This restaurant in London (in Chinatown) always reminds me of Zhu Guang.
I still get e-mails from Zhu Guang who I worked with at my last company. He has gone back to Nanjing where he lives with his family (who “own” a manufacturing company, although I think it is actually state-owned and masquerading as private enterprise). He sent over a very conventional e-mail photograph album of himself with his Chinese girlfriend, in mannered vignettes, Chinese music playing in the background.
His mood alternates between extreme nationalist faith in the achievements of China (how the nation is moving forward step by step, how they are getting more confidence, how the cities are booming) with a fatalistic expectation that when a great moment of crisis arrives they always lose their ability to act and become paralysed (“pitiful”). He also tells me, often, that the situation is “serious” (without explaining what is serious, or why). My interpretation is that he wants China to be successful, but does not want the Communist Party to be credited with this success (this is just my interpretation – I have no way of knowing whether it is true).
When he was in the United Kingdom he told me that in a field near his parents’ home public executions take place, and when the prisoners have been shot in the head the executioners stick metal chopsticks into the bullet holes to make sure the victims are dead. In the factories the machine operatives become deformed because they are doing the same repetitive movements all day (developing massive muscles in one arm from operating a piece of machinery). As a joke I once told him IT should always kow-tow to Marketing – in response he got down on his knees and performed kow-tow.
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