My last post has brought me to an old topic, waidiren in Beijing, which I have written about more than once in my blog. I am forced to write about/complain about them again here because they simply can't be justified.
I don't wanna go out these days because the streets in Beijing are packed with waidiren. More and more waidiren have said on TV that they will DEFINITELY come to Beijing for the 2008 Olympic Games. I almost faint at hearing this. My fiance calms me down, saying that
the central goverment/Beijing government would not allow waidiren to enter Beijing at that time to maintain good road conditions and security here.
The only reason that I love McDonald's and Pizza Hut so much here is that they only employ people with a Beijing Hukou, (although a lot of waidiren bribe officials or marry Beijingers to obtain a Beijing Hukou) and I can still feel the friendliness, frankness and quickness of Beijingers at McDonald's and Pizza Hut.
Liu Guang, the Bei Wai student I mentioned in my last post, has felt inferior to those from cities and taken his origin too seriously. Only when waidiren themselves feel so do Beijingers have to look down upon them. We Beijingers are always nice and frank to others. But they seek for fame and wealth in a ungraceful way.
If you watch Chinese news, you can figure out that over 80% of crimes in Beijing are committed by waidiren. And TV anchormen always warn people of their property and safety before the Chinese New Year Day comes because waidiren need to go home and this needs funds they don't have.
I remember when I was 15 and my family had a car, my relatives always reminded us of being careful when we unlocked our car. At that time, there were people from northeastern China who hit people on the head from behind with wooden sticks.
We have no seat on buses, get squeesed on subway, share less and less clean drinking water with them, listen to hard-to-understand dialets and smell their bad B.O., most importantly, suffer from their far-more-strange way of thinking.
Waidiren come and go. They never treasure Beijing, our city. They come for opportunities without caring about the city at all. I can fully understand why John Howard has had harsh opinions/words regarding immigrants to Australia, thought the case in Australia is even more complicated - it involves nationalities, races, religions and politics, even terrorism.
I got a phonecall from a survey committee under the National Statistics Bureau one month ago. It was a random call and the woman on the phone asked for my opinions of China's or Beijing's govermental departments. The last question was what department I was most dissatisfied with. I replied "the planning committee". She inquired the reasons of course. I only pointed out one reason before she said "thank you and this is fininshed". The reason is the governemt has been destroying Beijing without knowing it. Beijing has become a test field for high-level officials. They wanna build up their political achievements here. However, what they have done to my Beijing is damage. How can they say that it is for keeping Beijing's tradition and originality by knocking down those traditional and historic buildings? How can you preserve a culture and history by building up look-the-same buildings? You can refer to Richard Spencer's photos of Dongsi Area. I heard this has happened to Xuanwumen Area too. It is gonna happen in the famous Qianmen Area as well. I cannot recognise those shops in Dongsi I had been visiting. I was living in there for almost 15 years and I have never seen it so ugly before. The area matches the Pingan Da Jie near it though. A gray street, looking dead and lifeless, which is Jiangzemin's masterpiece. There is also no limit in how many waidiren can come to Beijing. BTV has broadcast that the drinking water sources can not afford this amount of people here in Beijing (15 million people here!). But people are still coming. Of course, the woman on the phone could not understand my feelings and probably thought that I didn't appreciate the governemt work because she was a waidiren, probably holding a Beijing Hukou now.
My university best friend is from Shenyang, Liaoning Province. I alaways had the idea to ask her to have a look at my blog but I still haven't given her the address cuz I don't want her to see my complaints about waidiren. I have never said so before her. However, I want her to see it now because I can't stand her waidi way of thinking (my uni classmate from Hunan even went to Suzhou for cheaper wedding dresses. She bought one which only cost RMB250. Not to mention its poor quality, didn't she think the RMB hundreds traintickets would've been part of the basic cost as well? And to make a nice wedding dress in Beijing only costs RMB1500, only RMB500 more than hers, if we include the nearly RMB 1000 traintickets!) And my Shenyang friend even looks down upon other waidiren. What a joke! She is not open-minded enough to live with other waidiren.
So my question is: do you expect Beijingers to live with them as well despite the fact that we are friendly and open enough?
I understand that a city which needs develping demands labor, which is called urbanization. A country needs labor as well. I watched a TV program on CCTV 12 today, praising Chinese people for their effort to help build New Zealand. I can also understand that immigrants need to preserve their own cultures/roots. However, I refuse to embrace those waidiren who are destroying Beijing.
I have only one requirement: would they please help preserve our Beijing culture and treat the city well while making money here?
I beg you.
| 