Wedding Day Clash

UI journalism students witnessed a wedding day clash in Shanghai Sunday.  While visiting the Xintandi area of Shanghai, the student journalists noticed a bride and her wedding party in a heated dispute with a Shanghai police officer.  The officer had given parking tickets to several members of the wedding party for leaving their cars in a no parking zone while wedding pictures were taken.  The bride, groom and several groomsmen argued vehemently with the officer that he should not hand out a ticket to the soon-to-be wedded couple, but the officer refused to budge.  It’s not a huge story, but an unforgettable slice of life in Shanghai.

UI Journalists Dine with Chancellor

The journalism students travelling in China dined with University of Illinois Chancellor Richard Herman Saturday night in Shanghai.  The dinner also included university alumni from Shanghai, members of Sinfonia da Camera, the professional chamber orchestra of the University of Illinois and dignitaries from the Shanghai Overseas Returned Scholars Association.

White skin = beauty and social status

Early morning yesterday, Zhu and I went shopping.  We went to the expensive mall and the small street shops.  While we walked, Zhu was telling me about protecting her skin from the sun. She said that she thought it was interesting how in the U.S.  girls paid to get good tan. Where as here in China, girls do as much as they can to protect themselves from the sun. They use umbrellas, hats and even buy special lotions to make their skin look whiter.

Not only girls do this, guys do it too.  They don’t only do it because of beauty (at least from what I understood).  They do it because it is a symbol of wealth.  The people who have darker skin are usually the people that work in outside.  These people include farmers in rural areas and migrant workers in the big cities.  So if someone comes from the countryside to study in a university, other students know that this student comes from a rural village because of the tone of his/her skin.  Unlike the Cultural Revolution, people look down on peasants and they’ll do as much as they can to not have their skin color. 

"Hit the Ground Running"

At the opening of our trip, between settling in and contacting sources, my woes of jet-lag and culture shock were overridden by a finger on the keyboard and another on my cell phone’s keypad. Overseas reporting can be a daunting task, as my peers and I have very quickly discovered, and travelling to a slew of locations throughout the city of Shanghai can make it rather easy for a student-journalist to become overwhelmed with his/her research goals. 

Over the last four days, I have been doing my best to arrange for daily interviews with experts, professionals, or students, in my attempt to examine the underbelly of what outsourcing of US labor markets to China means.  “Hitting the ground running” has been the journalistic motto at the opening of any new week, and we have all done our very best to adhere to this, and have.
Through a number of email and telephone exchanges while in China I have been able to speak with a handful of Fudan University students who have been more than willing to share there educated, and in some cases radical opinions of the Chinese government and other public concerns.  Other notable sources have included, lawyers, graduate professors, UIUC students abroad in Shanghai, Motorola reps, US reporters, and members of the Shanghai Overseas Returned Scholars Assocation, otherwise known as SORSA.

Understanding the engagement of the US and China in global labor and trade markets has closed many of the cultural gaps that we were once familiar with, particularly within each respective nation.  The cell phone has been the tool that college students are using to close these gaps, in a country like China where there are 32.7 mobile phones for every 100 people.  A student at Fudan University shared some thoughts on these roles of international social stereotyping,

“I am not sure what Americans want to believe about Chinese youth, but in many ways, we have become the same people.”

The statement followed a conversation of increased telecommunication and cell phone use on a college campus.

Many of my interesting encounters with Chinese everyday life have come before my interviews, in transit. Perhaps budding is the incorrect term to describe the technological developments in China over the last decade, as this country has been quick to assume it’s role as a pioneer in electronics.  On a taxi ride home from Fudan University riding in one of the standard-issued Volkswagen Santana cars, installed plush into the headrest, facing the backseat was a touch screen interface.  Through this interface the back seat patrons and I were able to surf a fixed set of web pages designed to cater to all tourist-like needs.  Myself and Sam Unger, put together an impromptu piece on this technology via digital camera video. 

It was moments like these that simply blew my mind, particularly when I thought about how far behind any taxi in the United States is behind it’s Chinese counterpart.

Tomorrow the group and I will take a day trip, to Zhouzhuang, one of the most famous water townships in China, located in Kunshan City.  Before the trip and all night following the trip, the group and I will be scratching our notes together and making the numerous phone calls and emails that will help us “hit the ground running” for the new week ahead of us.

On the Net at Fudan University

Friday a couple of us went to Fudan University (about 20 minutes away from our hotel by cab) to meet students. I interviewed Dr. Limei Gu, who was on the panel Thursday at SORSA and is also a professor of international relations at Fudan. For almost an hour, we talked about the government’s responsibility and the citizens’ responsibility when it comes to the Internet, and also the e-forums at universities. Gu said she trusts her students when it comes to posting on the BBS forums that they know to not write anything that might be considered “too sensitive” or possibly cause trouble for the univeristy.

Following the interview, Dr. Gu talked to a security guard for me so I can go into a computer lab, which requires a University ID, to talk with students using the Internet. Rick, my translator, and I stayed for two hours talking with various students. The computer lab attendant told us that foreign Web sites were not accessible on campus and it cost money to visit other Chinese Web sites outside the University’s.

Students inside the lab were watching movies, checking e-mail or playing games. The four students we talked with didn’t have any major issues with Internet regulations.