In most of our journal chapters, we have tried to focus on the positive aspects of life in China. We didn’t come to China to be critical of living conditions or the government, but rather to link the world more closely in friendship and understanding. In contrast, some of the observations in this chapter may seem harsh, but I don’t intend them that way. China is an amazing country; it has made great improvements during the last century, especially during the last 20 years. This chapter is intended to capture a snapshot of China in transition. I have great confidence that, one day, China will be a great county that exercises a progressive and unifying influence throughout the world.
Our city has a new mayor, and his policy is to make great changes in the appearance of our streets. The main streets are being given a facelift to make them more modern, open, and inviting. All over Xiangtan, buildings are being demolished, curbs and sidewalks are being renovated, and trees and shrubs are being replaced.
The sidewalks along the main streets are crowded with small buildings. Most of these house shops and small restaurants. Slightly behind these, accessed by alleys, are apartment buildings, factories, offices, and other larger buildings. As I understand it, it so happens that many of these small shops were built years ago without a proper permit. The mayor is tearing down these smaller buildings. The work is done mostly by men armed only with sledge hammers. From dawn until dusk, they pound away at the brick walls. Sooner than you would imagine, a long line of shops is reduced to low piles of rubble. Other people come and salvage anything of even the slightest value. More workers come and squat in the rubble, cleaning the mortar off unbroken bricks and stacking them along the street. Tedious physical labor such as this is common. It is the best--or only--work that many people can find. It’s not common, though, to see them working at full speed. They have a much more leisurely pace than construction laborers in America. However, who can blame them? They probably work 60 hours or more a week for perhaps 30 US dollars salary per month. For a worker, chances for advancement in a job are slim.
Hundreds of blocks of street front have been demolished in this way. Now most of them are still rubble heaps; I don’t know what they will be used for. In a few places, mostly near major intersections, the demolished areas are being turned into parks, with benches and shrubbery. Probably most of the rest will eventually be replaced with more modern and prosperous buildings.
Along the main streets, at least in the central downtown area, the old sidewalks are being torn up and replaced. New decorative tiles are laid down in patterns of green and white. At first the new sidewalk seems luxuriously inviting--clean, wide, level, and unobstructed. This honeymoon doesn’t last long, though; the sidewalks are quickly appropriated for other uses. In fact, walking seems to have only a low priority in the overall multiple-use plan for sidewalks in China. Vendors crowd back onto the sidewalk, reclaiming their space. Vendors might be grouped into two categories: portable and fixed.
Portable vendors include shoe shiners, who carry only two small stools and a box for polish and rags. There are many of them on the streets. Others wander with their shoulder-pole baskets, selling fruits and vegetables. Still others lay out their knickknacks on a piece of cloth. As I understand it, many thousands of people were laid off from the large state-owned factories in the last several years, and it is very difficult for them to find new work. Some of them have no better prospect than to buy a few pounds of bananas at wholesale, or perhaps a few belts or other clothing accessories, and somehow hope to earn a minimal subsistence by selling them on the street. I don’t know how they manage to survive.
Fixed vendors are somewhat more prosperous and have a definite patch of sidewalk that they consider their domain. Clothing vendors stretch lines between trees and hang their wares along the sidewalk. Shoe sellers arrange their goods in long rows. In summer, “cooler stands” are very popular. People hook a small chest freezer up to an electrical connection and sell ice cream, popsicles, cold water, and soft drinks. At other seasons people sell chestnuts, fresh-roasted in a wok over a portable stove, or sweet potatoes, baked inside an old oil drum. Shops have absolutely no qualms about extending their business area out on to the sidewalk. Restaurants take up the most space. They spill out of their rented space, perhaps only 200 square feet, and arrange their tables and chairs all the way out to the street. I can’t walk on the sidewalk without intruding into their restaurant. Some of them don’t even bother to rent shop space; their entire operation is conducted on the sidewalk.
In addition to vendors, many other hazards make it difficult to negotiate the sidewalks in our city. Holes, large and small, deep and shallow, abound. There is no warning or barricade. Broken tiles, cracked pavement, debris from construction or demolition (it’s often hard to tell the difference), trash, waste water from small restaurants, side traffic from alleys, and motorcycles riding on the sidewalk can make it impossible to get anywhere. Often I simply leave the sidewalk and walk in the street. This is not as dangerous as you may think; everyone does it. Oh. How could I forget to mention the parked bicycles and motorcycles? Sometimes they are arranged in nice long rows. More often they are parked haphazardly at odd angles, forcing one to wend tortuously along, like water percolating slowly, slowly through the soil. Worse are the motorcycle taxis, which swarm like flies around any congested spot--a bus stop, a busy restaurant, or an alley entrance. They are constantly cutting across my path as I walk, blocking alleys, and forming impenetrable thickets at every turn. Finally, as there is no public parking available, cars and vans park on the sidewalk. They don’t seem to care whether or not anyone can pass around them.
Other than the lack of parking, a typical wide street in our downtown is reasonably well designed for today’s China. A main street will have two lanes in each direction, but without any parking spaces or painted lines. No one would pay any attention to the lines, anyway. A curbed narrow strip separates the main traffic lanes from an additional “foot-traffic” lane to the outside. The foot-traffic lane is for bicycles, slow motorcycles, pull carts, bicycle carts, loading, and the like. Because it is so difficult to find an unobstructed path on the sidewalk, many people walk in the foot-traffic lane. If there is no such lane, they walk on the street.
Landscaping is also a current priority for the city streets. The narrow strip usually hosts a line of low shrubs and trees. Where there is no strip, trees are often spaced along the edge of the main sidewalk. With a large expenditure of labor, some inscrutable plan is being carried out. Old shrubs are pulled up and replaced with new. Thousands of sycamore trees that have outgrown their original habitat have been chopped off, pulled up, and replaced with smaller trees. Prior to transplanting, the smaller trees have been butchered into what are essentially leafless stumps. They do recover well and grow quickly, perhaps too quickly. In five years they may need to repeat the entire process. On the largest streets, streetlights have been installed. They are not necessarily turned on at night unless it’s a major holiday, such as the recent eightieth birthday of the Chinese Communist Party.
Most streets in this city have not been improved, nor is it likely that they will. For example, one stretch of road between our college and downtown deteriorated so badly during the winter that it’s now essentially a wide 4-wheel-drive road. It is a busy street for buses, trucks, taxis, and such. However, the problem is ignored; we lurch violently every time we go to town. Small streets and alleys stand almost no chance of being improved.
The mayor might be on the right track in beautifying the city’s streets. It creates a prosperous, modern, and progressive atmosphere. It gives himself and the city’s residents something to feel proud of. However, a more fundamental problem receives little or no attention--trash. There appears to be no municipal garbage collection. In some areas, people are hired to sweep the streets or sidewalks once a day. For example, on our campus the sweepers begin work early every day and fill their pull carts, mostly with trash that people simply throw down on the ground. For part of the day, at least, our streets are clean. Outside our campus, though, the trash is not carried away. It collects along the roadside. Houses and shops dump trash into piles along the road. Some piles have been accumulating for years. Out of necessity, a few piles are occasionally shoveled into trucks and hauled away. Just outside the border of our campus are several such piles. Shops continually dump their trash there. Over a period of a few months, the piles become so large that they encroach into the road. Finally they stick so far out into the street that the buses can’t get around them. Then eventually a truck will come along with a few strong-stomached men carrying shovels, and the piles are hauled away. This happens about 3 or 4 times a year. I think rats would be a very serious problem here, except that poisoned grain is spread around the base of all the buildings.
The fact is that the Chinese have made a habit of throwing down trash. Even if there is a trashcan nearby, which is not often the case, most people will simply drop their wrapper or can or banana peel, and walk blithely on. This practice is taught to children when they are young. No one corrects a child when he throws down trash. I won’t attempt to explain the psychology of this practice, except to say that most people only feel responsible, at most, for their own little space. For example, people who live near me will sweep the trash out of their patio and leave it lying on the sidewalk. If I buy, say, an ice-cream cone and give the wrapper back to the vendor for disposal, he will probably just drop it on the ground. Sometimes I carry a wrapper or banana peel for blocks before finding a trash can. I don’t want to accuse all Chinese of harboring this attitude, but it does seem to apply to the overwhelming majority. In my English classes, many students criticize the Chinese attitude toward trash. However, a major change in consciousness will be required before the situation improves.
I was riding a city bus with a Chinese friend recently. We were talking about the mayor and his plan. My friend said the mayor would be successful. I replied that the main problem--trash, of course--was being ignored and that the city government should make it a priority issue. He said that much of the problem was caused by the shop owners. They should pay someone to haul away their trash. I said that this wouldn’t work without government pressure; also that no private industry existed to provide that service. Government leadership was needed to create the necessary infrastructure, publicize the issue, and enforce penalties. He said that the city had no money to spend on the problem. I said very small taxes could be levied on businesses, or people could be charged for service on an as-used basis. The money shortage was simply an excuse for doing nothing. In return my friend observed, wisely, “It is easier to change the streets than to change the hearts of the people.” I agreed and then said that, in my opinion, until China was able to solve this problem, it would remain a third-world country. Foreigners would never be able to ignore the piles of trash. In their eyes, China would remain a backward and dirty country. I still have great confidence in the future of China, but the distance to be traveled at times seems staggering.
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