An Unconventional Day

Today has been pretty crazy. I have had an enema of Chinese culture potent enough to drop a hippo.

To begin with, there was the convention, which is the whole reason I am here. We exhibited our device all day, and we had lots of interest -- from fellow exhibitors. Many people came by and I showed them how it worked, often via pantomime, since Dr. Chen had his own booth for face recognition, and Dr. Lo was too busy wandering around to help out. But they seemed impressed.

Unfortunately, the representatives from industry were only there because the government forced them to be, so they were not very interested in much. They meandered around and then left, without ever really talking to anyone.

That was the boring part of the day. Then came dinner. I am getting much better at determining the sorts of foods that I like, and those I do not. But, during dinner, a bunch of guys came and sat at my table and talked, in English(!) about politics and economics. One guy in particular had a lot to say. He looked like a Buddhist Monk, but he most definitely was not. Indeed, he had a Chinese Russian accent (+2 to communism, although he was very very capitalist) He was full of all sorts of useful information (which I have since verified). For example, the GDP (the amount of money a place makes in a year) of the USA is about 12 trillion. The annual tax revenue is around 1 trillion, or 1/12. The GDP of Guangzhou, where I am, is ¥600 billion. The annual tax revenue is ¥200 billion, or 1/3. Think of that. 1/3 of the money made last year went to the government. Add into that the fact that the economy is BOOMING, and you've got yourself one rich government. The sort of government that can afford to pay for hundreds of Chinese scholars to come to a conference, fly for free, stay at a 5 star hotel, with all costs paid for.

It was also this Chinese gentleman's opinion that this entire convention was nothing more than some party official's attempt to pad his resume and get promoted. I do not share his cynical view, but I think it is quite clear that the function of this conference is not to bring together research and industry, as was claimed. No, the point of this conference is to show off how wonderful China is to all of its scholars who know better, and have left. It is good for me, since I get to tag along and see the best that China has to offer, but it is pretty useless for everyone else, who came seeking investment.

It is also interesting to note that every single one of the people at the table were of the opinion that America is going to fall, economically speaking, and China will rise in its place. It wasn't if, it was when. Most of them pegged it between 20-50 years. Now, I admit it seems likely that America will slide into a recession, and it is hard to deny China's economic prowess. But nothing ever goes as planned. I have quite a bit of faith in the American's ability to pull themselves out of a slump (especially a slump they can see coming), and China's economy is built entirely on the fact that they have 1.2 billion people, large amounts of whom are willing to work for almost nothing.

At any rate, after dinner there was a movie, which I decided to go to, because the only Chinese movies I have ever seen are Martial Arts movies, a la Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. First, the theatre. Imagine the commercialism in famous players exaggerated to a ridiculous degree. The ads ran for about 25 minutes. And they were almost entirely ads, there were only three movie trailers. One of the ads was this: the main character from the movie we were about to watch crawled out of the trenches (it was a period piece) and held out a cell phone. Apparently, no one pointed out that they didn't use cell phones during the Korean war.

After a lot of advertisements I didn't really understand, since they weren't in English, the movie started. I was in luck: there were English subtitles, so I was able to understand what was going on. Now, I have heard people complain that some Hollywood movies are too patriotic. To that, I say piffle! I can't imagine something more ridiculously patriotic than the movie I watched tonight. First though, some history.

I imagine most people don't know that the Chinese were fighting a civil war for most of the first half of the twentieth century. From 1927 until 1950 the Communists and the Nationalists fought it out. They did take a brief break during World War II to fail at fending off the opportunistic Japanese. Essentially, in the Early 1900's, the last emperor died, and warlords took over. A man called Sun Yat-sen wanted to re-unite China, and asked both the west, and the USSR for help. The west ignored him, but the USSR supported him, while at the same time supporting the Communist party that was trying to do the same thing. After attempting to work together for a while, the Nationalists and the Communists declared war on each other, and started fighting, while at the same time trying to fight the warlords. For a long time, the Nationalists were winning, until the Japanese showed up and wiped out their entire army.

Then, after WWII was over, the clever Communists, led by Mao Zedong, applied to Russia for help, and got the Russians to tell the Japanese (who were no longer allowed to be in the army) to come on over and help them. So, with the aid of the Japanese and the North Koreans, the Communists were able to beat down the Nationalist forces and establish the reigning party they have today. It's worth noting that once the west realized that the nationalists were fighting communists, they tried to help out, but it was to no avail. Furthermore, the nationalists liked to say they were going to establish a democracy, just as soon as they beat those communists, but in the meantime, it was martial law. Point is, it's pretty hard to say which side had the moral high ground.

So, the movie was about a psychopath named Gu Zidi, who was a captain in the Communist Army. The first scene of the movie, which was a battle, involved him shooting a nationalist POW in the head, because earlier the nationalists had the audacity to fire an artillery shell into his forces. But apparently he was emotional, so it was OK. They were stinking capitalists anyhow.

Then he is ordered by the Colonel to hold a mine, until he hears the retreat bugle. However, because those poor communists were out of troops, he had only the remainder of his regiment, 47 men. So, he goes to the mine, fights off countless numbers of Nationalist troops, until they eventually kill off all of his men. He, being not at all a coward, decides this is a good time to run away and hide, which he does, putting on an enemy's uniform so he doesn't get caught. This is how he's caught, so when the Communists pick him up, they think he's one of them.

The rest of the movie is him being angry at people because they don't believe his story, and his entire regiment basically gets lost in paperwork. There was about 10 minutes where he was digging on the side of a mountain, trying to find the bodies of his men where the mine had collapsed on them. Then, miraculously, they believe him, they find the bodies and everyone is happy. All in all, it was the most ridiculous excuse for a propaganda film I have ever seen. Although it did look pretty.

On the way home, I noticed we had a police escort, and I realized that I had seen police cars and police boats the previous night as well. Yes, they decided that we were so important we needed a police escort. Not that it mattered. The people here drive like lunatics, and don't pay any attention to laws, or other cars. They also don't believe in seatbelts, as no vehicle I have been in has any.

Anyhow, I got some pictures from last night from Dr Lo.



And these are the ones I took today, after I negotiated the purchase of some batteries. It was harder than it sounds.