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 San Diego 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 the surrounding shops, some marked with barber poles, 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
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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 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 Deng 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 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
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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.
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. The other 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 (Gaukao) 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 widely seen as liberating and
progressive, but efforts to emulate us go slow as they often conflict with
traditional sensibilities or longstanding practices entrenched in bureaucracy.
Change everwhere, of course, can be tricky and conflictual.
For instance, 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, 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.” It is expected, in crowds like these, that you push
your way through.
Friday, October 26, 2012
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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 twentyfifth 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, 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 sprawling, $100
million-plus facility that awakens the visitor to the reality that a giant is ascending.
We were there to attend the “International Forum for Distinguished Secondary
School Principals.” This was a conference sponsored by the National Training for
Secondary School Principals Ministry of Education China and had as it’s theme
“School Culture and School-based Curriculum.” This, along with “studentcentered education, was a very new concept in China, where government
programs of all kinds have been extremely hierarchical and 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: systematized culture!
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He pointed out that 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 institutional beliefs: curricular, extracurricular, festivals, competitions, and social activities. After several
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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 …” The speech went on, verbose and I
eventually 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 Rob Nairns: 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 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. There is nothing like it in
China!
A Canadian speaker said she believes their schools keep getting better
because they have followed various maxims such as: “It’s a system thing,
not a single thing.”
A South African speaker brought me first into despair and eventually into
anger about the state of 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 level of English fluency
among English teachers appears low.
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 had
described so much long ago. Time wore on—I remember an “I Ching” quote—
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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 clock-tower. 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 ...
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,
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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 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
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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 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
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our hair hang down”, and a strong liquor was brought out along with the nowroutine 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 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
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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.
Jiangsu Province Department of Educaton
Next 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.
My Ameson guide Jeff had warned me that, with Chinese ranking officials and
businessmen, no means no, and yes means yes, no, or maybe. I recalled that
Edward DeBono invented a word, “Po,” which was like that yes. Po meant
something like “that’s an interesting point perhaps worthy of consideration.” In the
questions and answer session after Hu’s talk, I said that America had a robust
tradition of independent schools which could innovate all they wanted without
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interference from the state. Would he be interested in having schools like this inn
Jiangsu?, I wondered?
Yes,” he said.
I looked at Jeff and whispered, “That means no,” worried that I may have
offended his sense of traditional educational hierarchy.
Jeff looked back and said, “No, it means yes.”
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 family, parents of Grauer School international
student Wendi 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 Englishspeaking 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 peoplewatch 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.
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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
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
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Blog from China, October 2012
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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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