I want to retire like this guy

Today we sat down with a 72 year old retired teacher and chatted about his life. I already knew China had been changing a lot in the last fifty years, but he really brought home the positive impact many people have felt here recently. This guy is an extreme example, but the numbers he gave us were stunning.

The talk was an activity for my Special Topics class. We've been studying the aging problem facing the Chinese; the baby boom of the 50's and the one-child policy of the 80's have teamed up to do a real dropkick on their average age. That's an interesting problem in itself, but it basically boils down to there's going to be a ton of old people soon and no one knows what to do about it. We'd already covered that in class, so what I found most interesting was the incredible increase in quality of life this old timer has experienced in his life, particularly after retirement.

Born into a farming family, he managed to get to college, graduated in 1957, and got a job as a middle school teacher. His salary was apparently pretty good for that time, 62 yuan per month. I don't know much about currency value back then, but that number is pretty low by western standards. We didn't discuss what happened to him during the Cultural Revolution, which I regret, but figure that he probably didn't feel much heat. Despite being a teacher, being born into a peasant family would have helped a lot during the madness when they were attacking the non-peasant classes. Anyway, he told us his salary stayed at that same level, 62 yuan, all the way until 1982. That's a long time without a raise, by my standards anyway. He changed jobs a few times and I didn't understand them all, but I think they included middle school teacher and principal, high school something, a beaurocrat of some sort, and finally teacher at the university level. In the early 80's, his salary started increasing incrementally. In 1985 the place he lived with his wife and two sons was only 23 square meters (200 plus sq feet by my rough estimate).

That's when things started to get interesting. The main point of his talk was that at least some old people in China get taken care of very, very well. He said that such good care reflects the level of respect for the elderly in the culture here. I've also gathered that teaching is a pretty good profession to be in, so this old guy probably got some of the best treatment around during the last 25 years. I'm going to throw out the numbers we got. Just think about the ride this guy had after his 50th birthday. The ages are rough:

• 1985, age 50. House, 23 sq meters. Salary, around 100 yuan/month.
• .......lots of salary increases.......
• 1995, age 60. Retires with stipend equal to final working salary of 1300 yuan/month.
• 1996, age 61. Government gives him another apartment in addition to the first, this one 50 sq meters (total 73 sq m).
• 2000, age 65. Stipend is increased to 1600yuan/month.
• 2002, age 67. Gov't declares all teachers/former teachers should have at least 90 sq meters of living space. Figures he's got enough room already, so accepts cash compensation for the extra 17 sq meters: 70,000 yuan.
• 2006, age 71. Stipend increased to 2400yuan/month.

Wow. Now that's a serious increase in standard of living, much of it after retirement. I haven't even mentioned the free family vacations every year, free monthly home medical checkups, and free activity room equipped with exercise equipment, games, and reading material which is shared by the 16 retirees from his old work unit. Also don't forget, it's just him and his wife around the house these days - the sons have big places of their own.

China reserves this kind of treatment for government workers, which explains why so many people want to work for the government. Our old friend was up front with the fact that people living in the countryside get squat, and people living in the cities but not working for the government only recieve a basic living expenses stipend, about 250 yuan/month these days. But before you cry foul, remember that this guy was born a peasant. He could be the poster boy for equal education and upward class mobility in China...not that they'd call it that.

The system now is grossly unfair. But, at least there's some money here to create an imbalance. The Chinese people genuinely want to see the new wealth distributed. That is, at least on a collective level; the old teacher didn't say anything about sharing his salary with less fortunate retirees. Things will probably continue to get better for everyone as time goes on, and that's what individal people seem to really care about. With good reason, as far as I can see. Who argues with a big raise and seventy thousand bucks for quitting work?

Yabuli

Looking back, the ski trip was pretty decent. We hopped on a train at 8am Saturday morning for Yabuli, the famed resort that I've been hearing about since I got to Harbin last June. People come from all over China to ski there, people like the CCP high up muckymucks and important business leaders. The train was two and a half hours on hard seats, not too bad - the "hard" seats are just bench seats, there's cushions though and it's comfy for a few hours. After that, we got on a bus for a half hour and arrived at the base of the mountain about 11:30. We knew time would be a little tight with our train leaving that evening so we had packed lunch and decided to waste as little time as possible on things other than skiing. Two agonizing hours later, we finally got on the chairlift. The delay was due to them being poorly set up for large groups, and our rental gear coming from two separate places; one happened to be back down the road about 10 minutes. Only in China.

There was a single chairlift,which I am thankful for, but I had let myself have somewhat higher hopes for this most famous of ski resorts. t's possible that there was another on a nearby mountain we didn't have access to. The mountain was about as high as the one at Snoqualmie summit, not exactly the Alps but enough for a satisfying run anyway. Plus we only had about 2 and a half hours, so there wouldn't have been enough time to go exploring a bunch of other runs anyway. My skiing predictably sucked after a long draught of three or four years off the mountain...did I really add that up right? That's a long time. The snow was not groomed and really heavy, making it even tougher to get into a good rhythm, but by the last run I was feeling alright. I'm definitely going next winter, I won't be letting the amazing US mountains go unused for another year.

Since we couldn't buy the same-day return train tickets until we arrived at Yabuli, there were no sitters left. It was a slow train too, which meant three and a half hours instead of the two and a half going down. I passed the time standing in the aisle talking philosophy with one of the Chinese roommates; we wedged ourselves between sitting passengers every 10 minutes or so to allow the food cart to pass. Luckily we had only skied for a couple hours so standing wasn't an undue burden on our bodies. I couldn't help being a little disappointed at a 13 hour ski day that only involved two and a half hours of skiing. But hey, it was a great bonding experience and the skiing was fun while it lasted.

it's beginning to end

It's back to the grind again. This time it's the beginning of the end, my final semester in China. Maybe it's just that beginning of the semester feeling, but the grind is a little more comfortable than I remember it. I'm working as hard, but I think my language is good enough now that I can get past mind-numbing, out of context vocabulary and grammar and get interested in some content. My class on the Confucian school of thought is especially interesting. I've been getting glimpses and hints about that pillar of Chinese culture by osmosis all along, but it's been teasingly incomplete. Finally taking the thing head on is like scratching a bad itch. As an added bonus, memorizing and reciting Confucian proverbs is a cheap way to come off as really smart to the Chinese.

The new crew is looking good, probably even more studious than last semester. We're missing a couple of key players that kept us all on our toes last time. My suitemate no longer knocks on my door at 6 in the morning with a black eye and puke on his shirt, shaking his head and grinning like he just spent the night with the girl of his dreams. That Russian accent always came out a little heavier with the words "Man, you'll never believe what just happened..." Ai Youzheng, come back and visit any time, and after last semester I'll believe almost anything you tell me.

I've got a request pending for a ping pong teacher. I'm hoping to get some regular lessons going. Improving my game was one of my goals for China but it got lost in the busy schedule for the first couple semesters. No longer. I'm also going to take some cooking classes offered through CET. Tonight is the first one. I don't want to have to stop eating this awesome food when I go back home, and I see no other way to avoid that than making it myself.

Tomorrow we're going to hop on a train heading up to Yabuli and check out how the skiing is in China. I had a disappointing experience with a short, flat 'mountain' over the break, but Yabuli is known throughout the country as the place to go for skiing. I'm still skeptical, but would love to be proven wrong.