Malayali entrepreneur Suresh Varma, and journalist Danny Geevarghese who have spent several years in Beijing says things are fine despite the India-China border clashes
By Shevlin Sebastian
On a recent Sunday, a group of Malayalis along with their families
got together for lunch at the ‘Indian Kitchen China’ on Ritan street in
Beijing. They had rice, sambar and a vegetable curry. And during a discussion,
they all agreed they wanted to carry on staying in China.
Even the Chinese feel this way about their country. Around 150 million Chinese travel out every year on business, studies or tourism. And they all come back.
“China has the largest number of students who study in foreign universities and after their graduation, 90 per cent come back,” says Suresh. “They want to be in their motherland. It is not like in India, where out of 100 students who go to the US, 90 per cent stay back.”
Meanwhile, the India-China clash at the Galwan Valley in the Himalayas has fast receded from their minds.
Journalist Danny Geevarghese says he was not unduly worried about the clash in the Galwan Valley. “Although this time tragically there were deaths on both sides,” he says. “During most summers, there are skirmishes. But this time it became serious.”
Interestingly, the coverage was far less than in the Indian media.
“Some like the People’s Daily, the PLA Daily and China’s public broadcaster CGTN did not cover it at all,” says Danny. “Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are banned.”
More than the India problem, the Chinese are obsessed with the Americans, and the Japanese who colonised parts of the country,” says Danny. “India does not appear in the news often. Plus, COVID-19 was the big issue.”
But India’s soft power does have an impact. “All of Aamir Khan’s films are a bit hit in China,” says Danny.
Suresh says that many of his Chinese friends did not know about the incursion into Indian territory.
In fact, only one Chinese colleague said, “Because of this problem, I hope you are not planning to relocate out of China.” Suresh replied in the negative. As to how the Chinese colleague came to know about this, Suresh said that nearly everybody can access international news websites like BBC and CNN.
Suresh has been living in Beijing for eight years. After a long professional career, he has been doing business in supply chain consulting for the past three years.
Asked to describe the plus points of the Chinese, he says, “They are very hard-working and dedicated to what they do. They are warm and helpful. There is a clear demarcation about what they are doing and what the government is doing. They are focused on earning money, ensuring their children get a good education and have enough money for their retirement.”
Chinese are similar to Indians, says Danny. “They want their children to go to good schools,” says Danny. “They are very family-oriented. Grandparents look after their grandchildren while their children go to work. When my son goes down to play, in our gated community, a grandmother will ask one of her grandchildren to play with my son.”
One of the negative traits is that the Chinese have a compulsion to ape the West. “People have beautiful Chinese names with nice meanings to it, a lot of historical significance but just because they want to be accepted by the world outside, they will call themselves George, Harry or Sally,” says Suresh.
Suresh gives an example. The actual name of the martial art form Kung Fu is Gong Fu or Wushu. Suresh asked his Chinese friend why they were using the wrong name. He replied that since Westerners find it difficult to pronounce Gong Fu, they use Kung Fu.
As a result, they are losing a lot of their heritage. This is happening in India, too. “The number of people who know Sanskrit or Malayalam is decreasing,” says Suresh. “The next generation of Chinese may not know how to write the alphabet.”
As to the stories in the world media about people being upset about the way they were being treated, during the COVID-19 crisis, Suresh says that in a population of 1.4 billion, about 20 percent will be unhappy at the actions of the government. “I know friends of mine in Wuhan, which was the epicentre, who were happy with the government’s actions,” he says.
The government is supporting the people as much as possible. During the pandemic, all the patients were treated free of cost. “People are thinking, ‘the government is taking care of me, I shouldn’t be worried if they are sending ships to the South China Sea in a contest with the United States,’” he says. “The government knows the big picture, not me.”
Asked whether there is a lack of freedom in China, Suresh says, “I have not come across anything like that.” He gave an example: the US shut down the Chinese consulate in Houston. In retaliation, China shut down the US consulate in Chengdu. Immediately, on social media, a lot of Chinese complained that the government should not have shut down a consulate that was hardly of any consequence. Instead, they said, the government should have shut down the consulate in Hong Kong. “People express their views,” he says. “But there may be a limit and they ensure they don’t cross it.”
Many sites are banned. But people use the virtual proxy network to access them.
As for India, it does not feature in the minds of the Chinese people. “It's not that they look down but they don’t think about India,” says Suresh. “But for business people, they look at India with a great deal of respect. Because, they know, that apart from China, India has a huge population to whom they could sell their goods.”
A lot of Suresh’s Chinese friends told him that India is a beautiful place to visit. They feel that it is culturally vibrant. “But when it comes to economic superiority, they feel they are far ahead and their main rival is the US,” says Suresh.
Asked about the extensive surveillance in a city like Beijing, Suresh says, “Yes, there are a lot of cameras. China has the maximum number of cameras in a public area than anywhere else in the world.”
There are about 400 million CCTV cameras across the country. In December, 2017, the government told BBC reporter John Sudworth to lose himself in a crowd in the city of Guiyang (2000 kms from Beijing). But they were able to locate him in seven minutes using facial recognition software.
Suresh says people feel safe because of the cameras. At 2 a.m., if somebody's daughter has to come back home, after a party, even among the Indians, there is no fear. “The population has the fear factor because of the surveillance so nothing bad will happen,” says Suresh.
But Suresh does admit that if you are a critic of the government you could face problems.
It’s not that China is the only one which is feeding on privacy. Facebook, Twitter and Google also have a lot of data on all the people all over the world.
Meanwhile, Suresh is very happy with his life in Beijing. “The food is great, and the infrastructure is awesome. In eight years I have never experienced a power cut. Or a tap going dry. Or to have no gas in the house. I don’t think I have seen a pothole ever,” says Suresh, whose wife Karthika is a kindergarten teacher in an international school while son Siddharth, after his Mphys at the University of Surrey, is on a one-year assignment at the Institute of Astrophysics, Tenerife Island, Spain.
Of course, since he grew up in Kochi, he accepts the pothole-strewn roads of Kerala. “I take it as part of my India experience,” he says. “I go with the flow.”
But others may find it difficult. Suresh knows a friend whose child was brought up in China. He is now 15 years old and speaks English and Chinese fluently. “He hesitates to go back to India,” says Suresh. “He might settle down in China. No one can say.”
As for the food, when asked whether the Chinese food made in India and that in China is the same, Suresh starts laughing. “There is a world of a difference,” he says. “The Chinese food in India is Indian food made differently.”
A few years ago, the Indian embassy in Beijing had taken a Chinese delegation to Delhi to participate in a trade show at Pragati Maidan. In the night, they were taken to a Chinese restaurant run by Indians. At the end of the meal, one of the Chinese said, “This is very good Indian food. I like it a lot.”
In China, they cook everything on a high flame for a short period. “Each vegetable or meat retains its original flavour,” says Suresh. “For example, when I eat cauliflower in a Chinese restaurant, it tastes like cauliflower. In India, we use too many spices and overcook it. Essentially, we murder the original taste but we create a taste that is quintessentially Indian.”
(Published in Mathrubhumi English edition)
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