Letter from China

Landed in Shanghai several days ago, I was soon reminded of how overwhelming the city is: white heat, endless streams of loud cars, and equally ferocious bicycles and motorcycles.

One of the first thing I did was to look for a bank that could let me withdraw cash from my Bank of America account. I was told that a CITIC Bank was two bus stops away - it was not long before I realized that the distance between two Shanghai bus stops was almost twice their U.S. counterpart; and the distance between Harvard Square to MIT (two subway stops away) was nothing compared to the same thing in Shanghai. Also, I learned that day that Chinese banks did not process foreign debit card withdrawal - or so I was told.

The minute I got back home, I had to battle with the omnipresent Great Firewall of China: Google feeds - blocked, twitter - blocked, this very own blog host - blocked. I started searching for the software and plugins I used to use to bypass the GFW but found all of their websites were blocked; the few that remain accessible only offer proxy solutions for PC. Yes, China is still predominantly a PC (and IE) nation. My only option is to use the painfully-slow Harvard VPN for the moment.

The Shanghainese I stayed with are extremely proud of the Expo. Granted, they have complaints: they complain that the whole nation has to pay for the Beijing Olympics, but it is the Shanghai government who got the bill of the entire Shanghai Expo, including the China Pavilion; they complain about the millions of outsiders (wai di ren) flushing into the city and the trouble of managing thousands of volunteers (the couple are university administrators and former Ministry of Education officials). I asked what would the money be spent on if it's not used in the Expo, their answer was equivocal - we have tacit knowledge that Chinese governments, unlike their American counterparts, are the ones hoarding the big bulks, as opposed to private citizens, and in this Communist country, unlike Denmark or Sweden, little of the money goes into social welfare. No one really knows how much the Expo cost exactly, but as the Shanghainese couple commented, the main cost went to upgrading Shanghai's infrastructure - $45 billion. But shall people worry about the quality of the subway lines that were built so fast, given the ubiquitous corruption in the construction business in China? And what about the displaced households, silenced dissidents, and the migrant workers who are again jobless in Shanghai after the construction work?

Still, my friends were very proud of the Expo and urged me to go despite my reluctance. They raved about how magnificent the architecture was, how many country brought a few pieces of their treasure, and of course, how the China Pavilion was absolutely spectacular with a giant high-tech version of the nation's most famous ancient painting scroll and the most valued terra cotta warrior and chariot set from Xi'an.

So I went to the Expo and was shocked: I had never seen so many people at one place in my life - and I grew up in China! It's astonishing that millions of people were here in the scorching sun just to stand for hours in lines to see what essentially was just a big room with a short film about a foreign country and another room with picture displays - and another big room about a different foreign country, and another one. This is my genuine comment about the entire Expo with no disrespect for any of the participating countries. I went to some of the most loved Pavilions including Spain and Italy, but I have to say, waiting for 9 hours on a 40-degree-Celsius day to see them is just insane. [My favorite is Holland, and that might get its own post]

And here I am in my hometown Hangzhou, after merely an hour's train ride from Shanghai - one of the fastest train line in China. I still have to figure out how to beat the Great Firewall while (re)adjusting to my life back in China - that turned out to be more difficult than recovering from the jet leg. Wish me luck:)

Oh by the way, the best proof that I'm back in China:



street vendors in Shanghai selling DVDs of pirated movies, TV shows and computer games.