“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.

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.

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.

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!

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.