On Nanjing

My first visit to Nanjing was a little over a year ago, on a business trip. I arrived at Nanjing Railroad Station after a day and a half long journey from Chengdu. I spent the next few days suffering in a room being trained. Between these suffer sessions, mostly at night, but sometimes at lunch, I'd go out and explore Nanjing. In my few days, I managed to see some of the old city walls, walk past the Confucius Temple, and find a Burger King. In short, it proved an uneventful trip.

I went back to Nanjing Railway Station by subway and went back to Chengdu. And all that really was a shame.

This time around, things were different. For starters, instead of taking the subway, we decided to take a cab. The nice thing about Nanjing Station is it overlooks a long stretch of the old city walls and the lakes and parks, Xuan Wuhu. We'd later visit Xuan Wuhu. I have to say, it was one of the better parks I've been to in China. It was certainly the greenest. It is also large, probably larger than Beihai in Beijing, but not overwhelming.

The parks provided pleasant paths for promenading. And boating on the lake was peaceful for hour. We lingered though, and in the second hour it became something like a game of bumper cars.

The only other sight visited was Zongtongfu. This used to be the official residence of the Qing Governors. I think the complex dates back to the Ming. During the Taiping, it was occupied by the Heavenly King. During the Republic of China's stint running the country, it served as the presidential palace.

It was interesting looking at the house Zhongshan once lived in. It was rather small. In fact, it was all rather small. So much so, that it seemed the smallness of it all had been a statement of sorts, a deliberate distancing from Qing excess.

While in Nanjing, we decided to try some Duck Blood Soup. I was expecting a cup of blood. In fact, Duck Blood Soup is no different from most noodles. It just has cubes of cooked blood in it along with a helping of offal. It was delicious. It also had a very nice warming effect, which was appreciated as the day was brisk.

The trip back to Wuhu, ours was just a one night stay, was awful. Two hours standing.

In any case, we plan on making the trip again.  

Diaoyu Islands

The 18th marked the 81st, or 83rd, anniversary of Japan’s expansion into China. At the school, at least where the students live, they sounded the air raid alarms. The premier spoke. Teachers and administrators instructed students not to attend anticipated demonstrations in Wuhu. Most students listened. One of my students, however, did not.

She decided to attend the demonstration with a roommate, but they arrived late. Upon arrival they saw a Japanese car with its windows smashed in. She reported no damage to the bodywork. In her diary, she writes the protest’s organizers were using the occasion to pimp Chinese merchandise. I wonder what she means.

I picture the local plant director for Cherry, sledgehammer still in hand, entreating his compatriots to buy Chinese, as teenage girls in skimpy liveries,  hand out free samples. In any case, my student says there was a strong commercial vibe. She got the idea the organizers didn’t care about China at all. It was all a stunt to garner free publicity. She said it made her sick.

Meanwhile, in Xia’n, a man, driving in a Japanese brand car, had his head dashed in by a protester. The assailant was young, a bit pudgy, his skin untanned. I doubt he was a university student. In fact, it turns out he was likely a factory worker. Likely he was put up to it.

Over eager local officials went to a factory, gave a prep talk to some workers, and sent them out to protest. Things get out of hand; the assailant assaults a man in a Japanese car.  Things, in all likelihood, were never in hand. There are people that claim these protests were planned. I agree. But the protests also took on a life of their own.

In Shenzhen, workers smashed up Japanese cars. In Xia’n, a worker put a passenger into the hospital. In another city, a university professor slapped a elderly man for attack Chairman Hu. His exploit made the news. The success of aiguozhuyi (the idea that you must love your country) has always surprised me. In truth, I don’t know much of the history here. However, I think up until this period concern for country was always secondary. Family is what mattered. Family still is what matters, but aiguozhuyi is a useful banner.

I beat him because he was driving a Japanese car. I didn’t beat him because I envied him.

There seems very little the Party can do to resolve the Diaoyu Island issue, or any of the island disputes. But if they do nothing, if their response is considered weak, they risk becoming targets. People are already complaining about the Government’s weak response.

No doubt these disputes will be an issue for decades to come. What happens when Japan decides to develop? Worse yet, what happens when Vietnam tries to develop?

Living on Campus

I've been teaching for a two weeks now. I'm living on the old campus of Anhui Normal. It's in a built up part of town. Looking out my apartment window, I can see office buildings looming just outside the walls.  We're close to the lake. The apartment stands just up the hill from the west. I can see the neon displays of walking street from our balcony.

I imagine living here must be like living in a math. I wonder how long people will study here. Apart from the walls there is a pillbox. It seems untouched by war. For some reason, I can't imagine it being built before th 50's. The school was built on the side of a hill. The front gate looks out across the lake. The ground appears flat, but it has been rising gently since the lake-shore. It continues to rise gently until disappearing behind the main builing. Here the ground swells upwards, the grade increases. Two roads flank the mainbuilding. flanking them are basketball courts.

The hill levels off after a twenty foot climb. On this ribbon of flat earth, that wraps around the whole hill, I imagine, is an elementry school, the life sciences collegge, the international college, and teacher housing. The ribbon is intersected by roads and stairs leading still higher, but beyond this next ribbon is a sharp fall. Taking worn out stairs, you can venture into still more teacher housing. The hills begin again. The roads are flanked by buildings. At first, these are two storey brick row houses. Going deeper, the buildings become six and eight storey tenenments. High up the hill the buildings give way to shacks, forest, and darkness.

We decide to turn back for the night.

Discussing it between ourselves, we decide we've approached this hill from the other side. That side was no better. I wonder how much of the hill remains unknown to us, how long is that final stretch of road. With the trees so thick, there's no telling.

Tomorrow, first light, we'll venture back and fill in the map.

Friedman is a Joke

Friedman has offered up more sophomoric musings on China. China lacks trust, according to Friedman.

Francis Fukuyama wrote a book touching on this topic ages ago, but I suppose Friedman will want credit as co-discoverer of China's trust deficiency.

Friedman argues that China hasn't always been a low trust society. He's mistaken. Trust in China has never extended much beyond the family. In southern China clans based on fictive kinship were formed to address this problems, and the occupants of a village often would assume a single family name. Still, such extended networks of trust were always treated with suspicion.

Friedman suffers from the delusion that the private sector can create the trust necessary for innovation. I find his thesis suspect. Alibaba provides a valuable service. Innovation, however, depends on innovators being guaranteed rewards. The state can provide these rewards by offering bounties or granting monopolies through patents or copyrights. A company like Alibaba can't.

There is no easy fix.

On Shanghai

Shanghai is one of those cities most people know about. I first learned about Shanghai from the letters of C. S. Lewis to his brother. We didn't have much time, just an afternoon really, to sight see. So we walked the Bund. The Bund reminds me of Guangzhou's Shamian Island on a more massive scale except less colorful. There aren't really any buildings the color of creams. There weren't a lot of trees.

Nanjing Road, the pedestrian shopping street, was nice. It is, without contest, better than Guangzhou's and Chengdu's shopping streets. And the actual road and storefronts is better than Wangfujing in Beijing. Wangfujing is rather bland on the outside, but for actual shopping Wangfujing probably takes the prize.

A surprising thing was so many hotels not taking foreigners. We weren't on holiday so we stayed at a Chinese budget hotel chain. Turns out only two or three of the hotels were approved by the PSB to register foreigners for the night. In the end we found a hotel close to Ikea.

Shanghai struck me as a more sprawling city. More so than Guangzhou. Less so, perhaps, than Beijing. I admit though, that we didn't spend any time at all in Pudong, so I suppose we weren't really in the heart of the city.

Shanghairen are polite. The subway was better than Beijing's. Living in Xidan, a stop away from Tiananmen East, I was on Beijing's Line One. Which is rather old. And if I had to go eastwards during daytime, I was always subjected to two human waves of migrant workers and their families getting on at Tiananmen's two stops. So perhaps I'm prejudiced against Beijing's great subway.

The food in Shanghai is decent. The bookstore was nice, but I'd rank it third after Guangzhou at second and Beijing's at first. Shanghai is supposed to have a decent chain of private bookstores, as opposed to Xinhua the state run chain. I didn't get a chance to visit one of these. I'm also not sure if they have a Bookworm or not--not that Bookworms are any good as bookstores.

Still Beijing with it's state run foreign bookstore on Wangfujing, and the private bookstore in the mall around the China World Trade Center struck me as far superior. I hear it said, that most of the publishing houses limit their foreign book distribution to Shanghai. This might be the case. There were some Penguin Classics translated into Chinese. Something I hadn't seen before, but all the imported books seemed standard. They did have more Tuttle books than most. They did have copies of the Jin Ping Mei translated for sale. Something I hadn't seen before.

The taxis were efficient. One of the car models was a nice roomy VW faux SUV. Not as comfortable as Hong Kong's purpose built cabs, but the best I've seen on the mainland.

The train station was impressive. We came into the station just by the east airport. Nanjing's train station was also impressive. But I suppose that's the problem in China. The infrastructure is impressive and the private sector is treated like a ginger stepchild. Shanghai is notorious for this. More than 70% of Shanghai GDP comes from government controlled enterprises. And I got the sense that budget hotels weren't approved to register foreigners more to limit their ability to compete than my ability to stay where I damned well pleased. 

Anyways, those are my unedited thoughts on the topic.