The Fine Art of Reframing…

This week's report comes from the Micro Coffee Shop in Dongguan. Fortunately, the name refers neither to the size of the premises, rather generous, or to the size of the portions, again quite copious. For some strange reason, the more the economy creaks and groans towards the possibility of recession here, the more these coffee houses spring up. From the point of view of a nomadic flaneur in constant need of refreshment and a place to write, this is a very positive development. On the other hand, one wonders what is happening to the underlying economy here as the slowdown starts to bite deeper and deeper.

The coffee house itself is just one of a chain one sees in South China. Micro Coffee's shops seem clean, well managed and quite appealing. The seats are comfortable with a pleasant selection of coffees on offer. What more could a peripatetic flaneur wish for? Whilst enjoying the fayre on offer in such coffee houses, it is not unusual to enjoy a little conversation, or even some gentle banter, with the locals, or at least those that have a smattering of English.

One of the crucial factors one has to realise when discussing any issue with Chinese citizens living within the country is that their own sources of news are very restricted. There is some debate, online and even occasionally on television, but essentially the discussion is down to variations on the theme, rarely disagreement with the theme itself.

This, naturally, is very advantageous to the powers that be (a lovely phrase, that one!). They don't really need to win the debate or convince anyone as other governments around the world find themselves having to, they simply decide the policy and instruct the media to broadcast in, together with instructions as to how exactly it is to be framed.

Many years ago, seems like another lifetime now, I studied the somewhat dark arts of NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) as developed by Richard Bandler and John Grinder. I say 'dark arts' as one pretty soon realises that although such practices are often presented, and indeed used, in a therapeutic context, they can and are readily abused by such amoral or immoral folk as those involved in government or advertising, to name but two areas where these techniques have been roundly used to exploit, cheat and generally take advantage of the unwary.

(On this front, I think if I hear one more person assure me that advertising has”no effect on me” I think I will start to tear out my already very short hair. The last invulnerable soul who assured me of this being the case was the proud owner of a Hummer…)

The Chinese economy is in some trouble now. One hears of firms going bust on a regular basis and simply by looking around it is plain to see that many shops are no longer occupied, even in some of the primest of locations. The government here though, is still as popular as ever, which speaks volumes for their skills at the fine arts of presentation and reframing. In NLP terms, a reframe is used to realign or reshape one's thinking on a given issue or situation. It is a very powerful technique, perhaps more so because of its ubiquity; there is scarcely any situation that a skilful reframe cannot change one's perception of.

At the recent New Year's celebration it was very apparent that the amount of money spent by local government, usually so generous in such affairs, was relatively mean. The fireworks in particular were noticeable by their absence. This sad state of affairs was presented as the administration practising those fine traditional Chinese values of prudence and economic restraint. A classic reframe, but one that worked very well, some people even telling me how much they admired the government for returning to such sensible ways.

Basically, in China, if you can couch the reframe in terms of nationalism and especially in terms of traditional Chinese culture, you are halfway there already. Those in power, like those who remain in power around the globe, know exactly what buttons to press when needed and exactly how to structure a needed reframe to cast themselves in the best possible light.

Another classic tactic along these lines is to point out that although things may be bad here, they are a lot worse somewhere else. Far too many times now, when the subject of the poor air quality comes up, I hear people referring to the awful smogs of London. Now, while it is true that there were indeed awful smogs in London, these mostly came to an end in the 1960s with the Clean Air Act. To listen to many people hear one would think that the news reflects the current state of affairs in the UK's capital. In one recent dinner conversation, my fellow guests seemed genuinely surprised, even a little shocked, when I showed that day's figures from Dongguan and London via an app on my Windows phone. London's air quality figures were about one fifth of those in Dongguan (pm2.5s at around 35 compared to Dongguan's 180). Beijing, needless to say, would suffer even more by comparison.

Perhaps the bleakest and most cynical tactic of all in times of economic hardship is the call to patriotism. Nationalism here is already very strong and needs but little stoking to work people into something of a patriotic fervour. In this way, China is very different from more mature systems such as those found in Europe or America. Often in those cases there are enough worldly wise folk willing to point out such tactics that the politicians are often weary of employing them. Not so in China where if there is any opposition, it will scarcely dare to raise its voice (perhaps wisely) anyway.

Currently China is involved in territorial disputes with at least seven other states, any of which can and is used to stir up nationalistic feeling when required. Perhaps of these, the dispute in the South China Sea is the most likely to flare up into something very dangerous. In this particular instance, China finds itself in dispute with the Philippines, Vietnam, Brunei, Indonesia and Malaysia. One worries that, given the current deteriorating economic situation, it could prove all too tempting to focus the population's attention away from the problems at home and into such dangerous waters.

Back in the coffee house some of my fellow imbibers are now enjoying a game of cards, whilst others watch basketball on a 42inch screen. The latter is very popular here, Dongguan in particular being known as the 'City of Basketball'. Personally, it has never been to my tastes, consisting as it does of a lot of very tall men running down one end of a court to put a ball into a net, then running up the other end and doing the same thing there. The highlight seems to be when they occasionally bump into each other but, as highlights go, its not particularly riveting.

All seems normal, perhaps even prosperous at this level. Beneath the surface though, it is not hard to detect the stark reality of an economy and a people who are  beginning to scent the unpleasant odour of recession. As ever in China, the stage managing is very impressive, but also as ever, economic reality will, in the end, prove very difficult to conceal forever.

Very Superstitious

This weeks report from the far side comes from a very pleasant little café in South Dongguan which goes by the name of 'Green Light'. Apparently they were going to go with the name 'Red Light' but realised that in that case no one would stop in China…

I just asked the helpful young chap behind the counter for the wifi password and was told that it was 'ba leo', which translates to eight sixes. Such a password in not unusual in China where belief in the powers of numbers, in many ways similar to the Western superstition of Numerology, but far more widespread and far more accepted here. The number six is thought to encourage the smooth running of events, and hence is considered in a very positive light. Quite a few passwords, and a huge number of telephone numbers for commercial companies, including large amounts of this particular digit.

The love for the number six though, is as nothing compared to the number eight, a number that the southern Chinese equate with wealth, mainly because of the sound itself 'ba'  is very similar to the Cantonese word for wealth 'fa' (at least when these words are spoken in an appropriately Cantonese accent!). Given the obsession with wealth, and the ostentatious display of it, in this country, it is small wonder that this particular superstition is so widespread.

A common site in this part of China is that of huge banners hung down the sides of new developments encouraging potential buyers to contact the appropriate developer via a telephone number containing huge numbers of eights. The idea is twofold; firstly, compliance with the superstition itself, and secondly to tempt investors into parting with their hard earned cash in the hope that the apartment itself will be a good investment, hence bringing the much desired wealth.

In much the same way the word 'password' is the most common password in English speaking countries, if you want a decent guess at one in South China try '88888888'; several cafés I have utilized in this trip have used that very combination of not very random digits.

At the other extreme is the number 4, or 'si', which is unfortunate in that it sounds very much like the word for 'death'. As such, nobody seems to want to have much to do with it here. The superstition is so ingrained that apartment blocks and hotels very often do not have a fourth floor, simply skipping from three to five when needed. This makes lifts and tad confusing as the panels have a tendency to be a little inconsistent and jumbled in order to cope with this odd discrepancy.

Again there is also a commercial motivation for this lack of a fourth floor, especially in hotels and new build apartment blocks. In practice these spaces would be hard to fill as few Chinese would want to go against the trend. Also, on a practical level, if you wanted to resell an apartment, the investor would likely face the self-same problem as the developer. The bad luck becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy…

Superstitions of these sorts crop up again and again in everyday life in China. Recently I was enjoying a coffee with a Chinese Friend, David, and was happily making notes of the conversation in an attempt to improve my Mandarin. Without thinking, I had taken out a red pen and was merrily scribbling away when David stopped me mid-sentence. He seemed a little perturbed and asked me if I was aware of the significance of red ink in China. Up to that point I had no notion that such a thing could be considered problematic at all. David explained that in previous times the use of red ink was associated with documents on which a condemned man's name would be written in that colour. Since those far off days the writing of any name in red ink is either thought to be very unlucky or simply rude, the idea being that you wish ill for the person named.

Superstitions of this sort seem to permeate life here. Even otherwise quite intelligent people do not seem immune to these beliefs. A tai chi master who I have come to know quite well is sometimes reticent to leave her home on certain days if ill omens are indicated in her i ching inspired calender. She has a believe that she is a 'fire' person and so hates forests and glades, believing them to be somehow 'unhealthy' for her. When I was told this, the thought actually crossed my mind that living in the city of Dongguan with air pollution regularly at five times the World Health Organisation limit was probably a tad unhealthier, but I managed to bite my lip and restrain myself from uttering such an undiplomatic, if slightly more logical, statement.

Some time back I accompanied the aforementioned middle-aged tai chi master to view a flat she had a mind to purchase. After studiously looking around for ten minutes, she announced that the apartment had bad 'Feng Shui' and would not be a suitable place for her. Half an hour later we found ourselves looking around a much pokier, darker, more hidden away flat but, much to my amazement, after consulting her compass on numerous occasions she announced that the flow of energy was perfect for her and that the place had good 'Feng Shui'. 'Hmm….' I thought….

Back in the very pleasant Green Light coffee I have been joined by an estate agent persuading a young couple to part with their hard earned readies (literally reddies here in China – the colour of the ubiquitous 100 RMB note). The purchaser, his wife looking on nervously, is just about to sign on the dotted line. I wonder if the fact that today is the 17^th of March has any relevance? Numerological thinking has people adding digits such as the 1 and 7 in 17 and coming out to 8, thereby rendering the day potentially a good one for investing in such things as property. Given the ubiquity of the superstition here, I would not be at all surprised if such notions played a part in the 'thinking' behind the decision to buy.

Strange World…

It's 2016, at last…

This week's blog comes from the pleasant confines of MoMo's café, just off the Hongfu Road in Central Dongguan. The café has only opened in recent weeks and still has a range of teething problems; the lack of electricity to the points being the most obvious. Still, one word and I had five different people running around trying to sort out the problem. Duly solved, I can now sit back amongst the minimal chic décor (actually, an odd mixture of minimal and New York of the 1990's)  and enjoy a very reasonable Americano together with a complimentary tea, a special offer for this opening month apparently. MoMo, who runs the joint and cooks a range of Western style snack dishes for her clientèle, buzzes around the table, ever wanting to practice her English or to indulge her apparently insatiably sociable nature.

New Year came and went, although it never did quite completely go as the festivities seem to go on for far, far longer than in other cultures. The event itself triggers a mass migration from the larger, first and second tier cities back to the smaller towns and villages. Such holidays in China I now assume to be the very worst time to travel as one is almost guaranteed incredibly long queues, huge and crushing crowds, and tiresomely draining delays into the bargain. I experienced one such festival earlier this year when I was unwise enough to travel to Guilin in the week before 'Tomb Sweeping Day'… never again!

This New Year's mass migration was further complicated by the visitation on South China of record low temperatures. Dongguan itself even had snow on the day I arrived – an event that brought out crowds of people to take snaps of this strange phenomenon. The local hub, Guangzhou, a city with a population over 14,000,000, suffered something of a crisis when 100,000 people were attempting to catch non-existent trains (cancelled due to the bad weather) and cramming themselves into an already over-crowded railway terminus. The people who heard about this on the news reacted in a fairly typical way for China and decided to head for the station even earlier, thus exacerbating the already dire over-crowding.

To be fair, the Chinese Authorities actually reacted to this situation fairly well, firstly by keeping social order (although apparently the crowd was remarkably good natured in the circumstances), and secondly by laying on extra high-speed trains at no extra cost, which enabled many of the travellers to be reunited with their families somewhat earlier than they had originally planned.

Family, it seems almost superfluous to point out, is extremely important in Chinese culture. So much so that people are willing to undergo the huge challenges of travelling at this time of year, 13 to 14 hour train journeys, hustle, bustle, overcrowding and almost endless aggravation in order to be received in the presumed warm bosom of their families. Understanding the importance of family here is fundamental to understanding Chinese culture itself. It is the one abiding notion that trumps all else in Chinese values. If you are in with the family, you are well in – you are welcome and treated royally. For those outside the group though, it is a profoundly different matter. In many ways this society is perhaps the very last in the world that should have pretended to be communist. The leaders here are fond of a phrase to describe the system of government: 'Communism with Chinese characteristics'. What this effectively means is something that is so alien to any notion of communism that would be intellectual recognisable as being such as to bear no relationship whatsoever. Instead, the critical factor is is family and, by extension, family connections.

I have struggled over many visits to pin some kind of label, some kind of name for the system here in China. Communism it is not, self-evidently so, but it is not really capitalism either, although capitalism comes far more naturally to the Chinese than perhaps any other system. The influence of Confuscius, for good and for ill, echoes down the years and is still critical to Chinese thinking to this day. However one labels the system, one has to admit that, for all its drawbacks and weaknesses, it works. Sometimes, it more than just works, it is a positively dynamic force for growth and change (at least in the economic sense – the environment is, of course, quite another matter).

I was fortunate enough to enjoy New Year's Night (Feb 7^th) with a family of a friend in Dongguan. The event was celebrated much like Christmas is in the West: an excess of food is consumed, too much alcohol drunk, too much spent on gifts of nebulous benefit to the recipient. Added to the more modern, at least for the Chinese, notion of giving gifts at this time, there is also the obligation to provide contributions to the nearest and dearest through the 'Hongbao' system. 'Hongbao' quite literally means 'red envelope', which will in practice contain a sum of money and is given by certain members of the family and friends to others within the group. Generally, the sums involved are between ten (£1/$1.50) and hundreds, or sometimes even thousands of yuan (the more well-off Chinese often love the opportunity to ostentatiously display both their wealth and their generosity).

The vast majority of families like to stay at home together rather than going to external, organised events. And the vast majority of such families will spend most of the evening, from 8pm to 12pm, watching the state sponsored TV special. Most of this extravaganza would not have been out of place 30 odd years ago in the West. It consists of comedic skits, songs, often of a patriotic nature, and large scale dance performances. It is all quite impressive, but feels somehow dated, harking back to an era of entertainment that has long passed in the West. Added to this however, there was also a disquietingly large amount of time given over to watching soldiers stamping their feet in unison and generally behaving as those in the military seem to love to do, ie shouting at each other in a very loud voice and acting like automatons. Patriotic songs followed this section. Maybe it is just me, but I always find such displays of mindless nationalism chillingly reminiscent of less pleasant aspects of  Europe in the 1930's.

Oddly, although there were many, many fireworks that simply went 'bang', often being so numerous as to create a ripple effective, there were strangely few colourful displays. Again I found this surprising for China, the very land where both gunpowder and fireworks were first brought into being. The actual stroke of midnight was something of a damp squib, rather than a pyrotechnic extravaganza; the odd bang here and there with no apparent co-ordination or order.

The next day's celebrations in Qi Feng Park were more impressive – although the fireworks were limited once again to the banging varieties, there were huge amounts of them at the Buddhist temple there. This was combined with the burning of huge amounts of incense with lent the air a very pleasant, if somewhat pungent, atmosphere and enveloped everything in a very fragrant smoke.

Back in the café, I find myself enjoying my first chance to relax and write for three days. The week-end and the days following were somewhat packed with visits and events, so much so that I find myself relishing this short gap of 'free time' here in the café. It seems that there will be more celebrations to come in the next week so, for now, time to gird one's loin, stay calm  and carry on regardless…

No News is Good News…

This week my flaneurial activities have faced something of a challenge as the incessant rain in South China has rendered any peregrinations a somewhat foolhardy activity. It has rained heavily and continuously for four days now, soaking every single item of clothing that I possess. My habitual minimalism on these sojourns is perhaps better suited to more clement climes. I usually endeavour to embark on these escapades with just the bare necessities by way of clothing, buying more if need be. The notion is to spend one's time in relatively warm places and hence all one normally needs by way of apparel is a supply of cotton t-shirts and maybe a few pairs of shorts. Not so this week. Every time I stepped out into the local streets it entailed yet another set of clothes being soaked, and as the cleaning facilities are based upon the presumption of hot, dry days in this part of the world, the chances of adequate drying seem to be extremely limited.

I am assured that such intemperate conditions are a rarity in this part of the globe. The average temperature is normally some six or seven degrees centigrade warmer than I am currently experiencing and the rainfall on average a mere ten to twenty millimetres for the month, as opposed to the current reality of thirty odd millimetres a day, every day, for the past week. Indeed, my accuweather app is constantly warning me of extreme weather conditions via a range of attractively coloured danger symbols. This sort of rainfall is not normally encountered even in the wettest of seasons in South China, and this is supposed, in theory at least, to be the driest part of the year!

Such challenging atmospheric conditions have meant far more time spent in cafes, restaurants, shops and libraries – basically, anything with a roof on it. A couple of days were even spent back at the flat being very anti-social (jet lag was my excuse...). One's motivation for strolling around town is severely affected by such adverse climatic inconsistencies. Given that I have spent far more time than is usual for me staring at various forms of screens, I was somewhat pleased in the circumstances to have kept to a resolution I made in early January (on my birthday actually – New Year itself having brought but little inspiration, being relatively content with life as it already is). I had been attempting to catch up on the news as offered by the MSN site online. Somehow though, on this particular site, the news items seemed to be presented in an invariably shallow and somewhat facile way, and I had even managed, quite inadvertently, to follow a couple of stories that were included in the list of articles that subsequently turned out to be, in reality, adverts.

On closer inspection, these 'news' items were marked with the word 'sponsored' which, in effect, means that they were not news at all, but merely a rather dubious attempt to mislead the reader into yet more commercial content. Over the past two or three years I have noticed this trend becoming more and more prevalent, much to the detriment of one's enjoyment on the internet (or, at least, to mine!).

At this stage, I recalled a book I had read some years ago by Tim Ferris; 'The 4-Hour Workweek'. In this excellent and thought provoking work, the iconoclastic Ferris had proposed that whilst engaged on one's travels one should avoid any attempt to keep up with the news. Up to this year, such a restriction had proven to be nearly impossible for someone such as myself. For most of my life I had felt the need to always keep myself abreast of developments. The desire to do so, however, had been somewhat reduced in recent times by the growing realisation that the vast majority of the news is currently presented with an agenda, rendering it not only horribly subjective and very inaccurate, but also biased to the point of absurdity.

It would be hard to say what the final straw was; perhaps the way that the UK press reported so negatively on almost anything that the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, said or did, perhaps an attempt to read the formerly well-written but now entirely muzzled Bangkok Post, or maybe the annoyance at being mislead by yet another 'sponsored' link. Whatever it was, I resolved that I would no longer make any attempt to keep up with daily news and only review developments long after they had taken place, to take the role of the detached observer, as befits a flaneur, rather than that of the mindless consumer who finds himself constantly drip-fed alarmist and sensationalist items.

As soon as I made this resolution two things became readily apparent; firstly, how difficult it is in these wired in, tuned in and turned on times to actually avoid this type of news content. Even though I routinely avoid television, except for the odd sporting indulgence, I still found that even on radio every station seemed to feel the need to give hourly updates, which forced me to quickly mute the volume or simply hit the off switch. Secondly, it very quickly became clear just how much time was wasted in keeping up with this constant stream of bulletins. Suddenly, I had so much more time on my hands to get on with several projects that had been merely vague intentions beforehand. After just a few days, I found my focus had become so much sharper once the need to check on 'developments' had been removed (this latter process also being enormously aided by the removal of all news apps from my mobile phone).

Also, it quickly became obvious that one's general mood was positively affected by this voluntary abstinence. No longer was I concerned about the latest blurtings of Republican presidential candidates, the Chinese economic situation and collapsing stock markets, or the ongoing threat of terrorism and just how unpleasant ISIS are (as if it were a new discovery that Abrahamic monotheistic religions tend to lead to such horrors). All situations on which I had no influence whatsoever but which I had routinely found myself concerned about in the past. Sometimes it seems almost as if we are fed a diet of fear and anxiety, yet barely any one of us is in a  position to do anything about such concerns. Mentally and emotionally, this cannot be a healthy situation, and may even be considered a close relative to the 'learned helplessness' that the psychologist Martin Seligman spoke so eloquently about back in the 1960's.

Finishing this particular set of conjectures in my fourth watering hole of the day, I am at last pleasantly surprised to find it has finally stopped raining. According to the usually reliable 'Accuweather', we have one rather pleasant day of sunshine tomorrow before the resumption of downpours from Sunday onwards. China is currently gearing up for the New Year celebrations on the 7^th February, one hopes that the unreasonable unseasonable weather has dissipated prior to these festivities. Having enjoyed such shindigs in the February cold of London  on several occasions, I was rather looking forward to celebrating the coming 'Year of the Fire Monkey' in what are supposed to be the much more moderate conditions of South China.

Xing Mian Kuai Le! (Happy New Year!)