Pay by phone, think by an ideogram. 4 weeks in Beijing

Ilustration: Bob May, "The Big Picture 92" (licencja CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Before travelling to China, I had acquired many questions and snippets of my friends' reports. Some of them later coincided with reality, although most turned out to be nonsense. However, even rumours had some grain of truth, because they revealed a fascination combined with fear of the former Middle Kingdom, still yet mostly unknown to many Poles.

A few days before the trip, I am left alone with pending enquiries - is the Internet there really "rationed" and controlled so much that I would not be able to log in to my Facebook or e-mail account? While already at the airport, I prudently download the most popular Chinese messenger - WeChat. After registering my luggage, I sit down with a coffee and start reading about China's space exploration programs plans.

The time spent in the departure area is traditionally longer than anticipated. As time moves onward, I see more and more faces of asian features. I'm sitting on a very inconvenient bench and eagerly sailing through Polish Internet. I come across information about the first contact of Chinese culture with Poland.

In 1241, during the Battle of Legnica, the Mongol army under the command of Ordu-Irchen used chemical weapons - precisely combat gases - for the first time in Europe war history. Invented and used for a long time by the Chinese, unknown warfare caused the Polish knights terror comparable probably to the invasion of aliens on the Independence Day film. Nobody in medieval Europe had such advanced technology in its tactical arsenal.

The battle was lost, however these events sparked a huge interest in the Orient.

In the history of Polish-Chinese relations, we even havd our own Marco Polo: the Jesuit Michał Boym, who was the first European to record his observations on Chinese medicine and the its medicines in a very meticulous and scientific manner ("The Key to Chinese Medical Doctrine" published in 1656 "Flora sinensis, or Chinese flora"). His notes enabled the famous French sinologist Jean Pierre Abel Remusat to learn Chinese. Boym was also an envoy to the Yongli Emperor, whom he baptized. His maps maps of China were very accurate. (Boym took into account longitude and latitude). His works described the Chinese political system, architecture, philosophy and culture. Considering his contribution to introducing China to the West, as one of the world's first sinologists, one must admit its value.

But 360 years later, when I land in Beijing after almost 9 hours flight, I'm not thinking about the cultural heritage of the Middle Kingdom or the poems of Taoist sages. I feel like I'm going to die, and soon. China greets me with powerful smog and awe-inspiring futuristic architecture, which, together with the orange sun breaking through the gray curtain hanging over the city, makes me feel like in neosocialist "Blade Runner". Apart from the vividness of Ridley Scott's film, it is not accidental that from the very beginning China appears to me as a place connected with the future.

In Beijing, modern skyscrapers are adjacent to hutongs, known since the 12th century as complexes of closely connected one-story buildings. Currently demolished, they still create a unique landscape with the most modern elements of urban architecture. This eclecticism does not offend. Walking through the long, narrow streets, I pass hawkers and old people who sit all day on a worn couch in the open air with cards and tea. Looking so mismatched to the modern center of the alley, I think that Chinese cities have been undergoing urbanization changes for thousands of years. The Chinese struggled with the problems of a developed civilization in times when we had not yet driven the first pile under the settlement in Biskupin.

My hotel, nestled in a low-rise hunting complex, is relatively sheltered from the noise of downtown starting a few blocks away. When I turn on the TV, I come across a children's cartoon. Drawn in a modern way, in the Cartoon Network style, the animation presents the story of a few friends - soldiers of the Chinese People's Liberation Army, and a cheerful donkey.

Jetlag, polluted air and the adventures of the Red Army soldiers make me fly away in an abstract direction. The Chinese reality reminds me of a dream - I find in it elements that I know, but the whole works on completely new, alien principles. Like in an English bathroom, I see two taps here: one is communism, the other is capitalism. Many Chinese I talk to do not associate Poland with anything special. Some confuse the word Poland with Holland, but this is not about a film director. Poland is represented by: Chopin, Copernicus, Maria Skłodowska-Curie, and Robert Lewandowski. Because I come from the same country as a famous soccer player, I get 10 beers and 4 bowls of Sichuan prawns as gifts from local football fans at a certain pub. Later, however, I came across information about another Pole who had fascinated the Chinese much earlier.

In the 19th century, China struggled with the occupation of Western powers on its territory. Colonial wars devastated the country immensely, and the eight Western powers held the empire in a tight grip. At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, the Chinese intelligentsia received a strong reception of Polish Romantic poetry, especially Mickiewicz, whom Lu Xun - the greatest Chinese writer of the 20th century valued more than Byron and Schiller.

In an editorial commentary on Ode to Youth in 1929, he wrote:

“The fate of the Chinese is similar to the fate of Poles in the era of Mickiewicz, and the poems of the Polish bard arouse our anger, hope and desire to break the slave chains in which we have been shackled. Mickiewicz's works brought the hearts of Chinese people closer to the hearts of Poles.”

When I turn off the TV, I hear the sounds of children playing and loud music. I look outside and notice that my hotel is adjacent to the school. Nearly a hundred children dressed in identical, colorful tracksuits practice tai chi on the artificial surface of the new football field, and a huge TV set beyond the goal line plays a cheerful song, the melody of which reminds me of Home Kindergarten. Although I think of Poland more because I am in the homeland of rubber sneakers, where millions of Polish children, including me, attended PE. On the next court, every student practices in the same shoes, although of course no one here calls them Chinese sneakers.

While discovering the city, I confirm my first impression that the old is mixed with the new at every step. A small dumpling booth decorated with photographs of Chairman Mao is adjacent to a hipster coffee shop where David Bowie is heard and the walls are covered with reproductions of Liechtenstein. Wherever I eat, every meal blows me away into ecstasy. I'm going on a culinary safari where there are no more caucasian faces or any help in the form of English menus. Fortunately, I have an app on my phone that can translate Mandarin from a photo I took. And just in case, I picked up a dozen words quickly, including the key words: shrimp: 虾 (Xiā), dumplings: 饺子 (Jiǎozi), chopsticks: 筷子 (Kuàizi), tea 茶 (Chá), boiled rice: 米饭 (Mǐfàn) and pay: 买单 (Mǎidān) . After two weeks, my gastronomic range is expanding. I've had pancakes, hot cauldrons, various dumplings, grills and a delicious Peking duck at a dinner party. And after a proper training at a Sichuan restaurant, I finally feel confident enough to say that I like and can eat spicy food.

Now I understand why in Chinese stories - where numbers are important and have a specific meaning - there are so many large numbers, such as 10,000. I have the impression that this is how many flavours can fit into a Chinese dish. Each region has a different cuisine, and in addition, each chef has his own version of classic dishes.

These flavours may not be to everyone's taste, but they certainly can't get bored easily. Beijing has about 22 million inhabitants. The term "rush hour" takes on a new meaning for me here. The inhabitants of the metropolis are used to the specificity of constantly functioning in the crowd, so it is not as burdensome as it may seem. They show no obvious impatience despite the hours spent in the crush. Of course, the Chinese are different from the Poles in other matters. It is a highly contextual society for which the category of relations with others, family, superiors, etc. is important. Just because a Chinese person doesn't say something directly doesn't mean they don't show it in a subtler way. Without going into complicated sociological comparative analysis, however, I must say that during the weekend, when the city is going crazy - and it can go crazy - there is no such post-beer aggression on the street as in Europe.

The Chinese I meet like to party, go out with friends and share our slavic passion for ethanol, but during the few weeks I spent in Beijing, I did not see a duel in the alcohol-kung fu category. Unfortunately, in vino veritas - in this regard, we reveal our European individualism, which we so often see in action from Friday to Sunday, most often in night bus symposiums.

One of the most interesting places that I manage to visit is CAFA, China Central Academy of Fine Arts. I read it is an elite university that rejects 90% of applicants every year. Almost 5,000 students, including foreigners, study on the huge area of the modern campus. I am very impressed - apart from the scale of what such a teaching unit can look like - the approach to what a student can do and what his leaving the university looks like. At the academy, students learn about history and traditional art techniques, but the diploma can be done, for example, fully in VR technique. Already at the stage of the diploma project - e.g. clothes or utility equipment - the university helps in contacts with potential entrepreneurs who may be interested in buying and mass production of a given work. The sale of a mass work of art is a natural element of the education process here. Such utilitarianism taught at the academy does not have to stand in opposition to the artistic value of the project. Today, instead of the vernissage, a work of art begins its social life also in the sphere of social media and factory production. Even more so if the diploma from the academy of fine arts is a complex VR project or a collection of furniture.

Digitalization in modern China seems present in every sphere of life. Traditional money gives way much more than in Europe to the electronic form of payment. Paying by phone is very popular, for example - by scanning the QR code in the WeChat application. Because China is very protective of its market, they create their equivalents of Western applications - WeChat is therefore the equivalent of Facebook, but much more extensive. Over 800 million people uses the Chinese messenger app daily. We can use it to use messages, video chats, publish things on our profile, and check which users are currently in our area. What sets WeChat apart is how it works with other services. We can integrate our account with a bank card and order a taxi, food delivery, pay in a cafe, buy a movie or bus ticket, and send money to another WeChat user. All with just a few clicks and from one application.

It is no secret today that personal and consumer information is a valuable product and can serve a greater purpose than developing a psychological portrait of the consumer (Purchasing diapers? Online store I suggest you breast pump at a discount). Although datamining in Western societies is still met with mixed feelings, it has been a real phenomenon for years. It's just that today this process must take place somewhat quietly, sometimes outside the law and sometimes through the back door - how many users read into the licenses of the programs they install? On the one hand, the violation of privacy by foreign entities raises legitimate objections and increased attention, and on the other hand, it is hard to give up the convenience of and instagratification Even more convenience: it's just easier that social media gives us.

Meanwhile, a user stratification program (Sesam Socual Credit Score) is currently underway in China, gaining its data

from users and the world's largest online shopping site, Alibaba. Based on the payment history and purchased products, each user receives a certain number of points. The higher their number, the greater the benefits - better credit terms, preferential terms for the purchase of airline tickets, etc.

Participation in the Sesame Credit program is optional, but the service has successfully encouraged many Chinese people to post their stratification results on social networks, and China's largest dating site Baihe has implemented the results of the program into its users' profiles. Enough of guessing from the pictures from Tinder is someone really rich! The numbers don't lie - the Chinese can already be sure whether their potential life partner has a good credit history.

The Chinese government is keeping a close eye on the Sesame Credit program as it is in the process of setting up its own system. Today's assumptions say that all Chinese citizens must be covered by the social credit system by 2020. However, the government project will not be limited to researching purchase history. In addition to the history of financial transactions, the position of a citizen will also be affected by conflicts with the law, the history of which will also be linked to our profile. Accurate stratification will be performed based on both digital, financial and criminal activity.

The West has always looked critically at the state-citizen relationship, and its democratic traditions tended towards a subjective relationship between the citizen and the government, not vice versa. Orwell warned against privacy surveillance. High technological development allowed for the successive fulfillment of the fears of Orwell, Lem and Ortega y Gasset.

Herbert Marcuse in his work "Industrialisierung und Kapitalismus" writes:

“Technology itself, and not only its application, is mastery over nature and over man, a methodical, scientific, calculating and calculating reign. The specific goals and interests of domination are not imposed on technology ex post and from the outside - they belong to the construction of the technical apparatus itself; technology is always a historical-social project: it projects, what society and its dominant interests intend to do with man and with things."

Today we have already given away so much of our freedom and civic privileges, that we fight more for the privacy of nude photos than for the categorical principles of individual independence and rights. In a neopanoptic world, we may push the boundaries of surveillance slightly, but we will not go back to the era before the attack on the World Trade Center, when the Patriot Act was introduced, which legalized the surveillance of US citizens on an unprecedented scale. And a decade later, people like Julien Assange and Edward Snowden paid a heavy price for exposing the true price of world security.

Looking at today's China, Iiking it or not I see the world of the future, because it is realizing what some governments and organizations dream of, but cannot yet openly implement. I've talked to Chinese people who consider the social credit system a good thing, cherishing transparency about who did what in the future, and accepting the consequences in the present. Let me remind you that for a Chinese, the category of relationships is important, especially the long-term ones. Perhaps we should accept the fact that similar solutions will be increasingly used by various entities?

It is hard to find an invention that does not have its roots in the Middle Kingdom - so maybe, just like paper and gunpowder in the past, the algorithm for a Good Citizen with its UberSSN will soon be another milestone in human history.

Chinese Manhattan, Sanlitun district. My friend, a cinematographer, pays for a large coffee with WeChat. A crowd of people moves between the exhibitions of shopping malls and bars, among which sits a street musician playing the traditional plucked instrument - sanxian. Groups of Chinese hipsters sitting on coffee shop stools - all dressed in black - look more like they're waiting for a Nine Inch Nails concert than for coffee from an American chain. My friend says that the skyscrapers in Beijing are taller than in Los Angeles. She recently returned to China after 3 years of studying and working in the US. I ask if she didn't want to stay there longer. She replies that now the Chinese film market is developing more and that he has more opportunities here.

I say goodbye and go back to the hotel. I pass a costume shop on the way - the sellers are ready for anything. Halloween, Valentine's Day or other creations of Western culture - everything blends into the Asian cosmos. The Chinese are attached to tradition, but at the same time very curious about the world.

When, just before departure, I want to eat my last meal at a Chinese KFC - with a completely different one from the western menu - I can't pay with my VISA card, which is blocked throughout the country (fortunately not at ATMs). So I spend my last paper money. Chairman Mao is portrayed on each denomination. They are distinguished only by different shades of the same portrait - as in the famous portrait of Marilyn Monroe by Andy Warhol. I buy my set with a set of banknotes and sit down next to the glass. I look at Beijing at night for the last time. I can still see a street musician kneeling in front of a shopping mall. But I can't hear what's playing anymore. My ears are filled with a selection of western easy listening music.

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