Apparently, the Obama campaign had ad dollars to spare... in China.The HTSICC (WRT) staff would like to announce it's full support for BARACK OBAMA!! That's right, we're setting the new trend in political endorsements: announcing it after the election! We're no dopes.
So let's the HTSICC (WRT) official party line was that we did not have a dog in this fight... even one with lipstick on... that can miraculously play hockey. Despite its name, THIS IS NOT A POLITICAL BLOG. So fear not, this post will ride the fence!
It was a very strange experience dating documents on November 4th but knowing that it wasn't election day -- being that China is currently 13 hours ahead of New York. But in a sense, it made for an ideal election watching experience. When I left work on Tuesday evening the polls had just opened. When I woke up the first results were just beginning to roll in. I was able to cut out those 12 hours of Wolf and AC yapping their heads off. It was great.
It's a widely observed fact that most of the non-State Department expats in Beijing were very pro-Obama (as demonstrated by the street art depicted above). Many of the expat bars advertised election parties beginning quite early on Wednesday morning. I made it down to The Rickshaw by 9:00am and it was already packed. By the looks of it, people must have been there as early as 7:30am. I ordered toast and beans to watch CNN in widescreen while standing at the bar. Pint after pint of Tsingtao kept flowing past me. I guess some were already starting to celebrate.
I'm going to take a moment and brag about how good of an American I am. Being abroad meant that I had to apply, receive, fill out, and then mail back my ballot. This was a complicated multi-step process, especially when you don't technically have a home address to receive mail. FedEx was sponsoring a program to overnight ballots for free -- which was great -- but it was only available at a single FedEx location in the entire city. Of course I didn't know this at first and visited 3 FedEx locations (each promising the next could handle it) before finally making my way to the 798 Art District from Donsi Shitiao... on bike! Those who don't know Beijing won't appreciate this feat, but it was really far, at solid 5 miles each way at least. I was on my bike the entire afternoon and my butt was so sore I couldn't sit down for the next day. But I did it, and a week ago my ballot arrived at Durrell's office. This time saved my butt the agony and paid for DHL to mail it back.
Overall it was very interesting to experience the election abroad, especially among the Chinese. A New York Times article today taking the perspective of non-Americans watching the election described it this way:
"From far away, this is how it looks: There is a country out there where tens of millions of white Christians, voting freely, select as their leader a black man of modest origin, the son of a Muslim. There is a place on Earth — call it America — where such a thing happens."
I mean, yeah, if you stop and think about it, even the unremarkable elements of this election could seem so unique from the outside. The last 3 elections have been incredibly contested -- dividing families, making for heated conversation fodder at dinner parties. Yet when the day is done, and the chad are counted, we accept the outcome and move on. We take this for granted, but it's actually pretty cool if you think about it. Go America.
You know what Mao said, right?: "An Election is not a Dinner Party."
And I was at a dinner party with a lot of locals where I "believe" (I say this because I was only keeping up with about 60% of the Chinese conversation) they were casually discussing if the Chinese people could ever manage an equally civil outcome, if (big if) China were a d---cracy. A Chinese man well versed in American history started to tell the story of Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr (this I'm sure of). His point: America's had its own progress towards civility in politics. The general consensus was "ehhh, maybe it could be for China, but maybe not." And then the conversation moved on to another topic as smoothly as we picked up American politics.
>>>>>>>I'm going to hop in right here and add some more thoughts since I originally made this post, based on a conversation I had with a Chinese woman at Ben's above-mentioned Saddle (awesome place by the way... try the nachos!)>>>>>>>>>
I asked her what she thought about the election we had today. Of course I didn't know how to say election, so it was more like:
me: you towards us country today cast votes choose new president event have what opinion?
her: the new president you chose is really handsome.
(OK, fine I thought -- not the first time that looks played into a voters opinion. I think we're all a little guilty about that.)
me: yeah, well it's a tough comparison to McCain because he's so old, but I'm sure he was a handsome dude in his youth. but what about that Palin, she's kind of foxy, right?
her: yeah, but she's the kind of foxy that you don't believe anything's going on upstairs
(Ok, I thought, so she's been watching her fair share of John Stewart's Daily Show recently. I decided to kick up the conversation a notch...)
me: so like, what do you think, would this sort of thing be suitable for China...?
her: no, I don't think so.
me: oh really, why not?
her: our country has no tradition of this sort of thing. we have so many people who are incredibly poor, so so many problems with corruption and bribery already, that it would inevitably lead to bad policies and people trying to buy votes. in America, there's a meritocracy. people are elected into power to have ability, and they choose administrators also based on ability, mostly. in China, familial connections are everything. parents and grandparents in power would nominate and appoint sons and grandsons, regardless of ability, in order to strengthen their base. this would reduce our system to warring factions and nothing would get done. right now things are going pretty well. the economy's expanding and people expect this to continue. so no, i don't think it would be suitable for China.
She was born in a neighboring provice and now works at a very nice hair salon in Beijing.
Expressed in one way or another, this was the theme I heard from several Chinese about the election. There was a general sense of interest, but detachment. Everyone was aware of the election, and perhaps even had a favorite candidate for one reason or another. But it was very much viewed as an American phenomenon. To the Chinese it was "so that's your system, this is ours."
I think there is this immediate tendency to think that whatever's good for the goose is good for the gander (flying right towards a Beijing Roast Duck eatery!!!)... which doesn't mean we're not right perhaps, but means we probably consider that this is a major assumption. I'm not saying that our systems doesn't have MANY merits over China's (because it does), and that there aren't serious failings here that need to be fixed (because there are). But it's a very complicated picture for people who live here and people who govern here. I think that many in the Western press tend to overlook this. There are so many moving parts here. If it were that black and white, some one would have fixed it by now, we'd only have one political party, and you'd only need one version of charger to power the many different types of cell phones.
I'm still holding out on that last one. But so it goes.
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