Beijing – Olympics, pollution and the control of power

Having now left China behind, there are still a few things I’ve been thinking about regarding the country and its people. I took a train from Beijing to Hanoi, a two nights, one day journey which gave me plenty of time to think but also observe the rest of the country as we crossed the majority of it going south.

As I mentioned in my earlier post one of the things that really shocked me about Beijing, and which seems to be echoed by a lot of people who visit it or live there, is how polluted the city is. The fact that I visited in early summer when the heat was going up definitely didn’t help, but I was really taken back by how smoky the city was and felt, how dusty you ended up after a few hours of walking around and just how oppresive the pollution felt.

Taking the train south, that feeling was only continued as we crossed provinces, all covered by clouds and a definite sense of more pollution, white smoke emanating from countless factories either on the side of the tracks or in the distance. In nearly 6 days spent in China I saw the sky for maybe 4 hours in total on one day. And that really makes you think.

With the Olympics just weeks away, it’s hardly surprising that some Olympic teams have complained that pollution would be a major factor in the games, especially for all the track and field events. And even though the Chinese government has done its best to claim that it was all under control – check the story I quoted in my last post here, which was published earlier this year in the paper I worked for – the fact remains that I can’t see how pollution will play a major part in the games, and most definitely not a good part either.

Given that the weather is only likely to get hotter, I was thinking about how it will all be made to look from the outside, when countless foreign TV crews are in town. Will the Chinese government try and keep a grip on it all, limiting the bad publicity and claims that pollution is anywhere but under control? I was thinking about those typical shots you see on TV during events like Olympics, when the camera pans out over the city during sunset. I can’t quite see how that’s gonna happen during the Beijing Olympics, unless something really exceptional happens, like favourable winds or rain. Whatever ends up happening it’ll definitely be interesting to see the reaction from the rest of the world, and especially the reaction from the Chinese state and its puppet media. As a side note, here’s another fairly interesting story regarding how the Chinese state is trying to control impressions of the country ahead of the Olympics, including the chaos that is Beijing’s traffic or the manners of its people.

Another thing I remarked while in town was how Beijing seemed to be for the most part in a state of repair. Every other street you cross or walk down seems to have work done on it. Building sites are all over town, and everywhere you look it’s hard not to feel like there is a sense of rush and preparation, no doubt for the Olympics and to help further this idea that everything is fine and under control. On one hand I can understand it, even if it feels forced, as it’s no doubt the case with any city taking on such an event (you only have to look at what they’re doing to London since they won the bid for 2012). On the other it’s also a possibility that once the Olympics are over, the people are Beijing are actually going to be the ones benefiting from this, with a city that has been ‘made over’ and somehow improved. Whether or not that’s the case remains to be seen I guess.

On my last night in town I met up with some friends, including one who is teaching at a university in Beijing. During the evening he brought something really interesting, which I hadn’t thought about until then. He was telling me about Chinese students and how they can be really frustrating to work with, because they seemingly have very little inclanation to contest anything or challenge anything. They are very much used to believing in what they are told and more crucially to follow orders and do as they are told. Looking at the country’s recent political past and the iron grip of power exercised by the communist government such an attitude actually makes quite a lot of sense. It’s just not something you would automatically think about.

This is only compounded by the fact that the early communist regime, under Mao, did its best to erase any trace of the city’s rich historical past. I mentioned this before in my previous post on Beijing – the cityscape is truly fascinating due to the contrast between the few remaining vestiges of China’s rich cultural past, the old hutong streets, the temples, the forbidden city and other palaces, and the dominant and in their own way impressive elements of the communists’ rise to power seen in Tienanmen square and the expanding concrete landscapes of Beijing suburbs, all unattractive tower blocks and demoralising streets.

As my friend explained how he often struggled to get his students to think outside the box, challenge or even just use their country’s past as a way to build something new, to think or to debate, it got me thinking about the Japanese and how they are also in the grip of something similar with the power held by seniority and tradition (again I mentioned this in an earlier post on efficiency in Japan, unfortunately it seems the post was hacked). While the Japanese can also feel frustrating to deal with, whether in an office or as a language teacher, because they have been molded by their society to obey, not challenge the status quo and power held by ‘elders’, it seems the Chinese also have their own similar problem to deal with, unable for the most part to want to challenge authority figures or accepted ideas.

Of course while these ideas are fair generalisations, I’ve noticed in my time in Japan that it’s already changing with the younger generation. People in their early to late 20s, and even early 30s, are already more used to a different way of doing things, I guess you could say a more Western way of doing things, where challenging authority or seniority is ok, because there is an acceptance that opinions are valid no matter who expresses them. What’s more a lot of younger people in Japan are keen to look outwards, while most of the previous generations are very much inward looking, unsurprising considering the country spent centuries in isolation.

And I’m sure that it’s the same in China, though it seems the process is slower. My friend was explaining how he does have students, who are from the younger generation, who are more open, more keen to challenge things and escape the belief that everything must be followed as it is said. At the same time he still encounters a lot of resistance and a lot of irony too, when students appear proud of their country and of being Chinese, telling him how they will ‘take over the world’ (in a manner of speaking) and yet at the same time will give their names as ‘Simon’ of ‘John’, still shunting to a degree their origin and place in the world.

As I said before, China seems to be a country that is very much caught in a difficult situation, as its past looms large over it, both its rich tradition which has been for the most part erased or put out of sight and the looming cloud of its communist years, and it is being thrown fast into capitalism to counter the growing power of the U.S. What’s worse is that all eyes are on the country, and it seems the people are still very much in a state of flux, caught between different places and times. As it only accelerates, with the country continuing to be the world’s factory, and its power continuing to grow to balance that of the U.S, it will be interesting to see how it all turns out.

As a side note, I mentioned how chaotic Beijing was. Well having arrived in Hanoi yesterday, I’ve now realised that it seems Beijing’s chaos is nothing compared to what I’m witnessing here. It’ll be interesting to see how this chaos continues to change the further south I get.