9.27.2006

Movement? or not

Yesterday a speaker came to williams, Eban Goodstien, who spoke about an event called Focus the Nation, which is slated to take place over 16 months from now. It would be a day of speaking about, learning about, debating and making political voices known through a day of sort of official teach-ins. The topic? Global climate change and what the US isn't doing about it. The event is scheduled to occur nationally at over 1000 college campuses as well as other institutions, involving community groups, civic groups and businesses. Focus the Nation

He came to Williams to make a presentation, but his express purpose was to gain the commitment of the Williams community in taking a leadership role in organizing this far-off event. Once we (Justin and Alison and I) expressed some interest, his first question to us was this: is this type of mass movement possible at Williams?

Today I went into the archives to look up the background on the student protest of 1970 which culminated in a all-school meeting from 10pm till 1am in which the students voted to strike for two days. The next day the faculty voted to suspend classes for the remaining two weeks of the semester to allow Williams students to take the lead nationally in organizing college campuses and Washington rallies. According to a senior history thesis, for a short while Williams was the leader of the national college protest. This normally apolitical, status quo institution was transformed into a radical center of a political movement.

What allowed this to happen? First was the students returning from a rally in Yale to protest the recent actions of Nixon to promote the war. At a similar protest that same weekend, half-way accross the country, several students were shot and killed at Kent State. The experience of Yale and the catalyst of Kent allowed the student body to be swept up by this spontaneous strike movement, diving blindly into an adventure of opposing authority and political power.

The movement was organized overnight, lasted a few weeks, and by the end had deteriorated back to kids doing what they would anyway if they were stuck at school for weeks with no class - drinking, smoking, music, relaxing in the sun. And maybe we've learned something from this - that spontaneous mass movements aren't really the powerful and effective things they seemed at the time. Maybe this has to do with why the nation currently has such a dearth of visible and exciting protests. We're more cynical now, or at least we are led to believe that people in general are too cynical for that sort of thing.

So my question is this: can we organize a protest, a movement, a feeling even approaching that level in response to an issue, which if you take it seriously is more catastrophic than anything they imagined in 1970, an issue thatvirtually all the science says we must act now in order to avoid the worst? Is it possible to jolt, scare, cajole or beg people out of their lives for a moment for some constructive and mutually agreed upon goal? And can that all happen without it then turning into a cynical or fatalistic pursuit? Or has the ever stregthening forces of market-consumerism dulled us of the prospect of mass movements sparking ideological change? (the kind of change that cannot be marketed as trendy, the kind of change that needs more commitment than a checkbook.)

Its so easy to be pessimistic. Its so easy to say that this is unlikely, that there is no reason why this should be my job or your job or Williams' job. And there is no reason to say that it would have any meaningful effect even if it was to succeed.

But it just seems so much more boring to be pessimistic.

9.23.2006

Poverty

So Professor Crane's recent post and my anthropology class came together in my mind on this rainy day. He writes about the incredibly low status of the migrant worker in China who sweats and bleeds (literally) for China's globalization. uselesstree.typepad.com

The income inequality of China is 5 times that of the US, which in itself is very high. And that inequality is increasing in China as the country becomes more and more modernized. In fact, it seems the inequality is actually a driving force behind the development of the worlds most populus country. It is certainly not a reason for fast growth, since many other countries have inequality and no growth, but in China the inequality is exploited both by private industry and a government keen on growth and national stature.

In anthropology we find that in the earliest neolithic villages, many people's quality of life actually deteriorated. Statures became shorter and more cavities were found due to a more limited diet. Live expectancy decreased. Women had more babies, closer together, and were forced to work far more than before. In short, it was a less desirable way to live, even if the elites that quickley emerged were much better off.

As far as we know, from the neolithic revolution to globalization, poverty has always been an important part of human culture. Not a very happy picture to paint.

9.17.2006

Followup to Dai Haijing Riots

The videos that first appeared to have been removed from websites have reappeared, showing the violence in the city of Dai Haijing recently. Facebook readers, please follow the links to http://mogmaar.blogspot.com to watch.





and here: youtube.com

9.11.2006

Dai haijing uprising - I can't ignore this

I don't have anything new to add to the ESWN commentary, except to echo it and post these photo and video. There has been almost no commentary on this outside of the ESWN blog so I thought I would pass it along.



Here is another photo of a man being beaten by police.



And finally, here is the only remaining video of the event. Others, takeny on cell phones, were posted but quickly deleted from Chinese video sharing sites.


I hope maybe a few of you are interested enough to read the long report and pass it on to a few people.

China Marks 9-11

"How has US anti-terror strategy lead to more terrorism?" is the headline that graces the top of the page on the people's daily. The Chinese language portal of xinhua.cn has a similar headline citing experts in their criticism of US foreign policy. The English version says "U.S. fails to nab chief culprits as 9/11 attacks commemorated" and the pages are filled with similar sentiments.

Is it ironic that China, a country which has a fairly bad record of treating its own people well and is not at all shy to violently suppress all types of uprisings, is criticizing the US for its violent strategy in Iraq.

But of course China is not critizicing the human rights violations, nor the number of deaths, nor even the waste of resources. They're just saying we're doing a bad job of the goals we set. The Chinese government is very clear about its stance on foreign policy and the control of violence. It must be effective and it must maintain stability. Namely, their criticism of our policy is that we have not reduced the amount of terror in the world. This is much more important to them than our meddling with democracy, handling of sectarian violence, our political manipulations at home. These things are in a different class for Chinese leaders, where the credibility of following through with stated goals and maintaining a constant, stable policy are the most important.

By this measure, as the headlines show, the Chinese are clearly not happy with US foreign policy, and more importantly, they are not being hypocritical in their criticism. Good job guys.

9.08.2006

Facebook Uproar

People often don't know what kind of power they have until they exercise it. In fact, one could say that exercising power is in fact the creation of power. I think this has proven especially true in the recent uproar over the facebook feeds.

For those of you who might not know, the feed allowed information which was previously available but only if you knew where to look - which friends were now dating, which parties were being thrown without you, which people had added photos or updated their profile, etc - much easier by compiling it in a list on the login page. The privacy level was technically the same as before, but at the same time facebook.com became more public.

Initially I thought the changes were fun and interesting, but then again I am a very public person. The large majority of facebook users seem to have made a very big deal of this. One group currently has over 700,000 members in the course of 3 days. That means 10% of facebook users are members, and if all similar groups were included that number would be much higher.

In a reply by Mark Zuckerberg to the facebook.com community, he apologized and insisted positive changes would be made. Perhaps most surprising to me, and the reason for this post, are the reactions to this letter. People seem to be genuinely surprised and happy that Mark is responsive to their concerns, and empowered by their success (despite and because of acting as only one person in a huge majority) in effecting change. In a time when what it means to be a citizen, an activist and a consumer of information is changing rapidly, events like these serve to unite and set precedents for the future of this generations web presense.

In many ways this is similar to the massive and frequent online manhunts which have become a hot topic on the Chinese mainland. Eastsouthwestnorth does an amazing job of chronicalling these events. Clearly the parallels between large numbers of people acting in unison and feeling empowered are large. But it also points out that, like the facebook feed, these issues are outside the daily political and social life. Chinese protests of this nature have shyed away from criticizing any central authority, and many other protest groups of government policy on facebook.com fail to garner near this much interest. We are becoming empowered to act in a world different from the one in which we live.

9.06.2006

administrative note

The blog has been fully moved back to blogger. I'm hoping post to it occaisionally, but not often.

Email to share

This is a long email that a recent friend from the summer program sent. I enjoyed reading it enough to feel it was worth posting here. It's a bit long, so don't feel bad if you skip a few sections, but I feel it captures a lot of what's really great and interesting about China that I forget sometimes. Enjoy,

++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Hi everyone - greetings from Chengdu, the capital city of Sichuan
Province. Right now I am in an internet cafe that smells like smoke and is
filled with chinese guys playing video games. Lord knows how long they've
already been here or how long they'll stay. The stacks of red bull, nescafe
and instant noodles for sale at the front desk imply a very very long
time... Speaking of things long, this is going to be a novel because I still
havent gotten my lazy ass around to starting a blog, and want to have some
of this stuff written down electronically in case disaster strikes and I
lose my notebook. So if you have better things to do than read stream of
consciousness ramblings on China, yeeah you probably ought to go do them.
Otherwise enjoy, and don't say I didn't warn you :)

The summer term in Harbin ended last weekend - the final week of the
program our language pledge toppled and fell as we realized it was our last
opportunity to have real conversations with each other. Many late nights of
talking in ENGLISH gasp and general silliness ensued, which led to me being
pretty tired and a bit hung over the day of the Big Scram. Much like I was
the day I left Germany for China, hmm trend anyone?... Fortunately our train
didn't leave til evening so I slept through the night as we trained to
Beijing.

Most people were headed home to the US; I spent the day relaxing with them,
then took the night train to Shanghai, where I met up with a friend from the
Harbin program (she'd flown) for a few days. Shanghai is nuts but after two
months in Harbin - loud, dirty, gritty, occasionally-smells-like-piss yet
you love it anyway Harbin - the western comforts were, well, comforting.
Sit-down toilets, international restaurants (first night we went Middle
Eastern, I hadn't realized how much I miss hummus), people not gawking at
you because you're foreign. Shanghai is very modern, spots of old European
architecture lining boulevards along the river/in major financial areas, and
ramshackle, dilapidated old woodshingle two-story dwellings with laundry
hanging out the windows to dry fill in the spaces between and below
skyscrapers. Bells in the steeples of the older European buildings tolled
the hour - it was such a familiar, rich, friendly sound and I hadn't heard
it in a while, my ears were happy. Yet despite its quasi-European exterior
Shanghai is still very much Chinese. People on the street still coming up to
you with 'Hello lady hello! Buy my (fake designer) bag/watch/shoes!' They
got kind of annoying actually, and as they speak some english weren't
deterred with no thanks. To make them go away I thus took to naming German
menu items at them. A forceful exclamation of 'spargelcremesuppe!!' (cream
of asparagus soup) was particularly effective.

The next day we went to a wonderful art museum - ground floor had a photo
exhibit from Xinjiang Autonomous Region, the mountainous and deserty home to
disgruntled Muslims of Uigher extraction, northwesternmost area of China.
Upper floors had old traditional through cultural revolution through today's
art, I really enjoyed it. Otherwise bummeled the main drags, window shopped,
stopped in a coffee shop or two to escape the humidity, rode the subway, ate
delicious traditional Shanghai dumplings, went out to a club that was
ridiculously, gleefully uebertrendy (or as my friend said, 'typical
Shanghai'). Ha that was fun. My friend is gay and lived in Shanghai before,
has traveled all over the country, but at that club for the first timeshe
met out Chinese lesbians. Or rather they met us. We were dancing together
which I guess made them think we were gay (ok they were half right), so
before long there's this Chinese girl behind me taking decidedly unwarranted
liberties with my ass. I was like, hoookay this one's for you chica and
swung her to my friend. Buggered out, lost my friend for a while and got
thoroughly drunk at the open bar (50RMB, about $6, all you can drink) with
some Europeans and a Swiss-Chinese girl. Hooray for someone who understands
my drunken Germandarinfrenchlish. Afterwards found friend again; her lesbian
buddies had basically passed out on each other in a heap in one of the
club's side rooms. oh Asian alcohol tolerance... Still it was really
refreshing and encouraging to meet Chinese gays who were comfortable and
open about being gay, and had straight friends who were cool with it too.
Definately hadn't seen that in Harbin - most Chinese and the govt
think homosexuals are diseased/disturbed, hmm kind of like in the US. No
wonder people say Shanghai is China's best face to the world.

The last night we had dinner at a posh Shanghainese restaurant with my
friend's old host family. They were very welcoming and gracious - almost
overly hospitable, typical Chinesisch. Next day my friend flew home so I had
the day to myself to poke around a couple markets, walk along the Bund
(strip of treelined sidewalk running along the Yangtze opposite the famous
skyline view), finish reading Lolita, write postcards and buy provisions for
the 40 hour train ride to Chengdu. Fri morning up early, grabbed my stuff
and found myself on the train.

Until this weekend the longest I ever spent in transit was maybe 36 hours
getting from Tehran to Tufts in dear old Somerville, Mass. Thus it was odd
to realize that I would spend 40hrs in a train just to stay within the same
country. But taking a Chinese train is its own journey. In a way a
destination in and of itself. You have four options - hard seat, soft seat,
hard sleeper, soft sleeper. The seats are very cheap but for 40 hrs very
uncomfortable - crammed into hard (or not as hard, if you go soft seat)
bench-like rows of seats in groups of 4 or 6 around a table covered in
everyone's instant noodle packages, bags of fruit bought from streetside
vendors, tea thermoses, plastic-wrapped chicken feet (a chinese traveler's
staple) and other various snacks; everyone's luggage stuffed under seats,
precariousy hanging out of overhead racks, in heaps blocking the aisles; the
air increasingly stuffy and smelly. Apologies, but I'm not that hardcore. I
took the hard sleeper, giving me the top bunk in a small room with six beds,
three to a side on each wall. Luggage rack up top, giving me easy access to
my bag. A TV in each room would sporadically turn on to some kung fu movie
or obnoxiously shrill Chinese comedy routine (apparently the louder and
higher-pitched Chinese comedians screech at their costars, the funnier they
are. By this rubric our guys were freaking hilarious, but alas my Chinese
lacked the subtlety to appreciate it). The narrow hallway outside the
doorless doorways of each room lined with seats and small writing tables
along the window. I spent most of my time there reading, writing, listening
to music, talking to people with my newfound functional chinese, and
watching countryside from the window.

If you drive 1658km/1030miles across the US (the distance from
Shanghai-Chengdu) you'll spend hours watching empty countryside roll past,
with the occasional farmer's homestead or gas station breaking your view of
the land. Not so in China. The landscape never quite became landscape.
Though there were places with fewer buildings and roads it always remained a
'humanscape' of sorts - the flat river valleys and plains west of Shanghai
became tall hills and small mountains, steep cliffs rose up from polluted
brown rivers. Amahoro-mates if you thought I was flipping out over the dirty
water in Rwanda you should've seen me yesterday. Right, anyway. There were
always little towns, surrounded by tightly packed fields of cornrows
grown on even the smallest, most irregularly shaped scraps of land or
corners of hillside. If it could be cultivated, it was. And the
electrical/telephone wires never ceased. They covered the country in a
10m-high net. A few times we passed towns with huge industrial plants in
their center, where otherwise all around were just crops growing. Mmm
healthy. One stands out in my mind - Jiang You, massive power plant in the
middle, smoke and steam billowing out from the complex. For several miles
preceding and following Jiang You the sky was hazy grey, and I could look
straight at the sun without squinting. It glowed unnaturally, but
beautifully red through the smog. The oxen and cows grazing in the fields
below didn't seem to mind. Or notice they glowed in the dark and had extra
legs growing out their ears. Ok not really.

Talking with people on the train was a blast, though after a while tiring
(prolonged involved chinese still an effort for me). On several occasions
younger people approached me to practice English. As many Chinese have no
great love for America I often said I was German, when I got a good vibe
from a person I was American, or both. All the people I spoke with shared
certain traits: they were very curious about me, appraising my bag, pen,
jewelry, clothes, notebook, everything with their eyes; verbally shy
sometimes to the point of caution, and openly puzzled by the fact that I, a
woman, was traveling alone. Got hit on several times - let's just say I have
yet to meet a smooth Chinese guy. Told them I had a boyfriend when they
started getting weird. Yes, he's very handsome. No, he's not Chinese. Topic
over. At one point to stretch my legs I walked the whole length of the train
- which in the seat sections was not so much walking as climbing what with
all the luggage/people in the aisles - and think I may have been the only
foreigner on board. Sometimes heard people talk about me as I passed - have
firmly established that to Chinese I look Xinjiangese (province from the
photo exhibit, borders Kazakhstan). Heard a lot of 'ooh, is that a
xiaoshuminzu (ethnic minority)? Yes, she looks like a Xinjiangren. But her
clothes?...' Pretty funny sometimes. Reminded me of Iran, where they thought
I was Persian or Tajik. Thank you mama and papa for these ambiguously ethnic
genes.

A lot of people also felt obligated to offer me advice (this is very
Chinese). When asked where I was headed, I said, to Chengdu for a couple
days, then I'll go to the Tibetan border regions of Sichuan to hike a week
or two. To which they would say, best not go there. It's underdeveloped, and
the Xizangren (Tibetans) are not the greatest. You know what you should do!
Join a tour group in Chengdu and go see the giant panda zoo - if you buy the
right ticket you can even touch one! My cousin touched one once, he took a
picture! And they were visibly delighted to be able to offer this lone,
young, clearly lost foreigner some sound advice and spare her the misery
awaiting in the mountains. For which I would thank them graciously and say,
I look forward to the clean air of the mountains, being away from the city a
while, and away from tourists and crowds of people. But I'll certainly keep
that panda in mind.

Last anecdote. One of the first people I met on the train was an older man
named Mr Zhu. He was a retired businessman from Shanghai, in the room next
to mine, and upon hearing my accent (it's a doozy believe me) came out of
his compartment to talk to me. Where you from? Good vibe: I'm
American-German. Ah, very good. Germany is very good, and I went to America
once, to Xiyatu. Seattle, really? I grew up there! Thus started a very long
conversation about our families, traveling, Shanghai, Chinese isolationism
and xenophobia, the Cultural Revolution (he was in his 30s at that time and
was brutally harassed for having Western friends), getting old, being young,
the fabulousness of Chinese food. At one point he took my left hand and
examined it, pressing a finger or muscle and tracing the lines on my palm.
Held my pinky against my ring finger and said, you have many friends, and
they're good people. He said my life line is strong. Squinted at another and
said approvingly, you will get smarter and smarter (hmm. methinks I'll leave
it to you 'good people' to be the judge of that). He also said I'm going to
have one child. let's see how these predictions pan out. If I get hit by a
rickshaw tomorrow we'll know Zhu Xiansheng, though a wonderful person is no
fortune teller.

Finally, last night around 9:30, arrived in Chengdu. Upon putting on my pack
the women around me were insisting I shouldn't carry it, it was too big for
me and they would help me find a porter, which I politely but futilely (is
that a word?) declined. Mr Zhu just said in his gruff grandfatherly
approving way, 'ta de shenti hen hao' - her body is strong/good. As the most
senior member of the luggage commentators and thus the most respected, his
was the last word. Made me smile. Walked out with Zhu and said goodbye,
fought through the crowds to get a cab and went to the hotel he had
recommended to me (right on the river, big clean 4person rooms for
30RMB/night = about $3.75). Realized I was starving, dumped my stuff, found
a teeny noodle restaurant nearby and blissfully chowed down. The waiter
said, oh are you from Xinjiang? Heh.

The last week or so in Harbin I'd gotten restless, stressed - a permanent
tiredness, the feeling I've been on the road too much the past few
yrs, crept up on me whenever I thought of packing and leaving again. It's
true I've been traveling too much, and need to slow it down next year, and I
will (I hear half of you saying yeah right Jessie). For now though, am so
happy to be here, without any agenda or set plans, here and alone, free to
go out and meet people or stick to myself when I feel like it, just to be
here in this confusing exasperating but wonderful country. Bought a cold
bottle of beer on the way back to the hotel, walked under trees along the
river past young couples making out and vendors selling fruit, shirtless
older guys hanging out smoking and laughing loudly. And I thought to myself,
I love this. Life is fucking amazing. Hope you're the same :)

Jessie

[Aug. 17th, 2006|11:50 pm]
Fying home, random walks through the backstreets of the Tokyo/Narita airport in search of the New USA, single serving friends, single serving Japanese culture, lack of sleep and feeling indignant that there was no seemless, wireless internet access in our hotel or airport. The laptop is being charged as we speak so the wireless internet can be utilized in flight.

The last several days have consisted of not much sleep and lots of people. The all-nighter in the internet bar was followed by our graduation ceremony. I won the photo contest and recieved $100. I don't think anyone else even applied, which I don't understand. I was one of three people who got prizes for following the language pledge so well – Posie and I both got 400yuan, or about $50 so I treated about 16 of us to dinner, spending a total of about 180yuan. HJ and I went to see our roommates dorms. 8 guys sleep in a room which only has space for 3 desks and small lockers squeezed inbetween the four double bunks. It was cramped, somewhat cozy but nightmares ran through my head of getting stuck with a really bad roommate. But it didn't look that bad, kind of like a summer camp. However, as we were getting ready to leave, HJ's roommate suddenly got fairly serious and said, 'you guys are going back to your single rooms in America, so you think this is cute and cozy. We're living here in this prison for the next two years and there's nothing we can do about it.' How much has living here with our roomates bridged the huge gap of income and opportun ity? How much has that even been the goal?

The farewell at the train platform was wrenching, but more because it was so prolonged. We all did our hugs, farewells, etc even though the train wasn't leaving yet, we got on just to avoid the awkwardness of continuing talking to someone you've already said your last goodbye to (maybe forever?). But when we got on the train there was only a thick, soundproof window between us and them, so we stood there for a good 10 minutes waving, smiling, making faces before an eternity had passed and the train started to move. We stayed up late talking, unwinding. Sunday Posie and I went up to ACC to see 张老师, my ACC professor, and Chris from last summer where we had a great 2 hour talk over a Peking Duck lunch. It seemed dinner wasn't far off, and we were soon back in a different restaraunt eating a second Peking Duck meal – hey, local characteristics are important in an internationalized city.

We went out to bars with Chris, first to the foreigners bar street of san-li-tuanr and then off to a street with 7 disco clubs back to back. The clubs were all brand new, less than a year old, but on a Sunday night they were packed. Not only were the clubs new, but the people in them were the New Beijing. They dressed much more like Americans, they were much more at home in the comfortable but sexy clothes. They danced differently than they had a year ago, again much more open and fun loving than I had remembered at all from last year.

I'm still amazed at how much Beijing has changed in a year. The taxi drivers want to speak English with you know. The street improvements have been made and there is less and less of the city that looks like a city of third world sidewalk and alley life; it has simply been erased fromt the map and bulldozed under the ground. I passed by Qianmen bus stop where there had been a tourist oriented set of little shops where the owners lived upstairs and behind the shops the alleys of a much older Beijing continued on in an endless maze. That was gone, a pile of rubble which was poorly concealed by several large red billboards carrying slogans of development and modernity. The one that struck me called on Chinese to respect their history and look towards a new cultural history. The accompanying picture was a canal that might have been in Venice or Beijing, bordered by a Chinese lion, a Starbucks shop and a Pizza hut sign. It was so blatant, even if I'm not quite sure what it was blatantly doing.

I'm going to wrap up this long and largely incoherent post and get some sleep.
-morgan-

musings

[Aug. 12th, 2006|05:14 am]
While the last post might have been about going to an internet bar, this post is being written from one. As the last night in Harbin, we decided to make it a long one, starting with a dinner and hanging out at a restaraunt. This was with my roommate, his two good friends from here, another roommate, chunwen (a malaysian girl who lives on our floor and speaks bubbly chinese) and Posie (brown college). We ate food and drank beer in modest amounts for a good hour before slacking off and then playing games. These games all consist of something simple like guessing a number of toothpicks and then the looser has to do what ever embarassing thing the rest decides. Its quite a test of social senses because the suggestions have to be embarassing but not too bad. We ended up playing that for a good three hours.
As we were leaving, my roommate's friend Cheng Haoyi gave me a present - some tea leaves wrapped in bamboo from his home in yunnan province. I was a little embarassed because this was the 4th or 5th present like this i've gotten from roommates and friends here and I only have so many American postcards and US Ski Team stickers to give out as feeble return presents.
Afterwards it was off to Yes Bar which features a moving dance floor, sort of like a large trampoline. While this summer I've been going to a lot less dance clubs this summer than previous trips to China (the third time tonight), everyone went and it was good energy. And of course very sweaty. We left the disco to come to this internet bar where we've been playing games and now just doing our own things for a while. At 5:20 am is already fairly light out, but the clever design of the internet bar keeps the sunlight from coming in too much and the gamers are still going at it.
This last week in China has felt a little anti-climactic. Because of finals, class work slacked off a bit, but I'm not one to study, especially when the tests aren't hard and the grades don't count, so I havn't been worknig as hard as the other 7 weeks. In addition I've been thinking a lot about what it means to really learn Chinese. I'm at a point where I can say just about anything I want to say and listen to someone tell me something they want to, but that often involves a bit of explaining vocabulary that I simply havn't encountered yet. So is that fluent? Sure, call it that if you want, but the reality is Chinese still has a long way to go but the only way that's going to happen is by living in China, with Chinese and working, taking classes, etc. But I feel I have a hard time committing to something like that without a larger goal or reason for learnin this language. And so I don't have any regrets about returning to America, (instead of deciding to stay here like some of my friends, and I admire them for it)
One other interesting bit I'd like to share is my final oral exam for my 1-on-1 class. I wrote a 2000 word paper, but the test consisted of about 8 minutes of delivering the paper and the class and then 8 minutes of answering questions by a panel of teachers. I was a little nervous, and I really think I was maybe not as courteous and not nearly as culturally sensitive as I should have been. My paper was on how consumer habits have changed in the last 20 years due to the influence of westernization, specifically english characters on clothing. I wanted to talk about the growing divide between rich and poor which is accentuated by a wastern, english savvy rich and a less than up with it poor which could possibly lead to culture wide questions of what it means to be 'Chinese' as opposed to westernized, and if that's a problem. What I think I ended coming accross as was criticizing Chinese consumers as a group as blatantly chasing the most expensive name brands they could find. I even went so far as to say Chinese consumers might not be as mature as American consumers because they might be more likely to succumb to namebrands, conspicous status symbols, etc. First of all, the American consumers I know are not at all representative, in my opinion, of 'america'. second, while I still think my view point has some weight, 8 minutes of answering questions isn't nearly long enough to clarify the finer points and back arguments of where I was coming from. Needless to say, I tried, and I think I came accross less than brilliant. Well see what they say at graduation in 5 hours. Enough on that.
Now its time to look forward, which means taking the train to Beijing tonight, seeing Mao's remains and then meeting Chris Bother (conn college, ACC) for a day and evening in the city. Then we fly to Toky where I'm going to try and spend an extra day simply walking around. Then I fly into NYC around midnight Tuesday night and am planning on taking the morning train upstate which means I might sleep in Penn station like the vagabond I am. Staying up all night might not be the best way to start 5 hard days of traveling/sightseeing, but that's just how it goes sometimes.
This might be the last 'China' post of this travelloge. However, I am going to continue writing occaisional posts here. Hopefully they will be regarding news articles that I read about China and whether or not I agree with their viewpoints, but I might stray. I also might move back to my blogger page which I think is a little better looking, but that depends on how motivated I feel. I hope you have enjoyed reading this for the summer.
-morgan-

A Cultural Revolution Restaraunt and an all-nighter in an Internet Bar

Our group activity for the week was going to a Cultural Revolution themed restaraunt. I had no idea what to expect. We walked into a place that looking like a Chinese version of TGIF or Ruby Tuesdays, filled to the brim with Chinese kitch and the hostessed at the door greeted us with a warm "为人民服务!" (serve the people!) Dinner was traditional north easter food, which isn't terribly exciting, but tasted good, but as we finished dinner the entertainment started.

First was the auction of paintings - a guy got up on stage and started talking very fast and excitedly about his traditional paintings, what was special about them and how much he was selling them for - 30-80 dollars. It wasn't an action though because there was no bidding. Some of them were sold for a fraction of the price asked, but you'd be incredibly naive to actually bid for these things because they were the same as the paintings you'd find in any painting stall in a market: tigers, bambo, horses, confucious and flower/bird scenese. And yet the guy kept talking in his precise and cutting voice, which when amplified through the PA system was an indescribably peircing sound. After the paintings the real show started.

Out came a couple girls dressed in mao outfits, mao hats and Red Guard arm bands who started singing Cultural revolution songs. In all there were 6 performers, plus a band of 4 really putting their hearts into it, belting out songs that all come down to loving Mao Zedong, upholding ideology and the eternal revolution. I was taken aback, not expecting such a celebration of a period which has such dark memories for so many Chinese, but they didn't care and neither did the audience. Reactions ranged from clapping and singing along (all the Chinese knew all the songs - it would be like America the beautiful, this land is your land, etc. in the U.S.) to walking up close to the performers and snapping pictures with cameras, cell phones and video cameras. Perhaps the biggest contrast was going straight from the blatant capitalism of a entrepenuer using his connections at the restaraunt as an opportunity to sell cheap reproductions of the great aspects of ancient Chinese culture. Blatant capitalism mixed blatant promotion of Chinese culture mixed with passionate upholders of the great communist cultural revolution. All I can do is shake my head.

But the awesomeness didn't end there. When we got back, the question was asked, 'do you want to go bao xiu?' That is a specific word which means an all nighter in an internet bar. It is something we'd talked about before, and something that almost all male college students, as well as far too many highschool students and some girls as well do from time to time. Its extremely cheap, our 10 hours of computering cost a grand total of $1 per person, and a whole culture has developed around it. Its exciting to go with a big group of people and play net games like Counter Strike, Warcraft, etc with them (everyone plays the same game, you talk to each other both through the game and accross the aisle.

We walked into the place and saw over 300 computers (the second floor of the place had the same number), over half occupied with people playing games, surfing or watching movies. At 6 in the morning only about 20% of those people had left. At 7:00am they shut off the computers, and the large crowd of young people filed contentedly out into the morning sun, and entered the gate of the university still more or less in a group, passing the fruit sellers setting up for the morning and the old grandma's doing their shopping.

But you have to admit, getting fired up to sit in front of a computer all night is a whole lot safer than a) drinking as much as you can b) drugs c) driving cars around recklessly d) trying pick up fast girls e) most other activities that you can think of the young and reckless typically engaging in. And on top of that, to be honest with you, I get bored dancing after 45 minutes. Even the best house party has moments when you wonder if you're better off going to bed, but playing fast paced games with friends for 10 hours was one of the most uninterrupted highs i've ever had. Not something I'll repeat anytime soon, but a really fun experience. Nerdy yes, but in China, nerdy is the new cool.
link post comment

朝鲜民族村子 A Korean Minority Town [Jul. 30th, 2006|01:24 am]
Our weekend activity was a trip to a nearby rural village to spend the night, interview some people and give a big performance where every class prepared a skit, etc.

The village we went to was split in two. The half we stayed in was entirely 朝鲜族, or Korean minorities. Under the Chinese system, these classifications are fairly rigid and define special treatment under tax law and governance. On the whole, these people were extremely well off. The house we stayed in was immaculately clean, had two bedrooms and a kitchen, a nice new computer, TV, stereo, etc. The kitchen was also more like American kitchens than most of the ones I've seen in the cities. I'll try and post some pictures because it was a really interesting place. We went to a few other houses that other people were staying in and they were very similar. My feeling was this was very immaculate and high quality, even if there weren't particularly many things.

We found out, after talking to a family, that every household had at least one person and in some cases several people go to South Korea for several years to work, blue collar jobs mostly, and send the money back home and eventually return home themselves for a comfortable lifestyle. This was the first time in China I've seen people living in the countryside who were not farmers, although they had been until 10 or 15 years before.

We wandered down the streets that really felt like a Chinese version of 'The Truman Show', crossed a field and entered another part of the town which was noticably more dirty. Not only were the streets here dirt instead of concrete, the houses weren't as upkept, there were farm animals wandering around and people were working in their front yards on tractors, or whatever. These were the 汉族, or Chinese Han majority people who don't get the special treatment under the laws, don't have opportunities to go to Korea because of the language barrier, and are much more representative of Chinese farmers at large. The contrast was striking, like walking through a nice part of a city and suddenly entering a getto. We talked about it for a while, but most people (chinese - our teachers and classmates) agreed that letting the Koreans protect their culture was more important than preventing tensions from rising between ethnic groups with different, state sponsored advantages.

Other interesting conversations included sitting down for a few minutes with 4 middle aged local Chinese guys, Han majority and drinking baijiu (hard alcohol) for lunch, and being asked after a minute or so what I thought the differences were between American's conception of human rights and the Chinese notion. I was taken aback, to be sure, but tried to explain what I think American's idea is. I didn't get to finish, or even really begin any discussion because our program director (chinese) came and said something about having to leave soon. I apologized to the 4 guys and left soon after, only to find that we had another half hour. I have no idea if our program director overheard and didn't approve or if it was a coincidence.

Lots more interesting conversations, observations and rasings of the language level (this post really feels like I'm struggling to write english good), but now I have to go write my final paper for my one-on-one class, regarding western influence here, probably mostly about clothing and politics. Until next time...
link 2 comments|post comment

Communists! [Jul. 30th, 2006|01:10 am]
Last week during my one-on-one class I found out that my teacher is a communist party member. We were discussing the contrast between party influence in private business as opposed to state run enterprises like universities, and how the party doesn't have any good way of 'controlling' businesses in the ideological, personal way it does in traditional work units. My teacher was explaining the structure in a university, and as she got down to the lower levels she kept saying 'we' and 'I', and finally I said 'oh, so you are a member' and she said 'yes' and that was that. I'm going to quote what I wrote when I got home after class.

"Today during one on one class a bomb went off inside my head. But i have no idea what kind of bomb, its one of those situations which merely because it is entirely unknown therefore becomes scary and exciting and huge. I found out my teacher is a member of the Chinese Communist Party. This is such a simple sentence and yet my heart has been beating fast for the last hour or so. ...its definitely an intellectual thing, that suddenly I'm realizing the communist party's relationship to the people is incredibly more complex than I could have previously imagined. In my class so far we've discussed a lot of pretty pressing issues in China, from the coverup of bird flu to internet mobs attacking government officials who acted in the wrong, to the kinds of democracy and the slowness of political reform in China. In a flash I'm suddenly going over all those conversations and anylyzing them for how she reacted to my questions, what here judgements were, whether I think her answers contained much of the party line. Maybe most of all was my previous premonition that occaisionally when discussing these kinds of problems she might be going to far, telling me too much and might get in trouble for it. Suddenly I realize that she was telling me the party line, the plain and simple party position against these sorts of problems."

I then asked my roommate over dinner if he had applied to the party, and he said he already was a member. To be accepted to have to pass a test as well as have interviews, background checks, etc. He didn't seem like he really wanted to talk about it, replying with 'now you know' and then asked me if I was a member of a political party, to which I replied no, but in America it doesn't mean much, you just check a box.

But my roommate is a good guy, doesn't drink much, extremely polite, I wasn't really surprised to find he was a party member, I just hadn't considered it. The next night though, having a conversation with another Chinese roommate who is definitely a quirky and fun kid, found out that he also is a party member and a much more willing to talk about it. He said he wasn't sure, but that probably the majority of our roommates are party members. This basically put things into the perspective that I'm currently holding, that being a party member is hardly a big commitment to an ideology, but more of an honor bestowed on bright and friendly young people. Like I said, this complicates but also enlightens my ever changing view of what China is like today.

A quick 'only in China' moment

Today while out running, listening to music and about as zoned out as you can be on a busy Chinese street - not very - a raucous noise violently overthrew the mp3 in my earphones. I came up on a stage set up on the sidewalk with big balloons, a big, blowup arch and huge speakers with a guy singing his heart out to some pop song. The base was blaring but sounded wildly syncopated, until I realized that next door, 10 meters further down the streat was another state with balloons, arch, singer and speakers playing a different song. Shaking my head in disbelief I caught sight of a third setup like this across the street from these two, doing basically the same thing.

What was going on was the grand opening, or beginning of a sale, at three large home electronics stores. Yes, they were selling fridges, air-conditioning and television sets. No, they were not coordinated, they just decided that this sunday was a good a day as any to attract a crowd, and what better way to do that than balloons and booming pop music.

Just wanted to share that colorful moment because so many just turn right into 'only in china' memories without getting told.

Interview with an old Party Cadre

This friday for my one-on-one class I went with my teacher to interview an old Party Cadre that she knows. We walked over to his apartment which is in part of the railroad bureau's compound (its very common for people to live in company housing, especially if the company is older than 20 years) near the center of the city.

As we walked up the typically dirty staircase of their apartment building I didn't know what to expect; because every apartment staircase I've been in is filthy you never know if the apartment is going to be clean but poor or surprisingly lavish. Theirs was very nice but not in an extravagant way, the furnishings were all of high quality but it still seemed a bit spartan in a pleasing way. My first impression upon seeing the Cadre was that he was a rather frail old man, skinny as a stick and wearing rather large glasses. I soon realized that he was a very intelligent man who had an amazing life story to tell.

He was born in 1930 in the second largest city in the province which means he spent most of his childhood and adolescence under Japanese rule. His family were poor peasants (or at least that's what he told me they were classified as during the cultural revolution, lucky for them), and he attended highschool during the communist push into the north east, racing the nationalist party to capture the industrial heartland as the Japanese retreated. When he graduated in 1948 he joined the communist party. This has turned out to be a very profitable decision, as any party members who joined before 1949 now recive twice the amount in old age pension.

He told me about his unshakable faith in Mao during the Great Leap Forward, giving half of his already insuficcient meal ticket to factory workers. Buying an American radio in 1955 for 3 months wages, the first one among his friends to have this new invention. He told me about getting denounced by big character posters at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, since he was the fifth ranked person in his 单位 (work unit) of over 1000 people, and how he was incredibly confused because he still really trusted Mao. But he said he found some solution in his heart, basically that Mao was right and the problems were in the middle levels of the party. He was reinstated after martial law was imposed, shaken by Deng Xiao Ping's denounciation, and especially when he was denounced the second time. He told me about his reaction to the first newspaper article published criticizing Mao, albeit guardedly (Mao was 70% right and 30% wrong, officially), how he wasn't happy but at the same time felt it was important to have more openness.

We talked about his work with the railroad reforms as China modernized, the advising he still does for the railroad and the sorts of 关系 (special relationships) that he still has. We talked about him retiring and his present views on China which were by far the most exciting.

We talked about the present rot in society and in the Party, because during Mao's time there really wasn't much, a point he reminded me of a few times. I asked him if there might be a relationship between having a disciplined and centrally controlled party, and next to no economic growth. He agreed, but turned the question around and said that then there were no opportunities for corruption and every one believed in the Party and socialism. Now it is not like that, there are many opportunities, the center is weaker and the belief in a higher ideal is gone. Then he told me an anecdote which left a deep impression in me, especially because it came from a truly dedicated and intelligent party member. During the war when Mao was still a peasant revolutionary he had an encounter with the leader of a large minority group. They spoke of the great China that Mao would create if he won, and the man told him that every great empire in China had fallen because of decay, so how would Mao prevent that? And Mao replied that the people will always keep decay under control. He said it with a sort of glint in his eyes of someone who's been there and doesn't bother with excuses and I was really surprised that he had chosen to bring up that pointed of an anecdote. A while later, he mentioned that he really approved of Hu Jintao and Wen Jiaobu before him - agree with the leaders but fault the middle layers.

The last instance I want to relate was still talking about rot. He brought up the coal mine accident that happened in May of this year where 56 miners were trapped underground. He was really angered by this, blasting the managers for being inept and only looking at profit. He told me that he knew one of the top managers personally, although somewhat distantly, and that he had written him a letter, a very impolite letter. He had said, 'did you even go into the mine yourself? you had sure as hell listen to Hu Jintao and fix this situation, you had better see that the money the central government is giving you goes towards safety and doesn't end up in somebody's pocket'. He signed it with his full name and former position to give as much weight as he could. He said he doesn't expect a response.

It was a really great interview, about 2 1/2 hours of him telling stories and me interrupting occasionally, to say I understood less than the gist of what he was saying. I wouldn't say that anything he said contradicted what I've read in articles and class about changing politics here, rather confirmed it in an incredibly colorful and real way. Its easy to talk about the flaws of a planned economy. Its much more interesting to talk to someone who truly believes in socialism and Mao Zedong thought, and yet is by no means afraid to ask himself the hard questions of how to make it work and why things didn't work out like they were supposed to.

长白山, 朝鲜 Changbaishan and North Korea (almost)

This weekend marks the halfway point in the summer semester here at CET. To celebrate, we all took a 2 day/3 night trip to the east and south of Harbin to climb a mountain called 长白山 (Changbaishan) on the North Korean border. We spent the night in a hostel (sort of, see below) and then cruised around 延吉 (yanji) which is a border city with North Korea. Most of our roommates were able to come with us and it was an amazing weekend of traveling, China with Korean characteristics and good Chinese practice.

At about 7:00 on Thursday we took the bus to the train station. All I had was a backpack and a sword. Yes, a sword, which I boldly carried in my hand into the station, passed it through the metal detector without batting an eye, and walked onto the train. We boarded the hard sleeper overnight train for Changbaishan, the 30 people in our program taking over most of one of the cars and hanging out in the passageway to the annoyance of the train personel. We were all very excited to be leaving the city for a new place, and our roommates had just finished their final exams so they were obviously happy. At this point you might be saying, 'Morgan, WTF, a sword? Is this Kill Bill!' Never fear, all good things come in time. I spent a while talking with two roommates, Renfeng and (how embarrassing that I forget her name), planning the plot of the kungfu movie that we were going to shoot as we climbed changbaishan, making a plot of love, kungfu skill, mystery and of course all of it way more complicated and illogical than it should be. Needless to say, I was very excited about mountains, movies, traveling and the like and I ended up getting about 2 hours of sleep. I even tried to use a friends cell phone and IP card to call home, on the mistaken assumption that Friday was the 15th, my birthday. No I wasn't drinking anything, just excited.

At 5:30 am we got off the train and met our new tourguides (2 from Harbin plus one local one). All I wanted to do was sleep but the guy from Harbin just wanted to talk to me. He was 23, just graduated from tourguide school and really liked reading history books and watching history movies. He told me a long story about the ancient ethnicities of north eastern china, how different peoples had become different races, which all let up to a story of a war and fued between two families over 300 years ago which was crucially important to the Manchurians taking over the rest of the middle kingdom and as a result these two families, even 300 years later can't inter-marry. (A good point about Chinese politics and 'fued's being played out on a longer time scale than we're used to, read: they might wait 100 years to get Taiwan back but there's not a chance they're going to forget). Of course he told me a lot more but I was way too tired to have him clarify the vocab that I didn't understand. I told him a very bad version of the Indian wars in upstate NY during the French and Indian war after he asked for a similar story from my country.

After breakfast we got back on the bus to drive to Changbaishan. As we approached we were harangued for half an hour by our tourguiedes shrill voice talking about the tree species, cultural significance of changbaishan and that it was perfectly safe because the last erruption was 304 years ago. She then explained that it had erupted several more times in recorded history (which is fairly long here), I forget the other years, but that the local oral history said the mountain would erupt every 300 years. Although I was ready to flee at any moment, no signs of volcanic activity were seen, don't worry. I also learned how to say fun words like volcanic eruption and soapstones, yay Chinese. The bus stopped at the gate, which had huge billboard pictures of themountain, but there was no mountain insight above the tree tops in this flat forest. We walked through the gate and boarded another bus which took us for another 20 minutes on an increasingly steep road that finally arrived at a much bigger mountain than I expected.

Changbaishan is a cauldera very similar to Crater Lake, OR. The ring of mountains are over 2000m (6000 plus feet) with a very large lake, several K accross and over 400m deep at the top. The North Korean border passes very close to the lake, on the opposite side, so I can say I've seen North Korea. The approach climbs up a wide valley caused by the most recent eruption and requires a covered staircase to protect against the loose rocks falling from the high cliffs. The steepest part has a several hundred foot tall water fall which fans out into rolling aspen forests, grey to yellow tinted cliffs giving it a very distinctive feel. There were also some hot springs at the beginning of the trail and the big attraction was eating eggs that had been naturally hard boiled in the springs. They tasted like hardboiled eggs.

As with all mountains in China, the equipment and skills perceived necessary by the climbers varies widely. We wore our sneakers and had packs with water, snacks and sweatshirts. Many people didn't carry anything and wore their leather dress shoes and slacks. I didn't see any skirts so at least most Chinese here were informed that this was a real mountain. Then there were a couple very large groups of Korean tourists who were all decked out in perfectly new, name brand mountain climbing gear and accessories. (hats, glasses, ski poles, packs, special shirts, pants, collapsable chairs, etc) I watched them closely but they didn't attempt any of the scree slopes or peaks, staying on the same stone staircase that everyone else used. Maybe most interesting were several of the Chinese girls on our trip who were genuinely worried that there wouldn't be enough male students around to help them climb the mountain. This perplexed me a lot because they really insisted on male students help and wouldn't accept the help of the capable American females. At first this seemed like a flirting game that students here play a lot, with the girls trying to be extra girly to get their guy friends to be extra macho (or more sensitive and feminine as the case may be). But this went passed friendly flirting and seemed to speak something about the interesting way gender roles are developing, not exactly upholding the capable and independent image of women we're used to in the West. Issues like them all being single children, experimenting with identity and relationships and having even less of a base of cultural precedent that American college students (us) feel at this point in their lives are all intertwined here and I think this is a fascinating aspect of modern culture here. Ok, Enough of that.

The whole time I'm climbing the mountain I'm carrying a sword! You have no idea how great it feels to climb a mountain with a sword at your side! The Chinese comments were hilarious, from 'hello master' to 'is that to protect against tigers?' to 'excellent sword, foreigner, good quality' (note: this is the cheapest taiji sword you can buy, and it was old and borrowed from a friend anyway), at the top one Korean hawker was really excited and really, really wanted to buy it. As much fun as it would be to reverse roles in the bargaining game, I refused on the basis of our kungfu movie not being finished yet.

The movie I'm not going to talk too much about because I'd rather have you watch it (when its finished), but we essentially chose the most beautiful backgrounds possible to carry out our incredibly cheesy kungfu/love story, getting some very interesting looks and having lots of fun.

After mountain climbing we went to a place called the underground forest which is really a sunken volcano crater which has a big forest in it, essentially below the surrounding terrain, home to diverse wildlife and plants. Then we went back up towards the mountain to go to a public shower/hot springs. It was a classy spa, with seperate halves for males and females. Since all our teachers and the older tourguides were female, us guys were left to ourselves, which meant running around like a bunch of naked 10 year olds, splashing, whipping towels, making dumb jokes about inviting the girls over and having a righteous time. Self conscious is not a word I would use to describe our Chinese roommates when there weren't any girls around.

That night we stayed in a 兵官, which literally means 'soldier lodge' but is generally used for more economy hotels or this place which could be called a bed and breakfast. No, not bed, 炕 (kang). 炕 are used all over northern China to sleep on in the winter. It's essentially like sleeping on top of a fireplace. Its built like a large bread oven and you sleep on top, usually rolling your blanket out on top of the bricks, squeezing people in rather tight since it forms the entire floor of 'bedroom' that you step up two feet to get into. Being summer, there was no fire under ours, and it was like sleeping on a thick blanket on a brick floor, so hard but not bad. Before bed four of us (one cool kid from Harbin and three of us Americans) sat out on some sofa's on their porch, watching the stars and telling gost stories and other tales from our lives. It was a very nice night.

The second day we got back on the bus for a four hour ride to the city of 延吉 (yanji)。I some of the Chinese girls taught me a card game, and after of about 10 minutes of struggling with rules and vocab realized it was Hearts with chinese characteristics – just different scoring, and things got much easier. The middle of the drive was highlighted by driving through a very small village which our tourguide explained was predominantly of Korean ethnicity which you could see by how they built their houses and the layout of the town. The bus didn't stop, only slowed down so we could gawk out the windows at these people who had suddenly and unwittingly become a museam attraction to be stared ot through the glass. I havn't been to see other 'chinese ethnic minorities' in China, but from what I hear this is the fairly standard mentality: present a people and their 'ethnic characteristics', take a busload of tourists to see these people and their characteristics and maybe buy some souvineers or buy a few sticks of incense, and of course take lots of pictures. I can't say I felt too comfortable looking out at the people going about their lives, looking slightly confused to see a couple tourbusses driving slowly through.

The city of 延吉 was nice, not too big and just about like most other cities I've been to. There were lots of Koreans selling things, some of it having 'North Korean characteristics' but like tourist items all over the world, most of it was made in China. We wandered through some shops and looked at things, but there really wasn't much here that seemed that interesting when compared to climbing volcanoes. But still, it was my birthday and my friends here weren't about to let me forget it. At dinner, Korean, do-it-your-self BBQ, they rolled out a big cake, complete with a pink, plastic flower/candle that played happy birthday continuously. And like all cakes here, the cake itself was a plain as plain can be, yellow and bland, only made interesting by the visually highly complicated but entirely flavorless frosting. But I'm not complaining, merely explaining. It was a great birthday, thanks to all of you here for attending (ha, it was part of our planned trip, you didn't have a choice)

But I'd also like to say a big hello and thank you to friends and family, literally from all over the world who sent birthday wishes, or who felt facebook.com was too silly and who were still thinking of me. And for those who weren't, I'm more than happy you were doing something exciting enough that home and friends didn't cross your mind. I'm not sure any of use knows what it means to live in a world where we can be in constant contact with friends in China, New Zealand, Nicaragua, France, Pakistan, the entire span of the US, heading off for Russia, Tibet, Uzbekistan, Africa, Lebanon, etc. But even if we don't know, we're sure as hell going to try and find out.

German/South American BBQ

After reading the title of this post, you might be wondering what German cuisine and South American cooking have in common. I'm here to tell you that in Harbin, China, they have found the answer. It is called Hans and it is an incredibly popular restaurant near the center of the city.

Hans is a big multi-story restaurant, just like all the good ones here. In America the better a restaurant is the more likely it is to be small and exclusive, but in China the better a restaurant is the more floors it has. Even with 4 big floors we had to wait to get a table at 6:00 on Tuesday night. We ordered our beers, which is the first time I've found dark beer in China, and they definitely tasted at least a bit German. The waiter was also dressed in something that was supposed to resemble laiderhosen and the posters on the walls all depicted German beer or holidays. But the waiter also wore a cowboy hat, which took me a few glances to realize how out of place it was with the german theme.

It was then explained to me that this is actually South American food. At least in Harbin, South American food means a huge BBQ with long, double pronged skewers that look like a Dr. Suess drawing. The skewers are then brought around by the waiters who place one end of the skewer on your plate (they're about 24 inches long) and then use a very long and sharp knife, inches from your face, to cut off pieces of whatever meat it happens to be. Since they don't give you very much every time, opting instead for variety, this happened at least a dozen times over the hour that we ate. Needless to say I felt bloated from all the meat although it was all very tasty. So if this makes you interested in German/South American food, come to Harbin because its the only place in the world you're going to find it.

帽儿山 - Hat Mountain

Hello all,

Yesterday the planned activity for CET was a dinner out, and I didn't think that was exciting enough, so a friend and I got about 9 of us together and rented a bus to drive us out of the city to go mountain climbing. I'll back up to mention that our teacher helped us rent the bus, but Li Laoshi (the teacher) didn't come, so we were mostly on our own.

We drove about 2 hours out of the city to a place called Maoershan, or Hat Mountain. Most of the drive was on the highway. China's in the middle of building a highway system similar to the US, and in less than 10 years the system is expected to have more miles of dived highway than the US (yikes), this road was certainly one of the earlier ones built and looked about the same as a US road. Combined with the fact that we were driving through a hilly, wooded terrain with tilled fields in the narrow-ish valleys. It felt like Vermont, which is a nice feeling after not even getting to the outskirts a Chinese city for 3 weeks.

We then had to navigate the dirt roads of the 农村 (farming village) at the base of the mountain, asking directions frequently until we arrived at a dirt parking lot next to the cleanest river I've seen in China - about like the Green river or the Ausable river looks, for reference. We walked over the bridge, but you could also drive on a concrete ford that the river flowed over. This was designed to drive your car onto and then you got out into the 4 inches of flowing water and washed your car in the stream. (Luckily I didn't see anyone using soap).

Hat Mountain does not have a ticket price, and considering it has a cobble stone path the entire way I'm not sure why they don't charge. But the hundreds of well dressed (skirts, dress shoes, etc) and well off Harbin'ers wandered up the muddy and at times very steep cobblestone path. There were only a few people selling water or snacks along the way, and no built stalls. There were three guys at the top selling bottle water and poloraid photos, and we chatted with them for a while about this and that. Taiwan came up somehow and I agreed with him that America had been interfering in that aspect of Chinese affairs for 57 years. (note, I don't know what I really think about this issue so I say that here to be polite). He beamed a huge smile and then told me that if I ran for president of the US he would vote for me. He also told me about the town building the cobblestone trail a year ago (presumably to attract more tourists which it certainly has), and how the mountain is being developed, with Chinese characteristics of course.

The mountain itself, geologically speaking (warning: my less than expert opinion), is interesting. It has a very distinctive shape, getting steeper and steeper all the way up to the top which is flat but only about 60-80 meters across. The last 100-200 vertical feet are cliffs or near cliffs. The path used lots of chains bolted to the rocks and steps cut in the rock, and they were definitely necessary. Now if I had to guess, I'd say this might be the core of a fairly old volcano, the lava tubes in the center being of a somewhat harder substance than the older mountain left to stand in this fairly vertical way. Devils tower is the best example of this if you want to picture it. That's the limit of my expertise, next topic.

On the way down, we were taking our time and one of the Korean students came up with the idea of making a CET kungfu movie, so we did. He and I 'fought' in a few different spots, including on a cabble suspension bridge. Then instead of going out last night we stayed in and edited it. If I can figure out how to put it on Youtube.com I will, after I make English subtitles for it of course, and post the link. But for now, we're planning the sequel, to be filmed next weekend when we take our long trip to Changbaishan.

That's all for this condensed version of our Saturday. You can see the facebook.com for photos of course, and drop me a comment here or there to harass me and tell me what you want to hear more about.

Hope you're all well,
-古木军-
-morgan-

Some smaller tidbits I'd like to share

[Jul. 4th, 2006|03:44 am]
Lets see, we're starting the third week of classes already, as hard as that is to believe. Things are going good on the academic arena with lots of quizzes, practice exercises, but also reading some interesting literature by Chinese authors and papers by Chinese sociologists. Its not exactly the same as reading in English, but it definitely feels more like reading than deciphering now. And some of the roommates have been teaching me some local dialect which surprises people a bit when I first use it.

Last night after I got out of class I went to meet some friends at a concert. It was in a huge old building here built by the Russians in the Russian style - symmetrical, huge, fairly lavish interior, I'll try and post a picture or two of it. I wandered up to the third floor, following the sound of the music, and entered an auditorium about 2/3rds full, with 200 people sitting and clapping to the music. The music was being played by 5 students and it was definitely Rock'n'roll, but not exactly the fast, energetic, angry or exuberant rock we're used to in the states. Instead, like I said, people sat. This reminded me a bit of my dad's description of the Byrds playing in Chapin hall in 1970 where the audience sat. The guitar players and the drummer were very talented with the riffs and keeping a strong beat going (although they seemed to have forgotten to amplify the bass drum which was noticeably lacking). What was really interesting was the lead singer who wanted to kick things up a notch. He would occasionally raise his clenched fist repeatedly trying to get the audience to follow, but all he could elicit was a little more intensity out of the monotonous clapping of the seated audience. The whole time there were several people sending text messages on their phones, pulling out expensive cameras to take pictures, and also, when the singer announced the concert was over and started into the last song people started to exit in masse. I don't think it was because they didn't like it, it was just what you did, let the music walk you out.

On a totally different note, I wanted to talk a little bit about the media here. I have my list of blogs that I like to read to keep up on China news like EastSouthWestNorth , Danwei.com , China Digital Times , The Useless Tree (written by my Chinese Politics professor this last semester), and Chris Bothur's Blog written by a friend of mine from last summer. In addition to the New York Times and Xinhua.com, these form the sites I usually visit when I'm bored and want to read news. What is interesting is that with the exception of China Digital Times and my old blogspot site, all of these are accessible in China. China Digital Times is run by Falun Gong members and is specifically pointed against the communist party, so I understand why they block it. The others (lots not listed) tend to provide fairly even reporting on Chinese events, even if they do occasionally have biting commentary about specific issues (especially EastSouthWestNorth). There are a number of factors why these blogs are allowed, but I think the biggest thing I like to keep in mind is that censorship here is highly intelligent and often incomprehensible to foreigners, indeed many Chinese as well. But the relationship between media and the communist party and China in general is hardly the relatively unidimensional one of push and pull that it was even five years ago, instead being much more educated and expansive over many different issues.

For an excellent discussion of this, see EastSouthWestNorth's entry on this here. Of course being less biased against China means the reports released into the news will cover more issues and not just the bad, but it also means that there are easily as many if not more terrible things happening in China which are not reported in the interest of focusing on other aspects and not seeming biased. In some ways this is a lot like the last presidential debates where reporters would give equal weight to statements by Republicans and Democrats without actually checking if the facts mentioned were correct. The big question is whether the blogosphere will ever be organized enough to produce a comprehensive but 'balance' picture, instead of allowing netizens to surf endlessly on articles that tell them what they want to hear. Nobody knows, and I can't really claim this blog is contributing to any such noble goal.