Portrait of an LBX

By Andy

I haven’t written for a while. Evan’s post on the SOE coalmine experience captured the story and insanity of the situation quite handily. The only thing I have to add is a couple thoughts on the separation between the Party and the people and on the definition of LBXs, or laobaixing.

We still have no precise definition for China’s laobaixing. It is most often translated as simply the ‘common people,’ but that doesn’t really do the term justice as it is used in modern Chinese context.

In a slightly less vague context, it is used to mean anyone who is not connected to the Party or the government (the two being approximately the same thing in China). I think this is the way most Chinese people in major cities like Beijing or Shanghai would describe the term if you asked them what they thought about their childhood home being demolished to make way for a luxury mall – “We laobaixing have no power. (我们老百姓没有权利.)” Back in June, an offhand comment made by Lu Jun, a government spokesman in Zhengzhou, a city about 80km from where I write this post, caused an uproar on the Chinese internet, which interestingly acts as one of the few checks against rampant abuses of power by local governments and officials. Lu, when confronted by reporters about the future of a plot of land originally allocated for low-income housing where 12 luxury villas were instead being constructed, first asked, “Will you speak for the Party or for the laobaixing? (你是准备替党说话，还是准备替老百姓说话?) (more…)

Just for empirical verification purposes, I’m looking for definitions of Laobaixing that any of you might have to share with us. A friend, Devi, recently told me that a certain LBX of her acquaintance described Laobaixing as “people without rights or power” – simple and terribly true. I also recently finished River Town by Peter Hessler, where he describes a similar LBX self-characterization.

That’s a good definition politically, but LBXes are more than just the helpless byproducts of political systems in which they have virtually no 办法 (means) to change anything.  As our goal here is more philosophical and pictorial than political, we’re always on the hunt for solid LBX descriptors.  To summarize, if you have a good LBX definition from yourself or anybody else, I’d appreciate responses of any length to this post or by email.

For most who visit this site without having extensive prior knowledge of China, an explanation of the title is in order. LBX is an abbreviation for laobaixing (pronounced roughly lao-by-shing), the Chinese term for “the old one hundred surnames” – that is, “commoners” or “the common people.” Although the Chinese word has existed for centuries, the nickname LBX has, in our circle of foreigners living in China, come to designate the poor, low-class, uneducated (in the Western sense) subsection of Chinese society. We will readily admit to, on occasion, using the term in exasperation at some of the uncouth habits exhibited by this particular group of people – the spitting, smoking, frequently stinking and always surprising habits sometimes offensive to Westerners more acclimated to a more delicate way of life.

The genesis of the term, however, was simply a need to quickly describe a group of people we encounter frequently and often wish to discuss*.  The word “Chinese” didn’t suffice for quick distinction since it can describe the nationality of a billion and a half people and the ethnicity of an even greater number of people who are now scattered across the globe. There are rich Chinese, bureaucratic Chinese, sophisticated and refined Chinese, minority Chinese, American Chinese, Hong Kong and Taiwan Chinese – and then there are LBX’es.

LBXes are decidedly the products of 5,000 glorious years of Chinese history, forty glorious years of Communist China turning the previous 5,000 on its head, twenty glorious years of market reforms completely undoing the previous 5,040, birth into the caste of 800 million Chinese referred to casually as “peasants,” little to no formal education, lives that in many cases might be called “cold,” “brutish,” or “short,” and stupefying uncertainty about where the next glorious set of years is going to take them.  Any geologist can tell you that all it takes to produce some of the world’s true gems – or oddities – is time and pressure. LBXes have certainly been subjected to enough of both to achieve stunning effects, making LBXes into an extraordinarily curious lot from the perspective of an American, and hence a group of people very much worth describing.  They are, as a result of pure circumstance, extremely different from their more affluent or overseas cousins.

LBXes are everywhere in China. Most of them live their lives on the farm and comprise the some 70% of China’s population engaged in agriculture. A horrible many of them are of late engaged in manufacturing. Been to Wal-Mart lately? (more…)