china: day three

Today was our first lecture on Chinese painting. Unfortunately there was not much to the lecture I hadn't previously learned, but the professor did bring two of his paintings--I learned far more from them. One had a delicate branch with thin leaves against a light mist in the upper right, with the poem and seal directly below. In the lower left were two fish; the river was implied. The other image had spikier branches to contrast with the wispy strokes of crustaceans' antennae below. Both paintings were composed in virtually the same way, with vast areas of blank paper pulling the eye to the two points of interest in the bottom-left quarter and upper third.

It was revealed today that the XJTU administration wants to keep us Americans confined to the international student dormitory. Not ones to waste one of our precious three weeks, our faculty fought back. Because of their efforts, we were able to visit a Chinese high school, a factory that produces Moon Cakes and halal food products, and a farming-village-cum-tourist destination (imagine Living History Farms in Iowa, or the town in Stuhr Museum in Nebraska). It was a direct clash between China's high power distance and ascription system of merit versus the U.S. low power distance and achievement system. The school administration assumed the American faculty would not fight back, simply because they were placed lower on XJTU's organization charts. Whoops.

Above: Students' hot water bottles.
Below: A student nicknamed "Chinese Obama" by his classmates.

We spoke for some time with the high school students. They had taken enough English language to pass their standardized exams--that is, not quite enough to communicate verbally with us. It may well be true that many Chinese students study English language, but they focus heavily on the written language rather than the spoken one. I'm not criticizing them, but it was an interesting fact to learn.


The food factory was literally built from nothing by a Chinese entrepreneur. That's much harder than it sounds--capitalists aren't really that common over here; indeed, borrowing money in general is looked down upon. This factory, then, was started from a few friends selling the food they made in their house for RMB0.10 each, and grew to a giant plant that produces many tons of Moon Cakes every year. The biggest strategic move, apparently, was locating the factory in a small town. It seems that starting an operation in Beijing would doom it to being forgotten, but basing it in rural China not only gives the plant more attention but causes the town to grow.