China Café

Of all the changes brought about by the Beijing Olympics, a less obvious one is that foreign residents in China can no longer get away with breaking so many bylaws. The urban police have discovered that if you tell foreigners what to do, they do it. We used to be able to get away with murder. (You may think I speak figuratively, but I once knew someone who did just that.)

Take getting on a domestic flight without ID. It used to be easy: a photocopy of a passport and a good excuse and you were in the departure lounge. Not anymore. My family and I recently travelled to Beijing by overnight train for a wedding party. We were going to take a flight home but when we came to board, the check-in attendant refused to issue me a boarding pass without my passport (which I didn’t have because I was renewing my visa). The attendant told me to speak to the chief of security. I was confident he’d say yes.

“No,” was the firm response.

“But a couple of years ago I checked in with a photocopy,” I protested.

“No you didn’t,” he said. No amount of pleading swayed him. Neither did the fact that I had my children with me. Why don’t they cry when it would actually help?

My wife and children flew back. I went to the train station. I could only get a standing ticket on a slow train. When I eventually got home, after a 21-hour train ride, I heard the news that an acquaintance was given 15 days’ detention for driving a taxi a few feet and bumping it into a parked car. I once did exactly the same thing—without killing anyone, I hasten to add. The policeman told me to stop wasting his time and sort it out with the driver.

China is no longer the playground for foreigners that it used to be.

IT MAKES YOU WANT TO SWEEP

It’s the sweeping season. The whole village is at it. They love autumn—every day there are freshly fallen leaves to sweep up. One leaf can be overlooked, two might be a chance encounter, but three is an illegal gathering and must be swept away. The village echoes with the swishing of brooms on concrete roads and forecourts. It’s good for the local economy too, as the brooms are made from the bushy tops of our bamboo.

Our maid loves sweeping. I have told her there are better ways to spend her time. She waits until my back is turned and picks up a broom again. She even sweeps our weed-infested lawn. I bought her a rake but still she uses her broom.

The villagers like sweeping because it is simple, purposeful and everyone can see you doing it. When there is nothing else to do, or when what you should be doing is too difficult, then sweeping is the answer.

In December, snow falls and turns to ice on the roads, making the village inaccessible to cars. Some years, the roads have been blocked for six weeks. Life is hard for the few people who stay in the village.

Of course, the villagers could sweep the snow off the roads as soon as it falls, before it can pack down. That’s what they used to do in the old days. But that sort of sweeping requires thinking about, leadership and responsibility, so no one does it.

THE HARMONIOUS SOCIETY

David Cameron recently visited China. I heard that he swapped notes with Chinese leaders about his “big society” idea. Apparently it shares common ground with China’s “harmonious society” drive. I’m not so sure. I don’t think that Britain is the place for Chinese-style harmony either.

One prominent sign of local harmony is the ongoing makeover of villages. Travelling through our area I see lovely little parks, fancy pagodas and grand arches across entry roads. A lot of money is being spent on outward appearances, not so much on social benefits, pension schemes and healthcare. But who’s going to complain when everything looks so pretty?

Some pundits see signs of grassroots democracy in the “harmonious society.” But in a democracy, you elect leaders and let them get on with making the decisions. This kind of grassroots democracy is more like a dodging of that responsibility. Decisions are made only after they have been discussed at all levels of the community. All very harmonious if everyone agrees where to put the new pagoda, but what if they don’t? Perhaps they follow the exhortation I spotted on a wall in town, painted in the big characters of old-style propaganda: “Fight for a harmonious society!”