Why “return”? Well, it’s a long story.

Chinese people have been using chopsticks for thousands of years, and there have been thousands of types of chopsticks, from down-to-the-earth bamboo chopsticks, to really fancy, sculptured ivory ones. And in the 90s’, yet another new kind came along: disposable chopsticks.

At the beginning, people thought they were cleaner and healthier, since people didn’t really trust that restaurants could do a good job cleaning chopsticks after use. Pretty soon, disposable chopsticks took over most restaurants across the country and pushed the real chopsticks—reusable but requiring cleaning—off the stage.

About a decade later, people started to hate the new comer, partly because the media reported that some restaurants, instead of disposing those disposable chopsticks, picked them up from trash and reused them. Meanwhile, environmentalists said disposable chopsticks threatened the survival of China’s already endangered forests.

Many people, disgusted by those wasteful and perhaps not really disposable chopsticks, started to bring their own reusable chopsticks to restaurants, and they would bring them home to wash after eating. Others thought the self-provided chopsticks were just as disgusting since they were not washed promptly.

With their clean and healthy claims debunked, disposable chopsticks were under siege. Campaigns were waged to stop their use, and people’s once love for their convenience and hygiene turned into aversion.

But life without chopsticks is just unimaginable. So restaurants, which used to get rid of reusable chopsticks to attract customers, brought the old-fashioned chopsticks back for exactly the same reason. This time, with better cleaning solutions.

Hence the return of the real chopsticks.

Click to view slideshow.(Photos by Josie Liu unless otherwise indicated)

More on China’s environment by Josie Liu:

Some thoughts on China’s Environment

Local Governments Blamed for Unsuccessful Environmental Campaign

China’s Economy Growth Pays Too High Price: State Official

(Photos by Josie Liu)

More on the One-Child Policy by Josie Liu:
New Law to Prohibit Sex Selection Abortion
Chinese Authorities Trying to Update One-Child Policy Slogans

Traveling in China, I was often surprised how similar China looks to America. Such an impression was mostly generated by American brand names and logos I saw all over the places. For people in China, globalization is definitely happening. Whether it is a good or bad thing depends on who you ask. Some Chinese people are bothered that China looks more and more like America, some are happy about it, and some don’t care.

But China is big, and very diversified. American brands are everywhere, and so are indigenous ones, especially in smaller, innerland cities like Xichuan, Henan, which is featured in the slide show.

So what is really happening is the coexistence of global as well as Chinese commercial forces and cultural practices. It is what British scholar Stuart Hall described as going global and going local at the same time. What do all these mean to Chinese people? Again, it depends on who you ask. But I would say that for most, it means more choices, be it food, style, entertainment, values, or just about everything in life.

(Photos by Josie Liu)

ebikes waiting to go across the street with pedestrians

When my friends and I were teenagers in the city of Kunming, all we needed was a bicycle. We rode bicycles everywhere: to school, to friends’ party, to restaurant gathering, even a day trip to places miles away from home.

The city seemed big to us at that time, because it took a rather long time to ride from one place to another. But it also felt small, because we could go to every corner of the city simply by pedaling our beloved bicycles. Bicycle was for us cellphone for today’s teenagers.

Long gone those days.

Now I am back in the city where I grew up, and I could no longer imagine going anywhere by riding a bicycle.

It is way too dangerous to do that now. There are still bicycle lanes on the roads, but these lanes are mostly occupied by a new type of bicycle: electronic bicycles. They look very much like motorcycles, only that they were powered by batteries. They are faster than traditional bicycles, but are considered non-vehicles and therefore run in the same lane with bicycles.

Worse, they compete with pedestrians for road rights, because as non-vehicles, they don’t have to stop when there is a red light, and they cross the street on crossing lines together with pedestrians.

It sure is not a fair game. So people opt for upgrading their transportation tool. Buying a car might still be too expensive for many people, but an e-bike is much more affordable.

Everywhere in the city, you see people send kids to school, carry cargo with them, or go on a date on e-bikes. All kinds of people are riding them: young migrant workers, fashionable ladies, busy moms, grandparents…

All this makes riding a traditional bicycle to go around, or just walking across the street, much more complicated. Every time I walk across the street, I have to watch for not just roaring vehicles making turns, which have not learned the manner of yielding, but also roaring e-bikes coming right at me from the other side!

No wonder one of my friends, who is Chinese but has lived in the US for many years, said he couldn’t even make it across the street during his recent visit to Kunming.

Fortunately, I am better than my poor friend. I still could manage to run through the stream of e-bikes at the cross walk. And yes, I do feel that I am VERY brave.

ebikes running on the same lane with pedestrians

Alas, Chinese singers are just not cool when they try to mimic Western rockers. I thought.

At this moment I took a close look at the lyrics they were singing, shown in subtitles–something about praising the Party. Right. July 1st was the Party’s 90th birthday, and apparently the celebration was not quite done yet.

Maybe it was not about mimicking Western rockers, I started to think. Maybe the singers danced awkward moves because they were not dancing to a song that they felt.

This kind of songs are PR songs, as I call them. They are written and performed for specific public relation purposes, usually sponsored by the government and a combination of propaganda, political PR, and boosterism. 

And they are all over the place. They are the mainstay on almost every single televised gala show, held to celebrate all kinds of occasions–traditional festivals, Party anniversaries, political campaigns, even the Consumer’s Day.

They are also the most shown songs on public screens on buses, subways, and airplanes. On my flight from Beijing to Kunming, the tiny screen above was showing music videos of songs promoting Yunnan Province. They sang about the beauty and unique culture of Yunnan, performed by fancy-looking singers, with stunning images of Yunnan. The credits showed that these music videos were produced or sponsored by local governments or propaganda agencies in Yunnan.

Bored by the empty, slogan-like praises of those songs, I plugged my ears with my iPod and heard Steven Tyler singing “I don’t want to miss a thing.” I felt the song almost touched my soul. More than anything, I felt that Mr. Tyler felt the song deeply.

PR songs in China could be traced back to the Song collection in Shi Jing–lyrics of more than 2000 years old. But what people have loved most throughout history is not the official appraisals in the Song collection, but those folk songs written by folk singers in the Feng collection, which are mostly about common people’s love, pain and joy.

PR songs are, after all, PR songs. The singers know it, and the audiences know it. Despite the strong presence of PR songs, there are still many Chinese singers sing about real feelings, and those are the songs people actually listen to.