Under Mao Tse-tung, the country used a basic but effective network of so-called “barefoot doctors”. But since the introduction of sweeping economic reforms in the past two decades, everything has changed. The reforms have brought new wealth but the collapse of many local clinics and free services mean that poorer families simply can’t afford health care and serious illness can bankrupt them.
Heard this short radio documentary on BBC World yesterday when I was driving. I ended up stopping the car and sat in the parking lot of a store so I could finish listening. The funny thing about growing up along with your home country is you don’t notice your country’s peculiarities until much later. For me, the idea of walking in off the street and getting hospital care seemed entirely natural, until I went back to China a few years ago and found it really strange to go to the doctor as easily as I could buy candy. But then again, how else would China provide adequate health-care to 1.3 billion people?
This is actually part two of two in a series about health-care systems around the world. Part one is about health-care in the US and the UK.
China’s idea of what makes for a better Olympics for foreign consumption—tightened security and cleaning up marginal elements—is exactly what makes Western reporters crazy…you want to clean things up, but the West wants to see the dirt, not the rug it was swept under. It’s the dishonesty, as much as the substance of what’s wrong in China, that seems to get under the skin of Western reporters.
Beijing itself is an expression of the problem…It suffers from the current obsession with fazhan (”development”), which in urban-planning terms replicates the “giant soulless block” development style of Robert Moses and the American 1950s. Authenticity, which Western culture valorizes, isn’t something that Chinese people or planners go for right now. There’s a tendency to either modernize or tear down old structures, instead of trying to preserve their decay in the way Westerners like. It’s all just a little too nouveau riche to get much respect.
As the author of the article later puts it, there’s “a sense that no matter what China does, it won’t really be accepted as an equal on the world stage, that it will always be left cleaning the toilet at the OECD country club.” Maybe that’s why there is such a wide audience for the sentiments expressed in this video:
An article out today in the Shanghai Daily (have you noticed I’m addicted to Shanghaiist.com yet?) about the latest in the official crackdown on silly translations on Beijing street signs. This is old news, as the latest linguistic purging started as early as last year (see nytimes link above), and snarky bloggers have been making fun of these signs ever since…well, since snarky people started having blogs (see link on “Racist Park” photo below).
Asian countries somehow seem particularly adept at mangling the English language in brilliantly humorous ways, an ability variously referred to as Engrish, or when perpetrated by that most populous nation of the Far East, Chinglish. This article offers a dissenting opinion to the crackdown, quoting American linguists who are evidently a lot more amused by Chinglish than the Chinese government is: After the jump: The world would be a funnier place if we celebrated Chinglish instead of trying to get rid of it.
There is a Chinese dish called 西红柿炒蛋 (”fried eggs and tomatoes”) and it is–strangely enough–delicious. It is not, however, a good idea to wear local delicacies, even if (read: ESPECIALLY if) you are representing your country in the 2008 summer Olympics.
Two pieces from my favorite periodicals that contain the words “New York”:
1. The New York Times Magazine on architecture in the (post-)postmodern city. Features Dubai and some other new cities, with a lengthy digression on Shenzhen, China’s shining beacon of capitalism (and cultural wasteland, here euphemistically termed “product of unregulated development”). Take home messages: architects have staunch political principles, unless you pay them a lot; dictatorships make some pretty sweet buildings.
2. The New Yorker on music in China. Very thorough overview of the “classical music phenomenon” (i.e. non-phenomenon) in China, if a little bit quick to jump on the well-read-new-yorker-rambling-about-China’s-problems bandwagon. More interesting–and less presumptuous–are the tidbits about the Chinese avant-garde and an expat-led burgeoning of underground indie rock in Beijing. Yes, indie rock in Beijing.
Silly China, it still thinks building up its culture is like playing a game of Civilization IV. Doesn’t it know that all it has to do is give artists freedom and democracy, and their work will suddenly become legitimate, and win the approval of music critics in the West?
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