Date: Wed, 20 Oct 2004

As directed I’ve been polling my students. Said one, last week, about Iraq: “I don’t know if the American people get the correct information as we do in China.”

A couple of boys from the U.S. consulate came by yesterday to show a video of Bush versus Kerry and give a “neutral” speech to students at Fudan University. When they polled the Chinese students about who they thought had won the debate Bush came out ahead about 3-1.

My favorite chef buries his nose in the international news when he’s not cooking my Chinese comfort foods (sweet and sour pork and broccoli with garlic). Today he told me, in Chinese, that (sic) “for us lao bai xing or regular people or peasants,” (depending on how you want to interpret it) “the election doesn’t matter. Nevertheless,” he says, “Bush is bu hao (not good) because of the war.” But this chef has been negative on the war forever.

Date: Fri, 22 Oct 2004

1. Health Care:

– I was back at the dentist today for restoration on a tooth, and, to have them do some oral surgery on a little thing in my cheek that I get when I chomp down (I get stressed. It happens usually when I’m sleeping — it may have to do with working 50% overtime and having 325 students – 80 in one class – that’s now being addressed) — total cost: the tooth restoration, the “surgery” and the meds (antibiotics and mouthwash) $52.

– The dentist (she is actually a specialist) makes $720 a month.

– It costs $1.25 to see a doctor (10.5 yuan)

– Two months worth of dermatological scripts – $7

– Consultation privacy – negligible – strangers wait in the same room, people with immediate needs just rush on in and interrupt.

– Learning how to “chicken-elbow” while waiting on line – invaluable.

As Chinese get richer they are spending their money on foods that give them the diseases that rich people get — they are also indulging in cosmetic surgery. Unregulated profit-driven medicine is a topic of debate. Today’s paper argues for greater regulation of hospitals that do limb-lengthening surgery: what they do is break your legs and put nails between the bone fragments to make you taller. People are ending up crippled.

In Hong Kong they are also considering regulating smoking.

2. The “news” and what is or is not in it:

— Today the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress is hammering out laws that put flesh on the bones of the change in the constitution and enable Chinese to own private property — in addition to distinguishing between private and public property they will also create a new code dealing with “public order” by increasing penalties on:

– Criminal hoaxes

-Raising dangerous pets; and

– Gathering in front of public buildings

— Today’s Shanghai Daily Story about US Sec’y of State Colin Powel’s trip to China leads with the fact that “Taiwan will top the agenda…” Who’s?

— A story about the top chap in Myanmar who was arrested this week quotes state radio and television that he “has been replaced” — I suppose it depends on how you chose your sources

— Topics absolutely not covered or allowed to be covered in the press here: – worker safety; and the relocation of people moved to make way for development.

Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2005

Dermatology, psychiatry and traditional Chinese medicine — nobody gets better and nobody dies.

Date: Fri, 18 Feb 2005 Ko Samui, Thailand

Most embarrassing question to ask another traveler here: “Do you know what time it is?”

From the Bangkok Post “Many Thais believe that when people die, they must be cremated by relatives following appropriate funeral rites. Failing this, the spirit of the deceased will continue to appear over and over again to show where its earthly remains can be found.” Feb. 15.

Same day: Thai officials blame volunteers “inexperienced in handling bodies — rescue and tsunami relief operations” for errors of body classification. My observation: the issues of face are tremendous. Thai are a very proud people. They eventually sent all the white experts out of Phang nga where I was — the army were busy playing video games at the Wat where the command center was — elections were coming up (they have come and gone) and officials were losing lots of face with all the Europeans do the work of trying to classify their dead. Still many not retrieved. We all eventually end up in the food chain or as part of the scenery, an English friend here remarked.

King of Sweden here this week – Swedes love this place – lots dead in waves. Giving out medals and money.

Article on Feb. 15 examined planning decisions at one Phuket beach where dunes were preserved and boats were prohibited from anchoring immediately off shore. Result: when waves came natural barriers were in place and boat debris was not lethal. Arguable, mangrove in undeveloped Malaysia just to the south of us, probably saved many lives.

Curious politics: the election commission gives out red and yellow cards, like in soccer, to politicians who break the law — I can’t quite figure out exactly how the system works from reading the Bangkok Post.

Ways tsunami killed: swirling water underneath – think of a tornado but water.

What I can now say in Thai: chan-oop-ba-tahn “I am a hypochondriac” to which one clerk in a pharmacy here at Maenam been replied “do you want a pill for that?” – a Dutch couple I met suggest that for hypochondria one either takes one pill or all of them.

I was really pissed at how little the Chinese were made aware of what was going on here, though I have met, for the first time traveling, twice, Chinese tourists from the mainland. A sign of a changing economy there.

Date: Sun, 20 Mar 2005

Looks like we’ve got something to talk about.

BBS, or bulletin board service, is another name for the anonymous internet postings that college students use to sound off about just about everything from their teachers to corporate or government corruption, real or imagined.

Action has been taken now to place the bulletin boards under party control, but, coverage of this move, as evidenced below, is accessible to anyone who wants to read about it, and that, IS a VERY POSITIVE STEP in the right direction.

The regulations went into effect yesterday (Sunday) here prompting protests at Tsinghua University — protest messages have been posted here at my university, Fudan.

Date: Mon, 5 Sep 2005

Should we again talk it will begin our third year of conversations from China.

In year one, upon my return I told you about the construction at nearby Wu Jiao Chang. Last week, after being away for four months, I returned to bright blue and green neon seemingly afloat in mid-air looking like a lazer show just hanging in the August humidity. I didn’t know where I was even though I was back home in my own neighborhood. Sense of place is profoundly disturbed by the radical changes here.

Turns out the lights surround the gaudiest of egg-like concrete creatures that at the traffic circle known as Wu Jiao Chang or five corners — the area from where — I mentioned this two years ago — the Kuomintang and then the Japanese ran the entire city of Shanghai.

While I was away they finished and finally covered up the tunnel up the block that runs in front of the school’s main gate. Now that it is completed and the highway to somewhere is now about to open up this part of the city will be witness to China’s next boom.

It was good to get back to the old red tablecloth restaurant. Scrumptious dinner for (we were accompanied by a Swede and a Romanian classmate) with drinks, rice and tea came to a whopping 158 yuan — or $2.25 a person — now these guys (three guys, two gals — there’s a sixth fellow but he blew us off) are all starving adolescents.

Anyway, the kids were full and there was still some food which Keith Gardiner and I finished off when the dinner was over. The menu included but was not limited to: sweet and sour pork, deep fried beef, broccoli with garlic, string beans with garlic, breaded and deep fried egg plant, beef in a sweet sauce, egg and tomato, spicy chicken. I’m sure I’m forgetting a couple of others.

Observed on campus: Roman columns on the new building — a sign of self-importance? Architectural statements are shifting from the old block-like ugly Soviet-style. A clash, of course, with the hundred year old little brick houses built by the Western missionaries who founded the place as the Emperor Pu Yi was abdicating. Those houses separated by tasteful little green lawns dot the campus.

Hu Jintao, by the way, is invited to this bash which kicks off on the 22d of September with the arrival of all the dignitaries. The events culminate with a morning ceremony on Saturday the 24th.

Am coming to the conclusion that Shanghai is a combination of New York City and California: congested, diverse, sophisticated and fast like the city, but, if you can find your place, as I have, surrounded by some greed it is laid back and temperate (we’re on Northern Florida’s latitude) like California. Went swimming last week in a huge pool in Gubei. Really feel upper middle class urban when I live here.

Flew in on the 29th from Portland, Oregon where I was visiting my oldest brother and his family. Portland, Oregon, with is medical marijuana laws and legal assisted suicide is a peaceful, tolerant community with no sales tax and a woefully under-funded education infrastructure that produces a loving populace: it’s like a star trek episode.

Registered with the police yesterday. Observes my landlord: “They ask for picture and they put it on file. There’s a foreigner somewhere…”

Came back to an apartment caked in four months of dust and dirt — beings evolving in the fridge — became a quick study in the Mount Vesuvius school of housework.

Miss Albany (do you know her?) already — have been on the phone back “home” talking politics today with other reformer friends and have been posting stuff back to friends.

Let me know if you’d like to chat.

Take good care,

Bill