A Nation of Agnostics

“So generally speaking, what would you say Chinese people believe in?”

“Umm, well Chinese people don’t really believe in anything.”

“Really? Nothing? What about Taoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism? I’ve heard those belief systems are quite influential over here.”

“Well first of all, those aren’t really belief systems in the sense that they are religions. The ideas contained in those three perspectives still do influence Chinese thought, but any real religious establishment was wiped out during the sixties and seventies—“

“—during the Cultural Revolution?”

“That’s right. During that time, we could only believe in the Party. That’s it. Today, some older people hang on to religious beliefs; for example, I’ve been to a Buddhist temple with my aunt before. But most young people don’t believe in anything.”

“How do you feel about that?”

“I don’t know if it’s good. I think it is good to have something to believe in.”

This is a rough representation/summary (translated from Chinglish) of the several conversations that followed me posing that first question to different Chinese college students. As a result of these discussions, the overall impression I flew back home with is that China is indeed a nation of agnostics, if not atheists. Maybe this shouldn’t have surprised me—after all, atheism was the law of the land from 1949 onwards, and only recently has the central government allowed more freedom of religion.

But this impression does fly directly in the face of polls that I had heard about before going, and even those that I looked up just now. For example, a few years ago a statistician by the name of Phil Zuckerman reported that only 14 percent of the Chinese population was “irreligious.” Around the same time though, another study by Shanghai university professors found that just over thirty percent of the 16+ population considered themselves “religious.” Now I recognize that those results are not necessarily contradictory (on what side of the fence does a “seeker" fall?), but I think it may be fair to say that the most important insight they represent is simply the difficulty of measuring religious demographics.

It very much does seem like the Chinese people, especially the younger generations, are generally without a faith in any kind of higher power. It does look like this may be changing rapidly, however. I’ll try and find time to write another post pretty soon about why that may be …

"Understanding the Rise of China"

Our native Chinese biz/econ professor told us a few weeks ago that she wanted to show us a video about the Chinese mindset; that seemed fine, but as soon as I heard that all-to-familiar TED intro—something I didn’t realize was a common sound over here—I of course became very interested. And I was not disappointed; this twenty-minute TED Talk by a Martin Jacques gives a very good survey of the increasing influence China will have in the years to come.

His main theme seems to be that China is not like the West, nor will it ever become so; it is a completely different civilization and has been for millennia, and we can’t expect that kind of inertia to succumb to mere decades (well, ok centuries) of Western pressure. Before you take a look at the video, I do feel like I should tell you that the projections Jacques cites at the very beginning are almost certainly wrong—there is a wide spectrum of projections about China’s growth, and he (or the organization he cites) is at the far end of optimistic. It seems that most economists think it will be at least thirty or forty years before China’s GDP matches that of America (and their growth may very well slow because of problems such as these). However even if that is the case, they are still in second place today, and thus of course still incredibly important economically. Enjoy!

Flipping the Switch

In 1991, Pudong, a large part of my former host city of Shanghai, was officially established by the central government as a Special Economic Zone (SEZ), one of now fifty-eight within the country. The general idea of an SEZ is that within its borders, rules and regulations tend to be relatively favorable to foreign businesses. For example, a typical tax policy within an SEZ may not require a foreign business to pay a dime of taxes until two years after their first profits are realized, and then for the three years thereafter only pay taxes at half the domestic rate. Shanghai was actually quite late to the game in this sense, arguably because of political disputes between them and leadership in Beijing; for whatever the reason though, the first two SEZ’s of Guangdong and Fujian (near HK) were established eleven years before Pudong was finally granted that status.

Take a look at these two pictures of Pudong; the first one was taken in 1990, shortly after Bradley Andrew Kiley was born. The second one was taken from the exact same spot last year (just before I turned twenty-one).

I think Lucas and I looked at these pictures for like five minutes straight when I first found it, and I kept glancing at them in disbelief intermittently throughout that day. It is amazing how fast the Chinese government can develop someplace when they decide they feel like it, and once the floodgates of foreign investment are opened. Now was subsidizing the construction of these huge, fancy towers really the best use of public funds for the area? That is debatable, and I've heard that subject is the source of more than a little tension between the central authorities in Beijing and those running Shanghai. Either way though, there is no denying that the fantastic light-show that is the Pudong financial district certainly gives this city an aura very unique to the rest of the mainland.

Chengdooin' It

One thing that Lucas and I both wanted to experience before returning to good ol’ Meiguo is a “real” Chinese city out west. This and other reasons led us to the within-China-famous city of Chengdu, located inside the within-China-famous province of Sichuan (you may actually recognize that name from the devastating earthquake that happened here in 2008).

This city has quite a reputation; I think the best way I’ve heard it described is as “a big city with a small city feel.” One thing everyone knows about Chengdu is that the people there are sooo chill. One of the many things it is famous for is its plentiful tea houses, where natives can be seen sipping wonderful flower tea all day long, playing Mazhang or a number of other Chinese games. They also can be seen in the ubiquitous hot pot restaurants, taking upwards of three hours for a single meal. In short, it seemed like Chengdu was the opposite of Shanghai, where the pace of life is perhaps the fasted in the mainland.

Our experiences here during the past week have very much served to confirm that reputation. Walking through People’s Park during our first day was especially cool; we sat for a while outside one of the teahouses, got our ears cleaned (probably won’t repeat that experience!), watched people dance, and saw a master calligrapher at work brushing giant, beautiful characters on the ground with only water.

The rest of the week was a lot of fun as well. In addition to being an interesting city in and of itself, Chengdu also serves as a springboard to all kinds of other hotspots in Sichuan. As we only had a week, we just stuck to the day-trip locations. I think my favorite spot had to be the world-famous pandas—they certainly lived up to the hype. Towards the end of the day we found a 5x5 ft pen containing eight of the babies; some were crawling around, some were wrestling, some were sleeping in awkward positions—all of them though were absolutely adorable. I think I may agree with Lucas’s claim that this was perhaps the cutest thing ever seen anywhere in the history of the universe.

Another pretty remarkable attraction we checked out was the biggest Buddha in the world at Leshan, a couple hours away from Chengdu. Carved over a thousand years ago over the course of a hundred years, this guy clocks in at some 240 ft, with each pinkie toe being about the size of Shaquille O’Neal. Ridiculous.

Overall, it was a great way to end our four-month China adventure. Our host for the week, Karla, treated us waay too well and it was super fun hanging out with the Chengdu study abroad students and getting a feel for their lifestyle. It definitely does seem to be a different world than Shanghai; not better or worse necessarily, but certainly different, and I’m very glad we had the chance to experience it.

Shanghai Isn't "Real China"

Living in Shanghai for three months and some change has been as amazing an experience as I could have asked for. One thing you often hear about this city though is that it’s not “real China.” While this is usually said with a somewhat negative connotation, the accuracy of that observation is actually one of the reasons I love Shanghai so much. I certainly wanted to hang out with the natives as much as I could while here, and I’ve had the opportunity to meet some awesome new Chinese friends (by the way, 992 out of every 1000 Shanghai residents are Chinese citizens). But I love that Shanghai is also an international city; when you go to the expat church, or to the bars and clubs, you never know where in the world the next foreigner you meet will be from.

 In addition to this, the native Chinese population here is actually quite diverse. As far as race goes, umm, of course not at all; but as far as city of origin Chinese college kids and young professionals come from all over the country to this promised land of opportunity. As a foreigner, this created a unique opportunity for me to taste a sampling of the variety of cultures throughout this giant civilization. I’ve had the opportunity to meet students hailing from the area where Green Tea supposedly originated, as well as some who came from Sichuan, whose food is the envy of all other provinces. At Starbucks, I met a pair of brothers who grew up near where Confucius lived, and at a cool bar we met a couple skater girls from Guangdong, an especially prosperous city close to HK.

 There are still plenty of native Shanghainese around too, and they are quite fun as well—one dinner in particular with Colby, myself, and the two sets of parents of the kids Colby and I separately tutor will be impossible to forget. But the spectrum of cultures that collide in this fantastic city make life here a uniquely exciting and dynamic experience.

One Table, Four Languages

This was kinda fun.

A few nights ago, our suitemate Omar invited us to dinner in celebration of his twenty-third birthday. There were a total of ten of us there enjoying all different kinds of delicious Chinese food with, naturally, some tasty watered-down Budweiser. It was pretty cool just sitting back from the conversation for a few moments and looking around the table.

First, there was our friend Omar the birthday boy; he is from Benin (W. Africa), his native tongue is French, and he is proficient in English and Mandarin.

Seated to his right were two girls from Thailand. They didn’t say a whole lot, so I believe they only spoke Thai, and a bit of French.

Next to him was my friend Lucas, haling from San Diego and speaking a little English and Mandarin, and two spots over from him was myself, with similar language capabilities.

Between Lucas and me was Omar’s roommate Hussainu, a Malian dude (W. Africa) who also speaks French as his native tongue, but very little English and Mandarin.

To my right were three of Omar’s Chinese classmates from various parts of China, all who supplemented their Mandarin with a bit of English.

And finally, between them and Omar was a Japanese girl, who could speak conversational English and pretty good Mandarin.

So throughout the meal, there were four different languages being spoken at various points in time at this single ten-person table, and there would have been five had another Japanese person joined us. This is something I absolutely love about being part of the expat community here.