Portrait of an LBX

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…)

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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…)

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