International Buzz

Random thoughts - some weighty, some trivial, some downright silly - from a recent trip to China.

1)      The recession has put a dent in China’s growth. Their economy will grow by only – ONLY – 8 percent this year.

2)      Many of the Chinese I spoke to blame the U.S. for the recession, and say China will lead the world out of it.

3)      Any small problem, multiplied by 1.3 billion, becomes a big problem.

4)      The Chinese I spoke to have no interest in a military conflict with the U.S. They’d rather beat us in the marketplace.

My biggest misconception about China? Easy. The food.

Pre-trip, I heard all the horror stories. Food-borne illness that will wreak havoc on your system. Strange and grotesque dishes that look back at you from the plate. Questionable meat and produce that’ll have you longing for a PBJ.

I was so concerned I brought a couple boxes of granola bars, just in case.

Nonsense. The food I had in China was some of the best food I’ve had anywhere, ever.

So much better than the “Chinese” food in the states that I’ll never enjoy Kung Pao Chicken the same way again. The Chinese food I had in China was fresher, less oily and much more complex than anything I’ve had at the local sweet-and-sour pork palace.

Well, did you miss me? I'm back in Kansas City after 24 wonderful days in China. I learned a lot, though right now the jetlag is preventing me from recalling any of it (Somehow, I arrived in San Francisco yesterday - after a 12 hour flight - before I left Hong Kong).

I've got a few more posts I want to write soon - I haven't said hardly a word about the wondrous Chinese food I had, or my impressions of Hong Kong. I've also been compiling a long list of all the things I've learned, or observed, about China. I'll share all that within the next few days. Also, now that I'm back I hope posting photos to this blog won't be the chore it proved to be in China.

But for now, it's sleeping, eating (Apples! Bread! I can drink water out of the tap!) and sleeping.

I’m in Hong Kong for a few days of work and R&R before heading back to KC. Monday I took the day off and headed to Macau, the Vegas of the East, so see what all the hubbub is about.

Macau is a former Portuguese colony, a city of just over half a million. It’s long been China’s Sin City, a place where gambling was allowed and call girls easy to find. But in recent years it’s undergone a facelift as casino developers attempt to recreate Vegas in the South China Sea. Big casino hotels boasting brand names like Wynn, MGM and Sands have popped up. There’s a move toward family-friendly entertainment and world-class convention facilities.

You can’t drink the water in China. But don’t worry. Black & Veatch is working on that.

I just got back from a visit to Black & Veatch’s Hong Kong office. I had a delightful discussion with Alan Man, vice president and director of client services in the North Asia Pacific region.

The Kansas City based engineering firm has offices all over Asia, and employs more than 100 people on the 25th floor of a gleaming skyscraper in Kowloon. They’ve got big projects in mainland China and in Hong Kong.

Quick little aside: B&V’s office is in a building called Millennium City 6. It’s the sixth of a massive development of skyscrapers. But there’s no Millennium 4. Why? The Chinese consider that number bad luck.

That old line, ‘never let them see you sweat?’

I figure, conservatively, that I’ve let at least several million Chinese see me sweat.

I was warned. Beijing in the summertime is often hot. Hong Kong, always. High temperatures and higher humidity.

Whatever, I thought. I’ve lived in the South. I’ve survived Midwestern heat waves that could fry an egg. I’ve lived in top-floor apartments with no AC. I could take it. I actually thought it might be a welcome reprieve from the Midwestern summer temperatures.

Hong Kong's remarkable setting, perched on the side of mountains next to the sea, plus its intense density, combine to create perhaps the most visually stunning skyline I've ever seen. This city of seven million has more skyscrapers than any other, and they're packed in like matchsticks in the narrow ribbon on land between the mountains and the harbour.

My photos just don't do it justice - though I've attached some anyway. The photos from Kowloon and the Peak are probably the best.

Of course we all know the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests just came and went.

But 2009 also marks the 50th anniversary of the March 10, 1959 Tibetan uprising.

Here's a big one Beijing would like to celebrate: Oct. 1 is the 60th anniversary of the founding of the communist government.

One more: 2009 marks 30 years after the U.S. and China restarted diplomatic ties.

Taking the Star Ferry across Victoria Harbour in Hong Kong is one of those must-dos for the first time visitor. Sort of like Arthur Bryants, only cheaper and without the barbecue sauce.

I hopped aboard in Kowloon to get back to Hong Kong Island. The route has been operated for more than 100 years, and the ferries themselves look even older.

Click on the attached photos to check it out.

On our last night in Hohhot, we were treated to a Banquet hosted by Vice Mayor Liu Ju Ru, a night I'll never forget. 

After a brief discussion of Hohhot's economy, we sat down to a sumptuous meal. One plate after another came and went, starting with jellyfish and ending with fresh fruit (the Chinese love their watermelon at the end of a meal). In between was fish, chicken, beef and a few things I didn't recognize.

The highlight, however, was the toasting. The Vice Mayor, a woman, kicked it off with a toast to welecom us to Hohhot. The women were allowed to toast with red wine, but the men had to drink this clear grain liquor of uncertain origin.

Fine, no problem, I thought. I could handle one shot of this mysterious fire water. (The night before we tried the fermented mare's milk. Not as bad as you might think).

I had the pleasure to spend four days and nights in Inner Mongolia, a place I had to look up on the map before going.

Outer Mongolia is the nation north of China, the one you probably think of when you think Genghis Khan.

Inner Mongolia is a region within China, though it has strong historic and cultural ties to Mongolia the nation. Centuries of Chinese rule, however, mean that most Inner Mongolians are ethnic Han Chinese.

I expected a backwater - and there is plenty of that. But there's also a bustling economy based on energy (much of it renewable), agriculture and tourism.

Hohhot, the capital city, has nearly 3 million residents. I wrote about their giant diary industry earlier. It reminded me a lot of Kansas City - a hardworking, friendly town that probably doesn't get the respect it deserves.

I had a room reserved at the beautiful Shangri La hotel for my stay in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia.

Problem: a foreign visitor (either Korean or Japanese) came down with the swine flu. The authorities quarantined the hotel and when I drove by a police car was blocking the drive way.

Thankfully, the nearby Hotel Phoenix had rooms available. If I'd arrived a day earlier, my stay in Inner Mongolia might have been a bit extended.

Quite a lot about China has surprised me so far. The food far surpasses my expectations. The gleaming sky scrapers I was prepared for? They’re even shinier than I envisioned. The Chinese themselves are friendlier than I presumed. And riding in cabs and buses isn’t the life-threatening experience many warned me about.

And then there’s the surprising Chinese squat toilet which you still find in most Chinese restrooms. I was about to attach a photo I took of a typical squat toilet, but this is a family blog, and we have some decency. Google it if you're curious.

I'll leave it at this: a squat toilet is basically a porcelain hole in the ground,  and you find them all over China. Nicer western-friendly hotels and office buildings have "western" toilets in often very clean restrooms. Sometimes you can choose between options in the same bathroom.

The least interesting thing I've seen in China is the Great Wall. And that says something, because man, that wall is impressive. Makes you feel bad for the Mongols.

I went on a hot muggy day, to a section of the wall close to Beijing strung along a rugged area of mountains and badlands. I wasn't alone, as the picture indicates.

But walk a few feet away from the crowds - and the merchants hawking "antiques" from the Ming Dynasty and cigarette lighters shaped like Chairman Mao - and you can find quiet corners like the little temple originally built for soldiers stationed at the wall.

BEIJING | Twenty-five years ago there was no such thing as a Chinese MBA. Any Chinese citizen wanting one would have to go abroad – if they could. And they weren’t likely to come back.

Two-thirds of the top students went on to government jobs. What good was an MBA in communist China, anyway, when there wasn’t a free market?

“Marketing was useless, corporate finance was useless,” said Weiying Zhang, dean of the Guanghua Graduate School of Management at Peking University.

Back then, he said, “a good student goes into government. Today, a good student goes into business.”

A few headlines from this morning's China Daily, for your reading pleasure:

"Dead Dog Linked to Plague Outbreak."  

Three people have died from the outbreak of pneumonic plague (as in the Black Death) in Qinghai province. Authorities have linked the spread of the disease to a 32-year-old herdsman who caught it while burying his dog. The dog succumbed after coming into contact with a presumably infected marmot.

"While the herdsman was burying the body of the dog," the article reads, "he was beaten by the fleas residing on the dead animal, causing him to contract the deadly plague."

Three days later he was dead.

"Man Arrested for Riot Rumors." A Uighur man who spread rumors about ethnic violence before the Urumqi riots is in big trouble.

Just before boarding an Air China flight from Beijing to Inner Mongolia a few days ago, a friend mentioned that the airline used to buy old hand-me-down jets from the Russians.

That can’t be good.

I had no reason to worry. So far I’ve flown a few times in China and I’ve been impressed. The planes are clean and seemingly safe. It’s hard to tell them apart from their US counterparts. The same lack of legroom. The food is free, and much better.

My first Chinese flight – Tokyo to Beijing – was very nice (fears that I would be quarantined for suspicions of swine flu notwithstanding).

It’s no news to anyone that China faces a host of environmental challenges, some familiar to Americans and some that seem plucked right out of Dickensian London.

Air pollution that can make Beijing look like a city built on a sulpher cloud. Runaway development that’s eating up land, water and raw materials. Hotel water that must be boiled before you can brush your teeth.

A thirst for energy that’s decades from being quenched. To keep up, China is building a coal plant once a month. China is also the world’s largest auto market; should all 1.3 billion Chinese someday want a gasoline car, the carbon emissions are going to go sky-high.

China is already the world’s largest carbon emitter, an ignominious title it wrested from the U.S.

Had the opportunity to visit colleagues at China's Xinhuanet.com, the leading Chinese online news organization run by the Xinhua News Agency.

China doesn't do anything small, and Xinhua is no exception.

Here's just one little snippet of what I learned: you know when city politicians participates in an online chat and maybe 20 locals log on to pose questions?

Well, when Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao took part in a recent chat, Xinhua fielded HALF A MILLION online questions and comments.

The state-run site publishes in six languages, including English, and gets 28 million visits daily. Xinhua has 150 some overseas bureaus - in every nation with diplomatic ties with China.

The bar was smoky, sure (no smoking bans here), but it sure looks like Michael Jackson is laying low in the loud and crowded cafes and bars of the Sanlitun neighborhood in Beijing.

Jackson, who may have had additional plastic surgery to blend in with the masses, pretends that his English has noticeably deteriorated.

But he's still widely popular here: western tourists begged for photographs (he obliged) and the Chinese laughed and applauded when he took the stage briefly to show off his famous moves.