real

Some of you may recently have seen this photo circulating on various news-related websites (and on my Facebook page):

This image of a ghostly man hovering over an impossibly tiny old woman was in short order revealed to be a badly photoshopped effort by local officials to show how much they care about the laobaixing, “the old hundred names” or the ordinary people here.  Alas, this was not the first such “photoshop fail” as also recently there was this:

Which subsequently became something of a meme, with the Chinese internet featuring examples like this:

and this:

China is of course notorious for producing things of dubious authenticity.  The famous/infamous artist Ai Weiwei has even named his architectural/design studio FAKE Design  (in Chinese, pronounced fa-ke, which of course sounds like a Bad English Word). When he was detained, allegedly for tax evasion, in 2011, he started calling the situation the “Fake Case.”   And, recently and relatedly, The New York Times featured an extensive report regarding the plague of forgery in China’s increasingly profitable fine arts market.

Apparently this art forgery has even produced tragic consequences.  More widely, the problem of fakery in China is especially prominent and dangerous with respect to food products.  For instance, Chinese products are killing our dogs. (Our dogs!)  Worse, even to dog lovers, was the the notorious case a few years ago of Sanlu dairy, which spiked its infant formula with melamine to raise protein measurements, killing and sickening larger numbers of babies here.    Now apparently even bubble tea is dangerous.  (Bubble tea?!  Are you f---ing kidding me!?) 

For these and other reasons, many people here consequently do not trust their own economic and political institutions.  Importing infant formula after trips abroad is a popular pastime.  There are numerous potential ways to interpret these events, partially depending on one’s own political inclinations.  I lean towards attributing many of these problems to the high rate of economic growth here.  It is literally out of control, toxic to all who spend time here and of course most so to those who have no way of coming and going as I do.  I am here partially doing research on volunteers in environmental organizations and one of the leading reasons I’ve heard for becoming involved in such activism is rising rates of cancer. 

But what to do if your entire society is cancerous?  When the toxicity has spread from the literal air that people breathe to social and political trust? This apparent breakdown in social trust is largely a result of two factors.  First was the utterly destructive force of the Cultural Revolution.  And then, pretty much right after that, was the creation of a winner-take-all market economy.  Where are people supposed to get their sense of meaning, of value, of social responsibility in this poisonous blend of lost values and solely profit-oriented activity?

Yet, I do not want to solely dwell on negatives, as we can rely on the American media to do that just fine.  As I’ve said already, there are good and courageous people here who are seeking to change things.  In fact, the mode of relating I encounter here seemingly more than any other is simple kindness.  Daily I encounter people willing to smile, to help, to offer a compliment about my ever-evolving skills with the Chinese language.  The other day, a man claimed that my Chinese was better than the woman working the cash desk in his little shop.  I asked where she was from and he said “China!”  Then I said, no, “where is her hometown?” and he said, “Hunan!”  A southeastern province where the Chinese is not exactly biaozhun or “standard” (which really just means “as it is in Beijing, the city that is so dominant in this massive country that the whole country is one time zone, Beijing time, lest you provincial types and ethnic minorities forget where The Man really resides”).

Could this all just be “fake” as well?  I’m sure that some of it results from my status as a visible foreigner, sometimes the only one around.  It could just be superiority or disdain (“look at the foreigner trying to speak our language!”) rather than kindness.  But as an academic I must too often swim in the slimy waters of Unctuous Elitist Condescension, so I know that when I see it, and, whatever this is, it is not That. 

I confirm that suspicion by a correlate experience, that of the actual existence of honesty in this country.  Despite all of the deceitful and sometimes outright malicious behavior I’ve already discussed, I also daily encounter people of incredible honesty.  Once it was a man selling me oranges in the produce market—the cost was 9 RMB and I gave him a 10 and asked him to keep the change, so he put an extra orange in my bag.  Or the guys from whom I sometimes buy my breakfast pastries (or bing 饼!) in the morning on my way back from running in the park.  Two bing are 1.8 RMB—they could just charge me 2 and I’d not ever know or care about the difference (which is about 3 cents), but they still charge me that 1.8.  Or, yesterday, I was trying to feed two small, lost, stray dogs on the street and saw that someone else had the same idea:

And, finally, yesterday there was this.  A man near the art museum doing water calligraphy on the street offered his brush to me so I wrote, “China is good” (see, totally impressive Chinese language skills!):

He responded with “American friends are good”:

These gestures, of kindness, of honesty, of compassion, give me hope that good exists all over the place here.  You just need to take the time to find it.