No spitting and flush after using the toilet

SHANGHAI – During the past week – the Chinese equivalent of "Golden Week," a long holiday following national day’s October 1 celebrations – some 3.2 million Chinese tourists poured into Shanghai. They streamed in by bus, train, airplane and aboard over 300,000 private vehicles.

What happened to the nation on bicycles I first saw, even here in bustling Shanghai, in 1964? Gone – gone to the scooter, the motorbike, and millions of shiny automobiles, some of them already manufactured in China. Sure, there are still bicycles, and scores of millions of poor Chinese as well as desperate farmers turned into "migrant workers", but Shanghai is the center of the "upstart" quick-buck – or rather quick-RMB – culture which has already transformed this metropolis of 16 million, including the suddenly erected high-rise city of Pudong right across the Huang Pu river, into the stunning symbol of the aggressive New China.

Yet, while China is the world’s fourth largest economy (number one is still the USA, and number two, Japan) its capital income is still ranked only 100th in the world, i.e. China is the first "poor" global economic superpower in history. (Some 415 million out of 1.3 billion Chinese live today, still, on less than $2 per day).

About 15 percent of China’s workforce, or 140 million individuals, are economic "migrants" on the move from their parched home villages and towns in search of work. The country boasts about 300,000 millionaires (in US dollar terms), but – as mentioned above – over a third of the population ekes out a bare subsistence on under $2 per day.

China’s 10 percent annual growth is a statistic which elicits admiration and fear all over the planet. Yet this progress comes at terrible cost. Last month, Beijing itself released its own candid "green accounting" study which confessed that the nation’s rampant pollution problem is undermining economic growth. The report admitted that the pollution – engendered by mushrooming factories and the burgeoning amount of vehicles – cost the country $64 billion in 2004. (Widespread air and water pollution and acid rain remain major factors).

The Chinese Academy on Environmental Planning has released the grim statistic that 400,000 of China’s 1.3 billion people die from air-pollution related diseases each year. In addition, about 300 million Chinese lack access to clean drinking water owing to pollution from factories.

Thousands of workers die in the mines, dredging up coal needed for the runaway industrial effort (aside from huge imports of oil and fossil fuels). Mine owners seem callous about the primitive and unsafe conditions in which coal miners are forced to work. It seems that upgrade safety standards in the mines would cost scores of millions of RMB, while compensating families for deaths in the mines costs a company only US$25,000 per fatality.

Of the 25 most polluted cities in the world, The Wall Street Journal (Thursday, October 3) revealed, sixteen (yes, 16) are in China. To satisfy your curiosity, the most polluted city listed is Delhi in India, the second worst is Cairo, Egypt; the third, Calcutta (Kolkata), India. The fourth is the port-industrial city of Tianjin in China.

The most polluted Chinese cities are, in rapid succession: Chongquing, Shenyang, Zhengzhou, Jinan, Lanzhou, Beijing (number 13); and Taiyuan. Interestingly enough, Jakarta (Indonesia) is number eight, after Lucknow and Kanpur in India.

Gee whiz. Manila didn’t make the Top 25, neither did Shanghai.

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As for corruption, despite its boom, Shanghai is now involved in the investigation of a scandal. The city’s powerful party boss was detained last week, in the first purge of a ranking Communist Party leader since 1995. China’s Vice-President Zeng Qinghong, no less, is supervising and conducting the investigation, demonstrating his rise to power and influence within the Party.

The cashiered boss is Chen Liangyu, Shanghai’s party secretary-general and a member of the top Politburo. Chen was arrested, stripped of Politburo membership – but his disgrace seems to be only the tip of the iceberg. Security forces have already arrested high-ranking officials in Shanghai, Beijing, Tianjin, Fujian and Hunan.

Was the purge initiated by President Hu Jintao himself in order to break down the power of the former Shanghai Gang which dominated the government under his predecessor ex-President and military committee chairman Ziang Zemin? In any event, tampering with the Shanghai people’s pension funds was the big crime, according to Zeng’s investigators.

The phenomenon is that Inquisitor Zeng, officially ranked only number 5 in the party hierarchy, is rocketing to Number Two, just behind Hu Jintao himself – in the public eye.

Is there anything new under the sun when it comes to politics? Here today at the top of everybody – flushed down the toilet the following day. The Shanghai Gang is in political disarray.

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Anyway, last night was the Mid-Autumn "Moon" Festival, with millions consuming traditional mooncakes and celebrating in restaurants and homes all over Shanghai and Pudong.

Nanjing road, the renowned walking and shopping street which empties onto the Bund, was a torrent of people – a flood of humanity which seemed endless. Many Shanghainese leave town during Golden Week, while millions of outsiders from other cities and provinces stream into Shanghai. They were all there on Nanjing, or on the Bund. The kids were sporting lighted "horns," the young women little "bunny ears," everybody jumping along in a spirit of fun. Eateries were crammed. Men were drinking like there was no tomorrow.

The legend of the "inscrutable Chinese", so prevalent in the West, is totally false. Friday night, there were two angry, shouting matches between Chinese, fist-waving, and a punch or two. The protagonists were very scrutable, indeed.

One occurred at the corner of Nanjing and Henan Road. There were about nine fellows bellowing at each other and pushing against each other, while three of their womenfolk tried to pacify them. The imbroglio included two building security guards with walkie talkies, who were helpless it seemed to control the situation. In the bad old days, policemen would have arrived in minutes to wallop everybody into submission and drag them off bleeding and submissive to a police cell. Nowadays, you can’t get a cop when you need one. And they call China a "police state"?

Many of the cops patrolling Nanjing road, on foot, or tooling around in small cars, seem to be female police officers. In our hotel, there was also a shouting incident on the fourth level from the lobby, but it subsided in minutes. Guess booze and boys don’t mix in any country, even in "inscrutable" China.

Last Wednesday night, in the ritzy entertainment complex of Zin Tiandi where local yuppies and foreign tourists go (around the corner, incidentally, from where the Communist Party was founded), a fat, bare-chested guy on a bicycle, with his remonstrating girlfriend in tow, started bellowing all over the place and challenging two timid security guards to a fight. No cops showed up – but I guess they may have appeared later. As for us, we didn’t stay around to find out.

Incidentally, there’s a Philippine-owned Figaro coffee shop around the corner which was dismally empty last year, but has become popular in the district.

Oh well. Shanghai’s a fun place. And, for all their pugnacious shouting and shoving, Shanghainese aren’t violent – just noisy when in their cups, which is seldom. They’re business-minded mostly. The sharpest and brightest business moguls come from nearby Ningpo.

As for clothes, Shanghai is the place – whether for inexpensive local fashions, cunningly made items, or counterfeit "knock-offs" of designer brands. It’s the garment capital of China – and, ultimately, the world.

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Chinese – increasingly prosperous – have also become a world power in tourism. Last year, Chinese tourists made 31 million trips abroad and 1.2 billion trips inside the country. Their "uncivilized" behavior, alas, is becoming an embarrassment to their own authorities.

In this light, China last Monday published guidelines on how their tourists should conduct themselves abroad.

In the list of tourists’ bad habits published by China’s tourism chiefs, spitting and littering came first. The list was based on an on-line survey which got more than 30,000 responses from all over the world.

Chinese tourists’ reputations abroad have gotten so bad that in the US and some European countries, according to the Shanghai Daily, they have put up signs in Chinese stating, "No spitting," and "Flush after using the toilet."

The guidelines admonished Chinese tourists not to speak in loud voices or jump queues at public venues. Smoking in non-smoking areas is also sternly prohibited – strong advice to a nation of inveterate puffers. Chinese tourists are likewise admonished against making bedsheets, towels and other property dirty when staying in hotel rooms. Media reports abroad complain that some Chinese tourists polish their shoes with bedsheets or towels.

Proper dress is also enjoined. Chinese males have reportedly stripped to the waist in inappropriate places during hot summer days and women have been said to wear pajamas in supermarkets or on the street.

Don’t remove socks or shoes in airport terminals, the guidelines also warned. Chinese men were also urged to observe the "ladies’ first" rule.

There you go. Those guidelines were drawn up by the Chinese government, mind you, in a bid to improve the "image" of Chinese tourists abroad. There used to be talk of the Ugly American decades ago. Beijing doesn’t wish this to be replaced by the image of the Ugly Chinese.