Living in a Media World

When I was in my doctoral program at Arizona State, I took a course in the Sociology of Everyday Life, a class my wife has always lovingly referred to as the “Riding the Bus.” class. The central subject of the class was how people behave in routine situations, how we know that situations are routine, and how do we adapt when “everyday life” changes.

Let me tell you, nothing breaks you out of having an everyday life routine like traveling to China.

Take, for example, shopping.  The market I’ve gone to several times for bottled water and snacks is about five or six blocks away from the hotel.  On the first floor is a pretty predictable grocery store, bakery, and a section devoted to fine jewelry and watches.  The main floor is not particularly big by my standards, but there’s an escalator headed up in the back.  At the top of that escalator is a floor devoted to cooked, hot food with all the accompanying new smells.

Then there is another escalator heading up to another floor, this one devoted a wide range of household goods, toys, sporting goods, and the like.  And then there is yet another escalator that takes you to a floor devoted to fashionable clothing and accessories.  It almost was like a scene out of Harry Potter to me.  Starting at the store front, I had no idea there was essentially a small Walmart hiding within.

On Tuesday, a group of us went shopping for gifts with the help of a local young lady who goes by Moonie.  Moonie will be graduating tomorrow with a degree in business and finance as part of the 1-2-1 shared program between UNK and a university here in Guangzhou.

Moonie took us to a marketplace in the heart of the city that was definitely not targeted at tourists.  In fact, the only non-Chinese people we saw all day were a young blond woman and a Middle Eastern gentleman with a white robe.

This is the marketplace area our student guide took us to in Guangzhou.

Within the marketplace, there are giant department stores, Western and Asian fast food joints, and little stalls where everything is negotiable.  In these places, you are expected to negotiate the price for what you are buying, something that would have been complicated without Moonie, who is an expert at this.  (Moonie confessed that she is at this marketplace most weekends.)  Adding to the complications are that the currency is completely different from what I am familiar with.  Trying to calculate prices in your head where 100 RMB equals roughly $20 plays with your head.

Here the shop where I bought my wife her present:

Here is the little stall located down a narrow alleyway where I bought my wife’s present.

Along with Moonie and I were my UNK colleague Kim Schipporeit and her daughter Amanda.  One of Kim and Amanda’s favorite stops was an outdoor costume jewelry spot covered by a freestanding awning where everything was priced 49 RMB:

Moonie helps Amanda and Kim at the costume jewelry stand.

By the end of the day I had scarves, shawls, jewelry, a tie and the perfect gift for my wife. I was ready to call it a day and have some mango ice cream.  (The alternate choice was green tea and red bean.)

I wait outside a store/stall while the ladies look at yet more purses and billfolds.

Got my first breakfast in China yesterday morning, though it was a bit of an adventure.

I went down to the hotel front desk, but no one there spoke English, which I really can’t complain about given that I know zero Chinese in any of its many forms.  So I started wandering up a flight of stairs and found what looked like private dining rooms, and the hostess there took me to the main restaurant. There a waitress brought an all-Chinese order sheet to me and asked me what I wanted with very limited English.

I think I asked for beef (oxtail) having no idea what I was doing, but fortunately a few minutes later a coordinator from the conference came over and helped me order. I got some steamed dumplings, black bean buns, and the oxtail. So I was good. Not quite my idea of breakfast, but when in Guangzhou….

I then headed out for a long walk by the Pearl River that flows in front my hotel.

The Zhujiang (Pearl River) Hotel is a lovely place to stay, but the state-run hotel is really different from the cookie-cutter global conglomerate hotels one usually thinks about.

As you might expect, the Pearl River passes in front of the hotel, and there is a long urban trail that runs alongside it.  Head west along the river and you will soon see a sign that proclaims Forbidden Military area.  So I walk east instead.  Across the river to the south, you can see the city spread out before you:

The view looking south across the Pearl River.

Everyone has seen the photos and videos of people of all ages doing tai chi and other forms of exercise along the streets in China, but it can be a bit of surprise when you realize that in addition to the traditional Chinese disciplines there are also women ranging from young mothers to gray-haired grandmothers doing dancercize to K-pop music.  Imagine what you might see at 6 a.m. at your local gym or Y, and that’s what’s happening along the river walk:

Exercisers, whether solo or in groups, are spread out all along the the river walk.

The skyline takes a turn for the dramatic as you approach the Canton Tower, said to be the world’s tallest television tower, and an arena from the 2010 Asian Games.  There is a big park-like area around the two landmarks that I haven’t had the chance to explore yet, but I’m hoping to take more of a look there today.

The Canton Tower and the sports arena from the 2010 Asian Games marks a large park area and the start of the Mall of the World.

I don’t really know much about the Mall of the World, other than that it is a long, open area through the city with trees, grass, wide walk ways, Metro stations, and underground shopping areas.  There are also museums, a major library and small restaurants/cafes/snack stands along the way.

The most interesting person I saw out on my walk was this bearded man who was engaging in calligraphy on the stone walkway, painting with water. Not long after he had done his careful writing with elaborate Chinese characters, the word evaporated into the steamy air.  I have no idea what he was writing or why he did this, but it was beautiful to behold.  I’d like to think it was performance poetry, but I really do have no idea.

This gentleman was painting calligraphy using water on the stone walkway along the Mall of the World on a hot summer morning. Not long after he had created the characters, they were evaporating back into the air. I wish I knew what he was saying.

When I travel, whether through the American southeast on my motorcycle, to major cities for conferences, or to the wider world, I much prefer to eat as the locals do, staying away from the omnipresent corporate chain restaurants.  But after too much green tea and not nearly enough coffee, I was delighted to come across that most global of institutions – the Starbucks:

As much as I try to avoid chain restaurants when I travel, I was thrilled to get a good cup of coffee at this underground Starbucks along the Mall of the World. The young lady who waited on me spoke excellent English and brewed a fine Pike Place roast.

For the next week I’m visiting China as part of an exchange program between my university (University of Nebraska at Kearney) and Chinese universities.  I’ll be posting photos and my notes on my travels here.  Some of these posts will deal with media, but many will just be “What I did on my summer trip.”

The view from the Hong Kong airport while waiting on the flight to Guangzhou, China.

Getting to Guangzhou, China from Kearney, Nebraska is a bit of a journey.  It is easier than trips my friend Chis Allen has taken to Oman and Afghanistan; but as near as I can tell, it took close to 30 hours by the time you count driving to Lincoln to catch the plane to Chicago. Although my first flight is at 5:40 a.m. Friday, I drove up to Lincoln on Thursday evening to make getting to the airport easier.  I have a long layover in Chicago because you just don’t want to risk missing an international connection. (When my family went to Germany five years ago, we had a three hour connection in New Jersey and still almost missed our flight.) The following was written during my flight:

The plane flying to Hong Kong is very nice, though it’s pretty cool inside. If I do another trip like this I’ll definitely take a sweatshirt. I’ve got an aisle seat on the center group of seats — my travel agent advised me that that’s the best place to sit if you don’t want people stepping over you while you sleep.

The only problem during the 16-hour flight is that my legs are really cramped. I’m 6’2″ tall with really long legs.  During the middle of the flight I walked up and down the aisle for a bit; while I was doing that, there was a woman doing stretching exercises in front of the emergency exit and icing her calf.

The Boing 777 had individual media screens for every seat with a wide range of movies, TV shows and audio programs available in English and Chinese.

But I had my own media with me on my iPad.  I finished watching one of the old X-Men movies with Patrick Stewart and then watched Persepolis, an animated movie based on the graphic novels by a woman who grew up in revolutionary Iran. Parts of it were really depressing, parts really funny, and all of it really makes you think. It’s hard to imagine growing up under conditions portrayed in the movie, but Marjane Satrapi’s story is full of details that build on what I’ve heard from friends from both Iran and Iraq who lived through the same events.

I also continued reading Rick Atkinson’s Guns at Last Light, the third volume of his World War II Liberation of Europe trilogy using Kindle software on my iPad.  They keep the plane dark so people can sleep, so having the lit screen on the iPad is really nice. And while I generally prefer paper books, having this massive volume on my little tablet is nice.

As I’m writing this off-line, I’ve been on the plane more than nine hours (we had a weather delay on the ground), and still have more than seven hours to go. According to the map we’re over northeastern Russia (Siberia maybe?). It’s fascinating the route we take: Head northwest over Canada and Alaska, then across a short bit of ocean, and then heading south toward Hong Kong. We really spent relatively little time over water. Hard to imagine that my son Erik, who was an exchange student in South Korea and is now advising international students there, has made this trip several times in the last two years.

The flight crew is really good. The guy with the drink cart remembered I was drinking decaf black coffee across a couple of services.

I’ve napped a couple of times, and now they’re getting ready to serve breakfast to us even though it’s 4:30 in the afternoon, Hong Kong time. We’ve completely flipped night and day.

Following a half-hour flight from Hong Kong to Guangzhou, a driver meets me at the airport and takes me to the conference hotel where I happily collapse asleep.  And I wake up to this view of China:

The view from my hotel window in Guangzhou.