Last week I was with a group of friends in Lanzhou and we had a rambling, hours long discussion- one that eventually lands on the topic of Fu Er Dai (Second Generation Rich). China is notorious for its roster of badly behaved billionaire millennials that try to outdo one another with very public displays of wealth: stables of Maseratis, matching Shanghai and London duplexes, gold Apple watches for THEIR DOGS. Their parents were the first ones to get super-rich from the 1980s onwards after Deng Xiaoping’s reform policies took off.
“i couldn’t find parking… so i parked in the middle of the street”
But did you know this derogative generalization of Fu Er Dai can be further broken down into five specific categories? Like taxonomic rank from biology class used to distinguish between a monarch butterfly and the ultra-rare Adonis blue butterfly, Fu Er Dai can further be divided into the following species, based on the source of their parents’ money:
Fang Er Dai （房二代）Property Rich
This is pretty self-explanatory. The kids’ parents are either real estate magnates (such as Wang Jianlin, China’s richest person/ Founder of Dalian Wanda Group), or a slum lord (such as Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law)
Wang Jianlin purchased an £80M home in Kensington Palace Gardens
Cai Er Dai （拆二代）Demolition Rich
This is more interesting. All across China, you can see old, 5 story apartment buildings and other low rises with the character 拆 spray-painted in red on the walls. This signifies that the building is set to be torn down and demolished- maybe to build a highway, or (if you pray hard enough) a shopping mall or 50 floor luxury apartment building.
took this photo on one of my bike rides last Autumn in Lanzhou. houses will be torn down, millionaires will be made
Your home in the middle of nowhere may have been practically worthless a year or two ago, but now you will be handsomely compensated with millions of RMB! If you were lucky and owned the entire block of formerly worthless, crumbling apartments, you may become a RMB billionaire overnight! Everyone in China secretly hopes their homes are next in line for demolition.
Hong Er Dai （红二代) Red Rich
This describes the children of the political elite. Most roll around town in Porsches, smoke Chunghwa cigarettes, and host 100k RMB a night KTV parties. Some will be sent abroad to London at a young age, attend private boarding school, and later go to Oxford. All paid for on a $25,000 USD a year government salary… yeah right…
Bo GuaGua at his Harvard graduation ceremony. dont know who he is? Google him.
Jun Er Dai （军二代）Military Rich
This signifies your grandfather was an important army general at some point during the Chinese Civil War. Many of the PLA descendants have entered politics, so they are not mutually exclusive from the aforementioned “Red Rich”
Mei Er Dai （煤二代）Coal Rich
This is easy- your dad is a coal mine owner. And can afford a 70 million RMB wedding and fly in Taiwanese pop stars for the spectacle. The size of your bank account at any given time is inversely proportional to the carbon emissions reductions that are needed to save the planet.
B-list Taiwanese popstar Elva Hsiao performs at Xing Libin’s daughter’s wedding
this type of gross wealth inequality is uncomfortable to see from afar- and in person. To be fair, it exists as much in America as it does in China. (Have you seen Donald Trump’s Cabinet?)
I’m volunteering at one of the poorer vocational schools in Lanzhou- the bathroom urinals are always flooded, the hallway lights flicker on and off, the wooden desks and chairs in many classrooms are unstable and so, so close to collapsing (and have been taken apart to be use as props in a skiing and snowboarding skit by my freshman)
… and yet… located just across from our library, the newly built residential complex has been described by my students as “the Beverly Hills of Lanzhou”
a line of poetry from Tang poet Du Fu ( taken from the final article I linked)
I frontloaded the first week of August with a fairly straightforward plan: fly down to Chengdu, take a bus south to some obscure cities where a couple of my volunteer friends and students are based, and ultimately see the Shunan Bamboo Forest.
Shunan Bamboo Forest is where several scenes from Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon were filmed- Zhang Ziyi and Chow Yun Fat fly through the bamboo stalks, dueling over the Green Destiny sword.
after 17 years, this is still one of my favorite movies!
So, I hoped this trip would go smoothly but the first day was a total disaster.
For one, I went to the wrong bus station upon arriving in Chengdu (there are so many bus stations! Not my fault!) and I was hustled into taking a bus – around the corner from the real bus station – headed toward Zigong (where I needed to go) for 100 RMB. I had no other choices really, since it was getting late so I got on.
This turned out to be a five hour bus ride from hell. (though I consider myself lucky, since a lot of volunteers find themselves on a 10 or 15 hour bus ride from hell that should have been no more than two hours)
A couple things that made this a shitty ride:
1) Mandatory screening of The Hobbit: Battle of Five Armies. Watching the CGI mess of The Hobbit trilogy in English is already hard enough- having to watch it with low quality Chinese dubs was nearly unbearable. I call this a “mandatory” screening since the bus driver put the speaker volume on high for the entire bus ride, so my earphones could not drown out the chaos of elf/ dwarf/ orc warfare, and I could not avert staring at the screen hanging several seats in front of me, no matter how hard I tried…
(Mandatory “listening to random nonsense” is a part of living in China. For example, for half an hour starting from noon, all the loudspeakers at my school blast a radio show that everyone on campus must listen to. You cannot escape it. The speakers are everywhere and you just put up with 30 minutes of local news and weather updates. I suspect it’s a relic from the 60s and 70s era of getting instructions from the central government on how to live life on a day to day basis)
2) The guy sitting across from me. He was younger than me by a few years it seemed, and had a habit of spitting into the aisle every ten or fifteen minutes. He didn’t seem all that sick – maybe it’s a macho thing to prove he’s a real man by covering the floor with his phlegm, or maybe he started smoking at the age of 9 (not uncommon in China, unfortunately) and now suffers from chronic pulmonary infections a decade later. Eventually he fell asleep and was too tired to turn his head to spit into the aisle- so instead he would spit into the empty seat next to him. Classy!
3) I missed my stop! We took 20+ minute bathroom breaks throughout the bus ride, but for whatever reason could only stop on the outskirts of Zigong for less than a minute?!? I kid you not. By the time I sat up straight and realized I might have to get off, it was too late- the bus already lurched forward back onto the highway. So I had no choice but to take the bus for another 90 minutes- this time, I was ready to go and leapt off the bus at the next stop, in Yibin.
Yibin
Luckily, things got better from here- it was late at night, but roadside stalls were still selling delicious bowls of Sichuan wontons and noodles in central Yibin, and I enjoyed my late night dinner tremendously.
I finally found a hotel that would take a foreigner and passed out.
The next day I had a chance to explore a city I didn’t actually plan on seeing, and it turned out to be pretty awesome. Yibin was surprisingly clean for a major city in China- there was almost no litter on the streets, and people were generally friendly. Maybe the city was burdened with a Duterte style mayor for 20 years, or maybe its granted an extra $10M RMB annually for public sanitation due to its location as the official start of the Yangtze River – either way, I was blown away by the cleanliness of Yibin.
In downtown Yibin, two rivers converge to form the mighty Yangtze Rivera nice pairing of light broth and dan dan noodles
Shunan Bamboo Forest From Yibin I took an afternoon bus to the famous Shunan Bamboo Forest.
expensive cable car ride, but the view was great!
if you squint hard enough, you can imagine the wuxia warriors from Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon weaving in and out of the bamboo groves
I stayed at a courtyard style inn, and spend the next day trekking through the hot and humid park. It was all very, very beautiful – the cable car ride through the mountains, the various small paths through the bamboo forest – and I was hopeful I would spot a panda somewhere, but that didn’t happen.
found a blissfully quiet path in the bamboo forest parkbamboo in every direction, as far as the eye could see. heavenly!
Rongxian: Lorin’s Home
Next I bussed back to Yibin, had a quick lunch with fellow PCV Katie, who is based in Yibin, and got on yet another bus to Rongxian. I arrived late afternoon and my student Lorin was waiting at the bus station for me. He’s one of my favorites from the sophomore class – writes beautifully – and was happy to show me around his hometown.
requisite tuk tuk selfie
We took a short tuk tuk ride and climbed up a small hill to the city’s giant seated Buddha, carved back in the Tang Dynasty.
Buddha in the mountainside
Rongxian’s Buddha, the less famous cousin of Leshan’s Buddha
I visited Lorin’s home further from the city, which had a nice balcony overlooking the lush countryside, several black chickens running around, and a puppy Cai Cai. His mother and grandmother prepared some amazing dishes for me when they heard a teacher was visiting!
a feast, in my honor!
Perhaps the highlight was seeing Cai Cai and the hens gobble down their dinner- rice and leftovers, completely DRENCHED in chili oil.. and they loved it… Cai Cai is definitely a Sichuan dog!
chili pepper rice? yum!only a matter of time before the hens came for their share
I was happy to visit Lorin, and am glad to have met his parents, both of whom were so friendly and humble. Lorin is fortunate to have grown up living with both his parents on a daily basis – tens of millions of Chinese children only see their parents once a year (during the Lunar New Year) since their fathers and mothers are migrant workers that live in coastal factory towns.
Lorin with his grandmother, and a row of certificates/ accolades from (maybe?) elementary school hanging on the wall
Mid Service Training
Finally, it was time to head back to Chengdu for mid service training. Now that its been 14+ months in China, we are just over halfway done with service! I saw the usual friends, teachers, doctors, program managers who had helped guide us through the past year. Unlike winter training (which lasted two weeks), Mid Service Training was short- just four days to catch up with everyone, relive old memories, and gather gossip as needed.
hanging with HeFei, CC, and Greg
One year in, all the volunteers are starting to freak out about what comes next after Peace Corps- a job in China? Grad school in America? A third year of volunteering to delay adulthood? In particular I am grateful for meeting up with my Language/ Culture Facilitators from training, and my host family. it seems everyone has something on their minds these days, and its not just the volunteers who are eager for a drastic change in their lives.
with two of my language teachers from last summer’s training
The LCFs and my host family gave me some serious and constructive advice on what I could pursue in the future after Peace Corps – as well as general life direction- and I am so grateful for their input and opinions!! Thank you and hugs all around!
my host family. Snuggles the cat was better behaved this time around! what a difference a year makes!!
Here is a collection of sketches I put together from the previous semester- it is a continuation of (naturally) Semester One Sketches! Many paintings are from my winter trips to Beijing, Harbin, and Taipei; others are from various walks through Lanzhou, a PCV softball game, and a trip to Linxia.
Temple of Heaven
Self portrait in the Forbidden Citywhat Western Civilization did to BarbarismGuardianLionHarbinFeed the TigersTaipei 101DuskSoftballLinxia
On some of these paintings, you will see calligraphy work added to enhance the sketches- these were done by my uncle, and I’ve been told his words take these sketches entirely to the next level– which i don’t doubt – though most of them are far too advanced for me to comprehend
He almost always adds his seal next to the poems. Hilariously, I had a *huge* seal carved when I first arrived in Lanzhou, but it was quite embarrassing to stamp my name 4x larger than my uncle’s on the same page, as if i were compensating for lack of talent.. so I had a new one made that is just *slightly* larger than his…
harry rubacuori 