Forbidden City, Beijing. Courtesy of Corinne Wan

We arrived in Beijing on the eve of Bart’s big day; security was tight as the EC heads of state were meeting Chinese leaders, with caps in hand, to request that China, with its enormous trade surpluses, does its part in alleviating the global financial crisis that was just unfolding.

The European leaders seem to be echoing the same advice that I had, all along, been quietly dispensing to Bart, “Why lose your money (investing) when you could be spending?”

As we drove in from the airport, we were greeted by a clear night sky sparkling with twinkling stars. This was a lovely surprise for Beijing which is widely known for its endemic poor air quality. Apparently, during the Beijing Olympics, in order to combat the smog, the local authorities limited the use of vehicles on the road and after putting up for years with having air as thick as pea soup, the citizens of Beijing suddenly woke up to discover that the skies could actually be blue and clear and they decided that the quality of life was worth more than any quantity of cash they could possibly bring with them to an early grave.

This would have been the obvious conclusion to account for the clear visibility we had the whole time we were in Beijing. But apparently, after we left, the city decided to return to the “comfort” of pea soup. Just as the air cleared up during the Beijing Olympics, I suspect that it is more just a coincidence we had clear blue skies over Beijing at very same time the European VIPs hit town. The Chinese economy that has, these last two decades, been so pumped from the “steroids” purveyed by Milton Friedman is now in the process of being deflated by a major crisis and since the economy is of a greater concern, the authorities are reverting to what is to them, in the first place, “more” important.

I always find that architecture offers us a glimpse into the “soul” of a city for buildings have a way of relaying a message that can be quite telling. The flash buildings in Shanghai (China’s commercial center) project big financial and commercial interests whereas in Beijing (China’s political center) the designs of buildings are calculated to awe and to impress.

Many of Beijing’s small hutongs (neigbourhood houses with narrow alleyways) were demolished to make way for spanking new buildings and wide boulevards that made Beijing seem even colder than when there was just the one, “bigger than life” and impersonal Tian An Men Square, dominating Beijing and was built during the euphoric days of communism (early 50’s) over the debris of many houses.

I miss witnessing the human drama being played out on small side streets that one can still easily see in Shanghai. Modern highways with excessive flyovers in Beijing provide swift and easy passage across the city that had just spent billions of yuan to impress the world during their recent hosting of the Olympic games. The new impressive structures, built during the run up to the games, included the main Olympic venue referred to as “the bird’s nest,” the new Opera house – “the bird’s egg,” and the new CCTV building – “the underwear.”

I could not help noticing that the designers of these noteworthy buildings were, without exception, international architects; even the new Beijing Airport with its largest terminal building in the world was built by the British architect, Norman Foster.

Will some homegrown Chinese architects bag some major projects on their own home turf or win some recognition and accolade from their international peers? I am not that hopeful for even the architect of the Forbidden City built in the fourteenth century has variously been attributed to an ethnic Vietnamese subject of the Ming Emperor who commissioned the palace complex.

On this trip I was able to meet up with some my buddies from my university days (1979-80) at Fudan, Shanghai. I had not seen my former roommate, Jin, in almost thirty years and I warned him that he might be unable to recognize me as I would have changed over the intervening years; he reassured me that he’d think I was really an odd fish if I were to remain the same.

It was a relief when he called for me at the hotel in Beijing to find that he was still recognizable and we spent a whole day together making up for lost time. Over the years, he had risen high up the ranks in the “Peoples’ Liberation Army,” (which in the past, I used to call, half in jest, the “Peoples’ Oppression Army”) and is now a “high official.” We had an authentic and hearty Hunanese lunch at the hotel owned by his beautiful and charming wife (his sister had played marriage broker by making the initial introduction). I also met their only child, a son who had just graduated from business school in Illinois: it is a picture of a happy family with genial teasing and gentle ribbing. The only regret they expressed was that they were only allowed to have the only one child.

In contrast, Ling (my good friend while at Fudan), with whom I had dinner a few days earlier in Shanghai, was in matrimonial hell: he had married against his parents’ wishes (at one point of his life, he was disinherited), and though leading a very separate life from his wife, he still shares the same digs with her.

The social environment in China has become so much more relaxed than in my university days that there are actually places for the demimonde to freely congregate; as a pre-birthday present, when we were in Shanghai, I had taken Bart to one such watering hole where youngish people gathered. For me, it reinforced the reason why I have had always avoided and shunned such places. It was also good to be reminded that as a member of the “older set” how the denial of reality can so readily blind us to the obvious – that the problem with the youth of today is simply we are no longer a part of it.

Not everyone has been happy about the new changes and reality in China. On a short journey from Beijing to Tianjin (Beijing’s seaport) on the rapid rail transit (a journey that used to take 2 hours has now been shortened to half an hour) to visit an American friend teaching “business studies,” at the Tianjin Foreign Language University, I fell into conversation with my cabdriver.

Reacting to my innocuous remark that Tianjin has become very tidy, clean and orderly (from the last time I was there, four years earlier), he retorted (loosely translated), “Orderly, my foot! I prefer the old days when we were poor for everyone was equally poor then. They (the authorities) are going to regret doing away with the old (broken down) houses; this is not the real Tianjin; the poor people have all been relocated from the city center. Back then (under Chairman Mao), the government genuinely served the people and not just the elite.”

I was taken aback by the tone of his rhetoric and while I did not entirely agree with the sentiments expressed, I was reminded that China has come quite a way from being an “empire” with its hereditary Emperors and servile subjects to becoming a republic (a peoples’ republic, no less) as represented by a citizen expressing his opinions with boldness and candour.

In Beijing when I asked one of our cabdrivers how the Olympic games had affected him, he cleverly sidestepped the question by giving a cautious but sly answer, “Our government has benefited most from the games.”
Extrapolating from the vocal response of the cabdrivers, I think they give us a fair indication of the alienation between the rulers and the people.

Throughout its long history, China’s “tradition” and civilisation have proved more enduring than its forms of governance. The Republican revolution of 1911 spearheaded by Sun Yat Sen tried to reform the moribund imperial order by bringing in elements of Western “democratic” style of politics in keeping with the times; in the end, the “Marxist” form of government prevailed when the Communists won the civil war and “liberated” China in 1949.

Under the leadership of the late Chairman Mao, the Marxist ideal was so heavily laced with good old Chinese authoritianism (as had not been seen since the heady days of the First Emperor of China, Qin shihuangdi), that it really took on the form of “socialism with a Chinese face.”

After the excesses of the Cultural Revolution, it must have come as a relief to have the likes of the pragmatic (“It doesn’t matter whether if it’s a black cat or a white cat so long as it catches mice”) Deng Xiao Ping take charge. Deng promptly liberalised commerce and encouraged the citizens to be “patriotic” by getting rich. The pendulum has swung completely from a centralised and planned “socialistic” economy and is now coming to rest on the side of unabashed supply-side economics. This laissez faire style of commerce currently out there can best be described as “cowboy capitalism without a heart.”

Despite the promise of “liberation” in 1949, the nation degenerated into a ruthless regime, holding everyone captive to sheer ignorance and gross stupidity through the machinations of the megalomaniacal and intolerant Chairman Mao who imposed his inane and banal “thinking” on the cowed populace. From “liberation,” to the cultural “revolution,” and now to the current economic “liberalisation,” practically every social paradigm has been challenged, age-old institutions dismantled, and so many sacred cows slain that, undoubtedly, has left the people utterly perplexed and bewildered.

During imperial days, the social ranking had been scholar, peasant, artisan and tradesman in a descending order of importance; during the Maoist era it was the worker, peasant and military (with a strong bias against intellectuals); now, it is those in positions of power, traders and people in business. In the great halls of learning, students are fast abandoning the works of Marx and Mao and are now flocking to peruse the writings of Adam Smith, Drucker and other modern American business and management gurus.

In that week of traveling with Bart, apart from consuming fine foods and spending on consumer goods, we also took time out to check out Chinese culture that is unequivocally and indisputably indigenous. The Shanghai Museum’s priceless collection of bronzes did not disappoint; neither did the excursion make to Zhou Zhuang (Zhou village), one of the many “reconstituted” water villages (built along canals) dating from the Ming dynasty (14th to 16th century), about a hundred kilometers out of Shanghai. Getting out of the city reminded me that a very large part of China is still rural and until recently, the mainstay of the economy was agriculture. Along with so many China “pundits,” I am also wondering what will happen to the 20 odd million migrant workers who have lost their urban jobs in this recent economic downturn and are now returning home to the countryside.

It does seem that when it comes to China, there is an inordinate reference to food, money and politics – all fascinating subjects. But these are the fundamentals in any society and China is no exception: after all, it is politics that determine food production and the creation of wealth. We have forgotten about the famines that used to ravish China and now talk of nothing else but fine foods and exotic meals. The Chinese Peoples’ Republic was founded on the back of hungry bellies.

Land reforms and the collectivization of farms that followed went to serve Mao’s political ideologies and objectives and when these were found wanting (with massive famines during the “Great Leap Movement” from the mid to late 50’s), the Cultural Revolution (mid 60’s) was then initiated to cover up the tracks of failure by wresting political power back from the pragmatists.

In the post Deng era, hunger (for food) is no longer the main issue for now it is raw greed (for money) that has brought about the scandal of adulterated and tainted milk (even in Malaysia there is a great reluctance to buy fruit and vegetables from China for fear of the high level of insecticides found in them). In thirty short years, food has gone from being a scarce resource (I can well remember when grain was still being rationed in 1979) to becoming a tradable commodity and to borrow the parlance from the world of fashion, greed has replaced hunger to become the “new black.”

A dictum that has always kept me on track has been: “Do not be happy when people agree with you – be happy when they tell you the truth.” Chairman Mao can always be counted to be the epitome of a recalcitrant (“unteachable”) tyrant that has issues with the truth – the type who is remorseless when wrong, insufferable when right. Ironically, Mao was both contemptuous and suspicious of his subjects while at the same time harbouring a deep-seated psychological need to be wanted and to be flattered by them; he would stop at nothing (including selling his “friends” (colleagues and former comrades in arms) down the river in order to satisfy his addiction for sycophantic adoration and praise from his “public” – I have often wondered if the real issue wasn’t about wanting love and respect and instead getting only fear and loathing.

I have always had a very visceral aversion for the “beloved” and “fearless” leader bristling with cocksure optimism, charging headlong into some dead-end alley followed unquestioningly by their hatchet men, armed with a hope, a prayer and extra-thick blinkers. More often than not, this kind of leader is more interested in giving the impression (usually, through spin in the media) of accomplishment than actually getting things done.

I find that any country intolerant of dissent and not making some reasonable allowance for healthy discourse among its people will invariably engender paranoia on a grand scale. The ones being “ruled,” will remain stunted in growth, continuing to be “childish,” confused and running scared with fear and upset, while the ruling elite will stay insecure in a huddle, cowering under a “siege mentality,” rejecting any views other than their own, and reacting out of all proportion to any kind of criticism (perhaps, even taking offence to the personal rant of a cabdriver who just happened to have got out on the wrong side of bed).

It is the law of averages that if one wiretaps, one will hear “things” one may not want to hear. Surely the goal of a civilised nation is to have a healthy respect for its people, to equip them to make mature decisions affecting their livelihood (of which food and money play key roles) and to bring accountability to those who hold positions of authority by making them take responsibility.

The present Chinese rulers are a smart bunch and running a country with a population larger than most continents cannot be an easy task. Some sanity has been restored to China’s central ruling politburo but if this cabal of ideologically inbred party hacks is not subject to occasional checks and balances, the government will tend naturally toward being repressive and be open to massive abuse of patronage. I am not at all surprised to hear the many reports of “backdoor” takeovers, land grabs, and illegal operations by officials and their cronies.

It has been suggested that it is better to consider China as a civilisation rather than as a nation. I expect that, in the absence of ballot boxes and an impartial judicial system to protect the rights of its people, the Chinese government will have to align its moral compass to its own Chinese traditions (that are as pervasive and fluid as they are old) to put the nation on the right course. I do not know what the future will hold for China as a nation but I can make an educated guess based on her general preference and past choices: cultural bias and decisions made at important historical junctures will determine future outcomes.

The last “mandate” given to the Chinese Communist Party to govern was back in 1949 through victory in war. I don’t think it is too soon for the present crop of Chinese leaders to seek a fresh mandate (perhaps through fair and open elections) from the “masses”; which will then give the people the chance to give or to withhold their consent on who is to govern them and more importantly, how they wished to be governed. For now, the jury is still out on the question of Chinese democracy – will it be a reality or an oxymoron?

We celebrated Bart’s 40th birthday at one of the “better” Peking Duck establishments predictably enough with a duck roasted to perfection, and then it was time to say our goodbyes. Bart headed home to Spain a year older and with his bagful of presents; I flew back to Malaysia, bringing back with me the thought that while we all grow old – be it people, nations, or cheese – what really matters is how well we age.