Entries from June 2006 ↓

The month of May is the time Pipa fruit ripens in southern China. I joined a local tour to Tangxi near Hangzhou (about one-hour bus) to pick pipa. You don’t ususally see pipa in the West, and it seems to me that not many people in the east know it either. I was glad that I had chance to taste it.

What is the taste like? If it is a good one, pipa is pretty sweet and tastes fresh and good, but it means that your hands are all sticky from the sweet afterward.

Hello everybody. This is my first blog in this space. So much to tell but seemingly nowhere to start. Of couse I can write sth about China, since I am just back from this country, after starting a business there about half a year ago.

Everybody says China is the place to go for business. Cities like Beijing and Shanghai are teeming with foreigners working there or looking for opportunties to work in China. I knew before going to China that it would be a tough place to do business - no legal protection, having to have connections, bureaucratic procedures…Somehow, I went there still, believing that I would not be the unlucky one …

Obviously I was so so wrong. I will write more in this space about the things that happened to me, but for now, suffice it to say that this county seems so void and souless. The people (it is a generalization, I know) in the cities think only of one thing - how to make money. There is no politeness, nor courtesy.

The ridiculous thing is even those people who have experienced the tragic Culture Revolution, and whose youth have been completely wasted, have not turned out to be better persons after going through all the sufferings and hardships. To the contrary, they joined in the rush to make money and have turned very…

If you ask people in the mainland china what they believe, I am sure you won’t get anywhere. Because there is a massive belief void in the country. Communism, in pursuit of the common good, is gone. Socialism? You know that this is a country with a huge supply of cheap labour with no protection, ready for exploitation and for some to make big money from. Materialism? Definitely. Affluence is everywhere to be seen, from the expensive cars hogging the street in the big cities to expensive restaurants and hair dressers’ serving the new breed of wealth and luxury.

I recently read a Chinese book in which some famous writers, film directors and musicians who grew up in the 80s talk about the changes in China they have witnessed. All, without exceptions, have a pessimistic tone to what they see in the modern China. They voice out one feeling: so souless in this country. Is it a coincidence or does it carry certain degree of truthfullness to the description of modern China?

The irony is, people from all over the world flock to China to make business, find job opportunies or study. What can they find? Money? Big business? Chinese culture? I serioulsly wonder. Are they all happily living and working in China?