Is time money?

Building on the last post about the primacy of money in the Chinese mindset, today we take a look at how this stacks up with a contrasting view from the U.S. This post picks up exactly where the last one left off, just after Carolyn Blackman has described the elaborate, theatrical negotiations she observed in a local Chinese market.

Blackman notes, in her observations, the tremendous amount of sheer time that is required for these negotiations to be carried out. Time is willingly expended in vast quantities in order to save, from a Western perspective, a relatively small amount of money. In the West, in contrast, we would be inclined to spend a bit more money if we could save time.

This is, according to China expert Janet Carmosky, one of the fundamental differences between China and the U.S.: the “domain of scarcity” in the U.S. is time; in China, it’s money.

In my experience the starkest example of the Chinese time-versus-money calculus is the behavior of Chinese drivers at certain points on toll expressways near urban centers. One such place is the Badaling Expressway in Beijing.

Driving north-northwest from the center of Beijing, the Badaling Expressway becomes a toll road right around the Fourth Ring Road. Just before the toll booth is an exit, where drivers can choose to travel on the frontage road and pay no tolls, or to stay on the main road and pay tolls. The first toll exit is about two and a half miles north of the toll booth. Exiting there requires a payment of five yuan, which is less than a dollar at the current exchange rate of 6.7.

In normal traffic the travel time from the toll booth to the exit is just under five minutes. Contrast this with the travel time along the toll-free frontage road covering the same stretch of the expressway. Late at night it might be five extra minutes. But during normal traffic it could easily take an hour or more to cover those 2.5 miles.

If we factor in living standard differences, it is not a stretch to say that to your average Beijing driver, 5 yuan is roughly equivalent to $5.00. In the U.S., how many people do you know who would not pay $5.00 to save an hour on the road?

This difference might partially explain the contrast between the American and Chinese emphases in responses to the rock band question. To an American, whatever religious or quasi-religious ideas she might have about life and talents, her sense of the preciousness of time is likely to compound the urgency even further: time is wasting, so Tom had better get on with his rock career. Money will come somehow, but time is running out. In the typical Chinese view, time will take care of itself somehow, but money must be struggled for and held onto.

The differences in American and Chinese interpretations do not and cannot boil down simply to the difference between “time is scarce” and “money is scarce.” Besides, both time and money are scarce in both cultures. And yet, seeing things through this lens helps, I think, understand better the moment-to-moment calculus of members of one culture versus the other.

Another way of looking at the differences in Chinese and American perspectives is one of pseudo-ethereal idealism versus hard-nosed pragmatism: the Americans, with their abundant resources, have the luxury of pursuing dreams, while the Chinese, with their enormous population and worn-out natural environment, must struggle for everything they can get. This too is an oversimplification, but also gets at something fundamental — something we will take a look at later.