卦Trigram 2.0

Ever since I started blogging, in my pre-MBA days back in 2003, it’s been clear that Asia was becoming more important and would become central – and that we would know this when mass trends were seen to start in Asia and take hold in the West.

In February 2005, I had this to say:

And following on about globalization, I’ve been saying for a couple of years that we’ll know that it’s really arrived when it means that fashions start in Asia and go West, instead of Asians consuming Hollywood etc… I guess things like manga and anime, Bollywood and Feng Shui were the beginning of this, but if Chinese New Year becomes a world-wide festival, as Christmas has become, we’ll know that we’re in a real global society.

When I moved to Singapore in 2002, it seemed highly unlikely that the Welsh town where I’d been living would every hold a Chinese New Year Festival, and yet, a few years later, it happened.

It’s a theme I’ve come back to several times over the years. I mention now because of course other people have been thinking the same way, and I recently discovered an extremely interesting post by China-based Aimee Barnes, who has been taking a look at “What makes China cool”, with an eye on anticipating what might feed those trends. Worth a look.

Over the last few years, I’ve become something of a global nomad, shuttling between three bases:

• Cowbridge
• Beijing
• Singapore

This is an interesting  combination, I’ve come to realise. The first is an ancient market town which still has a very strong community despite recent demographic change, and very much has the potential to be self-sustaining economically. The second is, of course, the huge capital city of a gigantic nation. There are still areas with a very strong neighbourhood spirit, although the ‘Old Beijing’ of pre-1949 (or even the ‘new’ Beijing of 1949 – Olympics) is now much diluted. As a city, Beijing isn’t particularly self-sustaining. However, as an old, organic city it has many areas and buildings that could be brought into use for urban farms and other community projects. Beijing is also close to farmland, and its fate is closely tied to the future prosperity, or otherwise, of the  country’s peasant farmers. The third, Singapore, is the most artificial, and is dependent on supplies from outside in order to exist. Although the government constantly warns this country’s citizens how fragile their nation is, there is an emerging national consensus and community spirit. The government reserves all community action to itself, however,regulating and monitoring all citizen activity closely.

As the global recession bites, it’s clear that the global economy will not continue as before; the money simply isn’t there any more. So how will these three bases of mine cope with the end of abundance (in the West), energy scarcity, resource depletion, and peak oil? What can the  West, facing the end of Baby-Boomer affluence, learn from bottom-of-the-pyramid ingenuity? How the West’s knowledge be shared with the Asian poor?

There’s a story I read once, although I forget now the name of the book. It’s from Russia in the early 20th century. There was a village, deep, deep in the countryside; let’s call it Porechye (though that wasn’t the name in the story – I’ve forgotten that). In Porechye there was a small church nestling in a clearing in the forest. There was a village pond, where the ducks swam. There was a girl named Masha, who had beautiful blue eyes and beautiful golden hair. In Porechye there was also a young man, who was in love with Masha. One day, recruiters from the Tsar’s army came to Porechye. They told the young man that it was his sacred duty to join the army and fight on behalf of the Tsar and Mother Russia against the Germans.

The young man loved his country, and did his duty. He joined the army, and was taken on trucks and railways to the far-away battlefront. He fought bravely against the Germans. One day, the news came that the war was over. The soldiers were happy, but they didn’t know what to do. No lorries came to take them home from the battlefront. Eventually, they threw away their rifles, and began to return to their homes as best they could.

The young man was passed by a truck, who asked him where he was going. He said, “I am going to Porechye, where the church nestles in a clearing in the forest and the ducks swim on the village pond, and there is a beautiful girl called Masha who has beautiful blue eyes and beautiful blonde hair. Do you know it?”. And the men on the truck said “Yes, yes, we know it. We are going far, and Porechye is on the way. Come with us, and we will take you there!”.

So the young man got onto the truck, and he travelled with them for many, many days, that turned into many weeks. They had many adventures together, and eventually they reached the village of Porechye. His friends cried “here you are, back at your home, but we have far to go still, and must leave you here with our best wishes!” And the young man waved farewell until the truck was a distant spek, and then he walked into Porechye.

He found that there was a church nestling in a grove in the forest, but it was a different church, and indeed a different grove. There was a village pond, but it was not the village pond of his Porechye, and the ducks were of a different kind. There was even a girl called Masha, who had beautiful blue eyes and beautiful blonde hair – but it was not his Masha. For Russia is very, very large, and there are many villages named Porechye, with churches in groves and village ponds and beautiful girls called Masha, and the young man had not thought, before he left for the army, to ask how to get back. And so he buttoned his coat and hitched up his pack, and set off to find his Porechye, wherever it was.

The book, alas, did not say whether he ever found it. Perhaps he is still searching. I’m not sure why I’m even telling you this story, but I suspect it has something to do with roots, and where we’re from, and the globalized world, and how we sustain communities when the big world outside is rocked by great change. I suspect that this is where this blog is going in future.

I’ve just come back from a wedding in Manchuria - in Liaoning province, that is, part of China’s northeastern rust belt. Getting there from Beijing was fascinating; it took only four hours on the super-modern electric train to Shenyang. From there, it was a forty-minute drive to the town where the wedding took place. Here the post-industrial decay showed clearly – despite the broad streets, and a bold new SOHO complex, most of what I saw was decaying apartment blocks, hardly any traffic, hardly any lighting on the streets at night. On the night we arrived, I fancied a beer before hitting the sack; I asked the hotel concierge if there was a bar nearby. He looked at me in total astonishment. No, there were no bars of any kind, anywhere nearby. He was right, too.  In the end, I found a hotpot restaurant, and enjoyed  a 3RMB bottle of local beer, and very nice it was too!

The wedding was astonishing – the bride is  of the Manzu ethnic minority group, and an only child. The parents had splashed out on a traditional wedding parade through the town streets. We started at 7am, perhaps to avoid traffic, but I’m told that Chinese weddings do normally start early.

A caravan driver wearing (fake) skins, and with a knotted whip led the way, loudly cracking the whip to alert people to get out of the way. He was followed by a fawning jester, and by the female matchmaker. Then came the (French) bridegroom on horseback, in flowing yellow robes. Next, a phalanx of dancing girls carrying red lanterns on poles preceded musicians playing drums, gongs, etc. Next came the bride, who was carried (well, rolled along on castors, but it looked like they were carrying her) in a traditional sedan chair by four big men. The bride was wearing a traditional red wedding dress and veil.  At the rear of the procession was a group of bodyguards in (pretend) armour, bearing broadswords. Finally, there were a group carrying the traditional large, triangular dragon-pheonix banners.

This caused pandemonium as we walked through the streets – people came running to see, and leaned out of homes and shops to watch. Buses screeched to a halt, and cars slowed to watch, causing instant storms of horn-blaring from those behind. The biggest worry was the taxi drivers coming from behind: there’s a wedding procession? So what, I’ve got work to do! Press down on the horn, and keep going! Let those darned revellers look out for themselves! Fortunately the groom’s horse took it all in its stride, and didn’t buck or bolt, which was my biggest worry!

I was struck by the reaction of old women when we passed them – they almost all went into fits of delight and curiosity, wresting to glimpse the bride, pointing and chattering loudly and enthusiastically. We speculated that these are the ones who remember such wedding processions from pre-1949? Pre-Cultural Revolution? days. I should ask when these stopped becoming common.

I took a lot of pictures and video on my Nokia N73, until the memory card filled up. I regretted then that I hadn’t taken my EeePC – I learned on my trip to Pingyao in May that it only takes a couple of minutes to swap out the Nokia’s SD card into the EeePC’s card slot, transfer the pictures and video to a USB memory stick, and then start filming again. The perfect combination for the “citizen journalist”?

After the wedding feast,  we changed, and made the trip back to Shenyang and Beijing. I was only away for a day and half, but it still felt strange to arrive back in the ‘Jing’s traffic congestion and smog. It was a really different perspective on China, and has encouraged me to get out and travel a bit more than I have to date.

I’ve just moved in to my new apartment, on the inner side of Beijing’s north-western Second Ring Road. This road was built where the city’s ancient defensive walls used to stand, so “inside the second ring road” means “inside the historic part of the city”. One of Beijing’s little mysteries, by the way, is that there is no First Ring Road…

My apartment block’s not historic, except perhaps for the people: when the old alleyways and courtyard dwellings were to build shopping malls etc, the local residents were relocated in these housing areas. They’re rather cheaply built – bare concrete stairways, and no elevators (and didn’t I feel that this morning, when I was carrying my boxes and bags up to my 7th-floor place – I climbed those stairs twelve times, each time with a heavy load!).

Today’s been a lovely late summer day: blues skies, the air getting dry now, compared to the humidity of July and early August. I was coming back from my evening meal at the Guloudajie dumpling joint, looking up at the stars as they came out… and then realised, hey, I can see the stars! At least in these areas, and especially in these apartment complexes, Beijing has definitely joined the Dark Sky movement, with plenty of screened halogen lights, sending all of their light downwards – not up into the sky…

It’s also interesting that the apartment complex has lots of “flower beds” around – which is to say, I don’t think anything much was ever done with them, except perhaps some sickly grass. However, almost every available spot has been colonised somehow, bu residents planting all kinds of flowers and other plants. Sometimes occupants of ground-floor flats have planted vines outside, training them up to almost entirely cover the windows. I can see the advantages – extra privacy and insulation, flowers, and so on, but it must still be a little strange to live there! Anyway, another Western trend that’s got some coverage lately, Guerrilla Gardening, also has its Beijing equivalent!

So, the Olympics have come and gone,the Paralympics will start soon, but the city and it’s local culture – which didn’t get so much attention – continue to grow and thrive in ways that the rest of the world could learn from.

Living in China is fascinating in very many ways; one of them is watching the transformation of values as prosperity spreads through Chinese society. The Chinese are, of course, just like everybody else: they want security, consumer goods, education… and that shouldn’t be any surprise; it’s odd sometimes to hear Western commentators (especially in the US) attributing more sinister reasons to China’s increasing demand for the resources needed for a better life.

The worrying thing is whether it can last – not just here, but everywhere. Looking at my RSS feeds, I see many worrying trends:

• the price of oil is rocketing – $200/barrel soon? – and that’s affecting our entire society. In the US, the consequences will be felt most of all; Paul Krugman talks about this in today’s IHT, for example.
• One consequence is the rising price of food, for example, partly because so much agriculture is based on oil-derived fertilisers, partly because of the substitution of crops for ethanol production instead of food crops. (This situation may soon get much, much worse as the Ug-99 fungus looks set to devastate wheat production throughout Asia and the Middle East).
• The rise in food prices has already sparked food riots in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean. What happens when people realise that their government is not capable of ensuring affordable food? Of course, they lose faith in the government and, eventually, seek more effective affiliations – perhaps criminal, or insurgent… and these groups are getting more and more powerful, with sometimes international or global influence. This is the kind of trend that John Robb is documenting in Global Guerillas, and it can make worrying reading. Just as a thought, who do you think will be strengthened by food riots in Afghanistan?

So the future looks tough. I don’t think it will necessarily be the Grim Meathook Future that did the rounds a year or two back; there will be technical fixes, and new discoveries, and political initiatives. At least, I really hope there will. Still, it’s worth reading and comparing two IHT articles on transition from abundance to scarcity and self-reliance. Which one would you choose for yourself?

1. Voluntary simplicity re-emerges. A renewed trend in the US of affluent, educated professionals shedding their possessions, and opting for a simpler lifestyle as on-line homesteaders, or techno-nomads.
2. Living off the land in a post-Soviet world. When their economic and political world collapsed, well-off skilled workers in Kyrgzstan were forced to become subsistence farmers. They were the lucky ones, perhaps, with land and clean water.

Like I say – which transition would you prefer? What’s the best way to prepare?

Over the past four years or so, I’ve written a number of posts on China’s role as a destination and a source of cultural influence. China hasn’t just been drawing the MNCs, the investors, the outsourcers, and the rest of the big battalions of globalization. It’s also been drawing the artists, the freelancers, the global nomads, and the dreamers – all those who recognise that change is brewing and want to be a part of it, no matter how small, or who seek the opportunity to reinvent themselves, or to find a niche for themselves that they couldn’t find wherever they came from. It’s this that separates China from Singapore, for example, where they prefer established artists who are already successful, and where up-and-comers are co-opted early on because there’s no way to get a platform without government or corporate sponsorship.

Amongst the foreigners here in Beijing – I hesitate to say ‘expatriates’, which is too loaded a term – there’s a common meme that Beijing now is like Paris between the wars, a society in flux, open to new ideas, prosperous whilst still cheap to live in; I have to agree, and it means that this city – and Shanghai, and Kunming, and Xi’an, and many others – are drawing in young, creative, adventurous people, who are engaging in a fertile exchange with the local scenes. Many of these people (I suspect) will be culturally influentual in the future, and are being shaped and influenced by China.

So, having felt all that for a while, it’s really interesting to see something on the same lines appear in the IHT today: For a new generation, land of opportunity may lie in China, not the US.

According to Stephanie Martin, the new worldwide lead for IBM Developer Relations, the number of young new IT developers is falling fast in the US, but rising fast in East Asia.

“In China what we’re seeing is interest in core technologies in the open standards area,” Martin said. “We’re seeing the most interest in learning more about Java, JavaScript and SOA as well as how all those work together. We’re also seeing interest there in Web 2.0 technology.”

Japan and Korea are also growth areas for developers; the latter apparently seeing 57% more people join IBM’s Developer Network in 2007 than in 2006. What’s interesting is that this represents collaboration between skilled and enthusiastic participants, which will hopefully means rising standards. Add this to the innovation and experimentation we’re seeing in other fields (eg the approaches to mobile phone design I wrote about recently), and it looks like we can expect to see lots more exciting developments coming out of the Confucian zone soon…

… of the cultural tide reversing?

Apparently, Damon Albarn, of Blur and Gorillaz fame, has written his first opera…

Apparently, it will be performed here in Beijing later this year, in June. I’ll be here… I’ll look forward to seeing it!

[youtube pCYj3GOy7v4]

The Guardian has an interesting piece on Beijing’s music scene…. no idea if I’ll have time to get to any gigs, but Beijing is a really happening place, with all sorts of underground and overground cultural stuff going on…