50 Holiday specials The Economist December 18th 2021
ing members of the southern Vietnamese
diaspora, especially from America, were a
source of investment and entrepreneurial
energy. In contrast, the north spent de
cades as a communist, wartime economy.
Prodded during a Zoom interview to de
scribe regional stereotypes, Mr Le at first
demurs, for he is a serious academic. Then,
as he is also a genial sort, heplays along. By
reputation, he says, northerners are more
interested in politics and jobs in govern
ment, but southerners are drawn to com
merce. Northern winters are very cold, he
goes on. And because that is hard on farm
ers, life as an official is an appealing alter
native. In the hot, tropical south, there is
only a dry season and a rainy season. “They
have an abundance of fruit and fish and
rice, especially in the Mekong delta. So
people don’t have to work as hard. So they
are maybe a bit lazy,” says Mr Le.
That is fascinating, I tell Mr Le from my
office in Beijing, but also puzzling. For al
most identical stereotypes—involving
harsh winters that drive northerners into
government, while southerners enjoy a life
of ease—are applied to different bits of
China. And here is another thing: on a map,
China’s hot, southern, commercially
minded regions lie above your frigid north.
Mr Le pauses. “What is winter for Vietnam
ese people is maybe summer for other peo
ple,” he laughs.
China is a handy place to explore such
mysteries. To generalise,the Chinese rel
ish stereotypes. Indeed, sensitive foreign
ers are best off avoiding any discussion of
regional, national, ethnic, racial and reli
gious differences when in China, unless
they want to hear all about the athleticism
of black people and the cleverness of Jews.
Food, a beloved topic, is often linked to
regional character. By common consent,
China’s north is shaped by wheatgrowing
and noodleeating, but its south is influ
enced by its staple crop, rice. Some years
ago American and Chinese researchers
published a “rice theory”, after finding
higher levels of individualism among stu
dents surveyed in north China, and more
group loyalty among southern ones. They
saw a link with the traditional culture of
rice farmers, who must pool labour and co
operate when flooding paddyfields. In
contrast,wheat farmers mostly rely on rain
and need not work with neighbours, for
theirs is not as labourintensive a crop.
Dongxing, a coastal town on China’s
border with Vietnam, lies 2,500km south
of Beijing. A balmy spot in the farsouthern
province of Guangxi, its population is
swelled each year by tourists and long
term visitors from northern China, espe
cially retirees fleeing freezing winters. It is
a fertile place in which to harvest north
south stereotypes. The nearest Vietnamese
city, Mong Cai, lies just across the Beilunriver, a sluggish, brown creek 50 metres
wide. It is so close that, with the naked eye,
it is possible to see Vietnamese border
guards lounging in folding chairs on the
far bank, fishing rods at their sides. Before
covid19 controls closed the nearby Friend
ship Bridge, Vietnamese tourists arrived
each day. A trader in teak chopping boards,
who will give only his surname, Deng, calls
folk from northern China welleducated
but standoffish. They are better suited to
officialdom than business, he mutters. A
veteran traveller to both Hanoi and Ho Chi
Minh City, he calls southern Vietnamese
food tastier, and southern women prettier.
Mr Deng’s prosouthern chauvinism is
ironic, given thatnorthern Vietnam is the
source of the wood on which his business
depends. It is illegal to cut large teak trees
in China, he explains, but luckily Vietnam
does not enforce laws well.
Belgium feels a long way from the mud
dy, jungly riverbanks of Dongxing. But the
conversations in this humid Chinese town
are oddly familiar. As in Belgium, the prox
imity of a proudly northern bit of the
world, a few metres away, in no way shakes
the locals’ conviction that here, they are
southerners in every respect.the upside down
Delightfully, northsouth clichés reverse
on the far side of the equator—a discovery I
made during a posting to Australia. To
meet starched establishment types, I head
ed south, to Melbourne, Adelaide and oth
er genteel cities with mild climates. In con
trast,to interview Pauline Hanson, then a
fastrising nativist politician, I flew to
Cairnsin Queensland’s sweltering north. I
found her stirring up alarm about immi
gration making Australia “a foreign coun
try”, by which she seemed to mean less
white. “I’m not antiimmigrant, but we
don’t want to be Asianised,” she explained.
“We’ve got crime with machetes now.”
Regional generalisations suggest some
larger truths about human nature. For one
thing, people are hardwired to make rela
tive judgments: defining lives as harsh or
lazy in comparison with those lived by
neighbours.Also, human beings are over
whelmingly interested by their own societ
ies. That is why so few notice, or care, if
their country’s supposedly hot, lazy south
sits atop another nation’s chilly, business
like north. This is no cause for dismay. If
over two decades on the road teaches any
thing, it is that the world is not a machine
whose workings can be explained with the
laws of physics. Foreign affairs more close
ly resemble a noisy, ceaseless family argu
ment that outsiders can never fully under
stand. Faithfully recording that cacopho
ny, and tryingtoextract some sense from
it, is the foreigncorrespondent’s job, at ev
ery latitude.n