CHINA TRAVEL DIARY

Sri Lanka Pavilion
A scene of a craftsman cutting raw ores into gemstones

The funnel-shaped tower in front of the entrance gate to the Asian Zone





Spanish Pavilion





Growing Foreign Investments in the Chinese Economy

     On September 21, 2010, I visited the Shanghai Expo. Although it was a day in autumn, Shanghai was still under a scorching sun. Walking on the streets early in the morning made me feel tired. Fortunately, the Expo site was close to the subway station. Entering the inside through the gate of the Asian Zone, I noticed a huge funnel-shaped iron tower rising high. Also I saw an oriental-style, red building just across the street; it was the Chinese main pavilion. The scale of the site was great, but not very surprising to me because I occasionally saw its pictures on TV in Japan. As broadcasted by the media, there were a really great number of visitors forming a long line toward the entrance of every popular pavilion.
     What was most impressive to me was not just the number of visitors but a global atmosphere being felt on the Expo site. It was like a competition of economic cultures and advanced technologies by 246 participating countries and world organizations. I stayed there almost half a day, trying to get inside of popular pavilions, but often I had to abandon it when I heard the length of time to stand in the waiting line.
     Such an extraordinary interest in the Expo among people indicates a growing existence of foreign businesses in the Chinese economy. Official statistics about the world economy on the Internet show that in 2009 foreign capitals occupied 55.9% and 54.2% in the Chinese export and import values respectively.  This means that about one half of the economy is supported by foreign companies.
     The Chinese government seems to welcome foreign capitals, keeping the market open to foreign investments. A newpaper in Japan reported recently about a Japanese company having tried to get approval for establishing a plant in Shanghai. In an interview with a governmnet official, the company representative was asked questions like "Are you OK if your technology were made known in China?" and "Would it be acceptable for you if local employees might leave you someday and begin their own business competing with you?" The application, the newpaper says, was accepted then and there when they responded positively.

 In Yuan Ming Yuan Park 
An entertaning parade in the folk costume of olden days

    Late in April, I took a 4-day trip to Beijing by myself. What I had been concerned about before leaving Japan was yellow sand which is known for making the region unhappy around this season. But it was an unnecessary worry. The breeze was cool and dry, making the walking outside rather comfortable. It was my fifth visit to China, so I was a bit self-confident that I had some understanding about their lifestyle, but this trip renewed my knowledge again, as in the previous travels. What drew my attention was their eating custom, which I found is rather different from that of the Japanese. 
    There is a restaurant called “ Azabu Juban” (or “ Ma Bu Shi Hao” in the Chinese pronunciation) in the basement of a department store located in Wan Fu Jin District, the main commercial part of town. I got interested in the name because it was the same as that of a well-known district in Tokyo. I entered the inside. Feeling familiar with their rice-related dish menus, I ordered a plate of fried rice and a vegetable salad selecting from the pictures on the menu. I was expecting to have a Japanese-style, humble-volume rice bowl.
    Some time later, a young cheerful waitress carried my orders. I got upset when I saw the plates being heaped with so much rice and salad. It was like the ones in volume for three persons in Japan. I wondered whether one person really eats such a lot of food at one time in China, and looked around in the restaurant. Almost all the tables were occupied with guests; there was no table with only one person sitting at, except mine. They were grouped with "fellows" (perhaps, friends or families), sharing dishes from the same plates. I understood why my dishes were so big ones. It is a custom in this country to share foods with other people eating outside.
    I heard later from an acquaintance that the Chinese usually do not go out alone for eating or drinking. With no companion coming together, they would rather stay and eat at home. There is also little difference with coffee shops such as McDonal's and Starbucks. You may rarely find someone drinking by oneself at cafes on weekdays as well as holidays.

円明園
The European Buildings Area in Yuan Ming Yuan Park keeps the ruins from destruction in the Second Opium War in 1859.

Yang Yi’s Prize-winning Novel “The Morning was in the Mist of Time”

     Ms. Yang Yi, a Chinese lady residing in Japan, has been recently awarded the “Akutagawa Sho”, the most honorable literature prize leading to a literary career in Japan. She is the first writer with foreign nationality to win the prize. The work honored by the prize is one of her recent novels titled “The Morning was in the Mist of Time” or in Chinese, “Zaochen shaowei xia shijian de wu le” (Both are my quick translations from the Japanese original title). Her prize winning was taken with a big surprise in Japan as this kind of top-class prize is generally thought impossible to obtain for people other than really professional native writers. She came to Japan in 1987 as a student and has since been staying in this country. Although Japanese is a foreign language for her, the novel is written in a flowing, natural style. The winning of the prize demonstrates her outstanding linguistic abilities.
     The story, set in both China and Japan, covers ten years from the end of the 1980s to the beginning of the 2000s. In a press interview after being awarded the prize, Yang Yi said that she wanted to make some notes about the Tiananmen Square Incident; however, no reference is made to political ideologies or propagandas in the book. She puts a spotlight mainly on two boys as the heros in the novel, and the story develops mostly in a provincial town in China. Those two hero students, after entering the same university with an earnest desire to contribute to the nation, gradually get involved in student activisms aspiring to national political reforms. They become interested in American democracy as well. But their aspiration is finally frustrated in the political situations of those days, and they are expelled from the campus. The author depicts the situations in an objective, restricted-tone approach without bringing in her personal feelings.
     One of the heroes later lives in Japan and, leading the social life with his countrymen, continues to be involved in democratization activities. Amid daily hard work and raising his own children, however, he gradually loses interest in politics. Some of the characters in the novel decide to move back for nostalgia at the risk of being blamed in their homeland. The title of this book indicates their parting early in the morning at the international airport near Tokyo. At the end of the story, the hero is impressed by a murmur of his Japanese boss at a printing factory saying that democracy would be achieved in China someday in the future only if its economy would continue to grow at the present pace.
     Readers of this work are divided in their evaluation of it. In fact, according to a press report, it was at the second voting in the Prize Selection Committee that Yang Yi’s awarding was approved among the members 5 to 3. One of the members commented later that although she was certainly a good writer, this work left less after-reading impressions in mind than her last one. The lifestyle on campus in China, vividly described in the novel, might have served as one of the factors in the divided evaluations in that it is not very familiar to the Japanese readers. It is rare to find academic communities in Japan where students and teachers live together within the same campus.
     In the second half of the story, the stage shifts from China to Japan, creating a possible expectation of Japanese readers that they could learn something about the hero’s personal experience in Japan. But the author, keeping her looks detached, talks very little about the hero’s personal communications with local people. It might be due to shortage of the work volume (completed with only 150 pages in total) or due to her skillfully plotted story-telling strategies. Anyway, this book is interesting, and would certainly draw attention of Chinese readers if it would become available in the translated version.

Dear Mrs. Wang,

     Please excuse me for my long silence. I always hope, however, that everything goes smoothly with your Chinese classes in Urawa. I am writing today to make some comments and suggestions on education of the Chinese language in Japan. This letter may be a bit long and complicated, but I would be very glad if you would be patient enough to read through.
     It is wonderful that the number of people learning Chinese is increasing  year by year in Japan. I think this trend is not surprising because of today's growing exchanges of goods and human resources between the two nations and remarkable expansion of the Chinese economy.
     On the other hand, however, I have to admit that quite a few Japanese, including me, feel it tough to learn the Chinese language well. And so, I have been thinking over what was making our learning progress slow. One big problem I can suggest now is "kanji", or Chinese-derived characters used in the Japanese language. I am sure that kanji characters are acting as a big hindrance in the Chinese learning. You might wonder whether my view is right to the point, but a great number of learners in Japan would agree with me.
     As you know well, the Japanese language has a lot of kanji characters transplanted from Chinese since olden days. Many of them, though having developed uniquely over the time, still share the same or similar meanings with the contemporary Chinese language. This means that Japanese learners, based on the kanji knowledge, can understand the meanings of your language to some extent at the beginning of lessons. As a result, students tend to neglect the practice of such basic elements as the four tones pronunciation.
     In addition, “Kambun” (Chinese classics taught for long in Japan) may be working as another barrier to the learning. Kambun, which has been quite popular in Japan for centuries, is a genre of literature to study the original versions of Chinese classics, such as Konzi and Laozi. Those works, however, are turned into the Japanese language in both word orders and pronunciations in Kambun. Because of its uniqueness, the literature has served us to understand the meanings of the texts without knowledge of your language, but on the other hand, it has also played as a roadblock to the learning of the language, similarly as I described above. I believe that Japanese students need more practice in the pronunciation and basic grammar. 
     I would like to take up the approach by the students from Western countries. They essentially have no concept of kanji characters in language, so it is not possible for them to start learning based on the characters. They have to devote much of their energies to practice in pronunciations at the early stage, and then move on to acquiring the meanings of the written characters comparing to the pronunciations. Such a step-by-step approach seems to have a long way to reach the destination, but I know that they are finally rewarded with excellent results; you would occasionally see Westerners speaking in fluent Chinese in Beijing.
     I hope that what I described above will be of some help in organizing your teaching methods in a further efficient manner, improving your students' practical use of the language.

Sincerely,

円明園

Yuan Ming Yuan Park is one of the best-known, largest gardens in Beijing and located northwest of the city. On July 21, as arranged yesterday, I met Mrs. Liu at the subway station “ Xi Er Qi “ early in the afternoon. She then took me by car to Yuan Ming Yuan for the tour of the garden. Mrs. Liu, a friend of an acquaintance, is teaching Japanology in a college in Beijing, and speaks Japanese like a native speaker. So, I was lucky that I could make a tour without communication barrier.
     The park, which is as big as 20 kilometers in circumference, was established as an imperial palace of the Qing dynasty in the 18th century. Reportedly, in the golden ages, over 140 buildings filled the garden, forming a gigantic palace, but in 1860 all of them were destroyed by the allied forces of the U.K. and Frances in the second Opium War.
     It took about 20 minutes until arriving at an entrance gate, which I later knew is just one of the gates. Outside of the gate, I see many local visitors and foreign tourists taking pictures or buying entrance tickets. Going through the entrance, visitors are welcomed by lines of huge weeping willows. The trees are old and huge enough to create an instant fantasy in me that they might have watched what happened inside the park in the course of the history. The entrance promenade leads to a large pond, the surface of which is covered with the deep green lotus in bloom. Lotus plants are familiar in Japan as a symbol of the Buddhist culture.
     Going deep into the park, Mrs. Liu shows me the place which was occupied by the main palace buildings. At present, nothing remains except the flat, stretching grounds covered with gray bricks. The area is surrounded by thickly growing wild plants now, and there are almost no signs of repair or rebuilding work. Perhaps, I am watching the same views as observed by people who visited here decades ago. According to Mrs. Liu, the palace buildings were plundered by soldiers during the opium war and swept by the flames, and a lot of valuables were taken away abroad.
     Another place, far from here but located within the same garden, is famous for ruins of the European-style buildings still preserved as destroyed during the Opium War.  If possible, I do want to visit there next time. I appreciated the charming professor taking time for guiding me today.

 A crossing point of Chong Weng Men Inner Dajie and Jianguo Men Dajie in the evening rush hours, adjacent to the biggest shopping center in the city.

Young girls are fond of walking hand in hand. This will be an unspoken expression of friendships.

Learning Chinese at Chinese Language Training Center

     From 16th to 23rd of July, 2007, I stayed in Beijing to take Chinese lessons at Chinese Language Training Center of the Academy of Arts & Design, Qinghua University. As the length of my stay was limited, I was recommended to take one-to-one individual lessons rather than attending class lessons. I followed that advice and registered for the lessons from Wednesday to Saturday.
     My teacher is Ms. Lao, who looks young but is actually in the middle of her 30s, married, and looks like being experienced in teaching. She speaks in a clear voice, and aloud like other ordinary Chinese. I choose a beginner’s textbook mainly composed of pronunciation and pattern drills. Having a very few opportunities to speak in Chinese in Japan, I face a lot of difficulty with oral communications with her. So, if I don’t understand her, she writes it in Chinese characters on a piece of paper, and I review it quickly. The lessons are conducted in serious atmosphere. The textbook includes as much as 242 pages in it. To make it understandable, the explanatory portions in the book are written in English. Due to the patience and enthusiasm of the teacher, after completion of the entire lessons I feel a bit eased in communication at the hotel or on the streets in Chinese.

Preparations for Olympic Games

     There is just one year left until the opening of the Beijing Olympics 2008. Newspapers and magazines at kiosks or signboards in town carry a lot of preliminary publicity for the Olympics. I feel heated atmosphere in media promoting the international event. In major districts in the city, old buildings are being dismantled and new ones are under construction. Some of the subway lines are under repair or construction to cope with expected traffic congestion. A lot of workers are engaged in public works for road construction even near my hotel located in a central area.The outdoor work must be harsh and painful under a scorching sun. 

     Reportedly, there are now three million cars in Beijing, and that number is still increasing by 1,000 every day. Main districts smell of heavy car exhaust. During the morning and evening rush hours, many roads are congested with bumper-to-bumper cars. The air pollution is likely to be approaching critical conditions. If the situation is left without taking effective measures, athletes in the Olympics next year might face physical disorders. Some suggestions are made to minimize the stuations; for example, the competent authorities should take actions like prohibiting cars with certain license numbers from driving on certain days of the week or limiting private cars driving into the central areas during a certain time zone.

Beijing Station and its main building

顎和園

Commemorative facilities facing the lake in the Garden

Entrance building of the garden

Main tower of the palace

 A lion statue welcoming visitors inside of the entrance 

Entrance gate to the Summer Palace Garden

Today is September 1. I get off the subway at the station Xizhimen in the midtown west of Beijing City. I soon take a taxi to visit Yi He Yuan Garden, the former summer palace of the Qing dynasty of China and a World Heritage Site. The driver is a gentle, middle-aged man.The palace is located in the suburbs of the city, 40 minutes by car from the downtown area.
     The taxi runs on highways with four to five lanes on one side. The roads are lined with huge, high-rise buildings on both sides endlessly. Building facilities in this area are modern and stylish. Some of them are office buildings with huge signs displaying the names of famous foreign companies. Block by block, a lot of people are gathering or walking on the squares and streets. These uptown districts are known as a newly developed area accommodating educational institutions and residences for middle class people.
     After about 20 minutes of drive, I am in front of the entrance gate to Yi He Yuan. The autumn has started today, but the sun is hot as if scorching. A number of tour buses and taxies are already parking, and people are forming lines in front of the ticket office to buy entrance tickets. Passing through the gate called Dong Gong Men, I soon come up to a large, old temple in front of which a bronze statue of a Chinese traditional lion is sitting and staring visitors.
     The garden have an area of 2.9 million square meters and almost 800-year old history. Many facilities are said to have been destroyed in the Opium War, and later in 1886 reconstructed by Xi Taihou, the most influential empress, as her summer resort.
     I start walking towards the main tower of the palace called Fu Xiang Gu. I pass through a long corridor and numerous palace facilities and gardens. On the lake, people are on small recreational boats and middle-sized sightseeing boats. Sometimes resting in the gardens, I finally reach the entrance building leading to the tower.........

One day in late August 2005, I arrived at Beijing International Airport around nine o’clock in the evening. This is my first visit to this city. It is late, but there are still many people in the arrival hall, including tourists, airport staff members, and a lot of other people seemingly waiting for someone. It is hot and humid just like in Tokyo, which I left a few hours earlier. I took a taxi to go to the reserved hotel in a hurry as it was late in time.
     Next day, I visited Gugong, or Forbidden City, and other well–known central areas with Ms. Jiang as my guide. She is a friend of an acquaintance and speaks English. I asked where she learned English; her reply was that she studied it in the regular courses at high school and university. She also confessed that I am the first foreigner for her to talk with.
     My first impression of the city was, putting it simply, that it is fantastic and somewhat mysterious. For example, in downtown areas, such as Xidan or Wangfujing, I find bustling stores standing in a row where the latest modes of apparel and electronic products are lined up for sale. On the other hand, stepping into the courtyard of Gugong, a palace of the former dynasties with an area of 720 thousand square meters, I feel as if I strayed into the olden days.
     On the second day of the tour, I took a chartered taxi from the hotel for a one-day tour to the nearest Great Wall. Ms. Jiang, a computer engineer and a charming young lady, helps me again by acting as my guide for today. The weather was good, but the air was not as clear as in Tokyo. The entire city was veiled in the faintly pale yellow haze, perhaps coming from some deserts in the west, and the distant places were not clearly visible.
     It was still seven o’clock in the morning, but taking the taxi company’s advice, we started at once. They say you should start early in the morning because the roads would get congested with cars later. The taxi, reserved yesterday, was clean and comfortable inside. I hired it for one day from morning to evening for a total amount of 550 yuan, or about 60 US dollars.
     The taxi driver is friendly and talkative. He says he has worked for the Japanese embassy. Ms. Jiang also loves to talk and enjoys conversation with the driver in the car. I got aware through her translation of the driver complaining that the Japanese tourists this year are fewer than the last year. I know it is mainly due to the mass demonstrations across China during this spring protesting against new history textbooks adopted by the Japanese government. 
     When we arrived at the gate to the Wall called Badaling Changcheng (Changcheng means a long fortress), it was still before nine o’clock in the morning. Badaling, distant 80 kilometers from the Beijing city, is one of the typical sightseeing spots. In order to go up the Wall, we took the ropeway. With the ropeway gondola moving uptowards, the entire scenery gradually got into my eyesight. The Wall was as if snaking along the mountain ridges to the distance. It was really a breathtaking spectacle of another world.
     The walkway on the Wall is paved with stones. It is wide enough to allow four to five horses to walk side by side; it is also massive and strong and 7 to 8 meters high on average. I wonder how the structures were built on such steep mountains in those days when no modern construction machines were available. It is really one of the seven wonders of the world.
     On the way back to Beijing, the taxi driver recommended another sightseeing spot of the Wall called “Mutianyu Wall”. He said it is not so far from Badaling but preserves a more scenic,natural landscape. He also mentioned that it was the place the former US President Bill Clinton went to during his official visit in Beijing. I thanked Ms. Jiang for arranging everything for the tour, including negotiations with the taxi company.

(Abridged for readability in November)

Inside of Forbidden City, Gugong

故宮