A Fast Car From China

In a previous post, I discussed my inability to find a car company that could be a lifestyle statement. Though one of the leading candidates was Volvo. Their combination of unapologetic dorkiness, and design appealed to me. But that discussion was limited to practical cars.

In the impractical car category, I've always appreciated Lotus. I know, their cars are cheaper and less powerful than most dream cars, since they go for small and light, rather than big and brawny. But small and clever overcoming strong and dumb is my fantasy, so Lotus embodies it better than some expensive behemoth that they crammed a huge engine into. And I figure that I might as well take advantage of being able to fit in tiny, lightweight cars.

Now here's the interesting part: Volvo and Lotus have one more thing in common besides quirkiness and my fandom. They're also owned by the same company: China's Geely, who have owned Volvo for a few years now, and recently bought Lotus.

Like many western car fans, to me, Chinese manufacturers are this unknown amorphous blob. We've heard various things about them ripping off foreign designs, building small but unexciting cars, and occasionally funding oddball companies. And there's a general assumption that they'll eventually burst forth, start exporting to Europe and the Americas, and destroy everything in their path. Or maybe they'll discover that the West's preference for cheapness over quality doesn't extend to automobiles.

Anyway, the point is that we don't really have any reason to have an opinion on the Chinese manufacturers. That may seem obvious, but car fandom is all about rivalries. You're expected to have opinions on Ford vs Chevy, Porsche vs Ferrari, Bentley vs Rolls Royce, VW Beetle vs Citroen 2CV, Delorean vs Bricklin, Subaru WRX vs Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution etc. It honestly feels weird to see cars and not have an opinion on them.

But now that's changing. I'd already noticed that Geely seemed to have done a good job with Volvo, a company that had been struggling to compete with the world's big luxury brands. Normally, when one car company buys another, it goes wrong in one of three ways: They integrate the small company into the big one lose what was special about it, they force cost-cutting on it and it makes crappy cars, or they just buy it and ignore it, and the smaller company is no better off.

But Geely had been clever with Volvo, giving it the money it needed to turn around, while not forcing it to be something it isn't. They're gradually integrating it into the rest of the company, with plans to build Volvos in China, but being patient. It's reminiscent of how India's Tata has turned around Jaguar Land Rover, so perhaps rising Asia will be good for western brands after all.

Lotus certainly needs that sort of treatment. They were owned and mismanaged by GM, who had them build a - I can barely say it - a front-drive sports car. Then they were owned by Malaysia's Proton, who didn't seem to know what to do with it. Then they had a CEO who announced an ambitious slate of new cars they couldn't afford to put into production. Since then they're been treading water, offering an endless stream of "new" special editions of their existing cars.

So stable and wise ownership is just what they need if they are going to stay in business long enough for me to earn enough money to buy one. I'm even okay with the fact that they'll probably end up building an SUV. But now, I'm just getting used to the fact that I apparently have an opinion on Chinese cars. Geely rules, Chery, BYD, um... Dongfeng drools.

Tso Long And Thanks For All The Chicken

There's a Tums ad running where a guy finishes a meal at a Chinese restaurant, then receives a declaration of war from General Tso, who - in the form of some sort of meatball avatar - proceeds to pelt him with chicken pieces. It's a reasonably funny ad, even though it's likely a historical abomination.

Okay, I looked it up, and yes, General Tso was a real person. Though at least General Tso's Chicken did originate in Taiwan, which makes it more authentic than much Westernized Chinese food.

But speaking of General Tso Chicken, it also brings up a point I've wanted to make for a while now: For the last time, people: It's General Tso, not General Tao.

You could understand if it was a simple misspelling or something, but this is a rather awkward misremembering in which people confuse two of the few Chinese things they've heard of. Worse, Tao is a religious concept, so it's a particularly touchy thing to confuse. Imagine that Apple Crisp became popular in China, but they couldn't remember the word "crisp," so they started calling it, "Apple Christ."

What's especially embarrassing, this seems to be a largely Canadian problem. Americans get the name right. But here in Canada, companies like President's Choice put "Tao" on their packaging. Even Chinese restaurants give in and use the wrong name. So let's take this ad as proof we need to change; there's no way we can get out-ethnic-diversitied by Tums.

Low Marks From The Canadian Judge

One of the awkward aspects of the Olympics is that there is little correlation between athlete's efforts and rewards. To get good enough to win an Olympic medal, you have to work incredibly hard starting from a young age, passing on a lot of the rites of passage growing up. Your reward is huge but very brief fame. Yes, you definitely have to work hard to be successful at professional team sports as well, but it's easier to envision those athletes having happier lives. They get rewarded with lots of money, and it's easier to believe that they get enjoyment out of their sport. For an olympian in one of the simpler racing or strength sports, a competitor spends their young life repeating this same mind-numbing event, gets a huge but brief fame after winning a medal, and then suddenly has to decide what to do with the rest of their life.

That's why I was a little alarmed to see the recent P&G ad featuring a Chinese diver getting chewed-out by his coach. His mother tells him somewhat dispationately that he still has what it takes, and then he goes on to win. It's supposed to be heartwarming, but it gets much too close to my worry that Olympic athletes' dedication goes beyond sanity. It's bad enough with our own athletes, but I've always felt uncomfortable when it comes to athletes from totalitarian governments that see athletic prowess as a national priority. The thought that these competitors are getting pushed by perfectionist coaches is not plesant, even if they do ocassionally get parental pep-talks from a distance.

Of course, you wouldn't have seen this sort of thing during the Cold War. I mean, they might have done a commercial making us feel good about enemies comming together to compete in peace, but you wouldn't have seen any validation of the opponent's methods. Can you imagine an ad with an East German mother holding her teenage son's hand to reassure him while getting his first steroid injection?

I fear that this is a result of our modern business world. If you're a global brand associating itself with a global event, you need ads that play in all places. Or, rather, play in all markets. And sometimes that means glorifying China's relentless drive for perfection. Lest you think I'm being West-centric here, let me point out that I encourage the mixing of the world's cultures, but we really should export only the positive aspects of our cultures. For instance, it's wrong to hate on Americans, but it's hard to disagree with people who resent them dumping violent movies or vapid fast food on the rest of the world.

The Endless Wait For Chinese Democracy

China's rise out of poverty has been good to see, but the way it has played out has been a little depressing. If you're my age, you remember the Tiananmen Square protests, which seemed to be - along with the freeing of Eastern Europe - part of a global revolution against totalitarian governments. Although those protests were ended by force, the people's desire seemed so strong that it would not be denied.

And yet it was. In the twenty-five years since then, the Chinese government had delivered only token democratic reforms, and yet their popularity is high. Of course, it's all because they've delivered prosperity.

And that's why the whole rise of China has been so depressing: it's demonstrated just how little we humans care about abstract concepts like freedom of speech.

On the one hand, it's understandable. According to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, people will want to be lifted out of poverty before they concern themselves with intellectual freedom. And a big mistake in the rebuilding of post-cold-war Russia and post-gulf-war Iraq was delivering on those abstract freedoms first with little consideration for building a system that would get people the necessities of life.

But China has, in many regions, gotten to that middle class level, and there still doesn't seem to be much push for democracy and rights. It looks like the government has succeeded in buying the complacency of the populous. Of course, many totalitarian governments try that, but few have the economic growth to pull it off. So although I could understand the starving giving their complicity in return for sustenance, it's shocking to see people knuckle-under just to get the same middle-class lifestyle we're starting to find so soulless.

But apparently there are some people who do care about this, and they are predominantly young people from Hong Kong. That makes sense: these are people born around the time Hong Kong was handed back to China. So unlike the rest of China, they have had a constantly good standard of living, and unlike the rest of Hong Kong, they haven't had any joy at being reunited with the rest of their culture. In that case, we might see more Chinese dissatisfaction with their lack of democracy, but it will have to wait for a generation that has grown up in the current Chinese economic success.

A Little Too Much Off The Top

China is now planning to bulldoze 700 mountains to make more room for cities.  What's really shocking is the quote that this is the "largest mountain-moving project in Chinese history."  So, this isn't even the first mountain-moving project in China.

It reminded me of the developers in the book Snowcrash who have designed the optimal suburban neighbourhood, and just keep building copies of it all over the world, even if they have to remodel the landscape to make it the same.  China seems to have achieved the same combination of boldness in construction and timidity in design.

It's nice to see China building the maglevs and exotic architecture we thought were in our future. But more often they just shovel their money into building facsimiles of western cities.  And that's disappointing when you think about the more creative things they could do with their money (even within the context of housing their people and modernizing their infrastructure.) Rather than brute-force work, try cleverer solutions.  Instead of moving mountains to make conventional cities, couldn't that money go into adapting structures to the sides of mountains.  Or better transportation so the cities can be build on the other side of the mountains.  Or for that much money, build the cities inside the mountains.

From China Without Love

Today was Singles Day in China.  It's an unofficial holiday in which young people celebrate being single.  It's become so popular that it is now biggest online shopping day in the world, putting The West's Valentine's Day to shame. I feel a great satisfaction to see my single brethren win the game of global capitalism.

Most news stories about this are just seeing it as yet another piece of evidence that China is taking over the world. But you could also see it as evidence of China's demographic problems. Their One-Child policy is well known, and combined with male-preferring cultural traditions, it's led to selective abortions and far more sinister ways of ensuring that one child is male. Thus, China has a generation in which men greatly outnumber women, and a lot of single men.

Those are some disturbing overtones to this story, so I'm trying to look at the positive: the Chinese started a rather melancholy holiday as a joke, and they ran with it. I'd love to see more of this from China. During their ascent, they've been portrayed as either an unemotional machine, or as a cryptic, alien culture. But this makes them seem human, and likable.

It's a lot like Japan in the eighties. I grew up during their economic rise, and they were portrayed the same way in media. Today they don't seem scary at all. Their economic stagnation had certainly played a part in that, but the culture they expected had a lot to do with that too, from video games to anime to sushi. It's hard to fear people once you know that they created Hello Kitty.

Neo Tokyo, We Have a Problem

I came across this article about how the Japanese space agency is creating a robot to assist the Japanese astronaut who will soon be going to the International Space Station.  But this isn't some utilitarian machine to do esoteric technical work.  No, it's a cute, human shaped robot whose primary task is to make conversation and keep the astronauts company.

That's what love about Japan: I don't think there's any other country on earth that is as gloriously, unapologetically reaffirming of its own stereotypes.  The Americans didn't put gun racks on the shuttle.  The Russians didn't put a little spacecraft inside a bigger one inside a bigger one.  And the Chinese spacecraft, to my knowledge, was both expensive and made of non-toxic materials. 

Here in Canada, our greatest contribution to space exploration has been the Canadarm.  I suppose that's a little stereotypical: it's practical, it's not flamboyant, in a pinch it can be used as a bottle opener. 

My Phone Has Been Shanghaied

It's happened again.  A few weeks ago I mentioned a strange incident in which my phone's autocorrect somehow "corrected" my attempt to spell "and" with the Chinese city of "Zhengzhou." 

Well, in typing my last entry, I noticed that where I had tried to type the word, "that," and again, I don't know what virtual keys I actually hit, but half-a-sentence later I looked back and saw not, "that," but rather, "Fuzhou" which is yet another Chinese city.

That can't be a coincidence; it must be a conspiracy.  Once again, China is doing things their way.  Any other country would sabotage our phones so they can see what we're talking about.  But they have sabotaged our phones to encourage us to talk about them.

With Six You Get Beanroll

I have a lot of respect for Chinese people who run Chinese restaurants.  On the surface, their job may not seem difficult.  You go to a new land, and immediately go into a field where you have an unfair advantage over everyone because of your heritage.  You also skip having to assimilate to the new culture.  It's the easy way out.  Besides the twelve-hour days six days a week part.

But as you may know, the "Chinese" food in North America is a rather warped version of actual Chinese food.  It's mostly based on the cuisine of Hong Kong and environs, since that's where the early Chinese immigrants came from.  The cooking has been adapted to local tastes and available ingredients.  And a lot of it was invented by immigrants in the U.S. long after they left home.  When you realise all this, you've got to wonder what they're thinking when they go into business making inauthentic food that misrepresents their homeland. 

To put this in terms we can more easily understand: Lets say you decide to emigrate to the planet Xardak.  You arrive to find that there are many Earth Food Restaurants, and the Xardakians always have an appetite for more.  It sounds like a great business opportunity.  But upon going to one of these Earth restaurants, you're horrified to see what they've done to our food.  Battered hamburger patties.  Curry with melted mozzarella on top.  Deep-fried sushi.  Pizza covered with one giant pepperoni.

So what do you do?  They'll never accept real Human food now that they've gotten used to their version of it.  You'd have to sell the Xardakians the food they want, trying not to gag as you ladle out their New England Clam Borscht.  Bite your tongue as you want so badly to point out that French Fries don't really go on a Caesar salad.  Try to convince them that this "Jambalaya" that you're introducing really is authentic Earth cooking, but their favourite stir-fried spaghetti is just something some guy made up when he was running out of ingredients. 

Maybe if your restaurant is in a bohemian neighbourhood of a Xardakian metropolis, you could convince a few trendy aliens to try your mother's recipe for shepherd's pie.  But for most Earth ex-pats, you'll have to conform to expectations if you want to stay in business.  Your only satisfaction will come from talking about your customers behind their backs in English.  Or, for maximum irony, learn to do it in Mandarin.

Keep Calm and Something Ironic

I was going to write a rant about how I'm sick of the "Keep Calm and Carry On" posters and their various spoofs.  After all, the whole phenomena has really run its course.  Beyond the original, there's really only three more permutations you can try: satire ("Get Panicky and Go Mental,") weirdness ("Keep Calm and Have a Donut,") and gratuitous subculture references ("Keep Calm and Han Shot First.")  Now people are scrounging for variations and the results usually aren't funny or meaningful.  Often, they can't even be bothered to get the font right (Humanist, people!  It's the only font they have in Britain.)

But then I realised that there is another avenue that hasn't been explored: other countries.  The reason the poster was so amusing in the first place was because it was so distinctly British.  It's rare that you see an artefact that sums up a culture's qualities (well, best qualities) so perfectly.  So I thought, what would the equivalent posters in other countries be?

Greece:

 China:

Canada: