One more on China, India, and the Western media
In two previous posts,
here and
here, overseas Chinese readers have presented very different views on whether Western press outlets were ganging up against China, and whether India was by comparison getting a free ride.
As a worthy complement to these arguments, an email from reader Shreeharsh Kelkar, giving an overseas Indian perspective:
I was pleasantly surprised to read the email you published from an
overseas Chinese citizen who thinks the western media treats China
unfairly and that he would like to see China being treated the way
India gets treated. As an Indian who lives in the US, I have many many
Indian friends who complain that the media here only talks about the
poverty in India, that they emphasize only what's wrong with the
country and not what's going right with it, that they talk only of the
poor and not of the middle class. Etc, etc.
I think both these complaints -- the Chinese and the Indian -- are, in some sense, two sides of the same coin.
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It's not just the Chinese
Recently
I mentioned the near-universal modern Chinese belief that a mobile phone, when ringing, should take precedence over anything else that might be going on -- in particular, the person you are talking or dining with at that moment. From a reader, the cross-cultural angle:
The mobile phone versus face-to-face thing is the norm in India as well, and again, is not considered rude or even unusual by the locals. I attended a family wedding in New Delhi a couple of years ago, and the priest took several calls during the ceremony. Taking our cue from the bride's parents, everybody paused while he took each call, and then resumed as if [nothing had happened]. Apparently another priest had failed to show up at a wedding across town, and that family were ringing round all the possibles...
This is one of the few India-China similarities I have come across.
DayJet may have struggled in America....
... but its goal, operating plan, and marketing language live on in India!
Check out the site for
MyJet, based in Mumbai, and its upcoming "
Per Seat, On-Demand" air taxi service in the subcontinent. "Values" rendering from the site:
For background on this whole concept, see
this article and
this book. For the sad story of DayJet, which has
just now filed for Chapter 7 ("no light at the end of the tunnel") bankruptcy, see the long skein of postings
here. As for MyJet, I say: Godspeed! Attentation of success! And all other appropriate good wishes.
Not 100% sure this would be legal in America
Beautiful evening in Bangalore; big schooners of draft Kingfisher beer on the garden-veranda of a luxurious hotel in the center of the city. Evening falls. To perfect the experience and make sure we are not bothered by mosquitoes attracted to the ornamental pond nearby, a helpful touch from the hotel management: our own chemical fogger.
Kingfisher with an overlay of aerosol insecticide -- hard to beat!
The first thing you notice when you come to India after China
India and China are so fundamentally different in so many ways that it is amazing that Americans often talk about them as a twinned pair. The Rising Asian Titans, The Billion-Strong Powers, the countries whose people will take our jobs, etc. They’re similar only in the grossest ways - big populations, economies that are rapidly growing, many many citizens who are poor and a few who are very rich.
As for the differences, there are a zillion for later exploration, and one that is stunning the instant you set foot in India (where I have been before, but not recently). The difference is, children
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