This Generation Read online

  I have some questions:

  1. Planned birth may be national policy, but doesn’t national policy need to have a foundation in law?

  2. If Yao Ming has more children than he’s allowed, will he be fined more than a billion yuan? Is there a legal basis for fines of this kind? What if one of these days some local government has the bright idea of announcing that parking violators will be slapped with a one-hundred-thousand-yuan fine?

  3. How are the proceeds from this huge levy going to be divvied up? I sure hope the departments involved are not going to resort to fisticuffs to settle this.

  4. Why is this fee called a “society-upbringing fee”? Are they really proposing that the child be raised by society? Do I take it that the parents need no longer concern themselves with this—that they can leave the kid on the doorstep of the governor of Anhui?

  5. How exactly is society supposed to have nurtured us, in the first place?

  6. If it’s so important to alleviate population pressures in China, then the best thing is if rich people emigrate, for that way not only will they not have to pay fines, they will also be reducing the population by more than three units—the greatest possible contribution they can make to this country.

  7. This new ruling does nothing to resolve China’s most real and most pressing problem—that of the poor having large families. If they have no income, or negative income, then logically shouldn’t the authorities be imposing a negative fine on negative income, in which case wouldn’t the government, in effect, be paying the poor for having extra children?

  I’ll just have to wait and see whether some bright sparks can answer these questions. I have actually raised some of these issues before, never anticipating that local governments would handle these matters even more foolishly. When it comes right down to it, this is a policy rooted in an egalitarian ethos. Actually, although people may be put out when they see that the rich have bigger families than others, this does not generate any social problems or demographic pressure. For a big nation to try to shape its policies to pander to its less well-off shows that it is dominated by a petty, micro-management attitude. What really matters is enabling the poor to improve their lives, or at least providing them with some social guarantees and basic welfare. If you spend your whole day jealous of Mr. X and cursing Mrs. Y, and celebrate with your several daughters and one son when you see some rich guy get fined six hundred thousand yuan, after you finish rejoicing aren’t you still just the same poor man you were before? None of the money that the government managed to extort is going to end up in your pocket. For all we know, the problems stemming from these exorbitant fines will be a lot more damaging than a few couples having an extra child.

  You’ve got to wonder, too, what the Anhui boss-man was thinking. If the police had it in for him like this, he must have really dropped the ball on the bribery front. Bad job there, I’m afraid. The international community, not knowing any better, is going to think he’s the only person in Anhui who has exceeded the birth limit.

  China is now a very unfair society. It’s normal, however, for social inequities to exist. A healthy society isn’t necessarily fair, but it needs to be just.

  Regarding my debt to society

  May 14, 2007

  In my previous post I raised the question of just how society is supposed to have raised us, because I hadn’t quite worked this out, but plenty of readers have now supplied me with answers. I’m going to quote from a few responses.

  “Han Han, how ignorant you are! How could you possibly imagine that society hasn’t raised you? Do you think that the street outside your house was put there for free?”

  I have to say that this comrade has extremely low expectations. He’s the type of citizen our government most appreciates—one who’s happy just so long as he doesn’t have to pay to walk down the street. But better not dream of ever driving a car, for though there aren’t many highways in China, the majority of the world’s toll roads are here and even basic national roads will charge you, even though when you buy a car you pay a purchase tax, a value-added tax, a customs tax, a consumer tax, plus an annual road maintenance tax and car/boat usage tax, not to mention the local license fee. I just hope that the street outside your house doesn’t get picked out by some boss or other for conversion to a motorway, or you’ll end up having to cough up some dough as soon as you leave your house.

  “Han Han, your ignorance amazes me. The education that you received, the house where you live, the store where you shop, the hotel where you stay, the hospital where you see a doctor—all these are things that the government has provided for you.”

  This comrade, I feel, has clearly confused welfare and commerce. So many of the things he mentioned are money-making enterprises. Free public education is still not genuinely free, and the other institutions deserve no further comment. I’m grateful, of course, to our government for building hospitals—it really set an international precedent there, didn’t it?

  “Han Han, you SB,3 if you were in war-torn Africa, or in Iraq, you’d realize how much the government has done for you.”

  This friend’s point is an interesting one. I like the way he used an English abbreviation when calling me “soldier-boy” and also that he reminded me about conditions on the battlefield. But, like our first respondent, he sets his sights too low. For him to compare a peaceful country like ours to one that’s fighting a war—now, that’s not very patriotic.

  Just how society has nurtured us remains a topic to which I need to give some serious thought. I’m sure it must have given me some support, for when there was a fire in our house some years ago it was 119 that we called to bring in the fire brigade (calling 120 and fetching the paramedics would not have counted, since you pay through the nose for that). We need to be clear about the distinction between profit-making enterprises and social nurturing. Social welfare is making some progress, but since the country is far from wealthy, the government seems always intent on treating benefits as though they’re a money-making opportunity. I have now paid over three million yuan in taxes to the government (in my profession, we do pay our taxes, and my real income is all post-tax), but I’m well aware that if someone in my situation becomes ill or old or handicapped, or if my income dries up through pirating or copyright infringements, or if one day for any reason I can’t afford to pay for my next meal, the government and the welfare system as they currently exist are not going to help me, and all I can hope is that I don’t get hauled off by city management officers.

  Naturally I’m hoping that national welfare will constantly improve and the government will allocate more funds to it—that little pot of hot money from abroad, after all, is not going to have an impact on our economic marketplace. But no matter how rich our rich people get, a nation that views wealth with hostility, a nation where the population at large favors hanging the rich to rescue the poor, is bound to be backward and deprived.

  Finally, I notice that it seems to have become the fashion recently to assume the air of some underprivileged individual from the grassroots. I’m wondering if I need to employ a translator for my blog—given that there are so many soldier-boys.

  How radical and ridiculous I am

  May 17, 2007

  A few days ago I wrote a column for Xu Jinglei’s online magazine. It was my idea, because I’ve been busy writing a novel lately and find it difficult to set aside time and energy to write a full-blown essay, so I thought it would be simpler just to answer some readers’ questions. Sex-advice columns, in any case, are always entertaining, and they give you a chance to poke fun. Unfortunately, because no translation was provided for my remarks, many defenders of morality had great trouble understanding them. That just goes to show how much damage was done by the language-and-literature education they got in school.

  In today’s paper they are saying that I’m leading young people in the wrong direction, and they express the hope that the General Administration of Press and Publication will monitor or penalize me. T
his is all because of my answer to this question I was asked: “What’s your view on early sexual activity among today’s adolescents—how some students are premature in sampling forbidden fruit?”

  What I said was: “I understand and give them my full support, but they need to take precautions.”

  They say my answer is not only radical but also ridiculous. But this happens to be my view, and it gets you nowhere to say I’m radical—that just shows how out of it you are. I doubt very much that people these days are so easily misled as to justify the claim that I’m leading them in the wrong direction. In the column I also said that, to my knowledge, there’s nothing strange about an erect penis measuring eight inches—how come I haven’t seen these experts tug on their own organ to make it that length? This shows they aren’t completely out of their minds. But maybe some people just like to throw a veil of propriety over their own shabby behavior. In addition, the chief editor of Education Today claims that an overwhelming majority of educationalists disagree with me.

  But that’s just fine, for in my experience those so-called education experts are all too fond of sounding off about moral issues while they themselves behave quite unscrupulously. Whatever meets with their approval can’t possibly be any good, just as it’s unthinkable that any movie that passes the censors could be at all worth seeing.

  Age eighteen is, in legal terms, when one becomes an adult. But often I hear people exclaim, “I didn’t start dating till I was nineteen.” And then everyone is surprised by such a late start. What’s strange about the situation in China is that most parents won’t allow their school-age children to date, and many are even opposed to their children dating when in college, but as soon as the kid graduates, the parents pray that all of a sudden someone perfect in every respect and—if possible, with an apartment of their own to boot—will drop out of heaven, and their child must marry them right away. Now, that’s well thought out, isn’t it?

  There are actually no such things as “premature romance” or “eating forbidden fruit.” At whatever age, so long as both parties are willing, any kind of attachment or sexual activity is an intrinsic human right that should not suffer any interference or obstruction. That’s my view, radical and ridiculous though it may be.

  Traditional Virtues

  May 28, 2007

  In my last essay I made the point that there are actually no such things as “premature romance” or “eating forbidden fruit”; that at whatever age, so long as both parties are willing, any kind of attachment or sexual activity is an intrinsic human right that should not suffer any interference or obstruction. To my mind, this is a remark that in the broader international context would be considered entirely normal and would not excite any controversy. But here a lot of people are criticizing me, telling me that once I have a daughter of my own I’ll realize what a stupid thing I said. Some argue that it’s a mistake to promote Western-style sexual liberation, for that will destroy China’s tradition of a moral and ethical culture.

  Actually, all I was doing was telling you what is your right. If you’re convinced that this is not your right and that other people are entitled to interfere in your romance, then I’m not going to insist. I simply hadn’t realized that it counts as Western-style sexual liberation if I say you can go to bed with the person you love. Or maybe it is just your daughter to whom you are denying this right? That’s the way lots of men are: when womanizing, they’re always hoping their partner will be young and uninhibited and ultra-liberated, but as they have their way with someone else’s daughter they remain firmly committed to the idea that no one should ever put a finger on their own. This I understand.

  The virtues that we celebrate here in China—modesty, sincerity, diligence, simplicity, helpfulness, warmth, unity—are, in fact, the qualities that we most lack. We’re actually quite hopeless at these things. Just take sincerity—when does this nation ever have a social environment that encourages real sincerity? You can, if you like, give me a hundred positive examples of these qualities in action, but I can easily give you ten thousand examples of the opposite. The reason why we have so many historical anecdotes promoting these values is precisely because, if you look at the larger picture, they are so thin on the ground. We have to rely on this tradition to create a fake image that is peddled about for us to study and get our kicks from. The so-called traditional Chinese virtues are just things fantasized out of history—all the more so these days, when we have fantasized for so many years about these virtues that really have nothing to do with us. But these virtues are certainly appealing and, to put it politely, they represent the ideals that our people should work toward, given that we range from low-caliber to borderline-defective.

  Of course, we Chinese always rate the Chinese people very highly. We should be content with that. After all, a full one-fifth of the world’s population thinks we’re wonderful. If you dare to differ, you’re a traitor, and we’ll spit on you until you drown in a sea of sputum.

  And don’t you forget—our land is vast, our resources are rich!

  On flying the flag

  June 2, 2007

  Today I read in the news that one of our filtered keywords has died.4 No evaluation of his successes and failures was provided. But I was reminded of when he was top dog in Shanghai during my middle school years and I used to hear his name every day.

  It’s only when the state’s filtered keywords pass away, I realize now, that our nation will fly its flag at half-mast. No accident, however major, that affects ordinary people ever seems to prompt the lowering of the flag to half-mast. The only time I can really recall seeing a flag at half-mast was when the flag was raised at school one day and got snagged half-way up, but that was a case of the flag raised to half-mast rather than lowered. I notice that in capitalist countries (where, we know, people suffer wretchedly under conditions of cruel exploitation), whenever there is a major loss of life the government will lower the flag to half-mast to register its grief. Of course, you may argue that they’re just putting on a show, but we Chinese can hardly claim to be averse to play-acting, can we? So I hope that one of these days China can put on a performance for its people. Of course, we follow rigorous scientific principles, so we need to decide in advance how many casualties will be needed to trigger this event, and in our country, this figure needs to be set very high—at least ten times what you’d find in other low-quality nations—partly to show that our half-mast has more significance than other people’s half-masts, and partly because, given the current scale of our industrial accidents and traffic fatalities, if we set the figure too low, our flag would hardly ever make it up to the top of the post.

  Because it has never flown the flag at half-mast for ordinary folk, our government may well find it difficult emotionally to come to terms with the idea. I have a typically Chinese solution to address the problem: If we replace regular flag posts with new ones twice as high, that would make everyone happy, for then a flag flown at half-mast would still be at its normal height. Another advantage is that this would provide enormous gratification for our people’s pathetic national vanity—oops, national pride, I mean. Other countries’ flags rise to the top of the pole in the time it takes to play their national anthem, but with our extra-tall flagpole and our lofty national stature, our national anthem will need to be played twice before our flag reaches the top.

  Of course, I hope the day will never come when we need to lower the flag to half-mast in mourning for ordinary citizens, for that would mean a terrible disaster had happened—at the very least, the collision of two jumbo jets.

  Let’s do away with student essays

  June 15, 2007

  As a reasonably competent writer in school, I participated in quite a few essay competitions. Before each event I had first to brainwash myself and check to see what slogans were in fashion at the time. In the days when there was great concern about the “Seven Improper Behaviors,” for instance, you would need to cook up a story related to this theme. If I told how so
mebody was about to spit and how I dashed over, stretched out a hand, and caught the gob of phlegm just before it hit the ground, and threw in some praise of our great country for good measure, I’d be sure of getting a high mark. Unfortunately, I only ever won second prize, because there was always somebody who succeeded in singing China’s praises even more effusively than I did. Even today I still feel like saying to those first-prize winners, “I really scraped the bottom of the barrel with my essays—how did you manage to be even more shameless?”

  In recent years a number of no-hopers in the university entrance examination have submitted essays that were awarded zero points. I’ve had a look at these essays, and what they all have in common is this—they truthfully express the author’s opinion. But our educational system does not permit the truthful expression of opinion—what it tries to do is discourage you from having your own views, and then, using teaching materials that are decades old, tell you that this is right and that is wrong. If you don’t agree, it’s not as though you’re taking your life in your hands—all that will happen is that you will be expelled or will get no points. Or maybe you will pick up a few—as long as you make an attempt to answer, the grader is not supposed to give you a zero. But the only real difference between the successful essay and the failed one is that you think this way and I think that: What’s the logic in you getting full points and my getting none? Even if I haven’t bought into the master narrative, I should at least qualify for a consolation prize, no? And for an essay—something that lacks an objective grading criterion—to be evaluated on the basis of the appraiser’s personal tastes and incorporated into a university entrance exam that professes to be fair: This in itself is unfair.