周黎明 (Raymond Zhou's bilingual blog) 用中文写娱评，用英文写时评

Christmas - Chinese style

In the United States, the conservatives and liberals are constantly fighting over something: the war in Iraq, abortion rights, gun control, tax policy, etc. This time of the year, they have picked a topic that would surely baffle us Chinese – the Christmas holiday itself.

The liberals claim that Christmas is a Christian holiday and the government, being constitutionally separate from religion, should not promote it. Specifically it should not endorse religious displays. And come to think of it, even the holiday cards sent out by the President do not contain the word “Christmas.” What if the recipient observes Kwanzaa or Hanukkah, they figure?

The conservatives charge that there is a “war on Christmas,” and gets ready to defend the holiday against “the campaign of fear, intimidation, and disinformation” from the liberals.

I have no intention to dip my toe into this puddle, tempting as it is. I’ll just recount my own experience.

I did not know Christmas was a religious holiday until several years into my stay in the US . Like many of my countrymen, I got aware of it on a college campus in the early days of China’s reform era. We just thought it cool to have parties and send out greeting cards. (We couldn’t afford boxes of presents yet.) The carols we recorded off a radio station popular then sounded catchy and festive, but nobody could make out the lyrics. (Remember, we, living with a language of numerous homonyms, need supertitles even for Peking Operas.)

Just when the religious association of December 25 dawned on me, I committed another faux pas: I enthused about it in front of a Christian friend of mine. It turned out that Christians of certain denominations didn’t celebrate the holiday after all. I meant to be friendly, but was instantly put down for my clumsiness in grasping the nuance of his custom.

That didn’t dampen my zeal. I love the parties (especially the lavish corporate ones), the ingenious home decorations, (which make driving through a residential area pure joy), the trees (though I have some reservations on environmental grounds), and above all, the carols (yes, better than karaoke).

From a fundamentalist point of view, I love Christmas for mostly the wrong reasons. But pagan symbols or not, they have the magic power to transport me into the winter wonderland of childhood fantasy.

And I suspect that many Chinese - in China and the US - take to this holiday in the same secular spirit. We don’t mind it’s rooted in religion; we just welcome the jovial mood created by an imaginary fat old guy with vague resemblance to Buddha, who has the capacity to boost sales of every store under the sun.

Which is why the business world is even crazier about Christmas than any individual, whatever religious faith one may have. Commercialization is obviously a driving force behind its popularity in China. And you cannot really fault us for ignoring its religious origin. No offense to believers, if a child is to choose between a symbol of the nativity scene and a string of light bulbs, the latter will probably win out.

We have such a weakness for lights and baubles that, instead of taking them down after New Year’s Day, we leave them up all year round. And this may puzzle foreign tourists or first-time expats. If you walk around some commercial streets in a big Chinese city, it is always sparkling with a Christmas-like atmosphere. But then, we sing “Jingle Bells” even during summer because, not knowing better, we just treat it as another American pop song.

The purists might be annoyed. In the US, if you don’t remove your outdoor Christmas lights by January 10^th, the residential committee would slap you with a fine.

Sometimes, ignorance is bliss. We tend to interpret Christmas as the Western equivalent of China’s biggest holiday, otherwise known as the Spring Festival. As a matter of fact, they have a lot in common: Both occasions call for family reunions, gift-giving, and most importantly, being nice and charitable to people who are less fortunate.

For me, this is the essence of Christmas – to be nice to those around you, even those you don’t know, and to be helpful if you can. The rest is bells and whistles, literally.

You don’t have to use a lunar calendar to celebrate Chinese New Year; you don’t have to be Bill Gates to do good; and you don’t have to be a Christian to enjoy Christmas.

Merry Christmas to you all! (Don’t sue me.)

艾晓明反问我：“这有意义吗？不就是几千年的处女情结吗？”

Sex, lies and surveys: Point is, is there a point?

Media obsession with female students' chastity, or the lack of it, has moved up a notch with a student paper at a top Beijing university refuting a report on the high rate of sexual activity.

The survey was conducted in response to an online claim that only a small minority of female students at Beijing Foreign Studies University (Beiwai) were inexperienced in sex.

"I feel this is unfair. Female students as a group have been the target of a demonization campaign," said He Min, a junior of the school majoring in journalism, who spoke on the condition that her real name not be revealed.

Chinese media, especially the tabloids, seem to be fixated on the private lives of female college students.

There are numerous reports of college girls moonlighting in houses of ill repute, with some putting their number very high.

A posting titled "The night life of a Beiwai girl," which has been making the rounds on the Internet, claims to be a first-person account of a "san pei" (escort) girl in the city's Sanlitun bar district.

Also, an online survey, purportedly conducted by the Beijing Film Academy's "Single Men Society," concluded that, by the time they graduate, only 15.86 per cent of female students at Beiwai are virgins.

The poll was conducted by a dozen people through "social networking and online data gathering" and "does not guarantee its accuracy," said the report.

He Min, the Beiwai student who was riled by it, defended their "good name" with their own poll, which was done on campus.

The result, published in "107 Investigation," a student newspaper, said that only 11.5 per cent of female students engaged in sex during their college years.

"This is a resounding rebuttal of the online figure," said He.

Discussions on Internet forums show that most Chinese are troubled by a sense of sliding morals, which they attribute to a growing materialistic craving. The loss of virginity at a young age is often seen as a manifestation.

Some experts have different views.

"The Beiwai students were trying to protect their values," said Ai Xiaoming, a feminist scholar. "But it played right into the traditional virginity obsession."

As Professor Ai argued, the whole fracas is pointless except that it has highlighted how ironclad thousands-of-years-old concepts of a male-dominated society are and how they still grip public imagination.

"What does it matter whether a student is a virgin or not? As long as it's a voluntary act, I don't see any problem with it," she told China Daily.

"The fixation on a woman's chastity is more important to men than to women."

In a village in North China, circa 1945, lived a poor farmer named Yang Bailao. He owed some debt to the landlord Huang Shiren. Chinese New Year was a bad time for Yang because custom dictates one must pay off every penny. He went into hiding for many days but came back home on New Year's Eve. The evil landlord, however, sent his lackeys to Yang's home. They demanded payment and forced him to give up his daughter as collateral. Yang died from heartbreak in the winter.

Well, actually the main character was his daughter, who was later abused as Huang's slave girl and ran off into the mountains. With no food or shelter, she lived the life of a savage, her hair turning white due to malnutrition. Thus was born the legend of the "white-haired girl."

Some literary historians contend this is based on a true story. Whatever embellishments the story took on, it gained popularity in 1945 after it was adapted into a folk opera, then, in 1950, a feature film, effectively transforming it into national folklore. The third incarnation came in 1964 when it was turned into a ballet and then filmed twice in the early 1970s as one of the eight "model plays" that monopolized the cultural scene of the cultural revolution era (1966-76).

The tragic tale, imprinted on public psyche throughout these art forms, served to highlight the class divide between rich and poor in old China. But in the last two decades, the characters Yang Bailao (meaning "toil for nothing") and Huang Shiren ("merciful world," obviously a sarcastic reference) have mutated into archetypes for debtors and creditors in China.

In the old days, as in the story, the poor borrowed from the rich, and the rich made profits by charging double-digit interest rates, very much like what loan sharks or credit cards do nowadays. The poor begged because they needed the money to feed hungry babies, or otherwise scrape a subsistence living. The rich came by from time to time, demanding payment or beating them up. At least that's the image indelibly etched into our collective mind. Even though the rich were legally owed money, they were morally repugnant.

In the early 1990s when China's economy took off, those with access to easy money borrowed large amounts from banks, rarely giving thought to payback. Then came the crisis of "triangle of debt" (san jiao zhai) when one debtor failed payment and caused a domino effect. Suddenly, the debtor became the king and the master while the creditor came begging and often went bankrupt in the aftermath of giving out bad loans.

The symbolic significance of Yang and Huang went through a reversal of fortune as Yang the debtor dined and wined in swanky five-star hotels, whereas Huang, the creditor, became miserable and contemplated suicide. This time around, the public professed its heart to Huang.

Fast forward 15 years, and we'll have Act Three of the Yang-Huang pas de deux.

The US is the world's richest nation, in GDP if not per capita; China, for all its economic vitality, is very poor in per-capita terms. Yet, China has bought a significant chunk of America's national debt. To paraphrase this story, now the rich Huang is living upon a mounting pile of debt voluntarily supplied by the poor Yang, and they both seem to be happy with it. Their welfare is so interlocked that hurting one may automatically affect the other.

It defies common sense that Yang, who presumably needs more money to lift himself out of poverty, should help out Huang with his luxury living. In this case, 1,000-square-metre monster houses, below-1-per-cent savings rate, costly wars, among other examples. Economic theories stipulate that money should chase spots of highest return, and Yang is poised at the curve of high growth and high return.

However, in the real world, decisions may not be made purely with economic rationalizing. The United States wants a stronger yuan so that it can stem the trade deficit; and China is propping up the dollar, which has the effect of sustaining the lavish lifestyle for the US.

China and the United States may be marching to different tunes, but it's obvious that they need each other, sometimes in the most unexpected ways. And of course the purchase of US Treasury Bonds is only one form of financial activities, whereas overall investment flows both ways, but mainly from the United States to China. Unlike the original tale, this international version of debtor-creditor wrangling may eventually make both better off.

 2002年夏，我为报社到美国做贪官外逃的专题，对他们的情况有了更深入和系统的了解。但后来所写的报道中涉及的细节很少，原因是大量资料不可能得到当事人的核实，只能作为道听途说。估计这些细节用小说写出来就会很好玩。

Exodus with Cash
Nestled against a hillside in Rowland Heights out in the Los Angeles suburbs is a cluster of single-family houses that the locals jokingly call the "Shenyang Compound". Residents here behave with an odd combination of profligate abandon and guarded discretion. It is an open secret that many of the households are inhabited by officials or former officials from northeastern .

 Edison, New Jersey , about an hour's drive from the New York borough of Manhattan , is another suburban enclave that has recently embraced an influx of wealthy Chinese immigrants. Among them is Pan Mingyu, the former president of a garment company in Henan Province . Pan was once a much-touted "young official" in before he disappeared with a large sum of corporate funds.

 These are just two examples of North American havens populated by a new breed of immigrants from . Though small in number, they can be very conspicuous. They bid for million-dollar houses and pay up in full - in cash. They drive luxury cars but have no obvious source of income. They spend money as if they did not work to earn it. Many of them are on 's most-wanted list because the big bucks they are spending so freely are not theirs at all.

 Like the lady who vanishes in the Hitchcock thriller, thousands of Chinese officials in charge of State-owned business entities have disappeared from the country where they are supposed to be conducting their main business and resurfaced, often with their entire families in tow, in a foreign land. In the process, huge amounts of corporate monies disappear, channelled to personal bank accounts overseas.

 Authorities at the State Administration of Foreign Exchange estimate that, between 1997 and 1999, capital flight from amounted to US billion, and a significant part of that was embezzled by officials who fled the country. A Xinhua article published in January 2002 mentioned that an incomplete tally had found as many as 4,000 people suspected of skimming corporate or government money totalling 5 billion yuan (US4 million) were on the run from law enforcement. "This has resulted in tremendous losses for State-owned businesses and has put their operations in jeopardy," said the report.

 Black hole

 's economic reform has unleashed the world's most powerful engine for financial growth, but at the same time it has opened up a Pandora's box of greed and corruption. Some people in power, given the opportunity, pillage and plunder like pirates. According to a source with the State Anti-Corruption Bureau, cases of insiders stealing sums in the millions or even tens of millions of yuan used to be rare, but have become commonplace since the mid-1990s.

 Lack of proper management is one obvious culprit. Xie Bingfeng and Mai Ronghui were lowly bank tellers at a Hainan branch of Bank of China when, in May 1998, the duo was able to pocket 50 million yuan (US.04 million) and escape to .

 Most embezzlers, however, are senior officials with ready access to large sums of money. The most shocking incident occurred in 2001 when Xu Chaofan, then president of a Bank of China branch in Kaiping, Guangdong Province, and two of his predecessors, took US3 million and made a run for Canada. Compare this with Fang Jiaxing, a Ningbo official who slipped away to 11 years ago with just 1 million yuan (US0,811) in stolen funds.

 Financial institutions are one disaster area, said the Anti-Corruption Bureau source. State-owned firms are another. Of all those who have eluded the law to date, about 70% were senior executives at State-owned companies.

 The current system leaves plenty of room for this kind of manouvering, said Ding Pinyu, a researcher with the Central Discipline Committee, because some senior officials simultaneously occupy all key positions, including chairman of the board, CEO and president, as well as Communist Party secretary. "There are no checks and balances. They have absolute power, which invariably leads to absolute corruption. Some of them sign multimillion-dollar contracts without consulting anyone, as if it's their own dough."

 Ding cited the example of Liu Zuoqing, president of Heilongjiang Petroleum. After he transferred 100 million yuan (US.08 million) to his overseas account and went AWOL with his family of eight, the company could not find a single trace of the missing money in their investigation.

 According to experts, escape destinations vary in relation to the amount of money stolen and the rank of the official in question. Those of lower ranks taking smaller sums usually steal away to neighbouring countries such as Thailand, Burma, Malaysia, Mongolia or Russia, while the higher ups prefer the US, Canada, Australia or Europe. Meanwhile, those who cannot obtain visas to their preferred destinations often bide their time in Africa , Latin America or Eastern Europe until they can move on.

 It is getting riskier to hide out in neighboring countries, said a Canadian-Chinese legal expert, because has begun cooperating with nations nearby to fight this kind of crime. , for instance, is no longer a guaranteed sanctuary as can now legally have these white-collar criminals deported home. Countries in Africa may have lax laws but most do not offer the kind of living environment they desire. Given the choice, most would rather end up in the developed world.

 The getaway

 Some of these big-guns-on-the-run used Hong Kong as their way out. Having set up businesses in the Special Administrative Region, they already had Hong Kong passports, which allowed them to travel to many Western countries without needing to obtain visas.

 Many further ensured their security by first moving their relatives abroad, setting up overseas subsidiaries and even acquiring foreign passports, fake or genuine.

 Pan Cheng, a California businessman, has been made legal guardian of several teenagers whose parents manage State-owned companies in southern . "Sometimes the bank will call to notify me of large sums of cash being deposited. They want to know the source. But what can I say? It scares me to think that kids this young have so much money at their disposal," revealed Pan.

 One way to stop these embezzlers from fleeing is to deny them passports. But the reform policy has made this a losing battle as the trend is to grant any citizen a passport unless the person is already a suspected criminal.

 Then there is the black market where fake passports for every country are available. One random survey revealed that a counterfeit American passport costs an average 10,000 yuan (US,208), while an "authentic" Canadian passport fetches 15,000 yuan (US,812). When police searched the residence of Li Jiating, former governor of Yunnan Province , they found five different passports bearing his likeness, supposedly issued by various foreign governments.

 Some people claim it is not difficult to get a visa from a foreign consulate as long as one is willing to pay. One source told about a Chengdu-based consular official for a Western country who was involved in "selling" visas. The story cannot be independently verified, but the official was transferred from his post prematurely.

 Moving millions of yuan can be troublesome, and money laundering often comes into play. The best method, according to Pan Cheng, is to open shell companies overseas. Imports come through such a company, usually operated by a close relative, at inflated prices, giving it extremely high profits, much of which will slip into personal pockets. Likewise, exports come in at such low prices as to provide a comfortable margin. In metropolises like New York , one often comes across goods dumped by fleeing officials trying to get rid of container-loads of items at fire-sale prices.

 Underground banks and foreign currency services also provide a way of channelling booty abroad. "They are one-stop shops for changing illegal yuan into legal dollars," said Guo Jian'an, director of the crime prevention institute with the Ministry of Justice. Some agents in coastal regions offer their services over the phone.

 "Many of these officials remain in until the very last moment, in order to misappropriate as much money as possible," revealed Pan. "Once they get wind of an anti-corruption operation directed at them, they're out of there and headed to join their families, who have already settled down in another country, before you can blink."

 Crackdown

 Striving to stem the flow of escaping suspects and stolen funds, the Chinese government is taking action. An operation set up in 2002 rounded up more than 1,000 suspects who had already fled. Hundreds more surrendered on their own.

  is embarking on international cooperation in legal fields, signing extradition treaties with 40 countries. Starting from 1993, 210 suspects or convicts have been returned to .

 "But this is just the tip of the iceberg," said an official at the foreign affairs department of the Supreme People's Procuratorate. Most of these cases are in limbo.

 Liu Yanji, professor of law at China University of Politics and Law, says that 's legal system still has a long way to go before it catches up with international norms. The evidence we prepare may not be admissible in a foreign court, and our demands for extradition may be overruled on technical grounds, said Liu.

 Liu Jiachen, supreme justice and vice-president of the Supreme People's Court, revealed that part of the reason it is so difficult to follow through on these cases lies in the fact that those who fled took much of the evidence with them, making an investigation extremely challenging.

 Meanwhile, the Chinese public is getting some satisfaction from media reports of the adverse outcomes befalling a few of these people. The Hainan bank tellers who ended up in were cheated out of much of their money by scam artists. After a further business failure, one of them hired someone to kill his partner. Millions deposited by the Kaiping bank president have been frozen by Canadian authorities at the request of a Chinese court. And many of the embezzlers have become fish out of water in countries where they cannot put their "expertise" to use.

 While the mere possibility of being deported back to may be enough to send shivers down their spines, it is the persistence of the law enforcement officials hunting them down that should really worry them. "Even if you run to the ends of the earth, we're going to get you and bring you to justice," vows Zhao Dengju of the Supreme People's Procuratorate.

整个亚洲的旅游业在突飞猛进。据世界旅游协会（the World Travel and Tourism Council）的推测，亚太地区的旅游年收入将从1995年的8050亿美元，增长到2005年的20000亿。这其中有相当一部分来自于大中国地区的市场。

 正因为中国旅游发展的态势很好，所以一些人往往会忽视散客这一块市场，总觉得一大巴士一大巴士的游客才是生财之道。一个单枪匹马闯入某地的游客（如海内外的背包族），无论到北京、上海等大都会，还是到边陲小镇，都会遭遇诸多不便。你可能会说，他们没加入旅行团，没雇导游，当然两眼一抹黑，总不能让各地旅游局为每位散客配置免费导游吧？

 其实在西方发达国家，只要你不是文盲，只身闯天下并不比紧跟导游困难得多，主要原因是信息丰富、透明、以最有效的方式传递。换言之，跟我们相比，他们在旅游推广方面找到了很多捷径，而其中有许多是值得我们借鉴的。

 §加大力度不等于多花钱

 说起宣传推广，很多人自然就想到花钱做广告。其实，在旅游产品的行销领域，慷慨解囊未必是上策，甚至效果如何也值得打几个问号。

 稍微细心一点的人会发现，很多海外游客无论到何处，手里总是捧着一本厚厚的书，这是很多游客出发前必读的旅游指南。在西方，有几家出版社专攻世界各地的旅游指南，它们比我们更了解读者需求，行文造句也更地道，而且因为年年出新版本，内容更新也较及时。如我国南方某中型城市，一向重视城市建设和景点开发，但海外游客很少，后来我在美国图书馆一查这类书，发现里面赫然写着：“建议不要去该市，因为那里的文物古迹都是假的。”

 这些如Lonely Planet或Fodor's等影响甚广的书上导游，一般由旅游爱好者（尤其是大学生）提供最新消息。一个人旅途中能掌握的信息总很有限，而且容易出偏差，因此这类书免不了小错不断。如果我国各地的旅游部门能主动跟这些为数不多的出版社联系，定期为它们提供最新资料，不仅可以避免这些错误，而且多少可以增强它们对该地的好感。这几乎不需要花什么钱，但作用之大难以估量。我们的旅游部门应加强跟海内外专门出版畅销旅游指南的出版社之间的联系，像企业的公关部门一样，争取借人家的力量，把信息传给目标客户。

 另一个不容忽视的宣传途径是网站，它也能在游客订机票前起到一定的拉动作用。把本地区各个景点的观赏内容、到达方式、收费标准、注意事项等明白无误地摆在网上，并随时更新，尤其是属于不测的天气和道路情况，这样，世界各地的游客都随时可以查到，方便他们做消费决策。网站应有专人负责，切忌长时间不更换过时内容，也不必求大求全。

 当一名游客只身来到一个地方后，并不表示他心里明白该去哪些景点。他在机场、旅馆等地经常需要向当地人或熟悉当地情况的其他游客打听。在西方，这类场所一般都有一个专门的架子，整齐地摆放着规格统一的景点宣传资料，一般都是一两张纸大小，其印刷成本平摊到每张大概只有一两分钱，但里面的内容却非常翔实，绝大部分游客的问题都能在里面找到答案。这对于那些次要景点尤其重要，比如第一次到北京的人都会想到去长城和故宫，但若没有提醒，很少人会想到去某个水族馆或小公园。

 我们的旅游部门热衷于花大钱印制精美画册，而这类“形象工程”的实际作用微乎其微。当然在海外，景点的宣传应该由各自承担其费用，但旅游部门若能出面协调，就可以避免街头派发传单式的混乱和低格调。（说实在，这类宣传品的性质和样式跟我国的街头传单没有本质的差异，但人家做得很规范。）

 另外，旅游城市可以考虑出版免费或低价的城市月刊，有本地景点介绍、当月活动、简要地图等，主要篇幅则用来登旅游业者的广告。这样非但不用旅游部门花钱，还可以带来一定的收入，也为来访游客提供一个方便阅读的信息平台。

 散客住在旅馆里，总有休息的时候。这时，电视上应有关于本地区景点的介绍，刚参观过的景点，在屏幕上重温一遍，有一种亲切的感觉；没有看过的，可能会调动起“看个究竟”的兴趣。据悉，全国各地旅游部门都拍了自己地区的风光片，如果把这些节目通过闭路电视在旅游饭店反复播放，总比老想着卖VCD更实际。而且，游客看了喜欢，买的可能性也就随之增加。当然，影片制作者的动机可能是为了向各地电视台提供素材，以达到扩大宣传幅度的效果。

 说起电视，一些地方投入巨额预算，制作大型歌舞晚会，试图打开该地的知名度。这种方式有多大的效果，真是很难说。电视上的晚会那么多，有多少人能通过一台晚会记住一个地名，甚至决定花几千元去游览一次？但是，你若能说服CBS的《百万幸存者》（Survivor）把下一轮节目安排在你的地盘上，保证明年你会额外增加几十万海外游客。该节目每年拍摄一缉新的，每次选择各大洲不同的场地，一般都是风景壮观、具有原始色彩、很上镜头的地方。由于该节目在西方的收视率极高，对于被选中地点的旅游业来说，这无异于中了头彩。即便该节目不播，该摄制组在拍摄地都会花费数千万美元，能有效推动当地经济。

 当然不是每台电视节目都有这样的神奇效果。即便是普通的电视或电影，如果对当地形象有利，当地旅游部门也值得助一臂之力，在不需要经费投入的情况下，帮人也帮了自己。

 谁都知道文化能为自然景观增色。别说是李白的一首诗，就是一首《太阳岛上》、一篇余秋雨的游记，都可能会让游客纷至沓来。因此文人墨客来访，尤其是顺着自己的兴趣而来（而不是有组织地参观），而且是在该地旅游业尚未开发时到来，对于该地一般都是好事。不过，任何文艺作品只有走红才会产生巨大影响，而能否走红却是谁都无法控制的。

电梯操作员、巴士售票员、超市收款员、电话服务员……这些职位很容易被科技所取代，这符合经济学的规律，但这中间的社会代价应该如何计算？

Elevator ladies, checkout girls and the human touch
Raymond Zhou

"Why do you need elevator attendants?" a puzzled expat friend of mine asked, shortly after he arrived in Beijing.

To an outsider, the person who operates an elevator - or lift in British English - may typify job redundancy. What on earth does it take to press a number that corresponds to the floor? What's the necessity for such a special profession?

I've also heard of complaints from expats who see these elevator ladies - it's a profession predominantly for females - as the personification of Big Brother. I don't know whether it's a thing of the past or the current situation as I have not met a nosy one myself. I'm sure I'd hate it if the elevator operators whom I come into contact with poke their noses into my comings and goings.

But no, those I've encountered are all nice and friendly. And come to think of it, they do perform a duty beyond that of pressing a few buttons. In a sense, they double as security guards. One example: Someone in my building had a broken lock and didn't bother to fix it, leaving his door unlocked for several months. I guess this would have been crazy in a building with unmanned elevators.

The real question is: For all the potential misgivings or benefits, shouldn't the profession be superfluous in the first place? Man designs machines to save manpower. In an economically efficient world, repetitive manual labour should best be performed by machines, leaving humans to more creative activities.

But we don't live in such a world, and sometimes economics is not the only law we should abide by. While it is the job of economists to study efficiency, the government needs to consider the broader human factor. A Beijing engineer once told me that many metropolises in China have done away with bus conductors, letting the driver oversee the automated depositing of bus fare. But not in Beijing, for the most part. The technology is available, but that would leave tens of thousands of low-skilled workers unemployed.

Now I'm no Luddite. Technologies have brought us an endless stream of wonders, making our lives easier and more comfortable. But the human cost of this kind of social advance is also real, especially to someone whose livelihood is threatened by it. As a society, we cannot shy away from taking these painful steps so that we can maintain our competitiveness and achieve progress, but at the same time we must always remember those who are negatively affected and ponder how to lessen their sufferings.

It is a delicate cost-and-benefit balance in not only economic, but also social, terms. A corporation needs only look at the bottom line, but a society at large needs to take care of the weak and disadvantaged. The "iron rice bowl" is indeed an impediment to progress, but designing jobs for low-skilled workers is not. On the contrary, it can create a higher level of harmony for our living environment. On a more personal level, it can add a unique human touch to things we take for granted.

When I first went to the United States, I marvelled at the convenience of customer service via telephone calls. In the past 10 years, things started to change. The numbers are still toll-free, but you can hardly talk to a live person any more. Instead, you have to wade through a jungle of recorded prompts and choices and wait forever. Surely companies have cut cost as a result, but imagine the aggravation that customers must endure.

On recent trips, I have found that automation has taken a giant leap forward. Some supermarkets have removed not only baggers - those who place your groceries into bags, but also all checkout clerks. Now, I have to scan the packaged goods and weigh vegetables all by myself. I'm sure the process will be a breeze in the future, but the time I tried it I was so frustrated that I yelled: "I'm taking this out without paying if you guys don't show up now."

To those of us with memories of China before the reform years, the word "supermarket" already implies self-service. Do we need to eliminate checkout clerks so that we can save a penny on our grocery? Will haircuts be the only business that involves human interaction?

Nowadays, when I see retired people guarding busy street corners and directing traffic, a feeling of appreciation wells up: They are doing something worthwhile, not superfluous, for all of us, something that traffic lights are supposed to do but not very well during rush hours. They make Beijing a more livable city, at least traffic-wise.

Dialects need understanding, not protection or discrimination

There is a tug of war for the stature of dialects in China.

On one hand, some government agencies are issuing edicts as God throws thunderbolts, banning the use of dialects on various occasions: No children's programmes on television should include dialects; foreign films must not be dubbed into local patois; and television hosts with even the slightest hint of an accent may have to walk.

On the other hand, a groundswell of grassroots activities have set out to defend the rights of using dialects: Blockbuster films like "A World Without Thieves" regularly resort to dialects to ramp up local flavour; radio stations in Sichuan rake in most of their advertising revenues from vernacular shows; and intellectuals join a chorus that preaches the virtues of dialects as the Chinese language's unique strength in its battle against erosion from English.

I believe both approaches are misguided.

Take the purists first. There is nothing wrong with advocating putonghua, or Mandarin as it's known in the West, as China's standard speaking lingua franca. But that doesn't mean we should get rid of our local variants.

To enforce a strict "no accent" policy for such public personages as television hosts is not only unnecessary, but also Pyrrhic. For example, it has been reported that some of CCTV's most popular hosts did not pass their putonghua tests, a prerequisite for their jobs. So what? Peter Jennings, one of the top three anchormen in the United States in the past two decades, had a faint Canadian accent, though imperceptible to us non-native speakers.

Purists seem to be unaware of the benefits and resiliency of China's spoken language in its endless mutations. None of the first-generation leaders of New China spoke good putonghua, but that added to their charisma and personalities. That's why film-makers stick to dialects when portraying them on screen.

Producers at CCTV, at the forefront of the linguistic battle, employ Northeastern colloquialisms in their entertainment shows so frequently that the audience in southern parts of the country often feel alienated. Besides, most celebrities are based in Beijing and routinely treat Beijing dialect as if it were putonghua. It may be too strong to call them "hypocritical," but it proves that you cannot eliminate local speeches even if you want to.

A dialect can add sparkle to a piece of literature or art work, and it gives an identity and togetherness to those who share it. However, it keeps away those who don't speak it, or worse, even can't understand it. Unlike the English-speaking world, China has an infinite number of dialects. Where I grew up, as you ride the bike for half an hour passing different villages, pronouns like "we," "you" and "they" start to change. Almost every cluster of villages has a different set for most common words.

The frustration a northerner faces in Guangdong or Shanghai is very real. Language is made for communication, and dialects effectively keep it within a defined circle. For instance, those who are born (or grow up) in a specified geographical location. Anyone who doesn't belong to it instantly turns into an outsider.

Dialects did not spring up by design. It is the result of an inadequacy in transportation (highways), telecommunication (telephones), and mass communication (television). Now that these root causes are collapsing, it is unlikely that young people will make an effort to maintain their linguistic identities based on location alone.

When children from different villages and towns attend the same school, they would not bring their home variations of "we" and "they" with them, but use the ones most dominant in the area, usually the biggest town. When people from across China moved to Shenzhen, it was putonghua that they adopted when talking with each another.

Human movements tend to increase with the economy, and most of the small dialects will wither, vanish or be consolidated into regional dialects. But major branches such as Sichuanese, Shanghainese or Cantonese would face no danger at all for the simple reason that the number of speakers for each is so great that no decrees can wipe them out.

Dialects are like living organisms. They go by the law of the survival of the fittest. You can launch wars to suppress them or defend them, but it's the natural laws that are at work here. As long as people communicate, they want to be understood. They will pick up words and descriptions from each other and enrich their own expressions. A term deemed too dialectal today may be accepted usage for all people tomorrow. All we need is to keep an open mind.