China Blog, Stuart Grauer, The Grauer School
From October 22 through October 31, I traveled to China as a part of a small delegation
of U.S. independent school heads, on the recommendation of the California Association
of Independent Schools and at the personal invitation and grant of the Ameson
Foundation for International Cultural and Educational Exchange. The Ameson
Foundation is 450 people strong in China and their unparalleled access and resources
afforded me a glimpse into Chinese education that would have been impossible even a
decade ago. For the benefit of those interested, I have prepared this as a blog posting.
Perhaps uncharacteristically for me and largely owing to the collaboration of Gene
Bratek, Headmaster of a Charleston, SC Episcopal school, I provide this journal of a
fascinating engagement to you all neat, in un-editorialized detail, or at least as much so as
I am capable.
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
I arrived at Pudang Shanghai International Airport at 10:30 AM and an Ameson
Foundation representative named Lin Ying and called Sid greeted me. She found a taxi
and we headed for the city. The day was not unlike a San Diego day, although there was a
perception of smog as we approached the city and the cars backed up considerably. We
traveled the longest elevated highway I have ever been on as we navigated our way
through rush hour, over the Huang-pu River, and into the city of 20 million people. There
were a lot of lane changes marked by quick maneuvers, but apparently cars in China are
not equipped with turn signals, or so it seemed. Having boarded an airplane in Atlanta at
9 PM and finally arriving in Shanghai about 23 hours later, I was happy to arrive at the
Hua Ting Hotel in Shanghai, five star with all amenities, east and west. At check in, I was
given vouchers for dinner that night and breakfast the next morning, which would be
typical of Ameson all week. My guide advised me to get a massage at one of them, the
price being around seven dollars, but I declined. Checked in, I was eager to take a walk
along the colorful shops and stretch my legs, since international flights in economy class
leave no room for stretching out.
Thursday, October 25, 2012
At breakfast I met our fellow travelers from the Southeast, including Georgia and Florida,
and California; twelve in all. We were led by Steve Robinson, President of the Southern
Association of Independent Schools, who was backed up by Paul Miller, Director of
Global Initiatives of the National Association of Independent Schools. Independent
education is perhaps more advanced in the US than anywhere else, and I could see that
this week would afford me with ongoing opportunities to share experiences with a
handful of our nation’s accomplished independent school leaders. Soon we departed for
Shanghai Gezhi High School, a “key school” in China, which means that it is one
requiring an entrance examination for admission. Sounds familiar. The school was
founded in 1874 by a group of men that included three from England, one from America,
and the others from China. While the government pays most of the cost of running the
school, parents are required to pay a portion. We were ushered into the Board Room
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where we were introduced to the Principal and the Party Secretary, seated jointly at the
front of the room. Presentations were made by the Principal, a teacher, and two students.
The Principal (the only man in the room without a tie) was obviously proud of the
school’s alumni as he recounted the many Chinese leaders who were graduates. He told
us that some of their graduates go to colleges in the USA and Great Britain. I was
interested to hear him talk about the school’s core values:
 National identity
 The scientific spirit and mode of thinking
 Development of physical qualities
 Global vision, multicultural diversity, and tolerance for others
 Innovative spirit
He emphasized that they believed they were creating the next generation of globally
minded students, a tradition begun in 1979 by Den Xio Ping. They offer a dual diploma:
the regular high school diploma, and either the Advanced Placement (AP) or
International Baccalaureate (IB). They have 17 sister schools. In addition to the natural
sciences, this school wants their students to develop their talents in art, culture, music,
and physical education. This is in contrast to most Chinese high schools that focus mainly
on core academic subjects. College bound seniors in China typically spend their entire
senior year in test preparation for the Gaukao examinations, which entirely determine
both their university placement and major.
While the Principal required an interpreter to translate his comments into English, the
two, handpicked students in our forum clearly had a high level of English proficiency.
Both of them had travelled internationally to other schools in order to participate in
service programs. Both said they planned to go to college in America and, like American
independent school students (but very unlike Chinese students), had thoughtful lists of
the ones they would be applying to.
All week, we kept noting that the Chinese educators have a penchant for listing and
numbering things as they provided lectures, summaries, and responses. The students’ take
on Gezhi High School was that it wanted students to develop in five ways:
 Learn to be innovative. At each grade level a class on innovation was required.
(This was the first of several discussions on the idea of innovation that we would
hear all week in various settings.)
 Follow your own passion. For example, the list of clubs offered was a long one.
 Develop in an all-around way. This included moral, academic, psychological,
physical, and innovative thinking. Their grading system even included points for
each of these five areas (although the universities disregard anything but the
Gaukao).
 Embrace diverse cultures. Travel to other countries is important at this school.
 Cultivate civic awareness. Currently, Chinese students have little beyond standard
“clean-ups.” One student described a project she and her classmates conducted to
determine the differences in teenage volunteering in America and China, with the
clear conclusion that there was a far greater commitment to community service in
the USA.
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One student with very rare, perfect English had studied at Hebrew University High
School where she had done a breast cancer poster with kids from six countries. Another
student with a math/science orientation read her script: “I love my school for it is like a
big belvedere.”
We also had the opportunity to visit two Advanced Placement (AP) classes where the
instruction was all in English: one was a pre-calculus class and the other was world
history. These classes were held in a part of the school entirely sponsored by The
Ameson Foundation to promote English immersion instruction and US college
admissions. Every student enrolled in this division will skip the Chinese national
examination for entry in Chinese universities and, instead, will take the SAT in
preparation for applying to American colleges and universities. The US and its
educational system are seen as liberating and progressive.
Afterwards, I spent time with the Communist Party representative at the school, Wang Li
Ping, who assured me that all students are aligned with the Party which, she claimed, was
on the rise. Students I asked did not see it that way at all. While it is true students are
typically expected to be members of the Young Pioneers until age 14, there is a gap in
organized activity until age 19 when you are old enough to officially join, and the high
school students expressed no interest.
That evening we were to make our way by bus to Jiangyin, a couple hours out of
Shanghai, to participate in the annual “Sino-International Seminar for Distinguished High
School Principals.” Departing, I rode the elevator down the 21 floors but, and the doors
opened at my floor, but I was packed into the back of the cab and no one would move.
The people in the front stood by the open doors, immobile, until I feared I would miss my
stop completely and I pleaded, “I can't get out if you will not move.”
Friday, October 26, 2012
Before breakfast I am looking out from my eleventh floor room watching high school
students walking to school. You can tell they are students by their uniforms that look to
me like athletic warm-up suits. It is drizzling out and they are crossing a busy six-lane
street. There are no crossing guards or traffic signals to stop vehicles as they wade into
the oncoming cars and trucks. There are zebra stripes, but it seems that students and
vehicles are in uncomfortable proximity to each other as somehow everyone reaches the
other side unharmed. I have to believe that in America this situation would be met with
alarm.
Most of our meals have been taken in hotel restaurants that feature elaborate buffet
stations. Last night and this morning, for example, we ate on the twenty-fifth floor in
what was called The Revolving Palace. As its name suggests, the restaurant revolves,
giving diners a 360 degree view of the city. However, with rain and fog there was not
much to see. There were many food choices available with each having a small placard
naming in Chinese and in English what each food was. The very extensive choices
wrapped around the “palace,” including Congee, dragon fruit (pitaya), bamboo shoots,
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steamed dumpling, goose web and wing, turtle, cuttle fish, beancurd, spicy sea snail,
fresh lotus seed, ox’s tendon, a kind of nut, octopus, read bean broad (bread), healthy
bread, and gelato served by a girl called Yoyo.
Today we are spending the day at Nanjing High School, surely a $100 million-plus
facility that awakens the visitor that a giant is ascending and somehow reminds me of
Stanford University. We were there to attend the “International Forum for Distinguished
Secondary School Principals.” This was a conference sponsored by the National Training
Center for Secondary School Principals Ministry of Education China and had as it’s
theme “School Culture and School-based Curriculum.” This a very new concept in China,
where government programs of all kinds have been extremely centralized. The program
featured speakers from China, Australia, USA, South Africa, and Canada. This was an
intensive daylong series of speeches and breakout groups. There was far too much
information for me to summarize here; however, a few comments might be worth passing
on:
 One Chinese speaker expressed the belief that the school culture should be based
on a value system formed by the headmaster and that the curriculum should
show the philosophy of the headmaster. He noted, “the culture should be
systematized and spread throughout the school,” a failed attempt to capture the
western naturalism and a statement that western educators might find ironic and
strange.
 Starbucks in China does not serve traditional western-style coffee; instead, they
have created a mixture of cream, water, and sugar to adapt to the cultural taste of
the Chinese.
 A Chinese official began by offering that culture relies on institutional stories,
such as the annual selection of the top ten teachers or the top ten events; rituals
that deepen people’s understanding of institutional beliefs; and activities,
including curricular, extra-curricular, festivals, competitions, and social
activities. After several blocks of time had clicked away with this, and this
official had compared cultural absorption to eating a steak and, later, to buying
fruit at the stand, then noting, “Cultural innovation can improve student progress,
but we must choose concretely …” I removed my simulcast earphones and
listened to the speech live in Mandarin for a while. This was equally
enlightening to the western ear, and after this I watched while listening to some
current American music, and so on.
 Australian delegate: In Australia, the largest number of new immigrants is
Chinese. He discussed challenges at great length until I was inclined to don my
headphones again and listen to him simulcast in Mandarin! At last, however, this
speaker, Rob Nairns, got our delegation’s permanent attention by serving up the
unforgettable notice, “This is the Asian century.”
 Our representative, Steve Robinson, detailed the extraordinary independent
schools phenomenon of the United States: the freedom of their heads to innovate
and develop new and appropriate models, hence their incubation of ideas
eventually used widely.
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 A Canadian speaker said she believes their schools keep getting better because
they have followed three maxims: “It’s a system thing, not a single thing.
Prescribe adequacy, unleash greatness. Common, but different.”
 A South African speaker brought me first into despair and eventually into anger
about the state of both hate, decay, and hopelessness in their national educational
system. This speaker provided an amazing, horrifying counterpoint to the
optimistic, energetic and unstoppable Chinese. (I later, in a breakout session,
offered up a short address first discussing multiple perspectives and, as an aside,
suggesting that this official remove himself from the field and become a
bartender. I am uncertain as to whether my speech was received by my Chinese
counterparts, however. My interpreter was a first year, high school English
literature teacher who understood just snippets of what I said and she haltingly
attempted to render those snippets in Mandarin to the Chinese educators in the
room, then stretched her lower lip into endearing, guilty looks after each, hapless
pass. I was surely in love.)
The forum was concluded with very long summations consisting of myriad thought
layers, including numerated bullet points punctuated by sub-bullet points. Officials of
ascending rank followed one another with increasingly global summations. A junior high
principal held court for a while, literally screaming his messages, Mao-style. “Everything
has a natural law,” he claimed. Screaming. EVERY STUDENT TAUGHT WITH HIGH
MORALS! We must make school happy, he implored. Later on, an official pointed out
that even though the west has recently identified eight intelligences, China had Confucius
who done so much long ago. Time wore on—I remember an “I Ching” quote—and my
journal shows some good sketching for a redesign of the Harkness Table—until it was
quite dark outside and at last the final, top ranking official noted, from a strangely
nostalgic perspective, “Your presence has glorified our land” and we hobbled upstairs to
a banquet room in the school where the principal, suddenly dressed in blue jeans, had
kindly arranged for abundant offerings.
To me, the good news is that, like American scholars have over the past decade, the
Chinese are beginning to study the relationship between the systems they are creating and
the concept of happiness.
We had a few breaks during the day to walk through the campus and some of the
buildings. The school was variously described to us as having either 2,000 or 10,000
students. While it was not possible for me to determine which figure was correct, there
were certainly enough high-rise buildings to make the larger number believable. The
architecture was both utilitarian and grand, but the grounds featured well-manicured
lawns, many bright flowers, several koi ponds and a stunning, 10-story pagoda clocktower. This was another “key school” requiring high scores on an entrance examination
for admission. It is one of 120 schools built in this province in the past four years, and the
race to build schools nationwide has been accompanied by the thirst for western
educational practices. This is the origin of the conference theme of “building school
culture.” And this is why our delegation is here ...
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Interestingly, most of the students were five-day boarders, even though their families
lived in the area. It was explained that the parents do not want their children wasting time
commuting to school when they could be studying. That explanation brings up the topic
of the one child policy in China. Since it is against the law for families to have more than
one child, much attention is paid to the sole progeny of these families. Even though
China is a socialist country, it has relied on the traditional Chinese practice of children
caring for their parents as they become too old to care for themselves. I was told that
there is no government sponsored retirement program for old people. The reliance on a
single child to assume these responsibilities will in all likelihood begin to breakdown
soon, particularly since some of these children intend to follow careers and lives in other
countries.
We arrive in Nanjing at 9:00 PM after a two and a half hour bus ride and will be in the
opulent Celebrity City Hotel for two nights.
Saturday, October 27, 2012
This morning we went on an excursion to Purple Mountain National Park in Nanjing.
This is a very popular tourist attraction because it is the location of the mausoleum of the
revered Dr. Sun Yat-Sen. He is credited for having overthrown the Ching Dynasty to
found the Chinese republic. (His reputation, destroyed by Mao, is now restored as the
entire era of Mao’s Cultural Revolution is widely called “the disgrace.”) To reach the
mausoleum and the monumental statue of Sun Yat-Sen one has to climb a total of 320
steps. We were led by an Ameson guide, Zhu, who I enjoyed my time with. Zhu’s parents
had been sent by Mao to forced labor camps in the countryside at the start of the cultural
revolution and he had been among the first to return to normal schooling as life came
back into them after a generation of terror. Our group of hearty school heads was
undaunted and persevered to the top of the mountain.
I have previously mentioned our lunches and dinners, but have not yet described the food
in any detail. Today we went to one of the oldest restaurants in Nanjing, Qi Fung Ge,
meaning “Special Aroma Restaurant,” which happened to be Muslim and, therefore,
meant that we would not be eating any pork, but otherwise the food was typical of what
we have been eating. With the assistance of one of our guides I tried to make a list of the
items that kept appearing on our table. Our meals always begin with what are known as
cold foods that are usually on our table when we arrive. (We would call them appetizers.)
Today, these included individual plates of cilantro, small slices of beef, Nanking
saltwater duck, smoked fish, pickled wah wah tai (cabbage), small squares of sweetened
pumpkin, and Jailing beer, a locally brewed, low alcohol beer. As our group began
eating these from the lazy susan in the middle of the table, our servers began removing
the cold foods and replacing them with the hot foods. Soon a pot appeared containing a
stew featuring bok choy, fish stomachs, “tree ears” (formerly called “Jew’s ears”), and
candied shrimp. Then came a plate of fried sheep ribs, then fried duck tongue that I failed
to extract significant meat from, and then a bowl containing tubers, shrimp, and
watermelon. As items seemed near depletion, servers deftly whisked them away and
replaced them with plates of other items. Soon something arrived which was described
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as a dried egg cake. Each diner then was served an individual plate with a potsticker. As
we began to believe there could not possibly be any more food in the restaurant, the
servers appeared with small individual bowls of red beans and balls of sticky rice. Soon
the tofu arrived. Other items continued to be placed on the lazy susan, but I gave up
trying to keep a complete list. No desserts were offered and apparently the meal ended
when diners were unable to eat any more. This was pretty typical of the challenge we
faced at each meal.
In the afternoon we went to the Nanjing No. 1 School where we were invited to observe a
Chemistry class taught by Pan Chin Wa, or Jessica, as she preferred. At the start of the
class the students stood and bowed to the teacher and said in unison, “Good morning,
teacher.” This was said in Mandarin. The teacher signaled for them to sit down and the
lesson began. There were 37 students in this class seated in rows facing the teacher,
typical of many classes we saw. Because this was another “key school” dedicated to
preparing students for entry to American colleges and universities, the instruction and
student responses were all in English. It is worth noting here that it is mandated that
Chinese schools teach English in grades one through twelve. On this basis, the principal
stated that there were more students studying English in China than the entire population
of the United States. Even still, I could not help thinking about the challenges these
students face as they take instruction in every class, every day, in a language that is not
their native tongue. Their school day begins at 7:10 AM and ends at 5:30 PM. They get a
break on Saturdays as their classes on that day end at 3:00 PM.
This is a very prestigious school in China, but it was apparent that instruction was
delivered in a way very different from how it is delivered in America. The lesson was on
sodium compounds and it featured a teacher lecture using a power point presentation and
a teacher demonstration, which she referred to as a “mini-lab,” surely an American
textbook publisher’s euphemism. Next, two students were called to the front of the class
to conduct another demonstration. There is no laboratory and, therefore, no opportunity
for the other students in the class to have a hands-on learning experience. Some chemical
notations were written in chalk on the blackboard. There was no evidence of the
technology we have become so accustomed to seeing in our science labs. There was no
sign of computers, or SmartBoards, or documents cameras, or white boards. But these
Chinese students were clearly used to working hard and learning without all these
advantages. When the class ended, the students stood and said in unison, “Thank you,
teacher.”
After class we were invited to participate in a forum with school officials, teachers,
parents, and students. We heard information about the city of Nanjing and the history of
the school. Before 1949, Nanjing (translation: Northern Capital) was the capital of China.
Today, it has a population of about eight million people and encompasses 650,000 sq/km.
It is a beautiful city known for its parks, lakes, mountains, and historic city walls. We
were all taken by the impressive sight of mature sycamore trees that line many of the
streets. The city has 54 universities, 60 high schools, 160 junior middle schools, 40
vocational schools, and 350 elementary schools. Combined, these schools have 1.5
million students. We learned that Nanjing School No. 1 was established in 1907 and
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tomorrow there will be a big celebration of its 105th anniversary, which our delegation of
headmasters has been invited to attend.
The students and parents were very interested in asking our delegation questions on the
theme of how best to prepare for admission to American colleges and universities. They
compassionately expressed concern for the pressure bilingual education, AP preparation,
and the US college admission process might bring to their children and appealed for our
advice. This, of course, was a topic we were all very familiar with. I stated that what we
wanted of them was to be collaborators in classes, not competitors. They needed to raise
their hands, try out ideas, and get in real conversations, I advised them. Afterwards, we
thanked them for the lively exchange of ideas and said we were looking forward to
tomorrow’s important ceremony. That night we were taken to a top restaurant and
advised by the Principal to drink as much as possible so as to “let our hair hang down”,
and a strong liquor was brought out along with the now-routine scores of dishes rotating
before us all on the giant lazy susan.
Sunday, October 28, 2012
This morning we travelled to Nanjing No. 1 School for the celebration of their 105th
anniversary. We entered the elaborate gates of the school to see students in their school
uniforms in line on either side, boys on one side and girls on the other. They were in the
formal version of their uniforms with girls wearing blue plaid skirts and black jackets
with white piping. Boys wore black trousers and blazers with similar white piping. All
had bright red sashes across their chests with the school name in gold Chinese characters.
As dignitaries and guests passed through, including us, in unison they bowed and said,
“Welcome to Nanjing No. 1 High School.” The ceremony was set up in a very large
courtyard. There were many long rows of wooden tables and chairs for the some 3000strong crowd of dignitaries, guests, and students. These were actually the student desks
and chairs from the classrooms with red velvet cloths covering the tables. The backdrop
on the stage was a 50-foot long video screen, on which we saw aerial video shots of the
event or text messages. The program began with high volume, full orchestrations of
American cowboy western themes (the opening score to “Blazing Saddles?”), grand and
triumphant, and one had to believe this was the true anthem of the new, Asian century.
This is the wild west! Then several student musical acts, all contemporary: several
singers, female student dancers showing lots of skin, hip hop boys with sideways ball
caps. All gave lively and upbeat performances. One by one, local dignitaries came
forward and gave brief speeches. Not knowing Mandarin and without our wonderful
translators nearby, we could only imagine what they were saying. A chorus of more than
100 adult alumni of the school sang the national anthem as the Chinese flag was being
raised. Later, this same chorus would sing several patriotic songs accompanied by a
student orchestra. The students were animated and amused by the appearance on stage of
two of their favorite celebrities. One, we were told, was the Chinese emcee of a version
of the TV program “The Dating Game” and the other was a popular actress. They
bantered back and forth on stage, much to the delight of the students who stood the whole
time with iPhone cameras and more serious-looking SLR digital cameras capturing it all
then racing to the stage as the celebrities made their exit. Eventually, the program drew
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to a close as a huge birthday cake arrived on stage, decorated with a very large “105” on
top; the singing in Chinese of “Happy Birthday;” and the firing of confetti cannons. This
was a high volume and, for me, intense show of patriotism.
After lunch we went to the offices of The Ameson Foundation, the organization that
sponsored our trip. During our discussions there we talked about how high school
students are admitted to universities. In China, high schools are three years long, and
include grades ten, eleven, and twelve. As noted, during their final year in high school
students spend their time drilling for an examination called the Gaokao. All the scores
from this exam are rank-ordered and the students with the best scores are accepted into
the elite universities. For example, if they are to accept the top 1,000 scores, the student
who ranks 1,001 will have simply missed the cutoff and will have no recourse. There are
enough seats for 40% of graduates, although universities are being built at near-frenzy
pace. During the 1990s six colleges experimented with a plan to accept the top 30% of
the class without having to take the examination. This plan was considered unreliable and
a failure, and it was abandoned. Now, many Chinese are moving toward an American
style Advanced Placement program. The Ameson Foundation is working with American
schools to help the movement along. By prepping their students for AP exams, they are
effectively bypassing the need for any US accreditation of the Chinese school courses. In
this ironic sense, the AP route is about as one-dimensionally test-based as the Gaokao
route, something I dared not mention for fear of wrath from both Ameson and Chinese
school officials. I did, however, mention this all to a newspaper reporter who somehow
found me after a class observation, and thereafter wondered if I’d make it out of the
country. But the nature of Chinese communism is changing and government control is
not as ubiquitous as it once was. China is no longer a communist country, though no one
is able to name what it is that has replaced communism.
Then we went to the offices of the Jiangsu Province Department of Education to meet
with Director Hu (pronounced “Who”) and several of his assistant administrators. He
received us in a large, very formal, now standard (to us) conference room with our
delegation on one side and he and his colleagues on the other. He began with a speech
during which he related many statistics and facts about the province. For example, he
noted that there were 128 colleges and universities in this province and that students
comprise 16.9% of the population. There are 1.36 million high school students there.
During his talk he suggested that there might be cooperation between our schools and his
in the following ways:
 Student and teacher exchanges during the school year
 Chinese students could do their first two high school years in China, then their
last year in the US
 Summer exchanges
 On-line classrooms
 Start a joint venture school.
After the mandatory group photo we headed off to our next stop in the city of Suzhou, a
place known for greenery and water and yet quite urban by our standards, a three-hour
bus ride away. There we were hosted for dinner at the Xianglian Restaurant by the Wu
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family, parents of Grauer School international student Wendy Wu. We then made our
way to the venerable Nanlin Hotel for the night.
Monday, October 27, 2012
This morning we visited a 500-year-old home that was built by a powerful government
official. We saw well-maintained gardens, stone sculptures, koi ponds and several
tearooms. While we were not able to have an English-speaking guide or an electronic
guide with English capabilities, some of the signs along the way were written both in
Chinese and English. One described the Linquan Qishuo House: “This hall is named after
the meaning of a place for venerable and prestigious persons to have a visit or rest. It was
founded during the reign of Emperor Guangxu in Qing Dynasty. With the structure of
one house divided into two parts of different decoration styles, like two mandarin ducks
in Wu slang, it also got the name of ‘The Hall of Mandarin Duck.’” We were growing to
love the English translations on Chinese signage. Along the way through the complex
there were also gentle reminders such as “Don’t tread on the grass as they also have life.”
Others offered wisdom: “Only in the sun of civilization can trees maintain evergreen.” In
several of the rooms there were performers in period dress who played ancient Chinese
stringed instruments such as the pipa and sang traditional songs. As we walked through
the gardens and passed through moon gates we began to realize that we were enjoying a
feeling of tranquility that the architects of this wonderful building and grounds had
intended.
Next we drove to park known as “The Couple’s Garden Retreat.” Here our delegation
enjoyed another bountiful lunch in a lakeside restaurant. Afterwards, we walked through
the park and watched local residents enjoy seeing the animals in the zoo and cruising in
the small motorboats on the lake. Later, our guides dropped us off in a shopping area
where some hoped to find souvenirs to bring home. Instead, we found ourselves
wandering the area content to people-watch and talk about some of what we had learned
during the week. Soon it was time to board the bus again and make our way back to
Shanghai. Tomorrow is our last full day in China, so we are on our own to see more of
Shanghai, a very modern and very international city.
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
Many of us have heard about the air pollution in China and that people appear in public
with what look like surgical face masks. During my week here I have seen such face
masks only rarely. However, I have observed that in the part of China I have visited this
week, there has been a constant smog. It is not heavy, but it is present. The weather in
Shanghai, Nanjing, and Suzhou has been warm and humid, which I am sure contributes
to keeping pollutants suspended in the air. Many people get around on bicycles and
motorized scooters. Many of these scooters are electric. The incentive to own one of
these is not the high price of gasoline. The government subsidizes the cost of gasoline to
keep the price low. Instead, the desirability of having a bicycle or scooter is that one can
more easily maneuver in the very heavy traffic in the cities here. And the electric motors
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contribute to a surprisingly quiet street situation, despite the great number of motorized
vehicles. Most major roads in the cities have wide bicycle lanes that are also used by the
scooters. The excitement comes when they arrive at intersections where there are
pedestrian crossings and cars and trucks making left and right hand turns. There appears
to be no rule controlling how this is done. Pedestrians, cars, trucks, bicycles, and scooters
all sort of move at once through these intersections and seem oblivious of one another as
though driven by rules imperceptible to the Western eye.
This morning we visited two museums: Shanghai Art Museum and Shanghai Museum.
The Shanghai Art Museum was showing some spectacular paintings of Tibetan people by
a very accomplished Chinese artist and illustrator. These people live a harsh life as
nomadic herders of yak. In his beautiful depictions of the Tibetans the artist was able to
capture the strength, resilience, and toughness of these people. It should be noted that
about 90% of the country’s population are Han Chinese. The other 10% consist of
Tibetans, Mongolians, Uigars, and other minorities.
The Shanghai Museum, which I visited with the first Grauer School China expedition in
2005, was quite spectacular. We arrived to see a long line waiting to enter the museum,
despite a consistent drizzle outside. This as a painting and craft museum with wonderful
collections of objects from China’s bronze age; exhibits of the renowned porcelain of
China; a gallery of many styles of calligraphy; a coin collection; furniture; and a special
exhibit of Russian art. My heart sank when I found the collection of ancient, painted
scrolls to be closed for re-organization, as they are among the most beautiful artistic
creations I have ever seen. All the same, it was astounding to see the high level of artistic
design and craftsmanship in items often more than 3,000 years old. Travelers to Shanghai
would be missing a special treat if they did not visit this museum during their visit.
This afternoon half of our delegation headed off to the train station to travel to Beijing on
an extended portion of their trip. The rest of us are enjoying our last day in this
intriguing, dynamic country as we prepared to return home tomorrow. It has been a great
trip and a wonderful opportunity to connect with great, new colleagues, to discover the
deep resources of The Ameson Foundation, and to learn about the education and culture
of a fast-developing country that is experiencing many changes and many challenges.
If you have made it this far in your reading, you surely have earned my admiration and
appreciation. Thank you! Many stories and photos will follow, as may various school
programs and liaisons.
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