I managed to snap a photo with a couple of RCMP officers at the Shanghai Expo in Sept, 2010.

The UCC tries to tackle difficult and controversial subjects about Chinese Canadians/Americans. It’s run by a bunch of “opinionated characters who care about issues that don’t often see the day of light”, according to the site.

Some cool facts about The Ugly Chinese Canadian:
1) During the month of May (2011), the blog hit a quarter of a million page views/month

2) A number of Canadian political parties read the blog to get a feel of the “Chinese pulse” in the community

Here’s my post below. You can also read it on The Ugly Chinese Canadian website.

What does it mean to belong somewhere? Does citizenship and a passport help define who you are? Is your identity established by how others see you? Or do you decide that for yourself?

I began seeking the answers to my questions when I first moved to China in 2007.

When I was 24 years old, I quit my job and moved to Beijing, enrolling in an intensive Chinese-language course at Tsinghua University.

People cracked a lot of jokes about returning to the “motherland” to learn my “mother tongue.” But as a Canadian, I always considered my mother tongue to be English. And what about the motherland? I was born in Toronto, my mother was born in Hong Kong and my father in Taiwan. So where is the motherland, really? I wasn’t so sure.

When I got to Beijing, most of my classmates were South Koreans – all of whom could read and write Chinese better than I could (did that make them more Chinese than me?) – while the rest were an assortment of Americans, Australians, Africans and interestingly, Kazhaks.

But in the hallways and in my dorm, I often passed by a group of Chinese-looking students speaking a guttural European language that sounded something like German. Overcome with curiosity, I approached them one day and quickly discovered they all spoke fluent English.

“Where are you all from?” I asked.

“The Netherlands.”

“Oh wow,” I said. “I didn’t know there were so many Chinese people in Holland!”

“And I didn’t know there were Chinese people in Canada.”

In retrospect, we sound pretty ignorant. Of course there are Chinese people in Holland (and in Canada!). There are Chinese people everywhere! At the time, my concept of an “overseas Chinese” included Chinese Canadians, Chinese Americans and maybe Chinese Australians and Chinese from the UK. In other words, English-speaking Chinese people. But here they were, Dutch-speaking Chinese people. It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Little did I know that three years later, I’d end up marrying one of the Dutch-born Chinese friends I made that day.

People cracked a lot of jokes about returning to the “motherland” to learn my “mother tongue.” But as a Canadian, I always considered my mother tongue to be English. And what about the motherland? I was born in Toronto, my mother was born in Hong Kong and my father in Taiwan. So where is the motherland, really? I wasn’t so sure.

The group was actually more diverse than I originally thought. In addition to the Dutch Chinese, there were American Chinese, a Chinese student born in France, an Australian Chinese and a Swedish-born Chinese in the group. Though we came from different countries, all of us seemed to click instantly, finding solace in our dual identities and even a shared history:

We bonded over the dreaded Saturday morning Chinese lessons we were all forced to attend; we shared in the frustration we felt when we realized we we could not speak Chinese fluently; and we revelled in the serendipitous decision we made to take a gap year in school/work to come to China to learn this so-called “mother tongue” of ours.

My Putonghua improved dramatically through the months. But while living in Beijing, I never felt more Canadian. That’s what a foreign environment does to you. When you’re thrown into a strange, new world, you start to really define who you are by first establishing what you are not.

In Beijing, I looked different from the average Chinese woman, from the way I dressed, down to things I could not change, like my height, weight and facial features. The food in Beijing was very different from the kinds of foods my Cantonese mother made at home in Canada. And there seemed to be a cultural (and language) gap between the foreign students and the local students at Tsinghua. We tried to mix up a few social events, but in the end, I forged deeper and more lasting friendships with the overseas Chinese.

During our time in China, all of us were confronted with the question of identity. It was an internal struggle that often manifested itself in every day encounters. Beijing cab drivers liked to play guessing games with us. Hearing us speak accented Chinese, they couldn’t help but ask:

“Where are you from?”

“Where do you think we’re from?” we’d reply.

“Korea,” they often said. “You must be from Korea.”

It was difficult for many local Chinese to understand why Chinese-looking people couldn’t fluently speak their own “mother tongue.” Sometimes, it became tiresome having to explain it over and over again.

“I’ve been outside of China for 20 years now, but to Spaniards I am still a foreigner,” he said. “I can change my passport, but my veins pump Chinese blood. My face will always be Chinese.”

My experiences in China got me thinking about where someone’s sense of identity comes from and how malleable that concept might be. A lot of us would like to believe that identity comes from within. It’s a romantic notion to think one has control over his or her own sense of self, that one can confidently say, I’m Chinese or I’m Dutch or I’m Canadian because “I feel it in my heart” or “I know it in my soul.” But I came to realize that identity is actually created and reinforced by external circumstances. One’s identity can change depending on who is asking. For example, friends who identified themselves as “Dutch” in China, often told Dutch people in Holland they were Chinese.

The concept of the “social identity” was originally formulated by psychologists Henri Tajfel and John Turner in the 70s and 80s. Identity, they said, was derived from perceived membership in a relevant social group. Social identity is therefore dependent on one’s status, legitimacy and permeability in a group environment. There are also different kinds of identity. There’s national identity, ethnic identity and cultural identity, to name a few.

Sometimes, people had difficulties articulating to me how they identified themselves. One friend, who was born in China and immigrated to the Netherlands when he was four years old, used Olympic sports to describe his sense of national identity.

“If I’m watching ping pong, I’ll cheer for the Chinese team,” he explained. “If I’m watching football, I’ll cheer for the Dutch team.”

“But then you’re just cheering for the winners,” I said. And don’t we all like to cheer for the winning team?

Recently, I was in Spain conducting research for a book I’m writing on Chinese emigration to Europe. I spoke with a 30-year-old Chinese entrepreneur in Madrid. Yong Jin emigrated to Spain when he was 10 years old. Today, he speaks fluent Spanish and is married to a Spanish woman.

I asked him how he felt about China and Spain. Which country did he identify with more? Did he perceive himself to be Chinese? How did Spaniards perceive him and did it affect the way he looked at himself?

If it came down to choosing whether he preferred one country over the other, Jin said he couldn’t make such a decision.

“Basically you are asking me to choose between my mother or my father,” he said. “On one side we have China, my mother who gave birth to me. On the other side, we have Spain, my father who raised me and who passed on a lot of culture and education to me. I cannot choose one or the other. I love both my parents equally.”

But ultimately, he said, his sense of identity had already been determined for him:

“I’ve been outside of China for 20 years now, but to Spaniards I am still a foreigner,” he said. “I can change my passport, but my veins pump Chinese blood. My face will always be Chinese.”

Chinese immigrants in Europe are entering into societies that are less accustomed to newcomers and therefore, at times, less welcoming. In Spain, immigration is a relatively new phenomenon. And there is already a pre-conceived notion of what a typical Spaniard should look like. Jin doesn’t fit that description.

I came to realize that identity is actually created and reinforced by external circumstances. One’s identity can change depending on who is asking. For example, friends who identified themselves as “Dutch” in China, often told Dutch people in Holland they were Chinese.

Other European nations, like the Netherlands, have a longer history of immigration and are generally viewed as more open and accepting towards foreign residents. But my husband, who was born and raised in Holland, told me he has never felt whole-heartedly “Dutch.” He grew up acutely aware that he was different from everyone else. While I have generally enjoy my visits to the Netherlands over the years, I am surprised when children shout the names of Chinese fast food dishes when I am passing by on my bicycle.

A typical Chinese restaurant menu in Holland will not feature chow mein or beef and broccoli as an American or Canadian might expect. Instead, you’ll find Indonesian-inspired Chinese food. Some of the most popular dishes are: loempias (spring rolls), nasi (fried rice), bami (fried noodles) and babi pangang (a deep-fried pork cutlet drenched in red sauce). On several occasions, while visiting Rotterdam, I’ve been called a loempia. Okay, so there could be worse insults. But it’s puzzling that this sort of name-calling is still going on in Holland.

For me, I have always considered myself “Canadian” whether I’m at home in Toronto or abroad. My black hair, olive skin and angled eyes are characteristics that define me, but never in Canada have I been made to feel different or uncomfortable about who I am.

After spending the last few years living abroad, my husband and I have decided to settle down. We’re hoping to start our new lives in Vancouver soon. In a few years time, I wonder if he will also come to identify himself as a Canadian. I hope this country and its people show him the same kind of acceptance, legitimacy and permeability I have experienced my entire life.

Suzanne Ma is a Canadian journalist currently writing a book about Chinese emigration to Europe. You can read more of her stories on her website: http://www.suzannema.com

That’s because, well, he’s a Chinese immigrant in Holland. The slave wages? Uh huh. The 12-hour work days? Been there, done that. The loneliness? Of course. And separation from family??! Wouldn’t be a migrant life’s without it!

I sometimes wonder what Chinese immigrants will think when they finally get the chance to read my book. They might have the same reaction as my father-in-law. That’s life, they might say.

But as for you, dear readers, I think the realities of their world might come as a bit of a shock to you. Throughout my travels in Europe, I found myself in awe, in tears, and feeling really lucky and grateful for the life I have.

Here’s a primer on a Chinese migrant’s life in Europe:

Chinese migrant workers sewing name-brand Italian swim wear at a factory near the coastal city of Rimini.

1) The average Chinese migrant worker in Europe works at least 12 hours a day.

2) You can demand more pay if you have experience, but if you’re just starting out, you can expect to make about 500 Euros a month if you work at a bar or restaurant. Even less if you work in a factory. Room and board is usually provided by your employer. Most workers are given a bed or a room in their boss’ home. While 500 Euros seems little to us, that’s already five times more than a waitress will make in China.

3) When Chinese migrant workers arrive in Europe, they usually don’t have a problem finding employment. Even in this economic recession, migrant workers of Chinese nationality often have a job lined up before even arriving in Europe.This is especially true of those who come from Qingtian. The network of Qingtian immigrants is so tight and extensive, employment is not difficult to come by.

4) Chinese employers like to hire workers who hail from the same hometown. That way, they feel there’s a better guarantee that the worker will be a good one. Or, at least he or she will be accountable for how she works and behaves.

Working for friends or family can be comforting for the worker, if the boss is nice. If not, workers often have a harder time because they are hesitant to ask for a raise or a day off, for fear of souring the relationship.

5) Many Chinese emigrants are isolated from mainstream society, working for Chinese employers alongside Chinese co-workers. As a result, they can live in Europe for a decade and still not speak the local language.

* * *

Behind the smiles, many Chinese migrant workers are overworked and underpaid.

I remember noticing how red and blistered the young girl’s hands were. She had been working less than a month, but the constant washing and scrubbing and polishing had taken its toll.

I clutched her swollen hands and found myself blinking back tears.

“Hey,” she said. “I’m ok. Really. I’m doing fine!”

Here I was, in a position to comfort her, to provide her with encouragement and counsel. Instead, this young girl was comforting me. Telling me things were going to be alright. It was at that moment I realized how strong she was.

Italy was not what she imagined. But she was determined to work hard. Her goal was to save enough money to someday run her own bar and support her entire family financially.

When that kind of responsibility is dealt to you, you have no choice but to work hard. That is the stuff Chinese immigrants in Europe are made of. Even if you’re only 17 years old.

YPRES, Belgium — Under pristine, white tombstones in the British military cemeteries dotting the landscape throughout Belgium and northern France, the graves of thousands of Chinese labourers can be found.

Chinese labourers cross a brook in Vlamertinghe, near Ypres, Belgium in 1919. (c) In Flanders Fields Museum

You just have to know where to look.

The Chinese Labour Corps unloaded cargo ships and trains, chopped down trees for timber, and maintained docks, railways, roads and airfields. Skilled mechanics repaired vehicles and even worked on tanks. Later, after the Armistice, the Chinese stayed behind to clean up the mess. As late as 1919, Chinese labourers remained in France and Belgium to help clear the rubble, bury the dead and clean up the battlefields.

Though the Corps was the largest ethnic minority group to participate in the Great War, their story is often left out of the history books, said Belgian historian Philip Vanhaelemeersch.

“In the West, the labourers were no war heroes. They fought no battles, they had no share in any of the great victories during the war,” said Vanhaelemeersch, a Sinologist at University College West-Flanders in Bruges. “Their presence in Europe during the war was, at best, a footnote in the history books on the war.”

Crucial link between China and the West

The Chinese recruits “figured importantly as messengers between Chinese and Western civilizations,” wrote Xu Guoqi, author of “Strangers on the Western Front,” a new book published this year on the Corps.

“Although most of the Chinese labourers were illiterate farmers with no clear ideas about China or the world when they were selected to go to Europe, they had a part in developing that new national identity and would play an important role in China’s internationalization,” Xu wrote.

Vanhaelemeersch agreed. “Chinese labourers to Europe during the war was China’s first ever entering the international political scene,” he said. “Today, the increasing interest in the Corps perfectly fits in the international agenda of the new superpower which China wants to be.”

Secret passage through Canada

Contrary to the recruitment campaigns that exploited Chinese labourers during the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway in the late 19th century, members of the Chinese Labour Corps signed contracts promising daily wages, food, clothing, housing and medical support. The labourers’ families also received regular payments.

Such rewards were tempting enough to encourage thousands of men to sign up for three years of work on the front lines of a war they knew very little about. Most of the labourers recruited by the British came from the north-east provinces of Shandong and present-day Hebei. The French also recruited labourers from China’s southern provinces.

En route to Europe, more than 80,000 labourers passed through Canada, landing in Vancouver and travelling by train across the country to Halifax. Most Canadians don’t know about this for one simple reason: Their passage through Canada was a top secret operation.

Capt. Harry Drummond Livingstone, a 29-year-old doctor with the Canadian Army Medical Corps, served at a recruiting station in Shandong Province. He examined thousands of men; only the strongest were selected to be a member of the Corps. Those who passed the medical examination were given uniforms – a dark blue tunic, dark blue pants, and a straw hat and hatband marked “CLC” – before marching out to the ships bound for Vancouver.

In his diary, Livingstone described the Chinese tradition of setting off firecrackers before a long pilgrimage: “…strings of firecrackers [are] set off, thousands in all, which noise brings safe journey, no storms or submarines.”

Between April 1917 and March 1918, more than 84,000 men were shipped from China to British Columbia. At this time, the Canadian government was imposing a head tax on all Chinese emigrants coming to Canada. Fearing members of the Labour Corps might try to “jump train,” the men were locked in their train cars and put under armed guard until they reached the east coast. There, they boarded ships headed for the battlefields in France and Belgium.

The journey was a treacherous one. At least 700 labourers died en route. In the fall of 1917, Livingstone left China and accompanied a contingent to the Western Front. While crossing the Pacific, he described “mountainous seas” in his diary: “On [Nov. 11] we ran into [a] bad gale and boat listed so far over that chairs and tables all slid to side. Dishes broken in dining room and couldn’t walk on deck.”

Chinese legacies in the European countryside

There are about 2,000 Chinese graves spread out across 17 cemeteries in Belgium and northern France, though some Chinese scholars argue the number of Chinese deaths was as high as 20,000. Most died between 1918 and 1919 from the Spanish Flu; some died from wounds and injuries received during the course of their duties; others lost their lives during German air raids.

More than 2,000 Chinese labourers are buried across Belgium and northern France. Photo by Suzanne Ma

The descendants of Belgian peasants, who continue to live on family farms in the area, can still recall hearing stories of Chinese labourers setting up camp in the neighbourhood.

The field is now chock-full of Brussels sprouts, but on the evening of November 15, 1917, 500 Chinese labourers were camped here. When a labourer came out of his tent to light a cigarette, the flame attracted the attention of a German pilot in an airplane overhead. A bomb was dropped killing 13 Chinese men.

“Although forgotten soon after the war, the labourers remain present in the collective memory of the local population,” said Vanhaelemeersch, the Belgian Sinologist. “If you pay attention to the small details of the changing landscape, you can still detect the Chinese presence here.”

Suzanne Ma is a Canadian journalist currently writing a book on Chinese emigration to Europe. Her research has been funded in part by a Pulitzer Traveling Fellowship from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism.

I have spent the last 8 months living in a small town on the east coast of China. There, I have sat in on Italian language classes (Yes! You can learn Italian, Spanish, French and Portuguese in the Chinese countryside!), learned to cook alongside young migrants who will eventually work in restaurants and kitchens across Europe, and spent a lot of time listening to the stories of people who risk everything for a life in the West.

My book — “Journey to the West, a tale of Chinese migration to Europe” — is an intimately researched narrative that follows the lives of three migrants as they prepare to leave China for Europe.

Now that I’ve wrapped up my research in China, the next step is to go to Europe. That’s where you come in.

My fieldwork thus far has been funded, in part, with the help of a Pulitzer Traveling Fellowship. I also relied heavily on my own funds to complete my research in China. For the European leg of my research, I am now seeking funding to help offset some of my travel costs.

Find out more about my project and about how YOU CAN HELP here:

Every little bit helps. I have 31 days to raise $2,500.

I am so very grateful for your support. Please, feel free to contact me if you have any questions about my project!

Sincerely,

Suzanne

People will ask, “What’s your guan xi with him?” This loosely translates into, “What’s your relationship or connection to him?”

People can say, “These two issues have absolutely no guan xi” which means “These two issues are completed unrelated.”

And a lot of people will tell you that in China, “It’s nearly impossible to get anything done without the right guan xi.”

That means, without the right connections, you’ll get no where in China.

To be fair, guan xi is important everywhere in the world. Have a friend who works at British Airways? She might be able to get you into the First Class lounge. Your father has a former schoolmate working at the local TV station? Maybe that’s where you can do your summer internship. Government officials, whether they’re from China, America or Canada, on all levels need guan xi to strike deals and to smooth diplomatic relations.

But in China, guan xi seems especially prevalent, manifesting itself on every level and in almost every situation I find myself in.

Two days ago, I was at the local China Mobile store, with a simple task at hand. Marc’s mother has a China Mobile SIM card. Each year, when she comes to China for vacation, she’ll use this SIM card in her phone. To keep the account active. China Mobile deducts 20 RMB from her account each month. But for the months she is not in China (she spends 11 out of 12 months in Holland, where she lives permanently) there’s an option to put the phone to “sleep.” The phone will not be used, and the monthly fee to keep the number active is reduced to 5 RMB.

With her phone number written down and a photocopy of her passport, it should have been enough to put her phone to “sleep.” But the photocopy was of her new passport. Apparently, the SIM card was activated using her old passport some years ago. The old passport number was different from the new passport number. So, the China Mobile worker told us, we could not make any changes to the account without the old passport number.

“We don’t have the old passport number, can you just cross-reference the name here on the passport? It’s the same as the old passport. Is that sufficient?” Marc asked.

“No, sorry, we can’t do that,” the girl said.

“But we’re not sure if we can get the old passport to you. Is there any other way to be authorized to make changes to the account?”

“Absolutely not, our company has rules. The passport numbers have to match. There’s nothing I can do.”

Fair enough.

We were about to leave when, off the cuff, I asked if the worker knew a woman by the name of Zhan Jun Jun. Jun Jun was contact of mine who also worked at China Mobile. As I’m leaving China soon, I wanted to say goodbye to her.

“Do you have a co-worker named Jun Jun?” I asked.

“No,” she said.

“Zhan Jun Jun?”

“Oh, Zhan Jun Jun? Yea, I know her.”

“Is she here tonight?”

“No, she gets off at 6.”

“Oh, okay. Thanks.” We turned and prepared to leave the store, when the China Mobile worker spoke again.

“If you want to find Zhan Jun Jun to help you put the account to sleep, just come before 6. She can do it for you.”

Puzzled, we turned around to face the worker.

“Why is it that Zhan Jun Jun can do it and you can’t?”

“Well,” the China Mobile worker said matter-of-factly, “If you know her, if she is your friend, then she can do it for you.”

“But what difference does it make if she does it or you do?” I asked. What happened to “company policy?”

“I don’t know you, so I can’t do it for you. If you say she knows you, then she can do it for you. That’s just how it works.”

We thanked her for explaining it all to us, but still left the store rather perplexed. It was just so unbelievable to us that the guan xi was out in the open like that.

China just keeps on surprising.

A CRH1A high speed train before depart from Shenzhen station.

It was July 23 and we were in a coal manufacturing town in Anhui when my fiance’s father (who is from Holland) asked: “Hey, did you hear anything about the train crash near Wenzhou?” He had received a news alert from a Dutch news agency. The speed train from Shanghai to Fuzhou is one that I have taken on more than one occasion. I wanted to know more, but state media released few details and even fewer questions were being asked. We knew only that two trains had collided on the high-speed rail near Wenzhou.The death toll – which now stands at 40, with 191 injured – was unclear and underreported at the time.

Later the next morning, as we were on the road headed towards Anhui’s Yellow Mountain (Huangshan), I received a text message from a friend in Beijing: “Morning – what’s the situation down in Qingtian with the train collision?”

While living and traveling in China, you can’t rely on official media outlets for news. Propaganda authorities ban search words on the Internet and state media are offered “guidance” on what to report and what not to report.

So I find out what’s going on via text messages from friends and from foreign news sources. The Chinese rely on such texts, too, and younger, more web-savvy Chinese rely are able to log onto twitter-like applications (Twitter is banned in China) and message boards where the real discussion takes place. The Chinese are sounding off, speculating, and venting frustrations. There are questions of corruption, of a cover-up, of a slowed response by authorities to acknowledge the cause of the accident and to properly punish those responsible. These boards and blogs are usually clamped down upon by the Chinese Internet police, but these days, it seems that the angry talk about the Wenzhou train crash is running unusually free of censorship.

The dialogue seems to have opened up after Premier Wen Jiabao (lovingly referred to as Grandpa Wen by the Chinese people who see him as a more benevolent and caring communist official, famous for parachuting into disaster zones) belatedly visited the train crash site. It was 5 days after the accident, and his appearance has caused further speculation about Wen’s influence and standing in the Communist Party.

From this week’s Economist:

Mr Wen’s comments on the accident itself were no less intriguing. In another rare departure from common practice, he took an open slap at the Ministry of Railways, conceding that “the public had many suspicions about the cause of the accident and the way it was handled”. He promised to investigate whether corruption, equipment or management problems were to blame, with no “soft-pedalling”.

State media began to loosen their lips after Wen’s statements. Official news agencies like Xinhua and state broadcaster CCTV began reporting on widespread suspicions circulating about the reasons for the crash. The Economic Observer, a weekly Chinese newspaper, published an open letter to a rescued two-year-old girl. She was orphaned by the crash, and the letter openly criticized systemic corruption and hypocrisy. And, already during the early hours of the crash, microblogs provided an outlet for Chinese journalists to publish details on the accident.

There are good Chinese journalists out there who want to do their jobs. They want to report what they see and what they hear. They want to raise questions, find answers, provoke independent thinking, and to hold government accountable for their actions/inactions. There is a hunger from the people to know the truth, and an urge for journalists to start providing those truths. That much is clear.

This week’s Economist points out that in the case of Wenzhou’s train crash, authorities have no one to blame but themselves:

The anger expressed there and elsewhere poses a problem for the authorities. Other disasters have spawned scandals and earned public scorn, as after the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, in which many children died because of shoddy school construction. But that disaster was a natural one, and the government’s response was in many respects effective. After the ethnic clashes that rocked Tibet and Xinjiang in recent years, officials were able to deflect blame on to minority agitators and outside provocateurs. This time they have no such recourse.

I am leaving China via the Shanghai Pudong airport at the end of the week. I could take the speed train, but relatives warned against it and bought me a bed on a 7-hour overnight sleeper bus instead.

The Chinese government has spent billions of dollars improving the country’s railway network, with plans to spend $120 billion a year for several years on railway construction. The newest high-speed rail link, the Beijing-Shanghai route, is the latest and most celebrated instalment. The government hopes that line will stretch over 28,000 miles by the end of 2015.

Okay, so I’ve made my point.

Driving in China is like going on a suicide mission. You’re putting yourself on the road with drivers who do not care who has right of way, who do not abide whether it’s green or red, who pass at high speeds when we are winding around mountains, who only accelerate when they are headed towards oncoming traffic… need I go on? The list of horrific situations I have observed first-hand doesn’t end.

So, if I don’t have a driver’s license in China. Then how do I get around? I am at the mercy of audacious taxi drivers and reckless bus drivers. Some might call them valiant; I call them foolhardy. Most in China accept it as ‘normal.’ But the fact is these dare devils put my life and hundreds of others’ lives at risk every day.

China is experiencing an auto boom. As more and more people are able to afford their own private vehicles, the Chinese are embracing a way of life North Americans know and love all too well – car culture. This is especially clear in Zhejiang, where wealthy entrepreneurs take to the roads in their Mercedes Benz, Porches and BMWs.

Part of the allure is the freedom to travel without adhering to bus schedules and crowded trains. Another thing is that whole showing off-面子 bit.

At the end of 2007 (the latest numbers I could find) – over 121 million private motor vehicles were registered across China, an 11% increase from 2006. No doubt, there are more Chinese drivers on the roads today in 2011.

China is now the world’s second-largest auto market, behind the United States, with about 8.5 million vehicles sold in 2007. And with so many new cars on the road, the Chinese government has embarked on an ambitious road-building campaign.

At the end of 2010, China had 46,000 miles (74,000 kilometers) of expressways, according to the China Ministry of Transport. That’s just a thousand miles short of the U.S. interstate system.

By 2020, China expects to have 53,000 miles (85,000 km) of expressway. Considering the work is now 90% done, it’s probable the expressways will be completed ahead of schedule. And, this grand total doesn’t even include expressways already built by provincial level governments, such as the five ring roads in Beijing, the extensive road network in sprawling Shanghai and the expressways of Hong Kong.

In this country, it’s now possible to travel from north of Harbin (in Heilongjiang or Manchuria, close to the Russain border) to the resort island of Hainan, south of Guangzhou and Hong Kong. This is a total distance of 2,700 miles (4,400 km). From east to west, a driver can go from Shanghai to near the Myanmar (Burma) border, beyond Kunming – a distance of 1,800 miles (3,000 km). In the future, it will be possible to travel from the Russian border in Manchuria to the border of Kazakhstan in Xinjiang, a distance of 3,500 miles (5,700 km).

The expressways have profound and immediate impacts on the villages, towns and cities it reaches.

Here in southern Zhejiang, the building of the Jinliwen Highway in 2005 connected the cities of Jinhua and Lishui to the eastern coastal city of Wenzhou. Along the way, it passes through Qingtian County, where I am now living.

The $1.5 billion project has made it a lot easier to get around in these parts. And I much prefer taking the straight-as-an-arrow expressway than the old National Highway 330, an old two-lane road that snakes along the Ou River and twists and turns around mountains leaving me with a bad case of motion sickness every time.

Highway 330 changed the landscape in southern Zhejiang dramatically: factories replaced rice fields; peasants became entrepreneurs. The Jinliwen Highway has only (literally) sped up this process, manufacturing factory boom towns along its route. With such speed there are, of course, more accidents.

Today, I traveled to the city of Lishui for some research. Unfortunately, the bus took the old two-lane highways and not the new expressway. On my way back to Qingtian I noticed some posters leaned against the grimy walls of the Lishui bus station.

Describing the photo on top, the caption reads:

Feb 6, 2006. Driver Li Mou, in a state of extreme fatigue, was driving his vehicle on the Hangjinqu highway passing the city of Yiwu, when he collided with a N06590 tractor trailer and caused his own H41009 coach bus to fall 7 to 8 meters in the ditch. 7 people wre killed and more than 10 were injured in this major accident.

Again, translating the caption for the photo on top:

On August 17 2008 at 6:30 p.m., driver Zhu Mou was operating a F14645 truck when he abruptly stopped on the Jiasu Highway about 24 km outside of Suzhou. All of the cars were able to stop and pull over on the shoulder but the FB2399 car was following too close and collided, killing 3 people in the F14645 car instantly.

I stopped to look at the posters for a minute or so, along with a few other travelers. The photos are pretty damn graphic – bloodied, mangled bodies on the scene are front and center.

I’m really puzzled as to why the government issued these posters and why they were at the bus station. Everyone taking the buses are relying on the alertness, skill and caution of the bus drivers and drivers of the trucks and private vehicles sharing the road. It’s one thing to raise awareness and caution against tailgating and driving while fatigued, but aren’t they targeting the wrong people here? We’re the passengers. We’re the damn victims.

Also, with so much emphasis on the tailgating and fatigue – what about speed? The speed limit is 60 km/h on those old highways, but on the way home, the driver was clearly hitting 80 k. He was typical of Chinese bus drivers: Passing on the left as the road was winding around a mountain side, accelerating toward oncoming traffic during that pass, and at one point during the trip home, the highway even became a 3-lane road, with our bus forging a middle lane with on-coming traffic forced to take the left shoulder. And then there is the honking honking honking at other cars as they pass and at children and old people walking on the side of the road. In China, the horn – beeeep! beeeeep! beeeeep! beeeeeeeeeeeeep! – is used perpetually, constantly, all the time, to warn people or other cars to get out of the way. Because in China, it’s you, the driver, who always has the right away.

I got home safe today, a little car sick and a little frazzled. I’m not sure what’s better – leaving your safety in the hands of other drivers or getting behind the wheel yourself and joining the madness on the roads in an attempt to ensure your own safety?

And then there are the factories. Plots of land that used to farm rice and raise fish are now massive factory compounds. Soil and crops and livestock have been cleared away for the gargantuan cement buildings. But one thing has not entirely replaced another. Eastern Zhejiang is a clash between rural and industrial, between farm and factory. Amazingly, people will grow what they can wherever there is fertile soil: bean stalks rising between the imposing ancestral stone tombs high in the mountains, a few sprouts of bok choy by the side of the highway. Here, chickens and BMWs share the road.

Today, we were walking in town and saw some ducklings for sale. Bright furballs of yellow were the regular ducks and went for 13 yuan each, less than $2. The smaller, yellow and brown ducklings were water ducks and they went for 6 yuan each. The last few weeks we’ve seen little chickens all around town – spring hatchlings – and Marc has been talking about getting a pet (or two).

So on impulse today, we bought two water ducklings and brought them back home with us.

We made a home for them in a giant cardboard box that we mailed here – it once held clothes, my kitchenware, and our books from Hong Kong. We lined the bottom with newspaper and a towel, filled a big plastic tupperware bin with water and put a plate of rice in the corner. We learned from this website that we can feed them tomatoes, diced up veggies and hard boiled eggs. Surprisingly, we are advised NOT to feed ducks bread. But doesn’t everyone do that at the park?

The two seem to be adjusting to their new home – having spent the first hour eating almost all of the rice – and they really like swimming (and then pooping) in the water bin. They also seem to be attached to us. They don’t necessarily like being held, but if they can’t see us, they start a high pitch chirping and won’t stop until we come to the box and back into eyeshot.

Grandma says that people generally keep these ducklings in a barn and when they reach their full size (at about 60 days), people slaughter and eat them. You know how I love bbq duck. But I just can’t see myself eating these two.

Here are a few photos of them from today.

The hundreds of shoe factories across Wenzhou

On the third floor of the factory, there were at least 60 people spread out across the assembly line that day, the rhythm and energy in the room focused on piecing together a white, knotted sling-back flat sandal. The Jade Bamboo shoe factory, one of thousands of factories in the eastern coastal city of Wenzhou, produced women’s footwear for export all around the world, from Tanzania to Paris to the Ukraine.

Entering the factory, my nostrils stiffened as I was confronted by a putrid smell —the oppressive, synthetic odor of industrial glue. It was as if 100 women started painting their nails all at once in a stuffy room.

Chinese pop music blasted out of speakers in the background but the melody was hardly audible with the thumping of hammers and clanging of staple guns, the chugging of three parallel conveyer belts, and whoosh and release of a heat-pressurized machine that melded the soles to the shoes.

Above all the noise, factory workers chatted casually to one another, reading each other’s lips as expertly as a bartender or DJ might in the midst of a raucous dance club.

According to a worker on the factory floor, it took just half an hour to manufacture one shoe. At the front of the room, a timetable logged exactly how many shoes had been made that morning:

Rising Wages

The assembly lines rumbled to life every morning at 8 a.m. and stopped at 10:30 p.m. A worker, using a wide paintbrush to glue the insoles into the sandals that rolled past her on the belt, told me she generally pulled 12-hour days. Online, I found ads from shoe factories in the same district of Wenzhou advertising low-skilled positions on the assembly line that paid 2000 to 3000 yuan (about $300-450) a month. This wage is considered high. Minimum wage in Zhejiang province hovers around the 1,100 yuan mark.

But these numbers are changing as I write. Chinese factories across the country are offering higher wages to a shrinking labour pool. Nationwide, minimum wages rose by an average of 24 percent last year, while the average monthly salary for the country’s migrant labourers (most of which flock to coastal cities like Wenzhou for work on the assembly lines) rose 13 percent to 1,690 yuan, according to the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security.

In Zhejiang, the Xinhua news agency reported that the province would raise the minimum wage by 19 per cent to 1,310 yuan ($200) starting this month.

Why are wages rising? Many economists say it is because of slow growth seen in the country’s labor pool. The high cost of living in coastal cities has encouraged many of China’s 150 million migrant workers to stay closer to their hometowns, many of which are located in the country’s interior provinces, where the cost of living is cheaper and where increasingly industrialized parts are opening up their own factories.

The result of the rise in wages can be seen in the numbers released from the high-profile Foxconn Group last week. The company, which manufactures iPhones, iPods and iPads in China, has been plagued with bad press when at least a dozen of their factory workers committed suicide.

Foxconn International released a statement announcing that sales had plunged to $6.63 billion from $7.21 billion in 2009, attributing the drop to increased salaries. The higher wages were implemented in the aftermath of the suicides and in the midst of international scrutiny into the working conditions at the company’s massive factory compound in China’s southern-most province of Guangdong.

Foxconn is now apparently looking into setting up factories in China’s interior to help stem their losses.

Made in China

On the day I visisted the Jade Bamboo factory, I had accompanied a Chinese businesswoman as she ordered her fall and winter stock for export to the Ukraine. Over the course five hours, she tried on hundreds of shoes and boots made of black synthetic leather, also known as pleather. She slipped each pair on, rolled up her pant legs, and sauntered around the room.

“This part is too tight, it’s crushing my toe,” she said, pointing to the edge of the boot she was trying on. “Widen it.”

The factory boss took the boot to the back room where the cobbler could make the corrections right away. She requested changes constantly.

“I like the heel on this boot. Let’s have all five of these boots made with a light-colored heel and sole,” she said, pointing to a row of black booties she had already picked out. “I don’t like the zippers here. Remove them,” she said about the pair of knee-highs she had on.

In the end, she ordered a total of 70,000 pairs of shoes. As a wholesaler, she was responsible for choosing the styles and arranging shipment from the port in Ningbo to the port in Odessa. She sold her stock to stores throughout the Ukraine.

Let’s talk about Celine Dion

At the back room where the cobbler worked, custom-making the sample shoes by hand, designers were at work at their desks, studying pixely print outs of stilettos and pumps.

When I asked a designer where her inspiration came from when she designed the company’s shoes, she pointed to the photos on her desk. The images were captured by cell phone cameras, in stealth, at Italy’s leather shoe stores – black strappy sandals with silver-colored sequins, white stilettos for a hot summer evening in Rome.

Later that evening, the factory boss invited us and a number of other big clients to dine on Wenzhounese delicacies and fresh seafood at a fancy hotel near the city center. I sat a table with Chinese wholesalers who sold the company’s pleather shoes to stores in Africa, France and Russia. I never imagined sharing a meal with such an international group in the middle of China’s factory belt in Zhejiang. One of the French businessmen from Paris, who learned I was from Canada, engaged me in conversation from across the table.

“Parlez-vous francais?” he asked.
“Non, je ne comprends pas,” I replied, giggling.
“Ah oui,” he said. “Un Quebecois accent.”

Then he pressed his thumb and pointer finger together to form an “ok”.

“Celine Dion?” he said. “Magnifique.”

Yesterday, I took a three hour bus ride out to Yiwu (义乌), a city in the central-eastern part of Zhejiang Province.

It’s 100 km south of the capital, Hangzhou and famous for its gargantuan wholesale markets.

This region of Zhejiang is famous for manufacturing little things: lightbulbs, pens, lamps, screw drivers, faucets, Q-tips. A quarter of the world’s drinking straws are made in Yiwu.

Here, I saw the littlest things marketed on the largest of scales.

Since the early 1980s, Yiwu began opening permanent trade centers that have become popular with foreign buyers. I visited the most famous center which claims it is “the biggest commodity market in the world” with (deep breath) over 34,000 shops and booths selling 320,000 kinds of commodities over an area of 800,000 square meters.

A recent article in the Economist mentions Yiwu and writes about Zhejiang’s “scrappy” entrepreneurs, people who came from nothing – isolation, poverty, farming, little education – to having many, many things. i.e. BMWs, multiple homes, factories that hire hundreds of employees. This once isolated, once ignored part of China is now a booming economic machine.

Looking around, it was hard not to believe this was the biggest wholesale market in the world. I felt like I was on the inside of a Borg cube – I walked past one aisle and then another aisle and then another aisle and then another aisle, each one with no end in sight; a dimly-lit abyss of “stuff.”

Though this market in Yiwu claims 200,000 visitors per day, I suspect it never gets crowded here. It was eerily quiet the day I was there. I guess when there are 1,000 different stores selling plastic cups, there’s no reason to crowd in just one or two shops.

The place had been built with foreigners somewhat in mind. English signs pointed to the nearest exit, elevator, and washroom (though, like many of the toilets in China, I could already smell it when I was around the corner). Around the shops were non-smoking signs and most people abided by this rule. But the communal areas – small foyers between the aisles where one or two steel benches were placed – were designated open-air smoking places. Groups of cigarette-loving Chinese businessmen puffed away, a fog of smoke wafting through the entire complex, adding to the eeriness of the place.

The market was split up into four districts, with a fifth one under construction. Each district had four to five floors, spanning what had to be five to six big city blocks. The maps were helpful, but not without spelling errors.

The first district sold:

Flowers, toys, ornaments, arts and crafts.

The second district sold:

Rainwear and ploy bags, locks, electronic produts, hardware tools and fittings, vehicles, hardware and sanittary, home appliances, telecommunication equipment, electric instrument camerals, clocks and watches

The third district sold:

Pensandink, paper articles, glasses, office suppliesand stationery, recreation spowting articles, sport equipment cosmetics, zippers, buttonsand clothes accessories

The fourth district sold:

Socks, daily necessities, gloves, hats, knitting products, shoes, sewing thread and tape, lace, necktie, wool yam, towel, bra & underwear, belts, scarf.

It was a dizzying array of everyday things multiplied by infinity. Shops filled with every style of telephone you have ever seen and ever will seen. Cotton balls in every size, shape and colour. Shelves packed with hundreds of ketchup squeeze bottles, the kind you might see at any greasy spoon diner off the Interstate. A entire wall of clocks decorated with images of Mecca and the Koran. I got dizzy staring at a shop selling illuminated signs, the ones see every day in stores across America: “We are Open”, “ATM”, “Free Wifi here”, “Bonchon Chicken.”

I saw many foreigners wandering through the maze of shops. Arabs, Africans, Russians, Europeans, Americans. They clutched clipboards – an inventory of what they needed for their businesses – and many brought along translators, young Chinese men and women standing between the wholesale dealer who punched numbers in a calculator and the foreigner, who quietly asked for lower prices.

This was the slogan I kept seeing everywhere in Chinese: “It’s an ocean of small commodities, a heaven for shoppers.”

Definitely an ocean of small commodities. But a heaven for shoppers? No way. I felt like I was drowning in there. This was a place constructed very practically to carry out wholesale export transactions. There were no coffee shops for tired foreign buyers (or tired tourists), or restaurants in the centers (other than a scrappy university-style canteen) or places to lounge (other than the smoky steel benches). This was not a place to linger or enjoy. This was a place to go in, do your business, and get out.

By 3 p.m. I was out and back on the bus back to my own town, south of Yiwu. When I finally got off the bus that evening, I breathed in some clean(er) mountain air and felt relieved to be out of the industrial zone. There are no major factories in this town. I used to think it was because this place had missed out on the factory boom. Now I am glad there are no factories here; an island oasis in a sea of commodities.