Under the Asian Haze

2007-06-27T08:46:00.001-07:00

The organic market was this past Saturday, an almost huge success. . Between 2:30 and 5 we had a constant stream of Chinese and foreign guests interested in organics and the different environmental tables we had set up. All of the farmers and organic food venders who participated were satisfied with their sales and responses from the community, and we sold almost all of the re-usable canvas bags that we had printed.

In fact, other than the blazing sun over our heads all afternoon, the only problem Ashley and I faced was the Chinese media coverage. We each had several interviews with local newspapers throughout the day, and people just couldn’t understand the collaborative effort of the event. Ashley and I tried to impress upon the reporters that we had worked together, that the event was about environmental lifestyles and community supported agriculture, about the innovation of the farmers, and the opportunity for the community to get involved. What we ended up with however, were three headlines that read, “pretty American girls support organic farmers” with pictures that literally cut out our Chinese partners.

Now, although the fact that that phrase does translate into a slightly catchy slogan, “meiguo mei nu…..” I found this disappointing. After so many attempts to engage all of our contributors as equals… a list serve, multiple meetings, lots of encouragement to innovate and develop everyone’s ideas, everyone kept deferring to Ashley and I as the leaders. Why was no one taking credit for their hard work and ideas for the community?
To be honest, I have asked myself this question a few times through some of my project with students or other NGO stakeholders in China. While competitive behavior abounds in schools and in more traditional areas of work, I think where new ideas are concerned, people are more timid. I’ve been told many times that this is a residual effect of the cultural revolution (!) and the modest Chinese cultural heritage, which seems reasonable… But it’s hard to gauge how much everyone is buying into your ideas, when the ideas are based in group ownership and community growth, and people are reticent to take responsibility.

Lastly, even though I was disappointed with the reporting, what is the impact of this framing. Does using a foreign face attract more Chinese people to the market? Or, is it a repellant to the kind of environmentally conscious consumer that we are trying to target? I really have no idea. Hopefully we can find answers next month when we try it again. At least my local fruit vender recognized me from the pictures however, and, in a few minutes of laughing and exaggerated hand movements, made it clear that he now understood the connection between my refusal of plastic bags with environmental protection.

2007-05-15T19:20:00.000-07:00

So, I just posted an article that I wrote for Chengdoo magazine after attending a two day conference in Chengdu about "Chinese Green Cities". The local NGO community was lured by promises to

• Discuss environmental, wildlife, & nature protection strategies

• Devise a plan to promote harmony between humans and nature

• Mobilize all walks of society to participate in greening China

• Discuss successful models & experiences in environmental and wildlife protection

and equally, if not more important that All speeches will be translated into English.

Well, after counting 78 chandeliers in the grand ballroom, studying all of the characters on the stage backdrop, and feeling like suckers in the "foreign expert" made for TV row, my friend Ashley and I conspired to actually discuss and act on the four points above: (in English with translation)

Join us for the launch of the
Chengdu Organic Market at The Bookworm

Introduction
Farmers markets are known for bringing healthy and fresh produce and products from the countryside into the city and fostering direct relationships between people and farmers. Although Chengdu has excellent access to fresh local produce in fruit and vegetable stands and on the streets, it is very difficult, if not impossible to find environmentally friendly or organic produce. The general dearth of organic produce can be attributed to a number of barriers which include the small perceived willingness to pay for value-added produce, mistrust/false labeling, lack of infrastructure, and lack of understanding on the part of both producers and consumers regarding the logistics and importance of organic production.

Fortunately, there are many NGOs and entrepreneurs in Chengdu working to grow community supported agriculture (CSA) models to bring organic produce directly to the consumer. CSA is a socio-economic model of food production, sales, and distribution that allows small scale farmers to reduce potential food loses and financial risks of producing organic. This model also provides an avenue to build trust between producers and consumers, resolving the issue of false labeling, especially false organic or “green” labeling that is so common in China.
We believe that creating an organic farmers market in Chengdu provides an avenue for expanding existing CSA projects in Chengdu while demonstrating the demand for organic produce and willingness to pay the added costs of production. This will in turn support the expansion of organic production to a greater number of farmers, improve the local soil and water quality by reducing pesticide and fertilizer use, and support a growing movement towards sustainable and “green” lifestyles in Chengdu. Already, many local NGOs are engaged in projects that support organic production and environmental lifestyles. The Chengdu Organic Farmers Market could provide a direct and constant consumer link to support and expand these activities.

The market will not be limited to the sale of organic produce; it will also provide a forum for educational activities such as urban composting, windowsill gardening, pet care and neutering, kids activities, etc. This will attract more diverse participation, and provide a platform for the greater local environmental community to gather.

Details:
First Chengdu Organic Market will be held
Saturday June 23rd from 11-3pm
outside The Bookworm

Call for Contributions:
The Chengdu Organic Market is looking for contributors who are interested in hosting tables for: organic produce, educational activities and demonstrations. Financial donations, and any other contributions are also welcome of course.

For more information, please contact Kat Cooley and Ashley Murray at ChengduOrganicMarket@gmail.com

2007-05-15T19:15:00.000-07:00

This is an article I just wrote for Chengdoo Magazine, a slightly more formal 'zine' for the hipster ex-pats in my neighborhood.

Greening the Grey.

May 9th and 10th marked the 4th Forum on Chinese Green Cities hosted by the Chengdu municipal government, and attended by government officials from many Chinese provinces, international forestry academics, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, and NGO representatives from Chengdu and abroad. The conference was designed to celebrate China’s “greenest” cities while addressing issues of sustainable development and the importance of urban green spaces. It also included an afternoon showcase of Chengdu’s many green spaces…although they may have appeared a bit more gray than expected on that ironically smoggy afternoon.

Since arriving in China, the word green has become synonymous with a vague sense of some “environmentally friendly” qualities. There are “green foods” in the supermarket, “green buildings”, “green lifestyles”, the clothing brand, “Nature” whose bright green sign clashes with almost everything inside, and now “green cities” popping up everywhere. But what exactly does “green” mean? In relation to green cities for example, are we literally talking about the number of leafy plants in side the second ring road?

Greenery is obviously important. Green areas and wildlife have measurable positive impacts not only on aesthetics, but also on local air, water, and environmental quality, as well as mental health. The right mix of species in an urban environment will serve multiple functions. Removing carbon from the atmosphere, emitting volatile organic compounds that reduce the formation of dangerous ozone and carbon monoxide, helping to control runoff, and stabilizing microclimates are just a few of their positive environmental effects. At the conference, one speaker from the University of Copenhagen also pointed out that in Denmark, proximity to green spaces is directly correlated to level of fitness, and that recovery of hospital patients with a view of greenery is significantly faster that recovery of those who view a brick. It’s these kinds of findings that have encouraged many Chinese cities to promote more proactive urban and rural tree-planting initiatives.

But “green” has to go deeper and address sustainability in a more holistic sense… or all the trees we plant will shrivel and die in a bone-dry city full of smog and acid rain. When we label something “green”, we also need to consider every kind of input and waste involved in its creation and day to day use. Clean, renewable, and efficient energy supply, effective and sustainable use of resources, comprehensive waste management, and implementation of the “3 Rs” reduce, reuse, and recycle are all concepts must go hand in hand with a “green” label. Where “green cities” are concerned, these concepts are beginning to prevail, with China host to the foremost global example of sustainable urban planning. Right off the Chinese mainland on Chongming island, where the world’s first sustainable “eco-city” is in its first phase of development. ARUP, a British consulting firm, and the Shanghai Industrial Investment Company (SIIC) are masterplanning the city, which, by 2010, will house 500,000 people, and provide the opportunity for people to lead an integrated and truly sustainable life. The island city will use recycled water, cogeneration and biomass energy sources, while remaining “as carbon neutral as possible”. Ecological sensitivity is a priority as the island that is mostly used for agricultural activity and is adjacent to a critical wetland, but sustainability has also been expanded to include social, cultural, and economic frameworks. It’s this type of comprehensive and innovative thinking that we should expect from everything green.

So, do not accept the nebulously green. When a product or event claims, “green!” require specifics: the basic whats, whys, and hows, or it’s a wash. It’s your role as consumers and as dwellers of whichever place you go to keep a critical eye on green, (and any other vague adjectives for that matter). If there is no one verifying that the eggs really are free range, organic, or bringing you and your friends to the farm in the back of the hybrid pick-up, you should assume that the chickens dyed their feathers last weekend at a party cause it’s so totally hip to be green right now. Or better, be conscious of the fact that although talk is perhaps the first step towards decisive commitments, right now there’s still a lot of grey in our greens.

2007-04-29T05:43:00.000-07:00

It’s 8:20, Marie and I are going to the airport in an hour and a half to fly to Bangkok. Absurdly, we’re feeling mellow. Probably because our work and social lives have not afforded us much sleep this past week. It’s also been cloudy and raining in Chengdu for three full days, so my backpack is full of dirty clothes that I haven’t been able to wash, or, wouldn’t have been able to dry. I think it’s ok, they will dry so much faster on the beach (!!)

I found Cedric dead on the tiles upstairs this morning. He had been sneezing and losing weight for the last three weeks, not cleaning himself as often as he should, and looking a bit dazed in general. By no means was this loss a surprise, but we’re all a bit upset.

I realize I haven’t written in this blog for some time, and haven’t shared that in February I moved out of my room with the Wang family and into an apartment nearby the Sichuan University campus. I now live with Nick, Tenaka, and Marie, who are American, Japanese and Swedish respectively, inside the “Institute of Biogas of the Ministry of Agriculture” on the 6th floor of the first faculty building. It’s part of a traditional concrete block-building neighborhood, but is surprisingly green, with trees, potted plants, and roof gardens flowing over nearly every ledge. We’re the only foreigners in the complex, and I think our neighbors think we’re a riot.

Cedric, hoppy and snuggly, as we will remember him, was one of the three bunnies we bought upon moving in to live in our roof garden. As with all pets in China however, we bought them when they were very tiny, and have since lost two of them to an illness that we think can be attributed to having been taken from their mother too young. Anyone who has roamed the stalls of a Chinese pet market can attest to the infancy of many of the animals, and the tight quarters in which they are kept, and their often sickly conditions. Thankfully we still have Buddy, who was the only rabbit of the three growing, and has more than doubled in size since we got him. We also have about a dozen fish in our roof pool, 2 roaming lizards, a few mice, and a giant cage that our landlords used to raise geese…

2007-02-26T03:40:00.000-08:00

First and foremost, I owe the Chinese New Year an apology. Turns out, fireworks are both horribly addictive and wonderful to scare bad spirits away, and most of the excessive eating and seasonal dishes have special meanings. I actually decided to break with my vegetarian self for the evening and try at least a little bit of every food that had some meaning. I tried some of the home-made sausage that is hnug outside so that the community can feel the holiday approaching, new years fish to bring me wealth, a chicken wing that young women eat so that they can fly away to beautiful places, a dumpling with a coin inside which thankfully didn't break my teeth, and "long life noodles" first thing on the morning of the new year. I'm forgetting a lot here as dinner was before an evening of firework warfare... In my last post I mentioned fireworks in on three sides... I don't think there was a square meter free of explosives between dusk and midnight on New Years Eve. Also, on the 18th, the Xupings invited Randy, Weihe and I to come watch them pay homage to their ancestors at a nearby mountain temple, where Spring festival is the busiest time of the year. So, as much as television and development has interferred with tradition recently, in the countryside at least, much remains intact.

After the holiday in Dayi with Randy and the Xupings, I took off on a weeklong adventure through Guizhou and Guangxi, two provinces that are southeast of Sichuan. For the last few days my friend Nick and I have been hiking around in the pine forested mountains and Miao minority villages Eastern Guizhou. A few days ago we spent half a day snaking down a paddied mountain to a cluster of houses for lunch then walked along the river back to Xijiang, where we were staying with the family of a woman we met on the bus. The Miao are also famous for their embroidery, which is incredibly colorful and elaborate...I asked a woman in town to teach me, and should have a dragon ready to go by the time I get home. We're expecting it to be "cute" a.k.a. horribly botched, so I bought a few more authentic examples to share.
Yesterday we went to a bull fight (which directly translates from chinese as "cow fight") in another small community downstream and spent the day hanging over a bridge with a bunch of kids watching what we think are actually water buffalo ram eachother in a crowd of crouching men.

Now I'm in Sanjiang headed to Guilin tomorrow morning to meet my friend from GreenSOS who is from the area. We had about a dozen near death experiences on the bus careening alongside bottomless cliffs and sharing seats with ducks, chickens, and vomiting children on the way over, and there is absolutely no going back for me. Thank god for trains, planes, and the "supernaturally lovely karst topography" that awaits!

2007-02-16T17:38:00.000-08:00

Happiness Upside-Down.

The Chinese New Year is tomorrow, February 18th, and the city is decorated with red lanterns, flowers, ornaments, bustling with traffic, packages, people, and exploding at every corner with excitement, or more literally, with sparklers, and fireworks. Traditionally each spring festival, everyone goes back to their hometown to spend the weeklong holiday with their families, and since the end of January when school got out, people traveling en masse across the country. The Wang’s daughter has come home from Singapore, where she has been working for eight years, and everyday, relatives, classmates, and neighbors have been stopping by for tea or meeting us for banquet lunches all over town.
That said, Spring Festival is also about food. A few months ago, people started preparing thick red sausages to celebrate prosperity on the New Year, and strings hang at every market, and in every house, frequently rubbing up against the days drying clothes on the clothesline. This afternoon I noticed a coat rack outside someone’s door where two whole chickens were hanging upside down, tanning with string of sausage, and a dog patiently waiting for disaster. Does this seem absurd to anyone else? There’s meat everywhere.
In my house we’ve also been eating a lot of different rice combinations wrapped with cornhusks and string. Some of them are stuffed with meat, but others are sweet with brown sugar and red bean paste or corn. There are also a variety of different small cakes and treats that I think are for the New Year, and a “New Years Fish” that is actually a bowl of about a dozen whole fried fish soaking in a spicy soup that you have to poke around for with your chop sticks. A spring festival banquet isn’t complete until everyone was stuffed out of their minds before eight more dishes arrived on the table for mandatory sampling. Both yesterday at lunch, and dinner this evening, the table was overflowing with food and plates were stacked on top of each other in heaping pyramids of meats, soups, vegetables, rolls, with the constant clink of cheering glasses above.

But to be honest, amidst all of this excessive festivity, I feel like we’ve all gone a little insane. So much of what historically must have been meaningful Chinese heritage, I feel, has been lost in the insatiable consumerism that is storming over this nation. Millions of cheap plastic disposable lanterns clutter every commercial overhang and window clashing with yesterday’s advertisements, and box upon box of processed individually wrapped cakes replace homemade goodies. Grandparents are abandoned in their rural villages, and there just aren’t enough trains to get the migrant workers back home. The rising middle class shares new opportunities for travel, leisure, and living room TV extravaganzas while the poor are left to their own devices when only children can’t get stuck somewhere else. Also, with firework explosions on three sides, post-trauma car alarms, smoking card board launch pads, and the cops belatedly buzzing the crowd with lights ablaze, it’s not hard to confuse these drunken, lantern littered streets with some kind of violent combat zone.
Maybe it’s just my foreign disconnected self refusing to be swept away in the celebration and watching wide-eyed as two young boys duel with giant roman candles, and the waitress clears away yet another untouched bird or fish. Or maybe with China’s new eye towards the American dream, it feels like my country’s biggest flaws are perverting traditions and cultures everywhere. It’s one thing when we replace Jesus with Santa and presents, but when our outsourcing and obese consumer culture displaces millions and buries Chinese traditions in so much product that young generations can no longer find the meaning, it’s hard to celebrate.
One of the most popular Spring Festival decorations is the character for happiness written on red paper cut outs and decorated with fish, pigs, and other symbols for prosperity and wealth. In Chinese, the pronunciation of “upside-down” is the same as the pronunciation of “arrive”, and a lot of the decorations for happiness, on my door for example, are upside-down, as a play on words to mean that happiness will arrive, or has arrived. When this was first explained to me, I thought it was clever…now I’m wondering if at some magical threshold number, all of the red glittered arriving happiness doesn’t just become tacky decorations hung upside-down.

2007-02-08T17:46:00.000-08:00

Step by Ittsy Bitsy Step

I’m writing from my hotel room in Ningxia, where I arrived with ECOLOGIA on Tuesday. We’re here to continue working with Canadian Aluminum (ALCAN) on the community project component of their local Environment, Health, and Safety program. It’s about eight o’clock in the evening, and from my desk, through my closed windows, I can hear the public speaker working through its evening routine from its perch in some poor tree across the street. It rotates through a series of dialogues, which I assume include news, public service announcements, messages from The Party, as well as orchestral space- odyssey interludes, and static chaos, all of which, to me, is incredibly irritating and creepy. Isn’t the land, air, body, and eye polluted enough in this industrial desert town?
Actually, in what I hope to look back on as a low point in my experience with culture shock or cross-cultural understanding, I can’t help but wonder if the speaker persists only to render anyone within earshot intellectually useless in the evening hours when independent or creative thought is most fruitful! Quick, turn on the television to drown the propaganda! I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
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It’s now 8:45, the speaker is finished (until tomorrow morning), and I can feel the brain fog lifting. It’s amazing how peaceful quiet can be.
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Anyways, after our workshop last September, the ALCAN Sustainability Team went to work on three community projects. Right now we’re reflecting on the experience of the first three, and inviting local community members to participate in the next round. On a local level, these projects addressed issues of elderly health, rural school deficiencies, and traffic safety respectively. On a global level however, ALCAN’s endeavor to engage local stakeholders and facilitate community development represents what I hope is a sea change in international corporate culture.
Last week, for example, I was in Sydney for the fifth working group on ISO 26000, which by 2008 will be a new standard for social responsibility. ISO, the International Standards Association, traditionally deals in technical specifications for everything. Essentially, making international criterion to ensure that all the nuts and bolts of the world are compatible; so that a watt is a watt etc. anywhere you are in the world. Regardless of what happened at this working group, (which I’ll be sure to share asap) just the fact that ISO has initiated the process of creating a standard for social responsibility represents a monumental shift in priorities and vision of not only the organization, but the world. Just twenty years ago, corporate social responsibility was a brand new idea. Actually a colleague told me that just three years ago in Chengdu, mention of corporate social responsibility wouldn’t receive cognizant response from anyone. Now, in Chengdu, CSR front page, and sustainability reports are the new black. Internationally, here are so many documents addressing the issue that there is demand for a gold ISO standard to clarify what exactly businesses are supposed to do. Imagine packaging the Global Reporting Initiative, the UN Global Compact, the Declaration of Human Rights, resolutions from the International Labor Organization, the Earth Charter, and more into one easy-to-read and easy-to-do guidance standard for all organizations all over the world. The impact could* be world changing, pointing to proactive companies like ALCAN as role models, and making holistic and responsible business ethics a social norm.
Tomorrow I will help take one more step towards what I envision as a refined 21st century corporate-consumer-capitalist cultural Eden, working with ALCAN staff and local elementary school teachers to design a project about food safety.

*see future post about Sydney ISO working group. As optimistic as I’m being now, at points last week aggressive industry reps, blind experts, inhibiting politics, and squelched opportunity had me crying behind my poker face.

2007-01-25T23:31:00.000-08:00

Sun, Surf, and Standards

This is just a quick note to say that I've safetly arrived in Sydney and and am already completely intoxicated with the city. The public transportation is incredible, people are contagiously friendly and laid back, and there are post-card beaches in walking distance that I'm sure will be baiting me away from ISO meetings come Sunday.

Carolyn and I have also managed to arrive just in time for Australia Day, so it's even more festive than usual, with boat parades, surf races, and picnics all over the city. I'll be sure to write more over the next few days. just not while the suns out and the waves are big.. or while I'm in meetings.

2007-01-19T08:01:00.000-08:00

“On Wealth and Bicycles”

This evening, for the first time, I braved the Chengdu streets by bicycle. With this feat I not only moved myself up a notch in the traffic hierarchy, but, in a microcosm of globalization, quartered all of my distances, and gained the experience and inspiration to share an observation I’ve been giggling to myself about for some time.

Although I’m no expert when it comes to bicycles, I know that with the pedal in its lowest position, your knee should be almost straight, and that your back should be relatively extended to reach the handlebars. This however, is definitely not how most bikes are ridden in China, where people hunch over and knees often bend to over 90 degrees. For a while, I didn’t understand why the Chinese like to ride bikes that are obviously too small, and wondered why the heck nobody has figured out how to fit a bicycle.

Eventually as I watched another herd of people scrunched onto older single speed bicycles pedal by, I had one of those quintessential epiphanies, in which everything magically fit together, and my faith in Chinese logic was restored. Basically, only a generation or so ago, Western China was predominantly rural farmland with a few state regulated economic centers, and lots of poverty. At the time when the older bikes I’m talking about were made, Chinese stature was significantly smaller, and now, development and wealth has led to a new generation of better-nourished and taller Chinese who are bumping their knees on the handle bars of teensie bicycles built for generations past. So it's not that Chinese are clueless when it comes to fitting bicycles, they're just practical, frugal, and a whole lot taller.

Other conclusions of this observation pertain to the durability of used bicycles that have apparently stood the test of time, the dedication to repair and renewal, persistence rusted bicycles, and everything that can still ‘get the job done’, and traces of history that can be found in everyday Chinese life and teeny bicycles.

2006-12-06T21:25:00.000-08:00

A Finer Grain

Since my arrival in Chengdu, I have been living with a Sichuan University Faculty member and his family just inside the south gate of campus. To get to our apartment, you pass from bustling streets onto campus, then take a left through the gate to our neighborhood, where the environment is completely transformed. Outside campus, bikes speed through herds of pedestrians and around carts full of produce, recyclables, shoe liners, cleaning materials, and other odds and ends. Cars seem to be in a constant jam, and taxis and tricycles huddle in corners waiting to join the race. Our road on the other hand, is narrow, lined with trees, and protected from the city mayhem by a tall wall and a row of older concrete apartment buildings. During the day, the soundtrack plays more like the set of Hitchcock’s “Rear Window” than the city commute, with neighbors practicing piano, taking voice lessons, strolling by in conversation or ringing bicycle bells. At mealtimes the smell of Sichuan oils and spice from every kitchen calls students and workers home for lunch, and in the afternoon old women and men crowd around coffee tables negotiating through rounds of Majiong, a traditional gambling game played with foreign dominoes and cards. At night it is completely dark except for glowing windows and the orangey city sky peeking through the narrow cracks between buildings and tree branches above. If you are returning home after 1 in the morning, you have to clang on the gate to wake the guard, and then give her a kuai for letting you in.

Needless to say, I am intoxicated by the daily routine of my neighborhood; from the bicycle bell traffic in the morning until the un-threatening nighttime dark, I consider it my haven from the congestion, construction, and general chaos of the city outside… which is slowly revealing some of it’s not so idyllic realities.

When I first arrived in Chengdu, I was pleasantly surprised by how safe I felt in my neighborhood. Beyond the minor threat of pickpockets and beggars, there was none of the aggressive sexual harassment or nighttime danger that had become part of my daily routine in South America. Although I definitely receive a lot of attention because of my distinctly western appearance (there is absolutely no hope of blending in), I feel that it is mostly either curious attention or people trying to help me communicate and move around. Buying oranges at a local fruit stand for example, is often a four person endeavor, with someone helping me choose the best oranges, someone helping to weigh and price them, and someone else being appalled by the outrageous price they are trying to charge me.

There is also a sort of innocence about the Chinese people for me, that I’m coming to think may be augmented by the lingual and cultural divide between us. The nature of a large population and a communist society means that more people are outside doing stuff all the time. All over town there are adult “playgrounds’ equipped with brightly painted exercise equipment and stretching bars where people swing their legs around and “work out”. Everyday between 4 and 6 it also seems like everyone, mom, dad, grandma, and ALL of the high school and college students, are outside playing huge games of pick up volleyball, basketball, ping-pong, soccer, and badminton on nearly every sidewalk with or more likely without a net. Furthermore, at English corner every Friday night, where hundreds of Chinese and a few very giving foreigners gather to practice English, it is customary for anyone to join any conversation by merely walking over and asking, “May I join? What topic are you discussing?”. This kind of uninhibited attitude towards social interactions is everywhere, often catching me, and other foreigners off guard.

But, as I mentioned earlier, as my eyes adjust to the more subtle/clandestine activities, this innocence is being put into a larger and perhaps more realistic context. Hair salons that dot nearly every block, for example, have taken on an entirely new meaning as many of them turn on pink lights by night, and women who smile and cut hair in the afternoon wait around in knee high boots for lonely tinted cars to take them away... Also, the young kids who are so cute playing with balloons and ping pong balls on the street by day are not as cute when they are still happily playing well past their bedtimes, and it's hard to realize that when many old ladies aren’t playing majiong with their friends they are sorting through trashcans to separate plastic, paper, and other reusable, re-sellable materials. I’ve also noticed recently that the carwash underneath my building leaves it’s garage door a few feet open at night and a black suited man waiting on a plastic stool for who knows who or what. I've also noticed that while there are a whole lot of cute little puppies and bunnies for sale on the streets everyday, sure aren't that many dogs... and even though they aren't secretive about eating dogs here, that observation still makes me cringe.

This is where my thoughtful conclusion will go. But for right now, I have to meet my Chinese tutor.

2006-11-27T19:39:00.000-08:00

Jumpstart, and Mr. Wang.

I have entered a new phase of my work in Chengdu. For the past month, although I haven't told you, or written anything about it in my blog, I have been running around like a nut meeting with different NGOs, interviewing small and medium sized business entrepreneurs, and participating in life in China. I was connecting, building the network, understanding my new turf etc. It was very fun, incredibly eye opening, and now I'm ready to share. Luckily, phase two includes basically continuing what I was doing before, only with a more specific focus, and in balance with the necessary reporting, reflecting, and sharing. In order to jumpstart this process, I’m going to start with now, and backlog only when it seems absolutely essential or fun.

I just got back from a 10 day trip to Beijing, an incredible vortex of a city. While my intention for this trip was to mix work and meetings with an appropriate amount of tourism, somehow I'm back in Chengdu without having seen the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, the Silk Market, or anything on a standard tourist checklist. There is so much happeneing in China related to sustainable development and socially responsible business, it's hard to prioritize anything that doesn't seem to be moving with the same light speed. Also, the Great Wall, despite whatever yesterday’s New York Times article claimed, will be there on my next trip, whereas China’s economy is obviously not going to wait, and some of the small organic farmers I met with are so close to bankruptcy its unclear what their future holds.

Anyways, one of my favorite expeditions on this trip to Beijing was an overnight with Mr. Wang at his organic company in Hebei, the province that surrounds Beijing. (For those of you who are unfamiliar with Chinese geography, Beijing has at least 13.8 million people, and it’s own provincial district.) I learned about Mr. Wang through my Buddhist friend Mr. He, who I meet for dinner or tea now and then in Chengdu. He is an aspiring organic shop owner, and had spent a lot of time learning about organics on Mr. Wang’s land. We made a few connecting phone calls, I coordinated graduate student translators from Renmin University, and Mr. Wang picked us up on Tuesday at 4.
Over the course of my stay, I learned that Mr. Wang lost part of his hand to an industrial workplace, and returned home to watch his mother, aunt, and several friends succumb to cancer. After this series of events, he used his savings to buy a large plot of land, started growing food without chemicals, which he knew were bad for the environment and health: basically independently inventing organic farming. Now he has an organic peach orchard, vegetable gardens, wheat and corn fields, facilities to make flour, and over 500 free range organic chickens... but he's virtually bankrupt.
This is because Mr. Wang is a social entrepreneur: he has an incredible vision of positive changes for his community, and he is using his business to generate those changes. Unfortunately, the financial/business component of his business often gets compromised for what he understands as the greater goods, the promotion of organic farming techniques and a healthier lifestyle for his community. In his community Mr. Wang explained that local farmers are often struggling to get by, and feel trapped into pesticide intensive farming to keep their yield and profits high. They think Mr. Wang is insane, and judging strictly by his bank account, it’s not hard to see why.
At the same time, there are tremendous opportunities for Mr. Wang’s business to be profitable while having an even greater positive impact on the community and the environment. First, although I’m not entirely sure on this one, I bet Mr. Wang is the only person in Hebei and Beijing who produces free range organic chicken, and if he could connect to a market like a healthy food store or restaurant rather than allow neighbors to take his chickens at will, that alone would probably pull his company out of the fire. There are many issues that complicate this process, like Mr. Wang’s seasonal approach to organics, which means he cannot provide a constant supply of X year round, and more importantly, the massive skepticism of organics in China due to false labeling, and the very small, albeit rapidly growing class of people who care about organics and can support slightly higher prices; but I think it is possible. Secondly, Mr. Wang has recently received support from a local government official who sees the organics as a viable economic model for his predominantly agricultural constituency, and third, the growing NGO community in Beijing that is focused on organic and community supported agriculture development, the environment, and small business development.
Right now we are working to connect Mr. Wang and his local official to a few interested members of the NGO community, two restaurant owners, and a team of business and agriculture graduate students from Renmin University to start a dialogue that may lead to a strategic plan of some sort for Mr. Wang. Unfortunately from Chengdu, I cannot be too involved in this process, but hopefully I passed the idea on to the right people, and there will be exciting news on my next visit.
Mr. Wang sent me home with a bag full of left over vegetarian whole wheat baozi, which is a kind of steamed stuffed dumpling, home made whole wheat noodles, corn pancakes, 6 apples, and 2 kilos of giant carrots. I tried to sneak gas money for his 8-hour van ride to pick me up in Beijing as well as all of the food and produce, but was obviously thwarted.

When my flight from Beijing landed in Chengdu (thank god) I felt like I had been given a new pair of eyes. Eyes that could see vivid color, detail, and long distance for example. Smog in China is oppressive and claustrophobic, but people adapt and adjust in the same way that they adjust to everything else that is whirling around them. Perhaps my new eyes can also see a little bit more of the “Chinese situation”, the road blocks that make so many good ideas infinitely complex, and the daily workload for China’s massive agrarian population. If only we could nicely ask everyone and everything to stop, let the winds clear the air, and let everyone really see the impact of the development that is taking this country by storm.

2006-10-16T07:39:00.000-07:00

Ningxia
The trip from the Yinchuan airport to Dabba was breathtaking on a few different accounts. The first was the outrageous driving tactics of our driver and fellow commuters, and the second, the incredible scenery and lifestyles of the people we passed along the way. Small-scale farming is still very prevalent in this area, and from the highway we watched women wearing bright red and pink head scarves bend over gardens, and men in navy or army green cultural revolution garb herding groups of 30-50 sheep around fields. Families work their land without all of the machinery that has transformed the American landscape, and people in bright yellow corn and wheat fields created contrasts that were often brilliant.

Clay brick walls enclose almost every house and field in the area, transforming the landscape. The walls are beautiful, similar to the old stonewalls one would find in the woods of New Hampshire or Vermont, but surprisingly comprise one of the most severe threats to the local economy and life. The traditional bricks used to make these walls and houses are made from the same rich topsoil that the farmers need to grow crops. Across the region, however, it is common for tree trunks, telephone poles, and older houses to be supported by a 3-5 foot plateau of dirt, which exists because the rest of the area has been carved away for bricks. The topsoil also protects the desert-like ecosystem from being swept away by violent dust storms that blast through the region throughout the winter. It is now illegal to make bricks out of topsoil, so hopefully the damage will not be permanent, and the scattered plateaus (just like SUVs, incandescent light bulbs, and, bio-accumulating chemicals) will remind us of our shortsighted ancestors.

Once we were off the highways, the traffic changed from vehicle to bicycle, motorbike, tractor vehicle, pedestrian, and livestock. The people live right along the road, and while women sat husking great piles of corn, commuters expressed their dominion with incredible blank-faced indifference to our drivers incessant honking. I would not blame this poor agricultural community for smiting the shiny silver minivan that matches the dozens of pollution-belching smokestacks on the horizon; even (especially) if they knew we were actually a well-intentioned NGO swooping in to save the day! I couldn’t stop reading the impact of hardship and climate on the people’s faces, the tired bicycles, and the dust covered storefronts. The kids at least seemed to be walking in smiles, snacking, laughing, and breaking everyone’s bleak.

The next few days were spent in meetings with various members of the ALCAN Sustainability Team, interested community members, and the CEO of ALCAN Ningxia, a socially enlightened Brazilian man with a taste for hip sweaters from the 80s. Our mission for the week was to help develop the company’s CSR program by creating the first round of environmentally and socially oriented community projects. In the past, ALCAN projects have been administered and funded by ALCAN: they bring in a doctor for immunizations, create a scholarship program, host a seminar on bird flu etc. Ideally our work will result in a series of projects that will become self –sustaining, created and executed by community and ALCAN volunteers.

The week was unbelievable combination of excitement and frustration with poignant stories and ideas revealing themselves just as I was beginning to feel like we were talking in circles or unable explain the core values and vision of the effort. In the end, after 4 exhausting days, we had planted the seeds for at least 4 realistic projects, created a timeline, an action plan, and scheduled a return visit for Yang (my colleague in Chengdu) and I for sometime in mid November. That night we met a group of 25 ALCAN and community members to feast on a traditional 3-hour 12-course meal where we affirmed all of our hard work shared stories of our lives, and laughed at my and Carolyn's persistent attempts to communicate in Chinese. In NGO work, I have concluded that you cannot allow yourself to be deterred by scale. We left Ningxia feeling optimistic and hopeful, believing, as we have to, that whatever evolves from the effort of the past week will create not a drop, but a minor tidal wave "in the bucket". Hopefully I can carry this energy with me through my first weeks on the next chapter of my adventures.... in Sichuan!

2006-10-05T07:47:00.000-07:00

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.