Tag: Disconnects

No Wechat conversation is safe. Anytime. Anywhere. What Chinese are (not) talking about (4)

Wechat is almost universal.  It is ubiquitous in China, and among the Chinese diaspora and their foreign friends and families.  Its functionality for social media, news, and buying things makes it a better choice than any combination of applications available in the west.  It is Twitter, Facebook, Googlemaps, Tinder and Apple Pay all rolled into one. And it is free.

Free does not mean without cost, of course, and in this case, the cost is the Chinese government being ready, willing, and able to monitor what you say, what you text, what you watch, what videos you post.  In China and outside.  If you think the long arm of Chinese government censorship doesn’t reach into the US – well, you would be wrong. 

SupChina cites a new report from Citizen Lab on WeChat censorship, surveillance, and filtering.  Citizen Lab is based at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of  Toronto.  The lab studies government information controls, such as censorship surveillance and filtering, that affect the openness and security of the internet that pose threats to human rights.  Citizen Lab seems to be an extraordinarily sophisticated (to me, anyway) information provider for anyone interested in international government monitoring of individual communications.  Highly recommended.  Read the wiki.

The Citizen Lab report is (Can’t) Picture This2: An Analysis of Wechat’s Realtime Image Filtering in Chats. 

Two key findings on international scrutiny of chat images and texts –

WeChat implements realtime, automatic censorship of chat images based on text contained in images and on an image’s visual similarity to those on a blacklist

WeChat facilitates realtime filtering by maintaining a hash index populated by MD5 hashes of images sent by users of the chat platform

As the predominant form of personal communication in China, Wechat receives directives directly from the government as to what should be filtered.

Wechat Moments, Group Chat, and one-to-one communications are filtered differently.  Not surprisingly, filtering is heaviest for political, government, and social resistance topics.

Sometimes, the filtering does seem a bit much. A pdf of a student resume, sent to me in May of this year from China, was received in early July.  Three short videos of my son at swimming lessons, sent from China to Chicago, were blocked on July 19.  One doubts that the swimming pool could be understood as a state secret, but you never know. For the government, better safe than sorry in censorship.  Last year, I was talking about events in Xinjiang with government friends of mine.  They had fairly high-ranking jobs in a city police department, and I know they had access to information before it was disseminated to the public.  They knew nothing of events in Xinjiang.  That could have been feigned ignorance; but other Chinese colleagues suggested that no, my friends really did not know anything.  “Everything is fine in Xinjiang,” they told me.

An example from the Citizen Lab report –

 Figure 1: Top, a Canadian account sending an image memorializing Liu Xiaobo over 1-to-1 chat; bottom, the Chinese account does not receive it.

Stephen McDonnell, a BBC reporter in Beijing, describes being locked out of Wechat in China Social Media: WeChat and the Surveillance State.  As he describes it, life becomes almost unbearable without access.  He could not get a taxi, call friends or colleagues, contact sources for news stories, get airplane or train or movie tickets, make children’s school arrangements, or pay for almost anything.  He was locked out while in Hong Kong covering the recent protests.  He was allowed back in only when he provided his voice print and face print for WeChat.  Now, as he says, no doubt he has joined some list of suspicious individuals in the hands of goodness knows which Chinese government agencies.

For anyone with morbid curiosity, here is a friendly guide in English on installing and using WeChat.  Enjoy!

Cultural Economy

In the old days, before about 1890, there was no field of economics.  There was only political economy, rightly reflecting the link between institutions and laws and the incentives they created.  As Acemoglu and Robinson pointed out in Why Nations Fail, what we call economics arises from the interplay of culture and institutions, and to think that economics is the same for all is to think poorly.

I want to point out some of the ways in which economic thinking can differ across cultures, and explain some of what we see in development in China, and in foreign countries with Chinese companies. 

Economic issues are necessarily paramount for any national leader.  Right now, both Mr. Xi and Mr. Trump derive their legitimacy from promises to achieve national greatness again, and for both, this fervent hope has much citizen – that is, cultural – support.  For Trump, the political slogan is Make America Great Again; for Xi, Made in China 2025, or perhaps, Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era.  

In China, this promise is more than a political slogan – more than, it’s the economy, stupid.  For Xi and CCP, the promise of development is at the heart of the promise to the Chinese people. All other values are to serve that purpose.  That has been CCP policy since inception.  The CCP Constitution is pretty clear –

In leading the cause of socialism, the Communist Party of China must persist in taking economic development as the central task, making all other work subordinate to and serve this central task.

Chinese development internally has been one of the world’s great stories – from extreme deprivation and depression to dual tier markets and township village enterprises and some land rights and property rights and competition law and insurance and stock markets and financial markets of all kinds.  The infrastructure miracle is the obvious sign of change for investors and foreigners alike.  But China doesn’t seek to export its development model.  It is understood that China is sui generis – except for infrastructure, where the universal model always seems to be, if you build it, they will come.

Many revenue-generating infrastructure projects within China seem structured as loss leaders for economic development, to the benefit of the local party chief.  There just isn’t any way for the completed project to throw off enough cash to pay for all construction and development and operating costs. One sees this in some expressways, subways, some high speed train lines, some airports and ports. The completed projects are beautifully appointed white elephants. How can this go on, year after year, across China?  Where is the ROI calculation?  Where is the money coming from? Who is eating the losses?

One has to understand the difference in ways of understanding economics in China and the west.  This means understanding how culture drives incentives. Economic interpretations are culturally implanted. Thinking about long and short term can be different. Thinking about goals can be different.  What is rational can be different. Let me give you some examples. First, from the savings side of the market.

Example 1 – bank savings 

It is about as fundamental an economic idea as there is.  When returns go up, people invest more and restrain consumption.  Interest rates go up, people will save more, and restrain consumption.  At the national level, macroeconomists have to figure out the impact of potential changes in interest rates, exchange rates, employment rates and investment.  What will people do? And while every situation has its own special character, when one has been making judgments for a while, one gets a feel.   So it was with some surprise that I saw Chinese policy makers discussing the impact of a rise in interest rates on savings.  This was at a time that policy makers were debating whether to allow rates on bank savings to rise, giving citizens a bit more of a return on their money, commensurate with growth in the economy, and ever-so-slightly slowing demand for money from developers and governments.

But what’s to discuss?  If interest rates go up, people put more money in the bank.  That is how the world works.

But maybe not always.  Our standard assumption, seldom noted, is that people are unconstrained in their choice to save or consume – that is, people are free to alter their spending or savings pattern as they wish.  For many savers in China – for most of us in the real world – that is not true.  You know the deep cultural importance attached to education in China.  Families, grandparents, will sacrifice mightily to save enough money to send their star student off to college, maybe high school, in America.  That may take extreme savings over a fifteen year period, but the investment is considered worth it.   If the grandparents have a defined monetary goal – $50,000 in fifteen years, then savings of $240 per month are required if interest rates on bank savings are 2%.  Returns in the real economy might be 7%, or 10%, but savers never see those returns.   But suppose policy makers allow interest rates to rise – say to 5%.  Then monthly savings of $193 are required to meet the future monetary goal, and perhaps grandma and grandpa can eat a little better, or afford the medicine they sacrificed for the cause.  Current consumption instead of savings.  The policy question is then, will they spend the extra $47 per month, or save it?  If you are a policymaker, how do you think about the goals of savings?  If you raise interest rates, will people put more money in the bank – or less?  Without some handle on the cultural features of savings, you don’t know.  And don’t let libertarians or advisors whose understanding of economics includes no psychology or human behavior tell you that economics has no cultural biases. 

Example 2 – trust and good faith

Getting to Yes is the well-known book on negotiating by Roger Fisher and William Ury.  I think everyone in the world who has ever taken a negotiation course has read this book.  In it, Fisher and Ury lay out the major principles for successful business negotiating over time – focus on interests, not positions; try to invent options for mutual gains; quantify or be clear about goals and measures of success. They are well aware that some negotiators lie, cheat, and distract, for the sake of the bargain.  But a general assumption in the US at least, is that the parties are negotiating in good faith – meaning a sincere intention to deal fairly with others.  In American contract law, good faith means that one party will not act so as to destroy the ability of the other side to receive intended benefits.

That is decidedly not a good assumption in negotiating in China.  The best known classics of war, and negotiating, in China are san shi liu ji, 36 Stratagems, and sun zi bing fa, the Art of War, by Sunzi.   Both are studied closely by students and businessmen.  Both emphasize deception, misdirection, and secrecy in dealing with the enemy.

With apologies to Chinese businessmen who have been highly successful by acting in open and principled ways with Chinese and foreigners, good faith is not a good assumption.  Stories about misunderstandings in completed negotiations or the irrelevance of a signed contract can be attributed to cultural differences. This is part of learning the turf.  But other problems, such as quality fade, theft of molds and IP, even kidnapping of American business people over payment disputes, are not cultural, but simply describe dishonest behavior.  This, when negotiations in China are designed to take extra time in order to build relationships.

Even within a company, growth plans can be secret, the province of only the owner. Survival and growth in the market is akin to warfare. Sunzi tells us that deception is a necessity, even when dealing with subordinates. 

5:19 Energy – Thus one who is skillful at keeping the enemy on the move maintains deceitful appearances, according to which the enemy will act.

6:9 Weak Points and Strong O divine art of subtlety and secrecy! Through you we learn to be invisible, through you inaudible; and hence we can hold the enemy’s fate in our hands.

11:35,36 The Nine Situations  It is the business of a general to be quiet and thus ensure secrecy; upright and just, and thus maintain order… He must be able to mystify his officers and men by false reports and appearances, Literally, “to deceive their eyes and ears”and thus keep them in total ignorance.

Per Sunzi, and per common practice, implementation in business or government can then be undertaken without clarity for underlings. It is a powerful tool in both business and government. Clarity for CCP underlings is not required when leaders are the only source of truth and know the goal.  For leaders, lack of clarity permits use of oppression when unclear laws are violated. For citizens, lack of clarity requires self-censorship in word and deed. In business, proper use of unclarity and deception might induce the “other side” in any negotiation to reveal its secrets or preferences, or even act rashly when confronted with apparent delay or indecision.  In the best of times, trust in good intentions is limited.  There is no good faith in the absence of relationship built over time.

This is both a powerful tool and a crippling handicap in Chinese international infrastructure deals.  Initial lightning speed and mystery in decision-making overwhelm opposition, but in the longer term, substantial good will is lost.  We dealt with that problem in the US – the model of government action as “decide, announce, defend” became too costly in time and lawsuits.  Better is “discuss, decide, build.”  But that isn’t necessary in an authoritarian state.

Example 3 – infrastructure investment

We are all astounded by the sheer extent of Chinese infrastructure investment in the last ten years.  The stimulus in 2008 was far larger, as a per cent of the economy, than the American one.  But those of us with some boots on the ground are also astounded at the sheer wastefulness of some of that investment.  We know that these projects are financed by bank loans, and those loans come due in three years or so – banks are not long term lenders.  And aside from projects taking three years to build, we have the experience of (theoretical) revenue generating projects that cannot possibly generate enough money to pay for construction and interest and operations.  No way.  A favorite example of mine is a new expressway built from Shanghai to Pudong, where the international airport is located, completed about 2008.  My first trip to the airport in 2008 was uneventful, for the simple reason that there were hardly any other vehicles on the road for 30 miles.  I mean, nearly zero.  At the time, this was a new expressway, and I suppose the information of its availability could have been scarce.  Possibly.  But I used that expressway at least twice a year for eight years, and the level of congestion hardly changed, anytime of the day or night, weekend or not.  Nearly no traffic.

There were simply too many other competing routes to the airport.  Big mistakes are possible everywhere in the world on infrastructure projects, the US being no exception, but we see similar stories repeated across China.  Transportation economists and engineers work pretty hard to forecast traffic and revenues, consider alternative routes and toll costs, and while the results are less than perfectly accurate, they are a decent guide to the investment decision.  But voters in the US, not to mention bond holders, would be more than a little exercised if their investment produced no ability to repay after so much planning.  Is there a different calculus in China?

Chinese planners have the means to make perfectly rational decisions about such matters.  So how can such revenue-short projects get built over and over again – aside from the pressure on local officials whose promotions depend upon generation of a target level of GDP in their three or five year term, and the need to spend following the huge 2008 stimulus.  Is the investment planning really for a twenty year horizon, at which time future demand will be sufficient to pay off the loans?  (I did transportation planning and economics work for some years.  There is no twenty-year projection of expressway use that is worth the spending of electrons to produce).

There is a way to make sense of these deadbeat projects, whether they are expressways, high speed train lines, airports or commercial ports.  And there is a way to understand the difference with western decision-making.  Given that the real decision is a political one, even more so than in the US, the trick is to consider than the long term doesn’t really matter.  A little bit of the cynical Wall Street IBG, YBG – by the time it matters, I’ll be gone, you’ll be gone.

How to understand this?  A simple chart from econ 101 should help.  A key point to understand is that the construction contractors, lenders, and local government investors in these projects are either government entities or heavily government-compromised.  While many big SOE make big profits, the companies can have political goals as well.  This means that they are not strict profit maximizers, in basic econ terms.  This also means that someone will take care of them in times of trouble.

Many, if not most, expressway projects in China are constructed by SOE as what we call B-O-T projects – build, operate, and transfer.  The concept is that the SOE contractor borrows the money to build the expressway, and receives tolls for a period of time – twenty years, let us say – to repay the loan and provide profits for the contractor. At some point in the future, the right to receive tolls reverts to the original government owner of the expressway.

But what happens when tolls are nowhere near enough to pay back loans?  This is a rather common problem.  Or would be a problem in the US.  Two particular ideas of “capitalism with Chinese characteristics” pertain here.

  • Loans for construction are bank loans, but the borrower may include local governments where the branch of the lending bank is located and even though loans come due every three years or so, the loans can be rolled over again … and again. That is part of what the SASAC (State Asset Supervision and Administration Commission) does – help borrowers roll loans among different local lenders. At some point in the future, someone will have to deal with these problem loans – perhaps one of the “bad banks” created for that purpose. But that is not now.  Just FYI, my favorite expressway to Pudong is now being handled by the one of the SASAC units in Zhejiang.
  • But wouldn’t the construction companies get cold feet, or nervous about not receiving planned income or having to repay the banks? Not necessarily.  In many recent cases, the borrower is actually a partnership between local governments and an SOE contractor.  And here is a neat trick, that could – theoretically – explain how the contractor can sleep at night.

How do regular retail stores decide to close for the evening, or the season?  How does a Starbucks decide to close at 10:00 PM, and then, miraculously, reopen at 6:00 AM?  Why not stay open all night?  Or, the ski lodge – open for five months a year, then close for seven months, and reopen?  How can this work, with mortgages and taxes and rents to pay?

The econ 101 answer is that businesses will shut down temporarily when revenues cannot cover average variable costs – for Starbucks, the cost of salaries and cups and coffee and heat or a/c.  If these variable costs can be covered, then the store will remain open.  If not, then close down and reopen when there will be enough customers – in the morning – that you can reliably cover average total costs.  In the morning, you will begin taking in enough revenue to cover operating costs and the bank loans and interest and rent and insurance and other fixed costs and make a profit. In the short run, you stay open if you can cover average variable cost.  In the long run, you have to cover all the other costs as well, but that is the long run. This is also the situation for the Chinese expressway with little traffic.

Stay with me on this, and the graphic representation will help.

In the figure below, you can see that the price P of the good is still above average variable cost AVC at the quantity Q being sold.  In this case, the seller should remain open, as long as the seller is confident that sales will pick up at some point in the near future (the morning) and sales quantities will then be at or above average total cost ATC.  Think of the price here as the price of the average sale at 2:00 AM; by 11:00 AM, both the average sale and the quantity sold will be greater, putting the company into a profitable situation again.

  • Even though the firm is not earning any economic profit, it is earning enough to pay their laborers (AVC), and thus it incurs less loss compared to the whole of average fixed cost.
  • In this situation, the company should continue producing the product.
  • P = MR > AVC , P = MR < ATC –> point where MC = MR minimize its loss
  • Economic loss = Q (ATC – P)
  • When AVC < P < ATC, the firm can stay open as long as they can cover the AVC
  • If a firm can cover all of the AVC and even part of the fixed costs, they will lose less than shutting down, as MR < ATC
    • Shutting down would mean losing everything and still have to pay for fixed costs, while in the loss minimizing case, costs are still covered.

Source: Welker’s Wikinomics

The same concept can apply to Chinese construction companies in BOT projects.  Loan servicing costs don’t really matter.  Someone, sometime, will deal with that, in the long run. If tolls from cars and trucks – and tolls are very high in China* – can cover operating costs – labor to collect tolls and trim bushes – then the project can remain open.

*Example – passenger car tolls for the 600 mile trip from Hangzhou to Jingzhou, in Hubei Province, are about 500 yuan, one way – say $75.

This is only a theoretical example.  I don’t really know if this is the thinking behind expressway projects that will never make money with debt taken into account. More likely is the the leader at some point said, proceed, and at that point, money became no obstacle.  And obviously some projects can pay their debts. You can see why big projects are often development projects, with revenues from related operations – retail stores, sales of apartments, rental from offices – rather than simply infrastructure projects.  Just like the building of the transcontinental railroad in the US, where the railroads were given land to use for non-railroad revenue.

The example shows what could be a rationale for continuing to operate the expressway.  And a positive spin on this story would be that to a much greater extent than in the US, Chinese infrastructure projects are expected to pay for themselves. 

When they cannot pay for themselves, loans are, in fact, rolled over again and again.  At some point, these projects with negative economic value must be recognized as such, and GDP will suffer as the project is written down to some value via sale to a third party, all the partners and the bank will need to take a big hit, or else someone – some government – will need to continually feed money into the project to cover debts.  This process usually happens quickly in the US, in bankruptcy.  In China, the process can take many years, but that is what the “bad banks” are for – to take the otherwise uneconomic projects and run them until they can be sold to someone or debt finally paid off by the Ministry of Finance.  The current idea is to convert the bank debt into bonds owned by the banks, and let the banks sell the bonds to (haha!) foreign investors.  Win-win!

Example 4 – stock investing

Stock markets were originally intended to accomplish two tasks – provide a source of funds for SOE, and “privatize” some of the risk. These efforts succeeded, and now most companies on the Shanghai stock exchange are SOE, with private funds supplementing a major government position, either ownership or management. Two way foreign and domestic stock market trade between Shanghai and Hong Kong has been allowed since 2014, and there is now an rmb clearing function in London, meaning trades can be settled in rmb outside of China. Now the government is pushing quite hard to get foreign investors directly into stocks and bonds in China.

My own somewhat cynical view is that this is not in the long term interest of Hong Kong or London – or foreign investors.  As long as CCP controls markets in China – and Mr. Xi is reestablishing the “Party is fundamental in all markets” philosophy – markets will not receive the sort of information needed to function efficiently.  Observe how much markets in China are affected by news reports or a speech by a particular high level official.  And observe the somewhat herd-like behavior of Chinese in purchases – a good word from the government suggests safety and profitability in a nation critically short of widespread basic economic news, not to mention divergent views. 

Michael Pettis does a superb job in pointing out the structure and pitfalls of China investing. He is one of the few China macroeconomic analysts with both western and Chinese investment trading experience, as well as the academic chops to put all in context.  Those interested in China financial markets should not miss a posting, now hosted at the Carnegie Center for International Peace.  Every post is rich.

Pettis writes most about overinvestment and the necessary macro adjustments, but his writing about the stock markets is also insightful. Writing in late 2013, he made an important point –  The recent Nobel Prizes in economics suggest both that markets are efficient, and that they are not. In fact they are likely to be efficient under certain conditions and inefficient under others.

Pettis argues that stock markets can be efficient at allocating capital under some conditions and not others.  He sees the need for an appropriate mix of three different kinds of investors, with different investment profiles, which he terms fundamental investors, relative value investors, and speculators. 

It is now 2019.  I don’t follow the Chinese stock market, and perhaps Pettis now has a different view.  But the fundamental conditions seem unchanged to me, if not more destabilizing than they were in 2015 and before.

He defines the three segments as follows –

  • Fundamental investment, also called value investment, involves buying assets in order to earn the economic value generated over the life of the investment. When investors attempt to project and assess the long-term cash flows generated by an asset, to discount those cash flows at some rate that acknowledges the riskiness of those projections, and to determine what an appropriate price is, they are acting as fundamental investors.

These investors are buying the long term trend of the economy, or the long term prospects for an individual company.  They want good financial information on companies.

  • Relative value investing, which includes arbitrage, involves exploiting pricing inefficiencies to make low-risk profits. Relative value investors may not have a clear idea of the fundamental value of an asset, but this doesn’t matter to them. They hope to compare assets and determine whether one asset is over- or underpriced relative to another, and if so, to profit from an eventual convergence in prices.

These investors are buying the shorter term trend in the market, and perhaps choosing among individuals stocks in one industry, based on what information they have.

  • Speculation is actually a group of related investment strategies that take advantage of information that will have an immediate effect on prices by causing short-term changes in supply or demand factors that may affect an asset’s price in the hours, days, or weeks to come. These changes may be only temporarily and may eventually reverse themselves, but by trading quickly, speculators can profit from short-term expected price changes.

These investors are looking at price changes over a span of minutes, hours, or days.  They respond to signals that are clearly not fundamental to the growth of the economy, such as insider behavior or political announcements.

Michael Pettis. The Difficult Politics of Economic Adjustment. China Financial Markets, November 11, 2013. Now at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace as When Are Markets Rational?  Note – versions of this newsletter are available online, but for the most part they do not include this stock market analysis.  The stock market portion of the post is at Naked Capitalism.

Pettis argues that stock markets in China are inefficient because the data necessary for fundamental investors – good macroeconomic data, honest financial statements, clear corporate governance – is lacking; and China has few value investors, because the conditions they need – ability to trade frequently and quickly at low cost, and ability to short securities – is also absent.  Speculators, he says, trade against very short term trend information, and are unconcerned about long term market fundamentals for a particular company.  China stock markets are dominated by speculators.

One could categorize these three investor types as having long, medium, and short term horizons.  Each type of investor looks at different information or analyzes the same information differently, and an efficient market can result when all information is available on which to trade.  Without a good mix of all three, markets lose flexibility, and don’t allocate capital well.  The Chinese markets are necessarily dominated by speculators – roughly 80% of stocks are held by retail traders, mostly individuals. The top ten listed companies on the Shanghai exchange are SOE, and most of the companies and the values are in government owned companies.  China has pension funds and insurance companies that can take a long term view; but even those industries cannot get access to trustworthy and general fundamental information on companies.  As a result, markets can be very volatile.

Example from Financial Times, September 27, 2017 –


When China’s vice-minister of industry said this month that Beijing was considering setting a deadline to ban sales of fossil fuel-powered cars, most auto industry experts did not overreact. The official did not offer any timetable, and rich countries such as Britain and France have set distant deadlines of 2040. Judging by the market reaction in Hong Kong, however, investors could be forgiven for thinking the statement was a bombshell. Shares in BYD, China’s largest producer of electric vehicles, surged to a record that day and are up more than 60 per cent this month. After BYD’s chairman speculated China’s deadline could be 2030 — in what experts said was more of a lobbying effort than a prediction — shares in the group’s separately listed mobile-handset unit also hit a record, despite the fact the company is not even involved in cars.

Not even involved in cars.

Even today, 80% of the listed companies on exchanges are SOE.  There can be little investor confidence in any market data, from government or an individual company.  Pettis notes that even credit decisions must become speculative, because when bankruptcy is a political decision and not an economic outcome, lending decisions are driven not by considerations of economic value but by political calculations.  See the example of Pudong expressway construction above. 

There are plenty of other ways in which “economics with Chinese characteristics” is different from that in the US – some of those ways make much more sense than what we think of as normal economics.  I thought it would be fun to point out some differences – for good or for ill – that could lead to cultural, institutional, and even economic change in the US.  After all, we import just about everything else from China.  Ideas may be next – after all, Mr. Trump and the GOP follow Mr. Xi and CCP in political philosophy in so many ways now.  Lightning speed and mystery and decision-making for the oligarchs and financial instability – no infrastructure, so far, though.

enyce and guanxi and … chen dongfan

Fall, 2009 


Note – this was a couple of months after I began teaching full time in Hangzhou, so I was being sensitive to … everything.  Food, clothes, manners.

Ju la, or as it is sometimes written, Ru la, is an American-sixties style restaurant in the hills of Hangzhou. Chinese food, Chinese patrons, but the design is all exposed and rough-cut wood, with American nineteen-fifties advertising posters on the walls and tables that are enormous rough hewn blocks.  It is very popular, especially on Sundays.  It is a custom to go to a restaurant on Sunday, take a table, and spend two or three hours or more eating and drinking and talking.  No waiters hustling you out as you take your first bite of dessert.  It is Sunday, the one day of rest.

Ju ra       Trip Advisor – Restaurants Hangzhou

I told you about Ju la before.  It is set in the very pretty Hangzhou hills, surrounded by tea farms and trees. Birds flit and sing just outside the open windows.  We sat on the second floor, in one of the private rooms by a window with a big tree outside and some vines overhanging the window.   There were many small birds, about three inches long, with orange tops of their heads, sort of bluish bodies, and white underbodies.  Tiny and chirping and having fun. Flitting in and out of the vines and the trees.  They looked like birds somebody painted up for a Chicago Bears game, in blue and orange.

Inna Xu Yi Yin and I already had plans to go there for lunch, to plan her assault on the Hangzhou government to support young Chinese artists, as she has been doing herself for some years.  Try as she might, she could not get the Hangzhou government to support any of her artists, in any way.  She did not want money, but access – to galleries, to media, to public exposure.   I told her I knew some people in the Cultural Bureau, which is the Bureau that put on the Hangzhou Reading Festival, and maybe they could help.

As it turns out, Mr. Xiao Jun from the Cultural Bureau called me on Friday, and asked me to go with him on Sunday for lunch.   So I put the deal together for us all to meet at Ju la.

Mr. Xiao and his son picked me up at 9:30, and we drove to Ju la.  His son is 9, and has been taking English for a year.   It is pretty good, certainly better than my Chinese, and I understand my role in these events is to be the Foreigner Who Speaks English, to help the kid, let him talk with an actual meiguo (American), and not so incidentally keep up the English skills of my host.

We got some tea, and waited for Inna to come.  I brought my learning-Chinese language book (the middle school daughter of a friend of mine looked at the book and sniffed, huh, first grade).  But we exchanged words and ideas and talked about the New China (with the dad, not the kid).  Inna got up late, and called three times in the 45 minutes we waited to assure us that she was on the way.

It is probably not necessary to describe the clothing styles.  Mr. Xiao is a good guy, spent 2007 and 2008 at Nottingham getting a Master’s degree.  He is a good and smart public servant, and was dressed casually in a grey long sleeve sweater and nice pants.  His son had gym shoes and sweat pants and a down vest, also blue and orange, and a red sweater with embroidered raised enyce on the front.  Ms. Inna rushed in, a little out of breath, in her uniform.   Slightly worn blue jeans with colored patches carefully sewn into the carefully designed rips in the legs, a multicolored rope belt, and a charcoal grey turtleneck.  A black leather vest.  Imperially slim, with the frizzed hair and the huge smile and the doe eyes.  Faye Dunaway.  The room, at least, shifted.

We did introductions and ordered corn juice.  I told you before about corn juice.   Mark my words, it is coming to the US.  Hot or cold, still good.  I suppose you could add a shot of Jameson’s, if the vitamins in the corn juice were not enough.  Anyway, at this point in the lunch my role was to talk with Mr. Xiao’s son, and watch, and get caught up every now and then when someone stopped for breath. 

Inna was describing her philosophy of life, the needs of young artists in Hangzhou, her work over the last few years in doing just that, purity vs. commercialism in art, and what she would like for the future.   Mostly Mr. Xiao listened, but countered with some philosophy of his own, some perspective on government support for the arts, and advice on what to do next.

I think I was in this same meeting in Chicago about 1977 – many times.   Then, it was about storefront theaters or outdoor seating in restaurants.   Informed, reasoned, but passionate case-making on one side, and well, we have to be careful, we don’t have that much money, what might happen, and we have to follow the guidelines on the other.

Don’t get me wrong.  I think we met with the right guy.  Mr. Xiao and I had talked before about the need to change the government approach to thinking, and schools, and innovation. Mr. Xiao was my guide for the Hangzhou reading festival event, where I received the gift of books from  the vice mayor of Hangzhou, so we had spent some time together.   But he was saying what an interested and helpful bureaucrat would say.

Every now and then, I would chime in with some Wisdom about Development from America.   The role of theaters in economic development in Chicago.  The concept of an arts incubator.  Government support for artists does not mean supporting the meaning of the art, it is support for the whole of the economy of Hangzhou.  Hangzhou as the cultural center of China. The standards of measurement for art- a key issue for Mr. Xiao – were unavailable.  Van Gogh was not terribly successful during his life.   Once dead, the value of his art zoomed.  So the measure of the success of art is the death of the artist?  The only quantifiable measure is the market.   There is little difference between a reading festival and an arts festival.  Both are designed to get people to think differently about their world.   La Villita Little Village in San Antonio, as an arts colony that became a tourist destination in town.  The stated goal of the central government to increase tourism to China over the next few years (2018 note – this was in 2009).  The reason why the government should do this (or something) is that some amount of failure is expected.  If success could be measured, if the externalities were few, then a private business could do this (whatever it is).   That success is measured over twenty years, not two months.   So the government role in supporting the development of the artists is a natural economic consequence of the nature of the good, art.   In twenty years, Hangzhou will be thankful it started something now.

My role was to be the objective foreign voice.  I couldn’t think of anything else.

Mr. Xiao was talking about the usefulness of soft power, another central government idea that is floating around now.  That the arts are a form of soft power.   I asked his son to open his vest, showing everyone the enyce on his sweater.   Neither Mr. Xiao nor Inna knew what that meant, but I explained, and demonstrated the soft power of NYC, regardless of the commercial origin of the sweater.   So Mr. Xiao understood.

We all left about 2:30, Mr. Xiao to drive me back to school and Inna in her white Range Rover.   The next step is for Inna to meet with the No. 1, the Party leader, in the Cultural Bureau.  He would make the final determination about access.

All in all, not bad for a Sunday afternoon sitting next to Inna with the Government across the table.   So Ju la is where I brokered my first deal.  I not only know what the word guanxi means, I think I have it, and have now used it. 

Postscript – About a year later, Inna got a commission for her star young artist, Chen Dongfan, to decorate the exterior of two buildings in the neighborhood of Liu Xia, the town in Hangzhou about three miles from ZUST, my school.  Inna now has a gallery and studio space in Hangzhou and a gallery in New York  Inna Contemporary Art Space  and Chen has exhibited in shows across Europe.    Pictures of the building art below –

Chen dongfan, the author, and Brenna, my daughter –  May, 2011

 

 

You can see more of Chen’ work at –

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/chen-dongfans-mural-on-doyers-street-1329968

and the work at Inna’s studios –

http://www.innart.org/en/

http://www.innart.org/en/artist/about/7b6eww.html

Inna at linked-in   https://www.linkedin.com/in/inna-xu-67818b66

The Mysterious Parking Garage Market

Tea party activists and Randians and market fundamentalist miss some things about the real world.   One is the distinction between free markets and competitive markets.  Free markets are for one-off deals with buyers and sellers who don’t know each other, have equal power in the market, will not see each other again, and don’t convey any information about the transaction to the rest of the market.  One-off deals are the métier for people like our current dear leader.  Except for the equal power in the marketplace bit.

All competitive markets have some rules.   Rules evolve, perhaps without the intervention from government regulation, and the system works repeatedly.   Supply shows up, demand shows up, demand and supply are satisfied, and markets clear.

This is a good story.   There are some details that get glossed over, however, and one of them is in whose interests the rules of the market are written.  And this is really about power – not just market power, but sometimes physical power or power to withhold service or power to delay.

Fundamentalists on these matters can claim that even the rules of the market are market-driven – that is, there is some discussion, bargaining, negotiation, over the rules. 

And that is true.   As long as supply needs some demand, there must be a way to make the demand come back the next time.   So “market-friendly”  rules consider some of the needs of the buyers in the market.

But, caveats.  Sometimes, the supply in the market does not create its own demand – Say, as we say, is wrong.   Say’s Law    (Yes, I know, Say was talking about a general glut of products, and later changed his view.  Here, I am only concerned about a general glut of parking spaces, with waiting demand, and … the market fails to work).

Sometimes, the supply could not care less about demand, because the supply exists for reasons other than to meet demand.   We don’t always see the reasons, but they certainly exist, even if shrouded in mystery.  Sometimes, artists just like to make art.  But there can be more prosaic reasons that excess supply exists in the presence of obvious demand.

Parking garages near the Hangzhou Pregnant Women’s Hospital are a good example.    The hospital, and two other big hospitals within two blocks, are all located close to xihu, the big lake that is the focal point of Hangzhou.   This is not really downtown, in the sense of lower Manhattan downtown, but it is Columbus Circle downtown, in terms of people on the street, taxis, bikes, motorbikes, buses, trucks, with the added challenge that it is China, and only free market rules about which side of the road to drive on, or walk on, or just stand still on.

There are thousands of people, sick, healthy, family, friends, doctors, nurses, garbage trucks, food supply trucks, medical supply trucks, all trying to get into or out of the hospital in the period 6:00 AM to 10:00 AM.

It is fair to say that parking for cars is limited.   In all of our visits to the area, and to the hospitals, I have found only two real public parking lots within, say, a mile.   There is other parking, but it is only for customers of a particular hotel, or restaurant, or business.    General public parking, for those who want to visit xihu, or go shopping on the street, or go to the hospitals, is tough.   The Pregnant Women’s Hospital does have a designated parking garage of its own, but that is for doctors and administrative staff.  Husbands of women who have already given birth are also allowed to park there.  One of the benefits of having a baby.

The two public lots – actually, they are one big underground lot, with two levels and entrances and exits on opposite sides of the street –  are very convenient to the hospitals – about a block away from all three hospitals.   And if you get there by 6:30 in the morning, you can drive right in, find a spot (there are plenty of parking lot attendants to guide you to empty spots on both levels) and be on your way.   But by 7:30 or so, the parking lot management decides to limit demand satisfaction – to ration supply.   They block off the entrances, and limit access to one car every few minutes, from 3 to 10 minutes per car.

One could understand some reasons to ration demand, if spaces are reserved for doctors, or hospital use, or something.  But even doctors come to work by 9:00, or 10:00, and the parking lots are still limiting entry, and the doctors would have no other way to get into the lot other than sitting in line with everyone else, so such a rule makes no sense.

I mean, it really makes no sense.   At 7:30, or 9:00, or 10:00, there are plenty of available spaces inside the garage.   Many.  Scores, to hundreds.   With no one parking in them.   During the course of the workday, the garage never comes close to capacity.

The parking is not free.   Not expensive, but you might think that the market rules in this case are being written by the forces of supply in the market, and the rules are written to maximize profit.    But that is clearly not the case, with so many available spots and dozens of cars lined up, around the blocks, in two lines, one line for each entrance, waiting to get in.    The wait to get into the parking lot, at 8:30 in the morning, ranges from 45 to 90 minutes.  (see note 1, below)

So there must be some other rule being observed, or some other principle maximized.

Maybe the parking lot management wants to raise fees, and is waiting to build demand before implementing a rate change.   But with so many cars waiting outside, every day, for months on end, that makes no sense.

It is China.  Maybe spaces are being reserved in case Hu Jintao (this was written in early 2012) or somebody, wants to come inspect the parking garage, and there will be 50 or 100 spaces waiting to satisfy demand from the entourage when they show up unexpectedly.   But even in China, that makes no sense.

It is China.   Maybe the parking lot attendants, unbeknownst to the management, are doing a little business on the side, taking some cars in before others, in exchange for a little hui lu- a bribe.   But again, there are no cars coming in any side entrance, or going around the other cars in line.   So that makes sense, but does not seem to be happening.

It is China.   The parking lot underground is really big, and on two levels, and the attendants are not using radios to communicate, so perhaps, in consideration of the customers, the attendants are making sure that there are spots available before letting the next car in.    Maybe there is a communication problem – the guys directing cars into spaces have to tell the next guy down the line that there is still another spot available, and that information gets passed to about six people, and takes about 3 to 10 minutes, before it gets to the guy who removes the “parking lot full” sign for the one next car.   It is China, and that could make sense, but even in China, the attendants would probably show enough initiative to count higher than one, and allow two cars in at a time.

Perhaps the vacant spaces are reserved for individuals, who own the space and would want to have it always available.  Perhaps.  But I don’t think ownership of parking spaces would work in a location such as this, and in any case, there were always scores of empty spaces.  Wouldn’t some enterprising parking lot manager make some deals?

Unlike my suggestions above, there could be simpler, even stupider explanations – air pollution regulations limit the number of engines running within the garage at any one time (sure);  the parking lot management is concerned about pedestrian safety (to exit or enter the garage, people on foot have to mix with the car traffic on the ramps, a no-no in the US) – (right – although it is certainly possible to receive such an explanation, given with a straight face);  the government of Hangzhou, in attempts to limit traffic, provides limits on parking garage access – this is actually sort of plausible, even if ridiculously stupid.   The heavy traffic jams within two blocks all around, due to cars lined up to get into the garage, would be eliminated with more “market friendly” access policies.

All the times my wife and I visited the hospital I parked in this lot, so I have some experience.  The 45 to 90 minute wait after 8:30 is no joke.  But parking is extremely tight everywhere.  One of the most ingenious ways of getting around the restricted supply of parking spaces was undertaken by a woman right in front of me in the line.  We were both sufficiently close to the entrance gate that no other car could pass us or take our space.  We were on the downward slope into the underground garage.  But the woman had no intention of parking in the garage.  She had an errand to run – perhaps ten minutes, or fifteen.  She waited in the line of cars until she was almost in the garage, then got out of her car, took the keys, and went and ran her errand.  Got back, nothing about the line had changed.  She got back in the car, did a u-turn in the combined entry-exit driveway, drove out, and was on her way.  Free parking.   I think this is what Bob Hariman, or James Scott, calls local knowledge.  Fabulous.  This is something about making the system work to your advantage.

About the parking lot – I confess to being at a loss.  I always say that there are many ways to solve any problem, but …. It is a mystery.   I would like to demonstrate the intricacies of the market, or of China, but I am stumped.    The point I want to make, though, is that in this market, such as it is, the supply makes the rules, and the demand can only choose to respond or go on driving around the block.    The rules don’t seem to be in the interests of the supply, either.  It is a puzzle.   A mystery.  This sort of thing should be undefined.     And it is at this point that Chinese themselves shrug their shoulders and utter the standard comment –  you know, it is China.  It’s fuza – complicated.   Say’s law is clearly wrong – there can be a general glut of parking spaces in this garage, even in the face of excess demand.  Somewhere, money must be involved.

Note 1- the line of cars waiting to get into the parking garage for the hospitals has plenty of precedents.  For many shopping malls – I am thinking of yintai near xihu (bastardized English as InTime), or the xichen square mall on wensan lu, or even MixMall in the new CBD, there can be a line of twenty or more cars waiting to get into the underground garage, on a normal evening at xichen, or weekend anytime at yintai or MixMall.   The parking lots can and do fill up, and the wait can be ten to twenty minutes even before the lot is full.

One has to question the design – it is not as if cars in modern China just appeared five years ago, and the shopping malls are very high standard in terms of store quality.  No one is walking in, or even taking a motorbike.   But there too, it is fuza – complicated. 

The International Student Office – Evaluation

This is the executive summary of a report prepared by students in my Modern Chinese Economic History course in spring 2014.

At that time, every Chinese university was competing to admit foreign students, mostly from Africa and the middle east.  University programs got put together on very short timeframes, with no training for staff and procedures more or less made up on the spot.  The pawns in this process were the foreign students themselves, who often arrived unprepared for college work, unfamiliar with China, lacking any Chinese language, their first time out of the home country, and certainly unprepared for Chinese university norms.   This work was an attempt to bring some efficacy, functionality (rather than efficiency) to the international student program.  Although this report is from 2014, there is no doubt that international programs in China still require upgrading to bring them to a minimal acceptable standard of responsiveness and care.

 Any student looking to attend school in China should read this, at least to get the jist of the boots-on-the-ground feel among foreign students.  This is not to say, do not attend school in China.  But forewarned is forearmed.   The full report is available by emailing me. 

 

An Evaluation of the Efficacy of the Administration of the International Student Program at Zhejiang University of Science and Technology

 

                     Prepared by

                     Students of

           Modern Chinese Economic History

        Zhejiang University of Science and Technology

 

 

                     Spring, 2014

 

              William D. Markle, Ph.D. Professor

 

Participating Students

茅晚菱 Mao Wan Ling

Bogdan Oprea

杜亚芳 Du Ya Fang

严丽文 Yan Li Wen

李亚男 Li Ya Nan

Nikodemus Hermanto

Lukas Cavalcante Baier

杨雪芳 Yang Xuefang

Mohammed Abdullah Mohammed Ali

Maingi Joy Nkatha

Dorothy Mutsamwira

沈洁妮Shen Jie Ni

阮芳波Ruan Fang Bo

陈雪Chen Xue

李丹Li Dan

Candy Shirly

Gladis Tshizainga Kasongo

Tariro Kurly Chingarande

章旭霞Zhang Xu Xia

顾盛霞Gu sheng Xia

吴越 Wu Yue

江添 Jiang Tian

Diana Madalina Nemes

Mary Assumpta Muhoza

Golden Chifune

Twagirayezu Didier

Sadick Mahdi Aden

Stefanie Bracher

Martina Odermatt

葛佳锋Ge Jia Feng

张晨凯Zhang Chen Kai

吴雯雯Wu Wen Wen

包舒影 Bao Shu Ying

 

An Evaluation of the Efficacy of the Administration of the International Student Program at Zhejiang University of Science and Technology

 

Executive Summary

 

Zhejiang University of Science and Technology (ZUST) has a long history of cooperation with foreign schools, particularly schools in Germany. While there have been many years of exchanges of faculty for research and lecture purposes, there were no foreign full-time degree candidate students at ZUST until the fall semester of 2009. This is considered the beginning of the ZUST international student program.

In the spring of 2014, there were 392 full time degree candidate foreign students at ZUST. In civil engineering, 167 foreign students; in the School of Economics and Management, in marketing, 47; in international economics and trade, 120; in the Language School, in business Chinese, 47; and a new major, information science, 11 students. First year students in the spring of 2014 numbered 142. There are additional exchange students, mostly from Germany, who stay at ZUST for varying lengths of time, from a few weeks to one year. (source: ZUST International Student Office, personal contact)

International programs are complex, perhaps more for university administration than for university academic faculty. Teachers need to address language barriers and perhaps cultural barriers in class; but administrators must deal with a far broader range of concerns, from admission standards, dorms and living conditions to food and health issues and visa and language and cultural difficulties. 

ZUST has now had an international student program for five years, with a second graduating class this June (2014). It is time to assess the quality of the international student program – is the program working as intended? Are students satisfied with outcomes? Are teachers satisfied with outcomes? What remains to be done to blend the international student program into the culture of a Chinese university? How effective is the program in creating customer satisfaction?

The fundamental goal of this research is to assist ZUST staff in making the International Student Office more effective in serving students, and thereby providing a better experience for foreign students. 

This evaluation addresses the administrative elements of the international student program. We reviewed student experience with health services, postal services, dorms and living conditions, and the international student offices, within the university and the individual department.Individual academic units within the School of Economics and Management and Civil Engineering should address academic quality. But students are the customers, in a real sense, of a Chinese university, and we want to ask whether their consumer needs are being met.

We conducted surveys and interviews of ZUST students, staff, and faculty. We document a wide range of concerns from students, less so from teachers and administrators. This is suggestive, in itself. 

We were also interested in how the ZUST international program compares with that at other schools. While we could not get substantial information due to time constraints, we did obtain good information about the experience of students and administrators. We interviewed students and administrators at two other schools, Zhejiang University and Zhejiang Gongye University (Zhejiang University of Technology).

Many students do not find significant problems in dealing with either the International Student Office in A4 or their department office. Problems that are identified by other students generally are about communications, in various forms.  

Conclusions are described in detail in Chapter 6.  Broadly speaking, we consider three fundamental areas requiring attention –

  • Quality and details in communications with foreign students verbally and in print, by email and text and online

There are difficulties in communication in both directions – Chinese staff to students, and students to Chinese staff. Additional training and techniques are necessary here, particularly for communications that involve student health and safety.

  • Timeliness and trust in communication

There are significant problems in lack of trust in communications from Chinese staff. The problems are attributable to communications that are too late for effective response, last minute requirements, communications that are wrong, and communications that are perceived by foreign students as simply lying. This harms both the administration of the program and academic quality.

  • Management of the International Student Office and department office functions – quality of management and policy direction

There does not appear to be any systematic training for international program staff. Nor can we see program goals, objectives, measures of performance, or an ongoing program of quality improvement.  As ZUST adds more foreign students, these defects will become even more apparent.  By accepting foreign students who are not qualified to be in the classroom, either due to English or preparation difficulties, the International Student Office defeats the purpose of having foreign students at all – to make Chinese students better.  The current model is a business model, not an academic model.

Particular recommendations are described in Chapter 6. 

Jazz at the JZ Club

October, 2009 

Went with Jonathan Gong Wei, one of the IIT students from four years ago, to the JZ Club, a jazz club on Nanshan Road next to West Lake.  I invited two of my fellow faculty members, Wu De Gang (Dominick) and Zheng Li, to join us.

Nanshan Road is the place to see and be seen in Hangzhou.  It runs adjacent to West Lake, so the views across the river are beautiful.  Think of the view of downtown Chicago from the Fullerton Avenue bridge over the pond at night, or the view of downtown from the Planetarium. Except that the lake here is small enough to see across, and in the distance are hills lit up with lights from houses, and the moon is out, and the city has worked very hard to make this area attractive to the “gold collared workers” that my friend Bob Yovovich talks about.

The upshot of it is that even though the bars and restaurants and clubs are expensive, and have a lot of foreigners in them, the lakefront is free and open to everyone.  The park betweeen Nanshan Road and the lake varies in width, but here it is about 200 feet, so there is a lot of room for a lot of people to wander and stop and sit and hold hands and have a drink.  The city does fountain shows in the lake at night (sort of like the Las Vegas water show thing with water spraying in all directions from cannons at the surface that pivot or rotate).   There is coordinated music and plenty of vendors for cokes and beer and snacks and plenty of public washrooms (clean!).   This is one of the few areas in Hangzhou (and in China, I think) in which there are a lot of old urban trees, and the trees canopy the street, so the effect is very soft and human scale and just … beautiful.   Not all the buildings are new, and even some of the new ones have been designed to look older.   There is a bronze slightly 3D map of Old Hangzhou set in the sidewalk at one of the little openings in the walkway along the lake.  Date of map impression, probably 1900.   Size of map, about 30 feet by 20 feet.  Lots of older residents looking at the map, trying to find where their parents lived- or maybe where the new expressway is.  Hint- its not on that map, either.    At least two locations in enlarged sidewalk openings where people dance.  Not tai chi (although maybe they do that in the morning) and not waltz, but good old fashioned Texas Chinese line dancing.   With two hundred people dancing.  I think the two-step music came after we walked past.

I misread the time that the JZ Club opens (8:30) and we started off from the school a little early.  So Ms. Zheng and Mr. Wu and I got dinner at the Zhejiang University student cafeteria.  Zhejiang University is one of the best schools in China, and the cafeteria is proof of that (since they don’t have a football team, they need some way to tangibly demonstrate superiority).   We ordered at the counter, and the place is big and noisy and full of students, but the food is remarkably good and remarkably cheap.  Food is way better than the food at ZUST.   Zhejiang University has an old urban campus, narrow streets with big trees and some old buildings mixed in with new.

Neither Mr. Wu nor Ms. Zheng had ever been to the JZ Club, which again demonstrates the isolation of academics from the real world (not only the U of C economics department).   Or maybe it just demonstrates the inability of faculty to afford $60 bottles of not very good Spanish wine.   Mr. Wu, who looks to be about 30, is a self-described homebody, so he is not a candidate for too many future JZ Club adventures.   But they both had a good time, with the wine and the music and talking with Gong Wei.   After about half an hour, we were joined at our table by Ms. Sun, who is one of the owners.   From Gong Wei, her story is that about twelve years ago, she was a secretary in a government department.  She quit to start a coffee bar, did that for seven or eight years, and about six months ago opened JZ (with partners).    Ms. Sun supplied us with a bottle of champagne, which helped everyone’s mood as well.  Works in China, just like in the US.

Hard to tell right away, but the location and the prices and the milieu  suggest that Ms. Sun will do fine at JZ. Another capitalist success story.   The club is in an old brick house, on Nanshan Road right across from the lake.   Ms. Sun, or whoever the designer was, chose to keep the 1930s heavy timber framing and the effect, with modern lighting and furnishings in the old structure, are the equal of anything you can find on West Randolph Street or the West Loop.   Again, beautiful.  There are three levels, and the stairway is decorated with framed pictures of musicians and what purports to be a 33-1/3 record of their work- Peterson, Gillespie, Rollins, Davis, Coltrane, George Clinton (maybe not).   The third floor looks out onto west lake through some big trees.  I told Ms. Sun that I was from the government, and  the government needed her land and building for housing for some very important people and that, sadly, she would have to move out.   I thought it was worth a try, but she wasn’t buying it … or selling.  The location and view and building are sui generis.

The band was four guys- four black guys- from the US, who like a lot of groups, I guess, are in China sort of on tour, and play a few nights here and there.   Started with soft jazz, okay, good for the surroundings, and by the second set were cranking a little more.   When we left about 11:30,  they had just hit Sweet Home Chicago.   The crowd loved it. Mix of Chinese and foreigners, I don’t think any other Americans, but some guys who looked more Brit and Australian  (the Captain England and Captain Australia headbands gave them away).    No one dancing on tables, but everyone having a good time.

I don’t want anyone to think that there are no downsides to life in Hangzhou.  I just got through reading More Hangzhou (English, of course), which is sort of a Chicago magazine-Time Out Chicago.  Ads, restaurant listings and reviews, club happenings, and the cover this month ….. the three year history of the Hangzhou Harlequins Rugby Club.   I wonder if I can get replacement screws for my ankle if I get tackled wrong in a match ….   But the downside.   In the restaurant listings, and goings-on this month, is a ad celebrating a month of ….. Canadian Food.   The Canadian Food Festival is at Cafe Le Rendevous in the Landison Plaza Hotel.   ‘Nuff said.

Into Clean Air

October, 2009 


Steven Shen Kanming and his wife and son and I went to Anji, which is in Huzhou, a small city in Zhejiang Province.  A couple of you will like this one, because it is an adventure, not hiking through Afghanistan for sure, but an adventure nevertheless – hidden dragons, many waterfalls, and how face can be made in China (sometimes).

Steven picked me up in the afternoon of national day, after the big parade in Beijing.  Or, I should say, Steven and his driver.   Let me tell you, it does wonders for one’s public image to have the big black car with the driver pull up in front of your apartment, and the government official jump out and greet you warmly.  I highly recommend it.  Over the last few years of being in China, the standard mode of travel is just that- black car, driver, my buddy in the back seat.   At ZUST,  I keep waiting every morning for the car and driver to take me from class to class, but so far it hasn’t materialized.   Must be on back order.

Huzhou is a small city between Shanghai and Jiaxing.   It borders Lake Tai, which is famous as one of China’s largest fresh water lakes, and now famous for its eutrophication and pollution.   Because of its limestone basin, it is also famous for its scholar’s stones, which some of you have seen in Ann and Dave’s garden.   The lake is about 900 square miles, no slouch of a lake, but only about two meters average depth.   Sort of like the Missouri River.

Steven grew up near Lake Tai, and he told me about going swimming there.   As with much of urban China, thirty years ago this area was rural, and the river was clean.   And as with much of China, the area is now developed, although not in the hyperventilating mode of the bigger cities.  The downtown part of Huzhou- old Huzhou- has big urban trees and a relaxed feel.   I guess I am getting acclimated when a place of 2.5 million people feels like a small town.

The driver dropped us off at a small local restaurant in Huzhou, where we met Wendy, Steven’s wife, and their son Can, who is 15.   Steven said he would let his driver go home, to be with his family.  After all, fair is fair.  It was national day and it was about 6:00 in the evening.

Dinner was good, just the four of us.  I avoided the chicken feet, but the fish and pork and vegetable dishes were all tasty.   I had some chrysanthemum tea and we shared a bottle or two of Chinese huang jiu yellow wine (which is actually brown) and which is not so strong as the alcohol that often fuels these events.

We walked back to the hotel, through downtown Huzhou, stopping for a while in the big department store.   The department store is six floors, with an atrium in the middle surrounded by the escalators.   This is Marshall Field’s in the 1960’s, at Christmas.  There are a lot of people buying, a lot looking.  On a Thursday night, the night of national day.   Much of the retail space is given over to brand names, which I presume rent the space in the store as they do in the US.   Lots of different clothing retailers, lots of styles, from professional woman on the go to hip-hop street kid.   I am not sure whose clothes are more expensive.  Housewares, kitchen, toys and jewelry.   Jewelry is, of course, on the first floor.  Along with the health food store, where I considered some protein powder and bee pollen.  Too expensive.  Too weird, also.  There was a KFC and a Mickey D’s right across the street, even in this fairly small town.

Every store-in-the-store has several employees, all of whom seem willing and eager to help.  Not so much like the US.    I could bargain in the health food store, although this is generally not done in the department stores.

I could get CCTV9 in the hotel, so I watched something with people speaking English.  Breakfast was the typical Chinese hotel breakfast- western and Chinese items.  You have to keep in mind that the Chinese like eggs for breakfast, usually hard-boiled, and they like pork, so bacon and fried eggs is not a stretch.  And they like big breakfasts.  Most hotels have a grill, where the egg guy will make eggs whatever style you want, and depending on the class of the hotel, add in tomatoes, onions, spices.  Still no cheese, except at the most westernized places.   Bread for toast is generally available.  The coffee was actually okay, maybe because I got there early, before it had a chance to sit on the burner for an hour.

We left about 9:30 in the morning for Anji.  We met up with several other people en route, two of Steven’s subordinates and three organization department guys, one from the provincial level.  A couple had wives and kid along, so this was a family outing for the families and a family outing for the leadership family.  The organization department is the party side of the personnel department, or at least that is how I understand it.   The organization department is the unit that decides who goes to Chicago to IIT, and who gets promoted.

The drive was about 90 minutes or so, we checked into the hotel in Anji.  Parked in the back lot, listening to Uptown Girl on the radio.  Anji is a county-level city, and the poorest of the five Huzhou districts or counties.  You can tell about some things in China easily.  Huzhou is the city, and the hotel is fine.  Not Shanghai fine, but fine.  In rural Anji, the hotel is listed as four stars, but that is four stars in Anji.  So the hotel entrance is not fancy, and there is no suited bellhop to open the door and grab the luggage.  And the lobby is not so over-designed.   And even though the place is clean, you get that sort of musty feeling that you get in Florida, and I suppose everywhere in the global south, that comes from low-lying land and humid air and things just decaying or being eaten everywhere.   I am for sure not drinking the water from the tap here.   Not many westerners here.  The breakfast next day was Chinese only, with hot orange juice and no coffee, and no tea.

At lunch on Friday we met up with the big leader of the day, who is the head of the organization department in Huzhou.  Seems like a very nice guy.  Of course, he has a daughter who is 17 and wants to know about business schools in the US.   The leader wants her to select a school in the top 50 in the US.  Her high school has some sort of relationship with Purdue University- maybe her English teacher went there-  so she is thinking of that.   Cherry and I talked about this for a while, about sometimes not getting what you pay for, and companies that can hire two graduates from a smaller school for the price of what they think they will have to pay for one graduate from Northwestern, or someplace.  And schools that are focused on finance, and logistics, and health care.  And finding a school that is a good fit for her.   I am in a strange place in China.  I know things that are useful and valuable to people, but not so useful that I can make real money from it.   If the world will only shift, just a little bit ….

After lunch, we drove to the main event, about 45 minutes away, to the Hidden Dragon and Many Waterfalls park.  Some  reviews 

Huzhou, like some other cities in Zhejiang, has a curious landscape.  Most of the city is dead flat, like Chicago.   The land is cut repeatedly by small streams or constructed storm drainage systems, and there seems hardly a flow of water in them anywhere.   But you drive outside of town, to Anji in this case, and there are hills, steep and covered in trees and lots of them.  They just rise out of the ground, like the Alps do in southern Germany.  Flat farm, flat farm, flat farm- bang- too steep to ski.  Maybe a 70 degree slope.  Like the hills poked themselves up out of the ground, and there is more hill waiting below to come out.

So “hills” are maybe the wrong term.  These are not mountains, by comparison with the Rockies, but they sure are bigger than suburban Chicago Palos Hills or Country Club Hills or Vernon Hills.   I can tell because Anji is home to a large water pumping station, including a dam, set in the rushing river coming out of the … hills.  There is some information about the pumping station, but I need better before I can write about pump size and how much water is supplied.   Sometimes you have to get the facts right.

The mayor of Anji has taken environmental protection seriously, although there are still many factories contributing a lot of pollution to air and water.   But the theme is to make Anji an “ecological county” which means that future factories will have to agree to meet the legal requirements.

Part of the reason for the ecological concern is that Anji is the home of bamboo in China, and bamboo is a mainstay of the local economy.  

Photo: Robert Schrader   https://www.facebook.com/leaveyourdailyhell/

We think of bamboo as a real tropical plant, but it grows here just fine, thank you, despite what we think.  And this bamboo is an amazing material.  We also all think of it as versatile, but you have no idea. People use it as a construction material, for walls, floors, columns, and beams, for furniture, for medicine, for food and beer and wine, for a form of paper, for weaving into rope and string, for art projects, for clothing and towels.    I give up.  China is going to win.  This bamboo stuff is more versatile than concrete.  Even more versatile than oak or pine.   At lunch, we had bottles of Science Bamboo Beer.   We ate bamboo shoots, sat on bamboo furniture, in a building decorated with bamboo, and watched the trucks wheezing down the road overloaded with cut bamboo to be taken for processing into any of a hundred products.   But not bamboo paper.  It is still made, but the local factories were closed because of their environmental problems- too much water demand, too much air and water pollution.  So those factories were moved to the south of China.

Bamboo harvest

Like many of the places I have been in China, the Hidden Dragon and Many Waterfalls spot is not on most of the tour guides.   There are occasional foreigners, but not like at the Great Wall or in Beijing or in Shanghai.  This does not prevent many of the signs along the trails being in English, as well as Chinese.  There is no doubt whatsoever that English is the second language of China.  People listen to, or watch, CSPAN and CNN in English, and get American music and movies in English, and read the NYT online just like we do.   Me, I have figured out how to recognize the Chinese characters for the numbers 1, 2, and 3.  I will probably have 4 down by the end of next week, if I work at it.   I think I know the difference between men and women.  In Chinese, I mean.  People keep asking me what I think of some current US pop music group, and I can’t even tell them my knowledge of music stopped with the Beach Boys.  No frame of reference.

The hills are densely covered in pine and bamboo, and pretty up close and from a distance, but the real treat is the climb into the hills around the waterfalls.   There are many wonderful climbs like this in China, with not-so-regularly cut stone serving as steps and sometimes there are railings made of steel pipe and sometimes just of steel reinforcing rod.   And sometimes, no railing.  None of this would ever meet OSHA standards, and the lawsuits in the US would shut the place down in about a New York minute.   But it is fun, and more natural, and more human scale, than if there were required elevators and pink release forms and concrete steps, 7.5 inches high and 12 inches deep.  Below is a wood slat suspension bridge with chains for railings.  It is rickety.  If you fall here, it would be … bad. 

The wood slats are more than a few inches apart … just for fun

So you can argue about China is still a developing country, and how far we have come, to take the danger out of nature in the US, but people take their little kids up this steep and uncertain climb, and the sense of personal responsibility is much greater.   We have had this discussion before, and you know that last winter I was a big supporter of the Americans with Disabilities Act, but do you want this climb to be fun or not?   Sure, there is a continuum, and I am not buying helmets and pitons, but how can we make this sort of stuff accessible (as it were) to most people without ruining it (for most people)?   The way this is built, it is fun and hard.  You could fall and get hurt.

Photo:  Leon Chen, at https://trip101.com/article/best-things-to-do-anji-county-china

There are 11 stations along the climb, each one on a small piece of rock or constructed into the hillside, where you can buy water and drinks and maybe a snack.  And places to sit for a few minutes before resuming.  And some have bathrooms.   So this is my version of Everest, and Jon Krakauer has nothing on me.  I am not just writing about it, I did it.   The climb is sometimes steep, sometimes flat enough for something passing for sidewalk, but mostly it is steep with steps that are uneven and jagged and non-uniform.  The waterfalls are all around, in the vertical hills, now too steep for trees.   At some places, there is no room for steps, so the climb is on a ladder made of reinforcing rod, or some very steep steps like the ones in those hidden attic stairways.   But the steps are not flat, they are three reinforcing rods spaced an inch or two apart, welded to the frame (probably better for footing than a flat piece of steel or wood).

This is one of those climbs where you get a few hundred feet up, and the view back down the waterfall, in the rocks and hills, is gorgeous, and you have hit a couple of the rest stops, and you think, okay, that was fun.   And then you look way up in the hill, and there are people with kids walking way up there, and it is like watching the field action from the upper deck in Comiskey – no- US Cellular- no, Guaranteed Rate Field? … where the White Sox play.   How did those people get so small?  And then you realize, damn, they are not on some other hill,  they are on your hill, just above you by a few hundred meters.

When Jim Ford says he doesn’t understand about my high school analogy, that Chinese government relationships are like those in the high school student government, he doesn’t know about one-ups-man ship.   Before the climb into clean air, we had lunch with the big leader and the three other organization department guys and the big Party guy from Jiaxing and the  wives and kids.   This was a family lunch, but the venue, in Anji,  suggests that this was also a bonding event.  The toasts were plentiful,  and I did my share.  We had rice wine, beer, and some Wu Liang Ye, which is a baijiu, a clear alcohol like vodka.   Not all leaders have to be big drinkers, and one is able to decline, but face goes up, at least for some Chinese, with the ability to drink.   So I held my own, and I think this made a difference.   More about that later.   But on the climb, it meant that I could end a rest stop by saying, “zou,” which means let’s go, and everyone moved.   Or maybe they were just deferring to the old guy.

Anyway, the climb is set around hundreds of waterfalls.  Some are small, like a bathtub faucet left on full, and some are sheets of water coming over a sheer rock face, twenty feet wide and falling fifty, into the next pool on the journey down.

The steep hill faces are about fifty feet apart, although that varies, on both sides of the climb, and there is a center spine of water that is the main flow.   There is a foot path is on each side of this spine, so there is a sort of up stairs and down stairs quality to the scene.  In some places the paths merge, since there is not enough room between the rock faces  for two paths.  In some places, the merge is down to the width of a ladder.   You climb the ladder over the rushing water below.

So this is not one continuous waterfall, but waterfalls all along the sides of the steps-ladders-stairs, and a center cascade of water flowing into pools at many levels, before continuing down.  Each level has something different to offer in access to the cascade, or access to the pool, or access to the little waterfalls on the sides.


Photo:  Tyler Ho  https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10206501520958901&set=a.10205622699828922&type=3

In China, the opportunity to make some money is never missed.  At about rest stop three, there is a one person tracked vehicle ride that goes up the pass.   It is exactly the Mouse at Riverview.   One person per car, tracks about two feet apart, open car, hands inside the car (there must be such a sign) and off you go.   We didn’t do that, although it would have been fun, but don’t look down.  Next time.

The climb is hard.  I kept thinking of Everest, and Into Thin Air, and which camp we would be at by now.   By camp seven or eight, I was thinking it was over, but I looked up, and there was always more.   Damn ego.   I had to push on, since I was representing the free world here.   But we were doing this without oxygen, so I felt a little better.  Above rest stop- sorry- camp 8, there start to be signs that you are in rarefied turf.   The steps on the ladders are now wood, and fairly old wood, and a little bendy, if you know what I mean.   And there is an air, as it were, of unkemptness, like the sherpas didn’t come this far when they removed the oxygen bottles and bodies from the summer before.

But the air is clean.  It is moist, and piney, and unmistakably fresh.   Everyone can drink the water right from the cascade at this height.  The only thing above is the water source.

Between camp 8 and camp 9, there is a wood and rope bridge that is definitely not for the OSHA crowd.  Maximum of three people at a time, but I figured they meant Chinese people, so I waited until three of our party had crossed, and started out alone.   I was on good enough terms with the leaders, from my lunch performance, that the Party guy from Jiaxing, who easily outweighed me by 50 pounds, started behind me and playfully rocked the ropes.   At least I think I was on good terms.  I mean, the Jiaxing guy was smiling and all, and if the bridge rocked too much, we were both going into clean air, as it were.   But its like walking from the number 5 Jeffrey bus stop at 64th and Dante to Mount Carmel in 1968, past the local misguided youth from the neighborhood.   The Jiaxing guy wanted to see if he could smell fear, and I couldn’t give it to him.  Too much loss of face.  I smiled, and shook the ropes back at him.

At camp 10, they give you a hard boiled egg as a little gift.  “You made it to camp 10.”   “Don’t let this be your last meal.”

The last camp is number 11, which we did not attempt.  Getting too dark, and there are no street lights up here.   Another hundred meters or so, up, and probably another half an hour of climb.  So I failed at my first attempt.  But I will be back.   The hidden dragon is calling.

I can’t tell if Chinese are all this way, or if it is the difference in our ages that makes Chinese seem so damn energetic.  The IIT students are mostly fifteen to twenty, or twenty five, years younger than me.   We walked down from camp 11.  I decided to count steps, and it is well over a thousand steps down, not counting flat parts.

When we got to the bottom, it was nearly dark.   Again, not to miss an opportunity to sell, the exit from the climb takes you into a building that is lined on both sides with stalls of people selling drinks, and food, and memorabilia.   I presume people rent the stalls, just like in the department store.  Pretty much everyone sells the same stuff.  The hallway is about fifteen stalls long, stalls on each side, and you turn a corner, thinking it is over, but the building is bigger than you think, and they have routed you back in the opposite direction through another15 stalls, each side, selling the same stuff.  So you just did a U-turn through the building, before finally being ejected into the street.

We walked up the hill in the little village where the Hidden Dragon is, to me looking and feeling like the retreat from Moscow.   We collapsed into a little restaurant, absolutely tired.  And thirsty.  And soaked with sweat.  Me, anyway.  Now this is the Chinese energetic part, or maybe the high school part.   Sitting at two big round tables in the restaurant, did we order big bottles of water, or coke, or sprite, which are freely available?   We did not.  We launched into some locally made clear alcohol, really terrible stuff.   The kids got the sprite, and I never wanted to sit at the kids table so much in my life.

But there was a payoff.  After the terrible local liquor, we started on dinner and beer and rice wine, which were all great.   And I was telling them about IIT, and ZUST, and teaching.   The general English level was ok.  Steven, his wife, one of the other wives, and two of the organization department guys had good or okay English.   I told them about being in Dalian last June, and getting the tour of the Dalian Party school, and jokingly asking if I could teach there, and without any of the usual Chinese demurring, got a quick and solid, “No.”     But  the Party guy and the head organization department guys took that as a challenge, and I think my lunch performance helped, and so now they are investigating whether I can give a lecture at Hangzhou Party school.    Update:  Lecture at Zhejiang Province Party School, about a year later

Cultural Hegemony, from 1959

Summer, 2016 

Not sure where this fits … I have always thought that the comments on the “Chinglish” street signs and hotel menus were tending to the mean-spirited, even if some were funny.   No one laughs at my speaking Chinese.

We were at afternoon tea yesterday with one of my students from Chicago and her husband and daughter.  They both work for the Hangzhou police department, in jobs that have to do with contact with foreign governments and screening government officials who want to go abroad.

The place for tea was beautiful –  a hotel developed by Greentown, one of the biggest Chinese real estate developers, set in the hills of Hanghzou and a bit isolated from everything else.  The design of  the hotel is meant to evoke 1920s London – smoking rooms and billiard rooms and card rooms and a veranda looking out onto the hills and landscaped gardens – and the super-Olympic sized outdoor pool, surrounded by falling waters cut into the hills.   The hotel was all highly modern, and highly high end, otherwise.

There was a (modern) movie on the big tv in the sitting room, some sort of 1920s setting English upper class drama.  Think Bertie Worcester, but not his club, the club used by his uncle.  Afternoon tea was 1:30 to 4:30.  Varieties of teas with cucumber sandwiches (no crusts, of course) and some varieties of breads and macarons (is that right?  not macaroni, not macaroons, I don’t think … little round colored cookies, two or three levels, like a little cookie sandwich … sort of like upper class Oreos) and a bunch of other stuff.

Piped in music was 1920s or 1930s big band and jazz – not loud, just terrifyingly smart.

Anyway, this is all superfluous.   There was an event at the hotel, The Next Part of the Bargain, designed to teach Chinese ladies how to be elegant.   Probably very expensive.  This is an all weekend event, with small classes and probably instructions in how to curl your little finger when drinking tea … sort of a weekend group Henry Higgins experience in China.  Walk, small talk, nodding appropriately, probably makeup and expensive dresses.

Anyway, about a dozen of the ladies who signed up for the weekend were taking a short course in how to walk elegantly in a qipao, the old traditional Chinese slim dress with the slit up the side.   We were seated on the veranda, looking out on the hills and the pool down below, and the qipao ladies were … well, not prancing … not performing … not sashaying … walking elegantly, up and down in front of us, to piped in music for the occasion.

I mean, the qipao has been out of style for modern Chinese women since about the 1930s, so this short course is so retro that it must be in style again for Chinese women so wealthy that they don’t care what the current style calls for.  Now, one usually see the qipao only on attendants at formal events, on female flight attendants, or sometimes at the entrance to a fancy restaurant.

But the music they were elegantly walking to is the thing.  In addition to some jazz hits, there was also this, and you can’t make this stuff up.  Those of you who are old enough might remember the Davy Crockett craze around 1959, with the movie and the hit song.   The wealthy ladies were walking elegantly to the soothing sounds of a Chinese woman singing, in English, over and over again, a soft, lilting, slow dance version –   “Davy, Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier.   Born on a mountaintop in Tennessee ….”

Source:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAVN_n0PljQ