Characters of Chinese Cities

Cultures of Three Cities

I have never gone aboard in my life, so what I know about the western culture is not what I have really experienced. That’s the reason why I decided to write something about cultures of different areas in China. I believe I could do much better if I write this article in Chinese. After all, what I want to write is about the Chinese culture, which is more familiar to me.

I have experienced three different styles of culture: Beijing Style, Shanghai Style and Chengdu Style. They are absolutely different, but you can’t never simply say which one is better, that’s the charm of cities.

I was born in Chengdu, Sichuan Province. In that city, people live a very peaceful life. They could spend the whole afternoon in the tea house, chatting with each other from history to modern politics. And that could be a regional character. And this kind of chat is very different from the chat in Beijing. All chat of Chengdu has a common topic -- eat.

Let’s first come to the natural environment. Chengdu is located in Sichuan Basin, with Daba Mountain in the north and Wushan Mountain in the east. It means in winter, the city won’t be affected by the cold wind coming from Siberia and can get warm and water from the south. Mountains in the east protect the city from most wars. This geographical advantage formed warm and mild climate, as well as the rich resources. So people here don’t need too much effort but can get whatever they want easily. In China, we call it ‘The City of Heaven’.

Rich natural resources means low price and the local low price means they don’t need too much money but could still live a good life. People here enjoy their life, don’t think about long-term future. So people in this city have more freedom. They are loyal to friends and easy going. And they are always thinking about how to relax. By the way, snacks in Chengdu are also very famous. They live an easy life, which formed their plain and simple characters.

Shanghai is very different. When it comes to Shanghainese, the first impression of most people is smart. It seems Shanghai is a city of business, and all Shanghainese are natural businessman. Of course that’s not the truth, but they have such kind of talents. Compared with the freedom of Chengdu, Shanghai gave me a sense of ‘Behave yourself.’ In another word, it’s very hard to make friends with Shanghainese at first. Not like the people in Chengdu or in Beijing, Shanghainese care more about ‘their own business’. But if you can really make friends with a Shanghainese, this friendship could be very deep and last for a lifetime (my personal experience).

In China, we call Beijing ‘Cheng(城)’, which means wall, but we call Shanghai ‘Shi(市)’, which means market. This could be the easiest way to tell from the two cities. Shanghai doesn’t have a long history like Beijing, or rich natural resources like Chengdu. However, Shanghai was chosen to be the door of urbanization, although the city passively accepted it instead of changing it by its own power. We could say Shanghai was forced to accept western cultures. At the same time, it provided the city, as well as its citizens, with more modern ideas and chances.

So people in this city started their own business much earlier than other place. Chinese culture is based on agriculture, but Shanghainese have already formed new thinking in bargaining and productions. So people here pay far more attention on benefits. They think time is important, and everyone walks like running. I notice this when I come back to Chengdu from Shanghai, I found I walk faster than everyone else on the street. In this way, the value of Shanghai could be much easier to understand, it could be looked as the value of business. They are easy to cooperate with, because it benefits you both. They don’t spend much time chatting like people in Beijing or Chengdu, because they think it doesn’t benefit either of you.

On the other hand, they don’t make irrational actions to situations worse. They separate public from private interests clearly. They are not very easy going but must be good assistance or cooperator.

Beijing is very big city. In China, we used say ‘Big Shanghai’ to show that this city is so large, but we never say something like ‘Big Beijing’. This city is so magnificent and confident that they don't need any adjunct words. The city itself is a symbol.

As I mentioned before, Beijing is call ‘Cheng’, which means wall. And this city really has walls maintained, showing its long history and the unique culture. The road is also very different. In Shanghai, it’s usually called street, which means it’s not just used to be passed through, it’s also for strolling and shopping. However, when I first came here in Beijing, seeing Chang An Street. It is so wide but no shops at all. I call this a kind of liberality.