Progress

There are many things to complain about in China, among them the fact that complaining about them publicly can lead to your visa being canceled (if you’re lucky enough to be a foreigner from a respected country). One thing I really can’t stand is privileged foreigners, usually expats, indulging in rants against their home countries while pointing out how China is doing everything better, usually including an apologetic sentence in the beginning or end (Yes, human rights, BUT …). Along with it often comes an arrogant attitude of someone who believes he embarked on the right side of history and the stupid people in his stupid home country are just dumb to understand that THIS IS THE FUTURE!!!!

Having said that, even with a more moderate point of view one has to admit that there are developments in China that are underreported in our media and that we can learn from or should at least be aware of. It’s also true that our media has a bias, though I’m not sure if bias is the right word. It’s rather a different setting of priorities. While many people, including me, think that the economical and technical developments happening in China will have the biggest impact on our own future and thus are the most important things to report about, journalists working for big publications often see their mandate in revealing the downsides, problems and dangers of China’s authoritarian governance – which is important too. So in order to get a bigger picture I think the best thing to do is to read traditional newspapers but also some other publications, such as techcrunch for news concerning China’s thriving start up scene or the South China Morning Post, a Hong Kong based newspaper that’s sometimes a bit too comforting, but has many in detail reports about issues that are below the radar of foreign publications.

There’s one thing in particular that annoys me about Europe (especially Germany) and that I love about China: Openness to technological progress. When you think of automation and robotics, what’s your first thought? If you mainly consume German newspapers, chances are you’re worried about consequences for the labor market and the replacement of humans by machines. The same for literally all other new technologies: Gene editing = Disrupting nature, jeopardizing our planet. Sharing economy = Killing traditional businesses, threatening steady, stable jobs. Digital payment methods = Surveillance, dangers through hacking, transparent citizen. It’s good to have a critical assessment of new technologies, but if that leads the people of a country to reject them from the outset, something’s gone wrong. Add to that the excruciatingly long and often failing processes to plan and implement new infrastructure due to excessive standards and citizens who think a few hectar protection area for some animal species are actually more important than modern roads and train tracks (recent example: 10 years to rebuild a bridge in Berlin – cities like Dubai or Beijing would be unrecognizable after the same amount of time) and you can’t help but feel like Germans sometimes just really want to harm themselves. The funny thing is that Germany has amazing fundamental research and innovation potential, but often fails to realize that because of a lack of entrepreneurial spirit and the public aversion to new things.

China is the other extreme. As long as they do not threaten party-rule, innovations are not only welcome but actively promoted by the state as a way to modernize the country and ultimately make it globally competitive. It took China three (3!) years to go from a quasi-monopole for cash to nearly cashless in major cities. In less than the time it took Germany to build 500km of tracks for the Berlin-Munich connection, China – not having had high speed railways before – built an entire new network only for bullet trains which currently has a length of 27000km. And it’s not just visible on the bigger scale, you can see the pace of progress in your everyday life here too. Shops close and open, a new bike-sharing service appears and vanishes, some trend sets in and all of a sudden everybody uses an app for something that had to be done manually before. The key to this fast-lived environment is not just a lower amount of regulations or the very competitive spirit of young entrepreneurs here, it’s also that Chinese seem to more welcoming to changes in their everyday lives. Offer a German a solution for a minor problem (say an app that allows you to quickly buy public transport tickets on your phone) and he will ask: “Do I really need this? What about data privacy?” Offer it to a Chinese and he will take it for the initial discounts offered and happily keep using it for the time saved and comfort added.

I know, we’re doing quite good in Germany, so why change a running system? I think it’s this kind of wary, phlegmatic attitude that’s dangerous in the long run. The world doesn’t stop evolving because you’re happy with the status quo and isolating yourself from this only leads to a bigger impact when reality catches up with you. While I’m really happy that we have a government that puts the individual citizens and their concerns first, I’d love to see some more curiosity and a positive vision of the opportunities the future holds.

Morals

This picture is taken from the evaluation of an online survey where people from all over the world could indicate their moral preferences for an altered version of the "trolley problem" with self-driving cars. All the questions assume you are in the car and encounter a situation in which a crash is inevitable, but depending on how the car is programmed, there are different outcomes, e.g. either an old person or a child, either a rich person or a poor person will be killed etc. One of the questions asked whether you'd prefer to die yourself or kill an (presumably innocent) pedestrian. The responses can be seen above and well, China does not come over as the most empathetic place...
The full article can be found here.

The running foreigners

After some exhausting, smart-ass history plus geopolitics comments, the time has come for letting you know about my recent triathlon effort. For your information: I used to be a sporting ace in high school, doing mountainbiking and running every other day. That was before Berlin and studying happened. Who could’ve known live had so many more interesting activities on offer, like going to bars or simply cramming your day so full of social activities that you didn’t even get home between 10am and midnight (another factor is that Berlin’s topography leaves mountainbiking without mountains, which is a pretty boring activity – also your bike will probably get stolen after a few months). So I kept running every now and then out of a sense of duty and despite my suboptimal lifestyle health-wise, my cardio remained on an acceptable level thanks to my age and the years of previous training.

That being said, things got even worse since I arrived in Beijing. As mentioned before, this is not a city where you want to move around by foot. After a while I managed to find a decent running track, but soon after winter arrived. Call me a pussy, but I do sports for fun, not because I think what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger. And there are more fun things I can think of than running in -5°C climate, like staying at home. So besides swimming and playing some badminton, I’m lazy right now.

But when I got the offer to participate in a triathlon, fully paid for and with the prospect of even getting some extra money for finishing, I obviously couldn’t resist.

Little digression: White Monkey Job – Chinese love white people, at least in specific settings for specific occasions. Whenever something has to appear worldly, international or chic, you better have some white faces on it! Sometimes black or arab faces do too, but the relationship is there is more ambivalent, while as a white person, you nearly exclusively experience positive racism. White people are also great English teachers, no matter if they’re from the States, the Netherlands or Russia (but try getting an English teacher job with an Asian face, no matter where you were born). Because of these circumstances, there are numerous so-called “white monkey jobs”, some more, some less dignified. You can be a background actor, maybe a model or an attraction at a night-club. I even heard of some white people attending a wedding celebration as hostesses. I’m not keen on any of these activities, but I really appreciate that rural sports events these days like to invite and equip foreigners to look less rural. In this case, being cold-blooded capitalist pays off, because you’re going to the unlikeliest events, do things you usually wouldn’t and end up not paying for that or even earning some money.

Two weeks ago I attended the first and hopefully not last event of this kind, a triathlon in Jiangxi (江西) province near its capital Nanchang (南昌), about 1500km south of Beijing. The distances weren’t too hard, 13,3km running, 2km kayaking and 22km biking, but not having been in a competition for years, I was still very excited. Upon arrival at the train station (night trains truly are a blessing), I was picked up by the organizer himself and then taken onto a bus with a few curious volunteers that were helping at the event. After arriving in the tiny city of Jing’an (靖安县) I registered and then waited for hours until more foreigners arrived, among them Olya, veteran foreign participant at Chinese running competitions and organizer of “foreign delegations” to them. Many of the foreigners are regulars at those events and thus know each other, so the competitions also function as get-togethers for them. On this one, 14 of us participated, some of them pros running as a means to earn their living (through price money), others just like me – making use of the paid-for policy to have a good time. After checking into the (pretty nice) hotel and preparing bikes, equipment etc. for the run the next morning, we all went to bed quite early.

The competition took place the next day at 8am, so that the slowest participants would finish around noon. The running part came first, starting on a typical newly build (means huge) street and then diverting into a river valley. The race was officially cross-country, but actually all the biking and running took place on paved roads, it was only a bit hillier than normal competitions. I was very surprised to see that my pace wasn’t all that different from my best times some 5 years ago (about 1km/h slower – but given the terrain it would probably even be less under normal circumstances). I was even more surprised that I managed to finish the kayaking in an acceptable time and without falling into the water – it was my first time. During the last section, I constantly competed with and eventually lost to a really dogged Chinese lady, but was still fairly satisfied, because by teaming up during riding bikes we both improved our pace. The end result was 30^th out of 120 or so participants. Since my humble goal was not to bite the dust and finish somehow, I’m super happy about it.

Representing "international" in the events title

After finishing, I could feel like a superstar for once in my life. I really don’t envy them. Hundreds of Chinese, most of them in school age, were gathering at the city square where the race started and ended. They probably just came because there weren’t that many others things to do in Jing’an on a Sunday, but once they saw foreigners, they knew what to do. If you didn’t move for more than a minute, someone would certainly approach you with a smartphone asking for a picture. Once that happened, around 20 others (usually girls) who previously had been to shy to ask broke their silence and started queuing up for a picture. I tried to stay patient and friendly - after all, there are no evil intentions whatsoever - but after 2 hours of taking pictures, you really start to get tired of it. Even more annoying are the usually middle-aged Chinese women (sometimes men too) who just film you for minutes without asking for consent or even looking at you. If you happen to be black and have nappy hair you sometimes come across particularly brazen locals who just start to pet your hair like it was someone’s dog. That’s when you realize again that most of China is not Beijing or Shanghai (where this stuff doesn’t happen at all anymore), but places that barely see people from other countries. But for exactly that reason I’m really keen on participating at more of these events – you’re seeing a part of the country you otherwise definitely wouldn’t.

And a glimpse into the crystal glass

So where is all this leading us? God knows, I don’t, mostly because the development hinges on a few factors that are extremely hard to predict. So instead of assuming too much, I rather choose the humbler path of pointing at a few facts and possibilities that I feel are often overlooked.

1. Like size for example. This is the simplest one and actually quite obvious, but there’s no harm in repeating it over and over again: China hast 1.4 billion inhabitants – the US has 325 million, the EU 512 million. So comparing China to the US is a bit like comparing Germany to Austria. Given the sheer size of its population, China would naturally be the most powerful, dominant country on earth (the same goes for India). The fact that it’s not, that even now its per capita income is still less than a 5^th of the German one, shows how far China on the whole still is from the standard of life that we enjoy – despite its superb infrastructure and glistening megacities.

2. People base their predictions for the future on their experiences of the past. That’s a fair heuristic principle most of the time, but as you know from your own life, when things are too good to be true, some shit happens and brings you back down to earth. The period of growth for China won’t last forever. Its end is not bound to arise as an explosive financial crisis (though that’s possible too), it might as well come in the form of ever decreasing growth rates at a time where there’s still a big gap between China and fully developed countries. The same kind of awe that people are showcasing now was a common reaction to Japan’s meteoritic rise in the 1980s and early 90s, before it imploded and left a country with a nearly stagnant economy and huge demographic problems. This is not to say that the same is going to happen in China, but merely to show that predictions on the basis of previous developments are only right until coincidence proves them wrong.

3. This is actually a more specific example of my second point “things that don’t have to and hopefully won’t happen but with a chance of them happening so big that they should be taken into consideration”. I’m sure we all agree that war is an evil and starting a war is morally wrong, except maybe in a few very specific, very rare cases. Yet wars happen, despite their negative consequences and despite everybody knowing about these consequences from history. How come? A widely accepted theory of international relations purports that in the absence of a supreme authority countries behave like humans in the stone age, uncivilized, tribalistic and constantly fighting for survival. As a global power, the US is currently kind of a supreme authority that decides on the rules and how and when to apply them.

Now if you were in this position, would you happily give up or share your power with some other country that has very different opinions and views? Probably not, so you’re preparing for the worst. Since there’s no higher power that could intervene or mediate, suspicion between incumbent and challenger reigns. Nobody wants a hot war, but then again, in order to reach strategic goals, under certain conditions state leaders would be willing to risk it. And of course there’s the slippery slope. While a sudden raid on a country like it was common 100 years ago is highly unlikely these days, a tit-for-tat situation that boils over and develops into an actual armed conflict is a real possibility. In fact, it doesn’t even require a lot of fantasy, so here’s a little horror scenario:

Basic premises: China remains assertive and nationalist, the US retains its bipartisan support for containment and a hawkish foreign policy and Taiwan keeps voting green (its independence party) and increasingly identifies as a non-Chinese entity – the latter is also an already ongoing process, with young Taiwanese people overwhelmingly identifying as Taiwanese rather than Chinese.

Driven by its own promises and pressure from a big nationalist share of its population, China becomes more and more aggressive in the South Chinese Sea and the Taiwan Strait. The Taiwanese realize that they can’t have both forever – economic advantages from ties with the Mainland and autonomy as a quasi-country. Polls show strong support for independence among the population (in case you don’t know: Taiwan is a full democracy) and activists demand a popular vote on the issue once for all. The US – well aware that a retreat here would be interpreted as a surrender to China in the Asia-Pacific region – guarantees its support for the democratic decision of the Taiwanese people. The vote for independence would then result in immediate military action by China. Even though it is said to be very pragmatic, there are a few core principles that would always cause China to take radical action, the most important being unity. Basically, the Chinese understand their history as a dialectic process between unity and chaos. When China is whole and united, it is strong and successful, when it is divided, it is weak and vulnerable. This is a core principle carved into the culture. It is not necessarily accurate, since “China’s” territory changed a lot during the dynasties and there is no such thing as a Han culture pervading millennia. But argue whatever you want, from a Chinese perspective giving up a single square meter of its alleged territory is the road to chaos and humiliation, which is why a Taiwanese attempt to independence would naturally lead to a Chinese attack, resulting in a war with the US.

This scenario also has the “advantage” that none of the countries acted as an aggressor, as viewed by their own people respectively. Taiwan merely established its independence formally, China merely prevented separatism and the US merely reacted to an attack on a free, sovereign nation.

A very interesting book/study once let experts on their field make predictions and measured these against those of the interested general public, coincidence and reality. The result was that experts were not really better than anyone else in predicting the future, especially on fields with an extremely wide range of influence factors like politics. There are so many “ifs” and “given thats” surrounding the future development of something as big as a country that really nobody can make a sound guess that goes further than a few years – and even that only if one extrapolates and no unexpected incidents occur.  A crumb of comfort for Europeans: Out of many worrying developments in this world, this is one of the few where we can and should step back and just observe – neither do we have a chance of changing the course of events, nor will the events have a major impact on us.

History Lesson

In my first post I announced that this is not just going to be a travel/expat diary, but that I also want to talk a bit about today’s China and what to expect from it. So instead of letting you know about my recent midterm exams and this one weekend trip to Nanjing that I did, let’s get serious.

For most of civilizational history, there were two dominant players on this globe: India and China (this is a fact we shamefully neglect in our history classes, where you get the impression that everything further east than Arabia was exotic hinterlands). 75% of the time AD, Europe was mostly forest with clans, shires and pre-states fighting each other, bad infrastructure and predatory public institutions. North America had no significant population. Then, through a number of intertwined developments, Europe got a headstart that is incredible and unique in historical terms, allowing it to dominate the globe for hundreds of years (this is – in my opinion – one of the most interesting chapters in history and I would love to extend, but it’s beyond the scope of this little blog). China reacted to this by isolating itself – not a great idea. India didn’t get to choose, the British simply subjected it – also not great.

When China was forced to open up by foreign powers in the second half of the 19^th century, it was merely a shadow of its former self and easily dominated by countries a fraction of its size and population. This led to an overthrowing of the last dynasty government in 1912 and the and the proclamation of the Republic of China. Republic of China? Isn’t there a “People’s” missing? That word is only included in the name after 1949, as the Communists eventually win the endless civil war against the Nationalists and force the latter to flee to Taiwan, which remains the number 1 geopolitical issue in East Asia and a possible trigger for a US-Sino war in the future. What was meant to be a fresh start for China some 100 years ago turned out to be nearly 40 years of campaigning and internal fighting, making the country even weaker than it was before under the anti-modernist Qing government. A short intermezzo was provided by imperialist Japan in second world war, whose war-crimes were so abhorrent that it brought Nationalists and Communists together against it. Once the Japanese were defeated, they of course diligently turned back to infighting. A few million dead bodies later the Communists defeated the Nationalists and Mao Zedong as their Chairman became the first head of state of the modern People’s Republic of China (PRC).

There’s evidence that countries can actually benefit from communism if they’re at a very low development stage. If you manage to overlook mass killings, resettlements and incarcerations, many development indicators went up in during the first years of Mao’s reign. People had enough food (mostly), many learnt to read and write, some conservative social norms were overthrown and women gained more power and independence. That was before Mao went nuts however. Undisputed within the Communist Party to his death, his ideas could go unchecked, causing a massive famine (est. death toll: 36 to 45 million people) and scorched earth intellectually, economically and technologically.

Then came the miracle under the name of Deng Xiaoping. Since he took over as the effective head of state in 1976, there hasn’t been one year in which the Chinese economy didn’t grow. He’s usually modestly labelled a “reformer”, but matter of fact, the China that is now the worlds second largest economy and close to becoming a great power would not exist without him. His premise was simple: Economic liberalization that would make nobody’s life worse. That actually worked. As it is the rule with more capitalist economic models, some people have become super rich while others are still poor, but there’s nobody who is as poor today as people were in 1976.

After centuries of isolation, it took China 100 years to adapt and rearrange itself to the modern world around it, but from there on development happened at an insane pace. Skip forward one generation and a nation of subsistence farmers whose survival depends on their harvest has become the world’s production facility with a huge industry workforce, massive urbanization and an emerging middle class. Skip forward another 15 years to the present and you see that middle class being the majority in China’s more populous and developed eastern provinces. You also see an economic superpower that turns from producing and copying to innovating at a frightening pace.

For most of its rise, China received admiration and accolades – at least economically – from the West. At the same time, nobody outside of policy circles saw a serious challenge in the development. After all, the country is far away and can they do anything besides assembling and copying lol? This changed dramatically in recent years (even months), as policymakers became aware that yes, they can and it doesn’t really matter how far away a country is if its ambitions are global. They also realized that China will never go down the path that was envisaged for it, leading to a flourishing liberal democracy that integrates into the US-led global order. Instead, there is now an increasingly nationalist and illiberal autocracy that promotes socialism with Chinese characteristics which translates to excessive capitalism with the state as the ultimate decision-maker.

What’s to come? Right now, nearly every analysis is based on the premise that China will just keep growing and growing, maybe at 7%, maybe 5% annually. This leads pro-China experts to proclaim a new world order and con-China experts to prophesy doomsday. However, I’m invited to a delicious Xinjiang-Restaurant now (a cuisine blending Chinese and Middle-Eastern flavours) and thus can’t continue. Maybe this works as a cliffhanger so you’ll visit here again when I’m writing about the future.

Random Collection of Pictures

Inside a shopping mall that's halfway demolished, halfway in operation

If the smog levels rise above 200 pm2.5, the air becomes very hazy

Beijing's main CBD with the new supertall skyscraper "Zun" and
the famous CCTV building

A hike on an unrestored part of the Great Wall

How’s life?

I can’t believe it’s nearly two months since I arrived in Beijing. But if you have a routine, time passes quickly. From the first days here, most of my time here has been spent at university classes, studying or attending mandatory events, which I actually appreciate. Starting a new life with no fixed schedule is way more difficult. This way, I had an easy time getting to know people at classes, courses and events. Two months into Beijing, I feel pretty much settled (which is certainly not the same as feeling at home). So is live really that different here?

I feel like there’s no simple answer to that question. First, I’m certainly biased since I already know a good deal of Chinese. Coming here without any knowledge of the language, China is an immense challenge and a culture shock. Whereas in France or Spain, even if you don’t know the language, you’re still be able to 1. read/translate and 2. find people who will be able to help you if you talk English, here you’d be virtually illiterate and deaf-mute.

Language-barrier aside, there a plenty of new things you have to get used to, but then again you’re wondering how fast that process is actually happening. These things include:

1. Smartphone for everything

Still thinking Europe is developed and China is a developing country? Welcome to reality, where I reserve a table, call a taxi to the restaurant, select dishes, send my order and pay without anything but my smartphone and a single app. I can also wash my clothes with an app. I can ride dirt-cheap bicycles at every street corner with an app. I send money to all my friends with an app. I pay my metro ride with an app. I exchange business contacts with an app. Basically, China – or at least its developed coastal cities – are very close to the point where your smartphone replaces every single item you’re carrying in your purse right now. Sure, you’re gonna argue data privacy and police state, and this is indeed a problem in a country where everything is controlled by a single ruling party, but then again, to me these arguments often sound like a lame excuse of rich countries who became too comfortable and lazy to try out new things.

2. Taxi for anywhere

I actually try to avoid this – it often feels decadent and unnecessary to me (and I don’t wanna get the reverse culture shock when forking out 30€ for a 15-minute taxi ride in Berlin). But the truth is, Beijing is so big that despite its relatively good public transport network, it often just takes too long to get somewhere. Furthermore, everything stops running at around 11pm. At the same time, 1km in a taxi costs around 0,28€, making it really hard to opt for other options. Even for Chinese people, this is a good deal – way better than for us in Germany. It also gives you the chance to talk to and not understand Beijing locals mumbling about things.

3. College Life

This is of course rather specific for my situation, you probably wouldn’t live in a student dorm if you came here to work. I’ve been through this before, and even though I like the German model with most students having their own (shared) flats throughout the city more, dormitories have some appeal to them. From a practical perspective, there’s nothing like leaving your room and entering the classroom 5 minutes later. It’s also a lot easier to meet up with university friends spontaneously. And since we’re being spoiled with single rooms, privacy is not a big issue either (my last dorm experience was sharing a small room with a co-student in Taiwan, something I don’t really have to repeat).

4. FOOD

A very positive change indeed. As an ardent worshipper of Asian cuisine, this is heaven. Authentic Chinese food comes in an unimaginable variety (we’re talking about a huge country with over 1 billion inhabitants after all) at ridiculous prices. For that reason, and because cooking in a common area without your own pots and pans is annoying, I don’t do any food or drinks myself here (except coffee, because the Chinese notion of that usually includes too much sugar and too little espresso). The social importance of food and eating in China is a lot higher in general, with having dinner together being everyone’s favorite pastime. If you’ve never experienced real Chinese food (definitely not the one you’re getting at a “All-you-can-eat” buffet), try googling “Hot Pot” and see if there are places nearby serving it.

There are two things that I find a bit unnerving, and these will probably stay with me during my time here. One is Beijing as a city. It certainly has its interesting aspects – history, politics, the small Hutong alleys in its center – but for the most part, Beijing is a gigantic pancake with congested roads. It’s as pedestrian friendly as a formula 1 racetrack and getting somewhere not your neighborhood is a big mental effort. The concept of public space is quite new in China, more so in its ever paranoid political center Beijing, where the city planning up into the 20^th century was deliberately carried out so that there would be no places where people could gather (and possibly scheme or revolt). While other Chinese cities slowly try out things such as public green areas or pedestrian areas (that usually resemble open-air malls), Beijing seems to remain true to its modern-era roots, which are big streets and enclosures. While the latter luckily is a rare sight in Europe, Beijingers love to enclose just about everything. Gated communities obviously, but why not enclosing the university? Hell, why not enclosing the PUBLIC park? I’d really like to know the reason, contemporary China is a fairly safe place, so security is not a major concern. Maybe it’s just reminiscing the Great Wall? Anyways, it gives the city the look and feel of a very efficient but dead place where public space is merely the necessary vehicle to take you from your office job to the shopping mall.

The second thing has to do with the people here and again, I was prepared for it so I’m not too surprised. Good things first, I like the people here and haven’t had problems with locals at all, many of them are in fact super nice. That being said, making friends (in the sense of building a meaningful relationship) with Chinese proves to be extremely difficult, and not just because of the language barrier. I can say that because I know foreign born Chinese people who speak the language perfectly and still struggled to connect with people when they were staying in their parents homecountry. I’m sure there are exceptions, but generally speaking, foreigners hang out with foreigners or with Chinese that have had strong western influence in their lives, e.g. studying or living abroad for a while. This is quite sad but probably unpreventable given the vast cultural gap. Through language and deliberate isolation, most Chinese live in a huge, fluffy bubble, full of cheesy pop ballads, food and TV dramas and mostly devoid of things that we would call mature or earnest, like political debate, complex movies or art in general. I know I’m walking a thin line, especially in big cities like Beijing all this is available even without having to circumvent state censorship, and in the West there are also tons of people who don’t care about the latter things. Proportionately however, I’d say there are huge differences. Generally speaking, the Chinese perspective on the world is pragmatic and materialistic. Why wasting your time pondering politics when you can’t change them anyways? What matters is personal success – traditionally defined as getting a well-paid job, a befitting partner and the best education for your kids. I assume that this will change, as it did in other countries who were becoming wealthy, but that is a matter not of years but generations. In the meantime, we can consider ourselves lucky that many German brands count as status symbols for which Chinese are willing to pay crazy amounts of money just to show that they can afford them.

What is this language?

 This language – Mandarin – is a tonal language belonging to the family of Sino-Tibeton languages, which might or might not have had a common ancestor with our Indo-European languages some 15 000 years ago (one of the reasons it’s so strange to us). It’s the mother tongue to an estimated 1 billion speakers, more than twice the number of the second most common one in the world, Spanish. It is also the major reason I came to China. I’m not a linguist or sinologist, so this is not going to be a scientific introduction, but rather a report of my personal experience enriched with a few facts.

We all heard that Chinese is a difficult language to learn. Think of those weird characters and the words that all sound the same to foreigners! For everybody keen on the Chinese culture and language I would love to deemphasize its difficulty, but I really can’t. It’s just a fact that Chinese is nothing like Spanish, French or any other European language you might have studied at school. Any self-titled multilinguist telling you how to learn to speak Mandarin in just 3 months (or 6 months, or a year) is probably just trying to sell you their shit. After more than two years of studying, I drew two conclusions that I think apply universally (unless you’re a language genius or come from a language that’s similar, like Japanese):

1. Chinese, especially its written form, takes a shitload of dedication

2. to speak fluently, there’s just no other way than living in China/Taiwan, I’d say for at least a year

Before I extend on those points, let me make my point clear. I dare say I have a modest talent for learning languages, but I’m far from a wunderkind. I don’t think that Chinese requires an exceptional amount of talent or intelligence anyways. What you’ll need is dedication and diligence. Which brings me to reasons for which it is not a good idea to start learning Chinese:

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         Your career:

This is probably one of the most common and equally wrong motives for a multitude of reasons. First of all, your career has not really a direct connection with China or Chinese, since the intrinsic motivation is not learning the language, but getting a good job / a lot of cash / power / whatever. If you’re down this path, you’re probably good at making cost-benefit analyses. In the same time you need to get your Chinese on a level that has any relevance in a vocational context, you could do an MBA at a prestigious university and work 3 gruelling years as a drone in some office tower to repay your student debt. That MBA also has the advantage of providing you with a great network and signaling all employers that you want to make it to the top. Chinese on the contrary is much less of a qualification for top jobs than most people think. First, despite the overall low proficiency in China, the international businesspeople there usually speak English, most likely better than your Chinese will ever become. Second, if you’re working on the Chinese market in an international company, you’ll always have Chinese colleagues whose English/German is most likely better than your Chinese will ever become. If you’re climbing up the career ladder, you’re getting your own assistant/translator, whose English/German is definitely better than your Chinese will ever become. If your goal is to work at a Chinese company, you might want to reconsider (In the words of our Business Chinese teacher: “Working culture at Chinese tech companies? [Laughing] Overtime, overtime! That’s the working culture.” There’s also the so called 6/12 or 6/14 rule at those companies, dictating working 12 or 14 hours a day for 6 days a week.) Ultimately, Chinese is not an important asset because in situations that are crucial for your company/institution like negotiations or meetings, there’ll always be people whose whole job is to translate. Is that an argument against learning Chinese for work? Totally not, your Chinese colleagues will like you a lot if you’re able to chat with them in their native tongue and if you’re happen to work in China, not knowing Chinese guarantees that you’ll stay an alien in the expat bubble forever. Just don’t start learning under the assumption that it’s going to be a career booster.

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               Kind of a general interest in languages / giving it a shot / finding Chinese culture somewhat                 fascinating

That’s the stuff that you often hear from exchange students, who happened to pick a Chinese or Taiwanese university and are now wondering if they should take the language classes offered. It depends on the goal: If it’s getting a glimpse of a language that’s fundamentally different from your own just out of curiosity, it makes sense. If it’s learning Chinese, you better have more than a bit of interest, because the one semester is but the kick-off to years of studying. After I stayed in Taiwan for half a year, taking the additional language classes offered, I could finally ask for a bus and not understand what people replied, that’s how far I got.

The best reason to learn Chinese is because you really want to learn Chinese, that’s what I’m convinced of and that’s what it’s like for me. I can’t even lay out exactly why I want to do it, there are many reasons plus some sense of purpose in the process. I want to understand China better, after all it’s becoming a global power. I am deeply intrigued by how different Chinese works from the languages I knew before. I have many Chinese-speaking friends who brought me closer to the culture. I want to be able to speak the language that 1 billion people are speaking, most of whom don’t know any other. There are many other small reasons that combined outdo the more frustrating aspects of learning Chinese. There are many.

The most obvious is the pace of progress. After more than two years, at least one of which I studied a lot, I still can’t have a normal conversation. Neither can I read texts that aren’t dumbed down for students. The same effort put into Spanish or French would’ve gotten me to C1 level, in Chinese I’m somewhere between A2 und B1. When you’re hanging out with Chinese, you’re inevitably feeling stupid at some point, because you’re always losing track of conversations, no matter how hard you’re trying to focus. Another factor is that just learning characters isn’t enough and it’s not even the greatest challenge (it’s actually far easier than I imagined in the beginning). The biggest obstacle is the overarching vagueness of Chinese. Characters are vague, sentence structures are vague and even content can be vague. Take the common character 才 (cái). It means talent or ability, but also describes a person that has talent or skill, serving for gifted persons as well as a suffix for a few professions. It furthermore is used as “just” in certain sentence structures, sometimes also as “only” or “actually”. This vagueness doesn’t seem to be a problem if you learn it from early on. Anecdotal evidence shows that bilingual kids often prefer Chinese over grammar-heavy, structured languages like German. If however you happen to grow up in this frame of reference, the seeming arbitrariness of Chinese can drive you crazy. It means that often, despite being able to recognize every single character, I don’t know what the f*ck I’m reading. A little comfort: It was even worse in ancient times. Modern Chinese is less dense, often using two syllables with similar meanings to create a word that is less ambiguous. For example, 树 and 木 both have „tree“ as a meaning, so if you put them together to 树木, “tree” becomes the only possible meaning. Normal Chinese people are in fact not able to understand ancient Chinese either, when I recently asked a woman to translate an inscription of Lao-Tze’s life on a statue, she couldn’t help me.

The other big challenge is listening comprehension and correct pronunciation. Compared to English or German, the Chinese language offers little creative leeway for vocal expression. Despite there being 75 000 characters (of which even an academic however won’t use more than 10 000, less than half that for the normally educated), there are only 413 possible syllables for pronouncing them. This number goes up to 1522 if you account for the 4 (+1) tones – and this is where the fun starts. If you’ve never learnt a tonal language in your life, to grasp the concept of syllables meaning different things according to how you pronounce them takes at least half a year. It takes a lot longer until you’re actually pronouncing words the way you should, unless you’re in steady contact with native speakers. A little mind-boggling example: The two syllables qizi can mean, depending on their pronunciation: Wife, wife and children, adopted son, flag, piece in a game of chess or bottle opener. Of course, often context allows to make the correct guess. But even then, Chinese people are not very forgiving when it comes to pronouncing words. It makes sense to pay close attention to the tones when you can – by nature – use them correctly. So quite often you find yourself in situations, where you as a foreigner - knowing their struggles - can actually understand what another foreigner is trying to say in Chinese, but the Chinese cannot, because it’s mispronounced. Another feature of the very limited amount of syllables is that having just an idea of how a word should sound like is not enough to understand something, because hundreds of words will kind of sound like that. The last annoying thing I need to mention (there are so many more, but these are the major ones I think – if you’re reading this and learning Chinese, feel free to tell me about others) is that there’s no such thing as standard Mandarin (I just realized I used Chinese and Mandarin synonymous, please excuse this culturally insensitive mistake, I’m too lazy to skip through the whole thing again), every place has its own accents. In Taiwan for example, people don’t really care if they’re supposed to pronounce a sh-, ch- or zh-, it all sounds like s. In Beijing, people love to add heavy Texas-like r’s to the end of some syllables in patterns I will probably never be able to understand.

After reading the last paragraph, you might be wondering why the hell any Westerner would want to learn Chinese when the world is full of joy and beautiful things to do. Well, in my case, I think part of the reason actually is that it’s so damn hard. It sometimes really feels like learning to speak again. Minor achievements like being able to read a menu and order in Chinese at a restaurant feel epic. The realization that you’re actually able to write a simple letter consisting of nothing but characters that 2 years ago were completely enigmatic to you is fantastic. It really is more than another language, because by learning it, you’re learning another culture and another way of thinking alongside.

Not quite like back in the days

When I was done with high school and started this blog, my desire first and foremost was to see some countries that were

1. different from mine

2. affordable with my strictly limited budget.

The second point explains the pettiness with which I used to detail my daily expenses, bargaining successes and expensive setbacks. Though my financial circumstances have somewhat improved and I don’t have to count every penny anymore, the frugal, offbeat type of backpacking still appeals to me. So when I first heard that there’s going to be a whole week of holidays around China’s National day (1^st of October), I was eager to find some destination that wouldn’t be flooded by domestic tourists - I was halfway successful. 

China has two weeks of National holidays each year, one around the Spring festival (equivalent to our Christmas) and one around its National day. These are the times of the year where you might see bird’s eye view pictures of massive 12-lane streets covered entirely by lines of cars in your news show’s foreign segment. And who could blame the Chinese for wanting a nice time out when average paid-leave entitlement ranges between 5 and 10 days a year? Having said that, you don’t want to be around major touristic sights when 1 billion people are vacationing at the same time.

After my Chinese language tandem partner told me how much she misses her former university’s city Weihai (威海) and I could find no information about sights and neither an article in the Lonely Planet, I decided on going there. Located around 700km southwest of Bejing in Shandong Province, it is a mere 6-hour train ride to get there. While it has no specific attractions, its location along the shore and the mild climate made Weihai a favorite vacation home investment place for rich Chinese, a fact made visible by an endless amount of apartment skyscrapers with no lights on at night. It’s permanent population of less than 3 million is however tiny by Chinese standards. 

Weihai - A mere village

I spent two days in a youth hostel that didn’t have any other foreign guest but lots of young Chinese who equally hoped to avoid the National holiday crowds. Despite limited conversational capabilities, most of my time there was spent with that group and I doubt that my listening comprehension ever advanced at such a pace before. Since there wasn’t really that much to do, the focus was on the important things – food and 玩, which literally means playing but has a meaning so broad it can actually be used for pretty much anything that’s (supposedly) fun to do.

Playing "Werewolfes" in Chinese - I had no clue what was going on

The second part of my 5-day trip then was a bit less exhausting (having a conversation in Chinese at my level requires as much focus as dealing with a mathematical problem) and more traditionally vacation-like, though I felt some regret for my decision to continue to Qingdao as I fought my way through the crowd covering its seaside promenade. Built by the Germans and famous for its beer (also German), Qingdao is frequently cited as one of Asia’s most livable cities and looks much like Europe in its very center. 

Interestingly, there’s no ire here against the former colonial power, the German roots are instead proudly displayed. For one thing, it certainly helps that Germany didn’t take Qingdao by force, but leased the land to establish a trading post. Additionally, the Tsingtao brewery established by Germans for their own consumption and now Asia’s second most successful brand of beer as well as the sewerage systems installed are widely seen as benign gifts. Ultimately, I think the Chinese view of power politics and even their own partial colonialization is a lot more pragmatic and forward-looking than those of many other countries, with little condemnation for the fact that stronger countries subject weaker ones (it’s a very different thing if other countries committed cruelties like Japan did – their relationship is still overshadowed by the atrocities it perpetrated in the first half of the 20^th century).

Qingdao's skyline is literally lit

Chinese find Europe and its architecture very romantic and consequently like to marry in
front of it (this has usually nothing to do with religion).

Apart from getting flattering comments for our country of origin and fighting our way through crowds beleaguering tourist attractions (forgot to mention, I was now with two German co-students), we made use of the extensive availability of Tsingtao beer. On one of these occasions, I got to know a Chinese German studies student whose dedication to and focus on getting drunk baffled me. Within a single night he managed to pass out, regain power (to drink more) and pass out again three times. At times I felt he was born into the wrong society and how acceptable his drinking behavior would be had he grown up in rural Bavaria.

Looks like a chemical experiment, but is just Tsingtao IPA - at least
according to the shopowner

As you can tell from this loose connection of story threads, there were no major events during those five days and I was actually hoping for the trip to be like that. I made tons of acquaintances, saw some places that seem just nice to live in, experienced some bits of China that are not super international Beijing or Shanghai and probably learnt more Chinese than in one week in class. Of course, this short trip was nothing in comparison to the nine month epic thing I did five years ago (and, as time passes, sometimes struggle to believe I actually did), but then again, I don’t even think that I could enjoy such a long time of meandering and rambling at the moment. Ask me again after the upcoming four uninterrupted months of classes.

The wonders of low-energy consumption housing and sumptuous buffets

As a DAAD scholar, I'm not only studying Chinese here, I'm also supposed to build a network in the local business community. The goal of the program, after all, is that I find an appropriate internship after the two semesters at BFSU. For this reason, there's a side-program that offers company tours and invitations to meet-ups and events. Many of the contacts are well-established German companies with branches in China and knowledge about the DAAD and its work here, but sometimes we do receive unusual propositions too. So when we were asked whether we'd be interested in a two day conference about low-energy consumption houses 120km from Beijing, I wasn't really sure if this would be relevant or useful to me.

After some pondering I decided to go for it anyways, along with three more persons from my program. Even if the technical details of thermal insulation for windows aren't really my area of expertise, I really wanted to experience the business lifestyle in China and see if it would be any different from what I used to know. This proved to be one of my better decisions. 

From the very beginning we were spoilt by the organizers to a degree that made me blush, given that except for one architect, none of us could actually provide anything technically substantial. We were picked up in Beijing by a German-speaking assistant from the international department of the hosting company "Windoor City" and then driven directly to the hotel in Gaobeidian (高碑店). The city lies in the Hebei Province that surrounds Beijing and reveals ugliness and ambition at the same time. With merely 600 000 inhabitants, it can be considered small by Chinese standards. It is shaped by the odd patchy mix of farms and grasslands next to mega appartment highrise building projects and 10-lane streets with few cars on them. Many restrictions on stock trading and international capital flows make investment into property option for Chinese and the results can be witnessed in satellite towns around major hubs all over the country.

We were then taken to a ridiculously opulent hotel that was monolithically rammed into the scenery. 

Ridiculously opulent lobby

Happy scholars with our assistent and the KFC dinner she arranged for us

Each one of us got their own room and after a quick dinner from KFC that we didn't really ask for but nonetheless appreciated, we went to our rooms wondering why we were here.

The next morning shed some light on our most pressing questions. We were chartered to Xiongan (雄安) where the actual conference was going to take place. Xiongan will be - at least at the will of the Chinese central government - the next Shenzhen or Shanghai, a High Tech city planned from scratch to attract investment and take the domestic industry to a new level. So far, it's a pilot project with a few houses, an information center, a conference center and a couple cool gimmicks. These feature delivery robots and supermarkets without counters that use cameras and other technology to check what you took out and recognize your face - which is linked to your WeChat Pay account (imagine the data privacy riots in Germany). I tried it myself and I'm honestly impressed, but back to the conference. It was held in Chinese with live interpretation, which unfortunately didn't help in making the topic more interesting. There were a few speeches about city-planning and architecture that caught my attention, but most of the contributions were really nothing you could attentively listen to after five hours of sleep.

The more interesting parts of the event were the breaks, filled with buffets as opulent as the monolithic hotel. We got into conversations with other participants fairly quick, maybe due to the lack of a language barrier. Indeed, everyone who wasn't Chinese seemed to be German, Austrian or Swiss. We slowly put the pieces of information together and they made a pretty story about China's rise, Germany's prestige and intercultural friendship.

The founder of Windoor City is a self-made man who started by manually carving frames for windows in his hometown. Arduously working his way up, about 15 years ago he made the momentous decision to buy German machinery for his production facilities. Along with it came Thomas Moser, owner of the eponymous family business from Baden-Wuerttemberg, to help setting it up. The two became and remain close friends despite not having a single language to converse in. With "Made in Germany", Moser GmbH lent its prestige to the Chinese company, winning a partner in one of the worlds most important markets in return. And thus, the conference was a mixture of Chinese representatives and the German Mittelstand. We had the chance to talk to many people who were doing business in China for decades already and the general impression that I got from it was that Germany's biggest advantage is its reputation for great, reliable engineering (that often translates into incredible price premiums for German products). In terms of technology, China is close or has already caught up in many industries.

The next morning, after a dinner buffet so lavish it could've made it into "Crazy Rich Asians", we were invited to a ground-breaking ceremony for yet another big development project in Gaobeidian that included seven different facilities. Still not knowing why we were invited at all, we watched the ceremony slightly baffled from the front rows where all non-Chinese people were seated. 

A botanical garden in the company's headquarters, cause why not?

Ground-breaking ceremony

One more buffet, this time in a big hall with lots of marble, and we were were on our way back to our unspectacular university life with a handful of business cards, a glimpse at Beijing's ambitions for the years to come and a fascinating small chapter of Sino-German business relations.

PS: The evening of our return, the German embassy in Beijing hosted its annual event for the German reunification day (3rd of October is during the Chinese public holiday season, therefore the event is antedated). Most importantly, this included another huge buffet, this time with Döner and sausages. Buffets should be the common way of consuming food.

Something visual

 

Scrambling for that Taobao (= Chinese Amazon) parcel

Wait, there's life!