finishing touch

My time in Beijing is almost over. I am going home in a week, and not too late. Temperatures have dropped below -10 degrees, permanently it seems. Too cold for me.

Overall, there are a bunch of lessons learned during these two months here. One is this:

 

 

 

 

It’s a sort of business card. Michael and me devised it. We chose ‘lingtong’ designating something like “clever-connection” as a proper representation of what we do. The red figure is an old form of writing the character ‘ling’, which symbolizes cleverness. On the left site we consequently put down each of our individual contact information as well as a common e-mail-address.

This card is unusual for Chinese standards for three reasons.

1. The card is black giving some people the impression that we are in the funeral business. Perhaps, not a wise choice of colour then. Black represents death, after all. But not every Chinese shares this sentiment. Indeed only older people have told us black may be inappropriate or misleading. There have been also favourable responses especially by younger Chinese. The colour has an additional side effect, related to practical rather than emotional judgement. The card, as opposed to white cards, is useless as scrap-paper to be used for putting down notes or telephone numbers.

2. The card contains the contact information of two people, rather than one. This is unusual because normally a card represents an individual only.

3. The card refers to ‘lingtong’ as an as yet undefined and in legal terms non-existent company. Some people have been confused by the simplicity and broadness of the company’s symbolic representation. In China it is common for company to carry really long names that try to describe what the company is actually doing.

It is interesting to see how people react to the card and how they use it. Notable is, despite the confusion it often raises it is also easily remembered. It may not inform well about the people behind it, but in the end it fulfils a much more important function: leaving a trace in people’s minds. After all, this is probably the main reason why personal cards are so important in China in the first place. When encountering people in everyday life, here it is much more common to exchange cards that hold contact and representational information than it is in Europe. In fact, it appears indispensable to have a name-card and to bring it along wherever one goes. Exchanging name-cards in China is a basic social gesture among strangers, sometimes even akin to a handshake.

I assume this is because:

1. The fluctuation of people moving in and out of cities like Beijing is quite high, the name-card appears as the only way to leave a memorable trace of one’s persona and a key to access other people’s lifes. Indeed, here the name-card is generally important for establishing a loose and extended social network.
2. In China individuals are ruled by identity-cards. The cards define, often somewhat arbitrarily, to which ethnicity one belongs, where one comes from etc. This is turn configures the access to state privileges or the lack thereof. To get a passport for overseas travel is much easier for Beijing-residents than, say, for Yunnan province residents. To receive one of the few spots at top-rank Universities is easier for people defined as belonging to an ethnic minority than for Han-Chinese. Thus, contrary, to the dictates of the identity-card, the name-card is only subject to one’s own design preferences. On such a name-card, I choose who I am and what I do. The name-card is a peculiar practise of freedom, standing in opposition to the ‘other’ invariable identity-card.
3. Finally, name-cards are of course also important for the information they hold. This information, as it spreads and circulates, it enables the gift and favour economy of Chinese culture to work more effectively. It thus takes the status of a informational currency. If one possesses many cards, and keeps in contact with the card-holders one may be more effective in activating support for various projects, be they of business or private value. It is for this reason that name-cards in China are not just simply business cards. As an informational currency name-cards transcend boundaries of private, public or business use. They work virtually anywhere.