Culture and Privilege in Capitalist Asia - Jurusan Antropologi ...

226 STRATIFICATION AND MOBILITY IN URBAN CHINA
ways, to overcome uncertainty and risk in a capricious social and economic
environment. For them, success and wealth are often dependent on combining
individual resources and talents with the opportunities and information that come
through relations with others. Hence, developing trust and social reciprocity among
close friends, partners and colleagues is an important element in social life. Many of
the culturally defined actions and practices of urban China’s ‘new rich’ become
clearer when we examine them through this prism of cultivating and consolidating
interpersonal affinity and trust. 7 In this final section, I will describe some of these
objects and practices.
Anybody who has spent time in a Chinese city like Beijing will be familiar with
many of the objects and practices that define the lifestyle of urban China’s
moneyed elite. Most notable are the emphases on collective sociability in settings
such as restaurants, nightclubs and karaoke bars; the highly visible (and
expensive) items such as portable telephones and imported cars; and the emphasis
given to consuming–and being seen to consume–‘famous brand’ (mingpai’r)
goods. In many cases, tastes for pleasures, such as for Cantonese yum-cha or
French brandy, have been diffused from the commercial hubs of Hong Kong and
Japan. Set against the self-conscious austerity which characterised Maoist social
ethos, and which still provides an important underpinning for many social
attitudes, this new ethic of consumption is even more striking.
The unspoken rules and expectations governing the new milieu of calculated
extravagance have been well described in Shi Xianmin’s study of individual
business operators in Beijing. Shi describes how relations between private traders
–who are both rivals and allies in the competition for customers–work according
to implicit but strict rules (Shi 1993). Above all, aspiring successful business
operators must win and maintain the trust and respect of their peers, a requirement
reflected in the forms of sociality and consumption that characterise their lifestyle.
Solving many of the problems of running a private business in Beijing, such as
reducing or avoiding tax and choosing, ordering and pricing goods, needs the
assistance of other traders. Shi observes that the kind of social relationship which
facilitates this commercial activity:
is an ethos of mateship (gemenr yiqi) based on exchange relations. The usual
way to give things, for example, taking along cigarettes… Paying the
expenses of these connections has already been incorporated into the
business costs, something that has to be factored into market prices… Many
interest relations are based on friendship ties; treating someone to a meal,
giving presents, even gambling together.
(Shi 1993:300—1) 8
Shi quotes one small proprietor who sums up this nexus between reputational
concerns, conspicuous consumption and making wealth in an uncertain
environment: