Arrg...I Voted

            After forgetting the previous 2 times and leaving me feeling sad, Yangyi came prepared for meeting. First, he wanted to discuss the election. He wanted me to explain how it worked. It all started with him asking if Obama was re-elected, and I said yes. He said ok. I wasn’t sure if that was going to be the end of the conversation or not, so I asked if he had watched the election the previous night. He said no. When I said that I did and that it was my first time voting, he became interested. I think he was surprised I was able to vote. His first question was who I voted for. I explained to him that that is kind of the point of voting with secret ballots; it’s your own private business. He didn’t really drop it then, so I told him. He wanted me to describe the process. I tried my hardest to give an accurate representation, but found it really challenging to explain to him. I guess I’ve never really been put in that position before where I need to explain the complex voting system in simple English. The description went well until I used the terminology “Electoral College.” Naturally, hearing the word “College” he thought of an educational institution. I had tried to say something to the effect that it wasn’t a university for students but that it was the deciding factor in presidential votes to explain the Electoral College, but after hearing the word “College” I was hard pressed to get his thoughts away from the word.

            After my failed – clearly - attempt of explaining voting the American way, I asked him about the Chinese President and how they are voted into office. Of course, I use “voted” loosely. Basically he says that if Male A is a war hero then the country will love and take care of Male B (Male A’s son) and eventually condition him to become the President. There really isn’t a second candidate. When the ballots come out there is Male B who the whole country has gotten to know over the years and maybe random Male Z, but everyone chooses Male B because they know him.

            And then our conversation switched dramatically to pirating. Not the “Yo Ho Ho and a Bottle of Rum” kind of pirating, but the illegal copying of music, movies, software, etc. kind. Apparently there is a lot of pirating in China and it is socially accepted, tolerated, and even endorsed. Technically the government doesn’t like it, but apparently because there are so many people, and consequently so many computers, for them to watch, most pirating is available online with no consequence. He laughed – laughed! – when I said that you could be put in jail or fined for it here. He says most everyone in China has pirated everything. He says no one uses Microsoft Word, because the “off-brand,” pirated material is so heavily available that it would be foolish to pay for it when you could get it for free so easily. I countered with the fact that here it is called stealing. He basically insinuated that it is there too, but no one cares. It’s free, so why care.

This is where we started getting into the money/credit discussion. One reason I think we are so serious about pirating is that thing that is being pirated someone invested their time into it and came up with the idea out of their own head and from their own work. Because America tries to connect success with merit, it is very important here to note what success came out of your hard work. Here we like to say, this person invented this and that person invented that. In China, it is more about blending and creating a better society as a whole. Because it does nothing for your status to have created this thing or that or to have achieved this goal or that, there is less of a seriousness at watching the thievery of pirated objects.