Global Lives, Global Futures
2007 Entries | 2008 Entries

Bleary and teary eyed farewells were exchanged early in the morning in Shanghai before the east coasters and west coasters parted was for the trip back home. We steeled ourselves for the hour of confinement that were to come, but knew we would be comforted by the plane movies and food and the promise of home cooked meals, family and friends, and our own beds. And now we are all back at home with memories of China to last a lifetime.

Today was the culmination of all the efforts, curiosity, questioning, and observing we had put into our projects over the course of the past three weeks. Each student had their fifteen minutes of fame (or more like ten) and presented to their peers all the knowledge, artifacts, and conclusions they had acquired about issues ranging from Chinese reactions to minorities to fashion to “green” China to architecture. The personal connection each student had to his or her topic will help to bring alive the overall experience when the students return home and share their adventures with their classmates, school, and families.

With baited breathe, we poured out of the classroom in eager anticipation of our next visit. We headed across Shanghai to none other than Ann’s parents house where we were welcomed with arms extended and filled with plates of food. We tasted one scrumptous dish after the next, tried to test out the bird’s true fluency in three different Chinese dialects, and were completely enraptured by the cricket fights (neither horse racking nor dog or cock fights can offer the same edge of the seat thrills). And though we tried our hands at both wontons and dumplings, our folding, shaping, and pinching skills didn’t even come close to those of Ann’s mom. Stuffed to the gills with watermelon and filled to the brim with visions of retirement spent playing majong, we said our thank you’s and good-bye’s and headed off.

The insistent cries for shopping were eerily absent on the bus as we sped to our next destination since the students knew that they were about to get their much needed fix. Entering the plastic paradise of a shopping mall, the students spread out across aisles and floors in search of last minute gifts promised to loved ones. Their thirst not quite quenched, we headed back to the hotel, which just so happened to sit around the corner from one very fortunate hole in the wall t-shirt shop, which certainly might not have anticipated such a spike in sales on such a day.

Now all that lies ahead of us this evening is our chance to look back and reminisce about the adventures and mishaps of the past 20 days and perhaps to bust out those tucked away dance moves and musical hooks at KTV.

The “swish” quotient was stepped up a notch today. We started off exploring responses to diversity in a student’s project and moved right on to the slaughterhouse. Or rather to a converted 1930s slaughterhouse that will soon be home to several design shops, boutiques, a Ferrari owners’ club, event spaces worthy of a Batman entrance through the roof on to the solid glass floor (watch those skirts ladies). This expression of architectural imagination followed us through to lunch at People, a very swanky restaurant whose minimal design allowed the food to speak for itself, rivaling any high end New York lunch spread. We sipped our iced tea and coffee seated in the lap of luxory before venturing back out into the heavy afternoon air.

It was on to Monganshan to meet Greg, an internationally reknowned photographer whose practiced eye has caught some of the hidden buildings lingering in the shadows of the neighboring skyscrapers in Shanghai. He took us across time and continents through his photographs and held us entranced with his view of his surroundings. Armed with signed copies of the National Geographic featuring his photos of the interior of China, we spread out throughout the galleries in the area and marveled at the squished omnipresent smiling faces in their many sculpted, painted, and paper mached guises.

Exhaustion from heat was the least of our worries come late afternoon as we sped off in the bus to Dragon Studios. Little did everyone know, we were in store for a bit of a popping workout in hip hop class. Our efforts were valiant, but definitely paled in comparison to our more practiced Chinese peers and were silenced by the break out break dancing of Stanley, the godfather of Shanghai hip hop. We poured back out on to the street, turned the corner to dinner, and then headed back to the hotel satiated after a day of reimagining the past, present, and future of Shanghai cultural expression.

The past two days have been a whirlwind of activity through the hazy filter of the heated summer days. Our first full day in Shanghai on July 16th brought us back in time to a period when mulled wine was heated in large bronze dings and drunk out of elaborately hand crafted bronze goblets. Their now green sheen was still alluring, but the minority clothes and a wall full of intricately designed masks soon captured our attention. After a bit more time spent wandering through the corridors of the past, we hurdled directly in to the present with lunch at a food court (Megabite!) in a gigantic shopping mall followed by a birds eye glimpse at the layout of the city at the Urban Planning museum. It was then on to the future of Shanghai where the refurbished shops and restaurants of Xin Tian Di foretold one possible future for the rapid commercialization of parts of the city. It also offered the possibility of escape perhaps on to feared red cliffs or maybe just to the hijinks of one kung fu panda…through the movies that is.

July 17th also gave us the opportunity to see how the evolution of not just Shanghai, but the whole of China on the world stage. The morning was spent at two different factories. The first was a yogurt manufacturing plant where we all learned more than ever before about the combative power of yogurt in facing down intestinal bacteria. The second factory produced chicken bouillon cubes and dispelled the myth once and for all that no real chicken is used in their production. Indeed it is, which prompted the students to stock up on packages decorated with cartoon chickens promising chicken flavored meals for their families for some time to come.

of Shanghai and possibly world fashion. The refurbished winding, tight cornered area claims many boutiques within its confines and was the perfect place for a photo scavenger hunt for our students to embark on with some other Chinese high school and university students. The conversation flowed into dinner and ended with a sing-a-long that spoke to our future KTV exploits. We then capped off the night with a hair wash, which in Shanghai is comes with a head, shoulders, neck, and back massage for the weary.

We arose early and wandered out of our hotel to a nearby noodle joint, where rice noodles with beef warmed our stomaches and gave us the energy to set off for our final destination of the trip. We headed to the airport, hopped aboard our plane, and soon found our selves catching glimpses of the sprawl of Shanghai below. We were bombarded by a blanket of hot, humid air as we trudged down the outdoor stairs at the airport and knew we would be in for some heat in the next few days. The quick trip back to our hotel allowed us to marvel at the modern skyscrapers popping up all over the city.

Once bags and people were settled in their rooms, we headed off for dinner and then boarded the bus to explore the city by night. We drove through packed downtown and unloaded at the Bund - a walkway along the HuangPu River that affords an amazing view of the Pearl Tower and other contendors in the nighttime skyline. We weaved our way past other glistening tourists, locals, vendors, and others off the Bund and down Nanjing Road where the golden arches could be found interspersed with store after store of clothes, goods, or other restaurants (including a quite posh Pizza Hut) all lit up in neon. Drawing our by now familiar standard share of stares, comments, and giggles, we made our way down the pedestrian way until we escaped the fray in the cool, calm of our transport back to the hotel.

July 14th - Hairpin turns and terraced hills along the winding mountain rode led us out of Dada and back into Kunming. The multi-story apartment buildings, giant shopping malls, and vehicle scattered roads assaulted our senses after a quiet week in the countryside, but we were able to capture a few hours of respite wandering through a tea market. We set aside our packages and tea induced jitters to eat lunch before moving on to our hotel.

Once settled and once the mechanized majong table was discovered, we walked down the street to meet several current and former university students who had banded together to start Exidea, an organization focused on providing volunteer opportunities in Kunming and around Yunnan province for university students. Conversation picked up rapidly as we strode through Kunming University and the Green Lake (with a short break for a student to join a troop of eldery women drummers). Most of us managed to escape a late afternoon downpour in the confines of the hotel, but those straggling behind were forced into t-shirt shops for shelter.

The university students accompanied us to dinner at a Dai restaurant (yummy spicey delicacies) and then back to one of the main corridors by campus for a bit of ice cream and shopping. And let it be known that when the kids are tucked away, the adults will play…majong that is.

July 13th - With a bit of sadness in our gait knowing it would be the final time walking through the village, we made our way back to our family’s house. The walls and roof of the structure we had been building to house the family’s cows and chickens was complete except for a floor, so we set to work mixing cement and passing buckets down the line. We whipped through two layers of cement for the floor and another for the driveway in no time at all. We then settled in for our final lunch followed by an impromptu graduation ceremony replete with Habitat for Humanity certificates for our efforts. Our final test bested most, though some of us were able to master the ability to transform palm leaves into grasshoppers and lanterns.

We said our final farewells and headed back to unwind and pack up. All evening the anticipation built towards the fateful moment when we cowered together awaiting the inevitable ghost story. While the actual tales of ghosts didn’t increase most heart beats, a well timed knock may have garnered a few tears.

July 12th - After having previously been wooed by one very adorable four year old Chinese boy who has been dubbed “Jack Jack”, we were thrilled that we would be spending the morning at a different building site belonging to Jack Jack’s grandparents. We made quick work of shifting scattered rocks into a pile. We then put our backs, legs, and arms to the test hoeing and shoveling three years worth of accumulated dirt off the future foundtion of the house. The sound of metal upon concrete signaled our success and we returned to our own family’s house for lunch.

After yet another delectable home cooked meal, we headed back to where all the village kids had gathered once again. The sun shone down on us today, so we moved our activities outside for some lively jump roping, badminton, chalk drawing, dancing, and of course a heated game of eeny-meeny-miny-mo. After exhausting ourselves and our litany of every single children’s game we could remember, we said our final good-byes to the village kids and headed out for the day.

Arriving back at our home away from home, we were expertly guided through the hidden pathways, water dribbling caves, and water surrounded pagodas by one of our very own students. After feeding our bodies and spirits with dinner and free time, we gathered blankets and pillows and piled on top of beds and chairs to get an incredible glimpse into Chinese hip hop dance and music in a documentary in part shot and edited by our very own Ann.

July 11th- We were back in action today hoisting, lifting, mixing, loading, unloading, and stacking. The two walls had grown exponentialy overnight, putting our efforts to shame. But the progress inspired us to whip through our tasks for the day and, despite a lingering toad, we managed to make fast work of moving a pile of tiles and subsequently a pile of rocks.

With our arms and backs still holding back their screams until that night or the next morning, we moved on to the quiet welcome of the village children awaiting our arrival at a nearby building. The silence was soon punctured by peels of laughter, voices singing, and feet stamping the ground as our students and the Chinese youngsters managed to capture each others’ minds and hearts as they colored pictures, made play-doh animals, dealt cards, and, of course, put any previous Soulja’ Boy dance incarnation to shame. It was a sight to behold.

We said our farewells to the kids for the day, knowing we would be back for more the next day. We headed back to our botannical garden hotel for a bit of singing and game playing of our own before dinner, free time, night chat, and bed.

July 10th - It’s amazing that no matter how many times the potatoes poked their heads above the soil, the excitement for uncovering one didn’t diminish. It was like a gold rush each and every time and prompted the farmer in some of us and the pro-wrestler in others to surface. By the end of the morning, we did manage to dig up most of the field and haul away the potatoes in woven baskets hoisted upon our backs.

A much deserved lunch was folllowed by everyone recapturing their expertise from the previous day in mixing cement, carting bricks, and building walls. After laboring for the afternon, we all unwound wiht a bit of badminton, yoga, or a walk around the grounds. And since exhaustion had set in, we capped off the night by packing into one room, blankets and pillows piled uner and over limbs, to watch a not so Chinese flick - Ghost Rider.