with a bunch of actors, that’s all.

  Try the pickles

  December 14, 2009

  One thing I have learned from our nation’s news coverage is that we have a the great variety of government departments, and the one I’ve been informed about now is the National Standards Commission. After long focusing only on internal matters and determining that the cost of an official’s meal must not exceed one hundred thousand yuan, that an official cannot keep more than five mistresses or engage more than two prostitutes at a time, and that an official cannot pocket a single bribe larger than one hundred million yuan, the National Standards Commission has now set its sights and its antennae on the common people, and has stipulated that a battery-powered bicycle cannot exceed a speed of fifteen to twenty kilometers an hour or a weight of forty kilos, otherwise it will be treated as a motor vehicle.

  How did this standard come into being? It’s simple. Businessmen make money from new products, and the government makes money from new policies. With the implementation of this standard, most battery-powered bicycles will be designated light motorcycles or electric motorcycles (a novel expression, that!), and their license fees and sales tax will see an enormous increase. I don’t quite get it: If the relevant departments are introducing this change in the name of protecting lives, then how is it that those heavier or faster bicycles suddenly become safer just because they command more exorbitant fees?

  In this reform we can see the authorities’ determination to get their pound of flesh. They know that those cunning people whose bicycles can speed along at forty kilometers an hour are quite capable of making technical adjustments so that they will go only twenty or even fifteen kilometers an hour during the inspection, and then the authorities won’t be able to get their hands on that extra cash. So what do they do? They come out with the forty-kilo weight limit, because heavy bikes are bound to be able to go faster, and now there’s no escaping the extra expense. My suggestion to working people is that if their bike really does exceed the limits, then when the inspection is scheduled you simply detach the heavy electric battery and the tires and whatnot, and tell the inspectors that because you trust the government and trust the state, then not only will you not die riding the bike, but you can even ride it without power and without wheels.

  A price has to be paid for any kind of transport, and for a long time, in the name of safety, the government has restricted the use of motorcycles. In other countries, lots of young guys just out of high school depend on a motorbike as they start a career, and for many less well-off families a motorbike is an indispensable accessory when going out—you can’t insist that everyone always take public transport, after all. Later, of those who used to buy motorbikes, some chose to take the bus or the subway, some bought small cars, some bought e-bikes. Now ticket prices and gasoline prices have gone up, and in some places license and road-use fees are levied for cars, but the authorities have had a hard time making money out of those low-income e-bike users—even if electricity rates rise, the money goes into other people’s pockets. So now the principles of fairness and justice come into effect, and now it’s the e-bike riders turn to pay up.

  Well, are e-bikes safe? No, they’re not. That’s because they run silently and brake poorly, even though they can reach or exceed speeds of fifty kilometers an hour. But it’s rare for an e-bike to knock someone down and kill them—it’s much more common for an e-bike rider to get killed in a collision, and the new standards are going to do nothing to reduce the casualties from that kind of accident. The norm for e-bikes is actually very simple: there should be no charge for their registration and license, their speed should be limited to thirty-five to forty kilometers per hour, they must have disc brakes, and their riders must wear a helmet. The disc brakes are especially vital. A lot of e-bikes, including many of those that can go over fifty kilometers an hour, have much the same brake system as a comparable light motorcycle: They are all fitted with disc brakes, and I find that reassuring. It shows that though these manufacturers may not excel in basic technology, their basic sense of decency compares well with that of some official departments—that’s to say, if you spend more, you will get a higher level of service and accessories. This is not to deny that it’s still a bit dangerous for an e-bike to exceed fifty kilometers an hour: It’s not equipped with great tires, and it makes so little noise that it can do considerable damage to a pedestrian if it hits one at that kind of speed.

  A neighbor of mine works in a plant at the Jinshan Petroleum works near Shanghai, and his commute
involves a twenty-five-kilometer bus ride. But often he’s asked to work overtime, and the bus is no longer running when he gets off work. His monthly salary is 1,650 yuan—pretty good pay, by local standards. He wanted to buy a motorbike and liked the look of one that cost over four thousand yuan. “I have one just like that,” I said to him, “that I’ve only ridden a hundred kilometers. I’ll sell it to you for one thousand yuan.” (If you’re wondering why I didn’t just give it to him for free, use your brain.) A month later he said, “I don’t want your bike anymore. I have to pay for a license, and what’s worse, the fuel costs are too much—four or five hundred yuan a month, I just can’t afford it. See this e-bike I’ve got—it can go fifty kilometers an hour, too.”

  Once the new standard comes into effect, it’s hard to know how my friend will manage. He’s got two choices. One, he spends a little money, rides his “electric motorcycle” for half an hour to get home, and if his luck holds out, lives to a ripe old age. Two, he trades in his bike for one that meets the national standard and takes two hours to get home each day, rain or shine, with the risk that he won’t have enough power to get himself home.

  E-bikes are the mode of transport for the second-poorest members of the community. These people are always running around to make ends meet, and while you don’t want them to risk their lives by riding at breakneck speed, you can’t expect them to get things done at a snail’s pace. In any case, I think it’s unreasonable for the authorities to try to squeeze more money out of them. Some people eat abalone, but just because they see others eat too many pickles they can’t set a standard and say, you’ve got to eat this set amount of pickles each day and no more, otherwise you’ll damage your health. Their solution to the problem is not to replace the pickles with meat, but rather charge the poor pickle-eaters for the pickles that they have overeaten or are about to overeat, at the market rate for meat. But, if you think people are so happy to eat pickles, you should eat one yourself and see. Of course, if you eat pickles once in a blue moon you might think they’re delicious, just like that provincial administrator who rode a bike to work in the car lane once and thought it was great. If you’re really such hot stuff, how about you eat pickles every day?

  Just testing

  January 15, 2010

  Recently I read several reports about Shanghai; I think it’s worth reviewing them here. First of all, Shanghai’s bulldozers are pressing forward with urban construction at a rate of practically one crushed person a day. If they carry on at this rate, the China Pavilion at the Shanghai Expo will be stained red with more than just paint.

  Secondly, the director of the Shanghai politics and law commission has declared that criminal syndicates will never be allowed to establish themselves in Shanghai. That’s an issue that has never caused me anxiety, because the cost of living in Shanghai is so high that no kingpin can afford to support a gang. Shanghai has found a supremely effective means to deny gangs a foothold here.

  Thirdly, the Shanghai government has announced that when necessary it will implement measures to restrict car usage, such as stipulating that only vehicles whose license plates end with odd or even numbers can enter the city on a particular day. They got the idea from Beijing, which introduced this system during the 2008 Olympics. But in Beijing a license only costs two hundred yuan, and there’s no congestion fee. Cars licensed in Shanghai have license fees of anything from thirty thousand to forty thousand yuan, and gas prices here are significantly higher than in other cities, as well. You take people’s money, but then not only do you not get things done, you make life difficult for the people whose money you pocket. Oh, and I almost forgot—we need to fork out another eighteen hundred yuan to cover that highway-loan surcharge. It sure seems odd to me that when we’re the ones who make the down payment and we’re the ones who pay off the loan—with all the interest going to you—we get to use the road only at fixed times.

  This new rule won’t have any impact on me, since I spend most of my time out in the countryside and rarely venture into the city. But if in the future they really go ahead and limit car use, I think people won’t have much alternative but to just leave their cars in the road and go back home. The government can restrict access because the roads are too congested, but we can’t restrict our leaders from going to work just because they are so stupid.

  Also, many people have asked me what I think about Google closing its operations in China. When Google Library was scanning the works of Chinese authors, a reporter asked me my reaction to Google’s scanning my books without permission and putting them online for people to read for free, giving me sixty dollars at most in compensation. What I told him was, if this is what Google is really doing, that explains why it hasn’t managed to gain the biggest share of the Chinese market. Only when I got home and went online did I find out that Google had been scanning only the table of contents. Then I realized why Google hadn’t captured a larger market share—too many people have been demonizing it. Actually, whether or not it’s true that Google is pulling out of China, I understand its position. The thing I don’t understand is the online survey that claims seventy percent of those polled do not support Google’s demand that the Chinese government remove its filters from online search results. When you look at the poll results on government websites, you have to wonder why you so often find yourself at odds with public opinion, and after many such experiences you must begin to suspect that you’re a member of the 1990s generation, to always be so out of the mainstream. Actually, it’s the government websites that should be blocked. I can live with black being called gray and white being called cream, but I can’t tolerate a complete reversal of black and white.

  If Google leaves China, the people who should most be wringing their hands are writers. This is not because Chinese writers represent society’s conscience and progressive tendencies, for many of them do not care about the limits on expression, and even if the government departments overseeing culture were to block a full half of the Chinese characters in circulation, writers would still find a way of using the remaining vocabulary to sing the authorities’ praises. What will upset them is that if they had known Google was going to run out on them, they would have definitely accepted those sixty dollars, for this would surely be the first income most Chinese authors have gained in terms of electronic publishing rights. All they wanted, really, was another forty dollars, to make a nice round one hundred.

  Finally, I read a report that in the future if a cell phone forwards a dirty joke or some indecent content, the messaging function on that phone will be disabled and you’ll have to go to Public Security and sign a promise of good behavior before you can regain messaging capability. That’s the government for you: It is always coming out with some verb or noun but never explains what that word means. You’re not to be counterrevolutionary, it says, for instance, without defining counterrevolutionary. You can’t be a hooligan, it says, but it won’t tell you what a hooligan is. Now, you can’t send an indecent message but it won’t say what it means by indecent. I’d like to follow the government’s lead but am stymied when it gives me no clear standard to follow. The result is that some of us step into a minefield without realizing it, and even those Fifty-centers suffer embarrassment when they try their best to suck up to the powers that be only to have their messages rejected as problematic. My suggestion is: with these minefields, You should tell us clearly—this is a minefield here, and if you enter you’ll be responsible for the consequences. But not only do you not put up a sign to warn us away from the minefield, you lay mines under the pedestrian crossing. Whose fault is it if one of those mines goes off?

  Given that we’re coming up to the Chinese New Year, so as to avoid phone users losing access to their phones just when they’re so busy and having to go to the police station on the first day of the New Year, I have decided to sacrifice myself: In the days to come I plan to constantly forward indecent messages of various kinds, until my cell phone has been disabled. After that happens, I will finally
be able to tell you what constitutes an indecent message. So, if any of you receive dirty messages from me in the next few days, don’t get the wrong idea. It’s not that I’m getting horny or trying to make a move on you—I’m just testing.

  Required course for Chinese officials: Lesson One

  January 20, 2010

  As someone has remarked, the main contradiction in China today is that between the growing intelligence of the population at large and the rapidly waning morality of our officials. But as our officials’ moral sense crumbles, their judgment, managerial ability, command of Chinese, personal appeal, and competence in a crisis are in constant decline as well. After many years of observation I realize that many things are actually not a problem to begin with, but once officials start to intervene, a small thing becomes big, and the big thing blows up in their faces and ends up a major talking point. Here I propose to outline some common-sense approaches that will help leaders at all levels handle issues correctly, so that they can get promoted and make more money more quickly. Here begins Lesson One.

  According to a report by Gansu Province’s news website, Gansu is about to establish a team of six hundred and fifty Internet commenters to lead public opinion in the right direction. The Gansu authorities originally planned to promote this as a major political achievement, hoping for some reward from their superiors. Various branches of the provincial government held a meeting in Lanzhou specifically to discuss this issue, and thus a press release was circulated to the outside world.