changing china

New Website!

2010-03-26T01:01:00.002+08:00

I have not blogged for around one whole year. But I'm starting again!

And with that, a new site: www.ohdeng.com. Please subscribe your Googlereaders to that site, as I will be completely jumping ship. Stay tuned =)

Hilarious Post on Lazy Journalists and Poverty Tourism

2009-09-01T10:48:00.002+08:00

Posted here in Vice Magazine.

I think I have a pretty high sensitivity for how Detroit is over-simplified and even sensationalized in the media, as I hail from a suburb 45 minutes on the outskirts of the city. I'm not claiming nativeness, but perhaps the opposite; my sensitivity is heightened merely because I grew up in that donut of affluence around the city that reinforced everything that Detroit lacked with its own sort of tourism: avoid the city, but if you have to go through, take pictures.

That same over-simplification and exotification of misery is latent in lots of media coverage of China. If I see another picture of a traditional hutong fringed by a bunch of sky rises, with the accompanied article that uses the word "paradox" 26 times, I'm going to shoot myself.

24 Hours

2009-08-06T04:04:00.003+08:00

24 Hours, Random Storefront, Beijing

If you're ever in Beijing, you should check them out: awesome sound. Really fun and upbeat. What's interesting is that they wanted a pretty plain shot - "we keep the 味道 (flavor) on stage...we're actually pretty boring in real life." They're from Xi'an. Two of them have day jobs; the other doesn't and is looking for a day job. Very down to earth.

Stepping Stones

2009-08-03T03:25:00.007+08:00

One of the most rewarding things about the Fulbright grant is the latitude it gives to help out organizations, NGOs and come into contact with a lot of cool work. For instance, a few months ago, I decided to volunteer some freelance photography for Stepping Stones in some promotional ads and their website after reading David Hobby's article on working for free and reaping the benefits.

I was quite amazed not only the extent at which they expanded in a short amount of time, but the limited resources at which they expanded from: no full time staff and an army of committed volunteers.

If you're ever in Shanghai and are interested in helping out or learning more, contact: enquiry@steppingstoneschina.net.

From the website:

"The objective of this project is to assist students in migrant schools in Shanghai to gain interest and confidence in their English language abilities and to help them pass their middle school entrance examinations.

English teaching volunteers are introduced into schools for migrant children in Shanghai.

To date, we are running projects in 18 schools across Minhang, Huangpu, Baoshan, Pudong, Yangpu and Putuo districts. The English teaching standards in these schools are low and the Principals welcome volunteers to teach English to the students and/or the teachers either during the school day or at the weekend.

This programme offers a rewarding way to get to know another side of China’s society and to contribute in a meaningful way to the education of under-privileged children.

An introductory video on Stepping Stones:

Open Spaces

2009-07-19T03:14:00.000+08:00

And no hands. I could never have this feeling in urban China and it further accentuates the urban/rural division. I've done the transition between big cities and small villages many times this year in China, but I still can't get used to it. Suddenly, things seem further apart. Life is slower. I can hear the sound of my own voice travel across distances I never thought possible in China. The contrast is just too stark.

Breakfast

2009-07-19T02:50:00.000+08:00

I am back in Beijing and eating like none other. Two weeks of porridge and salty vegetables really let you appreciate good food.

Snippets

2009-07-16T01:56:00.000+08:00

Apologies to anyone who reads this blog for my infrequent and substance-less posts. I know, I know I take the easy way out: pictures.

But lately, it's been busy, so I'm afraid it's going to be more of that. I'll try to be descriptive though.

A bit of what work/life has been like:

A local village clinic in Shanxi.

Making mantou. Lots of it. Really, a lesson in efficiency: the woman who was teaching me steamed around 15 large mantou in each circular steaming deck, and then stacked around 10 steamers on top of each other. The steaming decks also have tea leaves in them, adding to the flavor.

Local woman spinning string.

Young Nationalism

2009-06-21T19:39:00.001+08:00

China 5 Lead Singer: "yeah, we're called China 5."
Me: "Yeah? Why?"
C5LS: "Well, we all love China and we used to have 5 people."
Me: "How many do you have now?"
C5LS: "3."
Me: "Well, why don't you just call you guys China 3 now?"
C5LS: "...."

In all my anecdotal experience, there seems to be a rising sort of national pride in all my Chinese friends. My friend, Anna, charted out her own national pride over time: "when I was young, we Chinese always looked to the West and expected them to lead in everything: science, culture, money, etc. But we've been growing as a nation economically and so I've been more and more prideful of being Chinese. Now, it's like I don't always have to look to the West for everything."

In a way, I think her experiences are somewhat representative of the larger umbrella-conversation of Chinese perceptions of nation-hood and national confidence, particularly those in Chinese youth. Especially in the last few years, I think there's definitely been a giant spike in national pride with the Olympics and the successful space missions. Yet, what's interesting about this sort of national pride/confidence is that I often find it in a demographic of young Chinese who belong to a small minority of liberal, subversive culture. Although the Western analog of this sort of population would be more inclined to be critical of their own country (down with the man, etc.), I find a sort of nationalism (a sort that would be unthinkable in the minds of a similar population of young people in the West) really common here.

Which raises the question: is it *counter*-cultural to be nationalistic as a young person in China?

Mini-Great Wall

2009-06-11T02:41:00.003+08:00

Getting Warm in Beijing

2009-06-09T01:54:00.000+08:00

Interview with Robert Glenn Ketchum: Conservation, Photographic Activism, and Visual Literacy

2009-06-04T03:14:00.004+08:00

I thought it might be appropriate to post this interview on the 20th anniversary of Tiananmen.

Robert Glenn Ketchum’s formal background in photography includes study as an undergraduate at UCLA with two of the most respected non-traditional photographic image-makers on the West Coast Edmund Teske and Robert Heinecken. Ketchum was also one of the first photography M.F.A.’s to graduate from California Institute of the Arts, where he later taught for several semesters.

However, it is his interests in color and the natural world enhanced by letter exchanges and visits with Eliot Porter that have defined his career. Ketchum has always felt “compelled” as an American artist to use his imagery, exhibitions, lectures and issue-directed book published to address the political realities of habitat protection, natural resource management, and the preservation of wild lands, which he has done with extraordinary success.

Often supported by major foundations and individuals as diverse as actor, Robert Redford, and William E. Simon, former Secretary of the U.S. Treasury, Ketchum has used his art to effectively assist the passage of legislation and broaden public perception, while at the same time contributing a distinctive body of fine print work to contemporary color photography.

Since the early 1980’s, Ketchum has also been visiting China on a yearly basis as part of the UCLA-China Exchange Program, collaborating with the Suzhou Embroidery Research Institute to translate his photographs into silk hand embroidered wall hangings, table pieces, and standing screens. This completely unique reinterpretation of his imagery in a textile form merges Eastern and Western concepts in art, and the modern process of photography with the 2,500 year old Chinese tradition of silk embroidery. (From his blog)

Can you please first tell a bit about yourself? How did you become interested in (1) photography (2) (what can be only called) environmental activism and (3) China and did those three strands meet independently or together? Which first?

I suppose it started off in a very academic high school being exposed to some important environmental literature – Aldo Leopold wrote “Sand County Almanac” and Rachael Carson wrote “Silent Spring.” Those were really important books to me. When Carson wrote, “if we put chemicals and poisons into the environment, eventually it would poison that environment,” I believed her. At some intuitive level, I knew she was right. In the case of Leopold, he used the word “environment” – it was the first time I saw it in print. He basically said that human beings had a moral responsibility to take care of the environment, and if they didn’t, the environment would ultimately collapse and the humans would go with them. So the “moral responsibility” stuck with me.

And then I got into college and I got into photography. I started with rock and roll bands, but increasingly I saw myself taking my camera out on hikes and backpacks because some friends did that kind of stuff. Right after college, I moved to a fairly rural area – central Idaho – for the reasons of job opportunities and the fact that I knew some local kids. That took me into a very different, wild environment. I found myself taking more pictures of wild places as subject matter. Within 10 years, I had achieved some success and was getting published, but I began to feel that my pictures of the land were just victimizing the very environment I wanted to protect. My work was resource consumptive and was not giving back anything to the environment it was exploiting through sales for my benefit. So I wanted to find some moral way of resolving that problem.

One of the things to keep myself gainfully employed while struggling as an artist to become discovered was doing curatorial work in photography. I could do it pretty well, so I did a bunch of stuff: I was lucky and organized several group exhibitions, as well as discovering some significant vintage private collections. One of those exhibits in the late 70’s was a book and national traveling exhibition about the relationship between photography and the American public’s consciousness with regard TO the environment. Specifically, it detailed a clear history linking photographer’s and the influence of their work on the legislative advancement of the national park concept, the most obvious example of that being the first images of Yellowstone by William Henry Jackson that have been credited with helping pass the National Park Act. As I developed this project, I began to see that throughout history – many times – photographers and their photographs influenced legislative decisions. So, after seeing that history, I became empowered by it: I began to see ways of using my work in a similar fashion. Now, while I still do take pictures of the landscape in a very traditional sense, I have learned combine them with words and media use to drive advocacy issues, in my case, specifically about conservation.

So, that takes care of your first 2 questions. The third one – about China – came more for me as an artist than a conservationist. When I studied photography, I studied with nontraditional teachers and I retained my interest in non-traditional photography, even though I was also doing the more traditional work on behalf of conservation.

So I went to Mexico and did some loom-weaving and Europe and did some rug-making with electronic weavers. And then I found myself in Japan in the mid-80s when the first digital scanner came out. But none of those things could produce the richness of a photograph. The looms were too simple and rectilinear. Electronic rug making was much too coarse. And the scanner just printed on cloth. That wasn’t what I wanted at all – I wanted different textures on different surfaces. But while I was in Japan – I was looking at some embroidered ceremonial robes in a shop and one of the embroideries was clearly from a photograph. It was a crane and I knew it wasn’t rendered from a drawing – it had to be from a photograph.

So I began some research and found out about the various regions in China where embroidery was done. Through an article in the LA Times, I discovered the Suzhou National Embroidery Research Institute (SERI) – which had been created during the Mao era. And in a weird way – and I think you’ll appreciate this as a ‘real world politics’ thing – back in the day during the humble administrators and where the embroidery guilds fought with each other to have clients, it was kind of like arch-rivalry. It was a beautiful peasant craft back in the day: you didn’t’ have to go to college; it was all craft-based. And when Mao came into power and purged the intellectuals, he saw the embroidery as a peasant craft, a working class craft, not as an intellectual craft. So, instead of purging them, he elevated them: he called it the “National Research” and provided government money and housing. And so a lot of the embroiderers were rather well off.

And, when I arrived in 1984, that’s what I found. There was certainly a lot of controversy about working with me [at the Institute] because I was the first non-Chinese to ever ask for such an opportunity. Fortunately, I came through one of the only 3 China-exchange programs that had been created thus far in the U.S.: Harvard had one, Columbia had one and UCLA had one. I came from the UCLA.

You’re probably too young – I mean I don’t mean to insult you – but it’s hard to realize this: in 1983, most of the people in Suzhou were on bicycles.

No worries.

Very few people had cars. It took me three hours to get from Shanghai to Suzhou by train and driving by car was like a country adventure. I did it once and it took like 5.5 hours. You had to wander through the rice-fields and fish farms and there wasn’t a direct route. Everyone was living in the old world stone buildings with no running water. There was only one foreigner-friendly hotel and I was the only non-Chinese to ever come through the doors of the Institute and become a working partner.

Going back to the Suzhou Embroidery Research Institute: I hear that you’ve been collaborating with them to translate your photographs into silk hand embroidered wall hangings, table pieces, and standing screens (from his website). This form of reinterpretation with a different medium intrigues me. Who came up with this idea? You’ve talked a little bit about the Mao era and this type of embroidery. Who are the embroideries made for? And what is lost or gained in the process of reinterpretation?

Sure. I’m not sure whom they were made for. When I first got there, there were a lot of embroideries that involved landscapes with Chinese characters sewn over them. I never see these kinds of embroideries anymore. I suspect the characters were political slogans with classical Chinese landscapes behind them. I’m sure they were Mao-isms, and that they were used as part of the sublimation of the arts at the time to put out some of his statements and put them out as great art.

I saw that SERI had already played with the idea [of embroidering from photographs] which is why I sought them out. The way they originally managed rendering from photographs was to use a stitch they invented in Suzhou like drawing with a pencil: they shaded in with needle and thread. They followed the photograph, but close up, it still was a lot of random stitches – it only looked like the photograph from a distance. In considering working with me, many of the embroiderers worried that they would never get the dimensionality of a photograph in embroidery. Traditionally, SERI’s style was to stitch everything in the image. To the Chinese, as I was told, what you’re buying is the embroidery, so filling both sides of the embroidery with stitches is the point. But for me, coming out of a Western art school background where negative space is always used, I said “look, why don’t you use some of the double sided transparency as part of a design?” So, in one of the pieces, we didn’t fill the water in, which was unprecedented at the time we did it. But because of what we did, we were able to see through the piece. It also makes it more textural, and more dimensional because things stand off of the surface. Also, it makes it a bit more like film because when it’s lit correctly, it looks like a back-lit transparency.

In the end, I said, “if you just copy everything down to the last detail, you will really see the photo illusion.” So, there was an argument about whether or not that would happen, and then they agreed to do a piece. And it did work.

So, then we went from there. I wanted to try a lot more things.

Can you talk a bit about the “Grand Canal” project that was a part of the Aperture book called China: 50 Years. Why shoot the canal? How did this project come about?

In the beginning, being excited about being in the country and being a photographer, I was really eager to travel: I would work at the institute and then travel periodically for a month or two. I went everywhere, just so I could get more of a feeling of the country. I took pictures everywhere, but I spent a lot of time in Suzhou, where I would just wander through the streets with a bicycle. Suzhou wasn’t big enough that you could actually get lost, so I would just take off for whole days. It was impossible to not photograph the Grand Canal or the side canals, because the whole city was one of the greatest canal cities IN all of China. And it was going to be all changed, as you all know; it’s been completely transformed. So, I wanted to take as many pictures of this version before it was gone.

Now, the Grand Canal has been all cleaned up; the pictures that I took aren’t like what it’s like now. They said that it was too smog-producing and looked too decrepit. Now, it’s completely different and it’s now used for dragon boats for couples who are on honeymoon bliss and all that.

Was it a personal project at first or were you commissioned to shoot it?

Yeah, it was just me taking pictures at first. Then Aperture saw them and they were going to do that book and thought that it fit in very nicely.

China is and has been growing at an unprecedented pace. I’ve heard that certain up-and-coming cities have a slogan that characterizes their development as “development without tears,” referring to their lack of preservation and willingness to tear down old things. As a natural landscape photographer, what made you attracted to (and not repelled by) this country?

Oh, I’m not repelled at all with this country. I love the Chinese sense of self and style and I love Chinese food. And I love ancient China, but I could see what was going to occur. I believe that, as an artist, a lot of what you do relates back to the way you see the land. As a landscape photographer, and someone who appreciated Chinese art, it was interesting for me to go to the country and see the place where many of the first landscapes as art were created. At one point, during college at UCLA actually, we were studying drawings from a Chinese painter who had painted at Mt. Wangshan. Of course, the mountain has stairs all over it. But in art history (this is in 1968), I was told by my professor that the paintings were fanciful landscapes dreamed up by these artists to glorify the countryside and make their patrons happy. Of course, when I got to China, I found that that wasn’t the case at all; the paintings were drawn from real life.

They were real. That’s interesting.

Right! And what a European-centric view of the world that was, to completely misunderstand representational drawing. So, those discoveries were really exciting for me. So, it occurred to me that if China came forward into the new world economy and that the shackles of the Mao era were gone, a country that was so large and that had so many resources and so much intelligence was going to be a huge force in the world. I knew that there was no way that this country was all going to live in waterless, heatless stone buildings. I knew this would all change. Bicycles would give way to cars and all that inevitable stuff. I guess I wanted to photograph as much as possible before it disappeared. Looking back on it – now I’m not a journalist – and looking at what I saw, I realize that I missed a lot of stuff. I didn’t realize how big the change would be. I didn’t take enough pictures.

Right, so as a photographer, how do you decide what to shoot? Is there a lot of pre-photography research that goes into researching what is going on, or is it more organic (walking around, talking to people, etc.)?

It’s much more organic: I walk around, take pictures and base it more on instinct. I would see huge changes everything time I came back. And with each return, I thought “Oh, my God, I need to take pictures of this before it’s gone.” So, I think if I had more of a journalist instinct, I’d have done even more. But as it was, just because I was there, the pictures have some value.

As China changes and grows, what is the photographers’ role in the midst of all of it? Do you think the photographer’s role, in the context of China, is primarily journalistic?

Again, because I’m not a journalist, and because I’m not trying to record the story and am just trying to take pictures, it’s very clear now that I don’t have that intent. Standing outside of the cities and seeing them change, I’ve kept up with that [taking pictures]. So, I’m just continuing to do that. Every time I go back to Shanghai, I go to the tall buildings and photograph in all four directions. In my first photographs of Shanghai, the Peace Hotel was the only place you could stay, everyone on the Bund was wearing blue and grey, and Pudong was a rice patty. There was no bridge across the river to it. Now, the largest buildings in the world can be found there. If anything, China’s more alive and full of color then any country in the world right now; the idea that they were all dressed in drab greys and blues is quite funny. But just by being there, and you look at the span of time that my pictures were taken, you can really see Shanghai moving from ancient to modern.

In terms of your environmentally-oriented work, would you characterize your work as having a message that’s more open to interpretation or one that has a message that’s rather sharp? How do you reconcile the line between passive observer and activist?

Within North America, my message is pretty sharp. My projects are connected specifically to legislative acts, or attempts to pass conservation law or protecting wildlands – things like that. Most of my work is quite specifically pointed. I don’t do political work outside of the United States because, until recently, I thought that I would not have as much influence outside of the U.S. But in the last decade, that’s changed: photographers are out in the international arena making a big difference. They’re leading the way with good conservation photography. They’re funded by groups like National Geography and people who can really help with their money to make a difference.

But back when I started doing this, where I felt I would get most effect was inside my own country where I knew the political system. Within that, I’m very political. Outside of it [the country], I’m more of an observer. Yes, I’ve gone and seen Three Rivers Gorge and have seen the cities transformed, but my mission isn’t much to comment about it as it is to observe it occurring.

You mentioned a lot about how photographers are out shooting and making a difference, even legislatively, and that this is a fairly new thing. Can you talk more about this?

Well, I think the growth of the idea that photographers could be advocates for the environment started in this country [the United States]. It started off in the late 70s. If you looked at some of the acknowledgements that I’ve had, you’d be inclined to think that I was a part of this group. I think it was really 10 photographers my age: we had all been out there working on issues of our concern regarding the planet. And now things have changed. For instance, National Geographic used to be a fairly neutral magazine that never took a controversial point of view. But once the environment started to significantly deteriorate and the scientists started to say that this was happening, National Geographic started to have a lot more political intent. 12 or 15 years ago, this just wasn’t the case. Even young photographers from other countries are coming into the fold everyday and saying “hey, I don’t just want to take calendar pictures; I want to take pictures that make a difference.” They’re joining with groups like the International League of Conservation Photographers and working with Conservation International and their pictures are becoming more and more valuable to the media in promoting and furthering conservation research around the world. And again, it’s not just American photographers. And this has been happening almost exponentially. It probably drives the politicians crazy; I know that it at least drove the Bush administration crazy.

I see the troupe “old and new” in a lot of the work of photographers who photographed China in the 80s and 90s and even today. Do you anticipate or see any trends or memes in photographers working in China today? Or in the future?

The Chinese are brilliant. It’s mostly that they’ve been sort of contained for a while and it’s just recently that they’re really exploring their brilliance. They’re coming online with successful new ventures. Within that, young Chinese artists – especially the ones embracing the avant-garde, and the conceptual, and modern photography - have shot right to the top of the art world. So, they’re really getting the top accolades. They’re already ascending stars.

I think, quite frankly, the depth of culture in China gives a tremendous platform of things for a Chinese artist to work with and borrow from and mock and aggrandize: 5000 years of cultural history and lots of art connected to it opens the door for a lot of cross-bred ideas. There’s no reason that the Chinese as contemporary artists should not be at the forefront of everything.

Within the world of photography, that’s just a small part. The greater world of photography is expanding in different ways now. I think I see a kind of populism in China that is increasingly becoming somewhat democratic: when it’s treated badly, it protests to the government. Admittedly, the government still has some harsh responses to that, but at the same time, corporations who had dye factories who poisoned streams have been punished; CEOs are being put in jails and companies are closing down. So, it’s clear to me that China is very aware that coming into the 21st century and having a population as large as it has is going to have toxic by-products of epic proportions. It’s not stopping them from going there [toward development]. But its making them think about how to resolve those problems while they’re going there. So, yes, you do have terrible air and water pollution around industrial centers, but at the same time the government has realized that this isn’t sustainable: it can’t stay the way it is. And so they’re actually doing more to resolve that, then, say, the Bush administration that just pretended like it wasn’t happening. So, I think they’re taking those problems seriously and working to fix those problems because you realize that there’s a cost to them.

Right. There really is an advantage sometimes to an authoritarian regime, because if something is on the agenda, then things get done really, really fast.

Yes! Absolutely, right. And at the public level, because of the visual literacy of a lot of new technology like cell phones and cameras, the public is really beginning to respond to the government in ways that weren’t possible before. They’re also able to get the news outside of the country and make embarrassing circumstances for the government in ways that weren’t possible before too.

In terms of visual literacy, with much of the population still in rural, underdeveloped areas, what portion of the population is actually visually literate?

If we’re talking about intellectual literacy, perhaps not [much]. But even in some very rural places: suddenly, people have a cell phone or television set. Now, with that cell-phone – and when I’m talking about visual literacy – a rice farmer without a great education whose rice paddy is being poisoned by a factory upstream can take his cell phone, take pictures, show somebody at a university who is more connected, and all of a sudden, they start a small revolution. And finally, the factory is closed. There’s a kind of weird, new visual literacy in which the ability to make a record in a way that “uneducated people” couldn’t before is suddenly a whole new weapon. And they really get it. When the Earthquake happened, look at all the internet information that leaked out from cell phone pictures and Skype telephone networks. There was no keeping the cap on anything. With all of this new technology, for whatever it’s worth, the authoritarian government, to some degree, has to let the cat out of the bag. I don’t think they’ll ever be able to totally control it the way they did before. Also, a lot of this has to do with the fact that Chinese are internet players of the first class.

In terms of the internet or visual literacy, Rebecca MacKinnon, who is a Professor at the University of Hong Kong and who writes a fantastic blog about China and the internet, makes the argument that the internet often doesn’t democratize China because, while the amazing amount of chat rooms, posts, and pictures are stirring up a bunch of energy, the internet is often merely a safety valve that the government uses as a receptacle to contain complaints without any institutional change. What would agree or disagree with that?

Well, I would agree in that context. However, while it’s doing that, somewhere within that, an advocate is born. You never change the entire public, but you can change, say two out of 200,000 and they’ll become cultural leaders. It’s a fishing game. I’d say that generally, she’s right: it’s useful for the government to allow people to vent without taking to the streets. At the same time, more information is in more hands, and it may appease 98%, but for 2%, there will be no appeasement. You breed appeasement, but you also breed long term heroes.

What do you guys think? As news organizations like the New York Times are posting articles about China's visual history, (specifically, today's) how important is visual literacy and how does this affect the life of the average Chinese?

More Mohawks, Please.

2009-06-01T01:04:00.000+08:00

I wonder what the guy with the mohawk's morning routine is like.

Demerit, D22, Beijing.

Tilt Shift

2009-05-29T14:50:00.000+08:00

Island in Houhai

Bike

China's net-nanny just recently blocked blogspot in China. To my China readers, how are you seeing this page? RSS feed? Or proxy?

More 3-Dimensional News, Please!

2009-05-13T23:42:00.013+08:00

"It comes with being a rising power," my friend responded as we talked about the subject of "why the West's journalism had such a slant against China."

It's true. Perhaps this was most evident during Olympics season of last year, when respected news organizations like the New York Times ran pages after pages that had one, overall political statement: as China rises, it doesn't mean good things. And while a lot of these stories were deserved and true (milk scandals, workers rights, etc.), many of the stories were simply reflective of the news organization's own political leanings, often being not more than a reporter going into China and looking for anything that might give the Western media another inflammatory excuse.

I recently saw a news clip that reminded me of that feeling I had last year. The clip is a reporter in Sichuan, reporting on the one year anniversary of the May 12th Sichuan earthquake.

The crux of the video revolves around the resistance that he receives when he tries to interview a family whose daughter was killed in the earthquake.

Please don't misunderstand me: I think China has a lot of transparency issues. I am not saying that it doesn't. But there are a few things that make me angry about this particular style of reporting:

1. It's been done.

It makes me question the reporters role as unbiased watchmen when they are clearly looking for a particular bent on a particular story: "despite repeated petitioning attempts, family X has still been ignored." Yes, we've seen this story. It's not only a style of fit-to-mold journalism that is boring, it's simply uncreative: perhaps the thing that saved this reporter from producing yet another Sichuan story of an angry family is the very sensationalism (violence) that precluded his reporting.

2. It tries to make connections to Communism and the CPC that are dubious, at best.

I'm not sure if I'm more irritated at the sensationalism of it or the misrepresentation. "This is how the Chinese government responds...," the reporter said, pointing towards the crowd of suspicious people surrounding him. Really? The Chinese government? If you take a look, he was surrounded completely by plainly dressed Sichuan locals, suspicious of foreign reporters and how they are being portrayed by the West. If you listen closely, the only police officer in the video is telling the locals "don't hit him."

I am not trying to justify violence. But this is akin to a Chinese journalist, going into the Bronx to report, subsequently being an idiot, getting beat up by a gang there, and then blaming the U.S. Government, capital G.

I'm sorry, but we have to differentiate three agents here: (1) the reporters stupidity at probing into a story in a way that is obviously inflammatory; (2) Chinese locals' suspicion of foreign reporters; and (3) the Chinese government. Only #1 and #2 were at play here.

3. It represents an already over-saturated segment of Western media that takes a thin slice of Chinese issues (corruption, suffering youth and migrants, scandal, Olympics gluttony, etc.) and tries to distill it into an umbrella-description of China's dominant political party: Communism is the devil.

Trying to defame the Chinese government with Sichuan? Really? If anything, I think the Chinese government is giving too much attention to Sichuan. While I believe that the heroic acts of that day and manifested compassion were and are good things, I also believe that the Chinese public at large are so puffed up by a sort of euphoric, nationalistic memory of compassion that political leaders are forced to give Sichuan a higher priority than it really deserves: a full 25% of the late 2008 Chinese stimulus investment portfolio (4 trillion rmb) is being used on the rebuilding of Sichuan.

I get what he was trying to go for: China has transparency issues. I agree. But why not talk about something else then? Instead of using a poorly shot youtube video of a sensational run-in with locals, why not talk about something more interesting and representative? Like a nearly silent May 4th movement anniversary?

More than the barefaced simplification of a complicated issue, more than the caricaturization of an already 1-dimensionally-represented issue, I'm angry at this type of reporting because of the oppurtunity cost: there are so many more interesting things going on in China outside of antiquated descriptions of Communism or feeble attempts to vilify a party that is already very self-conscious of its image in the foreign media.

But it seems as if the ratings-based draw to feed upon already-old misperceptions of authoritarianism wins yet again.

in the dark

2009-05-12T01:51:00.002+08:00

Migrant Village, Northwest Beijing

Interview with Brian Palmer: Humility, the "Expert Mentality" and the Creative Edge

2009-05-03T12:58:00.006+08:00

Brian Palmer is a photographer and writer based in New York. His photographs have appeared in The New York Times, Fortune, US News & World Report, and other publications. His piece, Digital Diary: Witnessing the War, is included in Democracy in America, a project by PixelPress. Sipa Press distributes his photographs domestically and internationally. He has written for Newsday, Newsweek International, Aperture, Fortune, The Village Voice, The City Sun, Emerge, The New York Times Magazine, Rutgers Magazine, US News & World Report, Entertainment Weekly, and Savoy. Palmer is a member of the Photography & Imaging Department faculty at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. He lectures at The School of Visual Arts' MFA Photography, Video & Related Media Program.

From 2000 through 2002, Palmer was a correspondent for CNN. He was a Staff Writer at Fortune from 1998 to 2000 and Beijing Bureau Chief for US News & World Report for the two years prior to that. Before serving as US News's China correspondent, Palmer was an Assistant Editor on the magazine's international desk, and a staff photographer for the magazine. He began his career in journalism as a fact-checker and freelance everyman at The Village Voice.

Palmer earned a BA in East Asian Studies from Brown University and an MFA in Photography from New York City's School of Visual Arts. In the mid-1980s, he studied Chinese language and history at Nanjing University in the People's Republic of China.

He lives in Brooklyn, NY. He is a Sagittarius.

"I search for the essential human elements in each situation I encounter. I have developed and followed other threads as a journalist and image maker, but I return always to the person I am meeting, framing with my camera -- not simply as a subject, but as an individual. It is through such people that I learn about local reality. It is then my job to connect this reality to the global one." -- BP (From his website; pictures from Asia Society)

Just as a forewarning: most of the things I’m going to ask you will be about your experiences with China. I hope that’s okay. You can respond any way you like, but I just wanted to let you know that, as I know that China is only a small part of your body of work.

Understood. And just so you know: it’s been quite some time since I’ve been in China. My last trip back was in 1999.

Ok, that’s fine. Can you please first tell a bit about yourself? How did you become interested in (1) photography, (2) writing and (3) China and did these strands meet independently or together? Which first?

That is an interesting, but slightly complicated question, but I like the way you break it down. Number 1, photography was a hobby I inherited from my father. He was an avid “shutter-bug” as they called them back then. He had this wonderful Nikon F 35mm SLR. As a little boy, I coveted that camera. He would take trips in the summer to Africa and come back with slides and, you know, beguile us with pictures of Sierra Leone and Ghana. So that was where the initial interest came from. I did all the standard things: I did yearbook photography and I set up a darkroom in my attic.

I didn’t get back to photography until college. I went to Brown and they had a cross-registration program at RISD. Here’s where the writing and Chinese part comes in: I was studying Chinese at Brown. I went to a public school in New Jersey and we had one instructor – a math teacher, actually – who was a native Chinese speaker and he did a one-day seminar in Mandarin. We got Chinese food for lunch. So, I was hooked from one might say a very “visceral” point. But when I got to Brown, I decided that I didn’t want to continue doing what I was doing in high school: studying French. I felt myself awakening as a person whose forbears come from a part of the world that is not really considered to be important. And at the time, China was doing a lot of aid and sort of launching diplomatic initiatives with the developing world. It sort of styled itself as the leader of the “non-aligned” nations. It was sort of going back and forth with India for that mantle. I thought it was just interesting to avoid the whole Western, Euro-centric dynamic and study Chinese. I had opened the course listings book and I was looking for anything non-Western. Chinese coupled with my experience in high school with Mr. Chu (the math teacher) and some exotic flirtations with Bruce Lee, but I did understand enough to realize that Mandarin (or some form of Chinese) was spoken by 15-20% of the planet. And it was a good point to start my exploration of the non-European world. So that’s the Chinese part.

The photo part was resurgent – almost as a reaction – to what I was doing at Brown. I was writing papers, and I was essentially trying to “figure out” China. I was very, very young and this idea that our essays were supposed to “solve or encapsulate particular issues about China” was really limiting to me. I felt like I needed another avenue to express what I was discovering, particularly about China. I studied as an exchange student at Nanjing University in 1984 and again here I was, in this political science/history mindset in this program, being told “this is Deng Xiaoping’s China; this is what’s going on with jingjigaige and duiwaikaifang and we want you to write position papers on this.” This was a sort of a heady enterprise for a junior in college and it felt incredibly constraining compared to what I was seeing in the streets in Nanjing in 1984. I mean, it was a remarkable time to be there. We were there for National Day in 1984 – a whole lot was happening. The economic reforms – which had been in place for quite some time – were just being codified. I was not a great photographer, but I was running around the streets trying to photograph the contradictions: the old and the new, the Maoist and the Dengist, the things I didn’t quite understand just yet, but thought were cool like people in Mao suits, traffic jams that consisted of bicycles, all these things that were new to a kid from Jersey. All this stuff – it truly complimented what I was trying to do as a budding historian/political scientist. So, cut to almost 12 years later when I became Beijing Bureau Chief for U.S. News and World Report, I had started out my career as a photographer/freelancer and gradually moved toward doing both: I sort of switched back and forth. One of the “threads” throughout my career is this inability to settle on one thing or this desire to express myself to both text and picture. When I devoted myself solely to pictures as a staff photographer for U.S. News and World Report (which I did from 93-96), I felt a little bit limited and constrained because I was putting my photos into someone else’s stories and into a context of a rather staid, middle-of-the-road magazine. So, when I became the Beijing Bureau Chief after a few years of doing other stuff, I thought it’d be great to write stories and then also do as much of the shooting as possible. That didn’t really work out to be the case, but I was able to hire many local photographers and work with some really great people. But I still felt that need to do a “left-brain right-brain” thing to express myself visually in a way that I could simply represent the contradictions or the confusing/exciting juxtapositions that I saw in contemporary China, without having to do what I was doing in print, which was boiling it all down for a readership who didn’t really know much about China and who didn’t really care about the nuances of China. Most of our stories are from the point of view of the American business man in China and the sort-of “Beijing vs Washington, zero-sum game politics.” That was a very long answer.

In terms of writing and photographing, I feel like I meet a lot of photographers who only want to take pictures and writers who only want to write. Of course, this is due to people being loyal to their craft, but why did you decide to do both? How do you reconcile this combining act?

I feel like we could have had a very fruitful and possibly heated discussion about this perhaps 10 or even 5 years ago, but now, with the advent of digital technology, to only do just one thing is essentially professional death. So you have to be able to write and shoot, or shoot and edit, or write and edit – there has to be an “and” to what you’re doing. So, yes, I did feel my efforts were split and divided sometimes. Initially, I tried to write and shoot almost at the same time and that was just nuts. For me, shooting and writing were essentially left and right brain activities – I might just not be that smart that I could multitask that effectively. But I really need to retreat into a world of light and shapes to make a really good frame and continue to make pictures; whereas, to capture an exceptional story, you need to be present with your subject. You need to listen to the nuance. I found that exceptionally hard [to do both at once]. As you say, there’s only 24 hours a day. If it was a breaking news story, something that I couldn’t’ spend a lot of time on, I’d just hire another photographer to do the shooting. If I could stretch it out over a longer period of time, I’d try to do both. I think I was moderately successful in doing that.

As I said, nowadays, you have to be able do all of these things, if not simultaneously, than in series. It is very hard. Just in terms of the way that I shoot, I noticed that if I’m not really immersing myself in that visual experience, I can get very literal and not find a very unique and remarkable pictures, which, as you know, takes time and a different kind of “being present”: being present in place and really working through visual issues (time of day, where the light is coming from). When you’re on deadline, you’re just like, “I just have to have pictures.” It’s a really difficult balance and it’s something that I have to wrestle with every single day.

Let’s talk a little about your “Learning China” series that was a part of the Aperture book called China: 50 Years. Why call it that? And was this particular series a product of planning or more so because you had a lot of pictures from your frequent visits?

Very excellent questions. The “Learning China” series was from the fact that I had been in China for two years and was asked to contribute photographs by the editor of this book – a woman named Peggy Roalf. I had done some picture gathering and research for her. She asked to see my work and I was very honored. When I talk about that other type of shooting I was doing – not shooting on deadline, but really trying to see things in a visual and intelligent way – that’s where the title comes from. No disrespect to my colleagues, but so many people spend a few years in China and write a book and claim to know everything about China. They make prescriptions and prognostications about China and China’s future. And I didn’t feel up to that. I wanted to maintain a respect and a humility, hence the name “Learning China.” This idea that I could come up with definitive statements about “what China means and is” is tremendously hubristic. It’s also just bullshit. If I tell you where I’m coming from and the limits of my experience and ability and then I tell you what I actually know and have seen, then I think that builds my credibility and establishes integrity. I’m not pretending to be an absolute fluent expert, China-expert, long-term resident. I was a journalist who paid attention who had mediocre (at best) Mandarin skills, but who worked at it, and who tried to stay humble before this incredibly complicated nation, culture, civilization and people.

You said somewhere else that “It seems that every American who has spent more than 10 minutes in China feels qualified to write a book about it.” What do you think the learning curve is like in China? I feel as if there is this type of temptation to be more of a mouth than a pair of ears: to synthesize things too quickly. However, another fear is that, as China moves at an incredible pace, your experience is only applicable to that point and time in China. That is to say: if you don’t commit your thoughts to paper, it won’t be relevant later. While you were there, how did you balance the two? How did you maintain a creative edge and produce, and still be a pair of ears?

Well, to your point about the changeability of China: China is going to change whether I write about it or not. Also, I’m not saying that waiguoren (foreigners) and foreign journalists shouldn’t talk about China. I’m talking about a particular type of treatise or polemic – an attempt to reduce China to a certain, simple set of aphorisms and policies and then neatly plot a future for the nation. There are people who have studied China for ages who can come up with a cohesive and coherent, intelligent argument and then go write a book. However, we could also name those books by people who have cobbled together observations and quotes that reflect the point of view that they started with. Then, they get a publisher and publish a book. That’s great for them. I’m being very dismissive about this latter approach. There have been amazing books by talented journalists. I’m not dissing those books. What I’m saying is that, given my limited amount of time and the way that I’m wired personally, I’m more inclined to ask questions and raise contradictions and not to try to paint things as black and white. To be specific, in 96, 97, and 98 – all these amazing things were happening: Deng Xiaopeng died in 1997, the Hong Kong hand-over happened, etc. I just felt like “I have to ask people involved in this story – Beijingers, Hong Kong people. I have to try to represent what these people are going through.” Yes, you have to talk to experts and government officials, but the most valuable role I could play as a journalist was as a conduit for the testimony of actual stakeholders, rather than injecting myself as an authority and then representing myself as such, then packaging China up for a foreign audience. If I hadn’t represented the grey areas, the essential nuance (what is more nuanced than China’s economy?), then I wouldn’t be doing my job. I felt that there was a need to first show people that kind of stuff – the things that we don’t know – and then perhaps pontificate a few years down the road.

How did I remain the creative edge? Get out of my office, take the subway a few stops later, and go to parts of Beijing that (at least at that time) weren’t so fabulous. I would walk through the streets and hutongs and go look and see. And that’s also how I stayed humble before China, because I could go write these stories and theories, but then you go out into the real world and then have all that stuff challenged in a really marvelous way.

Yeah, I love that mindset. It seems to really honor complexity. However, were you ever afraid that all your on-the-ground, anecdotal stories never would really galvanize to anything besides just a jumble of stories?

Well, I still worry about that. I fought against that packaging mindset, but that’s what you do (to package) in weekly journalism: I tried to quote intelligent people who knew what they were talking about. So what I was doing for U.S. News was very different as an independent photographer in my own time, which was to embrace the nuance, the complexity, as you say, and almost have that be a counterpart to some of the work that I was doing for the magazine.

You said in the introduction to the series that “To most Americans, China is a giant, vexing puzzle. But beyond its daunting linguistic and cultural barriers, China is a strikingly ordinary place.” You wrote that in 1999, I believe. Do you feel the same way? What did you mean by this?

Well, I still feel the same way. So many people have this tendency to exoticize places, whether it is China or Iraq. They go to places where there is this tremendous linguistic divide and they then style themselves as the “intrepid interpreters” of these incredibly foreign cultures. My point is simply that once you go to a place and if you make attempts to actually reach and talk to people, understand how they live and deal with their concerns, you’ll realize that things are different; but there are also so many fundamental similarities. If you take the time to get beyond the things that are superficially different, you’ll learn about the commonalities. That’s why I said “strikingly ordinary”: people have fundamental daily needs just as we do in the US of A. I’m not trying to be all “Kumbaya,” but I’m reacting very powerfully against this historical tendency to see China as inscrutable and all this other stuff. It’s partly chauvinism, racism, etc., whatever you want to call it. But it also perpetuates this culture of “the expert”: “I speak a bit of Mandarin and have spent some time in China, therefore, I can set myself up as the interpreter of this ‘wacky culture.’” I’m not trying to claim that “we’re all the same – ebony, ivory and sandalwood.” I’m saying that if you put in the work of actually engaging with people, you’ll be struck by the similarities and then the differences will also make more sense to you. If you understand what someone’s culture is and what someone’s concerns are, you’ll begin to see them as a logical, rational actor. Not everyone’s perfectly rational, but if you understand the context in which someone is living, you’ll have a lot more insight into their behavior, their action, into their hopes and dreams.

Back to the “expert mentality,” particularly perhaps 10 years ago, when there simply weren’t that many Westerners here as there are now. Do you think this mentality is dying as more and more Westerners come?

I think there were a heap of Westerners across China in 99. I should be responsible and careful to say that there are brilliant scholars, journalists, historians and analysts of China (although I hate the term “expert), many of whom are American: Elizabeth Economy, Nick Lardy – people who I think they have tremendous knowledge, insight and judgment. I’m putting the word “expert” in quotes: the sort of instant expert who sort of opines without doing the foot work. I think that that form of instant expertise will be here forever, and it’s probably even more prevalent with the internet. I think those voices will continue to proliferate, but I also think that those who really have something to tell us about China will rise to the top. It’s up to serious observers and listeners to wade through that noise. I just think that it’s just a slightly more “noisy” atmosphere than it was 10 years ago.

People have been saying “it’s a historical time to be in China” for at least 30 years. Do you think it’s still an amazing time to be here? How much of this is hype?

I guess history depends upon where you stand. Because of the pace of change, it’s almost like every moment feels sort of “momentous,” for a lack of a better word. That may be inescapable in a country with such an incredible dynamism. There also might be a lot of that inevitable “exoticism” of a place that we don’t understand. For us outsiders, China would appear less magical if we understood more about it. That doesn’t take away from the incredible economic growth, but some things stay the same: 20 years after Tiananmen, there really isn’t a real verdict outside of the party verdict. Some things are really glacial in some areas.

Part of the emphasis we give to China is natural, inevitable and earned. But part of it comes from our profound lack of understanding about what China really is. I mean, we have no fascination whatsoever with Congo or Rwanda and fairly momentous changes have been happening there. There’s simply less money, other aspects of race, and all sorts of things [there]. Granted, those countries aren’t world powers who have substantial amounts of money invested in the United States. So, there is some hype and a tremendous amount of reality attached to the China story.

Did you say that you perhaps want to go back?

Yeah, I would love to. I got really sidetracked and captivated and enmeshed in Iraq since 2004. Any available income, time, whatever that I’ve had has been invested in finishing my documentary about Iraq, and writing about Iraq. I feel as if it’s been an amazing way to give up 5 years of one’s life.

On the subject of “being side-tracked,” I get that feeling quite a bit in regard to living in China. There’s simply a lot that is interesting. As a photographer and writer, how did you decide on what to invest in and what to table while you were there, without feeling like a chicken with its head cut off?

Well, it was probably a very similar process to you: I did feel like the head-less chicken almost all the time. There was always the feeling like I was missing the boat or not doing the right thing, but in the end, I think my preoccupations paid off: the stories that I pursued then certainly didn’t become stories that went away.

Growing Pains, Pt. 2: Hurried Preparations

2009-04-23T08:25:00.005+08:00

Even in the midst of demolition, people are trying to make preparations for their evacuation in the Wang Jing (望京) District of Beijing. In my last post, I had mentioned that formal edicts to evacuate had been posted a month before. Now, trucks filled with furniture and belongings line the streets, bike-carts whiz by in a hurry and clusters of bricks are all that’s left of once-thriving buildings.

Perhaps the most salient point is the speed at which this is all happening: a large housing complex full of people one week, a gutted skeleton of metal and debris the next.

Those who have left are split between the people who go back to their original rural homes and those who move to neighboring districts. The neighboring district of Sunhe (孙和) has been chosen by most to be the most logical step if they want to stay in the city because of its similar cost of living. Still, some remain, wavering between half-plans and worries.

Some things transition rather quickly. Other things require time.

“We can move; we can find new jobs. But the most affected are the kids,” a Mr. Zhang (father to a child at Wang Jing Elementary School) said, pointing to the problem of finding new schools.

(Below: a hole in the side of one of the major buildings of Wang Jing Elementary School.)

Four primary schools (望京小学、子光学校、育慧学校、育新学校)and two kindergartens (蓝天幼儿园，文英幼儿园) will be stopped or demolished in the process of the dismantling of the district, and estimates say that around 1000 kids will be affected. Most parents are angry over the fact that the notification to move and look for new schools was so short: on March 25th, all families with children were notified that schools would be demolished by April 30th. Many schools of surrounding districts like Sunhe District (孙和) are already at capacity, and are unwilling to take any more students.

The dilemma that most parents face is double-sided: if they go back to their home villages, the quality of education is much worse, but if they look for another school in a surrounding area of peri-urban Beijing, then it’s going to be (1) very expensive (schooling is not subsidized for migrant children like those with residential hukous and the price can vary from school to school) or (2) in a very far location. Although most of the schools originally promised that they’d help parents pay for the tuition for their kids transferring to other schools in the Chaoyang (潮阳) district, most schools have given up because they lack the time and resources to deal with the problem of finding new and willing schools that would except their children, or because they have run into financial trouble of their own. Wang Jing Elementary School is one of the latter, and parents reportedly have been filling the halls every day, complaining about the school’s failure to follow suit.

“They’re just giving us our tuition money back,” one disgruntled father told me outside of Wang Jing school, implying that the responsibility to find and pay for a new school is placed solely on the parents now.

Exacerbating the hurried exodus is the fact that the reason for the destruction of Wang Jing district remains unknown, even perhaps to the Municipal Committee office, who reiterated some of the political rhetoric in newspapers when asked what the reason for the dismantling of the district was for: “抓住新的增长点,(to capture new points of growth) “保增长, ” (to defend growth) and “为企业发展创造更好的条件” (to create better conditions through the development of enterprises). But what will actually be built on this plot of land? No answer.

The lack of a definitive answer hints that the government edict to clear the land is merely an anticipatory step, the details of the plans for construction not yet materialized. Despite billboards of a development plan lining the perimeter of the district, the exact details of this particular plan actually refer to the development of another district, 南搞 (Nangao), south of Wang Jing district. Development plans for Wang Jing District simply do not look like they exist, but that might be trivial in China. Again, this emphasizes the speed at which urbanization and high-rises are expanding. Demolition may not need a ensuing construction plan to happen: the question is what they will develop and build, never if.

Growing Pains, Pt. 1: Signs

2009-04-07T16:15:00.004+08:00

More than the commercial promises of billboard highlife, or the concurrently self-admonishing and self-congratulatory declarations of a civilized city (文明), and perhaps even more than the outmoded advertisements of Olympic （奥运会）glory, the character “拆” (pronounced: chai) finds its way onto the Chinese urban landscape at a frequency that is not only alarming, but ambiguous, blurring the lines between construction, destruction, and deconstruction.

The character means “to demolish” or “to take apart.”

It is found, quite simply, in places of history: old side streets, hutongs, ancient residential areas and schools built in the early 1900s, and even tall buildings that haven’t quite reached the sky. The character is necessitated by the logic of Chinese catch-up urbanization: to build up, you must tear down. Usually scribbled in white chalk, it represents the most rapid rate of urbanization in the history of the world. Hundreds of millions of migrants have already migrated to Chinese cities on the Eastern rim, in hopes of jobs and lives renewed, and more than 300 more are expected to drift to urban centers between 2005 and 2020. In less than 30 years, the percentage of China’s population who live in cities has doubled to over close to half of the total population.

Thus, the country is struggling to develop urban infrastructure at a pace that is commensurate with this movement. In Shanghai alone, 400 new commercial high-rises are built every year. As a result, urban construction needs a huge amount of resources, currently accounting for 40% of the world’s total annual cement consumption and 30% of the annual steel consumption (China Daily, November 7, 2006). An equivalent migration took place in the United States in the 19th century but it took place over a period that was twice as long—50 years—and involved a few million people rather than hundreds of millions of them; China’s equivalent migration and development not only dwarves the analogous histories of other industrialized countries in scale, but the entire process is compressed into a fraction of empirical timescales. Therefore, “拆” (chai) is at the heart of the tradeoff of Chinese modernization: to be rich is to be glorious, but it means leaving the past behind as quickly as possible.

For some, chai is a command to move: pack your bags. One of the unheard costs of development is displacement for already peripatetic populations. For instance, for the small migrant community Dawangjing (大望京) on the outskirts of northeast Beijing, demolition starts on May 1^st. The signs began to appear all over walls and buildings around early March. The government announced that residents must close up any shops or businesses before April 1^st and be moved out the following week. The formal edicts lack a specific reasoning behind why Dawangjing will be dismantled, but the tacit logic is clear: for something better. The other, redemptive side of chai is construction.

Below: a government edict is posted on a electricity pole in Dawangjing.

For that reason, accompanying the pronouncements of chai are government posters that justify the cost of development: for the increase of the communities’ standard of living. For the creation of a better place for citizens.

While this may seem like propagandistic rationalization of the abuse of local authority (China has a history of local authorities clearing land in order to honor under-the-table deals with real estate developers), the need for renovating older, para-urban infrastructure is undeniably clear: many areas still lack proper construction standards, public facilities, indoor plumbing, and waste collection and treatment facilities. These necessities, coupled with 30 years of practical benefits of economic prosperity, seem to have galvanized a faith in both the progress of the direction of the Chinese government, and also the process of tearing down and building up in most citizens that I have come across. Ultimately, the ubiquity of the sign itself is matched only by the regularity at which Chinese citizens deem the process not only inevitable, but necessary.

Below: a poster proclaiming "Believe in the government! Believe in the public! Believe in the future!"

And here, we come to a moral dilemma in which we Westerners might have to wince away both our knee-jerk, distrust for government and canon for individual rights. We walk through the streets, see the demolition signs, see the homes being evicted and the toys in the garbage heaps and want full-scale revolution, or at least riot. Where are the petitions? The picket signs? Where is the indignation? People are actually okay with this?

I can’t help but suspect that there is an element of naturalized helplessness to it. The most common response I receive when asking about issues from those who are most affected is the listless shrug: there’s nothing we can do about it. The white sign is law, so they move on. They pack their bags and find new jobs, the informal economy running the survivalism of a nomadic lifestyle. But what complicates this phenomenon, as well as the justifications of my own self-righteous ire, is the fact that many citizens – even the ones that bear the heaviest costs of development – believe that development, with all the costs of deconstruction and displaced populations, is a good thing in the long run. “This place is run down anyways,” a worker who fixes bikes tells me. “[It’s just] an indispensable condition of developing a better city and country,” says a mother who was finding another school for her son as they moved. “It’s inconvenient, but it will bring a better lifestyle for all,” an elderly woman declares, as she wobbles down the street to buy groceries.

Still, the signs go up, the schools and shops close down, and jobs, education and the prospect of permanent residence are suspended. More often than not, displaced populations have to not only find new methods of income, but also have to find new schools for their children and rebuild social networks. For those caught in the process of rapid development, the cost is steep.

Interview with David Butow: The West, China's Youth, and the Sichuan Earthquake

2009-04-01T13:34:00.014+08:00

David Butow is a photojournalist based in California, USA. Asignments have taken him to Asia, Africa, Europe, the Middle East and South America. His primary interests are social issues and the effects of public policy at local and international levels. Butow also works extensively in the United States covering issues of politics, education, race, immigration and poverty among others.

As a photographer working in the journalistic field, he hopes his craft contributes to an understanding of various peoples, their living conditions, cultural evolutions and the connections that exist between societies around the world. He tries to approach his coverage with as few pre-conceptions as possible, letting the personal experience of seeing and photographing a situation guide his viewpoint. (From his website.)

I had the privilege of interviewing David over the phone last week. It was a pleasure learning about his creative vision and craft, as well as hearing stories about how his interests in China translate into fantastic photographs in the field.

The following is the transcription of the interview.

Can you please first tell a bit about yourself? How did you become interested in (1) photography (2) China and did these strands meet independently or together? Which first?

It began independently. I started taking pictures seriously in high school and I didn’t have a favorite subject matter at first. It took me a few years before I kind of meshed my interests in photography with my interest in current events. I started to follow the news more so than an average teenager so by the time I was a junior or senior, I thought newspaper photography was a really cool thing to do because you could go to places you wouldn’t normally go, see things first-hand, and take pictures. To me, this was a great combination.

So when did you become interested in China?

Well, the funny thing is that I became interested in my last year of college. I went with a friend who set up a trip to several Asian countries – he was older and was already a working photographer at the time – and this was 1986 Tibet had just become open the public. I didn’t really know anything about Tibet or the Dali Lama or Tibetan Buddhism, which I think was a big reason why he wanted to go but it was nevertheless fascinating to me and it was clearly – even today – some parts of Tibet were the most remote parts of the Earth. And I loved the experience; I stayed for around 10 days in Tibet. And on my way out of Tibet, I took a charter plane out from Chengdu and then another charter plane out to Hong Kong, which would eventually take me back to the States.

I see. So no direct flights, huh?

Haha, that’s right. Yes, no direct flights from Lhasa to Los Angeles. So, basically, with China for me, it was Tibet and Chengdu, that’s it– but it wasn’t until 1998 that I went back and that’s when I went to Xinjiang. There, it was sort of a fluke actually, because I was working for a magazine and the photo editor said “oh, we should send you to China,” and it was kind of a offhand comment and they never sent me to China (for a number of years, anyway) so I just went on my own. I started reading about the Uyghurs, there was something about it that subject really interested me and I decided to do a photo series about them.

Let’s talk a little about “The Western Land” series that was published in a part of the Aperture book called China: 50 Years. It says on your website that your “primary interests are social issues and the effects of public policy at local and international levels.” Particularly when most of the economic and political activity is so concentrated on the Eastern rim of China, what made you interested in the West?

That’s a good question. Actually, since I did the series on the Uyghurs, my focus in China HAS shifted to another topic. But with Xinjiang , I was interested in part because it was a place that was almost like a time warp, it had the look and feel of someplace in other time. This group of people was so isolated from much of the change and also isolated from much of Chinese culture in general – they were so different from the Han culture, in terms of religion, art, the social laws that they had, etc.

There seems to be a strong focus on social change in your work. Specifically for China, you seem to focus a lot on the change of China’s youth. I’m interested in this topic too. A lot of ink has been spilled recently about how the one-child policy, combined with an upbringing in a post-Tiananmen, economically-driven society, has left a lot of young people in China materially-focused and in sort of “in limbo” in terms of identity. What has your experience been like as a photographer exploring this issue?

Right, this is my most current work. The Uyghur project was great, but I really think that the China Youth Project touches on larger, broader issues of how people grow up, how people think of themselves and social changes not even limited to China. I kind of finished up Uyghur project in 98 and 99.

It took me a while to find a specific idea. Anyways, I went back to China in 99 to photograph the celebration associated with the country’s 50^th anniversary and then another time to photograph another story. At the time, I was interested in China as a whole, but wasn’t actually sure what in particular I wanted to focus on. I was looking through all the pictures that I took and I felt that the pictures of young people were the most interesting. I thought it was the best way to show all the changes going on in the country. I could talk for hours about this subject, so the more specific the questions, the better.

What would you say to the assertion that “youth are youth” (that is, youth are all materially-focused and in search of identity the world over) and China’s young people are no different than the young people, of say, the West?

Okay, that’s the perfect question. The difference, I think, is that, China is changing so fast and that it’s an incredibly diverse country – particularly the way how people live. You have people living in tiny villages; their family is farmers; they might sleep in a building that doesn’t even have glass windows. Then, you have kids who grew up in Beijing or Shanghai, who have never even had grass underneath their feet, who have grown up in a pretty comfortable life. So, there’s this tremendous diversity and I think the key point for me in this work is that, because the country is changing so fast, it’s almost impossible for any 20 year old to imagine what their life will be like in 20 years by looking at the life of a 40-year old today.. Do you know what I mean? When I got out of college, I could kind of look at someone who was older and think “that’s pretty good; that’s the kind of lifestyle that I want to lead, that’s the kind of job I want to have.” Young people can’t really do that because new possibilities that are emerging so fast; what was available to the generation of current 40 year olds when they were young is completely different than what opportunities young people have now.

Right, we have a generation of youth who are unprecedented in nature, at least in China’s history.

Yeah, exactly. I would maybe even go as far as to say “world history.” If you look at China’s history in the last 100 years, there’s been such an evolution of how society is structured and the value systems: they’ve been turned up side down a few times. And it’s being turned upside down right now. And when this happens, it’s very hard to predict what people are going to find important.

Also, I just wanted to add one more point an aspect of the subject matter that appeals to me: the fact that about 70% of the kids in China are only-children [plural form of 'only-child']. I’m an only child myself and I identify with that personally. And another thing: it’s an interesting paradox in this group that you have all these children and they’re suddenly becoming all self-aware and society is actually encouraging them to follow their own dreams and ambitions. But it’s happening in a place where, traditionally, the group is more important.

Right, as the country is opening up, there seems to be this push of self-identity, ambition and the focus on the self (and in some cases selfishness) mingling with the old, communal identity – the focus on the group, the nation and the larger whole – in the minds of the young people that I’ve met.

Right, I find that a really interesting idea.

In an environment where you’re looking at quite complex identity issues, how much do you research and talk to people, as opposed to merely shoot? How do you balance spontaneity with planning and pre-visualization?

Right, the planning aspect is actually quite simple in the fact that I just go to places that might have some good activity and just take pictures. I might hear about a particular event somewhere and just go.

Now, I can’t speak Mandarin so I can’t interact too much. So, if I’m with a friend who speaks Mandarin, he or she can talk to the people that I’m interested in photographing and tell them what I’m up to. But a lot of the time, I’m just working alone and someone who speaks English will come up to me and ask me what I’m doing. But I don’t really mind, also, not talking to people also. I sometimes just talk to people out of courtesy and ideally, actually, I can just mesh into the background. That’s the idea: I can just show up and kind of let things unfold in front of the camera. The less self-conscious people are, the less aware of my presence people are, the better. Whatever it takes to minimize the impact of my presence on the environment, that’s what I try to do.

How do obtain access to intimate environments, such as those found in your photo essay called “China Youth?” A lot of the pictures seem to be in people’s rooms and homes, so it doesn’t seem like a place where you can exactly wander into. Quite simply, how do you find these young people and how do you build the rapport that’s necessary to go into these environments?

Yes, getting into houses is actually quite difficult, more difficult than back in the States. I’ll ask friends of friends to go into the houses, and actually, most of the time they’ll say no.

It [an oppurtunity for photography] might have been something that we planned to do for photography, but a lot of the times, it’s just me taking pictures of them while just hanging out – it’s true then. That’s sometimes the only way I can get them on camera.

How long did this photo series take? I imagine that building the rapport and friendships of your subjects takes a long time.

Yeah, I was lucky to have a friend who lived in Shanghai and I kind of followed him around. I met him in Indonesia – we were both covering the Tsunami. So, I happened to go to Shanghai a couple of months later and met up with this guy and it was through him that I met a lot of other people. Through the course of two or three trips, I became really good friends with these people. So it was through this way – that is, a friendship with a group of people that I often got pictures because I had my camera with me when we were hanging out.

For instance, one of my favorite shots from this series is a shot of two women hugging each other on New Years eve. You can’t actually see their faces and it’s kind of mysterious. Those are actually just two friends of mine. They were just doing that naturally. We were hanging out and it was then that I photographed them.

Again, on the topic of access, you did another photojournalistic essay called “Earthquake in China” on aftermath of the 8.0 magnitude earthquake that devastated China’s Sichuan province. How long did it take for you to hear about the earthquake and decide whether or not you wanted to go? Can you tell us a bit about how you got to witness the events you did? (How you got in, how you organized your work while you got there, etc.?)

Well, I left the next day. It happened around 2pm in the afternoon and I left the next day. probably should have left the day of. I first flew to Chongqing and it was quite far from Chengdu. I couldn’t get into Chengdu until early in the next morning after I left, which was two days after the earthquake.

And was it chaotic when you got there? I feel as if I would feel like a chicken with its head cut off if I were there when you went.

It was really chaotic, primarily because of my non-existent language skills. And I actually didn’t have anyone to help me out in terms of transportation, and that was the biggest issue of it all, that is of transportation: getting to the earthquake zone to the places I wanted to go. And I did that by a variety of ways, but it was hard to figure out where to go to – information was still getting out at that point.

One of the first places I went to was Duyjinyan, that was pretty badly hit and relatively easy to cover. A day or two later, I was in Beichuan, and among all the places, that was the worst. So once I got there, it was pretty easy for me to figure out what to do. I had covered a few other disasters before so I had some experience. So, it was really the transportation issue [that was the hardest.] From a logistical standpoint, it wasn’t really that difficult once I was on the scene.

So once you were on the scene, what were your priorities? Where were the places to go and where did you stay yourself?

I took a sleeping bag with me and a backpack and I brought some food and made sure I had some water when I went into troubled areas. So, yeah, I carried enough water to last me at least a day and was pretty self –contained. My priority was to go to places where things were still happening. Even several days after the earthquake, people were still being rescued. Afterwards, you start to scoping out pictures of just the damage, the aftermath, and how the survivors are coping with the situation. There weren’t too many survivors left by the time I got there and there was really no place for them to stay in Beichuan. They all left the town and moved up the hill out of the valley by the time I got there. I did see one really dramatic rescue, but for the most part, going in there was really about photographing the ruins. The soldiers were there collecting the bodies and some of the people started to come back to look at the places where their relatives were lost and they started burning money for them – those are the type of things I was photographing.

There has been a lot of talk about how, despite the earthquake being a devastating and tragic event, it was really an event that united the country, the compassionate acts of NGOs, soldiers and individual volunteers themselves awakening a new sort of nationalism for a lot of the Chinese. While on the ground, was this your experience as well? What kind of volunteerism did you see while you were there and which groups of people were helping?

Right, I really noticed all of that. Actually, the experience really changed my fundamental perception of the Chinese people. Because so much of my exposure prior to the earthquake was surrounding glitzy night-club scenes and stuff like that – very materialistic and self-focused places – this was a real different place for me. And I saw just a ton of volunteerism, in every capacity. I mean, I saw the dedication of the military, the soldiers (of course, they weren’t volunteers), but they worked really hard. The rescue workers were really dedicated; there were a lot of people who came from other cities and provinces just to help out. For instance, the guy who gave me a couple of long rides to and from Beichuan: he was just a volunteer from somewhere really far away like Guangzhou. He had a truck or van and he just drove all the way there just to help out. So it was a really fantastic experience for me.

Actually, in the final day before I left Chengdu there was this huge rally in the center of the city. There was so much camaraderie and spirit there. They were all shouting “Chung Hua Jiao! Chung Hua Jiao!!”. I think, because the Olympics were that year, there was this incredible sense of national pride. And because the rescue work was so well planned and executed, it was sort of a point of pride for most of the Chinese there.

I can’t stress the fact enough that so many people helped out. (You can read about it in the essay here). I just got help while I was there in so many different ways. There was this incredible sense of unity, compassion and empathy.

Wow, that sounds great.

Yeah, it was great. You know, there’s that cliché about good things coming out of tragedy, but I could really see it tangibly.

I’m not sure if this is applicable, because I’m sure the subject matter is quite different, but I’ve talked to a few photographers who photograph sensitive issues (riots, etc.) in China. They’ll often be approached with at best a little bit of distrust and at worst, some pretty bad antagonism. Was this the case with photographing the earthquake? Were there any circumstances where you weren’t allowed to photograph?

Very rarely. There was just one time in Dugjianyan, outside of a hospital and it was sort of a chaotic scene. The security guards kept me from taking pictures. And there was another time outside of a funeral and a few soldiers told me stop. They weren’t antagonistic; they just told I couldn’t take pictures. But in general: no, people were very accommodating and knew exactly why I was there. There was so much press coverage from inside the country alone. And the press coverage outside was even generally pretty positive; it showed that the government reacted pretty well and quickly. So, both emotionally and officially, I think the government was prepared for all the press coverage and attention because of the Olympics.

One last question: do you see any interesting and potential projects in China for yourself in the near future?

Not at the moment. There are a lot of things to do there and it’s still very fascinating to me, but for the moment, I’m looking forward to working more in the US. I think there’s a lot going on here. I’m sort of putting China on the shelf for a little bit, but I’m sure I’ll go back.

Thoughts on Hukou System (From My Visit to a Migrant Children School)

2009-03-29T23:43:00.013+08:00

I've been meaning to talk a bit about China's migrant populations for a while now, but have felt that I was unprepared to do the phenomenon justice: how do you understand the implications of the largest known population movement in the history of mankind?

You don't. I presume you merely chip away at it, little by little, gaining little specks of understanding along the way.

Last Thursday's trip to a migrant school (school specifically for the children of migrant workers) with a few Tsinghua University Masters in Int'l Development students was not only one of those "little specks" of revelations, it was also a lot of fun.

One interesting point was when I went around the room, asking each of the kids where they were from: Zhejiang, Henan, Anhui, Shanxi, Sichuan, etc. They were from all around the country. This really didn't come as a surprise, as migrants will come from all around to work in major cities on the Eastern rim. Yet, the fact that all the kids went to the same school in Beijing was in stark contrast to a map I recently saw in Zhang Li's book "Strangers in the City: Reconfigurations of Space, Power, and Social Networks Within China's Floating Population": a map similar to this one, plotted with different colors corresponding to different "migrant settlements" around the city. Each settlement consisted of migrants coming from one distinct province: Anhui district, Zhejiang district, etc.

I asked one of the school administrators about this and he told me that, although this was true 10 or more years ago, it was no longer true: migrants from different provinces can be found in one place and the pools of migrant communities were no longer divided by provincial origin. The school's diversity was representative of this phenomenon.

When I asked about how the school was funded, I couldn't quite get a clear answer. The best I could get was a "it's free for the children and the teachers are usually better than what they [the migrant children] could get in their hometowns." Indeed, most all the teachers did seem like they sincerely wanted to teach. Yet, I still couldn't wrap my head around just exactly how a school like that could exist without government funding or private payments from the migrant families. Donations, perhaps?

China's government has talked a lot about granting migrant workers' rights and alleviating strain from the already-ailing social safety nets. Agricultural subsidies, educational subsidies, unemployment subsidies, urban residential insurance pooling, and tax breaks all make up recent policy manifestations of a growing concern for China's floating populations.

Yet all these might remain only palliative to the fundamental problem of the hukou system in dealing with the complex problem of transitional populations and the social infrastructure that's necessary to accommodate these changes. Migrant workers have to obtain hukou status (local household residential status) in order to public services such as municipal health, free grade school education or retirement benefits like an ordinary urban citizen would, and are effectively relegated to a socioeconomic status of an illegal alien with it. In terms of schooling, children of migrant workers are not allowed to enter subsidized city schools despite the fact that they were born in the city because the hukou is hereditary: if your parents didn't have it, you don't have it.

However, in terms of limiting people to the designated area requirements of his/her hukou, the system has largely broken down - in practice - under the incentive of China's market reforms: it became possible to migrate and gain an unofficial job without a hukou residence permit. Furthermore, the relaxations in the hukou system after the 1990s have included the permission to buy temporary urban residency permits, decreased permit prices, the ability to obtain hukou status with a college degree and the recent elimination between the distinction between "argricultural" and "non-agricultural" status.

These changes, plus the very mass migration of millions of migrants into cities against the control of the hukou (the hukou system was originally a tool of China's planned economy to limit migration, ensure cheap labor, and minimize the stress on government services) give Western outsiders a glimmer of hope that the hukou system might one day be abolished.

Yet, Charles Minzer, associate professor of law at my alma matter （holler）, Washington University in St. Louis, disagrees:

"This is wrong. The Chinese hukou system is not disappearing. But it is mutating...[It] is not a proposal to wipe out the hukou system entirely. It is a call to gradually allow those migrants deemed desirable, and who satisfy particular criteria, to obtain urban hukou registration. This is, in fact, entirely consistent with the general trend of Chinese hukou reforms over the past twenty years."

Professor Minzer goes onto say that "desirable" immigrants who are allowed hukou status are usually those who can prove that they have (1) a "fixed place of living" and (2) a "stable source of income." Yet, the fact that the global economic crisis has caused such severe unemployment in migrant populations has proven that the possibility of a stable income for migrant workers would be precarious at best.

Both the slow reform and retaining of the hukou system seems to characterize the Beijing balancing act: a steady change that cautiously integrates urban and rural populations and manpower without overwhelming the status quo infrastructural institutions such as healthcare, education and housing. Schools such as the one I visited are sort of a stopgap measure until real policy changes from the institutional level comes. We'll certainly see these changes (relaxations) continue, as the hukou is widely recognized as an impediment to economic development.

On a tangential note, it was great to not only see the developments of the school, but also to just hang out with the kids. I've never seen a group of kids so excited at a camera. More to come and more pictures below.

Less Than You Think, or Want to Think

2009-03-16T18:45:00.004+08:00

I was at an event at the Beijing International Literary Festival the other day entitled "Destination China." The two speakers - Zackary Mexico (who wrote China Underground) and James West (who wrote Beijing Blur) - talked about subversive and youth culture and the "issues occupying today’s youth in China [that] are arguably not those which shaped their parents" (from the event description).

One point that West (who I thought was enormously eloquent and honest) made was the fact that we (mostly referring to Western expats living in China) would like to think that subversive and non-mainstream culture and art are a lot more thriving than it really is. In reality, participants still only really compose a small fraction of China, practically non-existent percentage-wise.

Paradoxically, we're also a bit disappointed when subversive culture doesn't get the reaction that we would like it to get. When things are actually allowed, it takes a bit of edginess away from the endeavor. Oh, the cops actually didn't come? They allowed that concert or rally? I can hear the disappointment of those new to China when I tell them that a simple proxy server will evade China's net nanny or when my friends back home ask me "So can the Chinese talk about Tiananmen?" and I reply with "Well, it's not that they're not allowed. They just don't."

It's hard as a Westerner (particularly a Westerner who reads NYTimes) to come to the realization that there are quite a few people in China who live quite content lifestyles, despite being governed by an authoritarian regime.

We make analogies to golden, Renaissance ages like Brooklyn in the 80s, not knowing how long this whole thing will take. China has a habit of condensing the history of the West into a fraction of empirical timescales. I hear my Chinese economist friends always boast that "China has done in 30 years what the West took in 100." But is the same true, in terms of art and culture? Or can this not be charted on a linear path, like development or economics?

Few Thoughts on Recent Brookings Report

2009-02-09T15:51:00.006+08:00

The John L. Thornton Center at Brookings issued a report called “Overcoming Obstacles to U.S.-China Cooperation on Climate Change” last week. The report is intended to help senior leadership in both countries (from Brookings website):

• understand relevant conditions in the other country
• appreciate the priorities and constraints of counterparts across the Pacific
• take action to control greenhouse gas emissions at home
• develop specific avenues of bilateral cooperation
• facilitate agreement in multilateral negotiations on these topics

Overall, the report was excellent, not only in “setting the stage” (politically and economically), but also summarizing what’s been done in both countries currently and giving a rather comprehensive list of recommendations of what could/should be done in the future.

A Few Thoughts

1. Let’s Be Clear

I applaud Brookings for not beating around the bush that is distrust: it’s one thing to be different countries with “different histories, different cultures, and different perspectives” and quite another to actively distrust each other, the tone of the latter dominating much of the “deadlock” of climate talks, with both sides assuming “at worst” perspectives of each other. China, at worst: a country hiding behind the victimized shell of “developing country” (an excuse to always have things on their terms) while already surpassing the US in emissions. The US, at worst: a country fixated on “zero-sum” economics trying to limit China’s economic “turn,” despite the last 30 years of Chinese development meaning a population the size of the US being pulled out of poverty.

In this regard, I don’t think the stress of “mutual understanding,” “acknowledging [the] legitimacy of each others perspectives,” etc. is merely rhetorical fluff.

2. Inter and Intra

“China’s leaders also have competing environmental con¬cerns, and the environmental community there is not unani¬mous regarding giving priority to climate change. The most pressing immediate environmental problems are enhancing the amount of usable water and reducing suspended particu¬late matter in the air.”

This delineates the distinction between inter-country and intra-country environmental issues, which sometimes get lost in the fact that global warming is inherently a trans-continental issue that has little regard for country lines. Still, this is a useful distinction (though not a great excuse to ignore global climate change), as not every issue can be packaged and weighed by the meter stick of CO2. It also points to the fact that the Chinese government is getting pressure on both sides: within China and internationally.

3. The Focus on Clean Energy

“Clean energy” had a pretty primary role in the entire report (using the phrase 106 times and including the call for ongoing senior dialogues to be called “US-China Clean Energy Partnership” (italics added by me)), as mentioned by China Environmental Law. The report itself makes it clear why this was so:

“’Clean Energy’ provides a more politically attractive framework for U.S.-China bilateral cooperation than does climate change per se.”

And although it’s a great meeting point of mutual goals and intersection of technology/political feasibility/climate mitigation, I’m wondering if this will merely delay any hard, initial emission commitments. It highlights a great example of the 7th recommendation (“Seek Common Ground on Commitments”), yet common ground can’t replace the inevitable goal of climate talks: concession, compromises and hopefully, commitment.

Wang Juan

2009-01-27T22:40:00.002+08:00

The "Queen" of Beijing Folk.

We decided to do the shoot on Hou Hai, which was cool and horrible. Cool, because it was frozen over and it allowed for a lot of creativity to bounce lights on the ice for interesting effects. Horrible, because it was, well, cold.

So cold that I found my lights misfiring like crazy. Interestingly enough, the silhouetted effect I got in a few of my misfired pictures came out rather nicely.

Oh, and she's probably one of the nicest musicians I've ever met. That's something I could really get used to here in China: nice, down to earth musicians.

Obama

2009-01-21T02:59:00.001+08:00

Obama, originally uploaded by rdx913.

I was talking with Liz online today and I said something to the point of “I hope that young, sometimes-critical, liberal people can let them celebrate today.” I later realized what I really meant: I hope that *I* can let myself celebrate today.

It’s that half-empty thing. Don’t overreact, my mind says. Pessimism is tricky thing because it’s such a damn good shield. If you don’t have high expectations, you can’t be let down. On the one hand, I do think there’s a bit of over-the-top-ness to NYTimes and the media coverage. There’s a sense of giving people what they want to hear. For instance: cabinet picks. Although I’m elated by most of Obama’s cabinet picks (Chu! Gates! Jones! Solis! Shinsheki! The all-star team busts through the Obama banner…), we can’t honestly say it’s been an absolute perfect transition. There was the whole Blago scandal (and subsequent stonewalling from his Chief of Staff), Richardson’s withdrawal, the fact that Holbrooke and Geithner both weren’t vetted, and his iffy pick for leading the CIA (without telling the Chairmen of Intelligence).

But those just might be eclipsed by the significance of it all. Perhaps the most comforting answer to my own hesitation and “we’ll-see-ism” is the fact that we’re already seeing the effects of his story, administration and campaign on American society even before he’s President. And that’s the thing: some of his promise, in a way, has *already* been met by the implications of his very inauguration. The country has already changed – in a huge way. “Hope” and “change” can remain fluffy and abstract things, but one thing is certain: public opinion and the attitudes of people matter. International opinion matters. Credit among world leaders matter. Confidence (in our government, our country, ourselves) matters and goes a long way in every sphere, but perhaps most notably, the financial one: can investors (foreign or otherwise) believe in the strength of the US markets? This affects us on a very, practical level. So too, Obama has affected us (for good) on a very, practical level. And on an emotional/inspirational/ideological level? That’s been covered, by, well, everyone. I can’t say enough.

Change, even here, in me. I was on the subway with a Chinese friend who’s learning English and she showed me her transcriptions of Obama’s entire acceptance speech, written by hand, in her notebook. I was reading it and I couldn’t help feel a bit of pride – patriotism even – swell up in me. I was particularly struck by one line: “It grew from the young people who rejected the myth of their generation’s apathy.” And then I realized: it *is* looked down upon (in some circles and certainly my own mind) to be patriotic, barring intentional irony. Why is this? Cheesiness? Perhaps a historic relic deep-rooted in us that warns us of jingoism? Or perhaps the sneaky vice of political stoicism, that too-cool-for-politics sort of elevation above the noisemaking?

The problem with being my age at this time in history is the fact that the birth of my own political-consciousness coincides directly with something historically unprecedented. So I’m always second-guessing: did that happen before? Is this special and particular to Obama, or was it merely the fact that, the last time around, I was too busy playing Dungeons and Dragons?

But the fact is that I *do* care. And that’s indicative of something. That’s indicative of something in him.

Ok, he’s not the Second Coming. He’s our next President of the United States. But that’s reason enough to celebrate.

Beijing Music “Scene,” p. 1

2009-01-16T19:10:00.002+08:00

There have been a few reasons why the last few entries have all been about band photography, but primarily, it’s because of this: I really think Beijing is in its infant stages of a thriving music epicenter.

Now, I know there are a lot of assumptions and undertones to that last comment. For some music fanatics, the above comment could be taken to mean “I really think Beijing is going to become ‘big’ or mainstream soon,” which could be taken as musical heresy. But seriously, before you get your skinny jeans all riled up, consider this: Beijing has some all the circumstances for a great music community to exist. Loads of talent, a changing social landscape, with enough political/economic pressure to allow lots of angsty fermentation, an orthodox musical mainstream (canto/sugar pop) to act as a backdrop to highlight an element of subversiveness, and a precedent to actually make a living as an artist, recently created by the explosive investment by patrons of Beijing visual artists after the Olympics. “The only thing it lacked was a good audience,” says Michael Pettis, owner of D22, a hub of Beijing rock in the Haidian District.

It’s gonna be the next big thing! The future! I swear!

It’s trite, but I feel as if “something big” is happening. It’s exciting. It really is. I was talking to a few of the owners of 2 Kolegas and Mao Live (two of a small number of music venues here in Beijing), and a common thread I took away from both conversations was that there was a good deal of competition between music venues, when the exact opposite used to be true: there wasn’t enough of an audience to warrant venues to exist even as islands, let alone compete for customers. New bands are popping up left and right, from folk, to hip hop, to electro-funk. Shows are filling up. Even the sugary-sweet pop musical tastes of most Chinese audiences are beginning to be replaced by a more band-oriented sound.

Lace up those chucks; it’s time to be a part of something trendy. Or soon to be.

More of 80 Portraits

2009-01-16T18:47:00.002+08:00

I've been pretty busy with Fulbright work ('work' work) lately, but this new-found flu is helping me get to some photos that I need to work through.

Happy Chinese New Year!

Hanggai

2009-01-06T19:52:00.003+08:00

Band I shot a week ago.

Really interesting sound: mongolian throat singing, modern bass/drum lines and traditional Chinese string instruments and guitars.

www.hanggai.co.uk/

I left the white balance a little blue on accident and I quite like the effect of it. Sandwich them between a sb-800 camera right in a shoot through umbrella and a snooted sb-600 behind them and camera left. The problem with this is, the cool silhouetted rim look that I got with the guy on the left slowly disappears as it gets to the bassist far right. I think that's one of the benefits of having a softbox instead of an umbrella: the light seems more directional, instead of spilling everywhere in varied angles.

I had them line up right behind each other and used a telephoto (70mm?) to compress the perspective.

From behind

Requisite motorcycle shot

All of a sudden, I saw them get a pile of sticks together and we had a fire.

The bare flashes did some interesting criss-crossing flare that I thought gave it a nice touch. That's too bad that the drummer's face is pretty much completely clipped by the light.

I've had some second thoughts on Nikon's proprietary wireless flash system (CLS) as of late, (1) because I've been shooting pretty much exclusively in manual (as opposed to TTL), (2) the line of sight triggering has been a bit limiting and (3) I find myself needing more than 2 lights a lot of the times.

Um, yeah.

They were some of the goofiest guys I've ever had the privilege to shoot.

Painting with Light

2009-01-04T23:56:00.005+08:00

A small thing I've realized in China is the huge amount of texture - everywhere.

Flattering or not, there just seems to be more of it over here. I'm not sure if this is actually true or if I've just been a bit more aware of it as of late.

Outside of my planned shoots and really, really low-light stuff, I think I've really just been smitten with my lightweight "walk-around" setup: Panasonic LX-3 point and shoot, a retractable monopod, an external flash, a small softbox that I can velcro onto the flash, and a radio trigger.

For you gear-heads, I don't use the monopod at all for my camera. Instead, I attach the flash head to the end of the monopod (sometimes with softbox attached), and extend one arm out to flash my subjects from an off-camera axis, the directional light revealing dimensionality and texture. The monopod just gives me more reach for a technique that I usually already do - flash in one hand, camera in the other. Directing light off-axis is somewhat the opposite of on-camera, "fill-flash": instead of lifting shadows, you're creating them. The 1/128th manual power setting on the SB-800 really helps keep it subtle too.

I've really enjoyed just walking around, looking at simple compositions and coaxing as much interesting texture out of them as possible.

Focus

2008-12-23T00:52:00.000+08:00

I need to focus. Perhaps a bit less on photography and a bit more on other things. I think I struggle with this.

On an inconsistent note, here are more pictures:

More Portraits

2008-12-14T01:40:00.003+08:00

One thing I don't want this portrait project to turn into is a black and white portrait project.

But some of these turn out great in black and white.

Local Artist

2008-12-09T12:35:00.004+08:00

So I was feeling a bit listless, walking around the Bund last month. I had my camera, a few flashes and stands (heavy) in my backpack and was a bit disappointed that I didn't get to use them throughout the day.

There's this idea of "showing up" that I've been adopting for the last few months: it's about being there, aligning yourself in the right place at the right time. I think it's an idea applied well for a life in China. It's that Heisenberg-ian concept of chance encounters and a coincidental happenings and the fact that all you can do is try to increase your probabilities.

I'm not sure if that made any sense. All to say that I've been carrying lots of gear for seemingly no reason.

Or so I thought. But I was happy to come across a local artist who was actually eager to have his picture taken. This was the first time I set up an umbrella, flash and stand and just started asking anyone who walked by to be photographed. Most would just say 'no, no photograph,' but all of a sudden, there's this guy actually putting down his pencils and sketches down to be photographed.

He was a local sketch artist. He walks around the Bund (highly commercialized pier) and asks people if they want to be sketched. Why did he want a picture? Apparently, he ran away from his art 师傅(master; teacher) in Beijing many years ago to pursue a girl in Shanghai. He followed her here and eventually set up shop, not talking to his 师傅 for over 10 years. He wanted to send a picture to him, letting his old teacher know that he was indeed ok and successful.

So, we agreed to do a little art-swap: he'd sketch me if I'd take his picture and e-mail it to him. So, we took his picture on the Bundt and then walked over to his friends noodle place and I had a bowl of noodles as he sketched. He made me sign his "yearbook" - a book of every customer he's ever had. Here are the finished products:

It's embarassing because I don't think either of our pictures are very good. But still, it's an interesting concept: taking pictures of artists who usually always render other people in their work.

poking fun

2008-12-07T22:37:00.003+08:00

a few quotes:

"Yeah, but it's not just classrooms where you have the same conversations over and over again. ('economic growth! cultural exchange!') It's also in the streets. 'Do you like China? Do you like China? Do you like the US? or China? And do you like China?' Occasionally, I'll just say 'no' for diversity. Conversational will stop for 10 seconds (sarcasm isn't popular here) and then I'll be like 'no, no just kidding' and we'll be friends again."

"In Taiwan, things are more open and free here and it's great to see them use this at every possible occasion. For instance, womens fashion: 'Hey, let's wear long, pocka-dot socks with everything! And the more gem-studded accessories the better!'"

"The idea of a gym and personal fitness is a relatively new thing here. So we have a sort of 80s concept of the gym being an uber-sexy place to be: people smoking, bottled alcohol on the shelves and lots of people in tight spandex."

Referring to the expat scene: "I've never met a group of people who are so interesting for all the wrong reasons. This, plus the very neurosis that drove them from their mother countries makes for a good and insane time."

80 Portraits, 80 Homes

2008-12-06T00:06:00.002+08:00

So I decided to make a small personal photo project about some photos I took in Taishi village.

A few sneak-peaks, because I'm really excited.

More to come!

IPRs as Catalyst for Low-Carbon Tech

2008-11-29T18:20:00.002+08:00

Every once in a while, I look at an article and think "hm, I may retrospectively say 'this article changed my life path significantly' in the future." It may be the case for this articulate one on intellectual property rights. Admittedly dry, if that's not your bag.

Nonetheless, here are some quotes from the second part of "Technology in a warming world," where he talks about intellectual property rights (IPR) as a catalyst for low-carbon technologies.

"The fastest and most effective route to delivering new low-carbon products will be through the marketplace. Strong IPRs are necessary for this, with policy interventions required to price in the externalities so that the price signals will drive the market."

"The start of the industrial revolution in Britain is a vivid reminder of what we owe to the patent system and its influence on investment in high-risk, new technologies. The development of the steam engine by James Watt was possible only because the patent system enabled him to raise large sums of money to continue the development of his engine over a long period, despite initial failures and the bankruptcy of his first backer. The Victorian industrialists, using the patent system to its full effect, then went on to transform the economic welfare of the west over the next 250 years."

"The volume of technology development necessary to make a real difference in low-carbon technology competitiveness is likely to be very high. In order to develop new low-carbon technologies, businesses will need to invest in their development. In order to attract sufficient resources, those investments need the incentive of generating attractive and sustained returns if they successfully create new products. IPRs, particularly patents, provide that incentive. They provide clarity and certainty about the ability to capture the revenue streams which are created when investment is successful. Businesses will invest in risky projects if they have reasonable certainty, provided by IPRs, that they will be able to benefit from success – even if the probability of success is low. "

"With clarity of ownership comes freedom to choose how that ownership right will be exercised. An example is open source software: copyright is an essential IPR underpinning open source. Without it you can neither specify what you are putting into open source nor demonstrate that it is not owned by someone else. Open source is a good example of both confusion in IPR terminology and misunderstandings about the role of IPR. The correct definition of open source is that the source code is open and anyone is free to develop it. Yet many people think it means “free software without IPRs”: open source only works if there are IPRs, because the IPRs define what is being placed in the public domain and that no one else can lay claim to it. The consumer has to pay for much open source software because it is up to the developer of such software whether they charge for it or not. Open source is a different business model for software, but based wholly on the pre-existence of IPRs, predominantly copyrights."

I'm Inviting David Brooks to My Future Wedding

2008-11-16T16:03:00.002+08:00

And I'm asking him to wear that tie.

A few tidbits of his last op-ed column titled "Bailout to Nowhere":

"Not so long ago, corporate giants with names like PanAm, ITT and Montgomery Ward roamed the earth. They faded and were replaced by new companies with names like Microsoft, Southwest Airlines and Target. The U.S. became famous for this pattern of decay and new growth. Over time, American government built a bigger safety net so workers could survive the vicissitudes of this creative destruction — with unemployment insurance and soon, one hopes, health care security. But the government has generally not interfered in the dynamic process itself, which is the source of the country’s prosperity."

"Granting immortality to Detroit’s Big Three does not enhance creative destruction. It retards it."

"It is all a reminder that the biggest threat to a healthy economy is not the socialists of campaign lore. It’s C.E.O.’s. It’s politically powerful crony capitalists who use their influence to create a stagnant corporate welfare state."

I agree with him, despite my being a Michiganer. Hell, my dad used to work for Ford. But still, a bailout of this type would be worse than a bandaid; it'd veritably conceal the very flaws that need to be changed in the industry.

Inner Climate

2008-11-14T00:58:00.003+08:00

Okay, I know: that phrase sounds like something out of a self-help book. But really, I need to learn how to cultivate this, particularly in a city like Shanghai.

On a more serious note, I feel like a bit of thick skin is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, you have to grow it to survive. On the other hand, it puts you at risk of becoming what we in the business call an asshole.

Case 1: Today, I was walking on the road when I passed by a small shack. What led me to it was the sound coming from inside: some high pitched, primal screaming that was louder than even the nearby construction. I looked inside and saw 10 dogs in tiny cages, clawing at every direction and literally going crazy. I kid you not: the barking had the desperation of torture, the sound of something worse than even a swift death. I had no idea how long they were in there for, but I couldn't stand it. I felt sick.

Who was responsible for them? Where were the keys? How long were they in there for and to what destination are they to go? Can I walk away from this?

Case 2: I find a nearby coffee shop and go in to do some work. A guy sits down to the table next to me and starts sobbing, in huge waves of low-toned weeping. Every five seconds, he takes in another deep breath and starts the weeping-broken-by-exasperations. The coffee shop is in large, 3-story lobby of a nice hotel, so his voice reverberates around the entire room, his groans wrapping around us like aluminum foil. I've seen a few grown men cry in front of me before, but never like this.

This continues for 45 minutes. Although I try to avoid staring, I couldn't help but look around a few times to see the reactions, or lackthereof from the other people around him: absolutely nothing. Not a look of concern, a raised eyebrow or even a bat of an eye. Of course, there's the argument of "don't look at him or he'll feel worse," but even if that was true, you'd still find people looking rather uncomfortable.

Where are the lines that draw the boundaries between the public and private? How hard must this separation be to be sane here?

I Lost My Phone

2008-11-11T23:33:00.002+08:00

It was a simple mistake that involved me being late to dinner with my grandpa, an insanely slow, 30min. cab ride in the middle of Shanghai traffic, and me rushing off and not noticing a certain 'thud' on the seat.

But mostly, it was carelessness.

And as trite as it sounds, I realized how much I depend on my cell phone, particularly when many of my contacts are Chinese and don't use Facebook or Gmail. I only have their numbers.

Now, time to rebuild my life.

What I'm Reading (08.11.10)

2008-11-10T14:01:00.002+08:00

1. A friendly reminder of what I missed a few days ago. Also, a friendly reminder of how much I miss breaking.

2. How long before we can see Chinese cars in the United States? If the Japanese and Korean manufacturers already penetrated the market, why not Chinese? And what does this mean for our already deflated automotive industry?

3. "Beyond the show room details, this stands as a visual evidence of the disaster capitalism and terror war culture we now must reverse." No more, man!

4. Halloween in Beijing was awesome. I went to the "Death Prom," which might have been the best Halloween party I've ever been to. The best costume though? It goes to a five-year old.

5. Photography as weapon. One of the reasons I love photography is the philosophical (endless) implications it may bring up. Case and point: what, exactly, is "responsible" photography? Where is the line between documenting and making, chronicling and manipulating? I would post a Roland Barthes quote here if I had more time.

6. Oh, and James Nachtewey - another fantastic photographer whose vision of art is inextricably tied to his hopes/ideals for social change. Stunning video of what that vision and lots of perseverance can do.

7. Implications and predictions for the China stimulus package. Interestingly enough, the thing that raised my eyebrow the most was the fact that the most economically responsible thing that China can do right now is invest in its own economy.

8. Sarah Palin, Sarah Palin. I've never found such annoyance for any political figure as I do her. Embarrassingly enough, I find a weird itch in this: I spend too much time trying to dislike her. Again, more, itches (from her own party).

9. Ahhh, this sums up the clashing mentalities - and consequently, stalmates - during climate change talks so well. I love how she gives a dual-perspective look on how China can be seen as both perpetrator and victim when it comes to climate change.

What I'm Reading (11.02.08)

2008-11-03T11:20:00.003+08:00

1. The huge science journal, Nature, endorses Obama. Not a big surprise what NIH money drying up, but another ostensibly-tangential-to-politics magazine supporting Obama and his science-friendly(er) platform is a big reminder of the "more than politics" scope of this election.

On the flip side, if I were a Republican, I'd be so frustrated at the ever-increasing liberal media bias. Quite simply, it's in. Magazines, newspapers, etc. can't lose if they endorse Obama. He's an almost risk-free marketing investment. In my opinion, two things can happen upon an endorsement: (1) current customers see endorsement and existing consumer allegiance merely solidifies or (2) potential customers who don't already read/subscribe to magazine/journal will give it a chance upon seeing an Obama endorsement. What probably won't happen or happens very little: a potential customer who was originally on the fence is dissuaded from reading upon seeing a political leaning a little too left. Or even less: an existing customer will revoke their allegiances to mag/journal upon Obama endorsement. I think the logic is that those who would do so would not be a potential customer in the first place.

2. Pilen-concept bike. This is 11th on my "ridiculously designed luxury piece" list that I will never buy but admire from afar. It is the Le Mans sports car of fixie bikes.

3. The ideological future of conservatism/the right. Two immediate reactions: (1) this is going to be interesting and (2) I need to grow a beard.

4. Finally, some more talk on China. I support Obama overall, but I agree with McCain's take on China more.

5. A bit more on the new land reform policies/debates coming out of the Third Plenary sessions. This is so exciting and will really change urbanism and city-life here in China.

6. Paul C. Buff is a genius. Maker of Alien Bees and White Lightning, he's come out with yet another breakthrough in the off-camera flash world. Why? (1) ITTL/eTTL output control at the base of your camera. This means the convenience of Nikon CLS with reliability of radio triggers. (2) You can control up to 16 lights. (3) Individual output levels. (4) Increased shutter sync-speed (up to 1/2500?!).

Downsides? Can only be used with Paul C. Buff-made lights. This means no Nikon or Canon speedlights, nor the trusty and cheap Vivitar 285. Still, an amazing step in wireless lights technology.

A Few Numbers

2008-10-29T12:15:00.002+08:00

China is home to 16 out of the top 20 most polluted cities.

Nearly half (at least 300 million) of China's men smoke.

Much talk has been given to (particularly Beijing) outdoor pollution (smog, etc.), but research has shown that indoor air quality can be up to 10 times as worse as the outdoor prevailing smog.

Nearly 640 million of China's rural population are uninsured.

A new Harvard research study states that 83 million Chinese will die in the next quarter century from respiratory illnesses and lung cancer, unless smoking prevention and indoor air initiatives aren't pursued.

I'm not throwing down the China-is-the-Devil card. That's for the news to do. But there's a lot to be done and it's a stark reminder.

In Pictures

2008-10-27T16:49:00.022+08:00

In no particular order.

As expected, biking is huge here. And not only moving yourself from point A to point B, but also moving ridiculously large things like mounds of garbage as big as my living room, or 8ft carts full of raw meat.

working the night shift

The garbage problem. Took this picture at Moganshan rd. and then came back a week later and it was still there. I might make a Flickr album just on garbage.

How to scale a fish

Fish tubs

Lightbulb has multiple uses: (1) most ostensibly, light and (2) heat.

Shanghai subway is the busiest in the world, transporting over 3 million every day.

A quiet conversation at 8pm at night on the busiest intersection in Shanghai. I don't know how they do it.

Fruit vendors are everywhere.

Panned shot of a guy biking

Old guy I met at Chenghuang Temple

Taking out the trash

Tools of the trade

Tagging at Moganshan Rd.

Modern day auto garage.

Clothes are always hanging everywhere. No dryers. While this is fantastic environmentally, I have to say I miss drying clothes.

Old street

I want to write more about thoughts on gentrification and urbanization, but I took a stroll through some of the old Shanghai "hu tong" equivalents and while I was taking pictures, a guy came up to me and was like "if you want to get pictures, get it quick...because in a few years all this will be gone." I couldn't get a wide enough angle, but surrounding the small neighborhood of small narrow houses are huge megarises and 20-30 story apartments.

More subway pictures.

Anyone notice the legs sticking out?

Holga knockoff.

Greg and Lyla at an excellent restaurant. I forget what it's called.

I've noticed that there are very few Chinese mannequins. This might be indicative of something much bigger, but I just thought it was an interesting reflection: old and new.

Fruit vendor

Good marketing.

Shanghai gets a bad rap for being driven by money. And while this has bad implications in terms of greed, etc., I've grown to realize that it also perpetuates a sort of sense of threadbare innovation. I like it. People will put anything on wheels and sell things from it.

View from the 18th floor of Huadong Hospital. I was visiting my grandpa.

Workers sleeping on site.

Changarang, fellow Fulbrighter

The red pools aren't b/c of the light. It's because it's blood. Anyone see the small leak? Animal remnants.

Bikes, lots of them.

Retreating into the cabin to make a phone call. Workers work late.

Construction worker from the Anhui province. What amazed me was the fact that it was 1am and he was still at the site. He said they always sleep relatively close.

Bike Finally Stolen

2008-10-27T01:19:00.002+08:00

I don't quite know how I feel about this.

On the one hand, I'm not sure I could do anything about it - it was in broad daylight, in a public place, locked onto a fence with two locks. The only thing I could've done perhaps was had an older (read: shittier) bike. That frustrates me.

The thief was polite enough to leave one of the locks. Yes, that was where you put it. That's your lock.

I guess this marks a full indoctrination into Shanghai culture. From the black market it came, back to the black market it goes. I wonder if I could buy it back.

3 Friends

2008-10-23T00:58:00.011+08:00

Although I hate to use the word "locals," I'm glad to say that I've made 3 good friends as of late. And yes, they're Chinese "locals."

I use the word to differentiate between the de-facto standard of the usually-American expat-in-China.

In a word, they're wonderful. I'll try to describe them.

First off, there's 王，阿钢 (I'm not sure if those last two are the right characters), who likes to be called just "aa-gang," which is fine by me. I remember I saw him around the French Concession, walking like a badass with his dreads, his Fuji dSLR and a gigantic Nikon lens. I walked up to him and tried to talk photography with him. This, and a few other very tenuous links ("you speak English too?," "Cool! You read too?," "OH, you also wear pants?") have been my go-to's for meeting people here. He works for a photography company that shoots baby pictures. He studied photography in the Zhejiang province for four years before moving to Shanghai. He likes cheap eats and uses the same camera as me!

We've agreed to meet up whenever he can (he works 60 hours a week) to go shooting around the city.

Then there's 李翼, who I actually met on the subway. I was reading a book in English at the time and it was HER who approached ME in English. I learned that she's also studying English Literature in the graduate program at Fudan. I bumped into her again as I was looking pretty lost around the Fudan campus.

We have a pretty cool deal going on: we'll meet up once a week and she'll go word-by-excruciatingly-slow-word through any Chinese articles I bring (today I brought in a controversial, Chinese political magazine which had a bunch of articles that talked, uncontroversially enough, about how awesome China is) in exchange for me correcting her almost-perfect English. Wow, this sounds pretty fair to me.

She's soft-spoken, reads Proust, and reads people pretty well. She immediately identified me as an ABC: "so you're...what we call...'a banana.' 100% 'banana.' Taha! 'banana'!" Ouch. Apparently, her slang does not need any brushing up.

Lastly, there's 王金龙，who I met on my way to Fudan. He was waiting for a bus when I rode up to him on my bike and asked him for directions (I was terribly lost again). He said he was going that direction anyways and that he'd gladly walk with me instead of busing. Immediately, I realized that he was one of 3 things: (1) a con-artist, (2) a murdering con-artist or (3) the nicest guy in the world.

I've only hung out with him a handful of times, but I can confidently say (and let's hope I'm right) that he is the last of the three choices. Seriously. He invited me to lunch that same day and I met 4 of his 7 roommates (they all live in a room stacked with bunkbeds smaller than my once-thought-to-be-small living room). He walked back to Fudan so I wouldn't get lost on my way. He also drew me a very detailed map of how to get to campus.

We also have a little deal going: we'll meet up regularly to surf Chinese and English blogs, giving each other the respective "low-downs" on the slang words we each use. (Today, I tried to show him why this was hilarious; I thought he'd get it because all his roomies are hardcore gamers.) In short, we both want to be able to speak and read not only the textbook talk, but the slang, the 俚语. "Word!" "Holla!" "Off the heeze!"

Perhaps I need to brush up on mine before I turn him into what is called "a deutschebag."

"Apprenticeship" at the Cart, Part 2

2008-10-15T23:58:00.004+08:00

A bit of background info: I live in 样浦区，which is a mostly-blue-collar, industrial district of northeast Shanghai. My parents bought a small apartment out here a few years ago and my dad uses it when he’s in town (instead of staying at my grandparent’s place). The upside is this: I don’t need to pay rent and I have a place to myself. The downside? A journey into the “city” (at least the one that shows up in nightlife magazines and travel books) is at least a 30-45min. subway ride. The majority of shows, good food, and nightlife of Shanghai is quite far away from me.

Yet, there might be a good side to this sort of isolationism. For the last week or so, I’ve gotten a good taste of the expat lifestyle. I’m not sure if I like it. In fact, I don't like it. In short, the relatively stronger dollar of other countries’ economies allows expats here to eat, buy and function in a completely different social class than most Shanghainese, allowing them to mingle in the upper echelons of wealth and status here in Shanghai – a luxury that wouldn’t be possible in their native countries. Quite simply, you can “go out every night to the best bars, the best restaurants and the best clubs and not really have to worry about it [financially],” as an expat I met expressively put it.

Besides the fact that I can be relatively introverted at times, I don’t think I quite jive with this lifestyle for three reasons: (1) it’s flat out wasteful, (2) I like to cook (and I also hope to learn how to cook more Chinese food) and (3) the opportunity cost of losing the chance of learning culturally from the locals is enormous.

Which brings me back to my “apprenticeship” at the food cart. After a night out in the city, I always find myself coming back to the cart, grabbing some noodles and chatting with the husband and wife. They’re migrant workers from the Anhui province. I’ve read a bit about the migrant worker experience, but it’s always a bit different hearing about their lives in person. They came to Shanghai three years ago, leaving their (then) 1-year old son at home so they could look for work.

I’ve been visiting the food cart for almost a week now (sometimes eating, always chatting). I ask if they’ll teach me every day. They say no, and the snide comments and endless jeering continues. I’m American. My Chinese is horrible. I'm (relatively speaking) rich. I find that my knee-jerk, tolerance-born, persistently-American reaction is to say “can’t we just talk together like ‘people’? Why does class and nationality always have to come up?” And perhaps that just highlights the differences between Americans and Chinese even more: while I try to treat conversation as a discrete act of individuals, they are always referring to “you Americans” and “us Chinese,” the individual only acting always as representative. Class and nationality have to come up. Necessary? Probably. Annoying? Definitely.

I don’t think the cutting comments could be any worse, even if I were a white American. Would there be any reason to be less American or more Chinese then? No. In China, I am just enough Chinese to be not Chinese enough and entirely-enough American to feel justified in feeling a slight pang of defensiveness when topics such as civil liberties, history (who’s right, who’s wrong), and government comes up.

But when it comes down to it, the reality is this: I’m an American-born, college-educated “scholar” with a camera that costs more than half a years worth of many people’s annual paycheck. Background and class matter.

Still, I think I’ll win them over – eventually.

Already Playing the "American Citizen" Card

2008-10-15T00:16:00.005+08:00

Today, some asshole tried to steal my bike.

I locked it on a fence under the street lamp of a busy intersection next to the subway station while I went into the city to have dinner at my grandma's. I came back around 8pm to find that my key didn't fit into the lock anymore and that there was some type of glue substance stuffed inside the lock. There was no way for my key to work.

So, I've been practicing for consulting case interviews as of late, so the following "case" formed in my mind.

Getting My Bike Back

Here's the situation and subsequent assumptions:

1. The key doesn't work in the lock at all. Therefore, the lock needs to be either picked or the whole thing needs to be cut.
2. The bike is locked to a fence, so I can't call a taxi and pick it up and go back to my apartment.
3. I must get the bike back tonight. The bike is a new bike, so if I leave it overnight, it would definitely be stolen.
4. In order for me to have the cops cut the lock, I need to prove my proof of purchase (a receipt) so that they can verify that I'm not some thief making up a story. This is problematic because my uncle bought it for me by having one of his friends buy it off of the black market for 200 rmb. Calling the cops is risky both because (1) I myself have no receipt and therefore could look like a thief myself and (2) the pin number of the bike could match one that has a stolen report filed.
5. All stores that would carry gigantic clippers are closed.

What I did: I first asked a nice grandma if there were any local stores nearby. Nope. Then I went downstairs to ask the subway police officers if they could help. Nope - not in their jurisdiction.

Sigh. I knew I had to call the cops. They told me to call the local locksmith. I did, but they told me I had to have a receipt as well. I called the cops again, hoping that a different person would pick up. Luckily, I got another person and they said that they'd come in a few minutes. 2 cars showed up with their lights all flashing. They wanted my proof of purchase or a receipt and I had none.

After much back and forth, I decided to play the much vaunted "I'm an American citizen" card and see where that would get me. I told them that (1) I have the keys to the lock, (2) I have my passport to prove I'm an American citizen and (3) no American citizen would journey across half the world to become a local Shanghainese bike-thief. After a bit of hesitation, one of the cops acquiesced, calling his "locksmith friend" (who ended up being the same guy that I called) to break the lock for me.

A few realizations and thoughts:
1. Wow. Only a week in and I'm already playing the "American citizen" card.
2. That thief glued the inside of my lock either because (1) he tried to pick my lock, found out he couldn't and decided to prevent me from unlocking my bike in hopes of me leaving it overnight so he could steal it or (2) he tried to pick my lock, found out he couldn't and glued my lock in spite. I actually hope for the former, because I can't deal with spite that is an end to itself.
3. I'm actually glad that my Chinese is a bit....iffy. It authenticated my being American.
4. I need to practice more hypothetical cases and not get my bike stolen.

"Apprenticeship" at the Cart, Part 1

2008-10-12T23:15:00.005+08:00

I've been trying to get an "apprenticeship" at a cart-run eatery run by a husband and wife down my street. They cook and serve fried rice, assorted noodles, dumplings and soup from a cart. It's quite amazing. How do they do it? They use two cylindrical "ovens," which are basically concrete cylinders facing up that have smaller cylindrical coal pieces stuffed in them. The coal pieces have small tunnels drilled through them, so you can take them out while they're hot with prongs. They put one giant pot (for boiling pork broth and cooking soup/dumplings) on one of the ovens and a wok (for making everything else) on the other. If that didn't sound all that technological (after all, it's coal), then wait till I found out how they varied the temperature: they dig out a small portion on the bottom of each cylinder and stick a battery-operated fan into the cavity, blowing in air to fan the flames when they need heat. It's a rather smart setup.

They set up every night at 7pm and serve food until around 3am. They bring their own foldable tables and creaky, wooden stools. Their clientele are mostly locals who have night shifts and teenagers looking for a late-night meal. Although selling things without a license is illegal, they have a deal with the local police (I think) that allows them to sell only at night.

So far, all they've done is make fun of me and make snide comments about me being (1) rich (or at least richer than they are), (2) not Chinese and (3) Western. I keep asking if they "need help" everyday and the guy just makes a few snide comments and says no. I reply that "I'm sending business his way" by being the token Westerner who "attests to the quality of his cart," attracting customers for him.

I think I could learn a lot from them - even outside of cooking. We'll see how this goes.

What I've Been Reading

2008-10-11T22:10:00.002+08:00

Ain't it the truth? I miss the good old days too.

Sheer genius, I tell you! Political comedy at its best.

Can China bailout America? Interesting article on spending habits of most Chinese (diametrically opposed to American spending habits, for good or for worse). This article was particularly interesting after I bumped into a 30-something lady on the subway and we started to talk about Chinese and American economies. She works in the loan business and she said that the "Chinese loan market (being less than 30 years old) is relatively untapped. America now comprises 76% of all world loans (wtf). China? 4%. China could eventually do a lot in leveraging influences on the world economy." Great conversation and coincidental that she lives just down the street.

UK Business Secretary Mandelson supports Chinese milk and then gets a kidney stone. Mysterious. I'm not sure what to make of it.

There might be some truth to this, although a lot of it is national pride (ahem, fluff).

New generation with different values?

China, Harmony and the Opening Ceremonies of the Olympics (Originally Posted on Facebook)

2008-10-09T14:36:00.001+08:00

On the night of the opening ceremonies for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, after months of reading and listening about the preparations for the big event on news and multiple blogs, I sat with my mother in my living room and was absolutely awed: Beijing put on quite the show.

I was awed for obvious reasons. Who puts on a show with 15,000 performers? The American broadcaster seemed to snatch the words from my very mouth: you know, there’s a lot of controversy around this event, but no one can deny the quality of showmanship that China is showing to the world.

But as the show went on, I began to feel the awe turn into a bit of disgust, as the glitz and glamour of showmanship slowly translated into what felt like open flamboyancy. The meticulous detail of each (tens of thousands, mind you) crafted costume, the perfect synchronization of every graceful movement of thousands and thousands of performers and the expanse of the stadium-sized (literally) LCD screen began to look less spectacular and more of what I could only express as guo fen – “too much.” And even as graceful dancers scurried across a gigantic calligraphic scroll and 2008 Taichi practitioners moved in perfect concentric circles, latent questions began materializing in my mind: how could China afford to spend tens of millions on a performance, with so many national issues that seemingly demand more attention? With still so many of their people (particularly in the West, where I hope to work this Fall) left in poverty? How could they set ablaze a pyrotechnics show the world has never seen, despite all the talk and controversy over air quality, not to mention the national reputation of having 16 out of the top 20 most polluted cities in the world? And is the estimated $43 billion in rejuvenating Beijing to be the new “face” of China another scheme to reinforce what seems like the already systemic issue of uneven development (with money, business and infrastructure concentrated only on the Eastern seaboard)?

I expressed this to my mom and she accepted it as a valid concern. However, she added that – akin to the talks over “whether or not the Olympics are ‘worth it’ from a development perspective” – there are intangibles that don’t materialize in the number equations. There are things gained by way of Olympic honor that don’t make it into economist-talk or even environmental figures. For many Chinese, there’s something that tastes of patriotic redemption: a mix of shame, image, and pride.

My mom used the word jingshen – Chinese for “outlook” or “attitude.” The camera panned back to the performers. Another dramatic display of the Chinese word for “harmony” flashed on the screen as hundreds of man-powered boxes moved up and down. I thought for a moment.

There is much to say about Chinese nationalism, but firstly, I’d like to say that I am only barely beginning to understand it. How could I? At least in my generation, there is absolutely no American analog. My parents left China right when the country was getting over its fall from its largely-idealistic cliff, before even the post-1979 economic boom that China is currently largely known for. They came to America confused, ambitious and very Chinese. When my dad returned to China to go work for a Chinese car company a few years back, one of the first things he explained to me over the phone was that he had a hard time fitting in. The culture of the country was so different – so fast paced, so westernized and devoid on the traditional values of which his national pride was built upon. Where was the willingness to sacrifice for ones country? Where was the Chinese working spirit that shunned material gain only to reach for a glory that transcended numbers? In short, the “higher values” were gone; only money mattered. This was "not his China," he said. He felt foreign in what he imagined would be his own homecoming.

That was the first time I ever thought of my parents as expatriates.

So did the Olympic symbolism mark a coming of yet another era of Chinese society, a middle ground between hyper-capitalism and Marxist principles, represented by the Chinese word “he”? Perhaps, but probably not. But perhaps, for most Chinese, I think it does chart a more dexterous social route for China, appeasing a certain amount of concern for a quickly changing society that has seen both sides of the capitalistic coin: extreme poverty and inequality. Perhaps the dramatic display of “he” – which made at least 3 separate appearances and was often found in the political rhetoric of Hu Jintao himself – was a strategic portend for the slow steadying of a political-economic pendulum that has the historical record for wild, 180 degree revolutions every 30 years.

I realized I had forgotten how much Chinese people treasure the meaning of huge demonstrations. Perhaps my initialize (and current) frustrations are merely a mark of my own college-educated, pragmatic liberalism. Yet, the pictures of the displaced victims of the Sichuan earthquake still living in tents that I saw the other day online and President Hu’s claim that “a successful Olympics is China’s first priority” still didn’t make sense, not only on the basis of my own ideological concept of justice, but logical sense. Again, I appealed to my mom. She looked at me and for a second; I felt pretty naïve. She said “You still don’t understand. You see, they’re all watching, all waiting. Even the villagers, even the poor.”

I also realized that the Western media’s portrayal of China during the Olympics – a depiction of a country that censors any badmouthing, shuttles away the poor and migrant workers after their work is down, and squashes uprisings only to assume a facade of harmony, etc. – is not only biased, but only partially true.

For Chinese culture has always been inherently exhibitionist. When guests come over, put the best out on the table (even if that means starving) – not only for them, but for yourself, your own honor. And while I always grew up thinking the idea of “mianzi” – best translated as “regard in the eyes of others” – to be both impractical and insecure, I’m slowly beginning to value the idea of it more and more, understanding the somewhat crude logic of it all: you illustrate a showy ideal, not to be deceptive or even superficial, but in hopes that in the process of it all, the outward display will develop into an inward reality. Perhaps the more literal interpretation of jingshen is appropriate here as jing refers to the physical and structural and shen the spirit.

So far as I can tell, Chinese politics has always been analogously mind-over-matter: infuse society first with hopes, ideals and jingshen, and the actions (read: reforms) or body politic will follow. The classic example is Mao, but even Deng Xiaoping’s speech, epitomized by his quote “to get rich is glorious,” catalyzed the reform that built today’s bustling Chinese economy.

Thus, only in the context of jingshen does the Olympics mean just as much to wealthy investors as it does to poor rural villagers; only here is the ideal of “he” (harmony) – an ideal not yet manifest, but proclaimed as if it was veracity – vital to unite a nation who is becoming more and more stratified. I guess this was the type of Chinese nationalism that was always foreign to me. And perhaps all this Olympic excitement is a sort of homecoming – not only for my old-school, expat parents, but for Chinese people as a whole – to harmony, “he,” balance, whatever you want to call it. It’s an exciting time in China because they are beginning to take stock of not only what they have achieved, but also of what they have not. Much has been swept under the carpet in order for the economic ball to keep rolling, but I think much of the symbolism of the opening ceremonies tried to express this willingness to reconcile the extreme paradoxes in China (ugh, I can’t stand when journalists say “China is a country of paradox” by the way), to veritably slow down, pointing to a society not so drunk on the political ideology of Maoism to be out of touch with the economic needs of a country of over a billion, nor a hyper-materialistic one glutted by the Westernization and the “GDPism” of the last 30 years. Perhaps “he” (harmony) between the two?

We’ll see.

Bastardification: Breakdancing (in China)

2008-10-09T14:31:00.001+08:00

Breakdancing has, in the last few decades, gained international popularity. With international competitions such as Battle of the Year (held annually in Germany) and the more mainstream documentary Planet Bboy garnering support for what advocates of breakdancing would certainly call art, breakdancing has gone a long way (go watch the hilarious 80s movie “Beatstreet”).

Most of the hip hop community agrees that breakdancing is an amalgamation of at least 3 forces that came together in the east coast of the United States during the early 70s: (1) the Brazilian dance fighting, capoeira , (2) James Brown’s distinctive dance moves and (3) Kung Fu martial arts moves culled from cheap Hollywood movies.

It is in the third source that “bastardification” takes on its complete meaning, at least in the case of China. Don’t get me wrong: I'm not using the word in a denigrating sense, but only insist that it is the most suitable word. For just as China is a newcomer into the international trade community (accepted into WTO circa 2002), they are also a newcomer to the breakdancing scene, following in the steps of other Asian countries such as South Korea and Japan. Therefore, breakdancing in China has an air of the illegitimate – a cheap consequence of the West – just as any early art form would in its nascent stages. It hints of the accidental.

Yet, what’s interesting is that breakdancing is sort of a homecoming in China. Was not the third source Kung Fu martial arts movies? Even as I see young Chinese try to perform moves that are undoubtedly replicates of movies (mostly online and from the West), I ask myself: “Do they know that there is a part of this, this dance, this culture, that came from their own country?” It is an interesting thought, is it not? The trajectory of cultural transmission spans at least 3 generations of dilution and illegitimacy: from a revered tradition of generations of Shaolin monks and martial artists, across the Pacific and capitalized and packaged into flashy, cheap tricks in Hollywood media, to the birthplace of a renegade, frenetic pseudo-dance called Breakdancing in New York City, and finally back across the Pacific onto the computer screens of a generation of Chinese youth who wish for a dance of their own. Quite the boomerang.

Just as American breakdancing is becoming accepted in the mainstream (after all, how many of “America’s Best Dance Crew” crews are bboys?), Chinese breakdancing is becoming accepted to the international breakdancing community.

I love the endless “what is culture?” conversations I have with my friends. My friend, Henry, says culture is merely “collective interests.” I like this definition for its simplicity and limitless usability. Taking this definition, I ask myself: “When does a cultural construct galvanize into a recognized thing?” Is it a merely a critical mass of popularity that tips it over to acknowledgement or is a cultural construct’s maturity what Derek Walcott describes as the “assimilation of the features of every ancestor?”

The latter sense reminds me of evolutionary biology, where which a population’s genetic drift is inversely proportional to its population size. The smaller the population, the greater chance of ‘drift’ (variability from larger, mother populations), until it reaches a fairly larger population size of its own and the probability of drift stabilizes. I feel as if Chinese breakdancing is currently that small, diverging population, taking its first still-wobbly, infantile steps to becoming a recognized thing (let alone art form). It’s exciting because, given its youth and small size, anything can happen - new ways of doing things, new stylistic 'alleles,' if you will - on its way to becoming something of its own.

Anyways, if you’re still reading this mental rant, I applaud you.

All this to say that I’m pretty excited to check out the Chinese bboy crews while in China come September/October.