A UCLA-led study analyzed more than 270,000 Chinese language books published over the last four decades. The words used in Chinese books illuminate how a nation's values changed during economic reforms. The authors of the study found as China has undergone rapid economic and social change in recent decades, an increase of individualistic values has been reflected in the word choices of Chinese authors.
My wife and I go to the Cheng Gong campus from time to time. We take the subway and then take a taxi to the school. The fee with a meter is 7 yuan but the CG taxis dont use the meter and just charge 10 yuan. They do this to all the students and anyone in the vicinity.
They tried this with us but we were prepared with recorder in hand and we recorded the drivers bullshit story (lies). We sent a letter and he was fined and had training for 3 days and lost money for 3 days of not driving - serves him right. We had a repeat of this on the way back from the school to the subway so we killed to taxi brids with one stone.
The moral of this story is that chinese (students) know they are being cheated 3 yuan every time they take a taxi but they dont know how to fix this problem.
So we gave one of my students the generic form letter and we showed her our previous results. Now she also wrote a letter and had the driver punished and fined and she has passed this on to all her classmates.
Eventually, the risk of punishement will be greater than the 3 yuan they steal from every student and this behavior will stop.
So chinese do want change, just many do not know how to go about and make this change happen.
Very encouraging story campo :) :)
On the topic, yes, one of the big problems in a society moving from a socialist model to a market driven model is that the adaptations in people's thinking and attitudes can easily go beyond seeing oneself as an individual (in the sense of being unique) to seeing oneself as a competitor in a world where every other person (outside of close family) is a rival. That can be a sad way to see the world, and I hope China moving forward can foster/maintain a spirit of helping others and treating them with respect regardless of their job/guanxi. I do believe that most people are born with positive dispositions towards others, I see it in my kindergarten class when they share cake/pens etc with perfect kindness and good manners, and play together nicely and with joy. I think that society (including media) has an unfortunate tendency to knock this positive disposition to others out of us over time. In summary, a society should try to foster the positive aspects of individualism (lateral thinking, creativity, freedom), whilst trying to keep a lid on it's more destructive aspects (selfishness, lack of empathy, excessive competitiveness).
@HFCAMPO
Thank you for taking the time to "do the right thing". Although petty extortion is IMHO rampant in KM, it is most apparent with our KM Taxi drivers - not all - but a sufficiently large enough population to make the profession appear ... unprofessional.
Would you please post your letter template to this string?
Laotou - send me a PM and I will send you a sample letter. It is 3 pages long and contains all the info needed including phone numbers, pictures and regulations.
HFCAMPO, with all due respect, do you feel good about getting people punished, fired, making them lose wages, etc.?
I would feel great about them facing some kind of consequence if they are cheating people, especially poor students who don't have much money.
Haali, but is it really one's duty to go around the world telling on people, getting them fired, making their families lose money and food, like God's divinely-appointed judge of mankind?
i agree with CAMPO on getting them towards consequences.
if they don.t want to lose their wages or being fined?....great! dont be greedy and don.t cheat....and your wages are all yours.
unfortunately what i am worried about is that the cheating cabbie still won.t see it and just send blame and hatred towards foreigners and ultimately reject foreign guests.
china is not a culture of realization of ones mistakes or let alone to apologize. the downsides of a sinocentric belief system.
how often have you ever gotten an apology from someone. the usual methodology is blame anyone but me for my mistakes...thanks to mianzi.
@neddy In a word, yes! If you follow your 'logic', then everyone would be free to do as they want to one another, free of consequence. Also, remember, Campo merely reported the actions of a taxi driver to the relevant authority. He did not fire the driver, nor did the authority, they merely sent him on an education course about how to do his job properly, so that in future, he cannot claim ignorance as an excuse.
I'm agnostic, but I believe the Bible says God made man in his own image. We love, we judge, we enact vengeance. We bring both balance and chaos, at the same time.
