November

I want to give a recap of November, given that I have not posted to this blog in a while. In the middle of the month I was busy with midterm exams and late in November I took a Chinese proficiency exam for foreigners and minorities in China (all non-native speakers).

I’ve also been working at a new ESL school a few weekdays and every weekend. I haven’t had a lot of English classes to teach, instead my responsibilities have been replaced with other things such as putting together lesson plans for single classes and curriculums for nine- and ten-month courses. The school has hired a few foreign teachers, and it has been my responsibility to recruit and interview them. The Chinese teachers that are hired I interview briefly once to judge their English skills and pronunciation.

I also do simple training sessions with the Chinese staff about once a week. With the office staff, which includes a few receptionists, a number of marketers, an accountant and an IT guy, we work on practical and fairly basic English skills. They are fun because they screw up a lot and love to laugh and joke around with each other. The other training sessions are with the Chinese English teachers and a few administrators who have advanced English skills so we practice more specific skills. I like them because I normally work closely with them so I know them well. They are also able to express their ideas well in English and tackle more difficult subjects, so the sessions are more serious and productive. I also do a lot of translating and editing of all sorts of documents. I was the only foreign teacher a couple months ago when the school opened – I was there at the ribbon-cutting ceremony, and now we have a handful of teachers and a few full classes of students and couple of students who take one-on-one classes with me.

The exam last Sunday, the HSK, is taken by thousands of people across the country a few times of year. In 1991 there were 2,000 foreign learners taking the Chinese exam that later became the HSK. In 2005, the number of candidates has risen sharply to 117,660.

You can also take it in the US, where Chinese is the fastest growing foreign language. Although the number of students learning Chinese is tiny compared with how many study Spanish or French. But one report shows that pre-college enrollment nearly quadrupled between 1992 and 2002, from 6,000 to 24,000. When the College Board polled schools a couple years ago about offering an Advanced Placement program for Chinese, it expected perhaps a few hundred to say they were interested. Instead, 2,400 high schools said they wanted to offer the class.

The HSK on Sunday was the same day as the Shanghai Marathon. I ran in that marathon last year after training for 9-10 months. Learning Chinese is a mental marathon but this one required more involved and patient preparation than a real marathon. I prepared for that exam through nearly two and half years of studying and a couple months of doing practice exams. I think I did okay and hopefully it’s the first step in moving beyond being a Chinese language student and English teacher to doing other things in China. There’s a lot of things in China I want to do, such as writing, research, translation, or business, so having a good command of the language and some experience living in China will me help jump into new things.
One goal that I accomplished was getting an essay published in a little newspaper for and by foreign students at Nanjing Normal University. It was an essay written for a class assignment to write a story about animals so I wrote about visiting Gibraltar and seeing the monkeys there. Along with the honor of seeing my writing published in Chinese, I was also paid ¥10 ($1.50) for it!

Elsewhere in China in November, Obama made a visit to Shanghai and Beijing, in addition to Japan, Singapore, and South Korea. Obama mania extends to some to China in some ways.

As is typical in Chinese official functions (this is also the case in the US for the most part), all the politics, speeches, press conferences, and strategic dialogues didn’t make a stir. Instead, the country was captivated by the fact that Obama carried his own umbrella in the rain and by an attractive young female university student in a red coat. Obama did bring up freedom of speech and access to information in answering a question about Twitter being blocked in China, which was nice to hear.

Cars in China

The Chinese auto industry resembles that of the United States in the early 20th century. There are just over 70 auto manufactures in China, many of which started as parts suppliers and later began to put together their own cars and develop a brand, such as BYD, which was originally a battery producer, and Geely, which started as a refrigerator manufacturer, then moved into motorcycles and cars. Like the American car industry in its early stages, there will be a lot of consolidation and will eventually be just a handful of large companies.

China, which has 17 cars for every 1,000 people (compared to about 600 per thousand people in Germany and 800 per thousand people in the United States), is quickly expanding its private car fleet. Car sales topped one million for the first time in September, and earlier this year more cars were sold in China than in the United States, although that was mostly due to a severe slump in US car sales.
Chinese auto companies are aggressively pushing hybrids and electric cars and several will start selling cars in Europe and the US soon.

So rising pollution and oil imports are two enormous problems, but I always worry about other problems in addition to further oil consumption and CO2 emissions that are seldom raised. There is simply no room for many more cars. Given that traffic and parking is already bad in large Chinese cities, adding tens of millions of more cars, whether hybrid or electric or something else, would be a disaster.

Books in China

China is the guest of honor at this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair, which was a controversial selection because the country bans about 600 books each year and holds dozens of journalists and authors in prison.

National Day and Mid-Autumn Festival

During the first week of October there is always a holiday for the October 1st National Day and this year another holiday, Mid-Autumn Festival, which occurs eight months after the Chinese New Year (all according to the Chinese lunar calendar), fell on October 3rd this year, so there was an extended break.

I saw some sites in Nanjing during those days off, including a huge fish market near the Yangtze river, a ferry ride to the other side of the river, Purple Mountain, and a memorial to John Rabe in his former home. Rabe was a German who lived in Nanjing in the 1930s and 40s, when he saved thousands of lives during the Rape of Nanking by offering refuge to locals in and around the Nanjing University campus) I also made the trip to an IKEA store in the southern suburb of Nanjing. It was my first time to an IKEA but from what I saw in the Nanjing store I’m fairly certain that Ikeas everywhere are all the same. Swedish meatballs and other family friendly food are served in the attached cafeteria and I recognized several pieces of furniture, a clock, paintings, and other things that my family has at home. I guess the only difference is that IKEA stores in China are packed, especially over a holiday, and are popular places to take pictures, as in, “so this is what an oven looks like!”

I taught a couple of English classes, went to a party organized by my English school for Mid-Autumn Festival, and was a involved in the opening and ribbon cutting at a new school location.

Pictures here

Nanjing

I live in a two-bedroom apartment on the fourth floor just inside one of the western gates of the ancient city wall. My bedroom overlooks a park where speakers play music and a fountain in a man-made lake runs and throughout the day, making it sound as if it were raining nonstop during daylight hours.

Nanjing Normal University is about a 20-minute walk to the north and the center of the downtown where I teach is a 30-minute walk to the east.

I brought two books back here with me focus on different parts of Nanjing's modern history. One is The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang, about the Japanese invasion of the city in 1937 and the atrocities committed under their rein through 1945. Nanjing (written as Nanking then) at that time was the capital of the Nationalist governed Republic of China, until the Nationalist officials and military fled and relocated the government to Chongqing (Chungking then). It was a capital for brief periods of time during several dynasties, blessed with fertile farmland in the Yangtze River valley and naturally protected by the winding river on to sides and mountains on the other. As Chang describes it:

"For centuries, water and mountain provided not only beauty for Nanjing but military protection. The Yangtze River to the west and the Purple mountain to the east shielded the city “like a coiling dragon and a crouching tiger,” to borrow an ancient phrase describing Nanjing’s natural strength."

Animals are often used in Chinese idioms, and the phrase “where tigers crouch and dragons coil” can describe a place with forbidden terrain. A similar phrase, “hidden dragon, crouching tiger” describes individuals who conceal their talents; the same phrase was reversed and used for the title of an Oscar-winning Ang Lee movie. My apartment, believe it or not, happens to be on the corner of Crouching Tiger Street （虎踞路）and Coiling Dragon Street (龙蟠路), with the address being 38 Crouching Tiger Street.

The other book that is largely set in Nanjing is Chinese Lessons by John Pomfret, a journalist with the Washington Post who was one of the first American students to study in Nanjing in the early 1980s. Universities fully reopened after the Cultural Revolution in the late 1970s and the U.S. and China normalized diplomatic relations in 1979. Pomfret’s summary of Nanjing’s history:

“Nanjing, the name means “southern capital,” is a city where Chinese traditionally went to lick their wounds while barbarians from the north carved up their country. In medieval times, it served as the capital during six short-lived dynasties when northern China was occupied by nomadic tribes from beyond the Great Wall. Nanjing was also the capital at the beginning of the Ming Dynasty in the fourteenth century and then again during the two decades preceding the Communist Revolution.”

A crossroads for plunderers and poets, emperors and colonialists, Nanjing was a safe house for Chinese culture, home to great painters and writers and the sing-song girls who worked the flower boats and brothels that lined the Qinhuai River snaking through the city… Throughout the centuries, Nanjing has been pillaged, burned, rebuilt, forgotten, and rebuilt again. In the fourteenth century, the first Ming ruler emptied the city of its citizens, exiling more than three hundred thousand to the far corners of the empire. A hundred years later, a repopulated Nanjing was celebrated as one of the most beautiful cities on earth. In the 1920s, an American architect laid plans to rebuild the city as a modern capital, a melding of Washington, D.C., and Paris, France. First, Japanese aggression in the late 1930s and then the Communist Revolution put an end to that.”

His experiences as a student in Nanjing in the early 1980s are pretty wild. Many of his classmates were either poor peasants or were children of urban middle class families who were forced to spend years in the countryside during the Cultural Revolution. Some were not able to finish high school because of the social turmoil at the time and one student lost his parents, both professors at Nanjing Normal University, when they were accused of being "rightists" and beaten to death by teenage "Red Guards" in the university's mall. Things improved after the Cultural Revolution ended upon Mao's death, but life as a student was still tough at that time. Many goods like sugar, meat and bicycles were rationed, dancing was banned on campus, and students were assigned jobs from a government planning committee upon graduation. Needless to say, it is fascinating to read about Nanjing 30 years ago and ponder how dramatically it has changed.

National Day

Yesterday was China’s National Day, marking the day when the People’s Republic of China was founded on October 1st, 1949. Every 10 years the celebrations are extended and virtually every military division is marched past Tiananmen.

It provides a time for people to look back at their country’s modern history, although usually back only until 1949, and most often overlooking the bad parts (e.g. the film Founding of a Republic was released to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the PRC’s founding conspicuously leaves out the darker periods). It’s important to look back at the entire past century of history, starting with the Xinhai Revolution in 1911 that brought Emperor Puyi and ended the long cycle of China’s dynasties. China’s modern history is chaotic and complicated – the country endured two revolutions, a prolonged civil war and occupation under imperial Japan that killed millions of people, a war against South Korea and the United States that cost one million Chinese lives, the disastrous Great Leap Forward that contributed to the world’s worst famine and 25 to 30 million dead, followed by the hysteria of the Cultural Revolution. Finally, after decades of regressive and destructive policies, China has reopened to the world and undergone a process of industrialization and urbanization at a scale and pace larger and faster than any country has ever experienced.

I’m also fascinated by stories of older people who have lived through so many periods of China’s recent history. There are some great stories about government officials, political dissidents, and ordinary citizens that the journalists Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn met in Beijing and wrote about in the book China Wakes (and one I finished recently).

Two interesting life stories that were profiled in newspapers recently are those of
Wu Jinglian, who helped formulate China’s policies of “reform and opening” in the 1970s, only to be persecuted for speaking out against corruption and poor governance, and the 103 year-old Zhou Youguang who helped create the pinyin system of writing Chinese characters in the Roman alphabet.

What’s in store for China during this century? The are massive problems to work on, all consequences of a rapid and messy process of industrialization and modernization, such as protecting the environment, improving education, reducing income inequality, and reconciling the gap between a liberalized and free economy liberalization and a nondemocratic, authoritarian government. But like Zhou Yougang, I’m optimistic. I only hope to be as intimately involved in the country as he was and to be able to live through more than a century of its changes.

San Francisco

On Saturday night we saw Chinatown and the North Beach, which is the Italian neighborhood. The Chinatown was pretty big and aside from all the cheap souvenirs for sale, it seemed authentic. In North Beach’s, where we had some tiramisu and cheesecake at an Italian café, the sidewalks were packed with people bundled up in coats and scarves and the restaurants and bars were all busy. It was pretty chilly that night, but I guess that is typical weather at night in San Francisco, even in August, because the city is surrounded by water on three sides and often has a brisk and cool wind coming from the Pacific.

Sukey and Pat both had Sunday off so we all drove to the Golden Gate Bridge and hiked a part way across the bridge. It was extremely windy and cool up there. We saw a few more neighborhoods, including the Haight and Ashbury area where rock music matured in the 1960s. That night we had dinner with Patrick Delahunt and Suzy Delahunt and her husband and daughter at a lakeside restaurant in Oakland. On Monday, Charlie and I saw more of San Francisco, from sea lions in the wharf to chocolate in the big Ghirardelli store. On Tuesday we drove through parts of Silicon Valley and saw the Stanford campus and the Google headquarters (from the parking lot).

Road Trip to California

I went west to go east. Six days ago I flew to Denver and Charlie picked me up to drive an hour north to Loveland where we stayed with our aunt and uncle. The air was noticeably drier, the skies were clear and blue, and the front rage of the Rockies was always in sight. The backdrop of mountains got us excited to drive across them all the way to the Pacific.

The next morning from Loveland we drove back towards Denver and then took Interstate 70 through the mountains, by ski resorts like Copper and Vail and old mining towns such as Leadville. By late afternoon, we had reached Utah and took a small road off the interstate – a shortcut our aunt Sara told us about – towards Moab. We came across very few cars during that half hour drive, but we did see an old wood bridge where only the steel wires remained and a panoramic view of mesas and spires of red rock. In one beautiful spot with a parking area for photographs, we took some pictures of the landscape that turned out to be identical to that of postcards we saw later at the gas stations in town.

We spent just one night in Moab and both Charlie and I fell in love with the place. Unfortunately, we didn’t have two mountain bikes nor did we have much time, but we did take out our two bikes with skinny wheels out and went up and down a paved bike path that follows the Colorado River. We had crossed the Colorado River several times during our drive that day, and now it was our chance to cross it by bike on a rust-colored pedestrian and bicycle bridge. Moab was a fun Western town full of nice cafés, bars, bike shops, and tour companies and outfitters.

We ate breakfast early in Moab – Japanese style tofu and seaweed over brown rice, a breakfast burrito, and roasted potatoes – because we had a long drive to do that day. Utah was long and dry but had lots of beautiful red rocks and mesas. Nevada was even longer and just as hot, but it got a little greener and was a seemingly endless series of mountain ridges and valleys. We took US route 50, which is known as “The Loneliest Road in America.” It took six or seven hours to cross the state and we went through four towns. They were all Western towns no more than a few blocks long. Around dusk we got to Reno in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. We had an awesome dinner of authentic Mexican food that tasted even better after a long day in the van and only snacking on packaged foods.

We spent the night in a motel room just outside Sacramento. After driving for about 12 hours through three states, we were exhausted and quickly fell asleep, but we arose early the next morning to see four cities that day. Over breakfast in Moab I read an article about “The Great California Garage Sale” taking place that weekend – an attempt by the state government to alleviate its massive debt by selling of cars, office furniture, computers, and other surplus state owned things. We happened to drive by the site of the garage sale so the next morning so we decided to stop and take a look. We considered picking up a computer for under $50, an old desk or some bright yellow pants with reflective stripes, but ended up leaving empty handed.

Not far west of Sacramento we reached Davis and spent a few hours there biking around campus, the university arboretum, and the “downtown,” making stops at the enology building, the math building, Charlie’s house, the farmer’s market, the Davis Co-op food store and a self-serve frozen yogurt shop (in all three of the latter places we indulged in some amazing food). It was a little like the near west side of Madison, a compact and green college town dominated by large university buildings and sports fields. There’s an excellent system of bike and pedestrian paths, complete with roundabouts and miniature traffic signs, and an endless rows of bike rakes outside of every campus building.

By now it was mid-day and we were ready to finally get to the Pacific coast, so we drove towards the Bay area and stopped in Berkeley for a couple hours, where we bike around campus (more like up and down campus, as it’s all on situated on a hill). There were some delicious looking restaurants in Berkeley, including Alice Water’s Chez Panisse and numerous Indian and Thai restaurants. We weren’t very hungry after eating our way through Davis so we just split a fruit and yogurt smoothie.

The trip across the Bay Bridge was really cool, once we finally got onto it after waiting in the severely backed up toll lines. We reached Sukey and Pat’s place around 4 p.m., which was the perfect destination. We could see the ocean and even feel it in the cool and damp breeze coming off the water – a palpable sign that the continent, and our road trip, had finally come to an end. I am sure Charlie was relieved to know that after three and half days of driving, there was no more land to drive across. And the van, with close to 160,000 miles on it and carrying a full load, had completed the trip without a problem.

Summer

Soon after arriving in Milwaukee, I saw the Big Bang fireworks show on July 3rd, followed by the fireworks at Atwater beach on the fourth. I spent a few days in Washington D.C., a weekend in northern Wisconsin, and lots of time seeing family and friends in Milwaukee and Oconomowoc. In August, Charlie and I spent a weekend in Chicago and saw a lot of music in Grant Park. When Martha returned home from camp, we skied on Lac La Belle and spent time at our grandparent's house.

I've posted some pictures from the summer on Flickr.

At the end of August lies one more trip, and this one will lead me eventually back to Nanjing, China. On the 26th I'll fly to Denver to meet Charlie and stay with out aunt Sara and uncle Glen in Loveland, CO. On the 27th we'll drive to Utah and camp for a night. On the 28th we'll be near Reno and Lake Tahoe. On the 29th we'll reach San Francisco and stay with our cousin Sukey in the Bay Area. On September 1st I'll catch a flight to Shanghai and from there a train to Nanjing. School starts on the 7th.

English mania

There is a brief video, titled “The world’s English mania,” in the TED talks online about how English has become the world’s second language and what purpose it serves. There are some clips of Chinese students studying for and taking the “gao kao” – the Chinese university entrance exam. The gao kao takes place every year for three days in early June. A few weeks ago, on two consecutive days I ran into a huge crowd of parents and grandparents huddling outside a school while I was on my way to teach English. When I returned a few hours the students had just finished and were heading home with their parents. Some were in tears, some looked exhausted, but most seemed happy just to be done.

The speaker in the video, Jay Walker, states that ¼ of the gao kao score is based on English. Several recent college grads and professors that I’ve asked all say that it changes every year, and recently nearly one of the three days of the exam is taken up by English. A large minority of students don’t not score high enough to enter any university – spots are limited – so they work, attend a private school or a technical school, or wait a year to take the exam again. The pressure to learn English is immense.

In the video there are some shots of English camps where thousands of students practice and recite English together. The largest class I’ve taught was about 100 students in a primary school gym, so it was a little bit like that. I’ve also gone to outdoor events where, on stage using a microphone, I say a few things, sing a Chinese song and an English song, or do tongue twisters, in front of 100+ people. The purpose of those classes at local schools or appearances at other events is to promote my school and get students to attend, where our classes have 5-10 students. Our classes meet several times a week with both Chinese and foreign teachers, and provide activities on weekends and holidays, and a language camp and trips in the summer. The tuition for an eight month long course is more than a semester’s tuition at a public university.

Pictures, videos, and more

Plenty of pictures from last month's trip have been posted.

You can view them as pictures.

Or view them as a slideshow.

There's also a compilation of short videos.

And an well written blog from Charlie.

The events that occurred 20 years ago still reverberate today, despite government efforts to whitewash the incident from history.

Scores of email, photography, and social networking sites are blocked (including blogspot, but there are ways around it).

The square is under tight security.

It's worth reading Nick Kristof's reflections on being an eyewitness 20 years later.

And going back to read his reporting at the time.

[UPDATE] There are some stunning pictures on the Boston Globe's photograph blog.

Family visit

Charlie wrote up a brief summary of the first half of our trip.

http://charliebrummitt.blogspot.com/

More details, including pictures and videos to come later.

New Ambassador to China

President Obama nominated Utah’s current governor, Jon Huntsman Jr., as the new ambassadorto China. Huntsman was a Mormon missionary in Taiwan in the 1980s before going into government service.

Last summer in Beijing there were four American students at my university who had similar stories as Gov. Huntsman . They all grew up in Mormon families in Utah or Idaho, graduated from high school, went through several months of intensive language training, and then were sent to Asia for two years. Two went to Taiwan and the other two went to Korea. All four were really nice people and sharp students. I got to know three of them really well and had no idea that they were Mormon and had already lived in Asia until it came up one day. I imagine schools like Brigham Young University must be long on mature and hardworking 20 or 21 year old freshman who speak a foreign language.

Some facts about Nanjing

I’ve been in Nanjing for nearly three full months now and have explored a good part of the city on my bike, but I haven’t visited any cultural sites during that time. In a trip to Nanjing last fall I hiked around Purple Mountain (it’s more like a big hill) and visited Sun Yatsen’s tomb (a massive set of stairs leading up to his mausoleum), an old temple that is now several touristy pedestrian streets, and the Nanjing Massacre Memorial and Museum.

Since I’m expecting visitors next week, I took out my copy of Lonely Planet China and went online to look up the points of interest in Nanjing and learned a few things about Nanjing. It has the longest city wall in the world and is believed to have been the largest city in the world in the late 14th and early 15th centuries, when the population was nearly half a million people. It was the capital of China under several dynasties and for a time served as the capital of the People’s Republic of China in the early 20th century. Now I know why there’s an area just north of my university that reminds me of the embassy district in Beijing, minus the guards on every corner; it used to be the place where many embassies were located.

Today Nanjing has 7.5 million people, which ranks 7th among Chinese cities. The city has the 10th tallest building in the world (free standing structures, which includes some TV towers); the nearly finished Zifeng tower is 450 meters tall and is only a few blocks away from my apartment.

Speaking of tall buildings, the Sears Tower (#4 on the same list) has new owners and hence a new name – it’s now called the Willis Tower. One Sunday last month a 50 story office tower in Nanjing caught on fire. I could see it from my English school on the 25th floor of another office building a couple kilometers away. It was a surreal sight to see flames leaping from a tall building.

See if you can find me among the pictures at my English school. There are lots of little kids and most of the pictures are from activities in and outside of school.

May Day weekend

Much of my birthday and the three day weekend was spent outside at a park, doing activities with little kids. A big event for kids was held there (and at a shopping mall Saturday morning) where my English school had activities with our regular students. In the park, we had a stage and microphones, and all I did was say a few words like “sweep the floor” and “wash the dishes” when we taught chores, and “apple” and “banana” when we made fruit salad. I get paid an insanely high wage (15-20 times the minimum wage) because it looks good to have a native English speaker on the staff (even though all I do is say a few words into a microphone and pose for lots of pictures).

The best part is the staff I work with and the fact that I was the only non-Chinese teacher all three days. About 20 assistant teachers from the school (where there are many, many more Chinese teachers) were there to set things up and help with all the songs, kite flying, food, games, etc. They’re all around my age, they’re really close with each other (kind of like camp counselors), and they all find me fascinating. We spent all of the down time chatting (they’ve all studied English extensively but find that it’s easier to talk to me in Chinese) and then I’d come home to an inbox full of pictures they took with me and friend requests on Xiaonei (a Chinese social networking site that is almost an exact copy of Facebook).

On Friday night, after we had packed everything up and took seven or eight taxis to get everything back to the school, three teachers took me out for dinner and surprised me with a birthday cake.

It was sunny and hot on both Friday and Sunday and I got a little sunburned. It rained all day on Saturday. That’s been the typical weather lately.

Finally, after discovering that the locals have no idea how to make a pizza (though they really try hard – for an activity making pizzas at school two weeks ago the Chinese teachers bought ketchup and white bread – they were convinced that’s how Americans make pizza), I decided to write a pizza recipe when our writing teacher assigned us a short essay describing how to make something.

做比萨

大家都吃过比萨，是世界上最有名的料理之一。有各种各样的比萨, 可以过过所有的口味。无论男女老少都喜欢吃比萨。虽然做比萨又容易又好玩，但是很少人会做比萨。
先准备比萨面。最简单的面是三个配料：面粉，水，与酵母。你可以加鸡蛋，盐，或玉米粉. 放热水在一个碗里面，加一点酵母，让溶一下，然后加面粉（大概3：2 面粉：水）。 等一个小时，面会大一点。把面揉五分钟。在桌子上，放一满手的面粉，然后把面弄平。
面准备好，放番茄将在上面。然后放蔬菜，奶酪，与肉。先要切蔬菜和肉成块儿。最流行的比萨配料是洋葱，青椒，蘑菇， 菠萝， 香肠，培根，等等。在中国，玉米，海鲜，与色拉将也很多。
最后，要把比萨放在烤箱里考八九分钟。

An article about “halfpats” (young people who head abroad to study and work on their own) from a Wall Street Journal blog about Americans working abroad describes me pretty well.

Frugal living – the “recessionistas” in China

Can you be hip and frugal? That’s the challenge many people are taking up in the United States. Cutting out subscriptions, movie tickets, eating out, and other discretionary purchases, while learning new ways to cook with cheap ingredients at home and how to reuse old stuff (see the recent explosion in blogs on living cheaply and surviving job losses).

In February I heard about students and young professionals in China who try to live on ¥100 yuan a week, which is about $15 (really more like $30-50 when factoring in the higher purchasing power of yuan or dollars in China). The ¥100 challenge excludes housing costs.

I thought I lived cheaply until I heard of the ways people spend a good part of ¥100 to buy food in bulk and trying to eat that for a week, while doing away with all but the most essential public transportation and entertainment expenses. It’s kind of old news, but I just came across an article about this trend in an British paper.

It’s not easy to do. Even though I live pretty cheaply and keep track of every yuan I spend, I don’t even come close to ¥100 a week (my target is ¥50 a day or about ¥1,500 over a month). Excluding housing, my most frugal month was November 2007, when I spent only ¥905, which comes out to around ¥210 a week (and I had free housing, so that’s all I spent). Last month I spent ¥1,546, or about 3½ times the ¥100 a week challenge. My most expensive month was August 2008 (¥3,969), when I bought Olympics tickets, train tickets, a cycling kit, a big suitcase, and went out a few times in Beijing. My average monthly expenses over the last 19 months, which includes virtually everything - food, transportation, entertainment, phone, Chinese health insurance - but excludes the rent and tuition I’ve paid in Beijing and Nanjing, has been about ¥2,000 (just under $300).

It’s nice to be young and single (no family to support) and living in a country with such a low cost of living. Life will never be this cheap again!

And if you don’t keep a detailed personal budget, you should start one today. It’s enlightening to see clearly what you do actually spend in a month or a week, then to plan ahead, set goals, and try to see how much self control you can muster to reach your spending/saving goals. It’s actually fun.

Middle of the semester

Spring has gone by really quickly – it’s already the mid-point of the semester and the steamy summer weather is almost here (it’s in the 70s now). We have midterm exams this week and then a week-long spring break next week.

I feel like I should get around to talking a bit about my classes before the semester is all over – and it seems like June will come really fast. My Chinese reading/grammar and listening/speaking classes are taught by two different teachers but in the same classroom. Our class level is the third semester of a four year Chinese B.A. Our class is just over 20 students; students from South Korea make up about half, and then there are three students from Germany, two from Japan, two from France, and one each from Vietnam, Indonesia, Mongolia, Mexico, and the U.S. (me). Two are married to husbands who work in Nanjing – one is a mother of three in her 40s, the other is a newlywed 30-year old – another student is a mother of about 30 who is a Russian language teacher in Mongolia, two are older men in their 50s – one is retired, the other is a professor on sabbatical – but the majority are college students, most of whom are Chinese or Asian studies majors.

We’ve become really close after spending so much time together in class (and sometimes over lunch after class) and we’ve learned a lot from each other by communicating in Chinese (some speak little or no English) and learning about each other’s countries and cultures. The foreign student population on campus is extremely diverse; in the cafeteria you frequently hear Korean, French, German, Turkish, and Russian.

I also take a few optional classes that meet for two hours each week – newspaper reading, business Chinese, and intermediate writing. They are in a bigger classroom with a mix of students from all of the third and fourth semester classes, so the numbers and nationalities vary widely.

I have midterm exams in all but one of these classes this Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.

Finally, here’s the first essay I wrote for my Chinese reading and grammar class. We write a short essay each week for the writing class, but since we have to practice writing characters by hand I haven’t typed any of them.

春节旅游

去年一二月份我放假一个月，所以我趁机去旅游。江苏省的冬天又寒冷又潮湿，我感到很不舒服，所以我决定去中国南方。我计划从上海去广西与广东,最后去香港。

我先跟一个加拿大朋友去上海住了几天， 然后坐火车去杭州。那时侯–2008年一月下旬–中国东南方下大雪。天气特别冷，还有很多雪。杭州到处都是雪，显得很漂亮.可是我很不舒服因为我没带很多衣服,而且，我的鞋子与袜子已经湿了。

因为中国交通又迟缓又拥挤,还有很多人回家过春节,火车票很难买到,所以一到杭州我就去售票处买火车票.但是我只买到一张到南昌的票。

我到南昌住在车站旁边的一座大酒店。房间里很暖和，我很满意，但是到桂林的火车票最早是两天后。第二天南昌那座大酒店没有空房间，所以我住在别的酒店。大概六点半那座酒店没电了，外面已经很黑了，而且没电，没暖气所以我就在床上听mp3。第三天我在南昌转一转。四点三刻我到了火车站。我的火车五点半出发。我到了站突然发现外面有很多不高兴的人。警察不让他们进火车站去。一看我的票，他们也不让我进去。我很着急因为我的火车马上出发。我先回去我第一天住的大酒店请他们帮助我。一位接待员陪我去向警察解释情况。警察告诉我因为大雪,火车延迟八个小时。他建议我几个小时回来才能进去。

九点半我回火车站去。那时侯我能进去。里面很拥挤，连一个空坐位都没有。我站了好几个小时。半夜后我抢到一个坐位，继续等火车。我不敢睡觉因为怕错过到桂林的火车。上午我还等火车…中午还等火车…到两点多才到了。迟到了二十一个小时!我上了火车,列车员却不让我上我的卧铺车,因为前一天的火车取消了,所以那天的火车有两倍乘客。我一整夜没睡觉甚至连一个坐位也没有！我生气极了！大概一个小时后一个列车员让我躺在一个卧铺上。我睡了很长时间。南昌到桂林的火车一般花十三个小时，但是那辆火车花二十六个小时才到了桂林。

一到桂林我就去一个旅馆。我的手机和mp3都差一点没电，但是那座旅馆又没电了！我就睡觉了。在桂林我呆了三天，但是每天都下雨。参观桂林后我去阳寿。我租一辆自行车骑过农村。那天晚上我得了流感。我一点饭也不能吃，就睡了半天。起床时没有力气不过能吃吃走走。那天我打算买到深圳的票。虽然火车最快，但我觉得我的运气很不好，不敢再坐火车, 还是坐长途汽车。我买了一张卧铺汽车票。晚上十点出发，预计早上七点到达深圳。半夜后汽车在高速公路上忽然停了。不一会儿一辆拖车来拖我们的汽车。好像汽车坏了！我就又睡觉了，一起床就发现我们在一个小村子。我们的汽车修不了。司机通知我们十一点另一辆车来。十二点到了汽车还没来。最后另一辆汽车到底没来。五点一刻车才修好了。半夜我们终于到了深圳！在那里天气又暖和又晴朗，我很高兴。

之后我花了两周在香港，澳门，与广州。

Use an online translator if you don't read Chinese and you'll get a hilarious version of it in English. In fact, I should publish everything on my blog that way, it's way more entertaining to read computer-translated-Chinglish, and after all, that's the way a lot of English signs and other media is published here.

Skilled workers and urban economies

Richard Florida is a popular writer on urban affairs, and is well known for his idea that greater creativity and tolerance fosters greater economic growth (see his “gay/hipster index”). His article, “The World is Spiky,” describes how economic production and scientific innovation is highly concentrated in a small number of cities. Four world maps show the importance of cities visually, in terms of population, light emissions (as a proxy for economic productivity), patents, and scientific citations. The last two are highly concentrated in just a handful of cities in North America, Western Europe, and East Asia. It’s a good counterargument to the current idea of a flat world where free trade together with fast and cheap computers and telecommunication allow anyone anywhere in the world to compete. Florida argues that cities provide many intangible benefits by concentrating creative and highly skilled people and providing an environment to commercialize new ideas and breakthroughs.

You could say the same of China, where average urban incomes are about 3.5 times as high as the average income in rural areas. Highly educated workers are concentrated in a small number of coastal cities and Beijing; Shenzhen is home to about half of the country’s PhDs working in private industry.

“The continuing dominance of the world’s most productive urban areas is astounding. When it comes to actual economic output, the ten largest U.S. metropolitan areas combined are behind only the United States as a whole and Japan. New York’s economy alone is about the size of Russia’s or Brazil’s, and Chicago’s is on a par with Sweden’s. Together New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Boston have a bigger economy than all of China. If U.S. metropolitan areas were countries, they’d make up forty-seven of the biggest 100 economies in the world.”

The attraction of cities for highly skilled and educated workers is further discussed in “Where the Brains Are”。

Finally, check out this interesting project that attempts to map the “geography of buzz” in New York City and Los Angeles.

Another article on America's immigration policy and how it is hurting high-tech companies that want to hire the best talent.

International schools

In the last few years, the number of international schools (the K-12 kind), along with their enrollments, boomed in many Asian countries. Growth was particularly robust in China, where international schools expanded from 123 schools in 2006 to 210 this year. But the trend has reversed recently as the recession is driving expatriate business people home.

By the way, some guy named Nicholas Brummitt is quoted in the article. I came across it because I have a Google alert for “Brummitt” that sends me links to anything new on the web with the word Brummitt. It’s usually a few little things about the Brummitts in North Carolina, the Brummitts in the U.K., or the Brummitt school in Indiana.

The contributions of immigrants

As a student of Spanish in the United States and now as an expatriate in China, I’ve been interested in the struggles of immigrants, their impact on society, and the heated debates over immigrant policy. China is trying hard to attract skilled immigrants from abroad while also creating enough jobs for the millions of low-skilled internal migrants moving to the developed eastern cities.

In the United States, H-1B visas for highly educated immigrants are difficult to obtain. More barriers to immigration were erected after the terrorist attacks in 2001 and even the first bank bailout last year restricted bank on hiring H-1B visa holders. These visas are limited and not easy to obtain.

[H-1B] visas are valid for up to six years. If a worker on an H-1B visa wants to stay permanently, he has to apply for a permanent resident visa. These visas are in very short supply and can take more than a decade to obtain. While they wait for permanent residence, some H-1B workers get paid below-market salaries and endure many other hardships.

But we should reexamine how important skilled immigrants are to scientific innovation, higher education, and economic growth.

Immigrants patent at double the native rate, and that this is entirely accounted for by their disproportionately holding degrees in science and engineering. These data imply that a one percentage point rise in the share of immigrant college graduates in the population increases patents per capita by 6%. This could be an overestimate of immigration's benefit if immigrant inventors crowd out native inventors, or an underestimate if immigrants have positive spill-overs on inventors. Using a 1940-2000 state panel, we show that immigrants do have positive spill-overs, resulting in an increase in patents per capita of 9-18% in response to a one percentage point increase in immigrant college graduates.

One way to look at educated immigrants on H1-B visas is to view them as human capital subsidized by their home countries.

Most of the workers who immigrate to the U.S. each year have at least a high school diploma, while about a third have a college education or better. Since it costs, on average, roughly $100,000 to provide 12 years of elementary and secondary education, and another $100,000 to pay for a college degree, immigrants are providing a subsidy of at least $50 billion annually to the U.S. economy in free human capital. Alternatively, valuing their contribution to the economy by the total wages they expect to earn during their lifetime would put the value of the human capital of new immigrants closer to $200 billion per year. Either the low or high estimate would make the current account deficit look smaller.

Immigrants provide crucial skilled labor for not only the science and technology industries, but also the military and intelligence agencies.

[A] new effort, for the first time since the Vietnam War, will open the armed forces to temporary immigrants if they have lived in the United States for a minimum of two years, according to military officials familiar with the plan.
Recruiters expect that the temporary immigrants will have more education, foreign language skills and professional expertise than many Americans who enlist, helping the military to fill shortages in medical care, language interpretation and field intelligence analysis.
…
The American Army finds itself in a lot of different countries where cultural awareness is critical,” said Lt. Gen. Benjamin C. Freakley, the top recruitment officer for the Army, which is leading the pilot program. “There will be some very talented folks in this group.

The New York Times profiled a high school in a northern Virginia school district that has received an influx of immigrants in the last decade. Bringing non-native English speakers up to a functional level of English and integrating a diverse student body presents many challenges.

The map alongside the article, showing the number of immigrants from different countries during different decades is worth checking out.

Most groups are highly concentrated on the coasts, save for northern and central Europeans who congregated in the Midwest during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The big debate today is whether the current wave of immigrants from Mexico is different from previous immigrations. Some of the reasons that cause the greatest alarm are the fact that Mexican immigrants are the only group originating from a neighboring county (Canadian immigration has always been minimal) and the only one with a historical claim to U.S. territory. The map also clearly shows that the number (and geographical reach) of Mexican immigrants far surpasses any previous group of immigrants.

[UPDATE] Another article on America's immigration policy and how it is hurting high-tech companies that want to hire the best talent.

The limit [of H-1B visas] was raised twice as the technology sector boomed, to 115,000 in 1999 and to 195,000 in 2001. But those temporary increases were not renewed for 2004, and the number of H-1B visas reverted to 65,000. (There are an additional 20,000 H1-B’s for people with graduate degrees from American universities.)

Since 2004, there has been a growing gap between the number of H-1B visas sought and those granted, through a lottery. In 2008, companies made 163,000 applications for the 65,000 slots. Google applied for 300 of them; 90 were denied.
...
Many innovators in Silicon Valley come from overseas; 42 percent of engineers with master’s degrees and 60 percent of those with engineering Ph.D.’s in the United States are foreign-born.

Foreigners also spur innovation by broadening understanding of consumers abroad. For instance, on the advice of Chinese-born workers, Google dotted its mobile maps for China with fast-food restaurants, which locals use as navigational landmarks.

The fate of the U.S. dollar, the U.S. economy, and climate change

One of the unique aspects of the current economic crisis is that it began in rich countries (particularly in the U.S., U.K., Spain and Iceland property markets) and the result is many developing countries are nervously observing the developed countries run up massive public debts and nationalize companies that are near bankruptcy. Remember that just over ten years ago, developed countries were telling developing countries to enact structural reforms like reducing public debt and allowing companies to fail in order to end the ill effects of the Asian Financial Crisis.

Now China holds somewhere around $1.7 trillion in American debt. In other words, every American owes China about $5,000, which is well above the average annual income in China. China is telling the United States how to handle its economic affairs and is worried about escalating public debt. Chinese PM Wen Jiabao expressed concern about how America’s low savings and high debt will affect the value of China’s holdings in Treasury bills. “We have lent a huge amount of money to the U.S. Of course we are concerned about the safety of our assets. To be honest, I am definitely a little worried.”

Interest rates will certainly fall if (when) the U.S. issues billions (trillions) more in Treasury paper, and China cannot sell its holdings because selling such a large amount of bonds would cause their value to collapse.

Chinese officials are also searching for a new system for central banks to use to store currency reserves, instead of the situation today where reserves in central banks around the world consist almost entirely of U.S. dollars. Possible alternatives are a basket of currencies or by reviving the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights, which is a unit of accounting that was created in the 1970s to also serve as a central bank-only reserve currency.

The two country’s economies are now inextricably linked – the world’s largest consumer (the U.S. is about ¼ of the world economy, and 70% of it is consumer spending, so that’s a big chunk of the world economy) and the world’s largest lender, the largest holder of foreign reserves, and the second largest exporter (China just surpassed Japan in American debt holdings, has $2 trillion in foreign reserves, and is second behind Germany in total exports). The historian Niall Ferguson describes the new world order as a global economy dominated by “Chimerica,” which played a central role in the real estate bubble in the United States. (See Andy Xie on other ways the two economies are closely linked. Michael Meyer on China’s traditional urban planning around hutong’s is also worth checking out.)

Some of the vast differences between the two countries could also provide opportunities for cooperation in productive ways (other than the previous cooperation of selling cheap goods to the U.S. for U.S. dollars and then using the dollars to buy T-bills so that interest rates stayed low and Americans could buy more cheap goods, which gets recycled into more T-bills…)

Over 70% of U.S. carbon emissions come from consumer-related activities, whereas more than 70% of China’s carbon emissions come from industry. We can learn from their use of bikes, buses, trains, solar water heaters, and dense urban living, while China could adopt our cleaner power plants, more efficient industrial processes, and service-based economy. At the government level, cooperation between China and the United States is critical for the next international climate change talks in Copenhagen.

Prepaid cell phones

It seems like prepaid cell phones are the most popular cell phone plan everywhere but in the United States. It is becoming more common in the U.S. now.

It's really simple and straightforward - after paying a little upfront for a SIM card, you can add money to your SIM card in a cell phone provider's store (some have ATM-like machines for after hours), by buying a ¥50 or ¥100 recharge card at a news stand or convenience store, or by adding money via online payment. You can also have multiple numbers by buying additional SIM cards and you can use your number and credit on another phone by swapping SIM cards (in case your battery dies or your phone breaks). Some phones here can hold two SIM cards, so people have two numbers on a single phone - one for their hometown and one for where they live and work most of the year (for cheaper local calls), or one personal number and one work number.

Recycling

An unexpected and fascinating consequence of the financial crisis that started in America’s cities and suburbs are the hard times the recycling business in China has run into, which deeply affects many low-income people who depend on it for their livelihoods. They can earn a few dollars a day by collecting and reselling trash, but the recent fall in commodity prices is making life much harder for them.

I always thought it was cool how every niche is filled in bustling Chinese cities. Although it’s not ideal to have so many underpaid and undereducated manual laborers, it does make sure everything little service is covered.

Instead of a municipal recycling service supported by taxes in every city, recylcing is largely private and the many people involved make it pretty convenient. Recylcers ride tricycles around residential areas while banging on a pot or chanting to solicit glass, paper, wires, old appliances, or anything else of value.

I often just hold onto an empty bottle when I’m on the street until I find someone carrying a big sack of recyclables and offer it to them. They collect them from trash cans, pedestrians, and pick them off the ground (lots of people litter) and sell it to a recycling center. Around the corner from my house in Changzhou was a store with stacks of cardboard and newspapers that reached the ceiling next to huge containers for plastic, aluminum and glass bottles. After a number of empy bottles accumulated in our house, I’d take them down there and receive some spare change in return (0.25 yuan for a glass bottle, less for plastic). Even if you don’t sell it back or give it to a collector on the street, simply by tossing it in a trash can (recyclable or non-recyclable bins) someone will always come along and fish it out to resell it for a few pennies.

Grass-mud horses and river crabs

The Chinese sense of humor is pretty interesting. Other than lots of potty jokes just like in English, another common source of humor are puns and jokes that use homophones (two words that sound the same but are written differently); they only work in Chinese and are hard for Chinese beginners like me to follow. These kinds of jokes are often performed by two people doing "cross-talk" where one uses plays on words and homophones to say funny or offensive things and the other person plays dumb and makes a fool of himself by interpreting everything literally.

Someone pulled off a similar cross-talk joke on the internet through a video about "grass-mud horses." This time the person who's being duped is the government internet censor(s).

When I sounded out the words "grass" and "mud" ("cao ni") I figured out it's the same pronunciation as the words "f•ck" and "you." I had a good laugh and was pleased that I understood the joke. Why the vulgar name for a fictional animal in a Chinese web cartoon? It appears that someone simply wanted to make a point about the absurdity of censoring dirty or controversial topics and tell a story with some subliminal messages.

The grass-mud horses' habitat is invaded by pestilent river crabs. River and crab ("he" and "xie") sounds the same as the word for harmony "hexie," which is a dig at the governments goal of creating a "harmonious society" which entails scrubbing the internet clean.

A tough job market

Last week, the U.S. Labor Department released the latest numbers the nation’s unemployment rate, and at 8.1% it is the highest ever in my lifetime.

Many talent recruiters in Silicon Valley, who only recently were flooded with work, now find themselves doing the resume polishing and job searching that they used to do for others.

Shanghai’s Korea town, a cool neighborhood on the far west side where I spent a Saturday last spring with my Korean students, has been decimated in recent months as Korean companies layoff Chinese workers and Korean pull their staff out of China.

In response to a sharp fall in exports, Japanese companies have been forced to cut costs by eliminating jobs, lowering wages, and replacing much of their work force with temporary workers who have no job security and fewer benefits. Nontraditional workers now make up more than a third of Japan’s labor force. It’s causing a generational shift in attitudes towards employment, consumption, and savings.

“Younger people are feeling the brunt of that shift. Some 48 percent of workers age 24 or younger are temps. These workers, who came of age during a tough job market, tend to shun conspicuous consumption….
Economists blame this slow spending on widespread distrust of Japan’s pension system, which is buckling under the weight of one of the world’s most rapidly aging societies. That could serve as a warning for the United States, where workers’ 401(k)’s have been ravaged by declining stocks, pensions are disappearing, and the long-term solvency of the Social Security system is in question.”

A lot of comparisons are being made between the current situation in the United States and that of Japan in the 1990s. The government response in both countries differs – and hopefully has a different outcome – but it does seem that Americans are beginning to gradually shift towards Japan’s frugality and higher savings.

In just the last several months in China, 2,400 factories in the Guangzhou area, the manufacturing heart of southern China, have closed and over 20 million migrants workers have lost their jobs (some commentator pointed out that that number is roughly equivalent to the population of Australia). The bulk of layoffs coincided with the Chinese New Year, so many who returned home for the holiday will simply stay and resume farming or take up lower paying jobs in inland areas and not go back to the coastal cities.

Another notable region that has hit a particularly rough patch is Eastern Europe, including some parts which experienced a real estate boom and others that are now are constrained by the euro and no longer have central banks capable of lowering interest rates.

Finally, one of my favorite economics writer, Michael Lewis, chronicled Iceland’s dramatic boom and bust. It’s a bizarre story of a small, sparsely populated (just over 300,000 people), very homogenous (99% urban, 84% Lutheran) country that went overboard in building a financial industry that was way out of proportion with it’s size, while a real estate and asset bubble made it one of the wealthiest countries in the world. When its currency and asset prices crashed, it brought down the government, caused public debt to skyrocket (to 850 percent of the GDP!) and bankrupted several of its largest banks. Far and away the country with the hardest fall in the current financial crisis.

Chinese characters

If you want to learn more about how the written Chinese language works, online I found an interesting attempt at doing just that by imagining what English would be like with a character based writing system.

It shows how there is more or less an organized system to the thousands of Chinese characters. Very few characters are pictographs that actually look like the word they represent. Instead, the vast majority of characters consist of several parts, including a radical that places it in a semantic category. Another part in most characters provides phonetic information that tells you how it’s pronounced, although pronunciation has changed over thousands of years so sometimes it’s similar and sometimes it’s way off.

For example, characters for many geographical words have the radical for mountain 山。And additional characters are made using mountain as a radical, so they are all found in a dictionary (the kinds of dictionaries organized by radicals) under the 山 “shan” section, which is in the section of radicals with three strokes (山 is written with three strokes I + L + I). Some examples of characters with radical and phonetic parts are 峰 : 山 “shan” + 丰 “feng” = 峰 “feng” which means a peak or summit and can also be used to represent an apex or a camel’s hump. 夹 “jia”, which means wedged or placed in between, together with the mountain radical becomes 峡 “xia”, which means a gorge. The semantic meaning makes sense from the two parts and 夹 “jia” also serves as a phoneme (it’s similar to “xia”, an example of how its often close but not exactly the same).

Other characters put two together to make a logical new word. For example, a bird 鸟 “niao” on top of a mountain 山 becomes 岛 “dao”, which means island and is similar in pronunciation to “niao”. The meaning makes sense as islands are small mountains with birds flying overhead. 山 can also be used as a phonetic part in other characters, as in the character 仙, which is the radical for person 人 with 山 to become 仙 “xian” (some characters like 人 are altered slightly when they are written as a radical). 仙 means immortal and is similar to “shan” in pronunciation (close again, but not perfect).

There are plenty of more examples at online dictionaries such as http://www.zhongwen.com/ (click on radical under the dictionary section) and don’t miss this site about Chinese characters found on tattoos and in western advertisements, often with unintended mistakes and mistranslations.

Learning to read and write is a lot of work at first because you have to start from scratch and learn many symbols that are more complicated than the letters in the English alphabet. But once you know a few hundred, which really isn’t too difficult, you begin to see many connections between them, while many new words are simply combinations of two or three characters, e.g. vehicle is 车, car is 汽车(steam + vehicle), train is 火车 (fire + vehicle), bicycle is 自行车 (self + travel + vehicle), garage is 车库 (vehicle + warehouse), etc. Notice how the English spellings of those words have no connection whatsoever. Each character is a unit that can have several meanings and often many more when used in compound words. At that point, your grasp of the written language really accelerates and it becomes a lot more interesting and rewarding to study.

Google and the web

Lately I’ve been reading the book The Google Story by David Vise. Meanwhile, I came across several news stories about the company, and they show how out-of-date the book, which was published in 2005, has already become.

The book is an entertaining and fast-paced read that traces the company from it’s humble roots in 1998, when two young computer science grad students took the fall semester off to work on improving their search engine, google.stanford.edu, driven by a complex algorithm that ranked websites based on dozens of factors. They rented a house for $1,700 a month and wired together servers from used computers in their garage, hired their first employee, and finally got around to incorporating Google only because they needed to cash a $100,000 check that they had received from an angel investor.

Now people worry that with 63 percent of all web searches, and over 70 of the US market share in search, they are too dominant. Others worry about threats to privacy when Google now possesses so much data on searches, email, and other web apps, and can use that data to customize advertisements to closely match whatever subjects users are searching or emailing about.

According to the book, in 2000, when Google was celebrating the signing of a major deal with Yahoo to provide Yahoo’s site with Google-generated search results, they also announced that they had surpassed one billion web pages in their index of websites to become the largest search engine in the world.

“Now you can search the equivalent of a stack of paper more than 70 million miles high in less than half a second. We think that’s pretty cool,” co-founder Sergey Brin said at the time.

But by 2008, according to a recent New York Times article, their website archive had already surpassed the next large rounded number. “One day last summer, Google’s search engine trundled quietly past a milestone. It added the one trillionth address to the list of Web pages it knows about. But as impossibly big as that number may seem, it represents only a fraction of the entire Web.”

So it’s time to modify Brin’s statement, “Now you can search the equivalent of a stack of paper more than 70 billion miles high in less than half a second.”

The rapidly expanding number websites, the growth in the non-English parts of the internet, the creation of digital libraries, and the large pools of data discussed in the above article found in databases that are now accessible on the internet show that there is a lot more to come. It’s hard to imagine what we’ll be able to do on the internet ten years from now. And the rapid growth and new functions of the internet provide a lot of new opportunities for Google and other web companies.

“The great thing about search is that we are not going to solve it anytime soon. There are so many problems and failings,” co-founder Larry Page said in 2000. “I see no end to what we need to do.”

Commerce Secretary nominee

Gary Locke, the first Chinese American governor, was recently nominated for the cabinet post of Commerce Secretary. If nominated, he would join Steven Chu, the Secretary of Energy, who is also of Chinese descent.

A semester in Nanjing

I’m now in Nanjing, living in a dormitory room on the Nanjing Normal University campus. Earlier this week I registered, took a placement test, and walked around to find the essentials like cheap street food, wireless internet, and the nearest Wal-Mart and Carrefour. I also showed a couple students with limited Chinese who just stepped off the plane around and helped them pick up all kinds of stuff.

I thought the placement test was pretty easy. Each section – grammar, vocabulary, and reading – got progressively more difficult but I was pretty confident of my answers on even the most difficult questions. And I skipped ahead to do the last section, an essay, first to make sure I had time to write a lot.

I was shocked to learn the next day that I was placed into a class at the low end of year three; in other words, a fifth semester course for students who have taken two years of Chinese. I was pretty surprised because I have only spent three semesters teaching in China while studying on my own (studying only year one level books). I took a Chinese class last year for all of one and a half months.

It turns out the placement test isn’t very good at measuring anything beyond the very beginner level and somehow my exam was interpreted as that of a third year student. I’m pretty good at taking language exams now and I prepared and tried as hard as I could. As soon as I bought the books for that level (advanced writing, ancient Chinese, modern literature) I realized it was way beyond my level and I switched to year two. The course involves eight classes a week of speaking, five classes of listening, and three classes of writing, all at the intermediate level. There’s also four classes of newspaper reading, two classes of business Chinese, and three classes of Chinese for tourism each week. The level of the textbooks and the coursework still seem pretty challenging, but doable. Certainly a better fit than fifth semester ancient Chinese.

Charity in China

“In the United States, [charitable] giving represents about 2.1 percent of gross domestic product; in China, it's closer to 0.35 percent.”

The movie star Jet Li, among others, is trying to expand philanthropy in China, where civil society is much smaller and less active than in western countries. Charitable giving was one of the silver linings in the Sichuan earthquake last May. The natural disaster triggered a flood of donations from people around the country. For the wealthy urban residents and corporations who contributed large sums of money, it was a significant development because private philanthropy had been almost non-existent before then.

Fireworks during the Chinese New Year, as seen from my window.

on YouTube.

Chinese New Year pictures

These pictures from the Boston Globe are much better than my pictures of the Chinese New Year. Some of the celebrations, including fireworks, incense, red lanterns and feasts with family, are shown in these pictures from across China and in Chinese communities around the world.

Freedom of information

The satellite box in my house, which was out of service for about half a year, was fixed the other day. We now have some good English channels that are broadcast in many Asian and European countries, such as CNN International, the BBC, and Sky Sports, and some American stations like ESPN, HBO, Discovery, and National Geographic. Satellite TV outside of hotels and other specially designated places is illegal in China, but anyone can easily get set up with satellite service from the Philippines, so we get several Filipino channels also. It’s way better than Chinese TV, which is a lot of unwatcheable Chinese programs and news (soap operas, old war movies, and 10 minute cycles of news on endless repeat), and one English channel (cooking shows and cheery news clips on repeat), and some of the movies are highly censored for sex and violence and worse, some of the news is censored for anything that is anti-China.

So it’s not hard for a Chinese person to get free access to movies and news on television but its mostly in English, in addition to a few channels in other Asian languages, and one each in French and German. It’s the same for the internet; a good number of Chinese websites are blocked, but it seems that 99% of English websites are accessible, so I rarely have a problem surfing online.

The social networking tools on Facebook are facilitating a youth political movement in Egypt. The U.S. State Department is following social networking sites and learning how they can play a role in democratization.

I thought how young people are using Facebook and the internet to organize and create a political movement in Egypt was pretty cool. Facebook played a role in last year’s elections in the U.S. as every candidate had a profile in addition to online fundraising and organization. Obama’s website, myBarack.com, was a full featured social networking site and certainly helped get his younger supporters more involved and organized.

Facebook is catching on among young people here, and there is a Chinese site, xiaonei.com, for high school and university students, and it is almost exactly like Facebook. I don’t know how much political organizing or discussion happens on social networking sites like Facebook in China, but blogs and chat rooms have been used for free expression for years and are probably more effective because they're anonymous, unlike social networking sites where the point is to explicitly identify yourself in your profile. Social networking sites are not only less private but also less fluid than blogs, forums, and chatrooms, which are easy to recreate or relocate if blocked, whereas networking sites are a fixed website and only are useful if they have a critical number of users.

It seems that a lot of good things will come out of the growing access to communication tools like cell phones and the internet in the struggles to expand wealth, knowledge, and democratic and transparent governance.

Economic crises and opportunities

The United States has been careful to never formally contend that China is manipulating its currency to make its exports artificially cheaper, so when the new Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner made such a statement during his confirmation process, it caused a bit of tension.

The People’s Bank of China “manages” the value of the yuan on the foreign exchange market by forcing domestic banks and companies to “surrender” much of the foreign currency that they take in through exports. They are given yuan in return and the People’s Bank of China accumulates about $1 billion a day through this process. The result is that there’s a larger supply of yuan, thus an artificially lower value compared to foreign currencies. Normally a high demand for exports causes the value of a country’s currency to go up as foreigners buy the currency to buy goods. A lower exchange rate means exports are cheaper, which is the rationale behind the managed exchange rate (though it makes imported goods more expensive). For a more detailed explanation, see James Fallows’s The $1.4 Trillion Dollar Question.

The yuan was pegged at about 8.3 per US dollar until it was allowed to gradually appreciate beginning in the second half of 2005. It now stands at 6.84 yuan to the dollar, after its value depreciated relative to the dollar for the first time briefly last fall, when the Lehman Brothers, AIG, and Fannie Mae troubles caused the dollar to rise and most currencies of developing economies to fall. Economists say that the value of the yuan, if allowed to float freely, would be around 5.5 yuan to the dollar.


(from FT.com)

While there may be disagreement on floating versus managed exchange rates, what effect the undervalued yuan has, and how much China should influence the dollar-yuan exchange, there are a few common points between the two countries. Both governments are implementing huge economic stimulus spending, including funds to expand infrastructure and to alleviate unemployment and falling demand.

And both are pursuing more wide reaching stimulus programs and health care reform. Some are even calling the U.S. bailout “socialism with American characteristics.”

Prime Minister Wen Jiabao is in Europe for the World Economic forum and visits with leaders in several countries. The article sites the dour mood during this year’s Lunar New Year holiday. Government estimates show that of the roughly “130 million Chinese migrants who crossed provincial lines for work, 20 percent to 30 percent will find themselves jobless after the holiday.”

Layoffs are up and salary raises and bonuses are vanishing. Recent and soon-to-be college graduates are having a difficult time finding jobs.

This may be exacerbating a recent trend of a growing divide between rural and urban incomes.

“City dwellers earned an average annual income of 15,800 yuan ($2,300) a year in 2008... The average rural income was 4,700 yuan (about $690),” which is a ratio of 3.36 to 1. I’d imagine it’s much lower than that in the United States.

And that is a drastic change in the last several decades. Only 30 years ago, China had one of the most equal income distributions of any country, and now it’s one of the most unequal countries in the world. I happened to read a 2002 speech by Nicholas Lardy, an American economist and an expert on China, and it had some relevant points on the potential crisis posed by high levels of inequality during an economic downturn.

“[since the 1980s] China has grown very rapidly and done all of these other things which are fairly positive, inequality has increased at an unprecedented rate. In fact I do not think one can find a society, perhaps with the exception of wars or natural disasters, which has had such a rapid deterioration in income distribution in a twenty-year period.”
…
One of the reasons inequality has been manageable to date is that even the poorest members of Chinese society have much higher incomes today than they did twenty years ago. Relatively speaking they have fallen further behind. But in absolute terms they have done, with very few exceptions, extremely well. Their absolute living standard has gone up enormously… But if economic growth were to slow down, that whole equation would change dramatically. Then you might have a situation in which as inequality gets worse, the people at the bottom of the income distribution might be experiencing an actual decline in their real living standards, rather than an increase. And I think that would be much, much more difficult for the regime to manage. So I think maintaining a robust economic growth and delivering rising living standards is a precondition for maintaining political stability.”

How the economic crisis affects political stability in China and what domestic policy changes come out of it will all be interesting developments to watch. The government has already promised to provide nearly universal health care coverage within three years, not to mention large investments in transportation and education. The health care program was conceived, in part, to induce more consumer spending. Savings rates are really high, around 40%, because of the lack of pensions and private health care insurance. Another way to look at it – in China, 35% of the economy is consumer spending, compared to 70% in the United States, so the high savings rate is limiting domestic demand and the consumer driven growth that is needed to replace the slowing demand for the country’s exports and maintain the high levels of growth of recent years.

The economic crisis in the United States also presents a unique opportunity to transform domestic policy in areas such as health care, education, financial regulation, and levels of saving and investment. For an excellent overview of opportunities for fundamental reforms in our country, see David Leonhardt’s essay in the New York Times Magazine.

Finally, the country that invented tea now has more than 350 Starbucks stores and is growing a new coffee for the chain, the first Chinese coffee to be sold by Starbucks. Green tea frappuccinos, by the way, are one of the more popular Starbucks drinks in China. Otherwise, the stores and their menus seem to be the same as those in the States.

The Lunar New Year

Monday, January 26th was the first day of the Chinese New Year. It’s the year of the ox, and given that the Chinese lunar calendar is a twelve year cycle of twelve animals, anyone who turns 12, 24 (like me), 36, 48... years old this year was born in the year of the ox. I also happen to be a Taurus, so I’m more or less the same animal according to the monthly zodiac calendar and the yearly Chinese lunar calendar.

I was invited out for lunch by a parent I know through school and ate at a nice Sichuan restaurant with two families. Sichuan cuisine is one of my favorites so the food was really good. They bought two bottles of alcohol; the grandfather sipped on one and the other was a bottle of brandy that the two fathers drank, only they were both driving, so they kept refilling my glass and I ended up drinking most of the brandy. It hit me later that afternoon and I had to take a long nap.

I went to a friend’s house for dinner and had a lot more excellent food. Everyone does the same thing on New Year’s Eve – hang out at home with the whole family, cook, eat, watch holiday specials on TV, and set off fireworks. One food that is commonly eaten is fish, because the word for fish – “yu” 鱼 – is the same pronunciation as another word – 余 – that means surplus or extra. Eating fish means you’ll have a surplus of wealth and prosperity in the new year (the most common superstition derived from a homonym is the number four 四, which is pronounced the same as the word “to die” 死, so it’s considered a very unluckly number).

So I ate fish and a lot of other good food, drank, and watched the holiday specials, which I missed last year. We watched some on TV and then retreated to a warm bedroom and watched more online, mostly comedy skits and music performances. We later set of fireworks and then the city erupted at around 11:50 pm as seemingly every house set off fireworks outside. The amateur pyrotechnics continued for nearly an hour and then started up again soon after sunrise the following morning.

I posted some pictures on flickr.

Where I live

I made two brief videos to give you a tour of my house.

First floor.

Second floor.

Inauguration reactions

An editorial in China’s Xinhua newswire raised fears about a reversal in Chinese-American relations that were strengthened under the Bush White House. The Strategic Economic Dialogues, one of the positive developments mentioned in the editorial, in addition to providing a forum high level discussions twice a year, has facilitated some pretty cool joint projects on green energy and sustainable development called EcoPartnerships.

President Obama ruffled some feathers in his inauguration speech by placing “non-believers” alongside Americans of various faiths, and for drawing a clear line on the lack of freedoms and the corruption that is endemic in many countries around the world. But some of those comments irked the media censors here.

In his inauguration address, President Obama said: "Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions."

That entire passage was retained for an English-language version of the speech that appeared on the website of state-run Xinhua news agency.

But in the Chinese-language version, the word "communism" was taken out.
…
"To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history," the president said.

Once again, Xinhua included the passage in full in its English version, but the sentence was taken out of the Chinese translation.
…
China Central Television, the country's main broadcaster, aired the speech live with a simultaneous Chinese translation.

But when the translator got to the part where President Obama talked about facing down communism, her voice suddenly faded away.

The programme suddenly cut back to the studio, where an off-guard presenter had to quickly ask a guest a question.

Censoring sensitive news reports is nothing new in China, where officials go to great lengths to cut critical material.

From the BBC News in Beijing.

The first step in tackling controversial issues is simply raising the topic and normalizing it so that it is more widely discussed in public and in the media. Of anyone, hearing those words come out of the President’s mouth is the best way to promote those issues. With time, there will be no prejudices towards different faiths, towards atheism, or towards gay, lesbian, and transgender people, so it’s good to hear those statements in Obama’s first speech as president.

The limits on free speech in China might be harder to crack, but slowly more and more controversial ideas are being openly discussed here as well.

English as a global language

I often overlook the opportunities I’ve been given as a native English speaker. I don’t have any teaching qualifications and don’t plan to make a career as an English teacher, but it has been a good way to live here and support myself. There’s never been another language that has reached the scope and influence of English. Latin was the lingua franca of Europe for centuries, but it never reached a global scale (I guess it has in scientific nomenclature, but it’s not used much in any other context).

At the earliest stages of globalization, languages and cultures and economic systems mixed as people traveled and traded around the world, and what happens with any clash between standards (not unlike VHS versus Beta or BluRay versus HDVD), the most popular one – not always the best one – wins out entirely and becomes the standard. In this case, the Anglo-American culture and economic system was the most powerful, so it became the world standard. There’s never been language teachers travelling the globe as there are today with English teachers, so I should consider myself lucky having been born at the time and place where I was. On a related note, last week I went to a gathering for a Changzhou expat group and the language everyone used to converse was English, even though less than a quarter of the attendees were from English speaking countries. It was mostly Europeans, particularly from France, Germany and Austria, and a few from Turkey. In general, among the foreign companies in Changzhou, if they aren’t Japanese, Taiwanese, or Korean, then they are most likely French or German.

The Chinese script had a similar role in East Asia as Latin did in western Europe. The system of Chinese characters is one part of the written Japanese language and was formerly used in the Vietnamese and Korean languages. Chinese will become more important as a world language (see an excellent article on the spread of Mandarin) but, to make a snap judgment, it’s unlikely to become the global language when English is already so widely in use around the world in business and academia. And Chinese has some disadvantages that limit it’s appeal beyond East Asia, such as the difficult writing system. Another related note: one of the eminent American scholars of the Chinese language, John DeFrancis, died this month. He was a persistent critic of the Chinese writing system and advocated reforms that went far beyond the simplification of a number of common characters in the mid-20th century.

One of the reasons English has been widely adopted and extremely successful as a world language is because it adopts foreign words and phrases so easily (but that does make spelling difficult; I’m often explaining to students “this is a French word, that’s why the vowels are strange” or “this word comes from Greek, that’s why the ‘ph’ is used in place of ‘f’). Chinese has no easy method of importing foreign words; acronyms are left unchanged but foreign words and names are translated into characters that sound similar (or close enough). I like learning the names of foreign people, cities, and companies, because some are hilarious ( “Mi er wo ji” for Milwaukee, “Pu li se tong ne” for Bridgestone, “A nuo Shi wa xin ge” for Arnold Schwarzenegger – the last two sound pretty close if you say them fast). Interestingly, Japanese has a separate alphabet, in addition to using traditional Chinese characters, that is used for transcribing foreign words.

One consequence of the large number of speakers using English as a second language and the flexibility of the English lexicon and grammar is that it is rapidly evolving outside of the countries where it is officially spoken. When there are many more students learning English in China than are people in the United States, it will be altered a great deal by those second language speakers, and we should realize that we now have far less influence over how it evolves.

Finally, here’s a discussion of the few English words that come from Chinese (from the obvious – ginseng – to the unexpected – ketchup).

The Inauguration

I’ll be watching the inauguration, which starts at midnight here, over the internet. Even though I’d rather be watching it with others in the States, or better yet, in the multimillion-person crowd on the Mall, it’s novel to be one of the viewers participating in the first presidential inauguration widely broadcast over the internet. And I’ll no longer take the event for granted after living in a country where the transition of power is an opaque process conducted amongst a small group of unelected leaders.

Such a symbolic historical precedent – the inauguration of the first black president – couldn’t have come at a more crucial moment. A day after celebrating Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, Americans are given another chance to come together to commemorate a milestone that many people, benefiting from the opportunities found in a diverse and free society, have struggled to achieve. Americans fought for desegregation and voting rights to ensure equal opportunity for every citizen and the swearing in of our 44th president strongly validates the system we created.

I’m afraid we can’t rejoice for long because we’re facing a lot of urgent problems. I’ve read a few books on modern American history (on the presidency in the 21st century, on the Cold War, and on the CIA) in recent weeks and they’ve tempered my expectations. Nothing can prepare one for the unexpected challenges the country and the president will face. I think being more removed from the events of the past year in the States has shaped my perspective so while I’m immensely proud of President Obama’s inauguration, I also expect a lot of stumbles and letdowns from his new administration. So, best of luck, but on the 21st let’s put our heads down and get to work.

Turning points in history

Jimmy Carter and Henry Kissinger traveled to Beijing to speak with Chinese government leaders and commemorate the first visits that Carter and Deng Xiaoping made to each others countries in 1979.

“There is no more important diplomatic relationship in the world than the one that has grown between the People’s Republic of China and the United States of America,” said Jimmy Carter

The two countries are undoubtedly closely linked. Two and a half million Chinese people live in the United States, Wal-Mart buys over $22 billion worth of goods from China each year, and China holds nearly $600 billion of our debt (over a fifth of our foreign debt holdings).

Chinese is becoming a popular foreign language for students at many private colleges in the U.S. The article cites that 10 percent of undergraduates at Yale University study Chinese (though it's probably true that 100% of students at Beijing University have studied English since grade school). And from my anecdotal evidence, a good number of Harvard and Princeton students are also studying the language. Harvard has a summer language program at Beijing Language and Culture University and they were an impressive group as they took a pledge to speak only Chinese so they stood out being a close group of foreign students who were always talking in Chinese. Same for Princeton, I ran into their group in the Longqing Gorge – they were bungee jumping the same time when I went – and only spoke English when a European tourist asked them where they were from.

The history of China in the last 30 years and how it got to where it is today is a fascinating story and a sharp contrast to the decades of civil war, famine and repression from the 1930s through the middle of the 1970s. I knew little about China’s path of development until reading a few books recently. In “China Shakes the World,” James Kynge describes a common misperception about the way economic reforms were implemented, “In the popular imagination, the launch of China’s economic reforms in 1978 was a planned, top-down affair managed by a man who is often called the ‘architect’ of the country’s emergence, Deng Xiaoping.” But, planned economy or not, history tends to run its own course. As Kynge explains, “the reality has not been so neat. Many of the key events and occurrences that propelled progress towards capitalism were, in fact, either unplanned, unintended or completely accidental.”

The initial reforms–ending collective agriculture and allowing free enterprise–led to a period of the fastest growth and greatest reduction in poverty the country has ever seen. According to the World Bank,

“China’s poverty reduction in the past 25 years is unprecedented. Poverty fell from 53 percent in 1981 to eight percent in 2001, pulling about 500 million people out of poverty. Rural poverty fell from 76 percent in 1980 to 12 percent in 2001. The sharpest reduction was in the early 1980s, spurred by agricultural reforms that started in 1978. The household responsibility system, which assigned strong user rights for individual plots of land to rural households, the increase in government procurement prices, and a partial farm price liberalization all had strong positive effects on incentives for individual farmers. In the first years of the reforms, agricultural production and productivity increased dramatically, in part through farmers’ adoption of high-yielding hybrid rice varieties. Rural incomes rose by 15 percent a year between 1978 and 1984."

Not only were much of the reforms unplanned, much of the initiative was taken on my local officials and individual entrepreneurs (for better or worse–Beijing now has stricter environmental policies but often there is little compliance at the local level).

Another example of consequential changes that subverted the central party are the events that kicked off the second burst of reform and growth in the 1990s. Tim Clissold wrote the book “Mr. China” about his two years as a language student in Beijing in the early nineties, followed by several years working for an American firm investing in the Chinese auto industry. The Chinese economy stumbled after Tiananmen Square and the Communist Party reached a nadir as their hold on power seemed untenable unless they could counter the swell of social unrest with economic prosperity. As Clissold describes,

“While Deng was no liberal, he was a pragmatist and realized years before his Russian counterparts that if the Chinese Communist Party was to survive, it had to deliver the economic goods. Tiananmen Square has shown that he would not shrink from using force, but he knew that in the longer term power grew from rising living standards rather than from the barrel of a gun… Even though he had won the battle for the top place in the Chinese hierarchy, Deng could not just set policy as he pleased, and when he tried to recharge the economy he faced serious opposition from the conservatives.”

To get around the political stalemate, Deng, who was 88 years old at the time, went on a holiday trip to southern China with his family during the Chinese New Year in 1992. He planted a tree in Shenzhen and proclaimed, “To get rich is glorious,”, followed by a tour of cities and factories up the coast and a visit to the Pudong Special Economic Zone in Shanghai.

“He talked directly to local officials about the need to ‘guard against the left,’ and pushed his agenda for greater reform…[party conservatives] knew that Deng had deliberately bypassed all the normal party structures and had reached out directly to local officials. They also quickly realized that they were fighting a losing battle; the rank and file liked what Deng had to say and the tide was against them.”

The most substantial changes start with ordinary people. China’s (and America’s) most successful leaders were those who were able to sway public opinion and convince people that they had a stake in improving the country. The expansion of civil society, the internet and media, and the growing numbers of university graduates and foreign students and workers in China bode well for further reforms and prosperity.