"Go for it, Li": Zapiro in China

On the Zapiro cartoon uproar: I thought the portrayal of Zuma was brilliant but it did not elicit more from me than a grim, black chuckle. Sure, the cartoon is not meant to amuse; it is meant to deliver a heavyweight, jaw-breaking blow to hypocrisy and corruption and the complete disregard for the justice system. But let’s take a look at Zapiro in China.

I both laughed and felt somewhat sad as I looked at the Chinese Olympics cartoon Zapiro blessed us with as he gave Chinese policy a royal kick up the rear. In that cartoon he shows repression in first place on the podium, pollution in second place, doping in third, and sport, which should be first on the agenda, a confused athlete hovering in the background. Superb.

I love Zapiro (as I do Madam & Eve) cartoons. For years he has been blasting away at the portentously politically correct and (at least honestly) politically incorrect like a sanitary engineer who is trying to remove an especially smelly blockage.

I decided to email his Olympics’ cartoon to all the local expats I know in China and lost a friendship. He’s an American, George, and he wrote back: “Rod, please do not send me such bigoted material. I do not find it funny or entertaining in any way. I find it sad that that such an attitude continues to exist when it is clearly a crock. I like the humour you have sent me in the past, but this is not humour but rather slander and yellow journalism bred from envy.”

Other ex-pats either agreed with the cartoon, chuckled “appropriately” or regarded it with distaste. The Chinese would be extremely insulted by it. They are fiercely patriotic.

Of course George is wrong. Of course he’s right. China has a history of brutal repression and of being brutally repressed. For centuries her people in the coastal cities have been slaves to the Western conquerors, victories made through opium trafficking and so forth. China went the other way with her new “freedom” in 1948 and the extreme hardships her people suffered as Mao & Co tried to convince the Chinese people — in spectacularly painful ways — that his brand of communism worked. It didn’t, and now in this period of new economic reform, cities like Shanghai are like knocked-over ant heaps, all the little critters running around, re-building and expanding. Buildings are constantly being built and torn down in Shanghai. Cranes and scaffolding are an inevitable part of the horizon. I don’t agree with many of China’s policies, be it Tibet, Taiwan, or the way the Dalai Lama is painted here as a drug lord and a gangster — a picture which many of the Chinese are suspicious about as a different picture emerges on the internet.

But I have to get personal and say that China has been really good to me and my wife. We lead a good life and love our jobs. We get paid on average ten times (yes ten times, an extra digit on the salary advice slip) what Chinese teachers get paid — a bizarre bit of positive “discrimination” to be covered in a future post.

On the street people in Shanghai do not have much, but we are always struck by how happy they are; how friendly and curious about us they are. They know well the adage, less is more. I do not want to paint a romantic picture; there is poverty and a lot of sad stories to tell in future blogs. But my point about George and my mix of humour and sadness at the Zapiro Olympics cartoon is this: we have lived here nearly four years and we know how hard the people work and are striving to create a better — nay a fantastic – cracking China.

That is what the Georges are responding to in Zapiro’s cartoon: that China – or at least the government — is getting so mocked and derided and yet China set a new, quality benchmark for the world in the way she handled the Olympics.

Of course George is also wrong. He should be more open to criticism, to having someone rattle his paradigms smartly for him. Paradigm-rattling is good for us. Though I don’t always enjoy the process, I welcome having my views rattled. And I like to challenge others’ thinking. Zapiro is a gold medallist among the rattlers. George is also wrong on a point he won’t talk to me about, or rather, he denies it. I have changed his name, because like many of that supercilious, anal-retentive species called the “politically correct”, George is actually a con artist, like quite a few of the Georges in Shanghai (and the Li’s). He helps market and manage English summer camps here every July-August and he and his colleagues rake in a fortune. The fortune-making is okay, but the lame excuse of an education that the children get is not okay. To wit, something like four thousand RMB (slightly more in rand) is forked out by unsuspecting parents and their children are herded into classes of thirty children, class sizes limited to how many courses George and his henchmen can sell. Herded into the same class are children with completely varying levels of English, ranging from a virtually non-existent grasp to an intermediate knowledge. It is impossible to teach in such situations. The books created for the summer classes are shocking, with pages missing. What the kids get in class is less about education and more about baby-sitting a group of bored kids all day. Yet George criticises Zapiro for his stance on China?

This is a problem I have with the “politically correct”: they have neatly packaged themselves, accuse others of being out of line and are often hiding or denying something. Zapiro is gorgeously and correctly way out of line and he has nothing to hide.