What do I think of China?
Since I've come back to the States, alot of people like to ask me what I think of China.Here's a short but overly complicated answer:
"It is usually assumed that between the "developing" and "developed" world lie distinct stages of growth. Shanghai suggests something different: developing as a continual state of being, urban existence as perpetual becoming, without destination."
-Anna Greenspan
I think the above quote sums up pretty nicely a large chunk of it. Not just concerning Shanghai, but all of China. Not merely about economic growth or societal transformation, but the Chinese soul.
While China's exterior world continues to thrive without end, the interior of its people cannot help but get lost in the fray. Our souls were not made for such perpetual and directionless change without end,
This applies more to the younger generation rather than the older. The older generation seems either gleefully engaged in China's new boom, almost like children seeking too many new toys, or jadedily disconnected having already gone through decades of modern China's endless revolutions.
This new generation appears confused but purposeful, passive yet driven. This is what I see in the students that I teach. It seems everyone is aware of China's growing place in the new world order and no one wants to be left behind. So everyone bunkers down and puts their entire being into running the race, conjuring up aspirations to become succesful participants in the new "Chinese Dream" of wealth and affluence. Like any dream though, the details are anything but clear. When I talk to my students it doesn't seem quite like they know what they are reaching for. They're just streching really hard.
The new generation seeks to live like Shanghai, but like the city itself, there is a harsh awareness that it's just an image. The tremendous weight of the new glitz only results in a sinking feeling that it's not really possible. This is what I see on the face of many of my students: ideals of endless possibilities met with a reality that almost everything is out of their hands. A confused worldview inflicted with both ideas of aggresive self-determination and fatalistic collectivism.
What else is there to pursue? No one wants to be left behind. Chinese have an uncanny ability to hold opposite realities in dynamic tension that Americans don't always understand. Where as a lot of Americans might have to trick themselves into thinking "everyone can make it" in order to survive, the Chinese don't neccesarily need that. The result is a sort of hopeless pursuit, an all out push for success even with the understanding that it probably won't happen. Most know in their hearts that they are but one in 1.3 billion and that in the end, just making a simple living is the best they can hope for.
Not only is there is no destination, there is barely even any direction... there is only an aimless yet perpetual becoming. Into what? I have no idea.
It makes me weep inside...
What do I think of China?
I think she's chasing after the wind.
I think her people are running to stand still.
I think she needs a more eternal sort of hope and purpose that the world can't give her.
"What good is it if a man gain the whole world but forefeit his soul?"
Never have these words felt so real to me. Perhaps this is just how things are in this post-modern, globalized, and restless new world. If the world really is flat, then we're all on the edge of ourselves ready to tip over.
"No Past, No Future, Just a Hungry Present.. ."
posted by Unknown @ 11:34 AM
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