Tuesday, July 15, 2014

7/12 - 7/13 Last Days of GSP

7/12 - Evening 

During the day, everyone researched and prepared for their presentations for their independent research topics. It was pretty long and arduous so i'll dive into the fun stuff.

Last night was an incredible night. We started by going to this Peking Duck restaurant in Sanlitun (Soho) a district very similar to 5th avenue in New York. Many high-end brand lie Prada, Giorgio Armani and names that I was not even familiar with. When we arrived to the restaurant at 8, I thought it would be packed, but the main dining area was near empty which was a bit of a surprise. Although it would have been nice to have many people there, it felt like we had the restaurant to ourselves and the service was impeccable. They carted out the duck and the chef masterful carved the duck onto a plate. We had seen this done before, but because the restaurant was empty we could hear the chefs blade crack the skin as it dissected the skin into small bit size pieces. Within 45 seconds of his first cut, the smell of the tender duck meat wafted over to our table as all of us began to salivate in anticipation for Beijing’s most famous cuisine. Before the duck was served prawns wrapped in green noodles, albacore stew and braised ribs that fell right off the bone arrived at our table and I was transported to culinary heaven.

The Crew

Prawns

Peking Duck

After dinner we went to a rooftop lounge overlooking Beijing and looked up at the full moon. In a smogless night, Beijing is a beautiful city and the modern aspects are truly amazing. After a bottle of wine and a glass of Glenviet 12 years (the smoothest single malt whiskey I have ever had the pleasure of drinking), we went down to a side street in search for street food. After a 5 minute walk, I was transported to what felt like the Lower East Side, with small bars and clubs with music blaring onto the street. There were tons of foreigners and at this moment it felt like I experienced modernization with Chinese Characteristics. There were bars playing hip-hop and rock, yet the area was predominately Chinese and there were street stands selling skewers that were being roasted on open flames. After some skewers, we slipped into the basement of one of the clubs, watched a b-boy dance off, burned some calories dancing and left for the guest house.

Skewers

7/13 Beijing Airport

I am sitting in alone in the airport writing this entry outside gate E22 waiting for my flight to Osaka. All alone. After spending close to every waking moment with my fellow Columbians, its nice being able to travel at my own pace, but so, so, so lonely at the same time. Emiliano isn’t here to crack jokes with and no Anton isn’t here to run, jump and climb with and Junho isn’t here to laugh along with. Last night we threw a little going away party with baiju and cheesecake in the Professor Armstrong’s room after dinner at a hot pot restaurant. When Armstrong said his final good byes, everyone ran over and we all gave him a big group hug. The patriarch had left. This morning we had to say our goodbyes as we all scattered across the world to Shanghai, Guangzhou, Seoul, Kyrgyzstan, Oregon, Texas and New York City. If there is one phrase to describe the trip, it would be “its been real”. If there had been a TV crew following us around, the suspense and drama would have gotten us higher ratings then even the Jersey Shore. I cannot even imagine what the confessionals would have been like.

In this last month, I learned so much from every single person on this trip and made a life experience that I will never forget. This reminded me of Harvard Summer Venture in Management Program where they brought together some of the greatest minds of America into the classroom for one week to learn and grow in one of the most intellectually stimulating and rigorous environments in the world. Emiliano, Gabby and I all walked for graduation this spring and are heading off the real world. To be able to end my experience undergraduate days not in New York, but in the Global Center in Beijing truly brings my East Asian Studies experience together.


The Global Scholars and Professors are all a little crazy in the best way possible. Before I close the book on this chapter I have to thank my father, mother and brother. They have been unwavering in their support. I've had a great time and for that, i'm glad.

Peace Out Beijing! 



7/11 Olympic Park

Today we went to the Olympic Park to check out the Bird’s Nest. On our way, we went through a subway and there were 6 security guards in the underpass checking hukous (household registration cards). We were able to pass through without any issue, but it was interesting to see the law of management the mass migrations towards the city. When we first went into he complex, we had to go through another security check. The security check was only for our bodies and not for our bags. I found this very odd because a terrorist could have easily slipped an explosive into the complex in a bag.  
The Bird's Nest

The Olympic Park was very impressive and the plaza was expansive, even larger then Tiananmen Square and the subway stop was in the city, not on the periphery. The Olympic Complex is also situated along the axis of the city and when we looked south, there was a row of trees on either side and in the distance we could see the golden roofs of the palaces in the Forbidden City. In the periphery of the complex, there were giant luxury condos and office buildings, including an impressive IBM building, showing the international and high end neighborhood of Beijing. The Bird’s Nest had enormous curved steel beams and the water cube, although a rectangular building, had steel beams on the exterior that formed what looked like bubbles. There were giant steel lamp posts and in the distance an Olympic tower and beyond that, a tree looking building. The entire complex was very impressive and looked like a part of nature and I could only imagine the pride a Chinese citizen would feel if they attended the Olympics. 

Olympic Torch and High Rises

When looking at the Olympic Complex, the question of how the Olympic Complex represented “Modernization with Chinese Characteristics”, the CCPs slogan, continually came up in my mind. What makes these modern structures different then anything else? After speaking with Edward and Professor Armstrong, I realized that the modernizing with Chinese Characteristics is just a method for the CCP to legitimize its position of as a "communist" government while adopting capitalism. Although the government is authoritarian, the complex creates a very different self image then the complex in Germany. The German Stadium was very ominous and the structures were composed of right angles and imposing structure. The Bird’s nest, was very friendly and inviting and the curved steel beams were less imposing and felt more natural and organic. In the German complex there were naked human figures and giant horses five times normal sizes with defined bodies representing naturalism. In Beijing’s Olympic Complex there were five mascots about four feet tall that looked like teletubies. The German rise seems centered around perfectionism of the human form in a rigid manner whereas the Chinese rise is friendly yet imposing in size.


Chinese Teletubies
Olympic Mascots



7/8 Forbidden City, Charles Hutzler, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences


Today we started off our morning with a visit to the Forbidden City. After emerging from the station, there was the iconic picture of Mao looking out onto Tiananmen Square, idolized since his death in the late 1970s. When I see his portrait posted in front of the gates, the only thing I can think of is the Great Leap Forward and The Cultural Revolution. These two periods marked periods of Chinese history of megalomaniacal totalitarian rule that challenged all established economic and social theory with simply the will of the people, ultimately leading to famine and great social unrest. Yet, there he stood as the father of the current generation of the Chinese people in front of the gates of the ancient city. The Giant Gates were very impressive and before we could enter we had to pass through a quick check point. When we enter the main area to buy tickets, we noticed food and beverage trucks and people selling ice cream bars. The heat was unbearable, but in Mao’s envisioned communist society where everyone would share and live communally, I bet this capitalist hustle would cause him to roll over in his grave.

When we finally entered the Forbidden City, there were hordes of tourists walking in gigantic group. Surprisingly, the tourists we saw were not international, but mostly Chinese and from the rural provinces. It seemed as if thousands of Chinese were making their way into the Forbidden City for their once in a lifetime visit. My first impression of the Forbidden City was its uniformity and its expansive size. All the roofs were gold and the arches were a bright orange with little figurines hanging off the edges. The pillars supporting the building were red and led up to an intricate design space between the roof and supporting pillars that was a combination of green, blue and gold. The giant plazas could easily accommodate a thousand people and there were many side streets and off shoots from the main plazas. It was incredible, but there were way, way. way too many tourists and it felt like I was visiting the Times Square of China.

The Man, The Legend, The Mao
The Forbidden City


After our morning in the Forbidden City, we arrived at a Sichuan Restaurant to meet with Charles Hutzler, the Head of Wall Street Journal’s China Bureau. The Sichuan restaurant was located in an old French postal office in the foreigner district of the Qing Dynasty. He was a Yale graduate from the class on 1984 who had lived in China over 25 years and happened to be a classmate of Professor Armstrong in the same graduation year! What are the chances? He spoke to us about his experiences and challenges as a journalist in China. All of his computers have been compromised by hackers and he had been pulled into government offices for articles that have not even been published on the web. Corporate espionage is also a huge issue and ex-pats often avoid typing their passwords in while in China because entire systems are at risk of being compromised.

Sichuan Restaurant
French Postal Office

After being prompted by Fenco, he dived into his experiences covering the 2008 Tibetan Protests near Lhasa. He was one of the few journalists allowed into the autonomous region to interview Tibetans. They arrived in a motorcade at night accommodated by Chinese government officials that had planned it that way in order to make it difficult to interview, but he and the other journalists scattered across the city looking for possible interview candidates. As the moved through the city, he noticed that all the people they had interviewed had also shown on CCTV, the government mouthpiece, making it clear that the entire tour had been orchestrated. Then when he and a group of journalists were in one of the main temples, monks forced their way in and screamed and cried their stories at the cameras. He caught all the footage and before it could be erased it was sent across seas to the states and aired. After the story was leaked, his e-mail was also somehow "leaked" on the internet under the pretense of “Journalists Spreading Lies about Tibet”. He received death threats, but still stayed in the country. It was incredible to hear his experience as a journalist diving into the center of the action to get the story and share the story of those who are silenced.

After he told his story, the conversation moved towards protests as a whole. China is a society of protests and according to the journalist there is one large scale protest every 6 minutes in China. Since China is a one-party rule, there are no alternatives to the governing system and instead of voting the leader out of power, protests are used to signal to the government what is wrong. A huge real estate developer that has 2 million followers on weibo tweeted his discontent with the pollution, causing protests to erupt. The government then responds with short-term concessions and there are even policies in place where local factories can get loans from Beijing to appease their protestors. After the protest is out of the people’s mind, the government targets ring leaders to stop the protests from happening again.

China is a society in transition and people want more of a say in the end product. Yet the government pushes the people to the brink with its rigid authoritarian policies that focus solely on economic growth with the ultimate goal of creating a modern international metropolis that result in negatives like pollution. Even when the people push back, the government has set up a system that plucks out the oppositions leadership, giving Xi Jingping the ultimate decision making capability.

After speaking with the journalist, we took the subway to the Academy of Social Sciences for a roundtable discussion with five Chinese Professors and Charles Armstrong (and his entourage of 8 Global Scholars!!!!). The discussion was focused on international relations in Northeast Asia. Before the end of the Cold War, there were defined lines between the democratic/capitalist alliance of U.S. South Korea and Japan against the communist China, Russia and North Korea. Since the End of the Cold War, with economic integration of all parties except North Korea, the relations between these countries have become more fluid. Professor Armstrong and the expert on North Korea began the discussion with the importance of Korea in the discussion of the security and the future of the region as a whole.

Professors of The Academy of Social Sciences

Then, a Professor in a green shirt interjected, bluntly stating that it was not Korea, but the top three economic players, China, Japan and U.S. that would play a role in shaping the region. He gave his perspective on the relation of the U.S. with the two Asia powers. He said that when the U.S. wants to deal with China, it will work closely with Japan and when the U.S. wants to deal with the world, it will work with China. It was an interesting perspective that I had not heard before, but it was very compelling. The perspective that I did not agree with was his lack of faith in the U.S. - Japan security agreement. He thought that it did not have that much backbone and the U.S. was not that invested in Japan. I believe he held this perspective because he equated the relationship to that of China and North Korea, a burdensome relation for China. The Japan - U.S. relationship may be a professional relationship where the leaders are not too close with one another personally, but their security alliance has a strong bilateral economic component.


Towards the end of the discussion, the Professor in the green shirt said that a way to characterize Xi’s government was three words: ambitious, reckless and prudent. Reckless, but at the same time so financially solvent that mistakes can easily be absorbed and prudent with respect to relations with Japan and ASEAN and knowing not to trigger a war just because of their new place as the second largest economy. He then surprised me by saying that Xi Jingping’s leadership style is very similar to Mao Zedong. In all the literature that I had read thus far, the comparisons were first made between Xi having similarities to Hu Jintao as a keeper of the status quo and then Deng as a reformer after their similarities after the Fourth Plenum meeting that outlined the policies for the next 10 years…but never like Mao. He went on to say that like Mao, Xi wants to do something special and he will do everything in his power to cause change and rock the boat. They both place less emphasis on stability and he shares the same “struggle” philosophy as Mao. This “struggle” seems to place an emphasis on struggling for a breathe a fresh air while GDP continues to grow at high rates.

Monday, July 14, 2014

7/5 - 7/6 Yíhé Yuán and the Great Wall

7/5 Free Day - Summer Palace (Yíhé Yuán)

First break day since the beginning of the trip. I had an incredible conversation with Junho and Alex about the identity of being a minority and multiracial in America.

Junho, Alex and Me

Buddha Chilling

Pyahhhhhhhh

7/6 - Great Wall and Break Day

Climbed Climbed and Climbed some more. Made it to the top. It would’ve been better if the day had not been as smoggy, but it was a fun trek up the wall. In the west we have this idea that the wall is just a winding path, but in reality it is incredibly steep.

So Steep!

"Until you reach the Great Wall, you're no hero"
Chairman Mao

Great Wall Photo Shoot!

7/4 Tian Wei from CCTV, Xu Bing's Studio, Sunlituan

Today we started off the Koenig with a talk from Tian Wei, a CCTV news anchor and HKS graduate. She fluent in English and her accent is negligible. Her show is a once a week special that is going to be expanded to once a night in their new CCTV building. After speaking on her specific journalistic background, she dived into the media industry in china. There were many remnants of the old socialist system leading to many resources being sunk into media/propaganda. Each ministry had its own related newspaper and there were tons of local media. Under the socialist system even if people didn't read the paper, large subsidies would cover the cost, but with the advent of capitalism, many of the smaller papers were either acquired or went out of business, leading to consolidation across the industry.


Tian Wei - CCTV News Anchor
The Lady with the Ear of 1.4 Billion People

CCTV is a news station on the rise that has over 50 bureaus and unlike other large media companies of the U.S. and West, can compensate their employees better and attract better talent. They are considered the mouthpiece for the government and cover 1.4 billion citizens of china. Her position as the line of official communication with the people on behalf of the government is a position of public influence like Anderson Cooper that I had no considered before. This is especially true in a society that has just begun to appreciate the journalistic profession.

Subsequent to touching on traditional media, we she spoke about social media, specifically weibo, Twitter's Chinese equivalent. She touched on the positives of weibo in spreading news, yet also spoke of the dark side of rumors, breaking news and off the record information all spreading at the same pace and the public not being able to critically evaluate what is being said. She then spoke further of how on weibo people even buy followers for 50 cents, called the 50 cent party, leading to the dissemination of misinformation.

When she opened the floor for discussion, I introduced myself as an East Asian studies major specializing in economics. She followed up by saying "oh, you'd better have a good question!" That got me a little nervous, but then I dived into my two questions - first regarding my thesis topic and her thoughts of journalists role in covering the senkaku island conflict. My second questions was about media's role in propagating Xi Jinping's china dream. She said that the senkaku island conflict was a hot topic that was covered 1 out of 4 of every one of her stories and Xi Jinping's had said that he was smart, but the resolution of the issue should be left to later generations. That is incredible to hear because Deng Xiaoping, the reformer of 1979 that opened china to capitalism, said the same thing 30 years prior, employing the delaying strategy that is considered least costly political strategy in this situation.

She then spoke more broadly about remilitarization of Japan and shed light on the Chinese perspective that the US does not understand the risk that it is taking by supporting it. The US was never colonized so I do not believe that we can understand the fear the Chinese and Koreans have against Japan. One of my Korean friends, told me separately that he thinks of Japan as very militaristic militaristic culture even beyond World War II aggressions and when thinking of the samurai. I always thought of Japan as a peaceful state, but there is truth to the soul of the warrior as a driving cultural force. Then she spoke of the issues of the cold war mentality that has arisen from this conflict and that as a world we are moving backwards instead of investing more money into the economy and a peaceful future. She referred this to NASA and how many of the achievements of the Cold War are not even in use today.

Towards the end of the talk, a question was asked by one of the group members that was something along the lines of china being a post-socialist country. In response, our speaker asks, "what is post-socialism". Our summer course was renamed because the name socialists and post-socialist cities was not an acceptable course title by the Chinese government. The idea of post-socialist is a western conception of China and because there was no collapse of the government like in the case of the Soviet Union, there is no clear distinction between the transition and more of a gray area as China moves in the direction of capitalism under authoritarian rule that claims to be communist.

After the lecture, we took the subway to Xu Bing’s art studio. Xu Bing is a famous modern artist and we were supposed to meet with him, but he got pulled away for an emergency meeting. Xu Bing was sent to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution where he wasn’t sent as a part of labor reform, but to learn the life in rural China. When he was there he was exposed to wax prints and sculpting that cultivated his interest in art. The focus of his art is interpreting meaning and repetition. When I arrived at the studio, I realized that I had actually seen it during senior year when I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s East Asia Exhibit’s opening night with my friend Mirabel, my Columbia Culture Buddy. 

Since he was not present, some elderly man, with half the teeth from his bottom row missing, gave us a short lecture with a powerpoint, but he only spoke Chinese, so the Fenco and Moore helped translate. Although that helped to grasp what was going on, he would speak for so long that I could tell that the when the girls translated, everything was not getting across to us. That being said, he was a fountain of knowledge and he had tons and tons to say about all the art. 

His most impressive piece of art was The Book From The Sky, which he spent 5 years on during his time at the academy and was on display in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He took the wood block print making style and created fake characters using his knowledge of the construction of Chinese characters. Xu then created an entire book using these incomprehensible words as a social commentary on the communist party during the Cultural Revolution. The formatting he used was similar to the little red book, that would bold and increase the size of the characters with more importance. The irony is that in a book with all incomprehensible characters, everything has no meaning, ultimately emphasizing arbitrary things.

The Book From The Sky

Another method he used to manipulate Chinese Characters was by taking American letters and transforming them to similar looking Chinese radicals (parts of characters) or creating completely new radicals. He would then combine radicals to form fake Chinese Characters that could be read in English. These were incredibly fun to decipher and bridged a gap between the two cultures with regards to understanding of characters and text. He had two beautiful scrolls on the wall: one wrote Faithful To Your Art You Know No Age and the other wrote Letting Wealth And Fame Drift By The Clouds.

Letting Wealth And Fame Drift By The Clouds
Can you decipher it?

Another interesting piece that they showed us was a piece that had a quote “Where does the dust itself collect”. It does not look impressive at first, but Xu Bing was actually in the US during 9/11 and he collected the ashes from the collapse of the Twin Towers. Because America forbids the exportation of any of the dust, he molded a sculpture using the inside of a cabbage patch kid and sent it to China and created the exhibit. Although I was not happy that he took a sacred “object” from the states by means of smuggling, his way of changing the dust into something meaningful was amazing. This also made me appreciate that when it comes to art, there are so many different mediums than oil on canvas or marble and the medium may have some incredible meaning in itself.

The last piece that we heard about was the Phoenix in St. John the Divine, right near campus. It is a giant piece made completely of garbage like old tires and bicycle frames. In this piece he juxtaposes what is considered waste with something grand and beautiful. The phoenix also symbolize rebirth, playing well with this theme. It was first commissioned by a large Chinese corporation, but after the 2008 financial slowdown, it became unaffordable and the phoenix was not desirable by any of the Chinese elite was then sent to the US where it was well received in the states.

Afterwards we went to dinner at a Fourth of July Party. I went to the party and left for a little bit with Fenco and Moore to find some other food. Honesty, I didn’t travel around the world just to meet more Americans and fall back into a comfort zone for a holiday I do not even celebrate too much back home. I love America, but I think there are more unique ways to celebrate American pride then by eating Bar-B-Que and drinking beer. We ended up finding a restaurant that specialized in Donkey Cuisine. I tried Donkey Tongue and Meat, but it was nothing special – a little dry too. Afterwards we went karoke-ing with Professor Armstrong!!! It was a blast and then afterwards a group of us went clubbing in the Sunlituan district. When we cabbed back to the Peking University, we ended up at an outdoor viewing of the World Cup, eating beef skewers and drinking tea until the sun rose. It was an incredible day of academics, arts and I guess…Donkey.

Karaoke with King Charles!!

At the Club

Skewers Until The Sun Comes Up
Can barely keep my eyes open