Author: Karen Zhang

There is a known Chinese proverb: “When you drink water, think of its source.” If you understand Cantonese, you may hear Hong Kong officials saying jam seoi si jyun these days to stress that the city’s freshwater supply is mainly from mainland China. To be specific, Hong Kong has imported water from the Dongjiang River in Guangdong since 1965. Today, imported Dongjiang water meets up to eighty percent of the city’s total freshwater needs. Local rainwater makes up the remaining twenty percent.

When pro-independence radicals in Hong Kong burnt shops whose owners were alleged to be communist sympathizers, sprayed red paint on iconic HSBC lions, and vandalized public infrastructures, they called for boycott from everything deemed Chinese, but they may have forgotten the banking industry, the real estate industry, and even that the power and water in the city have long been tinted red. To boycott Chinese involvement in Hong Kong is class suicide.

It is shameful to politicalize natural resources on which human survival depend. But when it comes to water, governments, regardless of size, are looking for ways to claim sovereignty and make profits. China has the economic power to build dams, open canals, relocate factories to treat water pollution, and launch huge projects to transfer water from the water-abundant southern China to the draught-ridden northern plain.

China also has the might to pull the plug to stop power and water supply to Hong Kong. That’s unlikely to happen if Beijing wants to prove that Hong Kong still has a strong back from its master of “One Country.” In stressing the source of their drinking water, Beijing is making this point to Hong Kong people—do not forget your roots and be thankful for the one who feeds you.

Unless Hong Kong finds its way to diversify the city’s freshwater supplies, reducing reliance on Dongjiang water, Hong Kong protesters can’t boycott Chinese products entirely yet. As a matter of fact, after the 2019 havoc in Hong Kong, Beijing is speeding up the economic development of the Greater Bay Area. What used to be called the Pearl River Delta that created tens of millions of manufacturing jobs now has been expanded to the Greater Bay Area which includes Hong Kong and Macau. Urbanization and cooperation between mainland cities and Hong Kong and Macau will deepen water reliance on major rivers and hydropower energy in Guangdong. I’m talking about seventy million people and rising are competing for the same water resources in this region.     

Pro-democracy Hong Kongers call for a more distinct “Two Systems” model in the city while Beijing interprets the call as too much emphasis on Western values but too little emphasis on patriotism by Hong Kong youths. Before “One Country, Two Systems” sets to expire in 2047, Hong Kong has lost at least two generations who are in despair and lost faith in government.

There is no permanent friends or enemies, only permanent interests. I think this well-known principle in international relations also applies to China’s so-called domestic issue about Hong Kong democracy. Hong Kong may not appear to be as important to China as it was two decades ago. But there have been plenty of elites and princelings who successfully have obtained permanent resident status in Hong Kong or via Hong Kong to handle their assets in between two different financial systems—the government-controlled one and the free market.

When it comes to political differences, few Beijing-backed, new Hong Kongers would defend “Two Systems.” They know—without saying it out loud as a wise guy might do—that the “Two Systems” is conditional and one way—just like the flow of Dongjiang water from Jiangxi province to Guangdong to Hong Kong.

There are mega bridges, highways, high speed trains connecting major cities in the Greater Bay Area. There are relaxed rules of housing, education and retirement for residents of Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan in mainland China, especially in the economic zones like the Greater Bay Area. Economic mobility is ensured in the decades to come. More economic successes only enlarge Beijing’s shadow in democratic cities like Hong Kong and Macau. Will Dongjiang water unite or divide Hong Kong? Only time can tell.

Do you want to leave a comment? Click here.

2020 finally comes to us. Unlike the futuristic movies I watched in childhood that forecast in the imaginative year of 2020, cars would be flying in the skies and that humans would be living with aliens from outer space. Nothing has come true in reality although humans are advancing technology to develop self-driving cars and preparing expeditions to explore Mars.

In reality, there’re plenty of challenges for us in 2020. We start the new year with bush fires in Australia; the escalating tension between the US and China on trade and technology; and deepening clashes in ideology and the military between the US and Iran. While these events become the headlines in mass media, do you know our languages are dying off rapidly?

Linguists estimate of the 7,000 languages spoken in the world today, nearly half of them are in danger of extinction and are likely to disappear in this century. In fact, they are now falling out of use at a rate of about one every two weeks, according to an old article in The New York Times thirteen years ago.

2020 does not begin a new decade but ends one. Looking back, if linguists made such an estimate about dying languages more than a decade ago, a decade later there must be spoken languages already dead.

When an endangered species is pronounced dead, biologists and the world will mourn it and resent the fact that humans have not done enough to preserve them. Some will even blame human activities for the cause of the extinction of the species. Skeptics will argue that it’s the cause of nature just like the extinction of the dinosaurs before the advent of humans.

As much as we praise the Internet for bringing us convenience and the closeness of the world, I wonder how many websites we’re browsing are in the dominant languages and how many of them are in the endangered languages? You’re reading this article in English, so the answer speaks for itself.

Does that mean websites in an endangered language are unpopular? Yes but no. Endangered languages are spoken by different ethnic groups at different sea levels on the planet. On the Tibetan plateau at least four Tibetan dialect groups are spoken. An isolated language that has never been studied by linguists is found on remote South Pacific islands of Vanuatu. American Indians can speak English as well as their tribal languages; so can American Amish.

From an economic viewpoint, if money doesn’t circulate, it loses its value. It’s more profitable to create a website in a dominant language than a website in an endangered language. The flow of the viewers is like money, isn’t it?

Older speakers of an endangered language may still cling to their mother tongue, but driven by economic needs and other reasons, younger speakers would rather use the dominant language in the society to communicate with outsiders. It’s tragic that native speakers can’t use their mother tongue in more domains in their life. Use it or lose it. Fewer users of the native languages will lead to the fate of the language becoming obsolete.

Urbanization and political decision can bring hope as well as a death sentence. With the support of local government and artists, the once declining Low German, widely known as Platt, is now one of the popular dialects in Northern Germany. It is taught in school curriculum and used in staging theater performances. Let’s flip the other side of the coin. Chinese Mandarin is thriving because, domestically, there is suppression of local dialects and, globally, there is China’s economic influence attracting more non-native speakers to learn Mandarin. This is sad news for speakers of other Chinese dialect groups. Learn more in my previous piece “Portuguese Renaissance.”

According to the UNESCO Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger, between 1950 and 2010, 230 languages went extinct. Today, a third of the world’s languages have fewer than 1,000 speakers left.

Don’t forget. Many dying languages have no written forms. Investigating an extinct species, archaeologists may someday find its fossil or food chain from other living creatures. But for an extinct language, without written form, when the last speaker passes on, the language dies with the speaker. I hope there will be some folk songs, nursery rhymes of sorts left behind for future linguists to mourn and then, perhaps, revive the fossil languages.

If my writing in Golden Orchid makes a dedication to my mother tongue Cantonese, I’m happy to do it once again in my debut novel. My new year resolution in 2020 is:

Saving the Endangered Species and Languages.

Saving the Endangered Species and Languages.

Saving the Endangered Species and Languages.

Yes, how important is it? It’s worthy of repeating three times and take action!

China’s notorious hukou system, the household registration system, is seeing some changes in the new year 2020. The system will be eliminated in cities with less than three million residents; and in cities with population of three million to five million, rules of the hukou system will be relaxed.

The media compares the decision to a Christmas gift for China’s 290 million migrant workers. Simply put, the hukou system in communist China has divided Chinese people based on their birthplace into agricultural hukou and urban hukou. Despite that tens of millions of migrant workers—the rural population—move to big cities to work, marry and even die, they and their children are not entitled to the medical, education and retirement benefits of the adopted cities.

In recent years, local governments of Chinese big cities are adopting a point-based system to vet applicants for urban hukou. This is similar to the immigration policies in some Western countries, such as Australia and Canada. Applicants are evaluated based on their education, work experience and talents.

The immigration issue is a hot stick in the US, so is the domestic migration in China. Because of the abolished One-Child Policy, four hundred million unborn babies have disappeared during the thirty years of the draconian family planning law. Chinese aging population outnumbers the working labor force. That’s why China is spending a lot of money on AI technology—high productivity with small labor. Productivity boosts economy; economy stimulates consumption; consumption triggers demands.   

I don’t see China will open its door for foreign-born citizens to become Chinese nationals in the near future. Looking around the neighboring East Asian countries: Japan has the same issue of aging population and low fertility rate, as is South Korea. But the difference is South Korea welcomes foreign workers; and Japan is slowly relaxing its immigration law but its legislation is not as fast as its robotics development. The gray-haired Japanese seniors are more likely to depend on robots than working-age humans for long-term care.

To relax the hukou system and even abolish it like the One-Child Policy is inevitable for Chinese leadership. The US-China trade war wakes up China to boost domestic consumption in order to maintain the 6.0 and above percent of annual GDP growth. Urbanization gives the perfect environment to stimulate domestic consumption. Therefore, the Christmas gift for migrant workers to settle in medium to small cities is also a long-term strategy for China to find an alternative alongside the sole dependence on manufacturing for foreign exports.

In my memoir Golden Orchid, I’ve made my point that China’s fast-changing policies affect several generations, in particular under communist rule. Tens of millions of Chinese workers were laid off due to the state-owned enterprise reform in the 1990s. Their children—most of them with urban hukou—had some tough years when their jobless parents could not meet both ends. The One-Child Policy has caused the-one-and-only only-child generation to take on a heavier social obligation than any predecessors to support the citywide welfare system.

As for the hukou system, it is not invented by the communists. The system has been in used since ancient China to keep track of who was in what family. However, under communist rule, the hukou system has become a tool for the top leaders to restrict movement and economic benefits of rural people and to create hereditary privileges of the urbanites. The relaxation of the system only means migrant workers and their children will contribute to the economic sustainability of the party’s coffers in exchange for a candy of social security. After all, to become new residents with urban hukou in mega cities, such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Chongqing, is off limits.

Happy New Year to all my readers!

It’s a linguist’s nightmare that an endangered language is dead after the last native speaker of the language passes on. Political and economic marginalization accounts for most of the world’s language endangerment, in particular, in Macau, the former Portuguese colony.

After the Macau handover in 1999 to China, Mandarin Chinese speakers in Macau outnumbered  Portuguese native speakers, although Cantonese is still the predominant language in the enclave. According to The Guardian, in 2000, the number of people who speak Patuá—a blend of Portuguese and Cantonese—was down to just 50 speakers worldwide. A year prior, UNESCO classified Patuá as a “critically endangered” language.

Despite the fact that Macau set Chinese and Portuguese as official languages after 1999 handover, the Portuguese-speaking residents of Macau are declining—older speakers pass away and young people are not interested in learning the out-of-fashion Macanese Portuguese. It was estimated in 2017 that only 0.6 percent of households in Macau speak Portuguese as their first language.

Growing up in Cantonese-speaking Guangzhou, I’ve witnessed how Cantonese is marginalized as new Mandarin-speaking domestic immigrants flooded in the city. As I described in my book Golden Orchid, the immigrants contributed their labor to the modernized urban development; and yet, instead of learning Cantonese, they speak their own dialects; instead of learning about the history of Cantonese culture, they bring their own to the metropolis. For instance, retired Mandarin speakers gather in the open air to dance with the company of loud music.

If the new Cantonese residents pay little attention to the Cantonese history, the new immigrants in Macau cannot be oblivious of the European architecture in the city. The road names and the local cuisine are all associated with Portuguese. I’m a strong believer that knowing a language is the first step in embracing its culture.  

But now, Beijing sees Macau as a door to the lusophone world, such as Portugal, Brazil, Angola, Mozambique and East Timor. The establishment of the BRIC economies speaks for itself. As the “Big Four” member states, Brazil and China have built a stronger-than-ever economic tie. As a result, students in the casino-dominated “Las Vegas of the East” see studying Portuguese as a shrewd career move. The territory’s government also pledged to make the city a hub for Portuguese learning. There is an increasing number of Chinese people in Macau—residents and mainland students—studying Portuguese as a second or third language. The number of native Portuguese speakers is also growing in the enclave to set up businesses or pursue careers.

As a polyglot, I cherish every language that survives regardless of the influence or intervention from a government or a ruling party. If only Beijing could see the importance of dialects in the mainland. If only the Communist leaders could embrace language diversity instead of implementing nationwide Standard Mandarin through coercive measures. If only today’s Portuguese renaissance in Macau could last for generations.

This week Chinese president Xi Jinping will visit Macau to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the handover. His uplifting speech in Mandarin Chinese will no doubt increase the confidence of the Portuguese speakers in the casino hub. Will his speech also strengthen investors’ faith in China’s goal of turning the enclave a financial hub as a backstop to the neighboring untamed Hong Kong? Let’s wait and see.

Anti-pollution makeup has become the latest trend in China. In fact, sales see an uptick in India, South Korea and even in Britain. As city air becomes more toxic, the demand for anti-pollution skincare products is soaring. Many cosmetics companies are capitalizing on the environmental problem by launching products from sunscreens to sheet masks that are aimed at preventing and offsetting skin damage.

However, at the other end of the spectrum, certain cosmetics themselves cause pollution on a much larger scale than previous thought. According to a study published in the Journal of Environmental Science and Technology, the divide between fuel emissions and chemical emissions is closer to 50-50. In other words, humans who use personal care products are also sources of harmful emissions.

I rarely wear makeup. Not only because I don’t like to embellish my look with cosmetics, but also because applying makeup is simply a time-consuming routine. No offense to the cosmetics users. The optimum effort I commit to my skincare is to wash my face with facial cleanser every day. During my travels with my girlfriend, I had an opportunity to be a fly on the wall to watch her morning routine on her face.

From washing her face to dry it up, from applying facial sunscreen and lotion to putting on foundation, concealer, and cheek powder in a rigid sequential order, not to mention lip gloss and eye shadows are equally important for the face as a whole, my friend stood in front of the mirror for a good thirty minutes plus. The dust from the brushes of all sizes in her hand rise in the sunlit room as if countless sparkling particles were dancing in the ray of light. A haze of sweet scents permeated the air.   

I am amazed at how many lotions and potions we lather, douse, spritz, and spray ourselves with each morning. If Americans live longer because of the magic of chemistry in medicines, do they look younger and more beautiful because of the magic of chemistry on skincare products?

The air pollution problem is complicated. And yet, if as the study discovers, cosmetics cause pollution; the more severe pollution is, the greater opportunity it seems for the anti-pollution cosmetics companies. The more we emphasize on protecting our skins with the application of skincare products, the more these chemical products will pollute the environment. Isn’t the skin precaution counter-productive? Isn’t the pollution self-inflicted?

Manufacturers and consumers need clean water to produce skincare products as well as to cleanse both skin and the makeup tools. Water is primarily used as a solvent in cosmetics and skincare products. When drinking water is a big problem in some part of the planet, tons of water is consumed by the cosmetic industry in the well-developed part of the planet. It is high time we conserve water.

Wanna leave a comment? Click here.

As part of China’s socialist economy with Chinese characteristics, the reform of state-owned enterprises (SOEs), has never stopped for forty years. However, instead of shrinking SOEs and expanding private companies like what the reform initiator Deng Xiaoping advocated in the 1978 Open Door Policy, there are signs in recent years indicating China’s SOEs are decreasing by number but their GDP contribution is increasing remarkably.

My understanding of China’s SOEs deepens as I grow older. Partly because of my age, partly because of censorship in China, the latter was more to blame for my ignorance. I only witnessed the phenomenon as I described in my memoir Golden Orchid, my parents were victims of the SOE reforms in the 1990s, losing their jobs as their state-owned companies were closed. But I didn’t think deeper then why the SOE reforms were so crucial to China’s socialistic economy with Chinese characteristics.

The term “China’s socialist economy with Chinese characteristics” appears often in the Chinese political rhetoric. The phrase is no stranger to Chinese citizens. But smart people are not fools. The phrase means China has an authoritarian capitalism. Unlike the free market in the West, the Chinese authorities want to be the biggest winner from a capitalistic market. Not to mention that the Communist Party in China is no different from any other political party in the world. All political parties need money to survive. (All political parties say they are for the people. Don’t buy it.) The SOEs help realize this goal. As a result, much of the SOE profits go into the coffers of the party. And party members running these companies pocket high salaries. The SOE reforms become an immediate and necessary solution in the past forty years.

In China, SOEs are controlled not only by the Chinese central government, but also by local governments. The simple way to understand it as if the American federal government and the state governments owned business enterprises. (Unfortunately, there’s no perfect system. The US political system leads to a faulty corporate capitalism.) There are almost 100 thousand local SOEs in China, and many of them are highly indebted.

Therefore, in my opinion, the provincial and municipal-level SOE reforms are more active and “necessary” as the central government says. My parents’ former employers were local SOEs. There aren’t many central government SOEs, but they have made huge profits.

When Jack Ma, who had been a low-profile Communist Party member until the party mouthpiece People’s Daily exposed his party identity, holds the largest individual shares of the e-commerce giant Alibaba, how can I not laugh at the sugarcoated “socialist economy with Chinese characteristics”? When some beleaguered Chinese companies are found that they are fake SOEs to mislead creditors about their state connections, how can I not see it another phenomenon “with Chinese characteristics”?      

According to multiple sources, China’s central government SOEs deliver strong performance. By the end of 2016, the revenues of more than 100 central SOEs reached 27 trillion yuan (approx. US$3.9 trillion at the time), making up 59 percent of the total revenues contributed by all SOEs in the country. (NOTE: the exchange rate between USD and CNY has been volatile since the US-China trade war began in 2018.) In the same year, 80 Chinese SOEs were listed in the world’s 500 largest companies.          

Chinese authorities are proud of the invention of an economic system with Chinese characteristics. A reform doesn’t mean to dismantle SOEs but to take the most advantage of SOEs to serve the ruling party. They see the rapid economic growth as the result of the introduction of private companies in China in the early days of SOE reforms. Private companies and joint-ventures with foreign investors have been the miracle drivers for jobs, productivity and even innovation.

Look at the economic boom of e-commerce and 5G network in China. Almost every foreign IT brand and service in the West can find its Chinese equivalent, from WeChat to Douyin, from Didi Chuxing to Meituan-Dianping. These Chinese firms all have central government’s support. Their success drives Silicon Valley to envy and to simulate. If Donald Trump bans Chinese telecom giant Huawei from entering the US market on the ground of national security, he is copying China’s long-standing protectionist approach from foreign competition in the domestic market. Sad to say, today’s US-China trade war is part of the global technology race.

As much as Chinese leaders emphasizes deepening SOE reforms, they do not tell the public in plain language that the role of the SOEs not only cannot be diminished, but must be strengthened to protect Chinese economy from foreign pressure and risks.

A long time ago, Chinese leaders called on the people to “look ahead” —in Mandarin Chinese, xiàng qián kàn—for a bright future. I was amused that the locals made fun of the call with the pun for “look for money.” “Money” sounds the same as “ahead” in Mandarin Chinese. China today is money-oriented and so is its authoritarian leader. As the influence of China’s SOEs grows bigger, the SOE mindset is a must-have for the centralized government. The rivalry between the US and China under the hawkish American administration only strengthens it.      

If you’re a Wikipedia fan, you’ll notice there’s a page created and dedicated to the “2019 Hong Kong protests.” With 530 citations, and more to come as the situation is still developing, the Wikipedia page is in great length recording this non-violent-turned-violent political movement in Hong Kong.

The 2019 Hong Kong protest is so close to home. For the past five months, I’ve been hoping to write about it but the situation changes too fast to catch up. The 2019 Hong Kong protest has reached a much larger scale in terms of the impact to the city and the world than the 2014 pro-democracy Umbrella Movement.

I’m saddened that Hong Kong has become a city of polarization. Protesters cannot tolerate different political opinions. They take the most radical way to demonstrate their anger. The pro-Beijing government’s attitude toward party loyalty is non-negotiable. Law enforcement forces also take an aggressive approach to quell the riots. The White Terror is sweeping the international trade hub in the fallout from a series of destructive acts including vandalism, arson, road blockage, physical assaults, confrontation between the riot police and the rioters.

In Hong Kong, doxing is becoming a powerful weapon when a person’s private information is leaked online. The minute after a police officer shot a black-clad protester in Sai Wan Ho on November 11, the officer’s and his family’s personal information was immediately doxed. They even received death threats online targeting the officer’s children. This is not a random practice. In fact, the common practice by protesters has driven netizens, especially those who are pro-police and pro-government to self-censor their online comments for fear of being doxed. Police officers and their families are at risk because of doxing. Because of that, I was inspired to write a short story set in Hong Kong in the backdrop of this protest.

I’m angry that Hong Kong has become a city of chaos. Mass transportation is what I treasure and brag about the most in this city. But now major highways are blocked by barricades, chairs and construction materials; roads are impassable because bricks are dugged out and laid on the surface as obstruction. Railway tracks are dangerous for service trains after abandoned bikes are left on the tracks. Even fire was set on the tracks. Ticketing machines and the entrance at the metro stations are smashed, burnt and blocked.

When I visited Hong Kong airport as a transit passenger this September—just a few days after the protest had paralyzed the airport—it was quieter than my last visit. I realized how serious the situation had become. Posters and electronic bulletin boards at the airport officially announced a long list of banned weaponry to bring into Hong Kong. Many of them have been used in the violent protest today.

In my memoir Golden Orchid, I mentioned how close Guangzhou and Hong Kong were geographically, in language, culture, trade and even in political stance toward Beijing. So when Hong Kong protests broke out in June 2019 surrounding the controversial extradition bill, I felt extremely uneasy. I’ve witnessed how the central government solidifies its power in every corner of mainland at all costs. Just a look at the Cantonese language. The number of native Cantonese speakers in Guangzhou has dwindled in recent years as a result of the domestic migration of new residents, many from non-Cantonese speaking towns and cities, and as a result of the nationwide Speak Mandarin Campaign that wipes out the local languages.

If Hong Kong becomes just a Chinese city like others in the mainland, Mandarin speakers will soon dominate the upper class of Hong Kong society. Gradually, Mandarin will become the lingua franca in Hong Kong, just like what is happening today in Guangzhou. According to some statistics, since the Hong Kong Handover in 1997, more than one million new immigrants from mainland China are living in Hong Kong. At least two million new immigrants moved to Guangzhou metropolis between 2007 and 2017. The wealthy and democratic places on earth are always attracting new immigrants. Hong Kong is one of these special places in Greater China. Subsequently, the local culture, including language and lifestyle, will face challenges from the outsiders. How to coexist is the key question between the natives and the newcomers. 

In the past week as the situation develops much nastier and out of hand, the Hong Kong protest looks pro-democracy, but it is also a result of cyber-terrorism. The Special Branch division under British rule, which handled intelligence duties, was disbanded before the Hong Kong Handover in 1997. Hong Kong’s anti-graft watchdog ICAC and the police intelligence division have not done their job to safeguard citizens’ personal information. Doxing becomes handy for the rioters to take revenge. Unlike mainland China and Taiwan where mobile phone users are required to register their real names, Hong Kong disposable cellphone numbers are too easy to obtain. The loophole is so huge that hackers can steal personal data and leave no trace to track.  

In the age of post-truth politics, netizens pick and choose information they want to know and agree with. Hong Kong people’s opinion about the city’s future is influenced by the social media discussion. Given the fact that the government remains unresponsive to the protesters’ grievances, the protesters are taking their chances to escalate the anti-government demonstrations. Hong Kong protesters are young and internet-savvy. Their sentiments are easily aroused by graphic images of the evil and falsehood disseminated among friends and families. The more people agree with a false statement, the more true the statement appears. Isn’t this what Donald Trump is good at? The fanning of emotion also stirs up the law enforcement forces. Who wouldn’t want to do something if one’s family or fellow officer is threaten by thugs?

As Martin Luther King once said in 1958, “Hate begets hate; violence begets violence; toughness begets a greater toughness. We must meet the forces of hate with the power of love.” I only can pray that Hong Kong will return to its normality soon.

Every Verizon customer has his/her own story with the largest telecom giant in America. My story has developed into a state of unreason in the past 48 hours. I include time consumption in some scenarios below so that you make your judgment about how time-consuming my communication with Verizon is. Although Verizon boasts itself as the country’s best, the fastest and the widest cellular network, the communication—the most important part in my opinion—of customer service has long fallen short. I hope my account of my unreasoning experience will shed light on your reasonable consumer protection.

1) Failure in communication clarity via telephone.

Customers cannot find help with their phone bills from the brick-and-mortar store. The only way to talk to the Verizon staff about your account is by telephone. Not to mention that every time when you call Verizon’s hotline, you need to go through a series of robot Q&A and voice recognition exercises. If you fail to answer a question, the robot is most likely to ask you to try again. So you do it over and over again until you—as human and humane as you are—become robotic and indifferent in answering a robot’s question.  

Time consumption: about 20 minutes

Remember, Verizon is the BEST as the company touts. When you finally talk to a human agent, the line quality is, on the contrary, not the best. It’s either fuzzy or with an echo. If your line is unlike what I describe, lucky you; perhaps you should try your luck and buy a lotto ticket. By my hindsight, it’s not a bad idea to record your phone conversation. You’ll need it after you read on.

Be prepared for an earful of new products during this conversation. As soon as you authorize the human agent to look at your account, she/he has begun to “optimize”—a frequently used word in Verizon’s dictionary—your account by talking you into their new products and services. The human agent speaks fast as if she/he wants to impress you with their professional knowledge. Either they are tired of the repetitive introduction given to every phone customer, they can’t wait to finish it by speaking fast; or they are trained to introduce the new products in one breath to brag about their speech fluency. Nevertheless, your understanding is not their concern. And please lower your expectation, or even have no expectation, for the human agent’s pronunciation and punctuation. You’re lucky again if you talk to an agent who can enunciate for you. If you ask him/her to repeat, you’re likely to get the robotic reply in a tone of impatience.

Time consumption: about 2-3 minutes for Verizon human one-time sale talk and problem shooting. Full length of conversation subjects to your query and request for repetition.

2) Failure in information transparency.   

We’re still on the phone with the human agent. Holding the hook tightly to my ear, I don’t want to miss a thing despite the poor connection. Well, Verizon certainly is doing its BEST at confusing you. Just a look at these names: Quantum Gateway, Double/ Triple Play, Preferred HD, Extreme HD, so on and so forth; a Verizon-outsider won’t have a clue. If you’re fortunately, or unfortunately, a Verizon customer, you may be acquainted with the advertising lingo. But no one, for sure, can distinguish the nuances of the product name and the content.

What’s more, the changes of service coverage and costs are strictly controlled by the provider. The users are always the last one to realize changes are made. On the phone, the human agent tells you all the perks if you sign up for something. But no one tells you the consequences and consumer’s liability if you change your mind after enrollment or during the contract period.

This common statement in almost all corporate Terms and Conditions also applies to Verizon: The company reserves the right, at its discretion, to change, modify, add, or remove portions of these Terms at any time by posting the amended Terms.

What can a consumer do? Sadly to say, nothing, except for checking your Verizon account closely. These are two examples of my state of unreason. Bear with me.

A ridiculous unreason is Verizon now charges a $12 monthly fee for its Wi-Fi router. Until today, I still cannot get a satisfying answer from Verizon about why there was no router fee in my old plan but there is one in the current plan, which was renewed for a longer term by a telephone human agent who took advantage of our lack of knowledge about Verizon lingo. We’re charged $12 monthly for the router despite the fact that there is no upgrade of Wi-Fi speed, or of the appearance of the router box, or of human intelligence of our service. My reasonable question only brings a robotic answer from a different human agent on the phone: “We now charge the Fios Quantum Gateway router monthly.”

Another absurd unreason is no one from Verizon explains why the administrative fee and taxes are creeping up in my recent bills. A store human staffer told me to ignore the increase of taxes and charges because it’s a small amount and there is nothing I can do about it. Really? I’m a consumer. Shouldn’t I have the right to know why?

I have tried all I can to communicate with Verizon: on the phone, in the store and in instant messaging on Verizon’s website but to no avail. My understanding is: if it’s a compulsory taxation by the government, a tax payer should be informed in advance and even vote on the implementation. The only Verizon explanation I find is here.

But the website still cannot explain why there is an increase of tax and charges now. Who decides the increase? How often? When will be the next increase? If part of the surcharges goes to Verizon, the regularity of the increase and the reason behind the decision of the increase must be fully explained to tens of thousands of customers. The current practice is arbitrary and unreasoning.

3) Failure in providing honest and fair customer service.

It’s no exaggeration that every human Verizon staffer is a salesperson, from customer service to technical repairmen. Enticing customers to purchase a product or a service is in Verizon workers’ DNA. Because of our unfamiliarity with Verizon’s ever-changing sales strategies and marketing lingo, we are always mindblown in our communication with Verizon workers.

The latest episode is about returning a TV box to the Verizon store. Long story short. The human worker kindly helped us to close our canceling of a TV box rental and gave us a guidebook of Verizon TV packages. He said with the guidebook it would be easier to conduct our phone call conversation with Verizon customer service about TV plans. But by mistake he terminated the wrong TV box serial number in the system. So we lost our cable TV that night. That led to our 1.5-hour phone conversation with a heavy-accented technician on the phone.

Time consumption: About 1.5 hour for long-distance human troubleshooting of cable TV

I followed all his instructions to reboot our TV set and Verizon TV box but the cable TV never came back. The last resort was Verizon had to send another ground technician to the house to fix the problem. Normally, it costs $99 for an in-person repair. The heavy-accented technician on the phone promised the fee would be waived as he ran out of his long-distance resources to solve my issue. Two hours after our phone conversation, I checked my Verizon account and found $15 was charged for TechSure Plus, a monthly virus protection plan that I did not ask for.

Time consumption: an evening of at least 2 hours for a customer’s active monitoring of Verizon billing

So I wrote to Verizon’s online instant messenging agent nicknamed Jessica. She explained to me what TechSure Plus was for. And I wrote back I wanted to cancel it, and she initiated my request. We exchanged a pin number for account ID recognition, back and forth. It took about 30 minute before my request was fulfilled. But when I checked my Verizon account, the bill did not reflect the removal of the plan. By then, it was past my bedtime and I had to entrust my faith in God according to what is written on the US dollar bill—“In God We Trust.” I hoped that after I woke up, my Verizon account would correctly show $15 in my pocket. Off I went to bed.

Time consumption: About 30 minutes to close my daylong contact with Verizon   

Thank you for reading this far. Living in America one has many choices, from making a decision about which cereal brand to buy to which car to lease or own. But when it comes to telecommunication in America, my choice is limited.

In many countries including China, your mobile phone is unlocked. As long as you have a SIM card you can use a different phone and carrier. But in America, if you want the BEST deal, you have to use the carrier’s locked phones. Verizon, AT&T and Sprint are the giants. T-Mobile is merging with Sprint.   

In China, you can get unlimited data for a reasonable price equivalent to a cup of coffee. But in America, the basic data plan cost is equal to a restaurant meal or more. China’s 4G network is relatively reasonable in pricing compared to the US. In the new battleground of the 5G network, China apparently has the advantage because its affordable 4G service provides a solid customer base for the upgrade. When big companies like Verizon dictate the narrative of industry pricing in the US, customers are the sufferers of a high-priced, sales-manipulative telecommunication system. It’s a mystery for me how to improve my experience with Verizon but at least my misery with Verizon is now at truce.

My takeaway is be skeptical and be vigilant.