China from the inside through the eyes of a Russian professor

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Russia's pivot to the East, which Moscow has long threatened in retaliation for Western sanctions, appears to be canceled. The latest data show that trade relations with China last year not only did not deepen, but also fell sharply: imports of Chinese goods in January fell by 42.1% on an annualized basis, and the supply of Russian goods to China by 28.7%.

But, of course, it's not just about the economy. Russia and China are too different. Andrei N., who has been living in China for more than 10 years and teaches at a local university, told Alexander Litomu about how China actually looks from the inside.

It's a pleasure to work at a Chinese university. The Chinese respect university workers in the old fashioned way, they welcome them, invite them over, give them food and drink. Education has always been valued in China. There was no hereditary aristocracy; the one who passed the exam for an official came out to the people. We have long vacations - two months in the winter, two months in the summer. The load is not tough - I have, for example, 12 academic hours a week in this semester.

Chinese aunts, 70 years old, in Russian folk clothes, performed "Kalinka-Malinka" - trash, of course.

Our faculty has four teachers of the Russian language, the department was created recently, it is widely advertised in China. Our idea is that we study not just the language, but also the culture, art, history of Russia. We watch pictures, films, books for students so far it's hard to read … I try to stage performances with them, we teach songs. We also have a French language department. Students from there in striped suits in the colors of the French flag performed "Les Champs-Elysées", ours - in Russian outfits rented for the day - "Kalinka-malinka" and so on. Also specially for the rector was invited the ensemble "Berezka" - elderly Chinese aunts, about 70 years old, also in Russian folk clothes, came and performed the same "Kalinka-malinka". Thrash, of course. In general, older Chinese are wildly fond of Soviet culture and Soviet songs.

Our university is interesting because it is almost the first private university in China. Our rector's name in Russian is Vasya - everyone who learns Russian has a Russian name - he is 84 years old. He is the son of repressed parents, landowners. From the age of 14 he lived on the street, but was able to enter the university in Harbin, where there were many Russian specialists, and he treats them, the USSR, with wild reverence. He taught Russian, but then, when the cultural revolution broke out, he spent 3 months in prison and 10 years "re-educated" in the village. He returned, taught Japanese (since relations between the USSR and China were spoiled, it was impossible to teach Russian), conducted educational programs on the radio. After retiring, he decided to create his own university. I called many well-known retired senior professors. In China, it's tough - it's 60 years old, they are fired from the civil service (including from state universities). And people still want to work. Compared to state universities, we have less bureaucracy and more freedom. The university doesn't even have a statue of Mao Zedong, only Sun Yat-sen. Our dean is also over 80, his name is Volodya. He loves to be called that. Those who studied Russian in their youth took these diminutive names and keep them all their lives. Until the age of five, he lived with a Russian nanny, the daughter of a white general. His father was a Kuomintang general and was also repressed.

In Moscow, these people pass homophobic laws, and in China they order not only girls, but also boys.

Delegations came to us to establish Russian-Chinese friendship between universities, but it looked strange. In the entire delegation, only one person had anything to do with education, and with him were the customs chiefs, employees of the Federal Penitentiary Service, and State Duma deputies. This is such a corrupt scheme - the Russian rector pays for the deputies' vacation, they license, somehow cover up his university, and take their comrades from different departments on trips with them. Communicating with them, I got to know Russia better. In Moscow, these people pass homophobic laws, and in China they order not only girls, but also boys. They tell how cool it is to be a deputy: that in the dining room of the State Duma there is vodka instead of tea in teapots, the deputies have young beautiful assistants and equipped beds in the back rooms of their offices.

Such are the characters of Gogol and Saltykov-Shchedrin. They asked questions in all seriousness: wow, how many floors are there in the university building! Who did your rector threw to build it? Who's protecting you? It could not have occurred to them that there was no “roof”, that the university was built on the money earned. Rest abroad for them implies prostitutes on the very first day - it seems like a rule of good form. If someone refuses, they will look askance at him. Such tourists have zero interest in sights. Is that at night on a boat ride and stare at the skyscrapers.

In China, it is believed that students should love the teacher. In the early days, the dean told me: the students have already fallen in love with you, this is good, but it is bad that they are also a little afraid of you. I ask why? Well, you don't smile, smile more. As a result, the students fell in love with me so much that they spend the day and night at my house: they eat, surf the Internet, watch TV. They choose where they will celebrate their birthday - at my house or at the dean's. Twenty-year-old students have a really childish mentality. At the birthday party, they just eat the cake without drinking. Very touchingly, everything is repeated in chorus after the teacher. They try to make me have fun: they force me, for example, to play ping-pong with them, cook for me.

There is one strange boy who follows me and strives to carry the hem of my coat. He is very fond of Russian weapons, and wanted to take the name Katyusha. I said that if he decides to continue his studies in Russia, then we will misunderstand him, he thought for a long time, worried, and suggested that they call him the Mosin Rifle. I said again that this is not an ideal option. In the end, he agreed to Misha - in honor of Kalashnikov.

The dean gave the teacher a letter in an envelope with the following content: "Don't you dare give them these exercises, because the students will cry!"

If students do not like the teacher, they can complain to their superiors and the teacher will be fired. They wanted to fire the teacher from the French language department for giving the students her assignments and not listening to what assignments the students would like to receive. Our teacher tried to reason with two students who did nothing. They lied to the dean and gave her a letter in an envelope from the dean, with the following content: "Don't you dare give them these exercises, because the students will cry!" As far as I know, this is the relationship between students and teachers in public universities.

The point here is not only that in our university students pay tuition fees. The Chinese are convinced that if students interact with teachers more, they will learn the subject better. Through communication, not coercion. This is probably due to the Chinese tradition of collectivity in everything. Collectiveness is one of the reasons why the communist idea in China has been so late. For example, if a Russian meets another Russian abroad, he is likely to turn away and step aside. The Chinese run towards each other, hug. There are a lot of collective emotions everywhere. It happens that in a cafe in China someone cries, it spreads to the neighboring tables, someone laughs - the same thing.

Once I got to a Chinese beach, and those were the most terrible seconds of my life. There are a lot of wild places for swimming around, and a thousand people are crowded on the paid beach, shoulder to shoulder. Not because there is no place, but just people like to huddle and merge into a single mass. It's fun together. All of them with the same umbrellas, in the same rubber circles, stand knee-deep in water in a small fenced-off paddling pool.

I was caught by a crowd of Chinese people who saw a white naked man … And the Chinese call Russians "maozi" - "overgrown with wool." They shouted, "Maozi!" They began to pinch, tug, the children pulled out small hairs from me. I was covered with a blush of shame, like a huge white monkey in a zoo and rushed headlong away, raking my bodies with my hands.

Collectiveness also manifests itself in business negotiations. Not 2-3 people who are in the know, but dozens of people come to negotiations in China. If few people come to you for negotiations, it is a sign of disrespect. For university affairs, we needed to find out from some officials whether Russian diplomas of a certain type were recognized. The officials called everyone from their department and from neighboring organizations. As a result, about 70 people were sitting at the table, with vodka, nothing could be discussed. I have heard from Russian businessmen that since the seventh trip they have been able to hold business negotiations - by this moment the Chinese are tired of such gatherings.

In China, in general, the opinion of people about you is very important, what they say about you. You have to be with everyone and like everyone else, and still stand out a little: to have the largest car, the largest TV, the largest house.

The Chinese are different, of course. There are Chinese nationalists who look down on everyone. There are TV shows where they say that you need to give up hamburgers because there is some kind of Chinese bun. Or it doesn't matter that the Americans flew into space before the Chinese, because several thousand years ago the Chinese invented the hang glider.

There is a strange idea in Russia that the Chinese want to settle in Siberia. That's bullshit. I drove along the BAM, Transsib. There are Chinese traders there, but there are no Chinese colonies there. I have not seen anyone in China who wants to live in Siberia. They are afraid of difficult movements in harsh spaces incomprehensible to them. Okay, they might not have said this to me in the face: but I have never read any discussion of the capture of Siberia anywhere in China! It's cold there, not the best places to live. In China itself, there are also undeveloped areas of this kind. The Chinese love to live in China, and to travel somewhere to earn money. Those who want to emigrate are more likely to choose the USA or Canada.

I have not seen the Chinese wanting to seize Russia, although many really love our country. At the same time, many do not like America - I, of course, did not conduct polls, but these are empirical observations. Many say: "It's great that we are friends with Russia, together we kick America in the ass." They pee with boiling water from a strong Putin, who alone is able to annoy Obama.

There are many lies about China in Russia. There was a characteristic moment when all Russian bloggers wrote that Putin disgraced himself because he threw a shawl over Xi Jinping's wife's shoulders, and in China you cannot touch a woman. Allegedly, this is an insult, and all the bloggers in China in Weibo - this is an analogue of Twitter - are outraged. This is complete nonsense, he didn't grab her by the ass. I watched Weibo, on the contrary, they wrote how Putin looked after her remarkably, what a “warm” person he is.

Or recently Anton Nosik wrote: there is a crisis in Russia, and in Chinese blogs they write “let the hungry dog die”, “the aggressor country must die”. There are probably such bloggers, but this is not a sample of the attitude of the Chinese towards Russia.

There are young and old Chinese people who love Russia. The old ones are for nostalgic reasons. While the USSR and China were friends, we really gave them a lot in terms of education, helped in the war with Japan, Soviet specialists helped build factories and railways.

The middle and younger generation loves Russia for opposing America. I saw books about Putin in stores, which are on the shelves not end-to-end, but cover. Fresh bestseller: The Return of the Tsar. Putin's impressive speech”. Many people want to do business in Russia, and for these reasons they send their children to learn Russian.

For all the prevalence of anti-Americanism, the Chinese, of course, do not love their bun, but the American hamburger from McDonald's. Apple, iPhones, big cars, dollars … They respect America for material well-being. Children are sent to study in America. Such love-hate.

Modern Chinese culture is largely copying. They copy the appearance without much understanding. Club culture: The Chinese have seen pills being thrown at discos by young people in Europe. I watched in one club how the Chinese in all seriousness were bombarded not with drugs, but with aspirin. I met people with mohawks, and it turned out that they did not know what punk was at all, they just copied what they saw in the photo from the magazine.

Entire cities have been built that copy Paris, European and Russian palaces. The apartments, however, are not sold out there, because they are very expensive. Probably, when the Chinese are packed to swim in thousands of knee-deep water, they also copy the Europeans from the magazine. The Chinese themselves do not like to swim in the sea - you can drown. If there is a rare swimmer, then he swims along the coast. The Chinese are much more fond of swimming pools.

From time immemorial, the goal of the Taoist cult was to achieve immortality, therefore, everything that is dangerous is not accepted and promises loss of life or severe injury. For example, for a long time mixed martial arts were not developed in the country.

Once I saw Chinese in the mountains in cool mountaineering equipment, with professional cameras. I was surprised, because the Chinese do not like mountaineering - this is also dangerous. And so it happened: I climbed the mountain alone, and the Chinese hung out in a restaurant at the foot of the mountain. They just photographed each other against the backdrop of the mountains in cool suits.

Why are the Chinese so tempted to copy? Until 1979, they were starving. People who couldn't afford more than a cup of rice had a dollar in their eyes. With the dollar came envy, hatred and, at the same time, respect for countries that are richer. And they began to copy what they considered iconic - from lifestyles to prestigious items.

Censorship of the Chinese Internet is essentially a question of how much time you are willing to spend to bypass the blockages. 5-10 minutes is one thing, 2-3 hours is another. Previously, Google was not blocked, now it is. No facebook, youtube, twitter. This could be bypassed by the "Thor" or the "Anchor Shield" program. Now they are being cut. When it became time consuming to bypass the blockage, I gave it up.

They can press for criticism of the authorities on the Internet. My neighbor was strained just for a blog about the city mayor's office. Social media is tracked by keywords. There was a story: the son of a Politburo member in Beijing shot down a woman either on a Maserati or on a Ferrari. They began to block the word "Maserati", so that it was impossible to find out anything, much less to unite in a group with other indignant about this.

From communism, there is only inexpensive medicine and pensions for government officials. In my opinion, you cannot buy an apartment officially - you take it as a lease for 90 years. Such hypocrisy, of course …

And just as in the USSR - state capitalism, the party rules everything. Although there is a kind and rudiments of democracy - rotation and elections within the Communist Party, competition between different clans and generations is often not undercover, but rather open … Since there are many people in the party, it turns out that most of society is involved in this.

Previously, the idea sounded: that before the building of communism, you need to get rich, so they rolled back to enrichment, and then they will take up communism again. But I think this is a divorce.

In everyday life, relationships between people are built on duty and material reckoning. You have done something to someone, and you must be done in return. In restaurants, not everyone pays for themselves, but one pays for everyone, but next time the other pays. Over time, everyone's turn will come.

All my attempts to just be friends with someone ended up with the idea of selling me something.

I have rarely seen Chinese people who like to “spend time aimlessly” like us, for example, chatting and drinking beer with friends. If you don't work and drink, you have to gamble. On a visit, the Chinese play cards, mahjong. All my attempts to just be friends with someone ended up with the idea of selling me something. I met a children's writer, he gave me his book. This is a man who himself learned Russian, an admirer of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. Then it turned out that he had a T-shirt store, and the conversation boiled down to the fact that I should buy these T-shirts. When it became clear that I did not need them, our friendship quickly dried up.

There was a familiar artist. His wife invited me to visit. I was surprised - in China, people rarely get invited. She put up all of his paintings, pasted price tags on them - she had to buy something. Besides, she knew, I am not a collector, not a gallery owner.

I also talked to the musician. Having learned from bitter experience, I even bought music in his shop. I was afraid of losing my last friend … But while we listened to music, we drank tea together. And he tried to sniff me wildly expensive tea, although my whole house is already littered with tea.

Remembering my youthful fascination with Taoist philosophy, one day I went to the temple. A man from the temple gave me a business card that he is the director of the temple. He said how cool it was that I came, he has an idea to start a new church, and he needs an investor. Since I am white, I am very rich. We can chip in and build a huge new temple. He told me this in five minutes of acquaintance.

He began to explain to me that he was enlightened: God comes to him at night. The man wanted to build a hotel, but God told him that a temple is better - you can't get a lot of dough at the hotel. The tourist season is only four months a year, and in the temple, believers buy special sticks every day. And God sent me, a white investor, to him too.

Or another case. I knew the director of the park for cultural development in the foothills of Tibet, a Buddhist. I rented a house from him, we became close. We talked about philosophy for a week. Gradually the conversation dried up, and he also wanted to play something. I didn’t know how to play anything, and he decided that since I was Russian, we could play "who will drink more." We drank his entire bar, then I treated him to a cafe. On the third day of drunkenness, I realized that the money was running out, I had to leave. He went to work. Here the wife rolls out a six-figure bill, not only for the room, but also for everything drunk together during these days. One might get the impression that this happened to me because I am a foreigner. But I saw that people communicate in the same way with each other, I just will not give examples from someone else's life. At the university there is no such thing anymore, there we are, as it were, already in the same team.

On the topic of drunkenness - one of the myths that they drink the most in Russia. Outwardly, China resembles Russia in the early 90s: there are stalls on the streets, you can drink and smoke everywhere, alcohol is sold around the clock … It is often said that everything is bad in Russia, because Russians are drunkards. A huge number of Chinese are monstrous drunkards, but for some reason everything develops for them.

Lunch at our university from 11 to 14 hours. At the same time, party meetings take place, and teachers often get drunk at them.

Another myth is that the Chinese are very hardworking. Lunch at our university from 11 to 14 hours. At the same time, party meetings take place, and teachers often get drunk at them. Officials at all meetings must drink endlessly. The nickname of the secretary of the party organization in a city with a population of over one million is "The First Glass". At our university, the main drunkard is also the secretary of the Party organization. When they drink, they get up, go around everyone in a circle, clink glasses. It is impossible to give up drinking: they are constantly pouring, a toast for that, a toast for that. You say - I have gout, and you - yes, I myself have gout, you still need it.

Of course, on these endless drunks, out of fullness of feelings, I asked to join the party. They said to me: yes, let's take it. But they still haven't accepted it. I asked only partly as a joke, but partly and sincerely: as a leftist, to some extent I sympathize with the original ideas of the Chinese Communist Party. But they are either sure that I am joking, or really foreigners are not allowed.

There is also a more serious format of party meetings: someone retells, for example, the theses of Xi Jinping's last speech. Then they gather in a large conference room, do not drink and listen to a boring retelling for several hours.

We have a private university, we are not strict with the party. Our dean is a member of the dwarf Democratic Party, which is officially authorized. I don’t know how many people are there: it’s a party of scientific workers. It has absolutely no effect on anything. In my opinion, 7 or 8 micro-parties are allowed in China. The dean of the art department says he is an anarchist. Apparently, we have an atypical Chinese university.

The communist ideal was replaced by medieval cults. Taoism in the form of superstitions, rituals and cults to achieve immortality. An old man, an important businessman and deputy, was recently shot in one province. He believed in the Taoist legend that if you have 100 virgins, you can achieve immortality. Caught him on 37 girls. Allegedly, he is not a maniac, not a pedophile - he just believed, and the process itself did not fascinate him at all. As soon as he was shot, the same old man was found in the neighboring province. Somewhere these girls were stolen, somewhere they were bought.

Another custom is the wedding of spirits. If an unmarried offspring dies, so that he is not lonely in the afterlife, he must be married to a corpse. The coffin of the deceased girl is dug up, two coffins are placed next to them, wreaths are laid, they are photographed and buried together. Coffins with women soared in price, they were sold for 12 thousand yuan, 2.5 thousand dollars, which is very expensive for China. As a result, just girls began to disappear. This was not immediately noticed. There are many "ownerless" girls in the country. It is believed that it is better to have a son in the family, and the girl may be thrown out at birth. Prostitutes roam the streets, feeble-minded. It turned out that enterprising gangs are killing and selling these girls for perfume weddings. It's cheaper than buying a corpse from a graveyard.

In supermarkets, sacrificial money is sold that must be burned and sent to relatives in the spirit world. The world of spirits is one to one similar to our world. Not only paper money is sent there, but also paper models of houses, yachts, cars. Craftsmen do it for a lot of money: these are small models, with small washing machines, dishwashers, refrigerators …

In general, outwardly, the Chinese are ordinary modern people with iPhones and iPads. But what is hidden in their heads - sometimes it's better not to know.