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Celebrating material success of poor migrant shows skewed values
By Wan Lixin |
July 1, 2009, Wednesday
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TEN years ago villager Xiao Lu came to Shanghai from rural Anhui Province, almost empty handed.
Today he has one car, two sons, is saving money for his second flat, works like mad and still manages to cook for his stay-at-home wife and children.
Obviously he has made it, whether by rural standards, urban standards, or by Shanghai standard.
Lu's example was cited recently to me as a success story. As a matter of fact, newspapers can easily use him as a perfect specimen to illustrate that nothing is impossible in "a sea that takes in all rivers" which Shanghai is said to be.
People in this most Westernized city have long bought into "success," which on reflection I find to be little more than the money-making power.
Lu happens to be a pharmaceutical representative, which means he hops from hospital to hospital promoting medicine, often overpriced and of suspect efficacy, by promising competitive kickbacks to important hospital staff. But this is beside the point.
Lu's rustic origins signify the disadvantages he had started with. The national college entrance test provides one conduit to escape rusticity. But unless the rural children have unmistakable academic promise, practically minded parents are well advised to send their children to cities as migrants.
Although migrants have little chance of being absorbed into decent or growth sectors in cities, simply to be able to stop being peasants can be sufficient inducement.
As more and more rustic youths turn their backs on farming, rural villages are now the preserve of children, who are too young to be exploited as laborers, and the elderly, who are too old to be exploited at all.
But unless you are brought up to grub for money like Lu, and are unusually lucky, success is elusive, and deceptive.
When material success becomes the only touchstone of merit, it probably contributes more to the restlessness that is already a defining feature of both urban and rural China.
Although success is now generally accepted uncritically, it actually involves quite a few hidden assumptions.
It requires you to be constantly sensitized to your wants, and to have strong determination to satisfy those wants.
The degree of satisfaction, rationalized in such terms as "progress" or "prosperity," sets our world apart from traditional society, as described by Lin Yutang in his "My Country and My People" (1935).
"Travelers in China, especially those wayward travelers who go through the seldom visited parts of the Chinese inland, are equally amazed at the low standard of living of the Chinese toiling masses and their cheerfulness and contentment under such conditions," he wrote.
He believes that "a lot of the so-called misery of the Chinese people is due undoubtedly to the application of a warped European standard, the standard which cannot conceive of any man being happy unless he is living in an overheated apartment and owns a radio."
Of course today "an overheated apartment" and "a radio" have long been superseded by numerous other amenities.
The craving for success is not confined to the likes of Lu.
Confucius said that "a scholar whose heart is set upon the Way, but who is ashamed of wearing shabby clothes and eating coarse food, is not worth calling into counsel."
But today billionaire professors who owe their piles to the stock market are eager to advertise their success.
Even if only a small fraction of the Chinese population becomes obsessed with success, the energy released would astonish the world.
The example of Lu would make those people who know him more restless, but I seriously doubt if an eminently successful Lu would make the world a better place to live, whether for Lu himself or for the rest of the people.
Today he has one car, two sons, is saving money for his second flat, works like mad and still manages to cook for his stay-at-home wife and children.
Obviously he has made it, whether by rural standards, urban standards, or by Shanghai standard.
Lu's example was cited recently to me as a success story. As a matter of fact, newspapers can easily use him as a perfect specimen to illustrate that nothing is impossible in "a sea that takes in all rivers" which Shanghai is said to be.
People in this most Westernized city have long bought into "success," which on reflection I find to be little more than the money-making power.
Lu happens to be a pharmaceutical representative, which means he hops from hospital to hospital promoting medicine, often overpriced and of suspect efficacy, by promising competitive kickbacks to important hospital staff. But this is beside the point.
Lu's rustic origins signify the disadvantages he had started with. The national college entrance test provides one conduit to escape rusticity. But unless the rural children have unmistakable academic promise, practically minded parents are well advised to send their children to cities as migrants.
Although migrants have little chance of being absorbed into decent or growth sectors in cities, simply to be able to stop being peasants can be sufficient inducement.
As more and more rustic youths turn their backs on farming, rural villages are now the preserve of children, who are too young to be exploited as laborers, and the elderly, who are too old to be exploited at all.
But unless you are brought up to grub for money like Lu, and are unusually lucky, success is elusive, and deceptive.
When material success becomes the only touchstone of merit, it probably contributes more to the restlessness that is already a defining feature of both urban and rural China.
Although success is now generally accepted uncritically, it actually involves quite a few hidden assumptions.
It requires you to be constantly sensitized to your wants, and to have strong determination to satisfy those wants.
The degree of satisfaction, rationalized in such terms as "progress" or "prosperity," sets our world apart from traditional society, as described by Lin Yutang in his "My Country and My People" (1935).
"Travelers in China, especially those wayward travelers who go through the seldom visited parts of the Chinese inland, are equally amazed at the low standard of living of the Chinese toiling masses and their cheerfulness and contentment under such conditions," he wrote.
He believes that "a lot of the so-called misery of the Chinese people is due undoubtedly to the application of a warped European standard, the standard which cannot conceive of any man being happy unless he is living in an overheated apartment and owns a radio."
Of course today "an overheated apartment" and "a radio" have long been superseded by numerous other amenities.
The craving for success is not confined to the likes of Lu.
Confucius said that "a scholar whose heart is set upon the Way, but who is ashamed of wearing shabby clothes and eating coarse food, is not worth calling into counsel."
But today billionaire professors who owe their piles to the stock market are eager to advertise their success.
Even if only a small fraction of the Chinese population becomes obsessed with success, the energy released would astonish the world.
The example of Lu would make those people who know him more restless, but I seriously doubt if an eminently successful Lu would make the world a better place to live, whether for Lu himself or for the rest of the people.
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