Monday, November 17, 2008

Report #5 from Shanghai










Nov. 15, 2008
Hello Friends and Family,
Another month has gone by and we have had many new adventures here in China, so here I go with another report. Our classes continue to go along well—only about one month left now. We have read many essays about ethics in China in my “Cross Cultural Ethics in Business” class (mostly by Chinese scholars), and we have had many lively classroom discussions analyzing business cases involving China and Asia. This past week 2 American businessman attended our class and discussed their experiences doing in business in China—each has been here more than 3 years—and the students had some good questions for them. When asked what is different about doing business here, each one answered “everything,” and then gave examples of different cultural behavior and experiences, “guanxi” and more.
My other class “Legal Issues in International Business” is also going along well. We are using the textbook that I revised last year, so it is good to actually teach from it and get the feel of the whole book (I revised half of it). I have 10 students in each of my classes. Sharon is busy with classes, trying to learn Chinese characters, and volunteering at a school.
The most memorable event of the last month was our biggest trip of the semester—11 days covering thousands of miles around China. Most of the students (25 or so) and the program director, You Sha, and Sharon and I flew to Beijing on October 31 where we spent 4 days, seeing amazing sights such as the Forbidden City, Tian’amen Square, Temple of Heaven, The Summer Palace, the Great Wall, Ming Tombs, the Olympic venues and much more. Our group also included about 15 American students from the USAC site in Chengdu, and Wentao, the director there. This time the activities, the transportation and hotels and many dinners and lunches were all arranged by Wentao and You Sha, so we just had to show up on time (wait for a few straggling students) and go along—much easier than our trip on our own to Yellow Mountain (last report).
We started out by walking across Tian’amen Square (the largest downtown square in the world) to the entrance to the Forbidden City. This huge array of impressive buildings was built in the early 1400s in the Ming Dynasty and housed emperors through the Qing (“ching”) dynasty until the Republic of China was formed in 1911. It consists of a series of impressive halls, palaces and temples with yellow roofs and vermillion walls spreading out over hundreds of acres. There were also hundreds of tour groups there that day—mostly older Chinese, often wearing red caps to identify their group, pushing their way into the buildings and temples—I’ll bet there were one million people touring the Forbidden City—I’ve never seen crowds like that. I now believe that there really are 1.3 billion people in China!
The next day we boarded our bus and went about 30 miles out of Beijing to the Great Wall, at Juyongguan, a high pass flanked by higher mountains. The Great Wall stretches some 12,700 kilometers (7620 miles) from near Beijing to the Gobi desert, twisting and turning along mountain ridges, through 5 provinces of China. Construction of the Wall started as far back as 656 B.C. when various early Chinese states tried to stop intrusion by nomadic people from the north. Later in 221 B.C. when the Qin dynasty conquered and unified China for the first time, emperor Qinshihuang ordered that the Wall be connected and expanded to form the basis of the present Great Wall. Much expansion was done during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) when 18 sections were renovated with bricks and rocks, and that is the part we see today. We spent 2 or 3 hours climbing around different sections (it is very steep and the steps are high—I fortunately still had my walking stick from Huangshan and used it a lot!). The views were incredible and we enjoyed it much, especially when we went across a road to a section with less crowds.
We saw many other sites in and around Beijing in the next few days, including the Summer Palace (beautiful grounds, temples and lake), huge silk and pearl markets (which have stalls selling anything you might want), spent most of a day wandering around the hutong area with our Chinese leaders (You Sha’s husband has a room there), and we also attended a neat Chinese acrobatic show and dumpling banquet. One evening Sharon and I took a taxi up to the Beijing 2008 Olympic venue area. We were hoping to catch a musical and light show in the Water Cube, but there was no show the night we were there. We did go into and explore the Water Cube where all the Olympic swimming and diving events were held—it is a pretty neat building. We also walked around the outside of the “Birdsnest” Olympic stadium, which we all saw on TV, and enjoyed watching the sunset and then the lights turning on in both the Water Cube (lit up a bright blue) and the Birdsnest.
On Tuesday night we all took an overnight train to the ancient city of Xi’an. While the students enjoyed the trip and got a good night’s sleep, we older folks didn’t sleep much and were tired upon arrival. However, You Sha and Wentao had a full day planned, and after checking in to our hotel and a quick shower, we were off at 9:00 a.m. on our tour. Xi’an has existed for 3100 years and has been the capital of 13 dynasties in Chinese history, so there is much to see. We visited museums containing relics from the Zhou Dynasty (10th and 11th century B.C.), the 3000-year old Banpo Village, and the Shanxi History Museum containing treasures of the Tang Dynasty (618-907) when Xi’an was the beginning of the Silk Road (to the Middle East and Europe), and perhaps the largest city in the world, with 2 million people. Particularly interesting for students studying Chinese was the Stele Forest Museum filled with huge stone steles carved with calligraphy. Each museum does a good job of showing visitors how the historical study takes place.
The highlight of Xi’an however, are the Terra Cotta Warriors—the most significant archeological find of the 20th century. A group of peasants digging a well in 1974 uncovered some pottery including parts of human statues. Over the next several years of careful excavation archeologists gradually unearthed an incredible group of life-size warriors and horses buried underground. Apparently the first Qin emperor (the same guy who started the Great Wall) wanted a large army to protect his tomb in the afterlife and ordered the construction around 211-206 B.C. To date, more than 7,000 pottery soldiers, horses and chariots have been uncovered, with more than 3,000 repaired and restored—they are now again standing guard. The Chinese have built a huge building over site #1 (the size of Michigan Stadium, the “Big House”) and are also finding more warriors in other sites nearby—who knows how many will eventually be found—and they still have not found the emperor’s actual tomb, only the soldiers guarding it. We toured site #1 and also #2 and #3 nearby and saw a 360 degree movie depicting the building of the warriors and the Qin conquest of China. Also that day, we visited the Huaqing Pool hot springs where an emperor in the Tang dynasty created what Sharon calls the first spa, in the year 747. She enjoyed a footbath at an outside pool with tea served.
It was certainly unusual to be in an ancient city in the middle of China on the day of the U.S. presidential election. We were eager to hear the results, but were on the bus touring all day, with no access to any news. Finally some of the students in the back of the bus shouted out “Obama wins” after talking by cell phone to family members in the States. Later we went to an internet cafĂ© and got further details. The significance of the news really hit home when at lunch one of our students, a very sharp African-American young lady, began to cry when she told us about her great grandmother being tortured and killed by the KKK, and saying “my 90-year old grandmother never believed she would see this day in her lifetime.” In the next few days when we had one English channel on our TV in our hotel in Chengdu, the Chinese commentators mostly focused on what effect Mr. Obama’s election would have on Chinese-U.S. relations--TV in China is controlled by the government.
On Friday, the student group and You Sha headed back to Shanghai, but Sharon and I flew on to Chengdu, the largest city in western China, located in Sichuan Province. I had been battling real nasty stomach and intestinal problems while in Xi’an but felt a bit better Friday so off we went to Chengdu. Wentao, the USAC director in Chengdu (and another American visiting professor, Marianne Cooley) were flying to Chengdu, so we went along. Wentao arranged a hotel for us, and after checking in, Sharon and I went to a Sichuan opera performance that evening, featuring great costumes and acting and singing (in high voices)—that is Chinese theater.
The next morning we went to the Giant Panda Breeding and Research Center, the highlight of any visit to Chengdu! The Giant Panda is one of the treasures of China, but the numbers in the wild have been declining steadily for many years. So about 15 years ago the Chinese established this center, a few miles outside of Chengdu. It is an amazing place—they have a few hundred pandas there, in a park like setting, with different age pandas in different sections of the site. You walk around, up and down pathways in a bamboo forest, and just a few feet away, behind a moat, you see pandas frolicking, eating bamboo, and relaxing. We took many photos—they are awfully cute—and spent several hours there watching the pandas play. The staff is especially concerned with breeding pandas, and this year they had the largest birthing year ever. Perhaps the most fun part of the site is the nursery, where through a glass you see two “playpens” with 5 or 6 little pandas lying in each one. These pandas were born in the last 2 or 3 months, and every now and then a staff member comes over, picks up one and holds and feeds it with a bottle, just like you would a human baby—they even burp them!
We enjoyed our next day in Chengdu, a huge bustling city of 12 million that appeared to be doing well economically—went to the beautiful new JinSha museum showcasing hundreds of relics found just in the last few years (again when digging a well) from the Zhou period (10th century B.C.) including a gold “sunbird” piece which has now become the symbol of Chengdu (along with the pandas). We spent Sunday walking in a bamboo park near the hotel and spent the afternoon with Wentao and her husband and daughter “Helen” visiting the very old “Yellow Dragon Village” some 20 miles outside of Chengdu, and then had dinner with them at a nice Sichuan restaurant specializing in tofu (we even made some by grinding the soy beans). The next morning we flew back to Shanghai. It was good to get “home” after 11 days on the road. As we were walking up the stairs to our apartment, (the elevator only goes to 7, and we live on 8) the couple who lives below us said “Welcome Home” in English as we walked by, carrying our suitcases, so that felt pretty good.
We continue to explore new places in Shanghai. This weekend we went to the Shanghai Art Museum and battled the crowds to see some sort of modern art show (which didn’t do much for me), and also had fun going to a jazz concert way over in Pudong (the new area) by a lively group. Later we went to the 54th floor bar in the Hyatt, in the JinMao Tower and had a drink looking down on Shanghai—very nice. Other days we have visited the Shanghai Museum and looked at ancient jade works of art, as well as calligraphy, ceramics and Chinese art. We have sampled quite a bit of “street food” for sale right on our street, including snacks such as jianbing, baozi, and ba-yumi-wha (popcorn, made while you wait) and more. At least once a week we eat dinner at the “Muslim Noodle” place (where you can watch the guys make the noodles and have a plate of noodles and meat and spices for about $1.50) and the local dumpling shop (plate of 12 pork/vegetable dumplings (jiaozi) for 5 yuan=$0.75) and then we also eat at a “western” restaurant maybe once a week. Cooking in our 3 ft. by 3 ft. kitchen is a hassle, (as is clean up) and there is much good inexpensive food nearby so we usually eat dinner out.
As I am putting the finishing touches on this Report, Sharon and I have just returned from the huge “Fabric market,” in the older section of Shanghai. The market is indoors and contains perhaps 300 “stalls” with each vendor selling a wide variety of clothing items and fabric. Hundreds of shoppers—both Chinese and western—are walking around, as the vendors shout out in English (to us) “Look here, want a suit?” “How about a coat?” “Need a scarf?” “High Quality.” After considerable negotiation, I ordered a custom-made suit, to be ready in one week, and Sharon ordered a custom-made jacket both made of cashmere, supposedly. The prices we agreed to pay were less than half of the original price quoted to us. The fabric did look and feel quite nice, and hopefully the garments will turn out well.
We continue to have new experiences every day, but enough for now.
Bye (zai jian) for now, Michael Bixby

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