Shanghai Scrap

If contemporary China had a national martyr, it would’ve been Peng Yu. In 2006 he was stepping off a Nanjing bus when he saw an old woman had fallen to the ground. While others passed her by, Peng not only helped her up, he took her to the hospital and even paid her bill. In thanks, the old woman sued him for injuries sustained when he allegedly knocked her to the ground. The story became a media sensation, and in the years following, Peng Yu’s name was always the first to be uttered when strangers failed to come to the aid of an injured stranger in China. Hundreds if not thousands of articles have been written about the case and the phenomenon.

And now, they’re all going to have to be revised. Because, on Monday, Peng Yu confessed to knocking over that old woman, after all.

It’s hard to overestimate the shock value packed into that revelation. But I do my best to distill it in this week’s column over at Bloomberg View, “China’s Infamous Good Samaritan Case Gets a New Ending.” I hope you’ll take a look.

And, if I don’t get around to saying it next week, best wishes to all of my readers in the Year of the Dragon. My sense is that it’s going to be a good one.

I’m very excited to announce that I am participating in the Innovation Policy Summit at the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. This is a first for me (both visiting and participating), and I have to think that – among the 100,000+ attendees – I must know somebody. So, if you’re there, look me up. I’m participating in the “Product Refurbishment and Reuse in the Developing World: What is its Current and Future Role in the CE Industry?” panel on Thursday, at 15:00, in LVCC, North Hall N264. Among other topics, I’m going to offer a more nuanced view of Guiyu, China’s notorious electronics recycling town, and its role in the global re-use and refurbishment industry, than what’s typically presented in the media. The other panelists, including my pal Robin Ingenthron of Good Point Recycling in Vermont, are definitely worth hearing. Below, used, recovered microprocessors for sale at Guiyu’s electronics market (of the sort that I’ll be discussing).

In other news … allow me to offer the strongest possible Shanghai Scrap recommendation for James Palmer’s outstanding, just-published “Heaven Cracks, Earth Shakes: The Tangshan Earthquake and the Death of Mao’s China.” It’s a beautifully written account of a) what it was like to live in a small Chinese city at the end of Mao’s reign; b) Mao’s court politics; c) how the Tangshan earthquake served as a catalyst (among others) to end Maoist excesses; e) an extraordinary and moving account of the quake and its aftermath. This is history, and it’s instructive. My highest recommendation.

Though little noted outside of China, pregnancy and contraception have been among the most commented upon topics on Chinese microblogs and newspaper editorial pages over the last month. The thread was kicked-off by a CCTV report on the anti-radiation clothes that many Chinese women wear during pregnancy, and hit a feverish pitch shortly after Fuzhou announced that it would require real name registration for women seeking to buy emergency contraception. Both stories are important in themselves, but also for what they tell us about the evolving social contract between the Chinese and their government, and – in the latter case – the expanding understanding of a privacy right in China. My commentaries, both for Bloomberg View, are here:

• China’s Mother’s Rethink Anti-Radiation Clothing.
• In China, Morning After Comes With New Aftermath.

If you prefer your Bloomberg View with a bit less China in it, allow me to recommend Virginia Postrel’s tremendous “How Art History Majors Power the US Economy.” As a gainfully self-employed philosophy major, I appreciate the sentiment.

A few years ago I was walking through a Chinese scrap yard when I came across a small pile of Christmas tree lights. There weren’t many there, but the encounter stuck in my mind. How on Earth did those lights move to China? And why? Like many writers, I keep a mental file of questions that I’d like to answer if and when I find the time … but never get around to answering.

Well, as it happens, this fall I found myself traveling with somebody who – one afternoon – revealed to me that there was much more to that small pile of Christmas tree lights that I’d originally assumed. That conversation became a phone call that, in mid-November, sent me to Shijiao, a small town in Guangdong Province that, by estimation, qualifies as the Christmas Tree Light Recycling Capitol of the World. On an annual basis the town’s recyclers import, and recycle, at last 20 million lb of the lights.

Part of my visit – not all of it – is outlined in a dispatch that’s just gone up at the Atlantic’s site, “The Chinese Town That Turns Your Old Christmas Tree Lights Into Slippers.” The text is accompanied by video that I took inside of one such factory (a first for me). If you’ve never been inside of a Chinese scrap recycling plant, well, this is a good place to start.

In other news: long-time readers may recall that this blog has a long, two-year tradition formally known as 141 Shanghai Christmas Trees. It was my intention to do a third edition of the series in 2011. But, alas, other commitments – such as chasing down Christmas tree recycling plants – has gotten in the way of doing that. Maybe next year.

How do you eroticize a massacre?

That’s the topic of my column at Bloomberg View this week. In it, I take a look at some of the Chinese reactions to Zhang Yimou’s new epic set against the 1937 Nanjing Massacre – and the sexed-up marketing designed to sell it. Consider, as just one example, one of the film posters below, featuring Batman Christian Bale in the role of fake priest, and the headless woman as a kind-hearted Nanjing prostitute. And that’s the just the mild stuff. More on Zhang Yimou’s tastelessness at Bloomberg View.

A few weeks ago I was in Foshan, a thriving city on the edge of Guangzhou, and I happened to ask one of my hosts about the cost of the apartment buildings going up all around the city. He gave me a number, which struck me as high, and then he told me that the price was off by 30% over the course of the last two months. That encounter, and more, can be found in my column this week at Bloomberg World View, running over the weekend.

Related, further listening can be found in an excellent episode of the Sinica podcast featuring David Pierson of the Los Angeles Times and Daniel Kroeber of Dragonomics. And it’s definitely worth reading Pierson’s widely circulated piece on the return of the China bears, here.

This morning we receive the surprising news (as related in the New York Times) that the producers of “Top Secret,” a play about the Pentagon Papers and press freedom, could go ahead with a performance in Beijing last night, but that they could not, unfortunately, hold a discussion of the play afterwards, for fear of “unforeseen consequences spreading beyond the theater.”

This is a pity.

Last Friday night I was one of the discussants of the play after its penultimate Shanghai performance (the others were the play’s co-author Geoffrey Cowan, David Barboza of the New York Times, and a Chinese colleague). From the stage, I looked out upon a 75% Chinese audience that was intensely interested in both the play, and the issues that it touched. The discussion was thoughtful – indeed, far more thoughtful than the oft-wild discussions on the same issues which occur on Sina Weibo and other Chinese microblogs – and engaging. I know, time permitting, we could’ve gone much longer.

Later, after the play, one of the individuals connected with the production mentioned that he had been surprised that the play could get a permit to perform in Beijing. Several Chinese familiar with the local media landscape corrected him. “Actually, Beijing is much easier. They have more performing arts and are more open-minded. The real worry was Shanghai, which is much more conservative. MUCH MORE conservative.”

Alas, it seems that some low-level Beijing official has decided, on his own volition, to disprove that otherwise self-evident (if you spend any time in these places) point. So hat’s off to whomever in Shanghai didn’t mind that we discussed “Top Secret” after the show. And shame on the Beijing yahoo who didn’t feel that the audience at Peking University could handle the same. You, dear sir, are playing into a dangerous game of stereotypes, ie the Shanghai-ren always suspected they were more sophisticated than those northern bumpkins.

In any case, if you’re in Beijing tonight, or tomorrow night, you really ought to go see the play. It’s a ripping good story, and a rollicking good time, and if you like a little American history mixed into your evening, well, there you go. Performance and ticket information, here. For tickets, call YANG Huiyuan at 15011301416. See it.

Bear with me, for a moment, as you read a passage from a dispatch now available on The Atlantic’s website:

[Alice Waters] put me to work beside her, cutting grilled slices of locally Beijing-made sourdough bread (from a bakery with the jaunty name Boulangerie Nanda) already soaked in olive oil from the McEvoy Ranch, in Petaluma, California; the oil, along with five donated Californian wines, was the only American ingredients used. I spread the bread with a crumbly, nicely cheesy handmade ricotta made by Liu Yang–a Beijing native who spent six years in France making cheese before moving back and starting a business he calls Le Fromager de Pekin–and drizzled more oil on top. And I broke into bite-sized chunks a Parmesan-like gouda made by Marc De Ruiter, a Dutch cheese maker in Shanxi, for his Yellow Valley cheese company (he recently closed it, unable to afford the expensive milk-testing equipment the government told him he must buy).

This is not, despite every indication, the account of a novelty dinner held at Waters’ famous, and famously expensive Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley, California, but rather the truthful account of a meal recently held at, and partly sponsored by, the US Embassy in Beijing, ostensibly to “build awareness of organic food being grown by Chinese farmers for Chinese food.”

No doubt, that is a laudable goal. As someone who has been eating in China for nearly a decade, I’m quite aware – indeed, probably more aware than most of the organizers – of the food scandals that have plagued China for years. But I am also aware that food inflation is a serious quality-of-life issue ( and sometimes, a life issue) for hundreds of millions of Chinese, and thus I have no doubt that the visit of a wealthy Western chef promoting more expensive food is more likely to be ignored by, rather than improve, contemporary China. Alas, the effect of food inflation on a developing nation, it seems, was of little concern to Waters or the organizers of the event (I’m looking at you, US Embassy staff), who apparently couldn’t see past their own stomachs, to notice the needs of the Chinese stomachs just past the embassy gates. Writing of the fine cheese served at the event, the Atlantic’s correspondent, Corby Kummer, made it clear – and without irony! – that this event was first and foremost an opportunity to satisfy Western appetites (according to the Wall Street Journal, less than 1/3 of the attendees were Chinese):

Cheese is a great rarity in lactose-intolerant China, and many of the guests wanted to know where they could find it.

I’m sure they did.

There is much low-hanging fruit to shoot here (the image of Waters, and her well-known eco-grounded belief in locally-sourced produce, jetting over to Beijing with her staff and bottles of olive oil to cook a feast that is both unaffordable and unappetizing to 99.9% of China, is but one). But what really troubles me about this dinner is the lack of introspection that led the organizers, Waters, and the correspondent to believe that, via their own gluttony (and visits to expensive organic farms), they are somehow promoting healthy eating in China.

They’re not. (more…)

Last week my Bloomberg View column took a look at the sustained howl of pain emitted by Chinese soccer fans at the failure of their national team to qualify for the 2014 World Cup. You can find it here.

I had a lot of fun with that one. And a lot more material than I could actually use, including a withering tweet to Sina Weibo from Zhang Xin, one of China’s most prominent female authors, who made it clear that she’d had enough of all of the testosterone-fed hand-wringing by China’s ranks of male soccer fans.

I don’t understand these men. Since they knewthat  Chinese football is over, why did they still seize the TV and rail words like “Chinese football is over”? Don’t tell me that you’re expecting to win a big prize like a lottery ticket. Does this belong to a gambling psychology or a consolation psychology? Or do you just find that, compared to the Chinese soccer team, you are not so bad?

My kind of woman.

The complete column is here. No column this week, though, in light of the Thanksgiving holiday. Which I plan to enjoy.

My long-time readers are aware, I think (perhaps too aware) that I spend an inordinate amount of time contemplating (and sometimes writing about) the life and fate of my home state, Minnesota (population, 5.3 million). And that mental phenomenon, in part (there were other reasons), explains why, yesterday morning, I was atop a hotel in Foshan (population, 3.3 million) a rapidly developing Chinese city (what Chinese city isn’t rapidly developing) that most Minnesotans have never heard of, looking at data on Minnesota housing starts. For those who don’t follow this sort of thing, a housing start is simply a housing unit on which construction has begun in a given period. So, according to the US government data that I was looking at, there were exactly 709 housing starts in Minnesota in September.

Then I turned around, looked out the window, and saw many more than 709 starts happening 33-floors below. As well as a shopping mall to dwarf any but the Mall of America, a new “financial park,” lots of commercial real estate … and this is just one neighborhood on the outskirts of town. Far more intensive construction was going on closer to the city core. And, in the course of the 16 days that I’ve spent up, down, and sideways in Guangdong this month, I’ve seen dozens of projects just like these, often much bigger (photos taken of the right and left-handed views of the same project).

None of this comes as a surprise to anyone who spends any time in China – even fleetingly. It is the stuff of daily life. But back in the US, and back home, in Minnesota, especially, I can’t help but get the sense that there’s an almost purposeful denial that what’s happened, and is happening in China is fleeting; that, in some shape or form, everything will go back to normal and sooner or later Minnesota will have more housing starts than China (or, at least, Foshan), again. We just need to cut taxes. Or spend more on K-12 education. Pick your favorite solution to the current economic malaise, whatever that may be, and it’ll set things back to 1985, again.

At a minimum, over the course of several trips to the US this year, I’ve gotten the unerring sense that otherwise intelligent people are too ready to blame the current economic downturn on partisan factors having to do with Minnesota/North America, without pausing to consider that, just perhaps, there’s something (many somethings) happening in cities they’ve never heard of, changing the living standards of Minnesotans, permanently; that much of what’s happening to Minnesota’s economy has nothing to do with Minnesota.  This sort of economic and political narcissism (“our problems are only our own creation”) isn’t going to lead to a very nice place. At some point, you’re going to have to admit that there is, in fact, something to that competition beyond their lower salaries.

Anyway, dear Minnesotans, that’s what 2.5 weeks in Guangdong (and 9 years in China), and a bunch of Census Bureau stats, led me to ponder.

For various reasons known to my long-term readers, I receive news alerts whenever “scrap metal” pops up in a news story somewhere in the world. So, a week ago, I was going through the list (it’s not long), and I came across an unusual story of a group of professors in China who knelt down to halt the operations of a steel mill in Hubei Province.

It’s a fascinating story, and the topic of my latest column at Bloomberg WorldView, “Wanting change, Chinese get on their knees.” The job – and the tendency – of reporters is to blow up relatively small incidents into metaphors for social currents, and so that’s what I attempt in this week’s piece. But whether you agree with my conclusions or not, I think you’ll find the story of the professors to be engaging in its own right. In China, it was an internet sensation, with leading voices speaking out on it. For example, Liu Yuan, a newspaper columnist quoted in the piece, wrote:

We should never propagate this kind of feudal signal. A hundred years has passed since the Revolution of 1911. If we think of ourselves as an ignorant common people as low as dirt, instead of as citizens of a modern society, officials will treat us with even more disregard.

More at Bloomberg View.

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In other news. This past week I’ve been traveling through the heart of China’s scrap recycling country, in large part for my forthcoming book on the globalization of waste and recycling. It’s remarkable how much China’s scrap recyclers have changed over the last decade, going from an industry based primarily on hand labor, to one that’s mechanizing at an astonishing rate. This, too, is a metaphor – a metaphor for a China that’s moving away from its low-end industrial origins. On Wednesday, I’m moderating a panel on this very topic at the World Recycling Forum in Hong Kong (Nov. 16). Nevermind me, though, the panelists themselves are the ones who really know what they’re talking about, including Li Jinhui of Tsinghua University (Beijing), my friends Michel Dubois of Recylux (Luxembourg) and Stephen Greer of Hartwell-Pacific and Oaktree Capital (Hong Kong), and Joe Yob of Creative Recycling Solutions (USA). It should be a great discussion, and if you’re in Hong Kong, and interested in the development of the Chinese recycling industry, that’s the place to be. Make sure to say hello.

On September 4, an elderly Chinese man collapsed on the street in Nanjing, China, and suffocated in his own blood. Why didn’t anybody stop to help him? The debate raged on China’s blogs, microblogs, and newspapers for a week. As I outlined in a September 8 column for Bloomberg World View, the answers were several and unsatisfying, ranging from a lack of legal protection for Good Samaritans, to a lack of Confucian obligations to strangers. But whatever the reason, or reasons, they all seem rather academic in light of the video that surfaced, earlier this week, of a two-year-old being run down and then ignored by pedestrians in Foshan. China’s Good Samaritan problem seems more real than ever.

Helpfully, on Wednesday, Shanghaiist posted a quote from Lu Xun that reminded readers that the Good Samaritan Problem isn’t a new one:

“In China, especially in the cities, if someone fainted on the streets, or if someone was knocked over by a car, you’ll find lots of gawkers and gloaters, but rarely will you find someone willing to extend a helping hand.”

Alas, prescience, though comforting, doesn’t explain why so much appears to be unchanged since 1933. And, in my opinion, it also make it far too easy to suggest that there’s something fundamentally wrong with Chinese society without specifying what, in fact, might be causing that fault (and without a cause, there can be no cure). Unexpectedly, yesterday, I received a thoughtful explanation that appeared in a three-way email conversation that included my friend Josh Goldstein, Associate Professor of History and East Asian Languages and Cultures at USC. It’s sober, thoughtful, and worth a read, I think. So, with Josh’s permission, I’m copying it, below.

About this samaritan stuff: i’d say in part the “problem” has existed for centuries, on some level strangers are not part of most confucian obligations and certainly not poor unknown folks.  Local elites certainly would help local poor elderly when approached, but they would typically not be strangers and would not initiate help.  Remember, the urban context of people falling while getting on a bus is historically pretty new. (more…)

[UPDATE 10/19: Half the way down, you'll find a clarification regarding the dignity of trash collection v. scrap peddling.]

The image, below, is likely one of the most recognizable in China, today – especially if you have a computer. It’s a screen grab of a video showing Yueyue, a 2-year-old toddler in Foshan, a highly industrialized city in Guangdong Province, on the verge of being run-down and repeatedly run-over by a truck driver, then ignored by more than a dozen passing adults. It’s shocking and demoralizing footage that – among other things – perfectly illustrates China’s so-called “good samaritan problem.”

I must admit, however, that when I first saw the image I noticed – and continue to notice – something else: the large white sacks in the lower left-hand corner. They contain recyclable materials, packed and ready to be shipped, a fact immediately obvious to anyone who’s spent any time around China’s thousands of scrap recycling markets (I’ve spent hundreds of hours in them). No surprise, the Nanhai district of Foshan – site of the Yueyue tragedy – is one of the world’s recycling capitals, home to dozens of recycling markets, hundreds of formal recycling companies, tens of thousands of small-scale recycling businesses, and perhaps hundreds of thousands of small-scale scrap collectors – like Chen Xianmei, the pedestrian who stopped to help Yueyue, and who is now being described, widely, as a “trash collector (for example, here, here, and here).”

So: in the video, we see her approach Yueyue with a large white bag slung over one shoulder, and what appears to be a smaller handbag of some kind in her right hand. I don’t know what’s in either of those bags, but based upon the picture, below, taken of Yueyue’s parents bowing to Chen after the accident, and the open sack of used clothes in the background, I’d guess that she was carrying lightweight rags. A Chinese media report indicates that Chen is from Qingyuan (one of the world’s copper recycling capitals, north of Foshan), and that she collects screws and other metal in the market to make extra cash. That is to say, she’s a rag collector, a scrap peddler, a recycler. And, on the day that she happened upon Yueyue, she was walking through the market, collecting whatever rags had been discarded by others, or been lost in the process of shipment.

I’ll offer a couple of reasons. First, Chen’s dignity. The term trash collector implies a number of things, not least of which is that Chen is paid by others to pick up trash. After all, nobody picks up trash for free. But, in fact, Chen, and the millions of Chinese like her, are independent businesswomen who pick up recyclables for cash. That is to say, Chen supports herself, based upon her ability see and recover value where others only see “trash.” She’s nobody’s low-priced scavenger; she’s her own woman. Now, that’s not to suggest she’s living an easy life. But it does suggest dignity – dignity that’s denied when the term “trash collector” is thrown around, especially in China.

[UPDATE 10/19: In the comments, below, and via twitter, several people have suggested that the paragraph above implies that trash collecting isn't dignified work. Reading over it, now, I see their point. Just to be clear: that's not the point that I intended! Rather, I was hoping to point out two things. First, that "trash collecting," as a term, is used to denigrate scrap peddlers (and not just in China), especially by those who don't, or won't, understand the profession. And second, that the circumstances under which most scrap peddlers work is quite different than the circumstances under which trash collectors work. In many if not most cases, scrap peddling is a desperation profession, what one does when one can't obtain formal employment (like trash collecting). But that by no means was meant to imply that one profession is dignified, and the other is not.]

Second, context. The market in question has been described in the foreign press as a “hardware market,” and Yueyue’s parents have been described as owning a hardware store. Based upon video of the store, it’s obvious, to me at least, that what they actually have is a used hardware store where locals buy old, sometimes refurbished equipment. Where does that equipment come from? Some of it is imported (Japan is a major source). And, increasingly, some of it comes from the Guangdong area (as China becomes rich, it wastes). It’s the kind of business that migrants, with a little entrepreneurial instinct, can and do get into on a regular basis. With a little hard work, they can do well in it. But – and this is important – it’s only a few steps removed from what Chen Xianmei does. That is, Yueyue’s parents scavenge for re-sellable hardware; Chen scavenges for rags, screws, bolts. It’s a cut-throat, bare-knuckles business, capitalism stripped to its very bones. Lots of people fail, and lots of people try not to fail. It’s not always a very nice business, to be honest, and I can’t say that I’m surprised in the least that an incident like this took place in and around one of its markets.

Few topics are as near and dear to me as Shanghai’s world-beating subway system. In the space of nearly a decade in this city, it has made accessible places and people that once felt like an adventurous pain-in-the-neck to visit. That’s progress. Alas, there have long been indications that all this convenience has come at a serious price – in safety. And on Tuesday afternoon those indications became something tangible: human error resulted in a collision that injured more than 270 people on line 10.

This week, my Bloomberg World View column takes a look at the reaction to the crash – the Party’s, the city’s, and mine. You can find it here.