This Generation (9 page)

Going back to the hotel room issue, it's actually very common for a player to check into a hotel room before a competition, and it's not reasonable to expect a player to refrain just because his ability is not that great. Similarly, in car-racing—the sport with which I'm familiar—taking a girl to a room is just a matter of course, no matter whether drivers are foreign or domestic or whether they're top competitors or also-rans. Many excellent foreign drivers are accustomed to taking a girl to bed the night before an event, believing this guarantees a safe run, so on the eve of a race I've seen drivers out in the street searching for a hooker even as late as three in the morning—and I'm sure the energy you use up in a car race is no less than that in a soccer match. Among good soccer and basketball players, there is no shortage of guys who like to live it up, so my position has always been: As long as you can perform at a high enough level on the field or on the court, then check into hotel rooms as you please; if you're not good enough at your sport, not taking a room won't make any difference.

In actual fact, the Olympic soccer team's performance was perfectly normal—that's just the level they can play at. What China
needs is not to reform its players, but to reform its leaders. A player needs a sex life—those hundred thousand condoms supplied to the Olympic Village were not for the volunteers. Many foreigners came to Beijing for the Olympics, and although there are no openly advertised prostitutes in Beijing, a substantial number of the visitors—including the athletes—must have had sex during the seventeen days of the Olympics. This, after all, is one sport that all these sportsmen and sportswomen know how to pursue. So, we shouldn't think it's fine for foreign athletes to screw Chinese women, but then consider the screwing of Chinese women by Chinese athletes an explanation for their failures.

A week ago, a reporter asked what I thought this Olympics had given China. “A lot of mixed-race children,” I replied.

September 15, 2008

In the second half of 2008, a scandal erupted in China owing to the widespread contamination of milk products and infant formula by melamine, a chemical product deliberately added to inflate protein content and increase profits. Tens of thousands of infants became sick as a result, and several died.

We boycott this country's products because it offended our

dignity.

We boycott that country's products because it hurt our

feelings.

We boycott the other country's products because it made us

look bad.

We support Chinese products—but they just end up

damaging our health.

October 30, 2008

After the Wenchuan earthquake I
said I had donated no money at all, when what I meant was that I would not make a donation to the Red Cross, because I was aware that they had very high administrative expenses. I did not spell this all out, for fear of being denounced as “making an inappropriate response at a key moment and negatively affecting the public's eagerness to donate.” Later, my position was taken out of context and understood as “making zero contribution.” No point, however, in making a big deal out of this.

Now we're going into the winter months, the time to donate warm clothes and bedding. I have a number of things—many given to me by others—that I have never used or just used once, so I was thinking I could just donate them. But suddenly we hear that used items will not be accepted—everything must be brand-new.

I find this very strange. I know, of course, that the government is keen to make a publicity coup out of everyone's eagerness to make donations, one that will exhibit our people's high moral qualities,
high enlightenment, high solidarity, and high income. But when I arrive with a carload of clothes and bedding that are ninety-nine percent new, and you tell me you won't accept it, that I must buy new clothes to donate to the earthquake victims—well, to be quite honest, I just haven't reached that particular level of enlightenment.

For a start, these items are all good quality—definitely better than things bought for the express purpose of making a donation. On this point, I am selfish—for the price of five hundred yuan, say, I might buy a single pair of shoes for myself, but if it were to make a donation to a humanitarian cause, I would try to buy five pairs, so as to maximize the number of beneficiaries. When buying one pair for five hundred yuan, I would take into account the shoes' sportiness, weight, style, warmth, and brand, whereas if it's just to relieve an emergency I would only think about the shoes' warmth. Rather than donating a Louis Vuitton satchel to the disaster victims, it would be better to donate two hundred ordinary satchels—that is something everyone understands. And I'm confident that nobody's going to be so cheap as to donate rags to the relief effort—they may hand in items that have gone out of style, but not ones that are defective in quality. As long as things don't have patches, it seems to me, they should be eligible for donation.

Secondly, some places insist that items still carry the manufacturer's tags. But I don't understand what they need the tags for. Can it be they just want to sell the stuff off?

Thirdly, and most importantly, say I spend one thousand yuan on clothes and bedding to donate to the disaster victims, but because I don't know how to bargain I pay twice what they're really worth, so that the merchant makes at least a five hundred yuan profit from the sale—does it really make sense to have people spend their money like this? Surely this is not how we should be promoting domestic demand.

Finally, this is very demoralizing. If I put together a pile of almost brand-new clothes to donate, only to have them all rejected, what I'm
not
going to do is to turn around, meekly purchase new items,
and drop
them
off instead. Of course, some people online may say, “On behalf of the disaster victims in Sichuan, I refuse these lousy clothes of yours,” just as when making cash donations a while ago, some businesses or individuals contributed less than it was imagined they would, and some people online said, “On behalf of the people of Sichuan, I refuse your lousy money.” I can tell you, the people's instinctive generosity is being steadily extinguished by these idiots. To start with, there may be a thousand people who stretch out a helping hand, but when they see how those who make somewhat smaller donations are humiliated by you so-called representatives, the numbers gradually are whittled down to eight hundred, five hundred, and then one hundred. You set a threshold figure for those last hundred people, and after further eliminations all that's left are fifty donors who have contributed the requisite amount—only then are you satisfied.

Of course, some may argue that the insistence on new clothes is out of fear that old clothes may carry germs. But that doesn't make much sense. Bank notes have passed through many more hands—when you accepted money before, why weren't you worried about hygiene? And even if old clothes have a few germs, couldn't you just disinfect them? Germs aren't so bad, anyway—if you think about the level of chemicals found these days in basic household supplies, you've got to suspect that new clothes and new bedding are injurious to your health.

If it's really so much trouble to donate clothes, then we might as well just donate money, but this takes us back to the question of where donations end up—of course the organizations sponsoring donations welcome cash most of all. Unfortunately, I still don't have a clue just how the hundreds of millions in cash donated last time were spent. No doubt everyone has good intentions, but in the face of the largest charitable donations ever in our history, we need to see a basic account sheet month by month.

Donating cash is nothing new, but the economic situation is not what it was. Although the economic crisis has passed me by,
many friends and relatives have been adversely affected, and with responses to this appeal and responses to that, cash flow really becomes a problem. When the government organized the Beijing Olympics, it was very concerned about its image and loved all the pomp and ostentation, and now in demanding that people make donations it is equally committed to appearances and equally intent on extravagance. If I contribute a few thousand yuan, I may well be seen as making the country lose face and end up becoming the object of a lot of criticism, so I'm not going to take part in this autumn donation drive. I'd like to, of course, but I've been persuaded not to. I've encouraged my friends to participate, but many of them tell me they learned their lesson last time. They'll be scolded if they give too little, but if they give too much they'll run short at the end of the year, so they'd do better to just wait and see. Originally they were doing charitable works happily and in a relaxed way, but now they feel weighed down with such a heavy burden. Those people who peddled that message of “On behalf of the people of Sichuan, we reject your lousy money” have a lot to answer for.

To conclude, it's not that I refuse to spend money on new clothes, simply that I find this demand unreasonable. To demonstrate my sincerity, I'm not going to buy any more new clothes for myself, either, in the months ahead. Recently I've been watching the CCTV happy news, and I am happy to learn that our country has not been affected in the least by this year's turmoil in the financial markets. The people are happily going about their business, the nation is richer and stronger than ever—even to the point that it's about to come to America's rescue. So I feel I can confidently pass on to the government the task of seeing the earthquake victims through the winter. When it comes round to spring, in the name of the people of Sichuan I will present our all-powerful administration with a glass of milk and a couple of boiled eggs—put them together and it comes to a maximum score, 100 points.

December 10, 2008

Now it's our government that
has called on people to boycott French products,
¹⁰
so as to demonstrate our anger and emulate members of the animal kingdom when they make themselves look bigger to overawe their adversary. But this time the incitement hasn't done the trick and popular response has been sluggish. As far as fashionably patriotic youth are concerned, they've already boycotted France once, and now to do it all over again just seems like old hat—it's not sufficiently cutting-edge, it fails to break new ground. Fashionably patriotic youth were waiting for their bosses' ideological apparatus to come out with a brand-new collection of songs, and now they find—damn it!—that all they're getting is just a greatest-hits anthology. Everyone's a bit tired of it all. So the government has no choice: like with the tax on fuel a while ago, it once again concocts public opinion, fabricating claims that eighty percent of Internet users support a boycott and ninety percent express indignation.
What's different is that this time round I support a boycott of French products, for the following reasons: