This week’s photo series is by Zhao Yinyin. The theme is festival fashion. Cool young people in full swing.
White Punk Android is ready. She’s ready for waning summer chills in her fuzzy cuffs. She’s ready for zero-G combat in her show-stealing stormtrooper boots. And most of all, she’s ready for her close-up. This one’s for you, White Punk Android.
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Zhibo is a weekly column in which Beijing-based American Taylor Hartwell documents his journey down the rabbit hole of Chinese livestreaming app YingKe. If you know nothing about the livestreaming (直播; “zhibo”) phenomenon in China, start here.
I’m back!
If you’re a dedicated Radii reader, my apologies — I was out of town and couldn’t get an article together in time last week. But as luck would have it, my trip provided an idea for this week’s post.
You see, last weekend was a friend’s birthday and we went up to a near-deserted section of the Great Wall — did a bunch of hiking and climbing, sang KTV (karaoke) with some extremely friendly old people, played an unfathomable amount of cornhole, set way too many things on fire, and met a tiny puppy named Peanut who is essentially the dictionary definition of “I. Can’t. Even.”
Watch here (You’re welcome, internet.)
There was just one problem — slow wifi and limited 4G. By all rights that shouldn’t even qualify as an issue. Usually I’m the kind of person who derives a lot of pretentious joy from ignoring every form of electronic communication on trips and getting on my high horse about the virtues of going “unplugged” for a few days. But as we climbed our way past the “Don’t Climb This, Idiots” sign and made our way to a lookout tower with one of the best views I’ve ever seen, I realized that not being able to stream the experience felt like a genuine problem.
Here I was at the tourist-free section of an iconic Chinese landmark — all of the beauty with none of the crowds — and I was missing out on a guaranteed chance to be #1 on YingKe. All those new fans! All those gifts! This *meaningful fun with friends* bullshit was hurting my burgeoning social media career!
pictured: a face of regret and despair
Ok, fine; I’m probably exaggerating a bit. Realistically, the thought went something like “oh darn, this would have made a fantastic stream.”
Still though, I’m at the point where I have to acknowledge that zhibo (live streaming, if you’re new here) is now officially a *thing* that I *do* in some semi-official capacity. It produces a half-decent bit of income, it often impacts how I schedule my day, and — lest we forget — it gives me the opportunity to ramble about China on the internet every week. It’s growing quickly and has given me the chance to meet people and come across opportunities I wouldn’t have otherwise.
But it’s also starting to occasionally produce a feeling of obligation. The moment at which I question doing something fun with my friends because I feel like I should be blabbing into my phone tends to prompt a series of internal questions, staring with what the actual f@#k is wrong with you?
Seriously though, what are you doing? You’re spending hours staring at yourself in your phone, saying thank you for imaginary lollipops and cucumbers, telling people where you’re from a dozen times a minute, and all for what? For better Chinese skills you could get by just, you know, living your life in China as a slightly more outgoing person? For some hypothetical future of bizzaro-fame and fortune that would tie you permanently to a country you only meant to spend a few years in? Do you have any idea how many books you could read or memories you could make in the time you spend telling strangers that yes, you do in fact like Chinese food?
Yes, it seems I’ve reached the existential crisis portion of this roller coaster, where I’m spending enough time and energy on zhibo without yet having the sufficiently-life-changing results necessary to justify those expenditures to the more cynical part of my brain.
I’m aware that Chinese live streaming isn’t exactly the most relatable thing in the world; thankfully (for readers, at least), my concern with wasting time on zhibo has become a tidy little metaphor for my broader existential dread at the idea that I’m wasting my young adult life screwing around in China.
For all the ways in which I’m loving life here — and for all the times I tell myself that going back to America with near-fluent Chinese and a good amount of work/life experience in Beijing can’t be a bad thing — it’s hard to start my fourth year halfway across the world without some horror at the idea that I’m squandering my youth. I go on Facebook and see friends who are going to grad school, getting married, moving up in their serious adult jobs; and sometimes it’s hard to avoid feeling like I’ve made a terrible mistake.
Having recently turned 25, it’s all too easy to get it into my head that I’ve officially wasted my early 20s and have left it too late to really be successful in life. After all, what do I really have to show for my time here? A resume full of a bit of this and bit of that, some vacation photos, and a set of lungs full of the finest smog on the planet. Despite career advances and a reasonably comfy life, I’m pretty deeply connected to the ESL industry here — and that doesn’t have an obvious transition point back to the *real* world.
What the hell will I do when I go home? Tell people I’m good at entertaining the Chinese? Brag about how well I know the Beijing subway system? What if I get stuck here because it never feels like the right moment to leave? Good god, am I an expat now? Was I so scared of the real world when I graduated that I’ve essentially spent another four years avoiding it? What the hell have I done?
These are my 2am *screaming wordlessly into the void* thoughts.
But of course, the grass is always greener on the other side of the existential crisis. Had I gone from college to a 9-5 office job in DC, I’d spend my void-screaming time worrying about missing out on adventure and new experiences and being on the fast-track to a boring and predictable life. I’d be with the friends I miss, but wouldn’t have made any of the friends I love in Beijing. I’d be breathing cleaner air but eating more junk food — the tap water would be safe, but wandering around sketchy alleys at 3am (a truly magical experience in Beijing) wouldn’t be. I’d have certain political freedoms I give up to live in China, but I’d have to talk about Donald “You Did WHAT While I Was Gone?!?” Trump on a daily basis. Yin and Yang, as it were.
close enough, I suppose
I suppose since no one can ever know if the path they’re on is the *right* one, the best alternative is to judge the way we spend our time by how it shapes us on a day-to-day basis. And by that metric, my time spent on zhibo (and more broadly, living in China) passes with flying colors. Putting myself in front of thousands of people every day forces me to work on presenting the best version of myself. I constantly consider what I look and sound like; if my clothes look bad, people tell me. If I seem to have gained weight, I am informed. If my skin has imperfections, you’d best believe I hear about it.
thankfully, the bar is set a bit differently over here
And it’s not just superficial bullshit, either. I’ve been a terrible snooze-button-hitter my whole life, but streaming at 7am is a reasonably competition-free time to get on the top of YingKe’s homepage, so these days I tend to be up at 6. People want to hear music and love when hosts sing and play the piano, so for the first time in basically ever, I’m actually practicing on a regular basis. I’ve learned dozens of new Chinese idioms essentially for the purpose of sounding less like a f@#king idiot when blathering in Chinese — something no amount of college homework and testing could convince me to put in the time for.
If you don’t mind, I’d like to propose a new measurement of whether a given pursuit is worth your time. I call it the “Hangover Test.”
Those who know me well — or have ever met me — are probably aware that I enjoy knocking back a few on a Friday night. Or a Wednesday night. Or a Tuesday morning brunch. Shut up — it’s 5pm somewhere. But unfortunately, my years of hearty imbibing have not rendered me any less susceptible to hangovers. Once I cross a certain threshold, the next day is usually pretty much lost to me in terms of productivity. Continuing the existential crisis theme, those of you past your college years are no doubt familiar with the horror that comes with realizing you’ve wasted a day because you just *had* to do that last round of tequila shots.
All Things in Moderation: Easier Said Than Done
So, last Friday morning I woke up feeling like death and looking even worse. But instead of my usual process of figuring out what food-poisoning-based excuses I needed to send to clear my schedule for a day of misery, I had a uniquely focused thought: Good god, I look like shit and I need to be presentable and streaming in 45 minutes.
Laugh all you want, but it worked. I did a bunch of miserable sweat-inducing exercise, took a long icy shower, drank some coffee, put on some over-compensatingly formal clothes, and sat down for my morning stream. Then I went to a meeting that without question I would have otherwise canceled. Doing zhibo gave me a win in the morning that all the exercise goals and podcasts and big book-reading plans never could.
So, I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say I’m probably not the only 25-year-old in the world with some serious doubts about whether their life is on the right track. Here’s the advice that you didn’t ask for and I’m not qualified to give: if what you’re doing with your time springs you out of bed in the morning and motivates you to improve yourself in other ways, it’s probably worth doing.
Even if it’s objectively fucking stupid.
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My apartment complex just installed a new security system. Now to get into or out of the complex, you need to swipe a key fob over an electronic pad on the gate. To enter our building you need to swipe another key fob over an electronic pad by the door. Then to go up or down the elevators in our building, you need to — you guessed it –swipe your key fob over yet one more electronic lock. To travel the 100 meters from the gate of our complex to my apartment requires swiping two separate key fobs over three different locks. That’s not including, of course, the key which opens my apartment door.
The new system has divided my neighbors.
A bit of backstory: we live in a reasonably upscale apartment complex just on the northeast corner of the Second Ring Road. (I can see the Death Star/Entry-Exit Administration building from my porch.) The complex was built in the turn-of-the-millennium Beijing building boom. To buy an apartment here will set you back about 8-9 million RMB. We pay about 9,500 RMB (~ $1,400) in monthly rent for a two bedroom/two bathroom, 900-square-foot, high-floor unit. There’s a large courtyard between the buildings, with a children’s playground and a couple of nice gardens.
The neighborhood around it is transitioning… slowly. There are a lot of danwei xiaoqu (old-school housing estates) and a few gritty hutongs, holdouts in Beijing’s sweeping plan to turn the city into a Green Zone for the 1%.* There are also a fair number of economic migrants who live in the area around our complex. Therein lies the problem, at least as far as my neighbors are concerned.
For as long as we have lived here — or at least as long as we’ve had our own apartment complex WeChat group — the residents of our peaceful little slice of heaven have complained about non-residents infiltrating our courtyard. Some of the complaints raise not unjustified safety concerns over folks wandering the halls of buildings, knocking on doors or posting advertisements everywhere, but just as many grumbled about being forced to share our courtyard, its play areas and gardens, with the people who live outside the complex. The general sentiment has been that owners in our compound paid good money to live here, and it’s not fair that some people (read: “poor folk”) are freeloading by bringing their kids and dogs over to use our space.
At the same time, many of the same people routinely throw a hissy fit on our WeChat group because the new security system prevents deliverymen from accessing the higher floors, thus forcing residents to trundle down to the gate (or at least the lobby of their building) to pick up their deliveries.
The issue is one of class. While there are signs that income inequality in China may actually be improving, among the world’s ten largest economies only Brazil has a Gini coefficient larger than China. It is as uncomfortable a topic for most folks here as it is for many people in the United States. Both countries have long prided themselves on their “classless” societies, albeit a self-identity derived from different ends of the ideological spectrum. Everybody I talk to in China is “老百姓” (“just folks”) whether they drive a three-wheeled scooter or a BMW. But China, like the United States, is increasingly divided among the have-nots, the haves, and the have-a-lots.
In China, class can also be something very personal. Many of the haves grew up as have-nots. Their boats have risen along with the waters of economic growth and general prosperity, but also through hard work and sometimes a bit of luck. (It helps to have been born with an urban hukou, preferably in one of China’s four major municipalities.) The urban elite often proclaims personal narratives and identities — not entirely without reason — as self-made individuals. But this has also created a kind of “Prosperity Gospel with Chinese Characteristics.” Good fortune happens to good people. If you do not have good fortune, then something must be wrong with you. After all, the system works for me: I’m the one standing on the inside of the gate with a couple of key fobs in my hand.
This same inequality allows for the army of delivery drivers, working long hours for relatively low wages, to keep up with the conspicuous consumption of the new middle class. As a friend asked me last week: When was the last time you saw somebody in possession of a Beijing hukou lift anything heavier than their mobile phone?
Last week, the Beijing municipal government announced a “red line” for population. By 2020, the population of the city will be capped at 23 million. The sticky wicket here is that the current population figures are based on the number of official residents, or holders of residence certificates. That number is about 21.7 million but doesn’t include the “floating population” of semi-legal residents and migrant workers. They don’t have residence certificates and, like undocumented workers around the world, are undercounted when the census takers come around.
Estimates vary, but the actual population of the city may already be north of the 23-million-people red line. This means that instead of simply slowing in-migration, the new policy may require the government to take coercive measures to move folks already here out of the city. We’ve seen one aspect of this policy in the closure of many low-end businesses throughout Beijing’s neighborhoods, exactly the kinds of businesses owned, operated, and staffed by economic migrants from other parts of the country.
It is possible that some of Beijing’s haves will cheer this policy as a raising of the drawbridge. Fear of being swamped by the rural masses has long been at the core of class anxiety in urban China.
But a city is more than just the upper middle class.
Earlier this month there was much excitement in our compound when the municipal government cleared out the street-side wet market, which used to make it difficult for drivers to reach the entrance to our underground parking garage.
Just the other day, our compound WeChat group fielded the plaintive query: “Where do people now go for dumpling wraps?” There used to be three such stalls right in the neighborhood around our compound. Now those stalls are gone. Along with the vegetable sellers and my jianbing guy. When Beijing becomes simply a safe haven for the upwardly mobile classes, what will be lost?
*Credit to Brendan O’Kane for this turn of phrase.
Cover photo: A towering apartment block in Beijing (via Century Realty)
The theme for this week’s photo series is festival fashion. Cool young people in full swing.
This guy was wearing sunglasses designed as mirrored Pacmans. We first saw him full-on lounging on the grass under a tent, and later caught up with him outside for a cigarette. The quasi-formal belt, slacks and shoes clash beautifully with his Pacman shades and fresh-ass tats. Shine on, man.
Photo by Zhao Yinyin for Radii. Text by Adan Kohnhorst.
Today is the National Day of the People’s Republic of China, the official celebration of the nation’s birthday (though it was technically founded on September 21, 1949). The leadership and top brass celebrated the country’s origins and fallen soldiers with a memorial service outside the Forbidden City yesterday:
The rest of the country celebrated mainly by moving around. The Weekend Australian reports “700 million Chinese on the move for golden week holidays” — that’s about half the country, or two Americas. Six million of those are taking their purchasing power overseas, according to The Straits Times, who also report 560 million road trips happening domestically.
In the US, the royal family gave China face by sending Ivanka and Jared to the official National Day celebration in Washington D.C. GB Times reports:
According to Chinese media outlet Xinhua, [Chinese Vice-Premuere] Liu [Yandong] made a short speech at the reception in which he highlighted the Chinese government’s efforts to improve the lives of its nearly 1.4 billion people, as well as the contributions it has made to the development of both China and the world as a whole.
He also stressed the importance of cooperating with the United States and the need for face-to-face exchanges.
Amen to that!
Last but not least: Toys ‘R’ Us might be filing for bankruptcy at home, but its China operation is firing on all cylinders. The toy behemoth plans to open 10 new stores in China during the National Day holiday, bringing the total number up to 150, according to China Daily:
Operations outside the US and Canada, including about 255 licensed stores and joint venture partnerships in Asia, which are separate entities, are not part of the bankruptcy proceedings, Toys ‘R’ Us said.
Seems fitting, given that the majority of their products are probably made in China anyway.
Cover photo: Northbridge Times
All this week, Radii is posting a photo essay by Edward Evenson of snaps from outside the buzz and noise of the Chinese megacity. Rural landscapes for a quick daily moment of serenity…
Walking down the piers extending out to the East China Sea, the sightseer is flanked by shallow mudflats covered in grass. The summer months witness the grass grow to heights of over a meter, swaying to and fro with the western winds of the late afternoon. The grass itself presented a good picture opportunity, but it was the ship sailing by, with it’s bridge just peaking over the grass that caught my attention. It reminded me of a scene from the Studio Ghibli films I watched as a kid. The ship was moving fairly quickly, so I lined up a shot and took just one photo before it was out of position. Luckily, it turned out alright.
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