There are traffic lights in Shanghai, and there are road lanes too. But one wonders why they even need it when no one follows them. The cars and bicycles do not stop for the red, and the people never care to wait for the green. There is a certain madness and chaos that goes on everyday on the roads of Shanghai, one that is different from New York, but I have yet to witness an accident. And so life goes on within this chaos, and the individual survives in a self-reliant way; it is Darwinism being played out on an everyday basis, and only the strong prevail.

Allow me to elaborate a little more. When one tries to cross a junction, and does so when the light is green, he will realize that the cars and bicycles continue to pass through, and in an unmerciful and obstinate way. Likewise, the pedestrains cross during the red light too, disregarding the traffic but only caring for their destination and their safety. As such, the people are really good at avoiding cars and crossing the road spontaneously whenever they see a chance, and the cars are also excellent at swerving through crowds of people and not causing any accidents. But one has to be forceful and aggressive in order to move forward on the road, because if you give way to others, no one will give way to you. I was once stuck at a zebra crossing for half an hour because none of the cars would stop for me, and i should have known since they don’t even stop for the red light.  

This same principle is also observed in subway stations, especially in the morning and the weekends, when swarms of people rush into trains and into the bottleneck of escalators. If you’re not pushing your way through, you will never get into the train or get on the escalator, and people will just cut in front of you with no mercy. People in Shanghai walk really fast, and they charge through crowds; sometimes one thinks that the subway station is a good place for soccer or basketball dribbling practice because you have to learn to meander and cut through the gaps in order to proceed forward. It is again the same for hailing cabs, where people will cut the line or steal your cabs even if you came before them. Such is the way of life here, where everyone fends for himself, watches his own back, and somehow it works out.

But there is also a certain sense of selfishness that comes out of this, a self-preservation attitude that only cares about saving one’s own skin without care for others. It’s sort of a mentality that arises from a lack of resources, where if only 3 people out of 10 people are getting something, then I will make sure that I am one of the 3, and too bad for the other 7. Should people step back and try to access the situation from a larger perspective and say, hey we should worry about the other 7 too, and take care of those around us? I wonder. But perhaps China has always been a place where there is not enough of anything, and too much people, thus giving birth to this sort of self-centered attitude.

No wonder Chinese people rejected Han Fei Tse’s teachings of law and restrictions. No wonder Chinese people never liked rules and regulations. They hate being boxed in, hate having lines drawn. Whatever boundary that you might have, the Chinese have found a way to break it regardless, or go around it. It’s ironic when people say the Chinese lack creativity, because I think they actually have a capacity to overcome anything with their strong sense of survival and disregard for boundaries. And yet because the Chinese civilization is so stubborn and formidable, their government has always tried to tame them with standards, from the time of Qin Shihuang to the present of the Communist government. But try as they might, they have never fully controlled or contained this wilful spirit. And things will change even more now, with the introduction of the internet, as divisions are collapsed and new networks are formed, which is resulting in the loss of media control by the government.

I had a conversation about television programs in China, and the thing that I noted was the abundance of war-related serial dramas on many channels. There was always something about the Chinese Civil War between the Liberation Army and the Nationalists, or some other movie about World War II with the Japanese. And for the first time, the Communist soldiers are portrayed as the good guys-soldiers who are liberating the poor farmers from the rich aristocratic Nationalists. Outside of China, it has always been the opposite, and sometimes I wonder who’s telling the truth, although it probably doesn’t matter. People are people, whatever political ideology they subscribe to.

War still seems so relevant here, to this nation and its culture. After all, it was formed out of one. It’s almost like the people have some sort of a collective trauma, with the television dramas replaying their history again and again in many forms, making it hard for them to forget about their past. Everything links back to history, and the lessons of the past inform their actions and motivations. In my hotel they have some American channels like HBO, and the contrast is so great. American channels feature more about lifestyle and the latest gossip in Hollywood. I had just come from New York too and war always seemed like a distant idea situated in Iraq. But here, it is everywhere. It is in the cracks, in the people, in the images. China has had such a long history of wars, dynasty after dynasty, and even when the last dynasty ended. Do they always broadcast such war-themed dramas to remind themselves where they come from and how they struggled to get to where they are today? Or are people generally interested in the stories of the past and thus the abundance of such programs?

And then they have Taiwanese dramas in China too, and some from Hong Kong, and again, the contrast is great. The Chinese programs always seem so serious and so proper, always about something political or social, whereas those from Taiwan and Hong Kong would be about high school romance or celebrity rumours. It’s interesting and ironic to flip one channel and see headlines about Andy Lau’s marriage, and then flip another to see the Chinese government trying to help farmers with their irrigation problems.

Such is the state of the Chinese civilization today.

The title means ‘The world shouldn’t be this way’. I decided to express it in Chinese because it sort of loses its meaning when translated to English.

Last week, after a hearty teppanyaki dinner with my colleagues, while waiting for a cab, two beggars loitered around outside the restaurant asking for money for a meal. It wasn’t the first time i’ve seen beggars or interacted with one; there are plenty in New York, but somehow its a little different when I see Chinese ones. Anyway, I had just had my fill, and to be honest, my life is pretty comfortable now and I feel really blessed to have such an enjoyable job and to be living comfortably in a hotel, that I felt really bad when one of the beggars tugged at my jacket and pleaded with how all she needed was some money for a meal. Actually, she wasn’t totally begging, she was selling flowers for 5 yuan each. I instantly felt sorry for her and so i gave her 10 yuan without taking the flower. She was really grateful and walked away, but the other beggar, seeing my display of kindness, instantly leeched on to me and begged for money. I got a little afraid and was worried she might ask for more, so i didn’t give her any, but she pestered and wouldn’t let go. She was there wailing for over 15 minutes, pulling my arm at the same time. I tried my best to ignore her and talk to my friend, but she wouldn’t leave. Even when i boarded the taxi, she stuck her arm in the door to prevent it from closing, although the taxi driver eventually drove off and she was left behind. I vowed never to donate to beggars again, at least not in this way.

Yesterday, i bought KFC for dinner, and was on my way home, when a mother and a daughter eyed my bag of food and suddenly asked if I could buy them a meal. I was shocked for a while and didn’t know how to react, although everything happened so fast. What I did, which i think i will remember forever, was I turned and walked away. And then almost in a millisecond, i felt a pang of regret and wished i had given them my bag of food. But then, even if i could feed them today, what would they do tomorrow? And, how many people could i feed by myself? Yes i could afford helping one or two people, but i couldn’t save everyone. I felt a tinge of sadness in me as I walked home, half wanting to cry, but I didn’t as I knew it wouldn’t solve anything. I kept thinking what were their lives like, and what were they doing now, did they manage to find food, and did they have a place to sleep in this cold weather? Why should I, a normal Chinese person, be allowed to live comfortably in a hotel with everything provided, and not they? Why should I be provided with a decent education, a life never lacking in food or shelter, and not others?  I felt so much injustice, but I didn’t know what to do.

I went home and talked to my girlfriend about it, and she said maybe I could do something to help with my resources. Maybe the world was unfair, but if i was more able than others, i could turn this ability to save others. I told her I don’t know how i can go on with my job in advertising fabricating ideas for big corporate clients when people are starving and homeless out there. It doesn’t make sense, I should be doing something more meaningful. But then she said maybe it’s not time yet and maybe all this is part of a bigger plan. I hope she’s right. But I do know God didn’t give me a brain for nothing, and someday, I will use this conceptual ability of mine to do something for the less fortunate.

That is a promise I will keep.

Lately I have become interested in artists for whom collecting is central to their process. Dealing with taxonomies and systems of classification, their work is, at least in part, a critique of the activities of museums and collecting institutions or individuals. Fundamentally, these artists are exploring notions of identity through quantitative assessment. Here, identity is expressed through an ontology—a system of objects, representing a particular and unique perspective. A collection seeks to establish a framework by which to formalize, structure and express its content. Through their work, these artists critique that framework at different levels—relating to individual identity, the role of the institution, or society at large.

It seems that the need to categorize is a basic human trait. We cannot not categorize. The ontologies we create define cultures, as the result of processes by which we shape our lives. Museums fundamentally aim to document culture, and the systems of classification created within the museum context reflect those present within society. Art involved in a critique of these systems is therefore fundamentally also a critique of society at large—a particular society, that is—aiming in an almost scientific way to objectify the outcomes of those processes that manifest themselves in certain predictable or less-predictable forms.

http://www.formfollowsbehavior.com/2008/06/25/collecting-as-art/

HE WASN’T ALWAYS THIS WAY. SUELO graduated from the University of Colorado with a degree in anthropology, he thought about becoming a doctor, he held jobs, he had cash and a bank account. In 1987, after several years as an assistant lab technician in Colorado hospitals, he joined the Peace Corps and was posted to an Ecuadoran village high in the Andes. He was charged with monitoring the health of tribespeople in the area, teaching first aid and nutrition, and handing out medicine where needed; his proudest achievement was delivering three babies. The tribe had been getting richer for a decade, and during the two years he was there he watched as the villagers began to adopt the economics of modernity. They sold the food from their fields—quinoa, potatoes, corn, lentils—for cash, which they used to purchase things they didn’t need, as Suelo describes it. They bought soda and white flour and refined sugar and noodles and big bags of MSG to flavor the starchy meals. They bought TVs. The more they spent, says Suelo, the more their health declined. He could measure the deterioration on his charts. “It looked,” he says, “like money was impoverishing them.”

“When I lived with money, I was always lacking,” he writes. “Money represents lack. Money represents things in the past (debt) and things in the future (credit), but money never represents what is present.”

http://men.style.com/details/features/landing?id=content_9817&