china: day five

Calligraphy class was unpleasant. The slide projector clicks, a new set of scribbled cangjie appears, and the professor drones, "This is a sample of calligraphy from the Tang Dynasty." This exact scene repeats itself hundreds of times, with only the name of the dynasty changing. Why were the characters written the way they were? What is the link between Tang calligraphy and the Japanese Art of Sho? Guess we'll never know.

There was a fascinating lecture about multinational enterprises in China in the afternoon. I learned that signatures are worth nothing, and that a Chinese person's seal is his identification. I could only imagine how easy it must be to steal someone's seal, and how much that person would lose. What would Schneier say?

The other interesting element of the lecture was that MNEs are encouraged to place research and development operations in China because of access to inexpensive scientists. I wondered how firms weigh the savings against the loss of intellectual property to China's challenging legal environment.

In the evening, we went to the park and watched the water show. It was quite a thing:








After the show, we wandered around the park for a little while longer:



Tonight I started to develop a low-grade fever. The administration has been measuring our temperature twice per day since we got here. The whole country is paranoid about swine flu, and I suppose they have good reason; people live terrifyingly close to each other here. Even so, it feels a little demeaning. They don't trust us. We're being treated like little threats to national security, not people. I can only hope nothing dire comes of this.