Chinese Mayors....and the Chinese adherence to living and letting live with others.

Great to watch. Gives a look into and appreciation of an important section of Chinese Officialdom and governance today.

The city of Hefei, the capital of Anhui Province, is particularly noteworthy for me. I went there for the first time in 1988 with great anticipation, only because I had previously a few years before befriended a delightful young couple who owned a very traditional but with a really wonderful contemporaneous touch in Taipei. He was about our age, and would have been born in 1948 as he came over with his father, a soldier of Chiang Kai Shek's KMT Army in retreat from the Mainland in 1949 when he was just a baby. His beautiful wife was then an instructor at Taiwan's Academy of Traditional Dance, and he was a director of some capacity at Taiwan's National Television. Even at a relatively young age, they struck me as extremely "cultured" and modern, but I was particularly taken by the husband's brilliance, I remember thinking, I had never met such an intelligent man. To cut it short, he was an Anhuinese, and I had subsequently heard from other Chinese that Anhuinese are smart people.

Thanks for bearing with me over such a small detail, which I obviously thought relevant to why I would be excited upon visiting the place.

Back to Hefei, even though a provincial capital and a sizable city with a long tradition in trade and commerce, half the people were still dressed in Mao Blue and there was not even a modern shopping mall, just traditional shops and markets. There were obviously no high-tech industries of any kind, but contrast it to today, thirty-plus years later, just a blink of a baby's eyes, it's beyond unbelievable. But this is not confined to one city, but the entire nation of 1.4B people.

Thus, inescapably, it makes one ponder and ask what drives the Chinese or what factors could explain such achievements and success, or are there some secret juices involved?

This is my short and gut assessment. To be sure the Chinese can be extraordinary in their achievements, but so are others too. They are as ordinary as the next man.

But to evaluate their comparative "achievements," one needs to go back to history. Fundamentally, China is a civilization, and the Chinese people know and appreciate it as long as anyone else, if not longer. Although they revere and trust it they are open to change. Arguably, the oldest book in the world, approx 2300 BCE, I Ching, the Book of Change, starts with the following sentence:" There is nothing more permanent than change itself" Their confidence makes them thinkers, thinking for themselves even though sometimes made more difficult or tempered by a high regard for tradition, inventive, and they have extremely great organizational skills, how else could you explain the historic Great Wall, the Grand Canal etc and the marvels of today's industrial and infrastructure prowess in High-Speed Trains, Space travel, Telecommunications etc etc. Their time immemorial respect for learning and knowledge, Confucian tenets, basic pragmatism, stoic nature, and get-on-with-it attitude are certainly factors. I could go on, but it's enough. But lastly, on the positive human side and from my own understanding, they are generally generous, protective, and caring of their loved ones, fair to others, loyal, love games and entertainment, and big picture people in outlook about most things.

None of the above are unique to them but collectively, they probably did make and continue to make a difference. As a civilization or a nation today, one glaring difference to the others, especially the West, is their long-learned realization and adherence to living and letting live with others in the world. Basic Humanitarianism is evidently not easily and sincerely learned. Lastly, they don't suffer fools. The latter sounds cheeky but true, nevertheless.

Lawrence

Comment: To be clear, I hope I didn't sound chauvinistic. I saw it and memories came pouring in and I couldn't help but to pen some thoughts.

And there is a need to say this. I believe there is nothing in conflict or wrong to celebrate or acknowledge your ancestry. It is the very fact of our diversity that makes us UNIQUELY who we are, and the sum of all our parts HAS TO BE GREATER than any individual part. In this context, no one is saying mine or yours is greater or better. Anyone who thinks and says that is an absolute fool, just like the one who says we can't be proud of our origins and ancestry. To me, being a Malaysian gives me both the right and access to ALL our cultures. I feel there is Malay in me as I feel Portuguese or Indian or Senoi in me also in the realm of culture, traditions, food, whatever, etc. Free yourselves from the confinement of race ( in fact if you really know more about this subject you would be wondering why, what in the world was I thinking, hung up about .. ? ) Fact is there no such thing as Chinese, Malay, Albanian, Hungarian , Cherokee, or anything but being HUMAN. That's who WE ARE. Take anything beyond and start separating yourselves from others on the basis of race is perpetuating a folly from down the ages when we were primitive in mind and in kind. Enough said.