Portrait of an LBX

The last post introduced you to the hukou system.  Now it’s time to get to a case in point.  It begins with a friend of mine who hails from Anhui province (think West Virginia), a place known for its beauty but also widely considered irreconcilably backward and poor. How poor is it?  When I meet an LBX doing menial labor in Shanghai, I usually just ask where in Anhui he or she comes and wait for the exasperated “how did you know?”

Nevertheless, there does exist a white-collar contingency in Anhui, of which my friend, who we’ll call Ms. Li just in case, is one. Since leaving Anhui, Ms. Li’s life has been punctuated by abrupt changes and adaptations, but being resilient, she’s managed to keep her head above water. Recently, her immediate future was solidified by a rushed marriage to a very well educated ex-diplomatic service officer, who, having become fed up with working in the foreign service, moved to Shanghai and to work for a gargantuan state-owned enterprise (SOE).

Why is her marriage to this man of letters relevant, you ask? It is important because his employment has put him in a decent position to apply for a Shanghai hukou (pronounced hoo koh), or what could be called, for all intents and purposes, “Shanghai citizenship.”

Hold the phone. Aren’t they already Chinese citizens? (more…)

This weekend as I watched an episode of Planet Earth, I noticed that David Attenborough began each segment by describing a new environment and the specific advantages or disadvantages it poses to life, after which he introduced the wildlife found there in terms relating to this environment. It occurred to me as an effective sequence for introducing the layman to strange creatures as they relate to their own extraordinary habitats which the audience might otherwise have trouble comprehending at first glance. Analogously, this post will hopefully help describe part of the unfamiliar LBX environment in order to orient our readers, who otherwise might have difficulty taking in the larger picture all at once.

Today it’s not sulphur rich ocean water surrounding underwater volcanoes, but rather the hukou registration system in which all mainland Chinese exist – LBXes included.  The hukou (户口), or household registration system, is essentially the manner in which the Chinese government divides up its citizens.  The majority of the population possesses a peasant (农民) registration, and the remainder possesses a non-peasant (非农), or, by extension, urban registration.  Since the rural reforms of 1978, peasant families are all allocated a plot of land on which to farm, and from that land to pay grain taxes.  Non-peasants are all divided into work units (单位) – the ostensible determination for what their occupation will be – are given no land, and are legal residents of cities or towns.[1] The distinctions are passed patrilineally to children, but there are a few methods by which a Chinese citizen born as a peasant can obtain a non-peasant hukou.[2]

These will be discussed in a later article.

The process by which a Chinese citizen with a peasant hukou becomes an urban resident, or Nongzhuanfei (农转非), can be compared to the immigration system in the US, with the exception that in the Chinese situation, the “immigrants” are already citizens, but institutionally regarded as second class once they breach the city limits.  In most cases those who qualify for Nongzhuanfei are of use to the state: students graduating from institutions of higher education, technicians recruited for industry, or local administrators chosen for promotion to senior administrative positions.[3] Since 1985, however, peasants have been allowed to legally reside in places other than where they are officially registered by obtaining a temporary residency permit.  This has resulted in the a colossal outflow of peasants from their places of birth into urban centers.[4]

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For the reference of anyone interested, Elizabeth Balkan over at New Energy and Environment Digest 新能源与环保参考 has a good post on some of the (limited) recycling initiatives being undertaken by the Shanghai government. As she points out, one of the major concerns the government has to take into account when considering any action in China is how it will affect employment. As I mentioned, a staggering number of people make a meager living off of China’s trash collecting/recycling industry. Having residents sort their own trash, while more efficient and sanitary, cuts a number of people off from their main source of income.

Our journey begins in Shanghai and Beijing — chaotic places where millions of LBXes scurry about doing all sorts of maniacal activities that are impossible to compile into any coherent story. If this is your first time here, you’d do well by yourself to know what an LBX is.

The most important thing to do before taking on a task like this is to clearly define what we’re looking for. It can’t be just LBXes. Nor can it be just LBXes and the mess they’re in. Many of the LBXes in China’s cities are indeed in a big mess, but we’re not trying to describe how hard their lives are or what obstacles stand in the way to their happiness. There is a great volume of work available on this already, and it’s depressing. Our goal then is more positive and hopefully useful: to seek LBXes who have been able to create happiness and beauty despite it all.

So we start our journey from the big cities, the center of China’s development and the heart of the madness that spreads over the land more frantically and with more gusto each passing day. We’re not interested in capturing the essence of China as a whole because frankly the subject is too colossal to try to encapsulate in one fell swoop. And besides, enough ink has already been spilt on such endeavors. Likewise, we’re not out to report on the economy. Of course economics are important on a macro level, and clearly money affects the lives of every LBX. Nonetheless, they’re all affected at an individual level, and we’re interested in the effects from the vantage point of the individual LBXes themselves.

We’re interested not in how wonderful is the world of the modern Chinese man or how his comforts are tripling or how his access to information is ever increasing. All of that too has been well documented, but more importantly implies movement by something greater than the man while the man passively receives from below. The essence of an animal is lost when it is described in terms of its ever bigger cage with air conditioning and more nutritious food – and harmony among its co-cage-dwellers. No, we’re searching for how the modern Chinese man flourishes in his own environment, where he feels relaxed and free. We’re out to tear down the walls of his cage to find signs that red blood still flows in his veins and that he has potency on his own.

Don’t get us wrong — this project is not meant to be destructive toward people or the systems in which they live, although God knows we’d love to have the magic button to destroy a system or two. We’re philosophers, and as philosophers, we’re out to seek inspiration in an old place full of secrets that can further our enlightenment and hopefully at the same time further enlighten anybody who stumbles upon our work. A rather pertinent Chinese saying goes something like, “The essence of a mountain is not in its height; the presence of immortals there makes it celestial. The essence of a body of water is not in its depth; the presence of a dragon there makes it divine.” So we’re not looking for big mountains or deep waters; we’re looking for remaining traces of divinity and immortality embodied in humanity, which we value more highly than the physical observations that point thereto. (more…)