In China, I no longer walk with a bad attitude, like they do in New York, the—you touch me I’ll kill you, a little bit crazy, unbalanced, kind of way, avoiding eye contact, focused as if they were reading a floating book in front of them, maybe something that was difficult to understand, like say, Finnegan’s Wake, shut down to all requests, whether foreign or domestic, the way people walk in every major city, as if they always know where they are going and are pissed off that they’re a half an hour late. Like I always used to walk. But these days I actually stroll, saunter, ramble, blunder about, never tensing at night when I unexpectedly come upon strangers in China’s low watt streets and alleyways, calmer now than I’ve ever been as a pedestrian, and why, you ask? It’s because China is extremely safe. No purse snatchings, no muggings, no gun-wielding thugs holding up liquor stores, no carjacking, no crack addicts trying to steal the fillings in your teeth, no urban shootouts with police, no helicopters televising live car chases, no street gang initiation murders, no street gangs, no home invasions, no hostage situations or any of the other tabloid fodder regurgitated nightly on the evening news. I know, I know, impossible you say. They must not be reporting it. But I have walked this city and others, at all times of the day and night, into places you would think I was crazy to go, provoking only the surprised stares of the locals, and I admit there are always those whose eyes are flinty with hatred because of what they think that I represent—and definitely go out of their way to let me know it, but I’ve never been overtly threatened, accosted, molested, or robbed, and this has got to be some kind of a record considering all the places I’ve wandered since I have been here. I have found the Chinese people to be very honest. Violent crime is rare and private gun ownership is banned. A Chinese teacher I work with occasionally shares news of some violent atrocity—like someone killing their whole family, but this kind of thing happens so infrequently here the national shock is genuine, and I always commiserate with her, because there is no way I could tell her that living in the U.S. I had become so immune to this kind of thing that I was beyond shock, and never ever read the grisly news reports, concentrating instead on the weekend grosses of my recently released movie favorites as if I were an accountant for a major film studio. Distraction is a way of life. Humans can get used to anything. We constantly justify what happens to us in order to make sense of it all and discard the rest of it as if it never really happened. But I ask you this: what percentage of the movies you watch or the shows you view on TV are about violence and crime? We tune it out when it is reported in the newspapers or on the nightly news, then tune into it for entertainment. How many movie and TV murders have you witnessed? How many bombings? How many crimes? And how does it distort our view of reality? If we accept crime and mayhem, we expect it, right? Which leads me to wonder, do we enable it as a society? This thought haunts me as I move through China where there is so little crime. And while the topic is too large to tackle in a single post, I would like to report without judgment some of the things I have observed as well as the reasons locals have given me as to why this is so. I know there have been studies where the data has shown that street cameras do not deter crime, but in China, cameras are everywhere. There are cameras watching cameras. Not cameras waiting for a satellite to pass in order to interpret the images, but real time cameras, 24/7, watching everything, aimed at traffic intersections, stuttering eyes strung like streetlights, you pass out of one camera’s view right into another, and these are just the ones you can see—who knows what others there are that might be hidden. And you rarely see police on the street and there are no police patrols. It makes you wonder, are they all watching the cameras, ready to burst out in swarms at the first hint a crime is about to occur? Today I walked for an hour and during that time I saw a tiny glassed in police substation with two policemen inside it, traffic police directing traffic at most major intersections, maybe a grand total of seven cops seen in an hour’s walk. So, I am sure they are there, but there is no real police presence anywhere on the streets. Yet, it seems every building and every entry into a gated row of apartment blocks is guarded by unarmed private security men and women wearing navy blue uniforms, but their presence would never stop a determined thief, and most guards I have encountered have been so friendly and nonthreatening that at least it appears to me that they are there for show and not in any way a real deterrent, yet I admit I only skim the surface of Chinese society, who knows the hidden power they may wield. I’ve often wondered as I wandered—where are the teens hanging out? They are not hanging out on the streets in packs, and when I asked my students about this they all said teens have too much homework to be hanging out. Apparently, it is so as I’ve never seen teen gangs or gangs of teens, except when walking in groups of five or less coming home from school. Maybe there is a ban on teen gangs forming more than five at a time that I have no clue about. Most people I’ve talked to say there is so little crime because the penalties are so harsh and that all the serious criminals have been executed. It is reported that Chinese courts have a 99% conviction rate and it’s no secret that China executes more people in a year than all the other countries combined. Since 1997, China has used execution vans to carry out death sentences. The so-called ‘Death Vans’ travel to the courtrooms where a death penalty is issued, and the prisoner is escorted out, enters the van and is given an injection of three drugs that ensures instant death, and are seen to be a serious deterrent as the offender is executed locally, “closer to the communities where they broke the law.” (USA Today 6/15/2006) I wonder why do people commit crimes? Most of us don’t—with the exception of the small everyday crimes we all commit because we don’t think we will be caught, yet we secretly admire those who do, watch endless TV and movie loops about them, vicariously live through them, never really admitting the real damage they do, how they diminish our expectations of what we all could be, as a race, as humans focused on betterment, as a tribe united, rejecting the tired xenophobic boundaries, opening up to the true possibilities of you and of me, and the relentless and profound, Recognition, . . . waiting
1 Comment
Mary
10/23/2013 06:36:25 am
This post is very interesting. When you write about the places you have been by yourself and things you have experienced in China I have always been scared for you but now that you write how safe it is in China I feel better. I did not know it was so safe. I have read that the chinese are respectful, honest and hard workers who are taught at an early age to have a good work ethic and to be respectful of other people and their property. The chinese culture is more respectful of rules of order and probably because the punishment is so severe and there are no lengthy appeals they do not commit crimes because the thought of execution is terrifying and final. I did not know they have "death vans" to immediately execute criminals. Just seeing that "death van" would scare you!!
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