Another Day...
Diana Feinstein, a leading Democrat in the U.S. Sentate was supposed to visit campus today to talk about Sino-American Relations. Of course I deck a tie today and get to the office early to find out that she cancelled her visit to campus.
I spent the morning trying to find information art institutes in Shanghai, only to find they are pretty scarce. None of them seem to have websites, so it looks like I'll have to just go out and do some on site visits just to find out more information about their programs.
Planning on dinner at Papa Johns near campus tonight... wish me luck! I'll let you know how close it is to Papa Johns in the states.
The new
Harry Potter movie is out on DVD already in the campus DVD store. Oh China...
Thanksgiving in Shanghai
I realize it may be a surprize, but as commerical as most American holidays have been made in China, Thanksgiving seems to have fallen through the cracks. I heard a lot about Halloween, and from what Ralph told me, Christmas in Shanghai has lots of decorations and sales. He was especially excited about Starbucks...
(22:10:07) Ralph: i am thinking of Christmas
(22:10:27) Ralph: we might go to Starbucks
(22:10:35) Ralph: they have discount......
(22:10:41) ME: well.. that's pretty american!
(22:10:52) ME: they have a discount when ???
(22:10:55) ME: during christmas?
(22:11:00) Ralph: yeah.........
(22:11:15) Ralph: they supply a lot of options of different goods
(22:11:46) Ralph: for instance, Cup, Coffee Bean, Notebooks, Toys etc.......(22:12:23) Ralph: and if you were to buy some one, you can get the Coffee-Passport which could reduce your coffee payment remarkably
Looks like I'll be having Starbucks for Christmas. Haven't quite figured what Starbucks and Christmas have in common, but it looks like I'll find out soon.
On Friday night, I went to Jerry and Jodi Fox's for a Thanksgiving dinner with my Shanghai family. We had Vegitables and Tofu, Organic Brown Rice and Grilled Cheese sandwhiches with a side of three Magnum bars a piece for desert. Talk about a Thanksgiving feast! We had a great time talking about common acquaintences at Appalachian, looking through the Fox's new collection of DVDs and just catching up on the past few weeks.
On Saturday, I went to the clothing market to pickup my new coat! I went last Saturday to get measured for a wool overcoat and it was ready to be picked up. It looks awesome! I paid around 400 RMB, about $50. Of course, now that I bought the thing, it's been in the mid-sixties during the day here. Not too sure when winter will hit Shanghai.
After the market I went to
City Market that's in Time Square on HuaiHai Zhong Lu, yes.. I know no one knows where this is... but it's a western food supermarket. They import everything, including Root Beer. They also import Coke and Sprite from the United Sates... so for $2 a can you can drink Coke from the United States that tastes just like the Coke you can buy on the streets in China for 30 cents. But let's remember the most important thing, I bought a bottle of RBC Root Beer in China. Saturday was a good day!
Saturday night I went out with Kyla to meet a few more Candadians and some Americans. They lived downtown, about a 40 RMB taxi ride. One of the girls we met lived in Conneticutt, but just graduated from Tulane. The others were from Ohio and Florida. I've met quite a few people from Ohio here... not really sure why Ohio.
Last night Kyla, Shannon and I decided we missed mashed potatos... so we made them. They came down to my kitchen with a pot of skinned potatos, a box of milk, a bag of salt and a stick of butter and we made enough mashed potatos for at least 10 people. It's funny the things you crave here.
Thanks all of you who sent me a Happy Thanksgiving wish. Hope Thanksgiving was full of too much food and left you thankful for your friends and family!
No more phone calls...
What a wonderful Thanksgiving Day find:
The Chinese government has made it illegal to use Skype to make international calls. This is really bad news for me since this is the only real way that I can call the United States. If I have called you since I've been here, then you've talked to me on Skype. Phone cards are EXTREMELY expensive and takes two phone cards just to make a call, which means dialing 58 numbers (yes, I counted) before actually dialing the number, while using Skype to call the US over the internet only costs two cents a minute. Several articles site the government's lack of control over international phone calls when they're made over the internet. Also, they're really concerned that none of their 6 state-owned phone companies will start to loose profits, since none of them have mastered the VoIP technology that Skype uses. They want to be certain no outsider makes any money off of the Chinese... the Chinese government has to be making the money.
They will start putting blocks on the use of Skype in Beijing and Shanghai with the start of the new year. Even more ironic, the group that created the blocking software is an United States company,
Verso Technologies, Inc. of Atlanta.
I know most of you couldn't care less if I can't use this program on my computer in China, but it severely restricts me from communicating to the United States. Of course China has to make this experience just a little harder. They already block access to a lot of US websites, you can't read many blogs from outside of China because it lets in free thought, something unheard of here. It's so disappointed to see more restrictions like this happening here when so many great improvements are being made to bring in the freedoms of the rest of the world.
Bank of China
If you've followed along with my entries, you'll notice that the most amazing thing to me is the Bank of China. It seems that I always run into to something when I'm there.
My visit yesterday was no different. I'm sitting in the waiting area, looking for my number to pop up above a teller. Number 324 is called up, a man walks up with a brief case and pulls out two huge stacks of crisp U.S. $100 bills. In fact, after watching the machine count all of them, there were 150 bills. Where did he get $15,000 U.S. dollars in cash???
A lot of expats here use the 1to5 rule... meaning that if I earn US $5/hr. doing my job, the Chinese would earn US$1/hr. doing the same job. Using that rule, this would be like someone walking into Bank of America with US $75,000 in cash.
That's a whole lot of fake North Face jackets and Folex watches.
Campus Life Proves Difficult for China's Little Emperors
You have to read this article from
The Chronicle of Higher Education to fully appreciate life on Fudan's Campus. It's right on the money!
Campus Life Proves Difficult for China's 'Little Emperors'Pampered at home, students rebel against squalid dorms and limits on their freedomBy PAUL MOONEY
BeijingThe 20-year-old Peking University sophomore sat down at her computer one day in late April and posted a poem on a university Internet bulletin board. She then walked to the top of a university building and leapt to her death. Her family later found the poem on the university Web site:
I Made a List
Put reasons to live on the left side
Reasons to die on the right
I wrote many on the right
But found little to write on the left
Not willing to imagine
Continuing to live like this for decades.
She was one of 17 college students in Beijing who committed suicide in the first seven months of this year. In September a freshman at a university in Guangdong province, in southern China, jumped from the seventh floor of a campus building. He had earlier complained to classmates about the poor quality of campus life, saying that the food was bad and that he was even unable to launder his own clothes. "I'm very sorry I cannot live up to your expectations," the student told his parents in a suicide note.
With harsh competition for a spot at the best universities, Chinese college students today face conflicting and stressful demands. Products of China's one-child policy, they are often pampered and protected at home, only to face appalling living conditions unheated dormitories, poor food, inadequate washing facilities on campus. They also find their intellectual and physical freedom curtailed, even as they struggle to gain independence. Few students take advantage of university counseling, which is only just becoming available on many campuses.
As a result, students are increasingly rebelling against the system, and psychological problems and suicide are on the rise. The situation is a far cry from the student days of their parents, a generation raised on the cradle-to-grave "iron rice bowl," or system of guaranteed lifetime employment under Communism. While this is China's first generation of college students to enjoy previously unknown freedoms their parents had their courses of study and jobs chosen for them the pressures that accompany these freedoms can be overwhelming.
"People are more and more concerned about the younger generation," says Myra Lu, a senior at the Communication University of China, in Beijing. "China has really changed a lot. Twenty years ago, my mom never would have imagined that her daughter would live the life she's living today. We feel we've grown up with society, and we didn't have enough time to react, no time to think."
Fang Xin, a Peking University psychologist who has been working with college students for 12 years, says that students today are "victims of a changing society" in which parents put extraordinary pressure on their only child to succeed.
"Parents tell their children if they work hard they'll get into a better university, and if they graduate from a better university they'll get a better job, and if they get a better job, they'll earn more money," she says.
Ms. Fang predicts the problem will get worse, saying that the students who need help the most don't realize it, and never come to the psychological-counseling center. When she held a special online counseling session following the suicide of the young woman, only 67 of the university's 25,400 students took part.
"I think the number of suicides will increase," she says, adding that the trend is "contagious."
Suicide is the main cause of death among people ages 20 to 35 in China, according to a July report by the ministry of health. Doctors cite exam stress, career worries, and relationship problems as the main reasons, according to news reports. In Beijing, 20 cases of suicide were reported last year.
Locking the Gates
In many ways, Chinese students today live similarly to their counterparts in the West. The pedestrian mall beside Fudan University, in Shanghai, is lined with bookstores, coffee shops, clothing stores, and small eateries. The bookstore shelves are piled high with Western works in translation and in the original language including Simone de Beauvoir's biography, Orwell's 1984, the recent bestseller The Da Vinci Code, and Francis Bacon's Essays.
One summer morning, just inside the main gate of the university, two students are lost in a kiss beneath a towering statue of the late Chairman Mao Zedong. A few yards away, students lie on the grass beside a small lake, reading textbooks or just chatting. A student wearing dark black-framed glasses and a T-shirt that says Linkin Park paces back and forth while memorizing a stack of notecards.
But the similarities to the West soon stop. Chinese students both undergraduates and graduate students must maneuver through a plethora of regulations and restrictions that students in Western countries would find suffocating.
Most university campuses in China are walled and gated to keep strangers out and, on occasion, students in. Students are required to live in dormitories, where doors are locked at a set time each evening. When thousands of anti-Japanese demonstrators marched through Beijing's university district earlier this year, anxious students could only watch from a distance. Gates at the leading universities in the city's Haidian district were locked to prevent students from joining the protest.
Secret ExodusDormitory conditions are dismal. Normally, a half-dozen students are crowded into one small room, with toilet facilities down the hall. Hot water turns off at 11 p.m. And with no showers in the dormitories, students have to walk to a shower facility elsewhere on campus.
"The summers are too warm, and in the winters the heat goes on too late, and you have to use a lot of blankets," complains Zhu Ying, a senior at Capital Normal University, adding that the public showers are a 10-minute walk away, a long trek on bitter winter nights in Beijing.
Lights in rooms go off at 11 p.m. (a new government regulation rescinded that policy, but colleges have been slow to comply), so students move to the lit hallway to do late-night work, sitting on stacks of books and using chairs as makeshift desks.
"We have six students in one room and three desks," says Rui Ming, a student at Nanjing University. "The space between my desk and bed is so narrow, I have to stand sideways to let someone pass by."
The conditions have led to an undercover exodus from college dormitories in recent years, despite government regulations requiring students to live on campuses. No one knows for sure how many students have moved off campus, as they must still pay for their dorm rooms, but students generally put the figure at about 10 percent some say as high as 20 percent.
Chinese universities also have strict rules regarding relations between male and female students. Some institutions even forbid men from entering women's dormitories and vice versa. "The guard at our building has such a keen eye that even a male fly would not be able to sneak in," the official China Daily quoted a Shanghai student as joking.
Students take the restrictions seriously, and for good reason. One student was kicked out of Shanghai University earlier this year after it was learned that his girlfriend spent the night in his room caring for him when he was ill.
Last year a university in Chengdu, in Sichuan province, expelled two students who were caught on a hidden video camera while kissing on an empty classroom floor one evening. Although the girl produced a doctor's certificate proving that she was still a virgin, the university insisted that the incident was an "illicit sexual act" and refused to back down. A court case to force the institution to reinstate the students failed.
Students are critical of such policies. "It's not the school's business," says Laura Liu, a graduate student in journalism at Fudan University, in Shanghai. "You can't regulate things like this. Students have a right to have a boyfriend or girlfriend."
When two Beijing students were found murdered in their off-campus apartment last year, universities adopted an "I told you so" attitude.
Students point in turn to the case of Ma Jiajue, a senior at Yunnan University, in southwestern China, who last year hacked four of his roommates to death in their dorm room. Mr. Ma, who was very bright, came from a poor farm family. He felt discriminated against and suffered from periods of deep depression. He was executed in June 2004.
It's a JokeChinese students also face a good deal of political indoctrination. In the summer before their freshman year, all students take part in obligatory military training for about two weeks. Students speak fondly of this experience, in the way that soldiers describe the camaraderie created in boot camp.
"Standing in the sun for hours isn't pleasant," says Daisy Li, a student in Shanghai. "But by the end of the training, we had formed good ties with the trainers. Some girls have tears in their eyes when they leave."
University students must also take courses each year in basic communist philosophy, including Marxism, Mao Zedong's thought, and theories of Deng Xiaoping. Few students or professors appear to take those courses seriously.
"It's a joke," says Ms. Lu. "I don't know why we have to take it. One student pretends to listen to the teacher and the rest sleep, listen to music, or completely skip the class. We just memorize the night before the exam."
Students tell of teachers who are aware of the unpopularity of the courses, and who use the time to teach Chinese history or Western philosophy.
Some observers worry that China's pampered "little emperors" are arriving on university campuses ill-prepared for the real world. Most new students have never been away from home before, never held a job, and have not had a romantic relationship.
"They were overprotected by their parents, and when they get into university they're not used to dealing with things on their own," says Ms. Liu, the Shanghai graduate student.
Some worried parents move to university cities with their college children to take care of them; some families go so far as to hire "nannies" to take care of their university-age sons and daughters.
In the case of the Guangdong student who committed suicide this fall, the Chinese news media reported that the young man's parents had planned to rent a house near the campus to be close to him while he was at the university. But when his mother told the young man the family could not afford the rent, and would instead deliver home-cooked meals to him each day, the distraught student committed suicide.
Ms. Fang, the Peking University psychologist, blames parents for spoiling their children and being overly protective.
"They're 18 years old, but their psychological age is just 8 or 9," she says of students today. "This is because Mom is always telling them, 'You needn't do anything. I'll wash your clothes, I'll cook for you.'"
Last year, Nanjing University of Science and Technology began offering 16 types of free hotel-like services in its dorms, including room cleaning, morning wake-up calls, the posting of mail, and even putting air in bicycle tires. The new services were seen as an attempt to keep students from moving off the campus. But the venture led to a nationwide debate.
The Beijing Youth Daily welcomed the decision, saying the new services would "free students from mundane trivial matters, allowing them to focus more on academic study." But the People's Daily concluded that hotel services would actually encourage laziness and a dependent mentality among students, and accused "overbearing parents" of having kept their children "far from daily chores at home."
Loosening Its GripThe Ministry of Education has recently begun to take steps to relax its grip on university life. It has appeared to back down on the requirement that all students live on campus when it vaguely altered the wording of the prohibition, implying that students might be allowed to choose where they want to live.
The ministry also lifted the decades-old ban on students' getting married, a move welcomed by a China Daily commentator. "It is as if an old lady is reluctantly loosening her grip on her naughty grown-up children," the commentator wrote, adding that the move was "a trend that should be encouraged." The author went on to say that excessive supervision by schools and parents limited the opportunity for students to learn from their mistakes.
Some universities were quick to capitalize on the changes. Suzhou University announced that pregnant students would be able to obtain a one-year maternity leave a first. Fudan University said it would no longer immediately expel students caught having sex.
The university's Web site said students caught engaging in sexual relations whether on campus or off would be given a warning and a negative report in their school records. Students would be expelled after two warnings.
Meanwhile, the Communist Party of China, which is less progressive than the education ministry, responded to changes on the nation's campuses with a characteristic call for a heavier hand in dealing with university students. In a People's Daily article last October that announced the start of a new political campaign aimed at students, the party complained that "a number of weak links exist in the ideological and political education of college students in the face of profound changes in the international and domestic situations."
The document announcing the campaign, which had the unwieldy title "Views of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and the State Council on Further Strengthening and Improving the Ideological and Political Education of University Students," also called for better control of college Web sites and the Internet.
During the past year, the government has shut down popular Internet bulletin boards. At some universities, Internet usage has been restricted to people who are physically on the campus.
Students have also been told to register to use the Internet with their real names, a move that no doubt has had an intimidating effect on cyberrebels.
But in the real world, students continue to skirt campus rules intended to keep them on a tight leash.
"There's no way to force a 20-year-old," says Ms. Lu. "If you want to go out every night, no one can watch you all the time. And I don't think it's necessary. We're mature enough to make our own decisions and we know what we want. If they give us too much pressure, there will be a bad reaction."
This is the picture floating around China right now after President Bush's visit to the Beijing Forum...
Tianjin
We left last Friday night for Tianjin, an 11 hour train ride north from Shanghai. There were four of us, from four different nationalities... There was Caz a lawyer from Australia, studying language at Fudan for a career change. Then there was Shannon from Canada, a junior from Queens University in Ontario studying sociology at Fudan for a semester. Then came Kyla who is from everywhere, a British and a Canadian citizen, lived in Hong Kong during her childhood, going to high school and college at Queens. Then there's me, the American.
After working all day, then getting on the train around 8:00 on Friday night meant a really tired Matt on Saturday morning when we arrived a little after 6:00am. Kyla arranged a driver to meet us at the railway station and a hotel room in town. Everything worked out perfectly.
We went to Da Qou, a small town that was famous in the 70's and 80's for its tremendous wealth which is no longer evident. There was nothing really to see their, just some factories and a pretty runned down little town.
Spent the rest of the day in Tianjin, driving around seeing the sites. In all actuality, there are no "sites" in Tianjin, just shopping, so we spent most of the later part of the afternoon shopping.
The biggest difference between Tianjin (which is larger than Beijing) and Shanghai was the noise and the people. Everyone in Tianjin was polite, even though no one spoke English, and incredibly friendly. People in Tianjin didn't seem to use their horns quite as much as people in Shanghai. We joke in Shanghai, that car manufacturers should reverse the horns so they would be on constantly, except when you push the button on the steering wheel.
It would be an incredibly nice town to live in except there was absolutely nothing to do. No westerners, few restaurants, no sites, no bars, no anything. It was just a calm, beautiful environment in China... Which is becoming rare!
We had a late dinner together on Saturday night, just roamed the quiet streets around down town and then headed in early to watch "The White Ninja" on HBO. HBO Asia shows back to back early 90's movies, so there's no wonder why everyone in China dresses in stonewashed denim, along with an assortment of other lost fashions.
Sunday was about the same relaxed pace. We spent most of the day walking around on a pedestrian shopping street. It was incredibly long and was pretty crowded... lots of little side alleys to go down to see how people in Tianjin really lived. Lot's of poverty in the areas surrounding this really modern shopping area.
Almost missed the train back to Shanghai on Sunday night, getting to our bunks with about 5 minutes to spare. Turns out there were two or three train stations in Tianjin and we didn't know which one to go back to.. we made a lucky choice and got it right.
Great weekend away from Shanghai... hopefully more trips to follow!
Sparrow Killing
So this has nothing to do with China or living here... but it's worth reading... (Thanks Lee for sending this my way)
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) -- The Dutch animal protection agency said Tuesday it is investigating the shooting death of a sparrow that knocked over 23,000 dominoes during an attempt to set a world record.
The ill-fated bird flew into an exposition center, threatening to derail a world record Monday, before it was chased into a corner and shot by an exterminator with an air rifle.
The bird was a common house sparrow -- a species placed on the national endangered list last year. "Under Dutch law, you need a permit to kill this kind of bird, and a permit can only be granted when there's a danger to public health or a crop," agency spokesman Niels Dorland said.
"That was not the case. I might add, is it really necessary to kill a bird that knocked over a few dominoes for a game?"
Dorland said the agency plans to submit the case to national prosecutors. The incident came as the national birdwatchers association was preparing a campaign to draw attention to the rapidly declining number of sparrows in the country.
The Endemol production company, which organized the Domino Day event, defended the killing. The organizers wanted to break their own Guinness World Record of 3,992,397 dominoes set last year by toppling a chain of 4,321,000 blocks.
Around 200,000 dominoes were left to go, and the bird knocked down 23,000 of them. Endemol spokesman Jeroen van Waardenberg said organizers made a "split-second" decision to shoot down the bird. "That bird was flying around and knocking over a lot of dominoes. More than 100 people from 12 countries had worked for more than a month setting them up," he said.
He said organizers had believed the building was fully sealed against birds and mice. The company is considering some kind of memorial or mention for the dead bird during the television broadcast Friday, he added.
But Dorland said shooting the sparrow to ensure the success of the program was an overreaction. "I think they were awfully fast to pull out a rifle," he said. "If a person started knocking over a few dominoes they wouldn't shoot him would they?"
A Dutch website called Geenstijl offered a $1,200 reward for anybody who knocks over the dominoes ahead of time to avenge the bird.
Hans Peeters, director of the Netherlands Bird Protection agency, called the killing "ridiculous." He said rapid urbanization in the Netherlands was threatening the species. "There were more than 2 million breeding pairs in the Netherlands 20 years ago," he said. "Now there's a half a million to a million at most. We hope this can be a call to action."
McDull
Do I Look Like This Pig???
So I found out my nickname at work. All the girls call me MaiDou (like Fido, but Mido) which translates to McDull. McDull is this cartoon pig from a Hong Kong children's movie.
"McDull, the piglet, was born dimwitted despite his mother's prayers for a handsome, smart son. There's no Dad around, so Mom has to make do alone. Mom continually prays for McDull's luck and life to change. However, his desires are simple. He wants to go to the Maldives. He wants a turkey dinner for Christmas. He wants things that are beyond their means."
"They really can't afford these things, but his mother tries to please him anyway. She gets him the turkey, but the leftovers drive him crazy. Instead of the Maldives, she takes McDull to The Peak and pretends it's the Maldives. In exchange, McDull can only give into his mother's wishes and attempt to make something of himself. He decides to train to become an Olympic level athlete. However, the trade he learns is Cheng Chau Bun Catching, which involves training heavily to snatch meat buns from large towers."
Umm.. yeah.. they tell me that it's a really good movie for adults because it's really deep and McDull is a really good character, so it's a good nick name. It's all in Canonese, so even I found the movie, I couldn't understand it anyway.
Huzhou and Nanxun
Last weekend I had a chance to visit Huzhou and Nanxun with the university level exchange students of Fudan University. Our office sponsored the trip and let me to tag along for the day. I spent most of the day with Ralph and two halarious Candian girls.
Map of Huzhou and Nanxun
After a two hour bus drive to Huzhou, we went to an old home and garden of a Qing dynasty family. All of the gardens are running together in my mind now, so it's hard to recall even small details. The gardens had their own family library and family history museum. It took most of the morning to tour and then we ate lunch at a hotel in near the gardens.
After Huzhou, we went to Nanxun, just a 45 minute drive west of Huzhou. In order to visit a Buddhist monastery in town, we had to drive up this one lane road which went from near sea level to about 2,000 feet above... needless to say, it was an interesting drive up the mountain, especially when they're building a highway tunnel straight through it and there's construction on this one lane road. The view from the top was worth it though. It really made me feel at home, like looking off Howard's Knob or Pilot Mountain on a clear day. The wind was blowing and the air was clean for once. There were three temples in the monastery, one of which held a rare female image of Buddha. In fact the temple with the female Buddha is said to be the holiest on the mountain because it lasted through all of the cultural revolution, where the other two did not. I learned that during the Cultural Revolution, most of the Buddha heads were cut off from their bodies; even the smallest statues of Buddha were beheaded. Most of the Buddha's you see in China have had their head replaced in the last twenty years after. The Buddha's that survived untouched are said to be the most sacred Buddha's to pray to.
I learned more about what materials the Communist Party of China (CPC) allows its members to pocess. They can not have any religious "paraphanelia". It was interesting to
In town, off of the mountain, we visited a small temple with Asia's largest lying Buddha. This was one of the most amazing Buddhas I've ever seen, second only to the
Big Buddha in Hong Kong. Unfortunately, they would not allow any pictures of the lying Buddha.
Overall it was an awesome day and allowed me to get out of Shanghai for a few hours. The almost three hour bus drive home was too bumby to sleep and my iPod died... so it was quiet ride back to Shanghai in the dark.
You can view the pictures from the day at
www.mattdull.com.
