Buying the Law

I ate at a Muslim restaurant the other night and in a slip of cultural awareness, my friends and I tried to order some beer as a compliment to our very delicious meal (seriously, delicious). We were immediately reminded that as a genuine Muslim restaurant, alcohol was not to be served on the premises. “Ok, no problem,” we muttered, as we came to accept our sober fate. Less than two minutes later, however, the same waitress who snubbed us came back and said that for a 35 RMB 服务费 (service fee), she would go next door and help us buy whatever booze we wanted. Now while this type of thoughtfulness might tickle some people, it made me pretty angry.

There are some rules that I agree with and some rules I don’t, but I simply can not stand for this kind of soft, indeterminate, inconsistent behavior/management. This “for the right price” attitude has got to change for China to continue its evolution into a respected power. There are some things money shouldn’t be able to buy. Now don’t get me wrong; I’m not a “buy-the-book” kind of guy. In fact, I’d like to echo the sentiment of my dear friend Yusha, with whom I recently spoke with on the topic of practical wisdom.* She shared with me her consent that people need to know when to break the rules – a skill developed from experience and exercised in an environment that allows for improvisation. “This,” Yusha confesses, “is exactly the problem I've been encountering in China lately...A mindless adherence to the letter of the rule instead of the spirit of the rule, or instead of understanding when a rule should not apply.” So it’s not the rule-breaking that bothers me, but the conditions under which it so often happens here, i.e., for money, because you’re white, because you’re Chinese...

In this regard, China is no different from the US; it doesn’t need Steven Seagal either.

*Click here to watch, can you guess?...yep...a TED Talks talk by Barry Schwartz on the importance of practical wisdom in a society gone mad with bureaucracy.