fiefoe

The people/ the system:

Boss Gao reached once more into his quiver of Sate Express 555s.
It had been a stroke of genius to initially send the youngest... the youngest showed up with her sister's ID, which was essentially a two-for-one; and then it was only natural that the father follow...
For Cadre Liu, it served two purpose: a favor for a friend and an additional source of intelligence, because the accounting service would give him a line of information on the business. The best part, of course, was that the bra ring factory would pay to be monitored.
At the bra ring factory, when I heard the tale of how Liu Hongwei memorized and copied the Machine, I thought of Francis Cabot Lowell, who performed the same trick in the early 1800s.
Years later, Master Luo could still rattle off intricate details from the times he had been wooed by competing bosses. He was like a former debutante: he told these stories wistfully, recalling every hotel, every restaurant, even the dishes and the prices.
The dispute had stared over money, and even in her rage she still clung to her thriftiness: she had chosen the cheapest socks to ignite.
The shop signs in the photographs caused the biggest headache for the artists, who didn't speak English.
Boss Gao and Boss Wang picked through each floor like gleaners in the wake of a harvest. They unscrewed every single lightbulb in the factory. With a hammer, Boss Gao pounded out and pocketed nails from a pile of scrap wood.

At first, the details of gauxi seemed mysteriously complex, .. because I was distracted by the rituals.. but over time I realized that it's actually a system, and in a place like southern Zhejiang it's highly functions. Gifts are standardized and portable, which makes them a kind of currency.
All of it - the high population, the lack of social institutions, the slowness of educational reform - combines to dull the edge of innovation. Inevitably, any nation is tempted to waste its greatest wealth, and in China this resource happens to be human.
The degree of detail was remarkable: if a person's former house had been made of brick, he received 220 yuan per square meter;.. Each stove was reimbursed at a set rate.
It was particularly depressing because in a way the system worked well. It didn't necessarily make people happy, and it certainly wasn't fair.. The government was smart enough not to resettle all the dam refugees in one place... they created lots of little rules that distracted people from the larger issues.

"Country Driving" (Reply)