How Shanghai is that?

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amega
Barker
Barker

Joined: Nov 18, 2004
Posts: 199

Posted: Mar 30, 2006 - 12:14 AM
Post subject: How Shanghai is that?

How Shanghai is that?
By Ned Boudreau

SHANGHAI - Recently, a friend who had taught in this city only a few years ago came to visit. Not surprisingly, he observed that

Shanghai had changed: "Everybody has a cell phone in his or her ear. How Shanghai is that?" he said.

But the question should be: How Shanghai are you? You have a phone? Of course you do. What about a laptop? That, too? You have an iPod? Excellent. Now: How about a BMW? A Benz? But what about Tsao Hsueh-chin; what about Shakespeare? This is not a rhetorical question. Where is elegance, where is culture if art is lacking? How Shanghai is that?

They aren't missing at all: My Chinese friends convince me of that. All of them know and love the Classics; I'm reading Song Dynasty poets and A Dream of Red Mansions. How Shanghai are we? Very. Naturally, we have cellular telephones, we have - most of us - laptops and all the rest. Maybe none of us has our own Beamer or Benz, but we have the most valuable asset in all business and economics: creativity. How Shanghai is that?

Most of the major media, even the Chinese media, play down and even denigrate the creativity of the Chinese. I beg to disagree. The Shakespeare Players and the poets in my Poetry Corner at a local university taught me an entirely different story. They all are studying finance or accounting or economics, but The Players are not afraid to lose face onstage; they play fools and clowns and buffoons.

The Poets have huge gifts, in both Chinese and English, and they are unafraid to display those gifts. They translate from Chinese to English and from English to Chinese with equal dexterity. One young man among the Poets writes incessantly in both languages; much of his work is superb, in either language. A young lady writes heart-wrenching love poems during her mathematics classes. Another young poetess amazed me with an extraordinarily powerful poem, her very first in English; she's an accounting major.

Similarly, one of my Chinese friends is a techie, but a highly creative techie - he runs a computer animation lab doing film and TV work. So he's both a nerd and a graphic artist. His English name is "Byron", after the great English lyric poet, whose works he quotes from memory. Another colleague and friend is writing a hilarious, much needed book on American business slang. Her husband, a banker at the highest level, is a brilliant photographer who thinks of early retirement so he can pursue his passion on a full-time basis. Yet another friend is a passionate musician who teaches chemistry to pay the bills. How Shanghai is that?

Well - very! Creativity is a hard thing to define, but it's easy to see. Where? In Shanghai, of course, but in all of China, too. Chinese actors and directors are taking their rightful place at the top of the film world - and not for the idiotic, formulaic movies favored in Hollywood, but ones with truly Chinese themes and sensibilities presented in entirely new ways. Chinese designers are beginning to compete with the best-known fashion designers in Paris and Milan. Modern Chinese artists have long been known for inventing new variations on traditional themes and techniques in painting, calligraphy and sculpture.

When I studied marketing at Harvard, many of the textbooks emphasized the crucial role of creativity, even if they did not call it that. Often, they termed it "research and development". And I recall one line from a marketing text: "New-product development is the lifeblood of firms, especially in mature markets." New-product development requires a great deal of creative thinking, as well as the huge creativity that goes into effective advertising campaigns.

Today, everyone has heard the phrase "think outside the box". That's creativity. It's as important to business as management skills. Economists study creativity, but they call it enterprise; it is - along with land, labor and capital - one of the "four factors of production" vital to all economic theory. John Maynard Keynes called enterprise "the animal spirit of capitalism"; The Economist calls it "the creative juices".

When China began to open up, the effect of entrepreneurial capitalism was like casting strong sunlight on a glacier - a flooding cascade of economic growth that continues to this day. I witnessed the same type of imagination and creativity during 18 years in the US corporate sector, where I slaved away in the mines of marketing communications - a very creative part of business - in highly competitive markets.

Tens of millions of Chinese took to business like fish to water. They made China the fastest-growing economy in the world by establishing highly entrepreneurial businesses of all sizes. So, to all those pundits who are getting this issue wrong, I say: "How Shanghai are you?"

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/HC30Ad01.html

Henry_Chinaski
Board Lord

Joined: Aug 16, 2003
Posts: 5025

Posted: Mar 30, 2006 - 10:49 AM

Could you please ask him to name 5 chinese writers of expression in the 20th century after LuXun?

No?

Oh. I wonder why.

Very easy to recite tang poetry and all that, but art in the 20th century and beyond had necessarily a functional role to which Chinese writers to my perception failed to deliver, mostly because of a number of purges and consistent crack down on anything "creative".

But I think it's convenient to give the illusion of freedom and have names like Byron, Oscar and William.

Ask this chap to make a test: go to the foreign bookstore, in this little pyramid of English classics, and try to find 1, ONE Byron, Wilde, Joyce, ...

How Shanghai is that?

Anyone that has any respect for "creativity" would crave to put their hands on the originals of all these classics.

So, the illusion of being sophisticated and modern is great when you see all buildings, people with notebooks in starbucks and all that.

But the fact is: it's just hardware.

Great hardware running software from the Tang dinasty. How good is that?

Confucian scholastic masturbation.

Oh but what do I know? They guy studied at Harvard hence his opinion is better right?

amega
Barker
Barker

Joined: Nov 18, 2004
Posts: 199

Posted: Mar 30, 2006 - 11:09 PM

Hello calm down! The article is not praising the system, only shows the seeds of creativity existed among the people. Under the right environment, the seeds will grow. Have hope…