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Zhibo: Trade Wars and American Idiots

Zhibo is a weekly column in which Beijing-based American Taylor Hartwell documents his journey down the rabbit hole of Chinese livestreaming app YingKe (Inke). If you know nothing about the livestreaming (直播; “zhibo”) phenomenon in China, start here.

Topic of the Week The Trade War

pictured: the general sentiment

Ah, the unanswerables. What do you want me to say, Chinese internet? That our president is an idiot elected by a system that hates intelligence and loves shiny things? You got me.

We all know Trump doesn’t know a damn thing about international trade and that everything he learned about tariffs comes from building some criminally ugly (and criminally other stuff) buildings in the ’80s. Of course there are legitimate reasons for both the United States and China to consider changing their trade policies, but this isn’t a 4-dimensional chess move – this is knocking the checkers board over because you’re having a temper tantrum.

Just like with everything else Trump-related, it’s teeth-gnashingly annoying to watch pundits who I’m sure consider themselves to be quite serious people telling everyone to calm down because these tariffs aren’t that big of a deal. I’d encourage these people to brush up on the concept of the Overton window and then try to remember that *this* guy is launching a trade war against our biggest trading partner because we made him president and he thinks it looks good on TV.

This guy.

THIS GUY.

Yes, I get that we can’t all be dialed up to 11 all day every day. I get that people have lives to lead. But holy good god, can we please stop listening to the people who want to pretend that THIS F@#KING GUY has any idea what he’s doing because confronting reality is too uncomfortable? Here’s a thought: when the British and the Chinese are mocking you for the same damn thing, you probably done goofed.

Yeah, but I hear Obama’s blimp was much smaller and made in Kenya.

It’s funny, though. Even with everything I just said, I can’t help but feel that little defensive flare of nationalist “HEY THAT’S MY COUNTRY YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT” in my gut when I see these kinds of messages. I guess it’s hard to overstate how badly we humans want to be on a team.

Funniest Question of the Week How many American beauties? Can you introduce me to being my girlfriend?

Can I introduce you to being your girlfriend? Sure – pick a hand.

But seriously, I only mock the bad English because of the obnoxiousness of the core message, which we’ve covered before. Some things are the same on the internet no matter where you go.

Related:

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Article Mar 22, 2018

Strangest Message of the Week If you pick up a Chinese daughter-in-law, you won’t have to die.

Is the implication here that a Chinese daughter-in-law is the secret to immortality? Or is there a bounty on my head that can only be removed if my child marries a Chinese woman? Either way, this is gonna be tough to do without kids.

In all seriousness, I never did manage to get a follow-up or explanation for this message. Did he/she mean that producing Chinese grandchildren would be the way to keep my family line going? Was this an endorsement of Chinese daughters-in-law as great caretakers of the elderly? I’m going to assume something got lost in translation, but sadly I’ll never know.

Wisdom of the Week cramming ain’t saving shit

Wisdom coarsely spoken is still wisdom.

Rote memorization is a real problem in the Chinese education system – in part simply because of what it takes to learn all of those characters.

A Billion Voices: Rethinking “Chinese” With David Moser’s Little Yellow Book
Article Feb 28, 2018

I can’t tell you how often people people ask me about their English or my Chinese in the meaningless language of arbitrary test numbers. Look, I get that you have to take tests to get the numbers so you can get the piece of paper that helps you get noticed by the school or employer you’d like to notice you. More power to you – cram and ace the test. There’s nothing wrong with living in the world that exists. But for the love of god, have some awareness of the game you’re playing and don’t trick yourself into believing that you’re going to remember any of that shit after the test is done.

Related:

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Is China’s Infamous Gaokao College Entrance Exam as Scary as it Seems?
Article Jun 07, 2018

The Last Word the last word fuck you American idiot

This sentence is missing a colon. Coincidentally, that’s also where you can stick this message.

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Chinese Company Faces $11.8 Million Bill Thanks to France’s World Cup Win

France’s victory at the World Cup 2018 in Russia will have been watched with mixed emotions in at least one corner of China. Back in early June, kitchen appliance maker Vatti promised customers a full refund on any purchase of their “championship set” over the course of the month if les bleus were to triumph at the tournament.

Photo of the Day: The France Team Helping Chinese Consumers (Maybe) Get Free Kitchen Appliances
Article Jun 21, 2018

What may have seemed like a fairly harmless publicity stunt back then has now saddled the Chinese firm with a bill of around 79 million RMB (11.8 million USD) — although the terms and conditions of the deal, plus the wave of attention its garnered, could still see Vatti come out on top.

The “championship sets” being sold as part of the offer included a gas cooker and extractor fan, and cost 4,999RMB each according to Caixin. The company reportedly saw a 20% surge in offline sales and a 30% growth in online business thanks to the campaign. Caixin goes on to note that:

The company said that the cost of the special refund campaign would be “controllable,” in part because it is sharing that cost. The Guangdong-based company stipulated ahead of the tournament that all refund costs for products purchased at off-line outlets would be covered by franchisees. Vatti itself would be responsible only for online-purchase refunds, which represent about 37% of total refund costs.

However, some Vatti franchisees were already experiencing financial difficulties before the potential cost of the refund campaign. On June 29, near the end of the World Cup campaign, a Guangdong province court seized assets from its Beijing and Tianjin distributors after the legal representative behind both franchises disappeared for more than 10 days.

It probably wasn’t only Croatia fans watching with despair as Didier Deschamps’ team romped to victory in the final last night then.

Meanwhile, according to a Weibo post from business news site DSB, more than 100 companies in China have attempted to trademark “Mbappé” or the young French talisman’s Chinese name 姆巴佩 (“mu ba pei”) following his star turn at the tournament. In the past six days, 137 such applications have been made to the national copyright authorities, DSB reported, including everything from sports clubs to internet bars to, err, fertilizer companies.

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Photo of the Day: So Hohhot Right Now

Our Photo of the Day series this week shares photos from Inner Mongolia, taken during the Naadam period last year.

After a couple of weeks driving around Inner Mongolia in search of Naadam activities, it was soon time to return to Hohhot and take a train out of the province. The picture above comes from the spectacular roof of the main railway station there.

I may not have found as many fully-fledged Naadam celebrations as I’d hoped, but I certainly had a wealth of indelible memories as I rode off into the sunset.

Check out the full series of photos from Inner Mongolia here.

A Taste of Off-Season Life with Fujianese Tea Farmers

I stood in front of the house in the middle of the Fujian countryside and watched my friend’s car drive away. I waved as he turned the bend and disappeared out of sight. I wouldn’t see him again for seven days.

The house belonged to my friend’s family in Gande, Anxi, a famous oolong producing region. It was about a week before the tea was due to be picked and I had taken up an offer to stay with his oolong-producing family. This would be my first real insight into what it really meant to live in tea country outside of the tea season.

A house in the village (photo: Dylan Conroy)

The day started around 7am. Everyone would wake up and the mother would do the morning chores which included picking vegetables from the front garden, and cooking breakfast. Breakfast would be set up on the dining room table.

The traditional country style of eating sees the food placed in the middle of the table while you pick at what you want and add it in your bowl of rice. What I found most interesting though was that the food was all salted and preserved, so after everyone finished eating the mother simply put a basket over the food, and left it there until lunch where it would be picked at again. Dishes generally stayed on the table for a day or two until they were finished, based on how popular they were.

This style of preserving food obviously comes from a long history of not having a fridge. On the third day, I actually discovered a brand spanking new fridge in their kitchen, only to find it completely empty when I opened it. I imagine my friend back in Shanghai had bought it for them as a well-meaning gift, but that the family saw no real use for it.

The house I stayed in contained four kids. Two boys around seven or eight, a girl around six, and another boy of around two. To this day I cant exactly figure out whose kid was whose but there are at least two families worth of children in there. (I have heard rumors of a Fujianese tendency to ignore some of the government’s rulings, such as the one child policy and painted propaganda “billboards” reminding people of their family planning “responsibilities” are a common sight in villages throughout the province.)

Fujian family planning policy message (photo: Jake Newby)

They were sweet kids but had a lot of energy and could constantly be found climbing, running, pushing, and clambering over stuff. There was something odd about how these kids played, but I couldn’t put my finger on it until the third day when I realized: they had no toys.

Except for one robot in the corner that sometimes came out to play, these kids did not possess any of the train sets, building blocks, or cuddly animals that many children in the West take for granted. Instead they pushed, ran, and played with each other and with the other neighborhood kids who would come running over after school. This seemed to be another example not so much of lack of financial means to have toys, but more lack of interest. It was like the need for toys had never even entered their minds, just like the need for a fridge. The lifestyle of this family embraced minimalism, without really knowing any other way.

One of the family’s young children (photo: Dylan Conroy)

While the kids played the parents would most often be found sitting outside of the house. There were a few wooden benches they would sit on and chat. Occasionally they would do a chore and chase after a misbehaving kid, but most of the free time was spent just sort of hanging out. Generally the women could be found outside the house, while the men could be found inside around the tea table.

Sitting at the tea table, which was more of a wooden desk with a hole cut in it, tea was loosely brewed without etiquette or form. Neighbors would come and go in an open door policy that can be found across the Chinese countryside. Through the idleness I could feel this sense of waiting. These people lived according to nature. Their crops had decided not to grow yet and there was nothing they could really do but wait.

To some extent this family truly lived with the dao.

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Photo of the Day: The Winner Takes it All (Well, a Sheep)

Our Photo of the Day series this week shares photos from Inner Mongolia, taken during the Naadam period last year.

The wrestling and the horse races aren’t just for sport, there are some big winnings involved. At least, there are if you think of several thousand RMB in cash and a sheep as big winnings. Above you can see some of the runners and riders awaiting the presentation of their prizes; below the winners trot off with sheep in tow.

Alas, they are sheep rather than goats, meaning we’re not able to make a G.O.A.T joke, but never mind.

Previously:

Photo of the Day: The Wrestlers
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