The most interesting topic in the world

Well, at least to me it is. I love my thesis topic. I love it so much that I don’t actually want to stop working on it. Which is just fine, because my topic translates pretty easily into a career. I’m writing about Western volunteers in China, particularly those who work in education. I’m interviewing people who are current or recently returned volunteer teachers or camp counselors in China. Of course my summer working with educational volunteers in Beijing inspired and helped me develop this topic.

students during their singing and art performance at xiwang zhixing school in outer beijing

There are lots of opportunities to volunteer abroad these days. Most of these are in the form of a paid volunteer vacation. The combination of volunteering and tourism is fascinating. When young Westerners pay thousands of dollars to spend a month or so in a developing country working on a “project” — anything from teaching English, to working with endangered animals, to building houses — countless impacts and concerns arise:

• What are young people really looking to get out of the experience? Is this just glorified tourism? Or worse: poverty tourism?
• Who are the host communities, and do they invite and welcome these projects and visitors?
• How are ethics maintained and for-profit tourism industries monitored to prevent exploitation of volunteers and hosts? Where does all that money go?
• What kinds of relationships are formed between volunteers and hosts? Do these relationships encourage sustainability or dependency?
• How do volunteer-host relationships impact racism, ethnocentrism, and bigotry? Do volunteers become more culturally sensitive and aware?
• What is the ultimate goal of international volunteering? Will it help make our world more socially just?

These are the questions running through my mind as I research Chinese education and the role of foreign volunteers. I’m focusing on the first, fourth, and sixth questions in my thesis. I’m hoping that all this work will be helpful for international volunteer organizations who are concerned about these same issues and dedicated to ethical practice. The potential impacts of volunteer tourism are huge for so many people: for the development aid industry, for educators and students of international issues, and especially for the communities that host foreign volunteers. And in a few months, I hope to have a job that lets me work on this!

The little dogs of Beijing

One of my favorite things about walking around my neighborhood in Beijing was seeing all of the adorable little dogs prancing in step with their owners. Rarely on leashes and never interested in meeting me, these dogs still baffle me. Why don’t they run around and chase the other dogs, or the birds? How are they trained so well? Is there some Chinese secret to dog training that we are missing out on? No doubt, these owners put a lot of time and love into their dogs. Many times I witnessed owners wiping their dogs butts after a poo, or sharing some of their delicious human food at dinnertime. The New York Times has captured some of the dog love in a recent article.

While high pet ownership is an interesting result of the economic boom, I really wish a reporter (or better, a dog trainer) from the United States would find out the secret behind Beijing’s perfect doggie behavior. People often say the one-child policy makes Chinese babies spoiled and misbehaved. But when it comes to dogs, they act like angels. I need to know this secret! All in all, it makes me feel very comfortable with the idea of bringing my dog to China. Once I asked Marshall if he wanted to go to China, and he got really excited. (This is probably because I asked him in Chinese, and Chinese tones are a strange sound for an American dog to hear.) Plus, he fits the Beijing police size requirements of under 14 inches. Feichang hao!

nihao, china! i'm the perfect size!

Shanghai on a whirl

My last couple days in China were filled with intense activity followed by lulls of loneliness. Qing and I took the fast train from Hangzhou to Shanghai, arriving just after the subway closed at Shanghainanzhan. That meant waiting in a long taxi line and experiencing a big difference between Shanghai and Beijing: English speakers. It’s not that Shanghai taxi drivers speak good English; they just make much more frequent attempts. Drivers wearing flip flops and beach shorts tried to convince us to take a ride in their illegitimate cars for “very cheap.” I showed Qing how well I have learned to ignore people when they are bothering me. It’s a great benefit of being a foreigner: I can always play dumb.

view from hotel in Shanghai

Qing booked us an amazing hotel in the center of Shanghai, within walking distance to pretty much every fancy pants brand in the Western world. Another big difference between Shanghai and Beijing: there are parts of Shanghai where you could be convinced you were in an American city. In Beijing, there are aspects that look very Western, but then you see a man selling melons from the back of a horse-drawn carriage and you get snapped back into Chinese reality.

people waiting to go into the aussie pavilion

My only full day in Shanghai was spent partly at the World Expo. Seventeen months prior, Jon and I learned about the expo at the Shanghai urban planning museum. Oh, cool. An expo, we thought. What’s an expo? Turns out the expo is kind of like Shanghai’s bid to host an Olympic-sized event like Beijing did in 2008. Although there are a lot of differences: Shanghai’s World Expo lasts for months, all through the summer and fall, plus it is attended by almost exclusively Chinese. I was there for an hour before I saw any foreigners. The point of the expo was to bring all the countries of the world together to talk about green technology. Each country was represented by a building or a booth, and other global interests like NGOs and corporations had presentations as well. Inside each pavilion was supposed to be cool stuff, but Qing and I didn’t have time to stand in line for all that. We went into Slovakia and Cyprus because their lines took less than 4 minutes. But countries like Australia, Saudi Arabia, and the United Kingdom had waits of up to 4 hours!

one of the most colorful pavilions, Serbia

Qing and I at the Chinese pavilion, the biggest one of course

We couldn’t spend much time at the expo because we had someone else to meet: Natalie, our good friend from school who had just the day before moved to Shanghai. Qing’s train left before we could find Natalie and her boyfriend Kenny in the train station, but I got to spend a nice evening with them. First mission: find Natalie shoes. Natalie and Kenny’s luggage had not made it with them on the journey from Pittsburgh to Shanghai, and her sandals were already giving her blisters. I took her to the only place I knew: Nanjing Lu, Shanghai’s famous shopping street. If only I were in Beijing, I could have taken her to great markets with cheap and comfy shoes. Instead we had to settle for a $7 pair of flip flops. How are those flippy floppies doing, Nat?

Shanghai's newest residents

The three of us ventured to the Huangpu River where I remembered last time seeing a psychedelic tunnel ride that was a bit out of my budget. This time, the temptation was just too much for budget concerns: crazy train, here we come! Just google Bund Tourist Tunnel and you can see youtube videos and reviews of this thing. The ride lasts only a few minutes, but it’s full of lights and colors and voices shouting out random words at you like “paradise” and “molten lava.” It’s totally trippy and absolutely worth the absurdly high price.

not really a vegetarian anymore

I was really happy I got to spend my last night in China with two awesome people. Natalie and Kenny had been in the city for less than 24 hours, but they were eager to learn a bunch of phrases in Mandarin and try my favorite Chinese dinner: hot pot! We found a seafood hot pot restaurant near my hotel where we got to sizzle some live shrimp in boiling water. After dinner, they went back to their apartment. After days of touring Hangzhou, taking a Chinese train, joining millions of people at the expo, dashing down Nanjing Lu in search of shoes, and teaching my friends as much survival Chinese as I could in one night…I was alone.

Back in my plush hotel room, watching (bad) English-language movies for the first time in months, eating a snack I can only find in China (xiang yu pi!), trying not to use the internet that cost a dollar a minute, all I wanted was to be back in my apartment in Beijing. I knew I was getting on a plane in a matter of hours to fly to San Francisco and see Jon and family and friends. But for that night, I was in China, and I wished so badly that it were my China. I was never and could never be ready to leave Beijing.

Hangzhou with a local

And not just any local! The lovely Qing, my classmate at Pitt. Hangzhou is her hometown, and it used to be part of her job to show people her city. So I knew I was in good hands. I had visited Hangzhou for a couple days in March 2009, but it was rainy and difficult to get around. Hangzhou is a big city, but it’s not as tourist-friendly with public transportation or pedestrian options as other Chinese cities. This time, with Qing as my guide, I had an air-conditioned car to protect me from the 95 degree heat and blazing sun. For me, the second time in Hangzhou was a charm.

classmates at the Hangzhou Wetlands Park

I felt welcome as soon as I got to Hangzhou. When I got to the baggage claim area, I noticed a lot of people pointing and whispering. But this time, they weren’t pointing at me! I weren’t sure who they were looking at, so I just forgot about it. But as we approached the public area of the airport, I saw even more commotion. Hundreds of people with posters, flowers and flashing cameras were chanting something. The closer I got to the door, the louder they got. Eventually I noticed that the girl walking directly next to me was wearing huge sunglasses and surrounded by body guards (body guards in China are not the same size as body guards in America). I was standing next to one of the most famous female singers in the country. The cameras flashed and the crowd moved in as we walked through the door, so I’m hoping I am on some Chinese gossip blogs as the sleepy, sloppy looking American walking next to their pop princess.

the escalator: a modern twist on a Chinese temple

From the airport we went straight to the main attraction of the city. Hangzhou is famous for its West Lake (Xi Hu) which has been the setting of many paintings, poems, stories and songs. Qing first took me to the huge pagoda at the lake, site of a famous love story featuring a snake, her man husband, and a battle of sea creatures. Chinese literature never lets me down! Neither does the level of familiarity the average Chinese has with these stories. They heard them as children, read about them in school, and now they see them depicted on television. The amount of poems and stories Chinese kids have to memorize is mind-blowing, and it may explain why the Chinese have so much love and pride for their history.

green, green Hangzhou

happy buddha in a magical rock

Another perk of having a Hangzhou native as my guide was learning about local cuisine. Chinese food is extremely diverse from province to province, city to city, so Qing made sure to give me a taste of Hangzhou seafood, dumplings, and dessert. Without Qing, I would have never known that Hangzhou cuisine is much sweeter and less spicy than the rest of China. I ate shrimp dumplings that felt like silk, homemade breakfast at her grandmother’s home, and eel, jellyfish and frog eggs with her extended family. If you ever find yourself in Hangzhou, order the steamed papaya with frog eggs and honey. Trust me.

lotus growing in West Lake

My second day in Hangzhou was spent at the Wetlands Park, an area where non-Chinese rarely visit. All of the tours are in Chinese, and the main attraction of the place is that it was the site of a well-known romantic comedy. I’ll try to get the comedy with English subtitles; Qing promises me that it really is a good flick. Anyway, the wetlands were really cool because it’s basically a group of islands where people lived as fishermen and silk producers. As the area modernized, most of the people left their island homes for the urban space. But some people still live there, completely isolated from the rest of Hangzhou. The only way to get around the wetlands is by boat. Tourists go there to take a boat ride and learn about what life was like 200 years ago in the wetlands. I was particularly impressed with the boats turned into dining room tables and the pygmy ducks, which I unfortunately did not get a proper photo of.

view of the wetlands from the temple

old, almost-forgotten Mao painting in a photo gallery in the wetlands

With my limited Chinese and the challenge of the Hangzhou dialect, I didn’t get to really converse with all of Qing’s family that I met. But nonetheless, they made me feel extremely welcome and encouraged me to return as soon as I can. Even though my visit to Hangzhou was so short, it reminded me how valuable it is to spend time with people in their homes, with their families, seeing what it is that keeps them coming back.

at the train station. next stop: Shanghai!

Mourning and marketing

These have been an interesting couple of days for China. Yesterday the government declared a national day of mourning for the nearly 2,000 victims of the mudslides in Gansu Province. This meant the flags flew at half-staff, all things fun were shut down for 24 hours, and the TV stations were only allowed to play footage and news from Gansu. Apparently everyone was also supposed to wear black and white, but I didn’t get that memo until around dinner time. A friend of mine had his birthday on August 15 and really wanted to go to a local amusement park. But of course, that was closed for mourning day. Clubs closed at midnight on Saturday night. Any planned concerts or entertainment venues were shut down. But for some reason the zoo was open. I don’t get that.

I spent the day at a friend’s apartment learning how to cook Chinese vegetables that have no proper English translation. She flipped through all the channels on her TV to prove to me that no other shows were on all day long. None of the Chinese people I spoke to seemed very surprised about the national day of mourning. It has happened before, they said. I think as an outsider it is fascinating to me because it is an example of how strong the central government really is here. This country is enormous, and the government was able to shut down EVERY form of entertainment (except zoos – must keep pandas) and EVERY TV show for an entire 24 hours. Can you imagine if the United States government did that on the anniversary of 9/11?

This makes me wonder about the motives of this kind of thing. Of course I have no answers. But I wonder, what does the government get out of a national day of mourning? What does it do to the population’s psyche? Why go to such great lengths to make people think about a mudslide disaster? Is there an environmental message here? A rah-rah government message? Please tell me if you have thoughts.

The other interesting day is today, Chinese valentine’s day! Also known as Double Seven Festival, for the seventh day of the seventh month of the lunar calendar. Basically there is an old Romeo and Juliet type story of forbidden love, and it ends tragically of course. Death and sadness. Oh, love. Anyway, traditionally this story teaches women how to be good wives, but that kind of message just won’t do in modern China. Hell no! Instead they take on western qualities: buy some roses, some stuffed bears, and go have dinner.

It doesn’t seem like the Chinese valentine’s day comes with the pressure and loneliness that a lot of Americans associate with 2/14. My single friends didn’t really care about today. The couples went out to dinner. That’s that. But the displays of love that I did see on the street were certainly entertaining. The flowers were beautiful, and the ratio of men holding their wives’ purses was higher than normal. But the real gems were the odd-ball and way-too-large gifts. I was pushed out of the way in line for the bus by a man carrying a teddy bear the SIZE OF ME. You know that bear is taking up a bus seat during rush hour, right? I hope the bus lady made the bear pay the whopping 0.4 RMB bus fare (about 6 US cents). The other charmer sped by me on a motorbike: a giant framed photograph of two pinkie fingers locked together…enclosed in a giant pink heart, of course! I am sure this will hang in their dining room forever, reminding them that true love comes already framed.

Again, do I really have to leave this place?