This is China! blog

I recently had a conversation with a young(er) American expat who has been living in China nearly ten years. I had told him about the talk – The Warlord and the Engineer – the Royal Asiatic Society (Suzhou branch) had hosted a few weeks before. The remarkable thing about the talk was how the Danish Engineer Robert Christensen and adviser to the warlord Zhang Zuolin had meticulously recorded his life in journals while he lived in China during the 1920s, had cataloged hundreds of photos and had captured the times on film, as well. The expat and I agreed those of us living in China were experiencing a special period in its history – call it “The Goldilocks Time”, when wealth seemed to flood Chinese streets. One day, the rapid-development period will all be a distant memory. Who amongst us will be the chroniclers of this time?

The expat admitted he had desperately few photos of himself and his time here in China, despite a decade’s worth of experiences. I personally have a bunch of photos, the blog, the books I’ve written. And now that I have a son, recording the ordinariness of our lives here has become more important to me.

I told the expat that for me, while watching the photos and film footage of 1920s Mukden (Manchuria), what interested me most was not the foreigners frolicking in the foreground, but the locals toiling in the background against backdrops that are gone forever.

It’s tough to gauge just how precious one’s everyday existence may be to future generations.

Technorati Tags: china, expat life

I was recently privileged to be invited to give the keynote speech to the graduating class of 2011 at the Suzhou-Singapore International School. Two charming and pleasant young ladies, 11th graders, showed me around the school before the graduation ceremony last week Friday afternoon. I’d never been to the new, much larger school before, and was surprised how huge, populated and busy the School was. I was also surprised how largely Asian the School was, as well. I’ve had and have Western friends who send their children to the School, and simply presumed the school population was more heterogenous. That said, my tour guides before the graduation program were from Australia and Malaysia. Of course, the school has a large South Korean population – nearly 40%, I’ve heard said. Of course, there were a lot of Singaporeans, as well as a smattering of Japanese. Westerners seemed about 20% of the make-up of the school, split between Americans and Europeans.

The ceremony was charming and inspiring. I haven’t been to a graduation in years, and found the speakers – faculty and students – thoughtful and funny. Of course, I didn’t get some of the inside jokes, as I don’t know the schooling system and the international certifications for which they have to work so hard to acquire.

After the ceremony, during the mixer, an American who seemed new to the scene echoed a thought I had while reading the program for the day. Inserted into the simple bi-fold was a list of ALL the universities to which the graduating seniors had been accepted. As students accepted their diplomas from the headmaster and received a shake from the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the school the master of ceremonies called out the name of the college or university the student would be attending. Easily 95% of the students were going on to University. The American with whom I’d chatted after the ceremony noted that in the States the usual number of people going on to 4-year school is about 30% – less in some parts of the country.

Nevertheless, all the students whom I met and with whom I chatted were shy, self-effacing and gracious – even if they were going on to Cambridge the following academic year.

You’ll find a transcript of the keynote speech I delivered at the ceremony, which seemed to have gone over well with students, faculty and parents alike.

Many of you are probably wondering who I am and why I am speaking today. Someone jokingly told me the School had originally invited President Barak Obama. However, he was unable to attend. Disappointed, one of the School staff saw me walking down a Suzhou street a few weeks back and figured, “He’ll do!”; though, they did admit later, they would have preferred a stand-in for the president who had a full head of hair.

I need to ask you all an important question: what are you going to do TODAY about the 150 million people within a day’s drive north of here who do not have enough water to drink, cook with or farm with? The largest drought in more than 50 years in Shandong province will turn China into a net importer of grain for the first time ever in its history. In Zhoushan, near Ningbo, just a two hour drive from here, people only have access to water five hours each day. The first and second largest lakes in China are becoming grasslands and mud flats, putting millions of Chinese fishermen out of work. Water levels were so low in Yunnan and Guangxi Provinces last year that 90% of hydroelectric dams in the region were shut down.

You all, the graduating class of 2011, are what I call the Tipping Point class. The Tipping Point is the threshold beyond which great events come together to define people and societies. You are at the threshold of an adult world fraught with some of the greatest challenges ever faced by humankind. It will be up to your generation to meet the challenges and take advantage of the opportunities the future will present us all.

In my book, China Inside out: 10 Irreversible Trends Reshaping China and its Relationship with the World, I talk about how China is at the LEADING EDGE OF HISTORY. Now, what does that mean, LEADING EDGE OF HISTORY? It means that though China may be amongst the first to experience these environmental and resource pressures, MOST OF THE REST OF THE WORLD IS FOLLOWING IN ITS PATH.

The CFO of microchip maker Intel recently asked me over dinner in Chengdu what I thought the most critical trends are right now at work molding China and affecting all our societies. I told him and the executives at the table there were FOUR trends in particular:

• the rapid development of China’s middle class;
• increased pollution of the land, water and air;
• ballooning resource consumption rates;
• and a rapidly aging population.

The rapid rise of China’s middle class approach to consumption and the society’s massive use of natural resources is based in a model 250 years old, called the Industrial Revolution. The Industrial Revolution model assumes that the earth has an infinite amount of natural resources to take out of the ground to be made into products; another Industrial Revolution axiom is that we have an infinite amount of air into which to blow our carbon dioxide when burning coal for electricity; the world view assumes we have an infinite amount of water with which to irrigate our farms, manufacture our products and drive our power plants, amongst other presumptions of about the wealth of the earth.

Five days ago in Shanghai, I explained to a group of top executives from TOTAL, a French energy group that whereas about 600 million people in the West have been happily consuming and polluting the last sixty years; now – if we include India – another 3 billion people are rushing into the party. It is THE SPEED OF THE RUSH AND THE SIZE OF THE CROWD coming assuming modernity that have created this Tipping Point in human history. The rapid modernization of China has compressed into 30 years major environmental and social issues that took the West 250 YEARS to arrive at. China though – because it has so many people on a relatively small amount of land with few natural resources of its own remaining – has rushed past the West into the future. And make no mistake: other countries are following behind.

America, Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea and others are beginning to grapple with the issues I’ve described. I hope this generation graduating today will consider the challenges posed to the members of their society – and to their families – and consider the opportunities that are opening up that intend to build a better world.

Great opportunities are opening in energy production industries like wind power, solar power, coal gasification, biofuels and even nuclear power: materials engineers, civil engineers, safety inspectors, environmental lawyers, biochemists and geneticists will increasingly be in demand. Energy efficiency policies in China and throughout Asia will create new industries in the building construction sector: in materials development, sustainable living architecture, and in heating and ventilation self-sufficiency, in gray water treatment and more. China in particular will develop institutions that for the first time in its long history will care for the elderly, the disabled, and those made redundant after all the cities are built and the roads laid, to help them many of them feel – if not actually become – useful and valued citizens of their societies.

I will finish with the story of a young Chinese woman, someone I am proud to call a friend of mine. She is a professional, born and raised in Shanghai, who works in a British professional services firm. When she turned 25 years old two years ago, she threw a special birthday party for her friends. She invited more than two hundred young Chinese professionals – and myself – to the party, which she hosted in a renovated warehouse on Suzhou Creek. She told the guests in her invitation that she did not want us to give her gifts for her birthday. Instead, she wanted us to donate at least 100rmb each to her favorite charity: the ONE EGG A DAY foundation, which would take the money to buy eggs to provide children in the poorest villages in China the only protein many of them would have each day.

She also invited eight other Chinese charities to the event and gave them space and time to display the services and products they offered, all of which helped the Chinese people who were not as fortunate as she, and to help the society at large to help those the government was not able to support. By the end of the evening, she had raised more than 32,000 rmb.

THIS YOUNG LADY WAS ONLY A FEW YEARS OLDER THAN THOSE OF YOU GRADUATING TODAY. I challenge any of you to contribute as much or more to society during your entire lifetimes as this young lady did in one evening of enlightenment.

I challenge you, Class of 2011, to do more than consider narrow career options for your future, to look outward from the protective cocoons of adolescence you are leaving to consider the issues our world, our societies and our families are increasingly confronted with. I challenge the Tipping Point graduates to make this a better, cleaner, safer world than the one into which you had been born.

Personally, I cannot think of a generation better equipped than the group sitting before me: international in outlook and experience; technologically savvy; related to each other and to a foreign environment through a sophisticated network of adaptation. You all, like my Shanghai friend, have it within each of you to become leaders in your own societies or even in foreign lands.

And if there is anything the future will require of us all, it is leadership of a different kind, in a world we can scarcely imagine.

Thank you.

Technorati Tags: expat life

Where else but at the next gathering of the Royal Asiatic Society in Suzhou can you step into the hidden world of China’s imperial palace in its last days a hundred years ago to hear about the rampant corruption, grand conspiracies and uninhibited sexuality that closed the chapter on China’s last dynasty? Published now for the first time, the controversial memoir of Sinologist Sir Edmund Backhouse, Décadence Mandchoue, paints an alternately shocking and lyrical portrait of an empire in its final days. Derek Sandhaus, chief editor of Earnshaw Books, and author of Tales of Old Peking and Tales of Old Hong Kong, discusses his resuscitation of the original manuscripts of the book, which, if true, provide an account of the Empress Dowager and her inner circle that can only be described as intimate.

Sunday, April 24, 2011, 4pm. The Suzhou Bookworm, Gunxiu Fang 77, Shi Quan Jie. 50 rmb for members; 70 rmb for non-members. Includes one glass of wine or beer.

The Suzhou Bookworm will take participants behind the bamboo curtain that separates North Korea from the rest of the world this weekend Sunday, April 10, at 2pm. In his talk, Journey to the North, Simon Cockrell will discuss the hidden lives of one of the few countries untouched by western culture. An exhibition on The North Korean people is being displayed all week. Tickets on sale now, prints also available to purchase at the Bookworm. The Suzhou Bookworm, Gunxiu Fang 77, Shi Quan Jie.

image credit: suzhou bookworm

Great fun was had by all forty-plus attendees of the inauguration of the Royal Asiatic Society in Suzhou Sunday evening, 6 March 2011. Peter Hibbard, President of the Shanghai branch, and Robert Nield, President of the Hong Kong branch, ushered in the new chapter in Suzhou after a charming talk by local legend Tess Johnson, who read from her autobiography about the China she lived through 30 years ago.

You can read about the entire gathering at Chelsea Girl’s blog, on the Telegraph’s site. (Actually, most of the fun, it should be said, was had after most people had left and the half dozen of us remaining polished off more of the house red. The remnants of the Shanghai contingent still managed to stow a bottle for the long ride home.) ;-’)

Excellent time. Excellent group. Looking forward to realizing the possibilities.

Suzhou now has its own chapter of the Royal Asiatic Society (RAS) to complement the China branches in Shanghai and Hong Kong. The RAS-China was originally established in Shanghai in 1858 “for the investigation of subjects connected with and for the encouragement of science, literature and the arts in relation to Asia”, according to the Royal Charter of King George IV in 1823.

On March 6th, 2011, 4pm, plan on joining us at the Suzhou Bookworm to inaugurate the Suzhou chapter with an opening talk by popular Shanghai-based historian and writer Tess Johnson, followed by a few words from RAS officers and members who have traveled from Shanghai to inaugurate the local group.Wine, beer, nibbles and a good time to follow.

FREE. The Suzhou Bookworm, Gunxiu Fang 77, Shi Quan Jie.

Today I had a great couple hour long lunch with Dan Harris and Steve Dickson of the China Law Blog, and Andrew Hupert, adjunct professor at New York University (Shanghai), author of the China Solved blog and a columnist for the China Economic Review. Dan had spent the last couple weeks in Southeast Asia, as had Steve. Lucky stars aligned and we all managed to get together at a pricey Japanese restaurant at the Shanghai Center on Nanjing Road West.

It was a pleasant holiday afternoon spent discussing (and solving) China’s overwhelming issues, including:

• it’s currency valuation (China’s backed itself into a corner and doesn’t know how to get out);
• escalating inflation (currency revaluation is only part of the issue);
• a highly stressed middle class (many hope to emigrate to the West before the pollution kills them);
• blog-writing techniques (Dan is the Master in  my book. LOL!);
• China’s bull market one day turning bearish (watch as the bull-writers one-by-one turn into bulls);
• China’s Peak Coal problem (Steve put his finger on the issue before most even heard of the phrase);
• China’s sinking water tables (no solutions there);
• Why Vietnam is cool and Cambodia still traumatized (can you spell Khmer?);
• Why writing books is so much more difficult than blogging (gotta draw a line in the sand with books);
• Why the cost of living in China is so much more than in other southeast Asian countries (Singapore excluded);
• Confucius as the architect of China’s current success (yeah, right);
• and more.

I’ll let each of these guys in turn blog on their respective inputs. These guys are great and stimulating thinkers, perceptive and clear-minded – and just plain good fun.

Incidentally, it’s that time of year when The China Law Blog needs your votes to be the best of the 2010 American Bar Association Journal Blawg 100. Go here to register http://lnkd.in/v_CzG3 and then go here to vote: http://lnkd.in/iE4M5E.

A Chinese neighbor recently came to our flat bearing a Christmas gift she thought was rather cute. She showed my wife and I a thick plastic bag, transparent with red markings. It was collapsed, and so wrinkled it was difficult to tell what was inside. She pushed through the front door and searched around for an electrical outlet. Satisfied she’d found one – and in a little nook next to the dining table – she drew out a chord from the plastic sack with great care, as though it was a baby’s umbilical chord. She plugged the heap into the electrical socket.

A great whir emanated from the sack, which began to twitch and shudder. A light blinked on inside the over-sized embryo. The noise set my teeth on edge and I wanted desperately to tell her to turn it off. However, she had been filled with such joy at her discovery and in the sharing I couldn’t bear to play the part of the Ugly American. Gradually, it became clear to me what mysterious seed lay inside the husk. I began laughing; at first, in a controlled way. But then, I could no longer hold back a guffaw that terrified my neighbor when released.

The gift was actually a Santa Claus standing in a wind-swept field, snow blowing – literally – around him. The Santa in the bubble stood nearly knee-high when inflated. The whirring sound was the small motor at the base of the plastic sphere sucking air to inflate the bubble and animate the plastic snow flakes. A bright light twinkled over the Santa’s head.

“Oh dear,” I stuttered through my hand. I was finding it difficult to control my laughter, and tears began to squeeze through my eyes. I turned around to compose myself. My wife and my neighbor just watched me, unsure why I was laughing.

I turned back to them. “Um, where’d you get that?” I asked, still aborting chuckles.

“At the neighborhood center – one of the shops,” the neighbor answered, mystified. She said, “But it wasn’t so loud when they plugged it in in the shop.” She studied the contraption in wonder.

I cleared my eyes of tears and said sweetly, “Actually, that’s what we Americans put in our front yards at Christmas. It’s not meant to be put indoors.”

“It’s not?” both my wife and the neighbor said. I shook my head.

“It’s an export item. They make it here in China and then ship to America. I guess this one fell off the truck on the way to the port.” Most people in China who live in cities live in high rises. “How much did you pay?” The neighbor held up five fingers.

“Five Hundred RMB?” I said, incredulous. About US$75.

“No, fifty RMB.”  A little less than US$7.50. I relaxed at the adjustment.

“Well, what do I do with it?” the neighbor asked. She unplugged the thing and the motor thankfully wound down. The apartment was quiet again.

“I guess you just wait for an American with a front yard who’s looking for an inflatable Santa,” I suggested. She didn’t look hopeful.

“Well, Merry Christmas, anyway. And thanks for the thought.”

After all, that’s what counts the most.

My wife recently told me a story she’d overheard between two Chinese at a local hairdressers in Suzhou. The first woman told her hairdresser she planned to travel to Japan soon for holiday. I’ll name the first woman Clueless. A second woman – whom I’ll call The Tourist – told Clueless she’d just returned from a Japanese excursion. The Tourist raised her voice in remembered fury. Those Japanese were so rude to us Japanese,” she told Bewildered. “Our group went to a purse store. We were looking around the shop when the Japanese attendant called for our attention.

“She held up a sign that read in Chinese, ‘No speaking loudly, please.” The listeners’ eyes grew wide in disbelief.

The Tourist continued, “She lowered that sign and held up another that read, ‘No spitting, please.’”

“Impossible!,” The Tourist’s audience remarked with indignation.

“She put that sign down and held up another sign that read, “No littering, please.”

“How rude!” Clueless said angrily.

The Tourist continued, “And do you know what? There were other customers in there at the time. Some Taiwanese people. They didn’t show those signs to the Taiwanese. And they were so much more helpful to the Taiwanese. It was just too much to accept!”

Of course, when my wife told me the story, I laughed, which didn’t help her mollify her own indignation, and managed to get me in a bit of “foreigner trouble” at home.

Still, with China’s outward bound tourist industry growing in leaps in bounds, it looks like Japan’s – and most probably other countries’ – sign businesses will see healthy growth in the years to come.

image credit: garysblog.spaces.live.com