 |
|
Ken Del Rossi |
this is china: a slouchy
teenager with orange hair leans against a light pole
across the street from Tiananmen Square, beneath a giant
portrait of Chairman Mao. His t-shirt reads “Speak
Your Mind.”
And this is China: on a sharply angled driveway surrounded
by hawkers of Great Wall souvenirs, a van driver begins
to pull away from a parking space. The gears grind horribly.
Suddenly a man emerges from behind the van lugging a
giant rock—the parking brake. His cell phone rings.
He puts down the rock, answers the phone. Finishes the
call, heaves the rock into the back seat, clambers in.
And this is China: on a rainy afternoon in the Forbidden
City, a few steps away from the Palace of Eternal Harmony,
a gaggle of tourists lines up at the door of a 600-year-old
building to buy coffee—at Starbucks.
One week in Beijing and Shanghai doesn’t qualify
me to comment on the country, but after being there
with a Stanford entourage in late May, I can say this
much: there is no easy way to describe the place. You
see contradictions everywhere—rich and poor, ancient
and modern, East and West. China feels like a wild experiment,
and perhaps that is just what it is.
Even a casual visitor notices that this is no longer
a society of dreary authoritarianism. Repression still
exists, and China remains a country with hundreds of
millions of dreadfully poor people, yet the climate
of openness and possibility is almost palpable in these
major cities. Some of this stems from the more superficial
aspects of a growing market economy—buying and
selling creates an energy all its own. But perhaps more
revealing is the collective body language of the Chinese
people. They seem relaxed, unguarded.
The only time I noticed an army presence was while on
an early-morning walk in downtown Beijing. Hundreds
of soldiers jogged in formation while their drilling
officer shouted instructions in short, clipped tones.
It might have been a little chilling, except that just
above their heads on a nearby storefront loomed the
beatific visage of Ronald McDonald.
Stanford’s connections in China run long and deep,
and we’ve tried to highlight a few of the most
influential in this issue, beginning on page 36. This
fall, a 21st century pioneer class—the first Stanford
students in the University’s new Beijing program—will
mark an official re-entry into the country where Stanford
academics and policy analysts have long been involved.
More than 10 years in the making, this new program—a
collaboration with Peking (Beida) University—allows
students to see for themselves the profound changes
under way in China. You might call it China 101.
A new China is emerging, some previously unseen hybrid
of a modern, sophisticated nation informed by one of
the world’s oldest civilizations. It’s messy
and slippery and scary and fascinating, and for the
people who are there to witness it, transformative.
I can’t wait to go back. |
