Come into my web

This weeks blog copes not from the comfortably cosy confines of a cafe but from the copiously cavernous capacity of Chang An library, a sprawling public building over five floors in the administrative centre of the town. Reliable internet connections are not the easiest things to come by in the People's Republic of China but this place is better than most.

          Frustratingly, even simple communications seem to take an age in the PRC. Because of rumours about the 'Great Firewall of China' and notions of intense supervision of each and every web search, one is never sure whether the laboriously slow speed of the internet here is more due to the nefarious activities of those given the role of surveillance or is simply a technical problem that one could put down to an inefficient infrastructure. In many ways, most of the infrastructure here would be the envy of the West, so it comes as something of a surprise that the internet is habitually so preternaturally slow.

         To be fair in this, one should not criticise China alone when Western governments such as those in the UK and the US have shown a similar weakness in regards to the temptations to pry into people's online communications or other activities. These two countries managed to come to a rather neat arrangement to get around the fact that US agencies spying on US citizens is illegal, and likewise in the UK. The two countries simply arranged to swap their data when each spied on the other's citizens - GCHQ spied on American citizens whilst the NSA spied on the British, thereby making their activities legal(ish!).

         Whenever challenged, the governments of these two countries trot out the usual excuses of terrorism, paedophiles and organised crime, thereby ensuring that many of the more naïve citizens will support the latest clampdown, but the reality is that those in power tend to love power and want to keep a firm grip on it. People communicating freely online is seen as a threat to that vice-like grip so the temptation to take more and more control over the means of communication becomes irresistible for such folk. In this way, one could at least say that the Chinese are being (relatively!) honest in their repression, unlike the other two mentioned.

Another aspect that makes using the internet in China a frustrating experience is the sheer ubiquity of the advertising. If you, dear reader, are anything  like myself, and yearn to simply use the internet without having to undergo a visual, or even verbal assault, each and every time you try to visit a site, then China is no place for you. One needs a degree of patience verging on the superhuman to endure the constant bombardment that one suffers each and every time one puts fingers to keyboard.

Of course, advertising is at the very heart of the capitalist process, an attempt to persuade the viewer/listener that he/she need lots and lots of things that, in reality, they don't ('because your worth it' as one particularly insidious offering puts it). It is everywhere here in China – from the internet to hoardings, from smiling greeters at shop doorways to incessantly repeated slogans from loudspeakers. This last technique is very common here, one might think that the originator of this particular method of advertising learnt his trade on the Korean Peninsula in the 1950s...

         In the West the techniques are somewhat subtler. On Youtube one has to endure a few seconds of trailer for a game or film before one can assign it to the oblivion it so richly deserves whereas in China one is forced to endure a minute of such assaults with no option to abort. If, having finally reached your video, you dare to pause it you will find that even that gap is felt to be an available opportunity for advertising and some intrusive sales pitch attempting to tell me that I need to spruce up my wardrobe for the coming spring, or some other such nonsense, will tend to fill it.

         To some extent, this mirrors life in China. For a theoretically communist society they are perhaps the most natural capitalists on the planet. Everything is for sale, no stone left unturned if there is an opportunity to make some money, no avenue left untraversed. Oddly, in the West, I think we envision factories and endless production lines. The reality is often far more mundane. One sees old ladies sitting on kerb stones outside shops manually inserting some  item into tiny plastic bags or fiddling with some  trinket, often in this town it will be cheap jewellery, the results to be displayed in the supermarkets and stores of the West a few weeks later. Such people are often piece workers, working their fingers to the bone for a pittance.  One can see them staring myopically at their work, their eyesight and their fingers failing. Chang An is a relatively well-to-do area but their presence is an ever present for all to see.

         So it would seem that capitalism won the argument that raged throughout the twentieth century but... appearances can be deceptive. Capitalism, whether it be the American variety or the Chinese (not much of a difference, I grant you) needs to persuade the 'consumer' (for we are all consumers now apparently, not people any more) that they have wants and needs that have to be fulfilled (by them of course) in order to be happy. Of course it is true, people do have wants and needs but often those needs are far, far less than the advertisers would have you believe, and often for things that money can't actually buy.

         As Samuel Alexander said: 'Simplicity is the new spectre haunting capitalism' – the fear that people will realise that to live well they don't actually need so much endless acquisition. After the crash of 2008 many people, particularly in America, began to question some of the fundamental assumptions behind the advertising and came to realise that the endless chase after ever more 'stuff' and the need to buy ever bigger houses to house said 'stuff' was a very limiting and, in many ways, a deeply inhuman way to structure a society.

         In this sense, I would have to disagree with the odious Gordon Gecko (as played by Michael Douglas in Wall Street), when he said that 'Greed is good.' Greed is not good, greed is simply greed – one of the least attractive traits that human-kind possesses, at best unpleasant and at worse deeply destructive.

         Never before have so many people chosen to start the process of casting off the chains of consumer culture, stepping out of the rat race, and living in opposition to the existing order of things. What they have come to realise is that life gets pleasanter and more meaningful when you value experiences over things, relationships over acquisition, personal growth over greed.

         Back in the library I notice that the battery life of my heroically struggling little netbook is coming to a close as the sun is setting once more over Chang An. I have to admit that it has been a pleasant couple of hours spent in these quiet environs. It felt slightly strange to have to produce a passport in order to get an internet connection in a library, but I guess that is not atypical of China. The staff at least were more than helpful and very polite too, displaying a much appreciated level of patience with my hopelessly inadequate attempts to communicate in Mandarin.

         This has generally been my feeling of China and the Chinese. The people are friendly, almost overwhelmingly so at times, and strangely innocent to Western eyes. There is a pleasant and trusting naivete to many of them which is almost touching on occasion. There are, of course, also times when the sheer rudeness of a Chinese motorist staggers belief but the 'behind the wheel' effect has been noted in many a culture (though I have experienced none worse than here, it has to be admitted). 

         The system... that is another matter. When it comes down to it politicians are politicians – the promise of power tends to draw those people who yearn to wield that power over others. As the old cliché has it, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. In this way, China and Chinese politicians are little different from tens of thousands of other politicians around this globe of ours. Some things never change...

PS. Just after I finished this article I came across a piece on the BBC website (which took much patience to access...). It seems that advertisers in the UK have chosen to partake in the particularly unpleasant American custom of 'Black Friday'. This had patently foreseeable results – greed, violence and a very similar unedifying spectacle as people fought over such things as coffee makers with the promise of £20 off the usual price. These particular items are classic 'stuff' – the sort of thing that people buy, use a couple of times, then consign to the garage to gather dust until it is deemed useless enough for the charity shop or the boot sale. Not really worth coming to blows over....

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-30241459

Loitering without intent

Loitering without intent....

This evening I find myself once again in the delightful surrounds of Cafe do Coral but an altogether different branch of the said concession. This one is in the 'village' of Chang An, a suburb of Dongguan just north of Shenzhen (and that, in turn, just north of Hong Kong, for those who wish to locate the village on a map). I think even the Chinese would struggle to call this place a village in this day and age being, as it is, the home to somewhere in excess of one million souls. On the other hand, the Chinese would not call it a city either. A mere million inhabitants just about makes it to town status in this part of the world. Cities by Chinese standards don't really start until the population of said metropolis is in excess of four to five million. By such a measure, one and only one British 'city' would qualify for that status in modern China - and that is London itself!

Back in the cafe, music tinkers softly in the background which, thankfully, is not of the 'Christmas' variety but rather various strains of what is known as 'easy listening'. To be fair, if I have to listen to such fayre whilst indulging in an Americano, I think this kind of piano base remix of 60's hits is not the least pleasant. Indeed, much as it pains me, I have to admit to quite enjoying some of the renditions, in particular 'The Sounds of Silence' (chance would be a fine thing!) and 'Scarboro' Fair'. It tends to have the effect of allowing me to muse amiably over my flaneurial activities of the day.

 Much of the time was spent sauntering around the streets and parks of this somewhat overcrowded yet still quite pleasant town. Fortunately, the town planners had the foresight to include several generous green spaces which render some relief from the otherwise oppressive constancy of the sun and the traffic. I have to say, Chang An is really quite a pleasant town to saunter around, if one is given to such sauntering activities. There is indeed an art to walking in this way wherein the point of the walk is the walk itself and not the destination. Naturally, this is also the art of the flaneur – slowly walking through town without a sense of purpose or a place to go to but with an omnipresent openness to the experience itself.

According to Thoreau, that great American thinker of the 19^th century, the word 'saunter' owes it derivation to the France of the Middle Ages. There were men who roved around the country and sought charity claiming that it was to enable them to go to the Holy Land, or 'a la Saint Terre'. Over time, when children saw such a person, they would should out 'There goes a Sainte-Terre,' a Saunterer, a Holy-Lander. Those who were merely pretending to extract charity were indeed mere idlers and vagabonds but there are those who are saunterers in the good sense, they literally go to a 'holy land' of sorts. 

Another derivation quoted by Thoreau again comes from the French 'sans terre', meaning without land or home. These days I find myself very much in this latter category but... it has proven to be not entirely disagreeable in itself, although perhaps not for everyone. 'Saunter' in this sense also implies to be able to be equally at home wherever one finds oneself, or to misquote Paul Young: Wherever you lay your hat...that's your home!

Sunday afternoon in Chang An is the end of the week and many hard working Chinese citizens enjoy a stroll through the town's parks on this day. Come on a weekday and you will more or less have the space to yourself and a choice of pleasant places to sit and contemplate, meditate, ruminate or simply sunbathe, whatever takes your fancy. On a Sunday however, places to rest are at a premium so most spend the time slowly sauntering beneath the trees smiling amiably to all and sundry.

It is noticeable how much more relaxed he people are, how much more amiable, when they are not obsessed with getting from A to B but are quite happy with A or, if they happen to find themselves in B, likewise. A stroll without purpose - for truly the purpose of the stroll is contained within the act of strolling itself. I look at them, they look at me, we exchange the odd 'Ni Hao' with each other, everyone smiles and seems content with their lot. This amiability is in stark contrast to the rest of the week when the general populace here seems to be in such a hurry that they will happily risk life and limb, yours as well as theirs, in order to gain a few precious seconds and get ahead in 'the race'.

Ah, the busyness of business! The modern Chinese culture is no different to the West in these ways. We are exhorted on all sides and throughout our lives to work hard, be busy, to go get. Apparently, you must have a purpose and must strive unceasingly to fulfil that purpose. And pray, when one fulfils that purpose, what to do then? Why, take on another, even harder one, of course!

 We are told that life is a rat race. In order to be successful we must learn to be ratty enough – to strive, to scurry, to ever give the appearance of busy-ness but...who truly wants to live like a rat? Apparently, there are those that do. There are some who relish the tooth and nail competitiveness of it all. Forever chasing after glistening baubles that seem so tempting from afar. Doing down their competitors by fair means or foul, striving forever to climb to the top of the pile. When said baubles are pocketed though, and one finds oneself seated atop such a pile, it often happens that the glistening that tempted one in the first place turns out not to be gold at all, but merely another encumbrance, another complication, another meaningless commitment to pour one's all too finite energies into. Seated atop the pile instead of friends you have competitors, instead of happiness anxiety, instead of satisfaction the ongoing obligation to defend what you have. Is this state of affairs really something we should strive for, really something we should desire?

Many years ago, the then French Prime Minister, Edith Cresson, on a state visit to Japan, was asked if she admired the economic success of the Japanese at that time. She thought for a second, sighed, and then replied: “It's all very well, but who wants to live like an ant!”

It was hugely controversial at the time, causing a huge diplomatic incident between the two countries but one has to admit she had a point. Watching the British in London or the Chinese in Shanghai or the Japanese in Tokyo queueing in their millions to be stuffed into already overcrowded carriages and carried off to places they really don't want to go (and this process sometimes goes on for 30 years or more)  has to give one at least a small pause for thought. Is the carrot of a few material baubles really worth selling one's all too brief time on this planet for? You may indeed end up with a bigger house, a bigger car and lots of 'stuff' to look after but it will  have taken so much of your existence to pay for it. There has to be a better way.

Meanwhile, it is now closing time in the cafe and I risk being the very last customer. The floors are mopped, the kitchen cleaned and even some of the lights have been extinguished. They really are very polite here but I think it is high-time to curtail my verbal saunterings for another week and let the staff return home to their loved ones and to some well-earned rest.

Wan An!

Investing in Divesting...

On this day in the midst of November mists, this nomadic flaneur currently finds himself enjoying the slow process of sipping gently at a cup of gingersnap and peach tea in the somewhat noisy environs of Costas coffee shop in the heart of Loughton. The rain is pouring down outside to such an extent that even a short walk will guarantee a complete soaking. As ever for Costas, the internet connection is somewhat less than reliable and I am struggling to search out flights for my next global gallivant. This time it is likely to start in Hong Kong and go from there, perhaps taking in mainland China, Thailand and Cambodia. If all goes to plan, I am likely to be on the road for quite some time.

The last few months have been spent in the Southern Counties of the UK with a few diversions to the wind swept but rather beautiful Cornish coast. England can be a very beautiful country indeed, but only for about six months of the year. Beyond October it can become dreary beyond belief. If you, dear reader, are anything like me then the joys of struggling against wind and rain pale somewhat with the passing of the years. Not for me the joys of temperatures hovering just above freezing or the encumbrance of having to wear multiple layers of clothing, gloves, hats and scarves. No, I am more your sandals and a T-shirt sort of guy these days, at least that is my preference during what would be the 'winter' months in Europe.

For the sake of my travels, my preferences in clothing have become simpler and simpler these days. This is, of course, something of a necessity if one wishes to follow the life of a nomadic flaneur. Cumbersome backpacks or other forms of luggage soon lose their appeal when one has the onerous duty of lugging them from airport to hotel, or has to attempt to hold on to them as some lunatic of a Thai bus driver cavorts crazily through the streets of Bangkok, gripped with an irrational but passionately felt need to risk all for the sake of the saving of a few seconds (which he will probably then spend watching some banality on TV or playing pool).

Indeed, it is curious to reflect on just how little one really needs in order to live the life of a nomadic flaneur. Of course, this does not merely apply to those of us involved in such activities. Life is often lead best when it is lead simply. When one's 'needs' are few, it is curious indeed how few material goods one actually has a use for. In my case, there is a certain logic to keeping the load light as everything that I have has, at times, to be carried with me. But, notwithstanding the demands of my own lifestyle, does this not equally apply to all of us?

A couple of years ago I moved out of a house that I had owned for several years. Much of my stuff was committed to boxes and sealed with brown tape. In the time since I have, on occasion, had cause to open said boxes but, to be honest, this has been necessary on remarkably few occasions. Indeed, the vast majority of my 'stuff' (mostly books, clothes, cooking equipment and various electronic bric a brac) has lain dormant in its allocated cardboard box, completely useless to man or beast.

Over time, the realisation gradually dawns on one that much of this stuff is not needed and, in all probability, was never needed in the first place. We are seemingly fooled by the illusion that we own stuff when often the reality is that the stuff ends up owning us. Things need to be maintained, cared for, stored and generally looked after, thus using up our precious time. Even for those items where this is not the case, there is the ongoing need to store them. This usually involves taking up space and, for many people, is an ongoing process often necessitating moving to larger and larger premises in order to store this relentless, and largely useless, accumulation of stuff. Another choice, chosen by many, if they cannot afford the ever larger premises, is to have their current premises increasingly packed to the gunwales with things they scarcely ever use until they reach the state where they can barely move in their own homes.

Of course, there is a third choice, a choice that oft times remains unrealised. Curiously, this is often the best and simplest choice of all. Get rid of it!

A good rule of thumb is that if you haven't used it, read it or worn it in the last two years then consign it to the charity shop, or give it as a gift to friends, or even simply consign it to the dustbin. If it is of some value then sell it on Ebay. Whatever choice you make, free your life from it. The penalty for not doing so is either less time or less space. Have few possessions that you own. Have none that own you.

Back in Costas someone has turned on the ubiquitous and ever looping tape of overplayed popular music adding to the general din of the place. Once more I have to hear of the somewhat dated romantic collaboration between 'me and Mrs. Jones' or have my ears inveigled by Midge Ure whining on about the joys of Vienna which, apparently, mean nothing to him, a fact he feels compelled to remind us of on a continuous basis it seems.

One of the joys of leaving the UK at this season is the avoidance of the dreaded Christmas soundtrack. The joys of listening to the self same tracks from Wizard, Slade, John Lennon and Kirsty MacColl played several hundred times before finally reaching the much longed for finishing post on December 25^th faded into a rather irritated boredom many, many moons ago.

The next few days will be ones of preparation but, having made a list but an hour ago, I found myself surprised with just how simple this process actually is. When one strips out the unnecessary and avoids the superfluous it is amazing how straightforward, simple and pleasurable life can become.

Cheers!