All the King's Men...

Ben, Suzanne, and I went to Xi’an on the last day that I was in China, and were taken around by a guide named Rainbow. Rainbow, poised, cheerful, and knowledgeable, is a member of one of the 56 Chinese minority groups who make up 3% of the population—the remaining 97% are all Han people, despite variations in languages and customs. She picked her name to indicate the bright side of life, the promise after the rain. It was raining when we arrived in Xi’an, and Rainbow delivered.

The main highlight in Xi’an is the mass of clay warriors constructed in 210 B.C. to furnish the tomb of Qin Shi Huang. He needed some serious protection in the afterlife, to the tune of 7,000 soldiers. The Chinese belief system was then aligned with the Egyptians, as the Chinese buried people with items that they would need in the Earth-like realm beyond. The number of soldiers created to serve the emperor seems indicative of the dangerous opposition to his rule among his people, as the tomb was pillaged very quickly after his demise.

The soldiers were buried in three main areas, and buildings were erected over the excavation. The main building actually looks like an airplane hangar, containing thousands of whole soldiers as well as the figures’ OR. The attraction to the warriors stems not only from their scope, but also from their craftsmanship. Each soldier has a different face. Each has details like hairdos, fingernails, weaponry, with positions in the battleground formation dictating a role, like a standard-bearer.

They're apparently modeled after actual individual soldiers of the emperor's forces.

Below is my favorite--a young bowman at the ready.

He looks the part, but it must have been a real disappointment for the emperor when he and his compatriotrs dropped the ball during the lootings.

China: The End of the (Silk) Road

I just wanted to tie up some final observations of China here, before I move on to the totally contrasting country of Japan

Bikes

Bicycles are still in force here, but Shanghai being the glitzy face of China, cars now dominate. I never saw a street packed spoke-to-handlebar like so many photos of China, but there are some innovations that make things easier for cyclists. For example, the full-bike poncho ensures that you and your cargo arrive at least dry. Safe is another matter.

Chinese Fashion

I have never been to a country that where people pay less attention to their appearance than people in the US do until…now. Unfortunately, I don’t have photos, but the vast majority of people wear ill-fitting western clothes that make them resemble potato sacks. Matching is not a priority, and hair is a nuisance. A minority actually attire themselves in pajama sets (not the shiny kind with the snap buttons--only Americans wear those). Hey, why change? But kitten heels are also the shoe of choice for women. Truly a country of contrasts.

Shanghai Expo 2010

The whole city is preparing for the upcoming showcase, which may prove more strategic than Beijing’s Olympics bid. Although the expo does not have the same amount of press as the Olympics, it also doesn’t come with the same financial burden. No new facilities are necessary in terms of show space, and the participating countries construct and pay for their own pavilions. It has also given Shanghai a development goal in terms of improving infrastructure, which is necessary in the first place, and building additional structures in Pudong to support expanding commerce. This little guy can’t wait!

Also, just a reminder: there's no English like bad English!

Wouldn't Yu (Yuan)?

Yuan are gardens in Mandarin, and these famous Yu gardens in Shanghai were built to honor the owner’s parents. They are beautiful, but the complex outside was packed with tourists, a KFC, and a DQ, and I don’t know if I’d recommend the experience.

Here we learned that it was customary to build up the threshold according to one’s social stature. I think that this is based on the age-old twin concepts of schadenfreude and slapstick slipping and tripping. I was waiting to catapult over a doorsill only to look up and find a group of socially superior people laughing heartily at my expense.

The presence of the dragon head was of particular note because the dragon historically symbolized the emperor. Its inclusion in the architecture signified that the emperor and his coterie had visited the garden housing complex and approved of the animal’s use.

This, to the right, is the third-most-famous rock in China. Don’t ask.

Women were only permitted to view the garden seated, potentially to avoid embarrassing Gone-With-the-Wind fainting sessions when confronted by the beauty.

This is the scene outside the garden. Who doesn’t like DQ?

There's No Me in Tea

We took a trip to Huangzhou, a mere 3.5 hours from Shanghai, to visit Alibaba, which is the Yahoo, Ebay, Yellow Pages, PayPal and general all-knowing higher being of the Chinese web. The building included rows and rows of young marketers, tech geniuses, and sales callers, all of whom, we were informed, could stand on their hands at the time of hiring. This talent strategy would not fly in other locales, but the Chinese are famous for both their gymnasts and their deference to power. So they stood on their hands and landed jobs. Alibaba also runs on a cult of personality of sorts, centered on founder Jack Ma, the aggressive net imperialist. The business was interesting, but we were all glad that there were other things to see in Huangzhou.

Huangzhou is actually known as a sort of “heaven on earth” in Chinese lore and travel brochures, although it’s now the site of countless cookie-cutter homes which have given it the nickname “Disneyland”(see right). The quiet lake is framed by hills of temples and willows draping over foot paths.

The old-style ferries are also popular as school trips.

We rounded out the afternoon at an area tea plantation, where they harvest only the top sprigs on the leaf three times a year.

The spring harvest is the most prized, as it’s had the longest time to grow, whereas the summer harvest is the poorest quality, and has the most caffeine. Their priorities are a little different from ours, I think. So, typically, the women picked the leaves all day while the men dried them. These days packing is an art as well, and our tour guide let us know that she was an expert, meaning that we would get as much tea as possible, should we choose to purchase there!

We were treated to a tea ceremony, which began with an expert pourer. She entreated us to first try the tea with our eyes… this is supposed to be soothing. It depends on how hot the tea is!

Much like wine tasting, you progress from smelling to sipping the tea. We were also provided with tea condiments, which looked like mushrooms and orange peels to me.

From now on, what you put in your tea is your own business. I don’t want to know.

Apparently, in China people often drink straight from the pot, which I never saw while I was there.

The piece de resistance was a flower tea ceremony, which approximated a refined, eastern version of the capsules that turn into spongy dinosaurs with hot water.

Better Write it Down

A word on Chinese: I learned very little Chinese while staying in Shanghai, but I’ll tell you what I picked up. Chinese, the written language, is understood by almost everyone in the country. The characters, originally pictorial representations, are so abstracted that most no longer signify specific concepts, although there are some exceptions. Specifically, ni hao, the Mandarin greeting, actually means “you good.” Hao, a character made of the symbol for woman and the symbol for child, signifies “good.” Cantonese (spoken in the South, in Hong Kong, Macao, etc.) and Mandarin (spoken in Shanghai and points north like Beijing) are variations on pronunciation of the written language, but have evolved so that they have almost no common ground. In addition, Shanghainese-speakers cannot understand many other Mandarin dialects, and often do not bother to try. My only sister is now speaking in Shanghainese slang. Another one bites the dust.
The evolution of “cheers”-ing shows how the culture is changing. While the common term is “gambei,” this literally means bottoms up—obligating one to drink the whole thing in one gulp. As wine bars and upscale cafés emerge, people are starting to realize that maybe this is not an ideal practice. The new term sounds something like “tschoo-ae,” which does not bind you to a specific amount. Since we were here ostensibly for corporate visits, I think we arrived right on time.

Zao Shang Hao (Good Morning!)

(Preface: I’m sorry that it’s taken me so long to post entries. In Shanghai the internet at the hotel was prohibitively expensive, and in Tokyo it’s fleeting at times. We were greeted with a booklet here explaining how to set things up, including such gems as “It becomes completion with the above process by the preparation.” The screen shots were entirely in Japanese.)

Welcome to China! The most amazing thing about the city of Shanghai to me was its dissimilarity to Mumbai. In the West, I feel like I’ve read a lot of press lumping Mumbai with Shanghai, as the glitzy faces of their respective countries, with their incredible growth and shiny new buildings, the former’s Bollywood and the latter’s French influences. But Shanghai is cleaner, better planned, more cosmopolitan and much more expensive. A lot of this is recent. In 1994, a quarter of the world’s cranes were in Shanghai, building Pudong, the skyscraper village on the east bank of the Huangpu River. (Today actually 72% of cranes are in Dubai. 72%!)

This was the only person that I saw sleeping on the street in Shanghai, and he found a bench! In Mumbai, it was common to see men sleeping in the middle of sidewalks, on medians, under store awnings…a different speed. I thought that I would spend more time in Shanghai itself, but several of our corporate visits were in satellite cities roughly the size of Chicago, so I feel like there’s a lot in Shanghai that I missed. But I did see a few things…

The Jade Buddha Temple

Our guide explained to us that over 80% of China’s population considers itself atheist, but superstition still reigns supreme in many areas.

These women have come from surrounding areas to worship the Buddha in his many forms, clutching incense sticks that send their prayers heavenwards with wispy smoke. Their bags are stamped with the symbols of temples that they have visited.
The temple itself was beautiful, with classical Chinese architectural features, such as upward-sloping corners, which mimic bird’s tails and are supposed to be lucky. The interior included a giant Buddha carved of one piece of jade, who impressed me by seeming very humble. He had a strangely submissive expression for a god to whom people are offering everything from flowers to tomatoes to…single servings of Jello? We weren’t permitted to photograph him, but downstairs there was an enormous hall of different personages of Buddha, which included the typical cheery Chinese figure and others, who may be avatars. Our guide told us that Buddhism arrived in the 6th century B.C. from India, and some of the figures had been changed into Chinese models, mostly the positive figures. The others, whom our guide termed as grotesque, “still had the Indian faces.” The Indian nationals in our group had their own ideas about this, I believe.

Here's a parting shot of Buddhist monks, who are cool enough to wear socks with sandals.