Well, I am back from China. It was my first trip to the country and I had a great time. The experience also gave me a lot to think about. There is one topic I will probably cover tomorrow if I can find where in my bags I secreted my notes. While my entry today won’t directly deal with arts management, it does cover some of the larger societal concerns arts managers face like traffic, public transportation, communal gatherings, cultural values and energy conservation/green buildings. Based on my experiences, I feel safe in claiming there will be a much greater cultural interchange between the United States and China in the near future so there might be something to learn or at least cautionary tales for those who tread the streets of the cities.

A few notes for those going to Beijing for the Olympics. There seems to be a dichotomy between traffic laws and enforcement. There are signs everywhere warning drivers about driving while drunk, on cell phones or while overly tired. However, I didn’t see a lot of police cars patrolling. (Shanghai seemed to have a stronger police presence.) All over China a honked horn signals to the pedestrian means either get out of the way or stop and I will drive around you. The greatest sin basically seems to be hitting someone. Otherwise, all bets are off. Our bus made left turns across oncoming traffic and from the right lane and we mysteriously never got hit.

The most exhilarating/nerve racking time was on a freeway in Beijing when the bus driver started up the exit ramp, then veered left off it, then decided he was right to begin with and started backing up to the ramp again. What was most amazing was that after the first 4-5 cars behind us honked and went around us, everyone else behind us moved to the left lane long before they reached us and allowed us to back up to the ramp again.

In a number of the cities we visited there was a lot of poor living conditions with dingy housing cramped together. The parks in these cities were absolutely gorgeous though. There were large spaces with a lot of gathering areas, ponds, fountains, amphitheaters with hills and structures to climb. I am guessing the local governments realized the importance of community gathering places and invested a lot of resources in them. The parks were packed even at 6-6:30 am on weekday mornings. I wondered if the parks will be abandoned as televisions and computers become more prevalent or at least how many generations it would be before the people stopped valuing communal relationships.

Television was interesting to watch in China. There was only one English language station carried at any of the hotels at which we stayed. However, given that the state owns the cable system, it was always channel 9 no matter where we were. There was more pro-US programming than I expected including U.S. Air Marshal which seemed to have a heavy Eastern European cast and crew, and movies about the Flying Tigers. For the first 4-5 days of my trip there seemed to always be a dramatization about Mao’s rise to power.

There was also always either a Chinese opera or classical music concert on one or two stations. I can’t say if people were watching the show but the government seems to be strongly promoting these art forms. I even caught what looked to be the Chinese Opera version of American Idol with young girls competing.

Unfortunately, Chinese television seems to be quickly inheriting some of the United States’ less desirable programming like ads for breast enhancements and bra inserts. There also seemed to be a lot of snake oil being sold. From what a could tell from one series of graphics, there is a pill that will (no joking) fix your ovaries, dissolve fat and give you energy. Where American television ads make claims about the inclusion of Chinese herbs, the Chinese ads show official looking documents with the United States of America emblazoned across the top and the American flag waving in the background.

There were some areas we drove through where the town was drying their wheat on the road. A tractor dropped huge piles of wheat on the street and people manually separated the wheat from the chaff. Our bus drove around and sometimes through these piles which went on for miles upon miles and were spread out on to side streets and roofs. The people seemed happy and healthy enough at their work. I just wondered how they resolved their lives against the images of breast enhancement surgery. These dynamics are complicated enough in the U.S. When you start talking about the haves and have nots in a Communist country which is embracing some capitalist practices, I can only begin to imagine what all the implications might be.

A couple last reflections on my visit. We often hear how China is going to become a more voracious consumer of energy. From what I observed and discussed with others in my tour, China appears to be taking steps to minimize their impact. We would go into shops whose lights would be out until we walked in. In hotels, you have to put your room key card in a wall slot to get the lights to work. We only got one card even though there were two of us in the room. When we left with the card, the lights and A/C went off.

There are a lot of new roads but few cars at all traveling the freeways. (Don’t quite know why.) There is a system of diesel rationing in effect. The miles of new highways and roads are lined 5-10 rows wide with newly planted trees for thousands of miles. (All of which is desperately needed in the heavily deforested country.) While the housing is dull and blocky in a lot of places, the newer street lamps are quite whimsical. In Xingtai, the lamps looked like gracefully curved flowers with butterfly shaped solar panels.

On the whole, my impression of China is that the idea of conservation and safety is a somewhat new for them. It seems like haven’t quite developed a holistic approach yet. In some areas they have progressed past the United States and are hyper aware of safety concerns. In other areas it doesn’t seem like anyone mentioned the concept at all.

One of my favorite experiences was meeting the Chinese people. There were places we traveled where Caucasian faces were obvious rare to unknown. For some reason though a lot of people (happily mostly young females) wanted to have their picture taken with me. There were three of us out of 10-15 men who people frequently asked to have their picture taken with. (Or they thrust their kids into my lap or beside me.) It didn’t matter if I was alone or in a group. I am hardly the best looking guy in the group so I don’t quite know why. My best guess is that I closely represent Budai, the Laughing Buddah (except I have more hair and kept my shirt closed) so people felt I was good luck.

One theory, given most of us didn’t understand Mandarian, is that I may have agreed to marry some of them and they were taking my photo home to mom and dad. *Gulp*