Changing China through its Youth – Part 4/5

February 2, 2011

Back to Wang Xiaolei, the Chinese rapper, who at the end of Part 3 shared a story where he met a Chinese girl on-line and sent her all his money so she could come live with him.  His money vanished and she never arrived but he keeps a poster-sized picture of the girl he never met in person on his wall.

Then Wang Xiaolei says there is a social problem in China. “Many girls only believe in money. They think they have to marry someone rich.”

Well, yea! In the US, we call such girls “gold diggers”. Women like this exist the world over. He just isn’t meeting the right girls.  After all, where does he spend most of his time—in bars/nightclubs singing his rap as a DJ.

Yet, opportunities exist for Wang Xiaolei that did not exist before 1980. Today, he works in a nightclub singing his songs and talks of starting his own record label. Prior to 1980, there weren’t any nightclubs in China and there were no private businesses.

The Internet love story he shared with Frontline embarrasses Wang Xiaolei.

In fact, if Wan Xiaolei had done some research he might have discovered what I did in a few second at What It’s Worth at Comcast.net. “Watch out, says the FTC, for any Lothario who wants to get you out of the safety of the dating site and onto your personal e-mail or IM, who was planning to visit you but then can’t because of some tragic (read: costly) event, who needs your financial help to get back on his feet, or who claims to love you much, much too quickly. And note: Do not wire money. It’s not like a credit card where you have the backing of a big corporation. It’s like cash. Once you do it, it’s gone.”

If you say that maybe Wang Xiaolei couldn’t find this information because of Chinese censors, consider that China has a very active Internet with hundreds of millions of people on-line.

In fact, China has its Google and Baidu, search engines that find topics on Websites and Blogs in China that I’m sure discuss this same topic since the Chinese have more active Bloggers than any other nation.

Since this Internet love scam is alive and working in China (as it is in the US for the naive and gullible), there must have been others who were burned and then Blogged about it.

Return to Changing China through its Youth – Part 3

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

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Changing China through its Youth – Part 3/5

February 1, 2011

The PBS Frontline narrator mentions how entrepreneurs that have been away from China must get used to doing business in China, which may include bribes.

In fact, to Chinese there is no clear definition of what is bribery — what the West calls corruption is deeply rooted in China’s culture (and has nothing to do with Communism) and is not seen the same way.

Lu Dong, going into the business of Internet tailoring, says, “If we use Western values to judge a Chinese company’s behavior, I think it is very hard to do business with them.”

Ben Wu, the Internet Cafe owner, says they (Chinese businessmen) have no interest in helping or not helping him, and he cannot figure out how to influence them.

To get help in China, one must make friends and since China is an eating culture that takes money. To learn more, discover the meaning of Guanxi in China.

Ben Wu, who was born in China but educated in the US, says he will not bribe anyone. However, he doesn’t think he can stop his Chinese partner.

One wise quote explains the choices. “There is nothing you can do. A fish has to live in water and if the water isn’t clean you must get used to it.”

Now, for a corruption reality check. Here is a comparison with the US. We know an engineer who stopped working in construction because of the difficulty in finding contractors that are honest.

We also had a bad experience with a contractor we signed on to build an addition to our house. Twenty-eight thousand dollars later without any construction starting, he was still asking for money.

An investigation on my part revealed he hadn’t taken out the construction permit even though he had collected the money months earlier to do so. We cancelled the contract and he filed a lien on our property for about $200,000 US.

Months later, we managed to get about half the 28 thousand back and California forced him to cancel the lien. However, we had to see and pay for a lawyer, file a complaint with a state agency in California and the process was stressful and frustrating.

The fact is that there is corruption in every culture and country. It just wears different clothing.

Return to Changing China through its Youth – Part 2

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Changing China through its Youth – Part 2/5

January 31, 2011

In Part 1 of this series covering a PBS Frontline documentary of how China’s youth is changing the country, we ended with  Ben Wu who had been away for more than a decade gaining a business education in the US and New York.

Recently, a Chinese-American friend returning from China after a long visit complained of the younger people (under 30) not saving money and using credit cards running up debt to buy consumer items (what I call mostly junk).

What Neil Genzlinger of the New York Times wrote of this Frontline series was true. “Soon it becomes clear that everything about them (the younger Chinese) is just like us. …” Learn more of The University Influence from the US and Europe.

This is scary since Money-Zine.com says, “The total amount of consumer debt in the United States stands at nearly $2.5 trillion dollars – and based on the latest Census statistics, that works out to be nearly $8,100 in debt for every man, woman and child that lives here in the US.”

Imagine what would happen to the world if China and America both had economic meltdowns equal to what started in the US in 2008? Instead of $64US trillion lost globally, the numbers would have been much higher.

Anyway, back to Ben Wu and his venture to start up an Internet cafe franchise. After months of living on caffeine and cigarettes (working two jobs–one to earn money and the other starting up the cafe), he opened for business.

By then it was probably 2005 or later. Soon after opening, Ben Wu reported, “The cafe is doing very well. It’s pretty much what I estimated.”

The next Chinese youth Frontline focuses on is Wang Xiaolei, a Chinese rapper using his music to express “his” dark view (opinion) of China’s new boom times.

In my opinion, Wang Xiaolei’s ignorance is on display. Since he doesn’t know how dark it was in China before the economic miracle, he has no idea what he is talking about. His own music says he’s never been to the US but it is apparent that he must have a gold plated perception of the US.

Facts say otherwise. Even the CIA reports that only 2.8% of China’s population lives in “absolute poverty”.

Meanwhile, in the US, the latest Census numbers reported by the Associated Press say “The number of poor people in the US is millions higher than previously known, with 1 in 6 Americans (almost 17%) – many of them 65 and older – struggling in poverty…”

Wang Xiaolei says, “There is a lot of discrimination in China. Like, if you don’t have money, people look down on you.”

How is that different from the US?

Try walking the streets of downtown Berkeley, California and see how many homeless beggars ask for money. Then drive around San Francisco and see if you can keep count of the homeless that live on the city’s streets.

In fact, “There is anecdotal evidence that many Americans complain about the presence of homeless people, blame them for their situation, and feel that their requests (begging) for money or support are unjustified.” Source: Wikipedia

Several years ago in this report, Frontline said that 70% of Chinese had no medical insurance. That was before current plans to improve medical services in urban and rural communities from 2011 to 2015. Source: Xinhuanet.com

What Frontline doesn’t say about health care in China is also important and puts the situation into perspective. The CIA reports that life expectancy in China for total population is 74.51 years. In 1949, life expectancy was a meager 35 years.

Return to China Changing through its Youth – Part 1

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

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China Changing through its Youth – Part 1/5

January 30, 2011

There is a difference between the Chinese that lived through Mao’s time and those born around or after 1980.

Frontline says, “They are a new generation breaking from tradition and transforming China.”

The Mao generation suffered through the Chinese Civil War (1925 – 1949) between the Communists and the Nationalists in addition to World War II (1937 – 1945).

Then there was the Great Leap Forward and Mao’s Cultural Revolution.

From 1925 to 1976, more than sixty million died due to these events. The Chinese that survived were willing to sacrifice by working harder for less so their children would have a brighter future. Now those children are coming of age.

PBS’s Frontline went to China in 2004 and spent several years following nine young Chinese to see how they were changing China.

Neil Genzlinger of the New York Times wrote, “For an American viewer it’s interesting at first because of the ‘just like us’ factor … But soon it becomes clear that everything about them is just like us. …”

There is a businesswoman pressured to choose between motherhood and her career; an Internet entrepreneur thirsting for a more spiritual life, and a young woman searching for the mother she barely remembers.

Their stories are of love, of family, ambition and sacrifice and the conflict between the past and the future. These stories come from a society changing faster than any in history.

Watching this Frontline documentary caused me to question why anyone is pressuring China to change any faster than it already is.

The first person featured was Lu Dong, 32, who returned to China after a decade in another country. He returned because of the opportunities that China now offers.

The narrator says so many Chinese are returning from other countries that the Chinese call them Returning Turtles.

In fact, few in the west realize how many educated Chinese are returning home.

My wife and I know of one man born in China and educated in the US that became the department chair of a university mathematics department in America.  Today, he is a department chair in one of China’s most prestigious universities.

Another man, Ben Wu, also returned to Beijing where he spent his childhood. He was gone from China for more than a decade and has never worked there before.  Now, he’s back to learn. He works two jobs—one for himself starting a new franchise Internet cafe using the knowledge he learned from a business school in New York.

Learn of Foreign Entrepreneurs in China

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Shanghai Scams – Assisted Shopping – Part 1/3

January 26, 2011

While researching another topic, I discovered the Shanghai Scam Series produced by a 30-year-old expatriate that goes by the on-line name of Serpentza.

Although I’ve been to China many times, I’ve never experienced the scams the narrator of this series talks of.

However, to be fair, the reason I haven’t experienced these scams is that I don’t drink (gave it up years ago) and do not frequent the popular nightclubs and bars.

In fact, my wife is Chinese and usually warns me of suspicious behavior. It also helps that I’m the distrusting sort.

In Serpentza’s video, he takes us for a walk in the rain in Shanghai to show us how the”assisted shopping scam” works.

He says, while shopping, you will be approached by a number of people who speak English that will tell you where the best bargains are.

Hmm, this has never happened to me. Do I look that forbidding? While in China, my wife isn’t always with me. I have gone shopping alone and no one has asked if I needed help and I do not buy anything from street vendors.

However, I have been approached by street vendors selling watches, which Serpentza warns of, but I don’t wear a watch and don’t want one.

On one trip, a Shanghai street vendor followed me for several blocks trying to sell me watches, wallets, dark glasses, etc.  He didn’t know what the word “NO” meant even when I used the word in Mandarin my wife taught me. Maybe he didn’t speak Mandarin. After all, there are about 60 different, spoken languages in China.

Had to go into a bank to get him to leave me alone.

I even found a trip advisor Website warning of Shanghai Scams, which says, “The majority of these scams happen at tourist spots around People’s Square, on Nanjing Pedestrian Street and at the Bund.”

General rule: Shanghainese are very friendly and always willing to help if you ask them, but they would seldom approach a foreigner without being asked (as probably anywhere in the world).

On his Blog, Serpentza calls himself “forever an expatriate”.

Discover Shanghai

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

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