Fuwuyuan

Another observation mainly made in restaurants, but it’s the same in a lot of shops, hotels, bars and even a place like the gym. Not that I go to the gym, but I did take a look there, cause a lot of Chinese people see this as a new modern thing, and the gym promoters have given me about 10 flyers of the two competing gyms this city has.

When I enter a restaurant in China, at the door there is usually one, two, or even a line of waitresses standing to open the door for me and to welcome me. The amount of people at the door depends a bit on how expensive the restaurant is and how many guests they have at that moment. This means that if we eat in a more expensive place (for Wuhu/China, this is close to the price of junk food in Amsterdam) and we happen to be the only guests, that it’s not uncommon to be welcomed by a big group of waitresses. This is kind of amusing while at the same time a bit intimidating sometimes.

Somewhere the behavior of the waitresses reminds me a bit of restaurants in America. In America the waiters are very welcoming and friendly but they have to be, because their salary is made out of tips and of course they only get a good tip if they do a good job. In China however there are no tips and I’m sure that if you try to give one they will give back the money. How they do get their salary is a very good question, cause the food and especially the drinks are sold in restaurants for only a few kuai more than the cost price. If I buy a beer in a normal restaurant it will cost me about 5 kuai, which is almost 60 eurocents. This bottle will cost about 4 kuai in the supermarket and I’m sure the restaurants can get it for less, but there’s no need for math to figure out that they earn far less with drinks as the restaurants in Holland do.

This small and amusing restaurant observation leads to the biggest problem China has, and which is the main reason for almost all the other problems this country has to face. Whether it’s pollution, unemployment, poverty, human rights or social unrest, it’s all because of the massive population. Everywhere you go there are people. Too much people. I come from one of the most populated countries in the world, but it feels empty compared to China. Numbers are overrated in my opinion and they are not much more than a indicator. However just to think about, for every Dutch person on this planet there are almost (unofficially 1.5 billion Chinese) a hundred Chinese people. So one Dutch person equals 9 Chinese football teams plus coach. In comparison, one Dutch person would only equal about 20 Americans. Not even two football teams! China is about the same size as the United States, maybe a little bigger.

A normal evening at Nanjing train station.

Paradoxical this population problem is also the cause of the whole China hype, and the main reason why the rapid economic growth is possible. Employment is extremely cheap because there are too much people to do the job, this makes it possible for employers like restaurants to have more staff than guests on some days. This makes service in restaurants in general very good, because the waiters and waitresses have a very high interest in keeping their job and in China there is usually someone to watch them doing their job.