A good year ago, dramatic images reached us from Henan: flooded streets, cars swept away by torrents of water, a subway in Zhengzhou with the passengers up to their upper bodies in water. Officially, more than 300 people died in the flood disaster in the central Chinese province in mid-July 2021.
And this year extreme weather has returned: Temperatures in Henan have already climbed to over 40 degrees. In other regions, floods and landslides are again on the rise. Climate change could hit with full force in the future. China is threatened with losing up to 20 percent of its harvests. The People’s Republic wants to better adapt to climate change – but so far the government has done not enough to minimize the costs and damage, writes Nico Beckert. Among other things, this issue is still not a priority for the relevant authorities. Funding also remains problematic.
The Chinese Communist Party may perceive a different problem as far more pressing right now: Since the chaotic lockdown in Shanghai, in particular, citizens’ trust in the Chinese government and its zero-Covid pandemic response has waned. In some places, Covid apps have allegedly even been misused to prevent protests, writes our author Christiane Kuehl. Frustrations are also rising among local cadres. It might take a while before these wounds are healed.
40 degrees Celsius and more in the northeast. Heavy rain and flooding, sweeping away cars and houses in parts of southern China – the People’s Republic also recently experienced severe weather events. Landslides resulted from the heavy rain. Five people died after their house was swept away by the floods. Temperatures in Henan Province, with a population of almost 100 million, climbed to over 40 degrees for several days.
The People’s Republic has become the biggest climate offender and is responsible for over 30 percent of global carbon emissions. At the same time, the country is a major victim of climate change. China is at risk of losing up to 20 percent of its harvests. Floods endanger infrastructure and heat waves not only affect people’s health, but also reduce their work productivity (China.Table reported).
The government sees climate change as a “major risk to China’s modernization,” according to the new National Climate Change Adaptation Strategy 2035. The adaptation is intended to reduce damage and economic costs. After all, even if the global community achieves its climate goals, the effects of climate change will not disappear immediately and the damage caused by climate change will continue to increase for a while. Emitted carbon dioxide will remain in the atmosphere for a long time, harming the climate for decades to come. Adaptation to these new conditions in order to mitigate the damage is considered crucial.
The strategy contains a wide range of measures. Due to the high rate of urbanization, a large part of the damage caused by climate change occurs in cities. The plan provides for the expansion of so-called “sponge cities” (China.Table reported). These are supposed to be better able to cope with extreme rainfall and flooding. The sealing of cities by roads and other infrastructure is to be broken up to some extent.
However, the conversion of cities into sponge cities is being hindered by financial problems (China.Table reported). The 16 cities that were supposed to be turned into sponge cities in an initial pilot program have only received the equivalent of €2 billion in funding from the central government – far too little for effective infrastructure restructuring. The new climate strategy does include passages on improving funding. But it does not provide any details on its scale. More parks and gardens throughout the cities are also intended to ensure that more rainwater can be absorbed, and the urban climate improved in the process.
China also wants to adjust its infrastructure to climate change. This will involve a power grid that is better protected from extreme weather. Just how seriously climate change is being taken is reflected in the planned amendment of building standards. In the future, buildings are to withstand stronger winds, and foundations are to become more stable in order to protect buildings against flooding.
To ensure stable food supplies, China wants to develop plants and animal species adapted to climate change. Heat waves and droughts pose a major threat to China’s future harvests. That is why Chinese researchers are working on researching heat-resistant species. Some initial success has been achieved in rice, where two genes have been found that could improve harvests under heat stress. The researchers hope to be able to plant these genes in other species as well. In addition, the government plans to present an action plan to improve the quality of agricultural soils. Due to the high application of pesticides and pollution from industrial processes, China’s soils have deteriorated massively in recent decades (China.Table reported).
The healthcare system is also set to be adapted to climate change. Due to increased and longer heat waves, the elderly are particularly affected by climate change. The government wants to assess whether the healthcare system is prepared for this. For example, an early warning system for climate-related diseases and health problems is to be established.
Early warning systems are also supposed to minimize the damage caused by climate change in other areas. Companies and banks are to disclose their climate risks as soon as possible (China.Table reported). The aim is to prevent financial crises. If too many companies invest in fossil sectors that will no longer yield profits in the future, banks, and subsequently, the economy will be in trouble.
China also strives for improvements in the area of climate and weather forecasts. Major weather events are to be reliably predicted a month in advance, global climate anomalies even a year in advance. Experts doubt that detailed forecasts for such long periods are even possible.
Back in 2013, China already presented a strategy for adapting to climate change. The recently published strategy does not give the responsible authorities particularly high grades:
Li Shuo of Greenpeace East Asia agrees with this assessment. Adaptation is a tough issue, he says, and one that is difficult to attract political attention and funding. “China is only making initial steps with climate adaptation,” Li said. After the renewal of the strategy it would remain to be seen whether the central government will be able “to mobilize all these stakeholders” for climate change adaptation.
So far, the regions and some relevant ministries have not paid enough attention to the issue, says Patrick Verkooijen. “We are working to help with these governance challenges through our partnership with the Chinese Ministry of Ecology and Environment,” says the CEO of the Global Center on Adaptation organization. The organization is involved in the implementation of the adaptation strategy and the development of adaptation policies at the provincial level.
Financing is also problematic. In the past, the central government has allocated hardly any budgetary funds for adaptation. Although funds have been approved for flood protection and drought control, experts argue that this is not enough given the severity of climate change.
It was an unusual protest. In Shanghai’s Jingan district, dozens of white-clad pandemic workers, popularly known as “Big Whites,” took to the streets to demand their unpaid wages: “Give us our hard-earned money!” they chanted; videos of the protest circulated on social media. The video and the unpaid wages have not been officially confirmed – but the protest is not an isolated case. More and more such unrest by workers is taking place in connection with the implementation of China’s pandemic prevention policy, writes the China Labor Bulletin (CLB), a Hong Kong-based nongovernmental workers’ rights organization in China.
Since March, CLB recorded 14 COVID-19-related protests on its interactive strike map, eight of them in lockdown-weary Shanghai: “Poor working conditions under strict lockdown measures led to protests not only by doctors, nurses, and white-clad pandemic workers, but also factory workers, taxi drivers and others.”
But it is not just that. The entire execution of the Shanghai lockdown was at times so botched that it shook the self-image of Shanghai’s residents. In many housing complexes, food deliveries failed, some did not receive urgently needed medication, and everyone had to constantly wait for hours in front of PCR testing stations – in constant fear that if they do test positive, they would immediately be sent to one of the isolation centers. CLB reports of protests by “Big Whites” who, after the end of their voluntary service, were not allowed – as promised – to serve the obligatory quarantine in the hotel before returning home. Instead, like those who tested positive, they were shipped to an isolation station.
The lack of clarity about the alternating opening and closing of residential neighborhoods also causes discontent. In mid-June, for example, a resident posted footage of a mini-protest of people who had been promised that their neighborhood would be reopened – only to find that it was not. They simply kicked over the fence that separated their neighborhood from the outside world.
“In Shanghai, a lot of damage has been done to the social contract between the Party and the citizens,” says Nis Gruenberg of the China Institute Merics. He cites one example. At the beginning of the pandemic, he says, many people were annoyed by the health code on smartphones, which people have long had to show everywhere. “But a little later, this was smoothly incorporated into everyday life.” And there was a realization that digitally supported pandemic response made perfect sense, Gruenberg told China.Table. “But this trust, that measures have a purpose and serve the common good, has probably been shattered in Shanghai – and in some other cities as well.”
It will take a long time for these wounds to heal, Gruenberg believes. “For service providers, small stores or restaurants, the damage caused by the lockdown is enormous. People constantly need PCR tests for the green health codes, it’s already very stressful.” Beyond that, even bigger problems have emerged. “Also, abuses of the codes for social control have already come to light – authorities can take away citizens’ mobility simply by setting the codes to red.”
In June, an incident in central China’s Zhengzhou – Henan’s provincial capital – attracted widespread attention on social media. There, authorities had prevented a protest by hundreds of angry customers at a local bank by setting their health codes to red, according to CLB.
The incident even drew criticism from unusual directions – such as Hu Xijin, the former editor-in-chief of the Global Times who usually tweets as a nationalist mouthpiece. Tampering with the code damaged the authority of the code system and would diminish public support for it, Hu wrote on Weibo, according to the New York Times. The hashtag reportedly was among the most searched hashtags in mid-June, with 280 million hits.
The matter is far from over, neither in Shanghai nor elsewhere. Small business owners are struggling to survive in this environment. Hundreds of Shanghai’s small business owners took to the streets in June to demand rent exemptions from their landlords at a local garment market, according to CLB. The protests showed that government measures to alleviate a pandemic do not go far enough to relieve the immense financial pressure felt by workers, small business owners and other citizens across China.
At the end of May, Shanghai announced a series of around 50 measures to stimulate the ailing economy. But these measures fall short, CLB criticizes. For example, little or no support has been given to employees or small businesses. Instead, there were incentives to buy new cars in Shanghai and small one-time payments to companies of ¥600 for each employee if they had laid off few or no workers. As an alternative, the World Bank’s Chinese ex-chief economist Lin Yifu recommended the central government pay ¥1,000 to families in cordoned-off areas to support citizens and boost consumption.
But it is not only citizens who are experiencing financial problems. Local governments reportedly also struggle to meet the high costs of pandemic prevention measures. (China.Table reported). In the end, this means that there is always a risk of not being able to pay wages and social expenses in full, according to the CLB.
Since the instructions come from the very top, there definitely is frustration among local cadres over zero-Covid, says Nis Grünberg. Often, officials then tend to over-implement out of fear that heads might roll, the Merics researcher says. “So it’s better to do too much than too little.” The risk of a more relaxed approach is very high, he says, if it doesn’t help push back the virus – as seen in Shanghai this spring.
It’s rare to see such over-sensitization at the local level as is currently the case, Gruenberg says. “It even led to an instruction from Beijing that municipalities not overdo it with lockdowns and also take stores and companies into consideration.” In China, applying uniform rules across the country is even more difficult than in Germany, Gruenberg says. “It simply is much bigger and more heterogeneous.” Local zero-Covid measures also tend to run in a campaign-style. “The government issues a priority, ‘No Covid’. And then they issue a list of legitimate interventions and tools. “But the details then have to be drafted by the municipality itself.”
Every person is different. No two people are the same. And yet, our society singles out certain people or groups as “different,” meaning: different from us. It’s easy to be part of the larger group, and it’s hard to be an outsider. But when Li Cheng talks about her Chinese roots today, about being Chinese in Germany and about the prejudices she faces, you don’t notice this burden on her. She has made peace with her supposed “otherness”.
Cheng was born and raised near Dusseldorf. Her parents came to Germany from Shanghai in the 1980s with the hope of finding better jobs. “They didn’t see a future for themselves in China,” says the 21-year-old, who is now studying in Abu Dhabi. “Back then, even in a factory in Germany, you earned the Chinese monthly wage in a single day.”
When Cheng was enrolled in school, she learned to give the answers that were expected of her. When someone asked where she was from – and this question came up a lot – she answered: “from China”. Even though she only traveled to China for the first time when she was six years old – it was a foreign country to her. “Often people don’t want to know where I was born,” Cheng says. “They keep asking until they know my parents are from China.” She can only laugh at the “Ah” that often follows that information. “I actually don’t know what that means until today.”
The “Ah” probably means that the questioners were confirmed in their assumption. How it feels to be sorted again and again based on appearances. Cheng shares this experience with the Chinese community in Germany. “The prejudice was particularly noticeable at the beginning of the Covid pandemic,” she says. “The coverage of the virus was heavily focused on China, and Chinese people and people of Asian appearance in my circle of friends were repeatedly discriminated.”
Cheng lived in Berlin at the time and became familiar with the city’s activist scene – eventually getting inspired to do something herself. Last year, she founded ZhongDe magazine, in which authors of Chinese-German descent write about being Chinese. “I wanted to actively contribute something to make the reality of our lives more visible.” She wrote an Instagram post, asking if anyone wanted to join in. “Then everything happened very quickly. More than ten people contacted me who wanted to write or participate in some way.”
The first issue was published four months later and focused on the topic of family. “Everyone could talk about that right away.” She herself outed herself as a “people pleaser” in her article, writing about the values her parents instilled in her: “In my childhood, it was completely normal for my parents and grandparents to make great sacrifices and act selflessly without ever letting on what a great burden it was for them.” Early on, Cheng learned to keep a low profile, avoiding any conflict and bending over backwards to please everyone. “This cultural thinking of being generous to others and frugal with yourself, I had to reflect on that to break it down.”
She no longer wants to be a “people pleaser”. Cheng is determined to make her voice heard – certainly also in future issues of her ZhongDe magazine. Svenja Napp
How about a small quiz to get you started: What are some common Chinese expressions for “having your period“? (Note: multiple answers are possible!)
A: “I got ‘you know what’.” (我来那个了Wǒ lái nèige le)
B: “My maid is here.” (我阿姨来了Wǒ āyí lái le)
C: “My aunt has come.” (我大姨妈来了Wǒ dàyímā lái le).
And, any suggestions? You may have already been able to tick off answer A intuitively. After all, we women also like to be vague when the subject of menstruation comes up. The expression “I have my period” is certainly just as vague for the Chinese as the expression “I got you know what” (actually literally: ‘this’). In short, Answer A is indeed a way to talk about periods in Chinese.
So that leaves the drop-by visits from maids and dreaded relatives. To add to the confusion, I’ll tell you that the words 阿姨 āyí (answer B) and 大姨妈 dàyímā (answer C) both mean “aunt”. The former aunt label is also often used for a caregiver or cleaner. The latter aunt, on the other hand, is literally “mother’s older sister”. Okay. I won’t keep you in the dark any longer. In fact, “my aunt has come” (我大姨妈来了wǒ dàyímā lái le or 我来大姨妈了 wǒ lái dàyímā le) is a common metaphor in China for the start of menstruation. So, with answer B, I have misled you.
But what the hell do auntie visits have to do with menstruation, anyway? Well, if it makes you feel any better, that’s a bit of a mystery to the Chinese themselves these days. Various attempts at explanations are floating around the Internet. One says that women in ancient China often did not dare to walk around freely during menstruation. Invitations were often declined discreetly under the pretext that “an aunt had come to visit”. Over time, this is said to have developed into the aforementioned saying. Another version is that China’s women in ancient times entrusted themselves with shameful body topics (if at all) only to older members of their sex – aunts, that is, or at least women of auntable age. At that time, “auntie cloths” are even said to have been a synonym for menstrual pads.
By the way, things also get obscure for foreigners if you type the word “aunt” into an English-Chinese online dictionary just for fun. Instead of providing enlightenment, the result only raises more questions. The subject of kinship terms is a science in itself in Chinese. Compared to English, “Putonghua” has two additional coordinates in the semantic system – firstly, the classification according to age, and secondly, according to the gender of the reference person. This may be interesting from a cultural comparison point of view. After all, it illustrates how age differences and gender affiliation played such a central role in the social hierarchy structure in China for a long time that this was even reflected lexically – i.e. in the vocabulary. For us language learners, on the other hand, the first steps in the Chinese jungle of kinship terms often turn up the hairs on the back of our necks.
For the word “aunt” alone, countless variants appear in the dictionary. Here is a small (incomplete) selection:
姨 yí / 阿姨āyí – mother’s sister
大姨 dàyí / 姨妈 yímā / 大姨妈 dàyímā – mother’s older sister.
小姨 xiǎoyí – younger sister of the mother
姑姑 gūgu / 姑母 gūmǔ / 姑妈 gūmā – older or younger sister of the father.
伯母 bómǔ – wife of an elder brother of the father
婶子 shěnzi / 婶母 shěnmǔ / 叔母 shūmǔ – wife of a younger brother of the father.
Those who would turn their face and run for the hills at the sight of so many auntie variants can at least take comfort in the following: Period announcements can also be made in Chinese with the more formal formula 我来月经了wǒ lái yuèjīng le – “I have (got) my menstruation/monthly bleeding”. Tactful yet completely auntie-free, what more could you ask for.
Verena Menzel runs the online language school New Chinese in Beijing.
A good year ago, dramatic images reached us from Henan: flooded streets, cars swept away by torrents of water, a subway in Zhengzhou with the passengers up to their upper bodies in water. Officially, more than 300 people died in the flood disaster in the central Chinese province in mid-July 2021.
And this year extreme weather has returned: Temperatures in Henan have already climbed to over 40 degrees. In other regions, floods and landslides are again on the rise. Climate change could hit with full force in the future. China is threatened with losing up to 20 percent of its harvests. The People’s Republic wants to better adapt to climate change – but so far the government has done not enough to minimize the costs and damage, writes Nico Beckert. Among other things, this issue is still not a priority for the relevant authorities. Funding also remains problematic.
The Chinese Communist Party may perceive a different problem as far more pressing right now: Since the chaotic lockdown in Shanghai, in particular, citizens’ trust in the Chinese government and its zero-Covid pandemic response has waned. In some places, Covid apps have allegedly even been misused to prevent protests, writes our author Christiane Kuehl. Frustrations are also rising among local cadres. It might take a while before these wounds are healed.
40 degrees Celsius and more in the northeast. Heavy rain and flooding, sweeping away cars and houses in parts of southern China – the People’s Republic also recently experienced severe weather events. Landslides resulted from the heavy rain. Five people died after their house was swept away by the floods. Temperatures in Henan Province, with a population of almost 100 million, climbed to over 40 degrees for several days.
The People’s Republic has become the biggest climate offender and is responsible for over 30 percent of global carbon emissions. At the same time, the country is a major victim of climate change. China is at risk of losing up to 20 percent of its harvests. Floods endanger infrastructure and heat waves not only affect people’s health, but also reduce their work productivity (China.Table reported).
The government sees climate change as a “major risk to China’s modernization,” according to the new National Climate Change Adaptation Strategy 2035. The adaptation is intended to reduce damage and economic costs. After all, even if the global community achieves its climate goals, the effects of climate change will not disappear immediately and the damage caused by climate change will continue to increase for a while. Emitted carbon dioxide will remain in the atmosphere for a long time, harming the climate for decades to come. Adaptation to these new conditions in order to mitigate the damage is considered crucial.
The strategy contains a wide range of measures. Due to the high rate of urbanization, a large part of the damage caused by climate change occurs in cities. The plan provides for the expansion of so-called “sponge cities” (China.Table reported). These are supposed to be better able to cope with extreme rainfall and flooding. The sealing of cities by roads and other infrastructure is to be broken up to some extent.
However, the conversion of cities into sponge cities is being hindered by financial problems (China.Table reported). The 16 cities that were supposed to be turned into sponge cities in an initial pilot program have only received the equivalent of €2 billion in funding from the central government – far too little for effective infrastructure restructuring. The new climate strategy does include passages on improving funding. But it does not provide any details on its scale. More parks and gardens throughout the cities are also intended to ensure that more rainwater can be absorbed, and the urban climate improved in the process.
China also wants to adjust its infrastructure to climate change. This will involve a power grid that is better protected from extreme weather. Just how seriously climate change is being taken is reflected in the planned amendment of building standards. In the future, buildings are to withstand stronger winds, and foundations are to become more stable in order to protect buildings against flooding.
To ensure stable food supplies, China wants to develop plants and animal species adapted to climate change. Heat waves and droughts pose a major threat to China’s future harvests. That is why Chinese researchers are working on researching heat-resistant species. Some initial success has been achieved in rice, where two genes have been found that could improve harvests under heat stress. The researchers hope to be able to plant these genes in other species as well. In addition, the government plans to present an action plan to improve the quality of agricultural soils. Due to the high application of pesticides and pollution from industrial processes, China’s soils have deteriorated massively in recent decades (China.Table reported).
The healthcare system is also set to be adapted to climate change. Due to increased and longer heat waves, the elderly are particularly affected by climate change. The government wants to assess whether the healthcare system is prepared for this. For example, an early warning system for climate-related diseases and health problems is to be established.
Early warning systems are also supposed to minimize the damage caused by climate change in other areas. Companies and banks are to disclose their climate risks as soon as possible (China.Table reported). The aim is to prevent financial crises. If too many companies invest in fossil sectors that will no longer yield profits in the future, banks, and subsequently, the economy will be in trouble.
China also strives for improvements in the area of climate and weather forecasts. Major weather events are to be reliably predicted a month in advance, global climate anomalies even a year in advance. Experts doubt that detailed forecasts for such long periods are even possible.
Back in 2013, China already presented a strategy for adapting to climate change. The recently published strategy does not give the responsible authorities particularly high grades:
Li Shuo of Greenpeace East Asia agrees with this assessment. Adaptation is a tough issue, he says, and one that is difficult to attract political attention and funding. “China is only making initial steps with climate adaptation,” Li said. After the renewal of the strategy it would remain to be seen whether the central government will be able “to mobilize all these stakeholders” for climate change adaptation.
So far, the regions and some relevant ministries have not paid enough attention to the issue, says Patrick Verkooijen. “We are working to help with these governance challenges through our partnership with the Chinese Ministry of Ecology and Environment,” says the CEO of the Global Center on Adaptation organization. The organization is involved in the implementation of the adaptation strategy and the development of adaptation policies at the provincial level.
Financing is also problematic. In the past, the central government has allocated hardly any budgetary funds for adaptation. Although funds have been approved for flood protection and drought control, experts argue that this is not enough given the severity of climate change.
It was an unusual protest. In Shanghai’s Jingan district, dozens of white-clad pandemic workers, popularly known as “Big Whites,” took to the streets to demand their unpaid wages: “Give us our hard-earned money!” they chanted; videos of the protest circulated on social media. The video and the unpaid wages have not been officially confirmed – but the protest is not an isolated case. More and more such unrest by workers is taking place in connection with the implementation of China’s pandemic prevention policy, writes the China Labor Bulletin (CLB), a Hong Kong-based nongovernmental workers’ rights organization in China.
Since March, CLB recorded 14 COVID-19-related protests on its interactive strike map, eight of them in lockdown-weary Shanghai: “Poor working conditions under strict lockdown measures led to protests not only by doctors, nurses, and white-clad pandemic workers, but also factory workers, taxi drivers and others.”
But it is not just that. The entire execution of the Shanghai lockdown was at times so botched that it shook the self-image of Shanghai’s residents. In many housing complexes, food deliveries failed, some did not receive urgently needed medication, and everyone had to constantly wait for hours in front of PCR testing stations – in constant fear that if they do test positive, they would immediately be sent to one of the isolation centers. CLB reports of protests by “Big Whites” who, after the end of their voluntary service, were not allowed – as promised – to serve the obligatory quarantine in the hotel before returning home. Instead, like those who tested positive, they were shipped to an isolation station.
The lack of clarity about the alternating opening and closing of residential neighborhoods also causes discontent. In mid-June, for example, a resident posted footage of a mini-protest of people who had been promised that their neighborhood would be reopened – only to find that it was not. They simply kicked over the fence that separated their neighborhood from the outside world.
“In Shanghai, a lot of damage has been done to the social contract between the Party and the citizens,” says Nis Gruenberg of the China Institute Merics. He cites one example. At the beginning of the pandemic, he says, many people were annoyed by the health code on smartphones, which people have long had to show everywhere. “But a little later, this was smoothly incorporated into everyday life.” And there was a realization that digitally supported pandemic response made perfect sense, Gruenberg told China.Table. “But this trust, that measures have a purpose and serve the common good, has probably been shattered in Shanghai – and in some other cities as well.”
It will take a long time for these wounds to heal, Gruenberg believes. “For service providers, small stores or restaurants, the damage caused by the lockdown is enormous. People constantly need PCR tests for the green health codes, it’s already very stressful.” Beyond that, even bigger problems have emerged. “Also, abuses of the codes for social control have already come to light – authorities can take away citizens’ mobility simply by setting the codes to red.”
In June, an incident in central China’s Zhengzhou – Henan’s provincial capital – attracted widespread attention on social media. There, authorities had prevented a protest by hundreds of angry customers at a local bank by setting their health codes to red, according to CLB.
The incident even drew criticism from unusual directions – such as Hu Xijin, the former editor-in-chief of the Global Times who usually tweets as a nationalist mouthpiece. Tampering with the code damaged the authority of the code system and would diminish public support for it, Hu wrote on Weibo, according to the New York Times. The hashtag reportedly was among the most searched hashtags in mid-June, with 280 million hits.
The matter is far from over, neither in Shanghai nor elsewhere. Small business owners are struggling to survive in this environment. Hundreds of Shanghai’s small business owners took to the streets in June to demand rent exemptions from their landlords at a local garment market, according to CLB. The protests showed that government measures to alleviate a pandemic do not go far enough to relieve the immense financial pressure felt by workers, small business owners and other citizens across China.
At the end of May, Shanghai announced a series of around 50 measures to stimulate the ailing economy. But these measures fall short, CLB criticizes. For example, little or no support has been given to employees or small businesses. Instead, there were incentives to buy new cars in Shanghai and small one-time payments to companies of ¥600 for each employee if they had laid off few or no workers. As an alternative, the World Bank’s Chinese ex-chief economist Lin Yifu recommended the central government pay ¥1,000 to families in cordoned-off areas to support citizens and boost consumption.
But it is not only citizens who are experiencing financial problems. Local governments reportedly also struggle to meet the high costs of pandemic prevention measures. (China.Table reported). In the end, this means that there is always a risk of not being able to pay wages and social expenses in full, according to the CLB.
Since the instructions come from the very top, there definitely is frustration among local cadres over zero-Covid, says Nis Grünberg. Often, officials then tend to over-implement out of fear that heads might roll, the Merics researcher says. “So it’s better to do too much than too little.” The risk of a more relaxed approach is very high, he says, if it doesn’t help push back the virus – as seen in Shanghai this spring.
It’s rare to see such over-sensitization at the local level as is currently the case, Gruenberg says. “It even led to an instruction from Beijing that municipalities not overdo it with lockdowns and also take stores and companies into consideration.” In China, applying uniform rules across the country is even more difficult than in Germany, Gruenberg says. “It simply is much bigger and more heterogeneous.” Local zero-Covid measures also tend to run in a campaign-style. “The government issues a priority, ‘No Covid’. And then they issue a list of legitimate interventions and tools. “But the details then have to be drafted by the municipality itself.”
Every person is different. No two people are the same. And yet, our society singles out certain people or groups as “different,” meaning: different from us. It’s easy to be part of the larger group, and it’s hard to be an outsider. But when Li Cheng talks about her Chinese roots today, about being Chinese in Germany and about the prejudices she faces, you don’t notice this burden on her. She has made peace with her supposed “otherness”.
Cheng was born and raised near Dusseldorf. Her parents came to Germany from Shanghai in the 1980s with the hope of finding better jobs. “They didn’t see a future for themselves in China,” says the 21-year-old, who is now studying in Abu Dhabi. “Back then, even in a factory in Germany, you earned the Chinese monthly wage in a single day.”
When Cheng was enrolled in school, she learned to give the answers that were expected of her. When someone asked where she was from – and this question came up a lot – she answered: “from China”. Even though she only traveled to China for the first time when she was six years old – it was a foreign country to her. “Often people don’t want to know where I was born,” Cheng says. “They keep asking until they know my parents are from China.” She can only laugh at the “Ah” that often follows that information. “I actually don’t know what that means until today.”
The “Ah” probably means that the questioners were confirmed in their assumption. How it feels to be sorted again and again based on appearances. Cheng shares this experience with the Chinese community in Germany. “The prejudice was particularly noticeable at the beginning of the Covid pandemic,” she says. “The coverage of the virus was heavily focused on China, and Chinese people and people of Asian appearance in my circle of friends were repeatedly discriminated.”
Cheng lived in Berlin at the time and became familiar with the city’s activist scene – eventually getting inspired to do something herself. Last year, she founded ZhongDe magazine, in which authors of Chinese-German descent write about being Chinese. “I wanted to actively contribute something to make the reality of our lives more visible.” She wrote an Instagram post, asking if anyone wanted to join in. “Then everything happened very quickly. More than ten people contacted me who wanted to write or participate in some way.”
The first issue was published four months later and focused on the topic of family. “Everyone could talk about that right away.” She herself outed herself as a “people pleaser” in her article, writing about the values her parents instilled in her: “In my childhood, it was completely normal for my parents and grandparents to make great sacrifices and act selflessly without ever letting on what a great burden it was for them.” Early on, Cheng learned to keep a low profile, avoiding any conflict and bending over backwards to please everyone. “This cultural thinking of being generous to others and frugal with yourself, I had to reflect on that to break it down.”
She no longer wants to be a “people pleaser”. Cheng is determined to make her voice heard – certainly also in future issues of her ZhongDe magazine. Svenja Napp
How about a small quiz to get you started: What are some common Chinese expressions for “having your period“? (Note: multiple answers are possible!)
A: “I got ‘you know what’.” (我来那个了Wǒ lái nèige le)
B: “My maid is here.” (我阿姨来了Wǒ āyí lái le)
C: “My aunt has come.” (我大姨妈来了Wǒ dàyímā lái le).
And, any suggestions? You may have already been able to tick off answer A intuitively. After all, we women also like to be vague when the subject of menstruation comes up. The expression “I have my period” is certainly just as vague for the Chinese as the expression “I got you know what” (actually literally: ‘this’). In short, Answer A is indeed a way to talk about periods in Chinese.
So that leaves the drop-by visits from maids and dreaded relatives. To add to the confusion, I’ll tell you that the words 阿姨 āyí (answer B) and 大姨妈 dàyímā (answer C) both mean “aunt”. The former aunt label is also often used for a caregiver or cleaner. The latter aunt, on the other hand, is literally “mother’s older sister”. Okay. I won’t keep you in the dark any longer. In fact, “my aunt has come” (我大姨妈来了wǒ dàyímā lái le or 我来大姨妈了 wǒ lái dàyímā le) is a common metaphor in China for the start of menstruation. So, with answer B, I have misled you.
But what the hell do auntie visits have to do with menstruation, anyway? Well, if it makes you feel any better, that’s a bit of a mystery to the Chinese themselves these days. Various attempts at explanations are floating around the Internet. One says that women in ancient China often did not dare to walk around freely during menstruation. Invitations were often declined discreetly under the pretext that “an aunt had come to visit”. Over time, this is said to have developed into the aforementioned saying. Another version is that China’s women in ancient times entrusted themselves with shameful body topics (if at all) only to older members of their sex – aunts, that is, or at least women of auntable age. At that time, “auntie cloths” are even said to have been a synonym for menstrual pads.
By the way, things also get obscure for foreigners if you type the word “aunt” into an English-Chinese online dictionary just for fun. Instead of providing enlightenment, the result only raises more questions. The subject of kinship terms is a science in itself in Chinese. Compared to English, “Putonghua” has two additional coordinates in the semantic system – firstly, the classification according to age, and secondly, according to the gender of the reference person. This may be interesting from a cultural comparison point of view. After all, it illustrates how age differences and gender affiliation played such a central role in the social hierarchy structure in China for a long time that this was even reflected lexically – i.e. in the vocabulary. For us language learners, on the other hand, the first steps in the Chinese jungle of kinship terms often turn up the hairs on the back of our necks.
For the word “aunt” alone, countless variants appear in the dictionary. Here is a small (incomplete) selection:
姨 yí / 阿姨āyí – mother’s sister
大姨 dàyí / 姨妈 yímā / 大姨妈 dàyímā – mother’s older sister.
小姨 xiǎoyí – younger sister of the mother
姑姑 gūgu / 姑母 gūmǔ / 姑妈 gūmā – older or younger sister of the father.
伯母 bómǔ – wife of an elder brother of the father
婶子 shěnzi / 婶母 shěnmǔ / 叔母 shūmǔ – wife of a younger brother of the father.
Those who would turn their face and run for the hills at the sight of so many auntie variants can at least take comfort in the following: Period announcements can also be made in Chinese with the more formal formula 我来月经了wǒ lái yuèjīng le – “I have (got) my menstruation/monthly bleeding”. Tactful yet completely auntie-free, what more could you ask for.
Verena Menzel runs the online language school New Chinese in Beijing.
