Word of the Day: Tegong

A university canteen with students in the back lining up for food

When I worked at a state media outlet in Beijing, at 12 noon we would get our empty food containers and chopsticks, and gather at the canteen door for some grub. Only when the staff were ready were the doors unlocked and we could see what grub was available.

There were thick noodles with a tomato and scrambled egg sauce, small plates of appetizers like pickled garlic cucumbers, or spicy pickled wood ear fungus, or even steamed or fried small fish.  My favourite on Thursdays was jiaozi, or dumplings. I'd get two catties' worth, or about 20 of them and was very happy eating them with a good dose of vinegar. The food was also very cheap too, only a few yuan.

Tomato and scrambled egg with noodles in soup

After a few days or weeks, I can't remember, a colleague I was eating lunch with said we were lucky to have good food. He explained that because we were working for a company that was state owned, the food was of a good quality. Of course he added, senior officials had access to the best quality food.

I was relieved to hear this, as there were so many stories of fake food in China, but I was also surprised to hear this privilege we had, just from working in state media, my colleagues toiling for 3,000 yuan a month.

Now I know there is a word for it, called 特需供應 te(4) xu (1) gong (1) ying (4) or tegong meaning "special supply", where food comes from organic farms, and quality trusted pork, beef and chicken producers.

This privilege extends to all canteens of local governments, state-owned enterprises, and elite athletes, while everyone else has to guess if the food they are eating is not dodgy.

Dumplings were never served like this in the canteen...

Tegong is an ancient tradition in China, where royal households in past dynasties used to source food from designated suppliers in regions known for their particular produce. One example is that during the Qing dynasty, emperors would only drink spring water from Beijing's western hills, which were carried over daily to the Forbidden City.

The tradition continued after the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949 for Communist Party leaders. The main reason was for food security to ensure central government officials were not poisoned, the second was for food security during famines and food shortages. The third is reputation, where the government designates certain farms and suppliers for overseas consumption, including Hong Kong, so that the quality and safety is ensured.

During the 1980s, one of the grievances that led to the Tiananmen Square protests was anger against officials' privileges that included tegong. After the bloody crackdown, the government promised to do away with the tegong system, but the measure wasn't implemented.

And so this privilege is still here to this day, while people continue to buy milk powder outside of China, and any other food they can get their hands on.

Until government officials eat the regular food that the laobaixing or ordinary people eat, food scandals will continue to fester, while the privileged can enjoy their tegong food.

Laobaixing Capital Outflows

Chinese nationals can only take out US$50,000 per year

I caught up with several friends in Beijing, both locals and expats, and the big issue for them was getting money out of China.

In the news Beijing is trying to stop capital outflows in the hundreds of billions of dollars. While one might think this mostly applies to large companies, it affects ordinary people, or laobaixing too.

My expat friend was having a hard time because his wife who is Chinese, has a fledgling business in the Chinese capital and they have to pay suppliers up front who are outside of China. They try to wire the money out, but their bank stops them, saying they aren't allowed to do this transaction. He says it's random -- sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

And then for my local friends, getting money out has become a big obsession. Over lunch two of them were excitedly going over ways, from buying up US dollars and even the pound Sterling -- they think it'll go up after Brexit (?!), and even going to Hong Kong to buy life insurance.

Locals are anxious to get their money out of China

"Buying life insurance products there aren't just for life insurance -- it's an investment vehicle," one said.

Then during dinner with another friend, she announced to me that she had bought a condo in Toronto -- and her husband didn't even know about it!

She doesn't even know where in Toronto it is, but it was her second best choice after Vancouver made it harder for foreign investors to buy property. "Maybe when my daughter grows up she can go to school in Toronto and live in the apartment," she said.

This friend used to work in state media and now works for one of the big Chinese internet companies, and so her salary must be exponentially larger than what she used to earn 10 years ago when I met her.

That on top probably extra money from her parents has enabled her to invest abroad.

And she's only 30.

I asked all these friends why they were so concerned about getting money out of China, and they said they didn't have confidence in the government.

They also said the yuan was depreciating and so they wanted some guarantee for their hard-earned money.

But it is a vicious cycle -- the more people invest in foreign currencies, the further the yuan depreciates, and that makes them even more worried, and they continue to exchange more money.

Beijing is very anxious about the situation. Currently each person can take out a maximum of US$50,000 per year. That will be halved next year.

These further restrictions are making people even more anxious, and there's no end in sight...

Written Loyalty to the Party?

A newlywed couple began their new life together copying the constitution...

The Communist Party of China is demanding its 88 million members show their loyalty by copying out the 15,000-character constitution -- by hand.

In an article published by PLA Daily, it warned members against just mindlessly copying the text, that they should use the opportunity to fully understand the meaning before they published their final product on social media.

"If copying out is just about moving the pen and is not done wholeheartedly... if it fails to touch the thoughts and the soul, the well-intended campaign will lose its meaning and be reduced to a form of delicate formalism," said the PLA Daily article.

Did they spark a trend endorsed by Beijing or was it staged?

"The purpose of transcribing is to study and to be awakened, to remind yourself of your original intention [of joining the party] by engaging full-heartedly," it added.

The campaign first got attention after a newlywed couple was photographed writing paragraphs on their wedding night.

Didn't they have more important things to do on their wedding night than copy of several hundred words of the constitution? Many thought the photos were staged.

Chen Daoyin, an associate professor at Shanghai University of Political Science and Law, said the campaign was eerily similar to people studying quotations from Mao Zedong during the Cultural Revolution.

"This reflects a societal turn to the left since Xi rose to power," Chen said. "But society is progressing, and the new generation is under an age of rapid development of the media and information, is no longer the same. These campaigns nowadays often end up as a target for sarcasm by society, as the propaganda apparatus is always falling behind social development."

He added the campaign had already been abused, saying there were 20 migrant workers in Jiangxi province who were hired by a company to hand copy out the constitution in front of a high court to protest the court's handling of a case involving the company.

Some sections of the constitution copied by others

It does seem kind of Cultural Revolutionary to have to copy out the constitution -- does that prove one is "more red" than the next person?

Or is it evidence the person is more of an obedient sheep?

Does anyone in the United States have to write out the Declaration of Independence to prove their patriotism to the country?

Are China's leaders doing it too? Or just laobaixing (ordinary folk)?

Surely there are other ways to prove one's love for their homeland -- unless they really want to practice writing Chinese characters by hand...