Beijing Girl Dumps Boy: “A Man Without Money is Garbage”

I totally did not get that from your comment – and I can’t really tell if you’re still agreeing with me or taking a shot at me. Sometimes saying less is more and instead of being so wordy, you should be more pithy in your comments.

To Foreign Devil :

“Probably they are surprised a doctor is debating people on “Chinasmack” But this particular debate is very good!! Jia You!”

Each morning I get out of bed, toilet, shower, brush my teeth, get dressed go to work, the library, my farm. Same things that you all do. I do not belong to special clubs, I shop in the same grocery stores, live the same life. There is great priviledge to being a physican, but I am no different.

“As a doctor why did you work in so many countries? Why not just set up a practice in Canada and takes lots of vacations to all those destinations?”

I am a full time staff physician in a medium sized community hospital. I went to a very interesting medical school that encourages the students to spend their copious elective time in other countries. (McMaster School of Medicine). I went to Nigeria for my first elective, working with a Nigerian plastic surgeon. Once you have been “bit”, you are never the same, I get bored when I return to Canada, I did some of my post graduate surgical training in Africa. I was married, my wife was killed in a car accident 11 weeks after I was married. I spent the next decade running from the pain by working all over the world. Eventually I returned to Canada to “establish myself”, I have however spent at least 3 months of each year working in a different country, with MSF, Red Cross, others, myself independent. My hospital administrator hates me as I will not sign a long term contract, I prefer the freedom to make life an adventure. In the last 4 years I have worked in Chengdu (earthquake), Changsha (icestorm), Haiti (earthquake) Angola (with my son in medical school) Dominican Republic (reconstructive surgery of people messed up in Haiti). I have 2 boys, twins, in medical school, we have a medical charity and in January we are deliverying supplies and equipment to Cuba and they will do a work study elective for 8 weeks and I wll drink Marguerita’s, smoke Cuban cigars and do colo-rectal surgery.

strange but interesting life.
“

Fu Zhigao

“a.) Yes, the U.S. has a huge debt. But you also have to acknowledge that a lot of the U.S. consumption is for Chinese products. Thus the trade deficit the U.S. politicians are so fond of complaining about.”

there is very little that americans buy that they need, they buy things that they want, this is very different. you do not need 23 pairs of shoes, 17 pairs of pant, 6000 christmas lights, 7 hammers. China is a manufacturing vassal to consumer driven economies. They build to the standards that they are instructed to and Canadian and American law clearly states that the importer is responsible for all standards, CSA, ISO, safety, etc. China does not need your business, they cannot produce fast enough to supply what countries are crying for. The great and powerful USA only buys 22% of Chinese products. Africa is gearing up to suck up Chinese manufacturing, and don’t always point the finger at China, India, Pakistan, S.E.Asia, Bangledesh also are producing. Don’t worry about China, Chinese are very skilled at survival, if you stop buying Chinese, we do not cry, we dip into our savings and lean on our family. China has survived a long time and are in a better position for austerity now than they have ever been.

“Also, if it weren’t for the EU and North America the Chinese factory owners would have no markets for a lot of the things they produce.”

Do you think the man who is working 240 hours a month for 600 kuai is grateful for your markets? most of the money goes to foreign manufacturing companies, corrupt officials and management. there is little trickle down effect of the growing Chinese economy. Most Chinese would be happier with clean air, clean water, clean food, vaccines, school books, free education. The “boom” ecomony has caused inflation, the Nongmin are more poor that 15 years ago.

“Chinese consumers don’t have debt because they need savings: ”

Most Chinese borrow within the family, sometimes over generations with children paying off parents debts. Chinese can borrow money from banks but they have an inherit distrust of anything linked to government. I know many very wealthy Chinese in Canada, they pay cash for everything, very little borrowing of money. This is a “Chinese ” quality. Chinese people “want” savings. It is objectifiable security.

(1) hospitals will turn away the sick and needy if they can’t pay the bills,

yes, sad but true, same in most third world countries, and the USA, I watched many people die in the waiting rooms in Africa for not having money for blood , surgery, care.

(2) their is limited to no social security right now and very small benefits for the eldery and disabled,

Chinese law says that the eldest son must take care of the parents, the government hoards the money, unfortunate. China has universal care for the elders, just different.

(3) most household savings go into purchasing a house, often so that the family can get an urban hukou and enjoy the benefits of city living.”

hukou’s are not so simple to transfer but it is becoming easier. generally a girl who marries can move her hukou to her husbands village. no house, apartment or condo is owned in China, it is a 70 year lease. no farm land is owned, it is a 30 year lease. There are little benefits to city living from my perspective, your long term health is imperiled.

“I will also add that it is rather frequent that I hear Chinese people talking about the U.S. and how developed and great things must be over their. Despite your negative (sour grapes?) attitude about Harvard, I don’t think I have met a single wealthy parent who hasn’t said something to the effect of “I hope my child can study in the U.S. someday–maybe even go to 哈佛大学.”

Chinese people develop their construct of western living from movies, television and DVD’s. I don’t think I really need to discuss the deception of this. America is a second choice for Chinese immigration. They are still pissed at the law that prevented women and children from immigrating to the USA. The number one destination is Canada. The USA just lowered their “bought” immigration to $500,000 from $800,000 which is what Canada charges. This is a plan by the USA to attract money to their failing economy. I am not denying the curb appeal of “harvard”, like many things, the brand name is more powerful than the product. No sour grapes, I have University of Toronto, McMaster and McGill on my wall. All world ranked universities.

“b.) Chinese success is borne on the backs of factory workers who work in horrible conditions for meager wages and the Nongmin who work in cities collecting trash, sweeping roads and doing minor repair work. They have in fact been striking recently, in case you don’t hear news from Guangdong, ZheJiang, and Jiangsu.”

yes, about time, but dangerous to do.

American workers fought for nearly a century for the benefits “that organized labor brought, which also, sadly, are now eroding thanks to outsourcing and the strength of industry’s lobbying in Washington. This has leading to huge wealth stratification in the U.S., though not quite as bad as is seen in China.”

it is these unions that have destroyed your country, they once had benefit but know law and arbitration protects the workers.

“A question for you: when the hospital, library and community center that you funded were built, how much were the workers paid a day? Did they work 12 hour shifts six days a week for about 1,200rmb/month? Did they live in aluminum truck containers that had been converted into dwellings?”

This was a small village area in the mountains of Guizhou about 45 kilometres from Yuping. You have to ride a donkey or bike in. Imagine if you had no school, hospital, library, administration center, and how happy you would be to have one. How much money would you want to provide this for your community? The brick layers laid bricks, the carpenters built wood structure, everyone played a role. Face is more valuable than kuai. Any worker who took money would be a disgrace to the Miao and China. All workers were fed, proper safety equipment was provided. all workers were given new tools, the village women made the meals, money was provided by the charity for food costs. there was so much competition to contribute that we had to have people take turns. some of the guys mixing mortar looked like they were born in the Ming dynasty. Kids soaked bricks, carried them to the masons, school children previously taught in scrap wood and grass structures came and sang inspirational songs each morning (Mao is still a hero here).

the workers showed up when the sun came up, and went home after the sun went down, every night we had bbq corn and 串儿 and beer. 贵州人怕不辣，watching Chinese brick layers is interesting, wish I could bring some to Canada,. And, women worked the same jobs as the men. ( after all, women do hold up half of the sky) a micro loan system was set up for crafts people too develop local arts skills, some of their weaving and needle point is amazing. We got some students in university in Guiyang to develop marketing for the village crafts in Tongren, Guiyang, and Yuping. The Charity paid their transportation and food costs, most would not accept it. (you must offer at least 3 times)

and yes, every single girl in the village put on the full Miao get up, silver hat and all, and made sure that I had a good look at them. families competed to provide me a bed at night, so I slept in a lot of local houses and ate 4 or 5 meals a day! how much did I pay them, not one of them would accept money. perhaps the best thing is that now they are frantically training young girls to master the skills of silver embroidery and needle point and they have several stores in Yangshuo (Guangxi) buying their wares. they have independently set up a fund for university tuition for the top students and have hired a real teacher from Beijing. There is a spring of water bursting out of a local mountain in a cave, they have now set up a transport system and improved their road and the village has bought 3 3 wheeled motor bike trucks (you know the ones) to deliver bottled water in 20 litre containers to the local more prosperous villages, for which they get 10 kuai each. They have now bought miles of food grade 25 milimetre tubing and are hand digging a trench to burying it in so that they can sell water on the closest highway. It is all down hill and about 20 kilometers, I had a tough time convincing them that water will go uphill it it first comes down hill then goes up hill and further downhill. their argument was good though, there were no local streams going uphill.

c.) Not gonna argue with the filial piety thing.

d.) Citing three countries does not in any way constitute a majority among Western nations.

“Lack of guns has not prevented acid or knive attacks on innocent bystanders or schools in China.”

there are probably 1.5 billion people in China, if you read the books by Dr. Robert Hare, psychopathology is common. there will also be attrocities in big populations. Please do not allow the kettle of the USA to call the pot of China black. we have not had mass murders in churches, schools, streets. The USA is troubled, China deals with these problems with execution, similar to USA. Chinese standard is much lower, 26 categories for crimes include execution for punishment. These problems are a reflection of society changing quicker than biology can adapt to. The stresses of “Civilisation” are what is destroying it, wish I had a solution.

When the project was done in this village, each family contributed 1 kuai toward a huge village feast. all the food of course is entirely hand made, everything but the beer came from their farms, pigs, chickens, fish, vegetables. even the 白酒 and 二锅头 was village made. familes of course all tried to outdue each other providing dishes and beer. I was offered numerous wives all dressed up and blushing.

I had a great time, This is my China.

a) China has no debt????
Not sure what newspapers you have been reading. China has lots and lots of non-transparent debts, hidden in SOE’s, local governments, etc. Google China hidden debt to get a clue.

Even if China had no debt, I’d rather have a GDP/capita of $45,000 and debt per capita of $68,000 then GDP/capita of $4500 and no debt (the 200K figure “including interest and blah blah blah” is a pie in the sky figure that only an American hating sinophile could come up with)

Just like I’d rather be an invidividual earning 48K and have 68K in debt then be someone earning 4.5K with zero debt.

It’s quite a simple concept – I would have thought that an MD could understand it.
b) No argument

c) I see anger in your comment about “what makes them think they deserve….”. As I said, sometimes unions act counter-productively, but this is not the norm. Most westerners live a good standard of living without over-working. They are (objectively speaking) much more productive than the Chinese.

d) Swizterland and Canada are small countries (population wise) – a small proportion of the West. And to be frank, although I’m no fan of lax gun control, I don’t think the average American’s life is impacted by firearms to any material extent. I’m sure you can pull up some anecdote to the contrary, but that doesn’t change the general.

American has the highest rate of unemployment in the Western world? What a load of BS.

Chinese parents are no more abusive than others? You have gotta be kidding. Child abuse is rampant in China – it’s just not callled abuse. It’s called “teaching respect/discipline”. Hitting innocent toddlers might be acceptable in China, but in the West we see things differently.

I brought up the doctor issue because doctors learn about development and personality as part of their medical training.