Do Chinese people shop?

Yes, they do, and thanks god, they are almost crazy about shopping.

It might sound odd to People living in Nordic Europe where shops shut punctually at 6pm everyday, and generally stay closed during weekends. I asked my Danish roommate when I firstly arrived in Denmark what do people do on weekends if there is no shopping mall open. His answer came to me with his great curiosity: Weekends are for going out to natures, what do you mean by “no shopping mall”? Well, believe me, young Chinese will soon go mad if they find out they can not go anywhere to buy some stuffs after work or on weekends, not because they are too rich to keep money in their pockets or really in need of buying things. Shopping, I just found out after I left China, turns out to be one of Chinese peoples’ main entertainments in spare time and choices there are always more than needs.

Visiting Pingyao, an ancient Chinese city built in 14^th century surrounded by its ancient city walls during a national photographic festival in Sepember,2007, made me think that the central role of commence in Chinese daily life can be dated back to early ages. When small towns in Europe were built around a church as a center in medieval times, Chinese cities thrive on the prosperity of commerce and a shopping street usually served as a spine of a city where all kinds of civic activities took place.

At a first glance of cities in China, you might find everyone is trying to sell something, in different ways, Shops are literally everywhere, so do advertisements. Shopping malls erected in centers of all sizes of cities as landmarks become meeting points for urban inhabitants, walking streets ranging from different lengths and scales are highlighted as major sightseeing places, not mention the massive markets you will not even be able to find way out easily and countless vendor stands appear outside any park or square. These are not only places people trade, but also social: to meet, pastime, and date.

But, things have not always been like that, at least not so three decades ago. In the late 80s when I was a little kid, I remember following my Dad shopping for groceries with “tickets”(click for photos). In the time of planed economy, tickets are used for basic daily necessities such as rice, flour, oil and meat and so on. Payments were assigned to individules according to his/her social class, profession, dependents’ number and so on. I roughly remembered my mom's salary was around 4euros(how crazy!) in cash and some tickets in addtion when I was around 10. So you can imagine how delighted the three of us were when one day my dad was paid with a ticket for a cycle. A cycle was not only quite unaffordable, but almost impossible to to buy with cash in any shops! "Cycle,radio and watch" were regarded as "three main purchase" for each family by then.

In the early 90s, in the little costal town in which my parents and I were living, there once only were stated owned shops in which according to my memory, attendants were always dressed in a white grown and stayed far behind the counter with poker faces. They were always reluctant to move when you asked for a look at something displaced in the counter, not mention answering your request of anything, because any increase of sales will not make any difference on their salaries which are fixed to certain amount once they were hired and they were assured their position were permanent. Things changed much quicker than these shop attendants could ever imagine. In fact, quicker than any ordinary people could ever realize. On one Saturday morning, my mom brought me to watch an opening of the first supermarket in my town. The whole supermarket, and even the whole street were packed with curious and exciting people with little knowledge of this new business mode, “There is no poker faces behind the counters!” “You can choose anything you want and pay at the exits!”

People were celebrating their freedom to consume while being surprised by the emergence of diverse choices of goods. Of course I didn’t realize that my country was undergoing the most important transition in its contemporary history but only quietly listened to my dad exciting stories of his adventures to the south (where the economic reform initially started) as one of the first salesmen in a state owed textile factory. He bought my mom and me gold, dress, silverwares used on planes and all other “exotic” stuffs as I began to dream of the outside world. We also enjoyed walking to a night market not far from our home in the center after dinner when my parents both had time, and I only got to know such kind of night markets appeared all over China since mid-90s were important signs of a prospective market economy.

30 years later than the launch of economic reform, Chinese people's ability and desire of consumption always shocked me while I got really tired of massive shopping mall in which you can spent a whole day, driving to the huge supermarket in the suburban and shopping for a week as once shown in the Hollywood movies, endless advertisements trying to persuade you everywhere even when you are sleeping.

One thing I really appreciated in living in highly developed Western Europe, especially in Amsterdam, is its preservation of small retail shops specified in various aspects (a friend even found a shop only sold tooth brush!) as well as their dignity of keeping shut on Sundays. If Dutch do not have less enthusiasm for shopping than Chinese people, they usually go to street markets or flea markets where individuals’ labor is highly respected, in my eyes.

What is a beauty?

I can not give a correct answer, because I know it largely depends on the context. For instance, seeing one girl in a commercial feel surprised to see her unevenly tanned shoulders as they were partially covered by her sun-top, if you are expecting her to undo the top and joyfully bask in the sun, you are a complete lay person to Chinese aesthetics. What you will soon find, on different TV channels, girls are applying sun creams marked with “+++” before they get out of their rooms even it is fairly a cloudy day, on the street, there is barely a girl walking without a umbrella in a ordinary summer day although they already had protection with sun creams for faces and for bodies respectively.

Are girls really so eager to be a “white skinned” girl? Partially yes. As an old saying “white skin redeems a hundred bad features.” shows, having a light color is traditionally considered as a necessity to be a beauty. As “your skin looks so pale” is actually a big compliments for girls and it is not hard to understand their scare of being tanned.

But some hostility towards the sun is unconsciously built, mainly thanks to the modern consumerism. Commercials, TV soaps, Sales in the department stores, female magazines keep on giving you a friendly hint that, “No one likes ugly black swans! ” and further social structures, such as family, peers, employers etc help girls to define “happiness” as “being loved by others”. So the simplified logic becomes, being white-skinned guarantees you more happiness and love! How wonderful, so just go to the store and buy according to the prescription: There are thousands of products can help you lighten your skin color.

So, a western girl living in China might find herself very limited choices to be beautiful in her understandings. All the daily products she can find in shops from facial foam to foundation power are all made with the “whiten effect”. That is what I thought immediately after I found out my first purchase in Denmark turned out to be a lotion helps to get sun tanned despite I was expecting something opposite. By the time when summer approaches and girls began to dress themselves in bikinis and have sun bath in parks in Amsterdam, I am already too sophisticated to be surprised: in countries with Atlantic climate, it really feels like a blessing when you see the sun shinning.

However, the closeness with the sun can only be enjoyed in North/Western Europe where it never gets seriously too warm. Although the climate of China varies greatly, the majority of its territory has a boiling summer with a temperature over 30 degrees Celsius. I have the reason to believe, if you were there, you will get fed up soon as well:)

Yes,Get It Started!

Well, things posted here mainly are ideas have haunted me for a while before I decided to put them out here, and I was hesitating about the language before setting up this blog. Finally, despite my broken English, I decided to write in a language that makes sense to friends around me and whomever is interested in knowing more about China without being scared away by the exotic Chinese characters!

Being away from my own country not only means a six-hour time differences, for which I need to set a special clock with Chinese time on my desk that I will not wake up my grandpa 3am, also it mentally separates me from the natural environment I was born to belong to, therefore I have the chance to observe the differences between my people and the "others”, in a objective(I guess) way.

I have been working as a journalist after my bachelor for three years in China, based in different major cities. The Life Magazine I worked for was quite an idealistic publication, for which I have traveled around this massive country in the aim of documenting its modernization process. This amazing experience taught me a lesson "How little I understand about my own country".

Coming to Europe at the end of the last summer and starting a course with 44 students from 30 countries brought my life and focus of thinking in a ever fresh direction. I do not remember how many times when people confirmed with me that I am from the China, they would raise questions starting with "Why": Why is your population so big? Why is a country with liberal market economy still fine with its non-democratic political system? Why is the housing price so high while your GDP per capita is actually so low? Why does it claim Taiwan part of its territory? Why...is it so different in so many aspects?

Some questions became clichés after all, and I just used some diplomatic answers if I noticed that they were not actually interested in knowing what I thought. But some did inspired me with further research for answers and my deeper interest in finding out why and how is China(not)different from others. I hope this blog can help me to keep these interesting discussions and findings.

When I expressed my doubt that "Why am I recognized as a Chinese, just for I happened to be born there?" People always tried to persuade me with "Come on, you are holding a Chinese passport which is only slightly more useful than an Iranian's" or "Go and look at the mirror and find out yourself! ". I am not satisfied with these responses. Starting this blog is also a means to find out answers to this and therefore a better way to understanding myself.