7 August 2019

Where do you go to find the ‘real China’? The steamy summer suburbs of a sweltering Beijing? The far-flung western states of Tibet and Xinjiang? The karst mountains of Guangxi and Guangdong? Nope, try a lift (or elevator if you really must be American). Any lift. In any part of China. You’ll learn ample there.

On the face of it that’s clearly an odd thing to say. But China is not just a big place, it’s what someone much more intelligent than me once called a civilisational state; like Russia, India and the USA it’s a country that’s simply so big and diverse that making sense of it simply by travelling around is always going to be a very tough task. To me at least, that’s not the way to unearth the secrets of what makes the Chinese tick.

So where do you start? Well, I have found the lift in our block of flats in Liuzhou as good a place to start as any. Stan, Vince, Ying and I are up on the 19th floor and so whenever we venture out the lift is in the game. Take it from me, we know lifts.

I’ve subsequently come to four conclusions about Chinese people from my experiences going up and down every day. Furthermore, I am quite prepared to generalise from those experiences to the country as a whole. Bear with me on this one.

The Land of Impatience

Firstly, the Chinese are impatient. Very impatient. And spending any time in a lift is essentially wasted time. Therefore you must do everything you possibly can to not only get in to and out of the lift quickly but there is also no point in waiting around for the lift to begin its journey.

Chinese people press the ‘close doors’ button more than any people I have ever come across. As soon as you enter a lift you press the number of the floor you’re going to and then you hammer the living daylights out of the ‘close doors’ button. No waiting. No ambling through the latest WeChat posts on your phone. Action is required, and it is required immediately.

Perhaps it is the thought of spending time in a confined space with strangers (I doubt this, see point two below). Perhaps it is the cut-throat speed of modern life that demands you get from A to B more or less instantaneously – for the record, I doubt this, too. From what I can tell, it is just an allergic reaction to nothing happening. Something needs to happen. And the most obvious something is for the lift to move. Now. Hence the furious button pressing. Absolutely everyone does it, believe me …

The Spanish Inquisition

Secondly, the Chinese see it as their God-given right to ask personal questions more or less as soon as they meet you. “They are twins, are they…?” is an obvious starter for ten when I am in the lift with Stan and Vince. That will quickly be followed by “Which of them is older?”. The questioner will give you their own answer before you have time to draw breath and it’ll nearly always involve them pointing at Vince (as he is a fraction taller). For the record, they are wrong (Stan’s the older by precisely one minute).

If the journey is a particularly long one then we may move on to where I am from. My Chinese can just about deal with that, although anything more nuanced and I am quickly stuck. In fact, that’s the point I guess I become a furious button-presser, too.

Personally, I don’t mind all the questions and comments. The folks are generally just curious; there aren’t many Englishmen in Liuzhou and even fewer who have mixed race twins. But the openness and the willingness to say things that you just wouldn’t in the UK is still a bit unnerving. Today, for example, Ying got told that neither of the twins looked much like her. The lady concerned was surprised she was the mother. Quite what you say to comments like that, well, who knows; perhaps “well, sorry, if I’d known you were coming I’d have brought their birth certificates”…

The food deliverers

Thirdly, you won’t have to go in to many Chinese lifts before you’re joined by someone delivering takeaway food. Now, getting food delivered to your door is clearly not a uniquely Chinese preserve, but the sheer number of people who seem to be employed in this way really does catch the eye.

Once you realise what they are doing then you notice these (predominantly) yellow shirted scooter drivers everywhere. Much as is catching on in the UK, they’ll deliver from more or less any restaurant to any flat and judging by the speed that they whizz around they clearly don’t want the food to get cold. There is a minimum spend, but it’s generally around a couple of pounds (at least that’s what it is in Liuzhou, I guess it might be more in bigger cities) so pretty much everyone can get in on the act.

Does this have an impact on restaurant-takings? I guess it must do somehow, but that doesn’t stop there being food outlets wherever you look. Clearly, it’s a competitive market and is (yet more) evidence that Communist rhetoric to one side, China really does look to me to be the most capitalist country in the world. The more I see of China the more convinced than ever I am of that.

Getting the message across

Finally, much as Chinese people are not shy in coming forward, for a foreigner there is always the problem of making sense of what they want. I can now work out what the basic line of questioning is likely to be (“Yes, they are twins”, “No, I’m not American, I’m English” and so on), but as a foreigner you still know that it won’t be long before your linguistic inadequacies let you down.

In those situations, the Chinese – in lifts and indeed elsewhere – adopt one of four tried and trusted methods for getting their message across.

  • You have the slow talkers; these folks realise you don’t speak Mandarin and slow right down. They speak clearly and enunciate themselves perfectly. This, of course, doesn’t make a blind bit of difference. They can speak as slowly as you like, I am not going to get it. Sorry …
  • You have the loud talkers; these guys clearly think the issue is one of volume. Basically, the louder that they talk the more likely you are to understand. There is essentially no issue that a bit of volume can’t put right. All fine, but see point (1) for the effectiveness of such an approach.
  • You have the ‘I don’t really care, I’m going to say it anyway’ group of talkers. These guys just talk. You understanding what they are saying is not really relevant. They have things to say and they are going to say them. Just nod your head and say bye when they (or indeed you) get out of the lift.
  • You have the signers. These guys understand where you’re coming from. They realise that if they want to seriously communicate, sign language will invariably be the best way to go. And they are right. Three days ago an old lady was pretty clear in signing that it was raining and I needed to get an umbrella. Message received loud and clear!

There may well be more things that you can learn about China from excursions in lifts. Should I come across any of them, rest assured you’ll all be the first to know.

Go well, folks, see everyone in September.