Social harmony

Just saw this video while brows­ing Sinosplice John’s blog. Haha… Like John says, it’s “a par­al­lel har­mo­nious uni­verse.” People are not so friendly in China. Maybe in America (some­times), but def­i­nitely not China.

China is a dog eat dog world where you have to keep you eyes peeled at all times for pick­pock­ets, con artists, line cut­ters and bad dri­vers. You can­not de­pend on the help of strangers. Sure there are iso­lated in­ci­dents of ex­cep­tional kind­ness, but for the most part, you fend for your­self. That’s why it’s so ex­cit­ing here!

The gov­ern­ment has been try­ing to change things for the bet­ter (or at least China’s im­age) by pro­mot­ing so­cial har­mony, but of­ten­times they take it too far. For peo­ple in China, the term “har­mony” (héxié, 和谐) has be­come a verb to mean things like “cov­ered up” or “un­justly re­solved.” Anything that dis­rupts so­cial har­mony can be “harmonized.”

Examples:

• The re­porter who un­cov­ered this scan­dal has been harmonized.
• This on­line dis­cus­sion about abu­sive chéng­gŭan has been harmonized.
• People who talk to for­eign me­dia about Beijing’s pol­lu­tion have been harmonized.
• Any web­site that hosts Edison Chen’s naughty pho­tos will be harmonized.
• Daniel Kwan might get har­mo­nized for talk­ing about get­ting harmonized.

Like I said, it’s ex­cit­ing here!