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Life in China Engineering work | Engineering work |
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| China | |
| Saturday, 24 November 2007 | |
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I thought "engineering work" was a phrase specially attached to the London Underground. There is guaranteed to be some "engineering work" on some lines or at least parts of some lines most weekends, and we are more or less forced into a habit of doing our research before traveling at weekends in London. However, my thought was proved wrong from my experience in Scotland this weekend. Two "engineering works" were taking place on my journey from the Isle of Arran to Edinburgh on the same day. Unfortunately, we don't have as many workers in Britain as in China, so when there is some "engineering work" that needs to be done, it normally does take a wee while. What about the "engineering works" in Beijing then? Well, you know, we have a very important event coming up in 2008, loads of "engineering work" must be finished before then of course. We need to work on the SPEED. Well, we are kind of concentrating on that, aren't we? I burst into laughing when I saw the underground map the first time I was in Beijing this spring - it was a map for line 1, 2 and 13. I thought, come on, there must be a misprint; line 1, 2 and 3 would sound better. But the print was right, lines 3 to 12 would all be finished before the Olympics. There were only two underground lines originally, and it had been like that all those years I had known Beijing, but when I was there several months ago, a random "line 13" was added. I guess next time I am there, it will be all 13 lines running, it will be as mad as the London underground. How do we keep up the SPEED then? "By working very hard, of course" (A line from a play I was in - Peace Pagoda by Andy Cheung). Yes, we must work very hard to get things finished on time!! And the project managers must make sure everything is running at the right speed!! So this is what I heard when I was there - There was an accident on one of the lines while the workers were doing their "engineering work", the project manager didn't want to get into trouble so he tried his best to cover up what happened because if the journalists found out and reported it, he would be in big trouble. What that manager did resulted in the death of a dozen or so workers as they were delayed being rescued by professional teams. This may show us how important the SPEED is and how unimportant the workers' lives are in China. Workers are just workers, we have too many of them anyway, the reputation of China and Beijing at Olympic time is of course a lot more important. Many of you have kindly replied and some of you have talked to me in person after my last email "Be careful with some Chinese people", Most of you suggested I should be a bit more careful and maybe shouldn't talk too openly about the Chinese officials in public. I appreciate your thoughts and suggestions, you are all good friends and trying to take care of me. But there is no point to write if I have to hesitate a lot. And why do I have to be friendly with some officials just because their titles? Shortly after I turned 18, I was the only student from my college that was voted by all the students' representatives and teachers' representatives to become a party member. If that had happened a few months earlier, I would have accepted the offer and become an honourable Chinese Communist Party member very happily. But funnily enough, it was just after a major event in my life that I had just learnt how corrupt they actually were. So I turned down the offer and even refused to go to their meetings. I hated the fact that they kept telling us to be good and honest while they were so bad and corrupt. I didn't want to become one of them, and didn't even want to go to the related meetings with them. No one would believe this in China, as everyone knows that being able to become a party member at such an early age is like being given a ladder to use later on in your career to get to positions that most others need to work rather hard for many years to approach. And being able to become a party member before graduation definitely suggests a very easy and successful career later. I was clear that wasn't the road I wanted to place my feet on, and I am even more clear about it today. As simple as that I don't know how to smile to people I don't like. And I dislike people who expect others to brownnose just because of their titles and how much power they think they have. Excuse me, things are a bit different here in MeiMei's world, your titles don't mean anything to me I am afraid. It's not who you are but how you are that counts. |
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