November 2006

My buddy Ben P., an ex-roommate from college days, is an American climate scientist who lives in Melbourne. He recently visited Beijing; here’re some snips from his amusing observations:

Traffic:

Shocking! We found that the 10 km trip from central Beijing out to our hotel could take 1-1.5 hours during rush hour. Drivers appeared to steer with their horns, and cars, bicycles, and pedestrians all hurl themselves at each other with frightening disregard for anyone’s personal safety. Miraculously we only saw one car accident the entire time (although we also heard a rumor that Beijing University loses quite a number of students each year to bicycle accidents). The subway was a similarly chaotic – the cars were packed, but unlike in Tokyo, professional packers weren’t required – the locals appeared to be quite capable of packing themselves in. And let me tell you – if you’ve never been a tall black man packed into a subway car in Beijing with 200 people staring at you – it’s an interesting experience.

The economy:

Neither I, nor any of my colleagues, could reconcile China’s communism with the spirit of entrepreneralism that rages through the Chinese people. Chinese people are more than happy to completely rip you off (let the buyer beware) and will do their best to accomplish this goal. But to be fair, everything is negotiable, so if one is dumb enough to take prices at their face value, he gets what he deserves I suppose. Many of us found that prices could be negotiated down by anywhere from 50% to 90% (although we concluded that westerners lack the basic skills to be good hagglers). What was also interesting was the economic influence that 100 young scientists with a per diem could wield. Stage performances in a bar were altered to accommodate us, we were virtually the sole patrons of an acrobat show one night, and our final night in town, we rented out an entire restaurant (and negotiated down the alcohol prices). One quickly becomes aware that he’s wielding wealth that is quite disproportionate to the average individual. Case-in-point, 6 of us had dinner and drinks one night at local establishment for a grand total of AUS$12 (and that includes the extra main dish that we ended up with by mistake). [But you could pay AUS$4 for a coffee at the aiport, and these kinds of contradictions are everywhere]. Really, the only clear sign that communism is thriving was the absurd amount of overemployment in some establishments. The local supermarket around the corner from us, for example, must have had 4 people “working” in each aisle and three at each cash register. As a consequence, none of them really had anything to do. When I did take something off the shelf, it was immediately replaced. This type of overemployment was rampant and must be juxtaposed against the rural poverty which exists outside the developed areas.

(Emphasis mine.)

[Image: BLP]

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