I woke up about an hour before our bus was to depart for the airport, giving me enough time to visit the pastry shop for breakfast and take a solo walk around Shanghai, enjoying my last minutes of free-roaming about the city.  An interesting thing happened during the flight.  As we climbed into the clouds after liftoff, I looked out the window to see the very peak of the World Financial Center projecting up through the fog.  To me it seemed like China’s way of saying goodbye, imbued with a reminder of its modernization and engineering accomplishments.  Our arrival at Newark and drive back to State College were uneventful, for which I was grateful.  Despite all the amazing things we did and saw in China, the familiarity of home was one of the best feelings I’ve experienced these past weeks.

This entry should conclude the storytelling portion of my blog, although within the next few weeks I will post the reflection papers for the course that we’re required to write.  Thank you so much for taking the time to read these entries and for all the positive feedback.  If you have any other questions about the trip, please don’t hesitate to get in touch!  

Location: State College, Pennsylvania

Today we took a drive in search of one of China’s rural villages in order to better understand the lives of its farming population.  The dusty streets and run-down structures were a far cry from the urban areas and shopping streets where we’ve spent most of our time.  We took a walk around some agricultural lands, which were bone dry in some areas and muddy in others.  Tiny frogs were hopping about everywhere, and I’m sure their presence is preferable to that of the insects they consume.

We then traveled back in to the land of the middle class, visiting Xinli’s brother’s house.  The house was located in a development of identical homes.  Its footprint on the ground was not very large, but it stood four stories high not including the garage.  The bottom floor housed a living room in which we watched some of the NBA Playoffs (Chinese people are big on basketball, especially and all things Kobe Bryant) and a kitchen in which we munched some fresh litchi fruit.  The floors above held bathrooms, bedrooms, a home office, and a den.  The home does not only house Xinli’s brother and his wife, but also their son and his wife.  It’s not unusual for several generations to share a residence. 

A house near that of Xinli’s brother

The view out our hotel window

We ate dinner at the same restaurant on Huangshan’s Old Street as two days ago, which for its dumplings and noodles is officially my favorite place to eat in China.  

Location: Huangshan, China

This morning we boarded our bus for the drive back to Shanghai, from where we’ll take the flight back home.  About halfway there we stopped at a rest stop, where I got some beef soup dumplings and herbal tea (sugarwater).  We took an alternate route to Shanghai in order to pass over the Hangzhou Bay Bridge.  Technically, it extends for 36 km (22 miles), although almost all of that length is approach to its main, cable-stayed span.  

The main span of the bridge ahead

An observatory being constructed along the bridge

After arriving and checking in, we headed to dinner.  The restaurant was crowded and the lack of adequate air conditioning had us sweating at the tables, but the excellent food and the knowledge that it was our last dinner together made the meal dear to our hearts. 

After dinner a few friends and I picked up dessert at our favorite pastry shop and took one last walk around the Bund, marveling at the historic buildings and towering skyscrapers of its skyline.  

Location: Shanghai, China

Today started with a tour of what was a wealthy Chinese businessman’s house but is now a museum, preserved as it was several hundred years ago when inhabited.  While most Western housing structures are founded on the idea of an enclosed space, almost every room in this home was open to the air with a roof that was more like a series of overhangs around courtyards.  This style is facilitated by the area’s weather, which even in winter rarely turns to snow.  All the roofs slanted inwards towards the room, which during rain directed the water that was not caught in the gutter system inside.  This follows a fung shuei principle that letting water in also lets in wealth.  Waist-high pots held rainwater that could be used to quickly fill buckets in case a fire broke out in the home.  We have seen these pots at every ancient structure, and for good reason.  Fire poses a serious threat where exposed wood is everywhere and candles are the only means of artificial light.

Different rooms and parts of rooms of the house were designated for different family members, classified by their gender and age.  In the dining room, separate quarters existed for the male of the household, wives (yes, plural), daughters, and sons.  One room was four stories in height, with rooms arranged around its square courtyard.  This area was for daughters, with the idea that having them live high off the ground might give them a good perspective from which to evaluate potential husbands.  Two half-circular tables placed in one part of the house were separated and on either side of their room when the house’s master was away, and moved together when he was present.  This served as a notification system to guests as to whether they would be welcome or not.  A chair for the patriarch looked down on the house’s main courtyard.  A wall made it impossible to see the yard while standing in front (a deterrent from blocking the masters’ view).  Only the extra elevation of the chair’s platform allowed one to see over the wall.  One room had walls covered with beautiful tapestries, which kept the records of the household’s family tree.  Another was used as a smoking and opium lounge. 

This home did not represent the typical living standards, but emphasized both how design was used as allegory for life as well as the extent to which China maintained a male-dominated society at that time. 

The family tree

The wall that blocks your view from in front of the master chair

Adjacent to the businessman’s home is a museum with a collection of several thousand year old artifacts, which are a testament to how long humans have resided in the Huangshan area.  One interesting display featured a series of naturally formed stones that had been collected over time for their likeness to the animals of the zodiac.

A statue in Huangshan

A unique structure in Huangshan

Our dinner was accompanied by a live show of traditional Chinese song and dance.  Several of the acts featured instruments.  One reminded me of a recorder, and another of the portable vibraphones used in marching bands.  All the performers wore traditional makeup and colorful garb with long hanging sleeves.  The men often donned false gray beards I associate with Dumbledore and Gandoff.  One woman danced with a pair of swords, twirling them in figure eights and posing dramatically as she sang. 

After dinner I went with some friends the nearby KTV, one of a chain of karaoke facilities.  Each group gets its own room complete with a touch screen computer for song selection and volume control, a television for displaying music videos and lyrics, a bar, a disco ball, and four microphones.  The Chinese students on the tour were among our group, so we more or less alternated between Chinese and English songs.  Obviously, we did not recognize any of the former, but there was a reasonable catalogue of the latter.  A few of the music videos that played along with the songs were clearly not the originals.  One of our favorites was used with Elton John’s I’m Still Standing, and kept returning to the image of a man in a Phantom of the Opera mask tied into the ground by strings at his arms and legs.  Eventually a boy came and removed the mask, which at the end of the video was shown floating in the ocean.  Basically, it neither fit the song nor made any sense on its own.    

Location: Huangshan, China

Some familiar faces were there to greet us in the hotel lobby this morning.  The seven students interning in China are joining us again for the first time since we left Dalian, and will accompany us for our tour of Huangshan and the bus ride back to Shanghai.  When we leave to head back to the States, they will spend a few more days in Shanghai with Xinli before resuming their internships.

This morning we toured a man-made cavern, dug several thousand years ago for an unknown purpose.  It bears the logical title: Mystery Cave. Interconnected caverns make up the underground space, many of which have pools formed from underground waterways and the constant dripping down of moisture from the ceiling.  The parallel marks of builders’ tools are still visible on the stairways and walls. On the walk back from the cave we passed through farmland and a archery range, where we took turns paying a couple yuan to shoot a dozen or so arrows.  

The Mystery Cave

An animal near the archery range

From the Cave, we drove to Huangshan’s Old Street, another bartering market whose architecture and history extends for hundreds of years.  Xinli has a family connection to an owner of one of the tea shops, who gave us a great deal on some of her wares.  Lunch and dinner we took at one of the Street’s most famous restaurants.  The meals were organized the same way as most of ours have been, with tables of four to eight people who share about ten dishes ordered for the table.  However, for the first time, Xinli had the members of each table do the ordering for themselves. 

This is done in an entirely different way from in most U.S. restaurants.  Each table has a little wooden plaque with its table number.  A few representatives from the table take the plaque and head downstairs, where the restaurant has every item on their menu prepared and on display along with its number and price (sometimes with two prices for different sizes).  The group elects a scribe, who takes a notepad and pen and records the item number, quantity, and price of each dish desired.  Drinks are written down the same way.  The list and the numbered table plaque are handed back to the restaurant staff.  After each dish is prepared, waiters bring it to the table along with a receipt.  Our favorite dish at the restaurant was by far the noodles.  There were also some splendid dumplings, including the sweet walnut and fig variety that would be a dessert in any other setting.  We’ve also come to love the plain fried dough, which comes with bowl of milky icing for dipping.  

For whatever reason, some of our hotel rooms came equipped with computer speakers, so in the evening eight or nine of us watched another knockoff DVD on my laptop.  We also played a few rounds of a fun card game called Village Idiot, which I had never played before this trip.  I’ll definitely be teaching it to some friends back home.  There’s a good combination of hardcore partiers and the opposite here (as well as plenty of people that lie somewhere in-between), so everyone has a group with which to spend his or her evenings in a way that is comfortable. 

Tomorrow is our last day in Huangshan, and looks to be a lot of fun.  We can all feel the end of the trip looming in the background now.  It’s a bittersweet feeling, knowing that I’ll be home soon but leaving all the great people and places I’ve come to appreciate.  At least I’ll get to see most of the former again in a few months when they return to State College for classes.  

Location: Huangshan, China

After grabbing some bread at the pastry shop (the same one as last night) for breakfast, we got on the bus for the six-hour ride to Xinli’s hometown of Huangshan.  Much of the drive’s scenery reminded me of Pennsylvania’s agricultural outer reaches.  I’ve decided that no matter where you go in the world, the countryside usually looks familiar from the viewpoint of the highway.  It’s a reminder that the essence of a person’s life halfway around the world isn’t necessarily too different from one ten minutes away from home. 

We also took some time during the bus ride using my computer to watch one of several knockoff DVDs purchased in Shanghai.  The knockoffs all come in cardboard casings with what looks like genuine DVD cover art until you read the paragraph on their back and realize that it was written by someone with a poor grasp of the English language.  The back of Iron Man 2 called the movie’s star “Robert Downey Smalls.”  The film we watched on the bus was Robin Hood, which has only been on the silver screen for a few weeks. Despite clearly having been filmed in a theatre (once in a while, a shadow crossed the screen on the way to or from the restroom or snack bar), the picture and audio were very good.  Most of the dialogue was in English, but when characters spoke in French, the subtitles were in Italian.  Our copy of Prince of Persia, which has been in theatres for three days, also worked fine aside from the minor detail that all the dialogue was in Chinese and there were no subtitles.  At least it only cost about $3.00. 

About a third of the way through our drive, we stopped by China’s Western Lake in Huangzhou, thought of by many as a paradise on Earth.  The Lake’s geography and architecture reminded me a great deal of Beijing’s Summer Palace.  A short ferry ride brought us to the other side of the water, where we walked around enjoying the beautiful scenery and ancient constructions.  Venders sold cooked corn as a snack, which was quite tasty. 

After arriving in Huangshan, we were joined for dinner by Xinli’s nephew and sister-in-law, the latter of which teaches English to Chinese highschoolers.  We asked the her some questions about the Chinese education system, and gained a greater appreciation for the stress of the college entrance exam, which has six sections (including English) and takes several days to complete.  Schools and teachers definitely face the same kinds of pressures that Pennsylvanians take away from the PSSA and SATs.  The Chinese school day extends for several hours longer than most American high schools’, although their lunch break is longer. 

Despite having spent most of the day sitting on a bus, I was exhausted by the time dinner ended.  Some of our group decided to check out the bar next to the hotel entitled “Emperor Internet” but I went to bed instead.  

Location: Huangshan, China

Today we took our third tour of an American company’s facility in China at Huntsman Shanghai.  Huntsman is a chemical company specializing in polyurethanes.  It develops formulae for industrial needs and then sells the correct ingredients to be mixed and molded.  The materials created appear in every kind of product you can imagine, from car seats and steering wheels to house insulation.  After an introduction about the company’s history we were taken to several laboratories, where formulae are developed and tested.  Much of their heaviest machinery is used in development to simulate the industrial conditions of their customers’ plants.

One aspect of Huntsman’s research I found particularly interesting was in limiting the long-term chemical emissions of their products.  For instance, all the plastics, gels, and cushioning in a new car continue to release toxic chemicals in small amounts for some time after the car is purchased (perhaps these contribute to “new car smell”).  The researcher we met told us that it’s important to open a new car’s windows once in a while, especially on hot days.  Our stay at Huntsman concluded with their treat of a McDonalds lunch, which was well received.  We all love Chinese cuisine, but it’s nice to have a break once in a while. 

From Huntsman we drove to Pudong, the business district of Shanghai.  This is where all the most impressive skyscrapers are found, notably the Shanghai World Financial Center, which is recognizable by the square hole in its twisting form towards.  The toilets in the Center are almost as impressive–they have heating, automatic seat cleaning, and a robot arm that pops out to function as a bidet.  Most of the cars in the Pudong area are Buicks, which are very high end in China. 

Pudong

The Shanghai World Financial Center

I liked this fire hydrant

Dinner was a special affair because it was our last meal with Sven, who will head back to the states early tomorrow.  He and Xinli selected the dishes for our tables, and made some great choices.  We’ll definitely miss Sven’s presence and his wealth of knowledge about smart traveling in the week before heading back to the United States, no one more so than Xinli, who is now the lone professor for our horde. 

After dinner, a few of us headed down Nanjing Road to a higher-end bar about forty floors up in a nearby hotel.  On the way we stopped by a pastry shop and gorged ourselves on some amazing custard and sweet bread.  The bar had a live band from the Philippines, which covered mostly pop songs (a lot of Black Eyed Peas and Lady Gaga).  Their musicality was questionable at times, but more than made up for by the classy atmosphere and an amazing view of Shanghai.  

Location: Shanghai, China

Today started with another of those fantastic omelet sandwiches and a bus ride to the Manhattan-sized Chongming Island, located just off the mainland.  The island is mostly swamplands and farming fields, which seem to pair well when one is growing rice.  Much of it has become a wildlife sanctuary, especially famous for its many species of birds.  Due to the way the tides work, sediment is deposited on one side of the island, adding to its landmass.  Until recently the land on the other side was naturally washed away, causing the landmass as a whole to remain the same size but seem to slowly float in one direction.  However, the Chinese have constructed a barrier to prevent the washing away, while the depositing of sediment is allowed to continue.  The really exciting activity on Chongming Island is called the Dongtan Project.  China knows that increased movement from rural to urban environments along with population growth is putting a strain on its cities and their non-renewable energy resources.  The Dongtan Project aims to turn the marsh and fields of some of Chongming into an energy and resources neutral eco-city.  While anything resembling a city is a long time away, windmills and solar panels already pepper the area, and the construction of green homes for the first several hundred inhabitants is under way.  The Project is certainly a bold (and expensive) plan, but it’s easy to have doubts as to its prospects.  The commute to Shanghai from the island is facilitated by a bridge, but still takes quite a long time.  It may be hard to convince people to live on Chongming instead of on the mainland.  Then again, the Chinese government is good at putting people where it wants them.  

We had lunch at a restaurant on the island, and most of the produce served had been grown locally.  As has usually been the case, the dishes were amazing.  I’ve decided that sitting at Xinli’s table makes a meal much better.  He can identify dishes when they are not familiar to Western eyes, and no matter which plate we ask him about, it’s always “really good.” 

Chongming Island

In the evening, about nine of us spent some time as a group walking around Shanghai’s Nanjing Road, which is as similar to Times Square as I’ve seen in China.  The Road is located about a ten-minute walk from our hotel.  It’s called a pedestrian road, although that is not entirely true.  Several streets cross it perpendicularly, so walkers always have to be on the lookout.  Lights and advertisements abound, and the energy of Shanghai’s success flows throughout the crowded streets. There is food and merchandise (especially World Expo goodies) available in stores and on the streets, but the best deals are found off the beaten path.  Basically, if you walk on the street for more than thirty seconds, you’re bound to be approached by a man or woman asking what you’re looking to buy (alternatively, he or she will run away if there’s a policeman nearby).  If you tell him or her what you want, he or she will take you through a few alleys and maybe even through someone’s home, and eventually bring you to a well-hidden, brightly lit storeroom filled from wall to wall with exactly the product you were looking for.  Of course, everything is a knockoff (the Puma logo on no two sneakers ever looks alike), and prices are always negotiable.  The person who brought you there will wait around until you’ve decided to move on and then walk you to another store until you can thoroughly convince him or her that you don’t want to be taken around any more dark corners.  The reason we decided to try this method (in search of cheap soccer jerseys) was that we figured there were enough of us in the group to stay safe, although we did meet a Polish fellow who was working his way through the shops solo and wasn’t worried at all about his safety.  After an hour or so of shopping around we convinced our guide that we were done, and enjoyed just walking around Nanjing until the crowds began to really thin out around midnight.

Nanjing Road

Location: Chongming Island, CHina

We were left up to our own devices for breakfast today, so some friends and I walked about a block down the road to a street vendor selling omelets to go.  The dough and egg exterior was used like a pita sandwich in which the vegetable or meat fillings of our chose were sealed.  Mine was about the tastiest thing I’ve ever had for the first meal of the day.

By the time I’d finished eating, our bus had arrived at the World Expo.  It became immediately clear that this event is more like a theme park than anything else, which explains why Disney World modeled its Epcot Center after the World Expositions.  The Shanghai Expo is on land that used to be a shipyard but was moved by the government to make way for the Expo (the Chinese are getting really good at relocating people and facilities).  Its grounds extend on both sides of the Huangpu River, so free ferries shuttle visitors across. 

They’ll tell you that each country has its own “pavilion,” but the quoted word is the greatest understatement of our trip to China.  Each country’s structure was a monument to the creativeness of its people.  Brushed steel columns at impossible angles, giant domes of transparent glass, and gardens on vertical walls–we saw them all, and much more.  China’s structure is a gigantic, upside down stepped pyramid.  Many of the pavilions also include their own restaurant with the traditional food of the country.  The insides of these structures are as varied as their exteriors.  There are movie theatres, concert halls, exhibition rooms, interactive environments, gigantic lifelike baby robots (Germany) and bicycling ramps (found in Denmark’s pavilion, where bicycles are available for those interested in riding).  Water effects seemed to be especially popular.  Indoor fountains and waterfalls on the walls weren’t rare. 

The Chinese Pavilion

Awesomeness comes at a price, and at the World Expo, this is paid by waiting in line (in addition to your admittance fee).  Furthermore, these aren’t your standard theme park queues.  For some countries’ pavillions, like those of China, the U.S., Japan, and Korea, the lines can take three hours to get through, and that’s if you match the aggression of the Chinese visitors.  The rows are often three or four people wide, and unless you and several friends form a human blockade, expect to get cut by a dozen people every time you leave more than six inches between you and the person in front.  It’s standard practice for those waiting behind you to press until their toes touch your heels, and their bags and elbows dig into your backside.  I found that if I waited in line while balancing only on my toes, the people behind me would shimmy their feet under my heels.  As I slowly shifted my weight back to normal, they would have to pull back and give me some space or lose their toes.  Another technique that worked very well was to lean backwards against those behind you until you pushed them back a few inches, and then to return quickly to a normal position.  This is all done without exchanging glances or words, but after three hours or so it definitely gets personal. 

The most aggressive people were the older ones (those under thirty usually found the behavior to be as bizarre as we did), and these were also the ones who don’t speak English.  By the end of a line, our greatest foes had codenames (ex. plaid shirt lady), and it became our mission to ensure that we beat them in the race to the pavilion entrance.  While the competition in lines was definitely occurring between every group of individuals, at times we felt like we received just a slightly harsher treatment because we were so obviously foreigners.  Part of the problem was that it was easy to tell that we were all part of the same group, but we couldn’t tell when others were.  Sometimes a child would slip by our knees and we would allow it, figuring that he was catching up to his family, only to discover that they was behind us using the boy as an excuse to cut past.  Other times, a woman would slip by and then link arms with three of her friends, pulling them between us before we could close the gap.  Lastly, whenever the line opened up into any kind of space, even if it was an entrance hallway to the pavilion and it was clear that they would be in the next batch of people to enter no matter what, members of the line would break into a sprint to try to reach the next room first.

It’s important to distinguish what I’ve written above from any kind of a slight on the Chinese people or culture.  Their way of handling lines is much more aggressive than ours, and felt bizarre at fist.  However, in traveling, one has to understand that there are no better or worse traditions–only different ones.  This is a concept that Sven has been doing a great job of reinforcing for us on the rare cases when we are guilty of frustration by a divergence from the American way.  Most of my favorite moments in the day actually occurred as we learned the trade of waiting in lines, just as we learned how to barter earlier in the month.  I must admit that without such pressure to advance in line, three-hour waits could easily have been double that duration. 

Returning my account to the pavilions themselves, I personally had the chance to visit Israel, Russia, Monaco, Japan, and a join pavilion for the smaller of the African nations.  Israel’s had a 360 degree movie theatre where they presented some of the nation’s research in science and technology, including micro snake-like robots designed to enter a person’s body and perform operations.  Russia took a two-level approach to their building.  Parts of it made me feel like I was in a fantasy world.  Giant artificial vegetables were arranged around the walkway, and every couple of feet there was a booth on which a projection screen displayed one of several children in strange costumes giving talks in Chinese on Russia’s culture and technology.  Replicas of famous spacecrafts hung from the ceiling, most notably Sputnik.  

Israel’s Pavilion

Inside Russia’s Pavilion

Monaco’s pavilion was essentially a movie theatre that displayed a silent animated movie of scenes of Monaco’s history, from its original colonization to the battles in which it changed from the possession of one nation to another to its current growth and development.  In the last seconds of the video, it proposed a view of the Principality in the year 3000, where flying ships became a part of its habitat as well as the mainland. 

         The joint Africa pavilion was divided into smaller stalls for its nations, which each displayed artifacts and exhibits detailing some notable citizens and cultural and artistic trends.  The booth for Kenya featured a picture of Barack Obama and a paragraph or two about his Kenyan lineage.  Several of the countries had displays honoring their notable Olympic athletes. 

         Japan’s pavilion was my final stop, and my favorite of the day.  In addition to having some walk-through exhibits on advancements in energy and water purification, it had several auditoriums where staff members gave presentations on Japanese technology.  One of the focuses was a new handheld digital photography camera with an unbelievably high resolution.  They also showed off a robot that can not only walk but also play simple tunes on the violin.  Lastly, they rode around in a single person vehicle that was like a combination between a Smart Car and a Segue.  All of this technology was tied in to Japan’s efforts to help reestablish China’s crested ibis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crested_Ibis) population, and followed a family of the future in their discovery that the bird had made a comeback.  The presentations also mixed in some traditional interpretive Japanese dancing on stage. 

Japan’s robot

         The use of the crested ibis was just one instance of countries attempting to paint themselves as having a rich and mutually beneficial relationship with the Chinese.  Much like Armstrong and GE, they knew that success in China depends upon making the case that they have China’s best interests in mind. 

         Several pavilions at the Expo were not related to any one country, but instead had been constructed around the theme and mission of the Expo itself.  We visited the “Urbanian Pavilion” that traced the parallel lives of several families in different areas of the world through each of five rooms titled: Family, work, contact, learning, and health.  In the rooms, a monitor for each family displayed a short video focused around that room’s title.  All the videos in a room were coordinated, so as you looked around you saw how each family performed similar activities in different ways.

The USA Pavilion

The Urbanian Pavilion

         The only pavilion I wish I could have visited but did not get the chance to was the United States’.  From what I’m told by others in our group who did attend, it had three different auditoriums, each with a video of about five minutes in length, and featured dialogues by some famous Americans.  President Obama was one of the more notable speakers. The final video included an effect that actually sprinkled water droplets on the crowd as a storm raged onscreen.  Few of us were surprised to see that KFC and Pizza Hut had locations right next to the U.S. pavilion.

A few more pavilions

A bridge of the World Expo

         Despite having had Mexican (or the Chinese take on it, at least) for lunch, I was starving by the time we returned to our hotel around midnight.  A few of us had a late dinner with Xinli at the restaurant next door to the hotel before heading to our rooms with ankles still sore after spending an entire day on our feet. 

Location: Shanghai, China

Today’s ride to the Armstrong acoustic tiles plant gave us some time to look at Shanghai’s bustling city streets.  Without a doubt it has the most Western feel of any city we’ve been to, but I can’t explain exactly why.  All I can say is that with the exception of having many more mopeds and bicyclists, the traffic reminds one of Manhattan, and the numerous and unique skyscrapers reaching towards the heavens reinforce the effect. 

Shanghai may not have hosted the Olympics, but at the moment it is the location of a world famous event.  This is the 2010 World Expo, which was launched just under a month ago and will continue to be in operation for six months.  Shanghai exhibits the telltale signs of a recent clean-up effort just as Beijing did, and its hard to miss dozens of street vendors selling stuffed animals and keychains of Haibo, this Expo’s mascot, who looks a lot like a blue Gumby.  Posters and advertisements around the city state the event’s theme phrase: “Better city, better life.”

After an hour or two on the bus, we reached the Armstrong facility.  Armstrong is a company that originated in the United States but has since expanded across the globe.  It is one of three other businesses that have followed the same business plan that we will be visiting over the next few days.  The Armstrong plant we visited manufactures the ceiling tiles one sees in schools and business buildings, which it ships all over Asia.   After a brief introduction about the company and its entrance into the Chinese market less than two decades ago, we took a walking tour of the assembly line itself, where we followed the formation of the tiles from being raw ingredients (some of which are recycled), to liquid forms being poured into molds and baked, to finished products being inspected and packaged.  Almost the entire process was automated, but workers were hard at work monitoring the mixture of ingredients, ensuring the quality of the tiles produced, and maneuvering loads of hundreds of kilograms on forklifts with the grace of a ballerina. 

We’ve been told that, for relatively uneducated workers, American companies are the best employers.  Salaries and benefits don’t extend anywhere near what laborers in the United States receive, but they are favorable relative to other Chinese companies.

From Huntsman we drove to General Electric’s Shanghai facility.  This is much more of a research institution than Huntsman was, and encompasses quite a few areas of GE’s broad spectrum of industry participation.  The woman we spoke with worked in their transportation department, and told us about a big project in which they are engaged with the Chinese government building trains and railways in the high elevations of Tibet.  GE also does a large amount of work in the energy business, especially in the manufacturing of turbines for wind energy generators. 

GE Shanghai

It’s clear that in order to succeed, American companies need to approach all aspects of their businesses from a Chinese prospective.  For instance, China rarely permits businesses to enter the country if they do not participate in corporate partnership.  This means that Huntsman and GE could not enter their ventures alone–even though it is possible to later progress to a stage of independence.  In GE’s case, this poses a significant risk.  They may have to partner and share with competing companies in order to have their product sell.  When that partnership ends, the technology they shared with competitors could be used against them. 

In addition, it’s important that these companies have to be dedicated to producing a product that is by China, for China.  The Chinese government has a tremendous amount of power to make or break a company, and would not allow one to exist that funneled its profits and innovations abroad.  In order to survive, the companies need to orient themselves 100% to benefiting China–and there is a lot of money to be made in doing just that.

I found it fascinating to learn that there are actually very strict regulations, both by the United States and Chinese governments, which limit how much researchers in either country may share with foreigners, even when they are part of the same international corporation. Imagine working on an international team and knowing the answer to an engineering problem with which you are faced, but being unable to offer it because your government sees the information as something that could endanger national security if leaked. 

By the time we returned to our hotel from GE and dinner, it was night in Shanghai.  Xinli took us on a quick walk to the the “Bund” area of Shanghai, which is one of the oldest parts of the city.  Many of the buildings here have the heavy Greek columns that we associate with Western financial institutions–and that’s just what they were constructed for, decades ago.  The beautiful buildings now mostly house Chinese banks and other offices, but remind older Chinese populations of a time when Asians were discriminated against by European colonists.  On one end of the Bund flows the Huangpu River, across which one can see the great skyscrapers of Shanghai’s business district, named Pudong.  Looking from the old Western constructions to the modern hi-rises, one glimpses over a hundred years of architectural and cultural transformation. 

The Bund and the view across the Huangpu

Tomorrow we have the whole day to spend at the World Expo, which should be an exhausting but great time.

Location: Shanghai, China