O***O
发帖数: 1854 | 1 As the west panics about growth, the Chinese are out enjoying themselves
The Chinese economy is collapsing. We all know that right? All of us except
about a billion Chinese, many of whom are out enjoying themselves like there
’s no dire tomorrow.
At just about the time that the west recently awakened from its summer
market torpor to get into a right panic about Chinese growth, Liang Lulu and
her friends were taking a passel of kids out for a night at a Chinese
caravan park — just for the sheer fun of being a member of the nouveau
middle class in China.
The kids — for whom the gruelling school year starts on Tuesday — were
darting in and out of the caravans at the Chongming Dongping Forest Park,
about an hour outside Shanghai. And the mums were having a blast taking
selfies of all the merriment. It’s enough to make one wonder why they were
not inside watching grim prognostications about the Chinese economy, on the
caravan’s flatscreen television. Instead, they were doing what China’s
State Council, or cabinet, recently decreed they should do lots more of:
taking time off to spend money and boost the domestic economy.
On August 11, for example, the State Council announced that it wanted
employers to give Chinese workers half a day off every Friday in the
summertime, so that they could do things like caravanning. That’s hardly a
classic Chinese response to impending destitution: work less. But that’s
the point. China aims to boost its economy not by making more exportable
widgets but by persuading its citizens to spend more on things such as
tourism and relaxation, hoping that will take up the economic slack, in the
new, less manufacturing-dependent China. So, in good old authoritarian style
, the mandarins have decreed that the country needs more caravan parks, ski
resorts, cruise terminals — and 57,000 new or renovated toilets at tourist
attractions.
In fact, toilets are a bit of a focus here, too: April Pan, 12, even manages
to tear herself away from afternoon TV just to wax lyrical about the loo
and its adjacent compact bath. April has come to Chongming for her first
recreational-vehicle experience, with her father and five-year brother —
with whom she will share the mini bunk beds. Chen Lina is at the park with
husband, daughter and granny (a classic combination in China’s RV world).
Like everyone else we met at the park, they are RV newbies: “I never knew
there was a bathroom inside,” says April, who says the loo is her “
favourite room”.
RVs don’t come cheap, though. Buying one can easily cost half a million
renminbi ($78,000) or more, and even one night’s rental at Chongming on a
weekend — the park’s 90 stationary caravans are mostly full on summer
weekends — can cost Rmb900 or more, as much as a luxury hotel room (without
the joys of a chemical toilet). And they don’t even have the facilities
much beloved of overseas caravan fanatics: there was no cooker in the ones
we visited. On the other hand, one of the joys of stationary RV camping —
not a pastime that’s much of a hit in the west, where RV campers usually
prefer self-drive — is that you don’t have to worry about where to dump
the contents of the loo.
As an RV fanatic myself, the first question I asked at Chongming was: where
is the park’s “dump station”. The reception staff looked blank: no one
had ever asked that before. RV enthusiast Zhou Yaming explains why: “I use
the RV bathroom only when I have no other choice, or dump the waste in a
petrol station toilet.” A salesman at the Centech RVing Club, Wang Zhiqiang
, said most clients just dump it any old where.
I did that recently in New Zealand and a national park warden (quite rightly
) made me feel like a sociopath. But in China, it seems, that simply is not
an issue. Doubtless, the State Council will see fit to publish a decree
about that too — hopefully before too much RV waste finds its way into
China’s already too-fragrant rivers.
Mr Wang says China’s recent stock market misfortunes could mean some
clients might not have the liquidity right now to fork out Rmb500,000 in
cash for a custom-made RV. But nobody thinks this market is going anywhere
but way, way up in the near term. It seems somebody forgot to tell the RV
enthusiasts that there’s an economic collapse around the corner. |
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