Taxis and social morality
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I landed at an airport in inland China recently， and the taxi queue was a mess. Black cars and negotiations with suspicious drivers with the so-called taxi queue managers standing by paying no attention. I declined and insisted on taking a regular taxi.
The driver started in a bad mood. He had been queueing himself for three hours， he said， and had been bumped time and again by the aggressive unlicensed black taxi drivers.
“Why don’t they clean it up and get rid of the black taxis？” I asked.
“Because they are an important source of income for them，” he replied，“They make nothing off us regular taxis.”
He went silent as we drove into town， then said： “Money， that is the only thing that matters in this society today. Do you feel it？”
I nodded.
The fee in the end was 80 compared to the 150 the black taxi drivers had insisted was cheap. I handed a 100 note to the driver， Xiao Long， and he tried to give me the change. Good for him. I refused to take it.
Every society， of course， values money. And for people who are really poor there is often no choice but to compromise everything else in return for money. But to value it above all else once that extreme poverty has been overcome， that is another kind of poverty， a poverty of spirit.
China has fought for decades to solve the basic issues of life - warmth， housing and enough food to eat. They solved it. But ironically it is often the people who have benefitted most from the super-fast growth who now hold fastest to the principle of xiangqiankan， meaning “focus on the money” but sounding similar to the saying “look to the future.”
Criticism of this approach to life used to be regularly heard in the Chinese official media – I first heard the xiangtiankan tendency being criticized on Beijing People’s Radio around 1980， just at the beginning of the new era. Now， that approach has beaten all alternatives to become the new guiding principle of China， but I do not remember hearing criticism of it on the radio in recent times.
The great Chinese writer Lin Yutang， writing in the 1930s， talked about the ease with which Chinese people are able to reconcile such contradictions. He used as an exam- ple Buddhist monks and monasteries which in those days were often wealthy due largely to donations from rich and poor alike in return for intercession by the monks on their behalf on matters large and small.
“Many monasteries are exceptionally well endowed， and many monks have plenty of money to spend， which is the cause of mischief in many cases that have come to light in recent years，” Lin wrote. “In 1934 a nun actually had the audacity to sue a monk for infidelity in a Shanghai court. Anything may happen in China.”
In those days， Lin said the one thing that could beat the love of money for Chinese people was face.
“Human， all too human， this face of ours，” he said. “And yet， it is the goad of ambition and can overcome the Chinese love of money. It has caused a schoolteacher infinite misery because the foreign principal insisted on increasing his salary from eighteen dollars to nineteen dollars. He would rather take eighteen dollars or twenty or die than be called a nineteen-dollar man. A father-in-law， by refusing to ask his unworthy son-in-law to stay for supper and thus making him lose face， is probably only wanting to make a man out of him， and very possibly that solitary walk on his way back home may be the beginning of his making good.”
Is it still true in China that face trumps love of money？ I am not sure.