Black Friday

I came to Shenyang Aerospace University in 2011 after I lectured on developmental economics to Chinese and third world students, eliciting an invitation to teach. Most of the foreigners were from Africa where I went in the early ’80s until I picked up malaria in Ijede by Lagos lagoon in Nigeria, cutting short a scheduled training event that was to proceed to Zambia, and then a prolonged stopover at a network of development projects in Kenya.

Halfway into the semester, the university wanted me to teach more econometrics. Having perused all the algebraic equations students did not need to learn but are forced to study and memorize because academics and the expensive textbooks say so, while the practicing economists do not even bother, I wanted to quit the gig.

However, the school needed students to learn how to speak English. Most had sat through an average of 10 years of English training but were unable to speak. Having dug deeply in the pedagogy of language learning at the rural village and urban ghetto level, I took on the challenge confident that I might know a thing or two on methods.

Now, I have Chinese students in the economics department majoring in finance as well as marketing, with some in tourism, which requires them to learn how to draft ad copies for print and broadcast. I do not teach any formal economic subjects, but I do use as a context the current situation of a new China that has turned to domestic consumption to fuel and balance its robust export-oriented economy.

Just for the sake of talking, I run an exercise with my class on what they would save if they found the price of an item of interest at the local department store lower by 50 percent than previous offering; say, a previous bag at ¥100, now selling for ¥50. Students then come up with reasons and the students usually repeat phrases picked up from textbooks like “supply and demand,” “opportunity cost,” “comparative advantage,” and “incentives.”

The point is to get the students talking in English, and the show-offs generally do. I then push them into the “practical and realistic” realm, and they temper their ideas a bit, but seldom does anyone raise the fundamental question of whether a “savings” in fact occurs.

Close to the tail end of the class, I then make my pontifical pronouncements. If in the supply-and-demand scale, a consumer needs the item but deferred previously from purchase due to other priorities, or had wanted the item but thought it to be too expensive, or has the money and thinks the bargain is a good deal, the consumer still pays 50 RMB that s/he would not normally spend. So, in the transaction, there is no such thing as a “savings.” The consumer spends, s/he pays for an item!

That’s when we segue into the word of advertising and marketing where the object is make someone feel they either suck if they do not purchase an item, or if they do, made to feel inadequate when they purchase the bargain item rather than the “real” thing. In either case, advertising makes you feel unfulfilled until you “shop till you drop!”

We recently witnessed where this ethos leads to; it is lamentable. In Honolulu, rental of storage places is a growth industry. Not only do folks haul their full garbage disposal bins once a week to the curb, they also rent places to store items they seldom or no longer use but are habitually accustomed to hoard. In many suburban neighborhoods, the garage is turned into an extra room, usually a storage place, which is no big deal in tropical Hawai’i where the car can stay parked outside all year (unless the home owners’ association says it is a “no-no”) but in temperate zone, that congests city streets badly.

Consumerism being a stated policy in China since 2008, and getting double downbeat in 2012, the admonition to be perpetual shoppers has gone off the charts. That’s how “black Friday” got into our students’ vocabulary. It is a term coined not too long ago by U.S. merchants and it symbolizes the influence of American promotions and marketing practices in China’s economy.

Black first referred to the pandemonium in traffic that happened the first day of Christmas shopping on the Friday after Thursday’s Thanksgiving Day, once a solemn religious tradition. It has since slipped from the Parson’s guidance to the directors of many Chambers of Commerce. In some shops, it is the beginning of their annual raison d’etre where merchandizing is profitable until shortly after New Year’s day.

Bleak “black” became the desired “black” in accounting where an investment finally makes profit. Black Friday sales’ events in some department stores do not even wait for the sunrise. They stay open while the turkey is being deboned, and a mad rush occurs shortly thereafter.

Since we in the United States have exported the lifestyle of perpetual debt and easy credit access to be emulated by the rest of the world, allowing financial institutions and stock market gyrations to determine the dance steps of our lives, Black Friday is globally making the rounds 24-hours this day. Fellow Americans dance to the music with gusto.

I am staying home.

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Jaime Vergara is a resident of Saipan teaching at the Shenyang Aerospace University in China. His email is pinoypanda2031@aol.com.