Hello, and welcome to my blog. As of yet, the title is “Ping de Zhongguo,” which I think means “Writings from China”. Know however, that I retain the right to reinterpret this title as my Chinese study progresses, because although I am 90% sure I am right, I could learn something tomorrow that reinvents the wheel, again!
I suppose I should begin with a brief introduction of myself and the circumstance of my year in China. I grew up in Newton, Massachusetts, and graduated in May 2006 from Middlebury College in Vermont, USA. While I was there I studied Environmental Science and Policy, and was very active in the student environmental affairs. Now I am part of the World Leadership Corps, a new graduate program that places students from all over the world in one-year volunteer positions that focus on health, development, education, and other inherently beneficial areas. I will be working in Chengdu, China with Ecologia and The Earth Charter, two NGOs that I will write about in more detail in the near future. The program was founded by James Martin, a technology guru, global visionary, and enemy of republican climatologists across the country.* The idea, as I understand, is to provide young people with an opportunity to work and learn in meaningful ways with an eye towards the global context and a larger vision of social responsibility and change. After the year of service there will eventually be a year of intense reflection and strictly pragmatic academics in the areas of global governance, development, and education. Needless to say, I feel honored to be a part of this program and am most likely setting off with irrational ambition.
*I made up the part about conservative climatologists, but it could very well be true.
On September 20th we set off for Beijing flying north over Canada and Greenland until we crossed the North Pole, and began our journey south over frozen Siberia, Mongolia, and the Great Wall. Surprisingly, the (14 hour) flight was not bad at all. After 8 hours of sleep-ish napping, and a few chapters of James Martins new book, “The Meaning of the 21st Century”, I was captivated by an aerial view I thought you only got on high budget documentaries and the Discovery Channel. Wherever we were between the Arctic, Ulan Bataar, and Beijing, I could hear the environmental devastation screaming from my jet plane window seat – Insert palpable irony, and imagine dry riverbeds snaking through equally dry earth, the redundant stamp of bygone irrigation systems, and agricultural terracing chewing up any mildly fertile mountain-side – As we got closer to the Beijing the smog snuck between me and my view, and eventually we touched down.
Next we drove in a chaotic parade of buses, taxis, and new private cars through the city watching massive apartment building after massive construction site emerge and then disappear back into the smog. By the time we reached our destination, I was just as excited about the Beijing Olympics in 2008 as I was ready to take a 5 hour nap until dinner.
The next few days were spent with Randy and Carolyn my Vermont based Ecologia bosses and friends inverting our body-clocks, getting to know my new (and engaged!) colleagues, Wenjie, from Beijing, and Giedre from Lithuania, and spitting on ancient pots to “smell the tomb” in 5-acre Chinese antique markets, and of course, prepping for our work the next week with ALCAN in the autonomous Muslim province of Ningxia.