Living in a Media World

Over the last several blog posts, I’ve been choosing photos that help tell the story of my trip through China.  But for this final update on my week-long-plus expedition through China, my only goal is to highlight several photos that didn’t fit in with the my previous narratives.

(By the way, the title of this post is taken from the wonderful first-and-only novel by Tim Rumsey, Pictures From a Trip.  It’s long out of print, but readily available used from Amazon using the above link.)

Couples on bicycles

Bicycles are not as all-pervasive in China now as they were in leaner economic times. But you can still see couples riding together with the young man pedaling and the young lady riding sidesaddle on the luggage rack.

Yes, the fish are fresh

You really don’t have to worry much about how fresh the fish (or turtles) are at restaurants in China. Instead of taking your dinner out of a refrigerator, cooks are likely to pull your choice for the fish course out of a collection of live tanks. Ones such as this were everywhere in in the city of Guangzhou.

The Great Staircase

When I visited the Great Wall near Beijing, I was surprised to see that it looked more like The Great Staircase than anything else. The steps headed off toward infinity in the endless mist.

Warning Sign on Great Wall #1

Good advice when you are standing on a tall stone wall. The locals have had centuries to work out this policy….

Warning Sign on Great Wall #2

I’m not completely clear on what I’m being warned about, but I’m taking it seriously. (All kidding aside, I know something about ‘brain disease’ has been lost in translation.) There is no question you have to be in good shape to get through much of this section of the Great Wall.

Tianamen Square Propaganda #1

I have to say, I find the classical Chinese statuary at Tianamen Square more compelling than the giant video wall pictured below.

Tianamen Square Propaganda #2

Along with the buildings, memorials and statuary, Tianamen Square also features a pair of giant permanent video screens currently playing a film promoting Shanghai as a tourist destination.

Scenes from an airport #1

My last view of China was from the Beijing Capital Airport as I prepared to leave for the United States.

Scenes from an airport #2

The contrast between my final air destination of Lincoln, Nebraska and the airports in Guangzhou, Hong Kong, and Beijing just couldn’t be clearer. I especially liked the high-tech airline label in baggage claim in Lincoln.

There are two things that have become immediately apparent to me during the two days I’ve spent in Beijing:

• The people here have been welcoming and friendly.
• The air quality is at least as bad as everyone said.

Let’s talk about the second one first.

The air in Beijing is a gray miasma that looks right out of a post-apocolyptic movie.

This is what the air has looked like the entire time I’ve been here.  And it’s not just fog, as it might appear, this is the full-on smog I was warned about.  I’ve just been here a couple of days, and I’ve noticed that it burns the eyes and has led to a persistent cough.  And it’s not just me.  (And this leads to my second point…) I had a nice conversation yesterday morning with a local gentleman who was waiting outside the hotel to meet someone for breakfast in the restaurant, and he mentioned how terrible the air was. He did note that it was sometimes better in the fall.

My other observation about Beijing is that the people have been friendly and pleasant to me as a foreigner who has been more than slightly confused and who doesn’t speak a word of Chinese.  The waitresses at Grand Pa Le’s last night (a lovely local restaurant in which we were the only Westerners) all did their absolute best to meet our needs as we tried to order off our picture menus. And the driver for our tour (who spoke no English – that was our guide’s job) pantomimed raising up an umbrella to make sure we all took umbrellas with us to the Great Wall.

(Our guide’s miming of the umbrella is the best charade I’ve seen since my father memorably did toast popping out of a toaster in a game of charades at our house several years ago.)

People’s friendliness extended to the crowds at the Great Wall, where a group of young people asked to have my colleague’s daughter Amanda have her picture taken with them.

Amanda gets her picture taken with Chinese tourists at the Great Wall.

Visiting the Great Wall was a lot like visiting the South Rim of the Grand Canyon.  Lots of crowds, lots of steep, difficult steps, and an incredible sense of history. The steps were endless and irregular, with some being a couple of inches tall and others being more than a foot tall.  As you can see, there was also a huge fog bank over the area we were in.  The Wall is up in the mountains outside Beijing, and everything was covered with damp.  That’s not to say there wasn’t still the air pollution, but there was also real fog.  Visibility was largely limited to 100 yards or less, though that improved somewhat by the end of our visit. I can’t complain about mountain weather being mountain weather (the fog was like what you might get in North Carolina in the Blue Ridge Mountains – minus the pollution), but we were never able to get a real view of the Wall progressing over the mountains.

Oh, one other note on that.  You know those photos of the Wall you’ve seen that show long flat walkways extending for miles?  They weren’t taken in the Beijing area!  There were stairs as far as the eye could see.

One of the coolest features of the wall were the Beacon Towers, which clearly served as models for the beacons for the Rohiran in the Lord of the Rings movies.

The beacon towers along the Great Wall made me feel like I was in one of the Lord of the Rings movies. The fog makes it hard to do them justice.

On our way back to the city from the Wall, we stopped for a brief photo opportunity in front of the Birds Nest Olympic Stadium.  I would have liked to have seen more there.

A quick photo opportunity in front of the Birds Nest Olympic Stadium.

We got back to the Tianamen Square area too late to do more than just see this historic area, but even that was fascinating.

Along with the monuments, buildings, giant video screens and crowds, Tianamen Square also had some beautiful gardens.

After the long day visiting Hong Kong, I decided to pass on the next day’s tour of Macco.  So instead I spent time exploring Gaungzhou with my new friend, Charles Boyer, the dean of agriculture at Fresno State.

In the afternoon, following a great Japanese lunch at a popular local restaurant, we went to a giant college fair at the Guangzhou Expo Center where Fresno State had a recruiting booth.

The Guangzhou Expo Center had four giant halls, all the size of this one.

The Expo Center building we went to was so big that even with the huge college fair there, we still had trouble finding our way there.  But we found a nice man at a desk who spoke no English who wanted to help.  But we just couldn’t get the idea of a college fair across to him. Then it suddenly occurred to me that my conference badge, which I had in my messenger bag, had the word “University” on it, printed in Chinese.  I pulled out the badge, pointed to the word, and the man’s eyes immediately lit up, and he was able to give us directions with hand signals and some written numbers.

When we arrived in the hall, we were immediately greeted by a group of students wearing yellow sashes who wanted to talk with us and have their picture taken with us.

My friend Charles meets with a group of Chinese students who are apparently representing their university at this giant college fair.

After that, we moved on to visit the Fresno State booth and the school’s local recruiter.  To my surprise, directly across from the Fresno State booth was one for Arkansas State University, where I know a number of people in the journalism and broadcasting programs.  In fact, the director of international programs who was manning the ASU booth is knows several of these people as well.  It truly is a small world.

Along with Fresno State, Arkansas State also had a booth at the fair. The man heading up the booth knew several of my friends there.

On Thursday, a group of us from the conference I’m attending in Guangzhou had the opportunity to visit Hong Kong as part of a commercial tour.  Hong Kong was an amazing city, and the tour was a fascinating experience on a host of levels.

The Hong Kong skyline as seen from the Hong Kong film walk of fame.

Our group of academics, both American and Chinese, got on a big tour bus for the two-hour drive to Hong Kong at about 6:30 in the morning, accompanied by box breakfasts from the hotel.  These included a packaged chiffon cake (quite tasty), a red bean paste cake roll (interesting), a cold hot dog on a stick (I didn’t open it) and a carton of milk.  Unfortunately, but predictably, there was no coffee.

The first major stop was at immigration.  Going through immigration from China to Hong Kong is an extended process.  Despite Hong Kong being under Chinese control, it is still treated as a separate country with its own currency and passports.

The process got started with our group going through a huge facility with long walkways covered with severe sounding signs. You eventually enter a giant hall full of stations labeled either “Chinese National” or “Foreigner.”  Once you make it through the long lines, the young man or woman working at passport control processes your passport efficiently. Given that our group has both nationals and foreigners, we’ve been split up, so we have to reassemble on the other side, then walk to a bus station, were we take a crowded yellow stand-up bus for a couple of miles to the Hong Kong immigration station. Once again, we que up, only this time it is “Hong Kong Residents” and “Visitors.” But the process is the same, only instead of a stamp in our passport, we get a little slip of paper stapled to a page.  Again we reassemble, again we get on a yellow bus with standing room only.  And finally we get on a new tour bus – our original one staying behind to wait for us in China.  From start to finish, I think that immigration took about two hours. (Though on our way back in the late evening, it probably only took an hour.)  My sympathies are with those who must make this journey on a regular basis.

Once we arrive in Hong Kong proper, our first stop is the Hong Kong Film Walk of Fame, featuring handprints and stars for the most famous Hong Kong action performers and a statue of martial arts great Bruce Lee.

Bruce Lee will always be the biggest of the Hong Kong action stars.

The walk of fame was pleasant, but the view across the water of the Hong Kong skyline was spectacular.  Then it was off to lunch at a restaurant we entered through a back elevator that led to an entrance through the kitchen, and finally down a marble corridor to the dining room.  Our food was all preordered for us, and quite fancy I suppose.  But as we left, I thought the more ordinary rice and noodle dishes we saw young people enjoying looked even better.

We then had a couple of rapid fire stops – first to the exposition center where reunification ceremonies took place back at turn of the century, when Britain turned over its colony of Hong Kong back to the Chinese government.

This is the sculpture that commemorates the transfer of control of Hong Kong from Britain to China. Despite China’s control of the territory, Hong Kong still has its own currency, and you still need a passport to travel between the two.

Our next stop was a brief photo op at an overlook near the top of a mountain that gave a fantastic view of Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbor.

Hong Kong’s magnificent Victoria Harbor

I felt a little bit like Moses having to stay outside the promised land, to gaze into it, but not able to enter.  Hong Kong’s harbor is so full of such rich history, and I would have loved to have at the very least taken a ferry across it.  But alas, this brief look was all I got. Should I ever get back to Hong Kong, that’s what I want to really spend some time seeing.

Our last stop of the day was at the Ocean Park amusement park.  And while I confess that an amusement park was probably not my first choice of places to go in Hong Kong, the park was pleasant enough, and the view from the cable car ride was wonderful.

The view from the cable car ride at Hong Kong’s Ocean Park was gorgeous.

As the day wound down, I was hot and tired, and relieved to get on the bus for the trip back to our hotel.  But before any of us could sleep on the bus, there was the multi-bus, multi-line immigration process to go through.

We got back to Guangzhou at close to 11:30 that night.  And while I was exhausted, I was also thrilled to have gotten at least a glimpse of one of the world’s truly great cities.

Wednesday was our big day and the ultimate purpose for the trip: Graduation Day!

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m here in Guangzhou, China for a conference on 1+2+1 college programs where students from China spend 1 year at a Chinese university, 2 years in the United States, and then 1 final year back in China.  During the conference we discuss how the programs work and what can be done for them in the future, and then we award the diplomas to the students.

And it is diplomas, plural.  Each student earns a dual-degree from both the United States institution and the Chinese one.

Our meetings and ceremonies were held on the campus at Jinan University.

The various delegates to the 1+2+1 conference head in for a morning of meetings before the afternoon graduation.

Following meetings and lunch, it was time to go over to the auditorium for the graduation ceremonies.  For as much as is different between the United States and China, there is much that is the same. Parents still crowd in to take pictures of their graduates!

No matter where you go in the world, parents still want pictures of their graduates!

The ceremony itself was held in a big hall flanked with video screens on the sides and giant screen across the back.

This is the stage before the ceremony with one of my Chinese faculty counterparts who will be handing out degrees shortly. I loved the gorgeous Chinese academic robes.

The ceremony itself was lovely, but long, about 3 hours to grant 270 or degrees.  It wasn’t that the speeches were overly long, it’s that they all had to be given twice.  Why? Because everything except the reading of the names had to be done in both Chinese and English! There was talk that at some point the ceremony might have to go to using simultaneous translation transceivers so that everyone can just hear everything in their own language from translators as it happens, but it was impressive seeing the student speakers giving bilingual speeches so clearly.

As a closing note for today, we were surprised to see that the big statue on campus was of a man with frizzy hair and baggy sweater.  I thought it had to be Albert Einstein, but that didn’t seem to quite fit for a Chinese university. I must be mistaken.  Then I finally paid attention to the inscription running around the center of the sphere underneath.  Yup, that’s Albert!

There is a lovely sculpture of Albert Einstein on the central campus of Jinan University.

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.