It appears that I’ve located the most wretched hive of scum and villainy in Xi’an, and it’s a place you’d least expect.

Starbucks.

These past two nights I’ve gone to the downtown Starbucks near the Drum Tower section of Xi’an. It’s been a great place for free wireless internet, coffee, cheesecake, and studying/conversation. Each time has been an experience.

The first time I went in a group of six. At one point the waitress came up to us and said to watch our bags closely because two thieves were just in the coffee shop. This was around dinnertime.

Last night I closed out the Starbucks. Peter (one of the guys on the trip) and I went to Starbucks to chat & do some work. I got one of those café vanillas, or vanilla cafes (I’m such a poor Starbucks-orderer, I really think the Barista community hates me) and a piece of green tea cheesecake. I can testify that the Chinese will make a green tea anything. If it’s edible and can have a green tea taste, it exists in China.

I got a big piece of green that looked like it had grass on the top. I half-considered dumping some MiracleGro on top to see if there would be any reaction.

The night got off to a curious start when we were sexually solicited first by a man, and then by a scantily clad woman, both of whom made suggestive poses outside of the glass doors (our table faced the doorway). Shortly later I was showing Peter pictures of my little sisters and a Chinese guy came up and was looking over my shoulder and pointing at pictures. Within minutes Starbucks employees chased him off, and warned us that he’s a thief who comes in and tries to steal from westerners.

Half of me was ready to split the coffee shop. The other half was fixated with an image of Starbucks employees going old Chinese-style kung fu on some bandits. How awesome would it be to see your barista jump kick a low life from behind the counter? I felt well-protected.

A couple times during our conversation I’d notice out of the corner of my eye a young Chinese woman, easily our age, come up to the glass doorway and try to get our attention. She was dressed like the “girls in the window” that we had seen in the non-tourist districts of Shanghai. The sad thing is that she probably pulls that act all the time, and it must work, otherwise she wouldn’t continue to do it.

Towards the end of the night, as the Starbucks employees were cleaning up and washing the windows, a boy stumbled in who was wearing dirty clothing and had a head of messy black hair. He plopped himself down on a maroon cushion that set next to her table, and his eyes scanned our possessions. He lingered around Peter for a while until a Starbucks employee gave him aggressive looks, and he scurried off into the night. As he left I wondered who was waiting for him outside, hoping he’d come back with some money or maybe a bag or piece of electronics to pawn.

The use of children by beggars and con artists in China is another blog entirely, one that deserves its own space & reflections.

Peter & I finally left the Starbucks at around 11:30pm. We walked out onto the busy street around the Drum Tower section of Xi’an, and were greeted by the smells of some food vendors and the beeping of taxi cabs, pulling on and off the righthand lane where they awaited late night fares.

What I’ve experienced in two nights at that Xi’an Starbucks has been unique. I’ve never experienced anything comparable in a Starbucks anywhere in the United States or Canada. Our Xi’an Starbucks is in a major tourist district, right down the street from a Louis Vuitton. It’s no wonder that a place like Starbucks, a symbol of western affluence and leisure, with its high prices and scenic interiors, would be a prime target for beggers, prostitutes, and thieves. I feel awful for the staff, who surely don’t get paid any extra to defend their customers. But they do so anyway, because they respect their workplace. The staff’s generosity is a refreshing comfort, a ‘shot of espresso’ to wake me up from an otherwise depressing and alarming experience, and keep me coming back for more coffee.

- Anthony

P.S. A quick update: I wrote this blog a couple nights ago but didn’t post it right away. Some of us have become friends with one of the staff members, a barista whose English name is Loretta. She’s a very sweet girl in her twenties who graduated from a local Xi’an university with an English degree. She actually hung out with a bunch of us today for a good two hours in the Muslim quarters. I’d just like to deeply express how wonderful the staff at the Xi’an Starbucks is. They’re an absolutely exceptional group of people, and it’s been my pleasure to see them every day that we’ve been in Xi’an.

I’ll be there tomorrow, and I’ll get some pictures of Loretta to put on the blog.

In the spirit of an upcoming presidential election, I have the perfect idea for our new president. This will strengthen international relations, and build the relationships with foreign countries essential to renewing the U.S.’s position as a competent and trailblazing ally for generations to come.

Here’s what the new president can do: build an electric fence around the United States and don’t let anyone out. Protect the world against American tourists. It’s the right thing to do.

I’m kidding. I think…

Yesterday we learned that the terra cotta warriors now get more tourists per year than the Great Wall, which means that Xi’an wins the prize for tourist capital (surely a double-edged sword). And it has been. I’ve seen more westerners in one day in Xi’an than I saw in Nanjing or Shanghai. When some of us went to a downtown Starbucks to get free wireless internet and do some work, the crowd over about three hours was almost entirely westerners. And the staff spoke better English than almost any Chinese people we’ve met thus far.

To be fair, I haven’t seen the stereotype American tourist yet. I won’t spew all the negative adjectives associated with this ‘culture shock’ of a person, because I think we all have a general idea. If you don’t, spend a weekend in Vegas.

We all have “oh shit, I’m an American” moments. It’s impossible not to. We hail from a country with the world’s highest GDP. We come from a place of advanced capitalism, of dominant educational, financial, technological, and corporate institutions. Our homeland’s foreign relations have a history of being aggressive and masculine. Some might even say that we exercise a postmodern cultural imperialism, without contempt for the erosion of native cultures or the burdens of language accommodations in the places where we trade. I’ll stay neutral on that last one.

I’ve had some “oh shit, I’m an American” moments. Last week in Nanjing I was walking down the street in a bright red-orange t-shirt from American Apparel (fantastic clothing store known for its vibrant colors) and carrying a KFC bag. I looked like a traffic cone with legs. And the Colonel? I don’t even eat KFC in the United States!

Another moment happened in the Nanjing Zoo. The Nanjing Zoo is beautiful, and is built on a mountainous area (lots of uphill walking), spaced out enough to give you a work out. Apparently management wants you to really get the most out of your zoo experience, because they expect you to excrete the same way the animals do. The bathroom stalls had no toilet paper, and were literally a little porcelain in-laid tub which you’d hover over and do your business. And hopefully none of your stall predecessors had bad aim, because the word “flush” didn’t seem to exist in the zoo bathrooms.

I’ve sucked it up for the most part in China. I’ve adapted to Chinese bathrooms pretty well, but nothing prepared me for the Nanjing Zoo’s bathrooms. Not to mention that there was no lock on the door, and while I was in one of the stalls a Chinese man walked in on me!

The all-encompassing moral point of this tear jerker is: it’s easy to gain a negative perspective of a country from our “oh shit, I’m an American” moments, and that’s wrong. Being American can be empowering as a tourist. Depending on where you are, your currency rocks, English translations are a daily source of humor, and things like Nanjing Zoo bathrooms seem to be a fresh reminder of the things we take for granted. It’s easy under these circumstances to steadily accumulate those terrible adjectives, some of which I wouldn’t say earlier. We become obnoxious, condescending, whiny, rude, self-righteous, etc.

True story: in Shanghai we were in a restaurant district marketed towards foreigners. On the outside wall of a restaurant were pictures of famous buildings/structures, and underneath their location. The Big Ben was brightly lit above London. The Eifel Tower majestically sat above Paris. And the Statue of Liberty seemed to have floated down the Atlantic because it was listed above Miami.

That sort of thing is funny! It’s funny when we see menus that say things like “Tomato Sand” when really it’s strawberry sherbet. It was funny last night in Xi’an when we saw a water show (think the fancy one at MGM in Disney World with boats, fireworks, etc.), and one of our group members asked when the announcer was going to stop speaking Chinese, only to realize that the announcer had been speaking English.

But, let’s keep some things in mind. In the United States we don’t translate anything for anyone. If you don’t speak English and you go out to eat at any restaurant in Philadelphia, chances are that unless you’re at Le Bec Fin your menu is going to rely on your ability to speak English. The United States doesn’t like to accommodate. We expect people to know our language, our ways, our do’s and don’ts. We have no patience. And when we transport that to other countries we’re bringing nothing short of self-inflicting cultural terrorism, sabotaging our international relationships with the global community. Especially in places like China, where citizens can’t obtain visas to travel internationally as easy as we can. What kind of impression are we giving these people?

I have no doubt that I’ll have more “oh shit, I’m an American” moments while on this trip. I’ll probably write about them. I’m sure I’ll laugh at myself.

I had an interesting conversation at 3:00am in the morning at the McDonald’s the night all of us went to Castle Bar. A few of us were talking about Chinese people, and how accommodating they are. One of the Americans on our trip said, “you know, when I get back to the U.S., this trip has really taught me how to treat people, how to treat foreigners.” Another person echoed their agreement, that people in the U.S. never seem to treat foreigners with the congeniality and friendliness that Chinese people seem to do.

I’m glad that we’re learning these priceless life lessons. Especially when it’s so easy to be “that American.”

- Anthony

Three words inside the Nanjing Massacre Museum echoed what has been the modern global response to the uncomfortable topic of genocide: “Forgivable, but unforgettable.”  This comment was made by a German named John Rabe, who saved citizens of Nanjing during the infamous Japanese massacre (Rabe is considered to be the ‘Schindler of the East’).  The reason I bring up this quote is because its implications are deeper than simply the remembrance, forgiveness, and prevention of genocide and human evil.  Genocide, even when forgiven, can deeply affect cultures and race consciousness, causing divisions that can affect socioeconomic relationships (i.e. geographic settlement, political interaction, trade, etc.).

The idea for this blog was conceived after two complementary experiences.

In the first, I was leaving the Nanjing Massacre Museum and in the middle of a conversation with one of our Chinese classmates.  I asked our classmate how his generation’s relationship with the Japanese differs from that of his parents’ generation.  He told me that it is much better, and even voiced the quote that I mentioned at the beginning of this blog.  However, he told me that there are numerous people of his generation who still will not buy certain Japanese products.

The second incident happened during one of our many bus rides.  As I watched cars pass alongside us, I began to take notice of brands.  I began thinking about the auto market back in the United States, and the nationalism that has affected the American car market in creating deterrents to the success of Japanese automakers.

My obvious question then became: have national anti-sentiments for Japanese affected the auto market in China?

The idea sparked me as highly probable.  A great deal of time has passed since the Nanjing massacre, however that wasn’t an isolated incident of Japanese imperialism and aggression against the Chinese.  Chinese defense against Japanese imperialism can be traced back to the 19th century Qing Dynasty.

And, the Chinese wouldn’t be alone as national participants in an economic embargo, rooted in an unforgettable tragedy that has destroyed families and shaken the makeup of generations.  There are still Jewish people who will not buy a Mercedes or an IBM because of the involvement these two companies (subsidiaries included) had in the Holocaust (and the absence of reparations made by the companies).

A blog doesn’t present the ideal landscape for the extensive empirical research that would be required to answer such a question.  However, I was able to get my hands on “some” facts that should slightly elucidate the modern relationship between Chinese people and Japanese automakers.

Japanese automakers are doing well.  Not necessarily in the past, but as of very recently, they are.

In 2005, Japanese automakers had a 15% share of the Chinese auto market.  By 2006, that number had jumped to 25.7%.  European automakers, who formerly dominated the auto market with a market share at above 50% around 2002-2003 ended 2006 with a 24.4% market share.

Japanese market share in the U.S. auto industry was around 30% in 2005, and has improved since then (although I don’t have the most recent figures).  With the Chinese auto market growing substantially each year, it’s likely that Japanese market share will continue to increase.

Japanese automakers are gaining ground in China the same way they’ve been doing so in the United States: product reliability and energy efficiency.  Everyone wants to get a return on their investment, and if Japanese automakers appear to be the best source of a return on the hefty purchase price of an automobile, it’s not surprising that they’ll dominate the auto market.  Even if it’s in the home of its former wartime enemies: the United States and China.

P.S.  By the way, a quick lesson in Econ 101.  Many people, from your mailman to your favorite presidential candidate will talk about how we need to bring back manufacturing jobs to the United States.  The auto market is often mentioned, and we’re told how many jobs are being lost because of the continually increasing sales of Japanese automakers.

This is completely fallacious.

There are three sectors of any economy: agriculture, manufacturing, and services.  Services encompasses anything from the guy at McDonald’s who asks if you want fries with that, to your highest-priced Philly attorney.  The wealthiest countries sustain themselves on services-based economies.  Manufacturing actually represents a nominal percentage of sector of advanced capitalist countries like the United States, England, Japan, etc.

This is how it’s supposed to be.  Theoretical capitalism should imply the relative smallness (or near absence—e.g. Dubai, Singapore) of a manufacturing sector.  Manufacturing jobs are not as sustainable and are more frictional.  Technological change can wipe out entire manufacturing industries.  We’re far from creating robots to represent us in the courtroom and to perform heart surgeries, but we’ve been using robots to replace manufacturing jobs for many years now.

Also, empirical research has proven that the declining market share of United States automakers hasn’t put a dent in our GDP.  Other factors are at hand for our recent economic woes, not Japanese automakers.

So, now you have some ammo for the next guy who tells you that the United States is in recession because those Japanese are outselling American automakers.

- Anthony

Friday was a special day for our group.  We had decided to re-throw Bryan a 21st birthday party (his was in early May) in China.  We chose our last full night in Nanjing for the celebrations.

Most of the American group (both Dr. Green’s class and Dr. Carpenter’s class) elected to go out, and even some of our Chinese classmates joined us.  We chose a place called Castle Bar that was about a 15-minute walk from our hotel.  It was perfectly situated next to a 24/7 McDonald’s… a dangerous combination.

Expat bars are a funny thing: you don’t realize how many foreigners there are in a city like Nanjing until you go to one.  The bar was filled with people of all ages, many of whom were clearly westerners.  We had found a mixing pot of colors and races in a one-floor club with a dance floor, lounge, pool area, and bar.

‘Here come the Americans’

Our group was large, maybe even a little intimidating.  As soon as we got onto the dance floor we covered at least one-third of it.  Older Chinese men swarmed around the girls, and one even patted my curly hair and asked me if it was real.  Four girls of about our age and of western descent soon joined the party and acted as a distraction for any of the creepy old men who seemed to be bothering our group.

After our group was exhausted from dancing (most of the music was American), we took over a corner of the bar close to the pool table.  We met people from England, Spain, Sweden, Africa, and even our homeland.  Drinks were cheap, which was a refreshing change from Philadelphia club prices.  We danced at the bar, watched pool, and intermingled with the other bar-goers.  One of us even had a little dance off with a native Chinese guy.

After 1:30 our group slowly began to retire back to the hotel.  I waited around to get in on a pool tournament, but the much older crowd running the table kept screwing me out of my turn.  And so after we’d had enough to drink and were finished dancing, networking, and watching pool, we said goodbye to Castle Bar and walked next door to McDonald’s.

McDonald’s isn’t healthy, but it’s undisputably appealing at 3:00am when you’ve you been drinking and dancing all night.  I got chicken nuggets, fries, and an ice cream, and told myself that I would be fasting all day Saturday (didn’t happen).  We wolfed down our food and hopped a taxi back to the hotel.

Taxis are less scary at night when there are no cars, bicycles, people, or other things on the road that can be crashed into.  The taxi ride seemed to be long & complicated.  The driver would randomly stop and point out the window.  About 98% of the time I had no idea what he was pointing at.  I know we’d been drinking, but I’m pretty positive we got into a taxi and not a tour bus.  “Pretty” sure…

We all got home safely after our night of fun in Nanjing.  It was the first real opportunity we’d had to go clubbing in Nanjing, and our group had an amazing time.  The abundance of westerners was sort of comforting, especially since I’ve seen so few westerners in Nanjing.  It was nice to hear people speaking English, and to spend our night in a very diverse and international crowd.

I’ll leave you with a funny story: On Friday evening, after we left the Nanjing Massacre Museum, I left with Bryan and Daneen to return to our hotel.  The rest of the group was going to the Confucius Temple, where we had visited the day before.  So we finally found a green taxi with a driver who was willing to transport some Americans.

There was the usual rollercoaster-like cab ride, including moments of cursing, shrieks, and me commenting “wait, I think he’s driving in the wrong lane.”  But the best part happened on the way to the hotel when the driver randomly stopped alongside a street vendor, and without a word got out of the car to go and buy food.  Dumbfounded, we sat in the taxi, staring at each other and at the driver, who was exchanging money for some food.  Within a couple minutes he returned to the taxi with a bag of food, and without a word he started the car and resumed course.

Could you imagine that happening in Philly?

- Anthony DiFiore

Let me start off by commenting that Chairman Mao is everywhere!  I started this blog with the intention of writing about Chinese money–which I’ll get to–but aside from his face being on every paper currency bill, we had another odd Mao encounter today.  I’m sure that someone will write about this later, because it deserves its own blog, but today our group visited the Nanjing Massacre Museum.  This was one of the most powerful and touching places I’ve ever been to in my entire life.

At the end of a brilliantly-constructed museum that I think everyone should see at some point in their lifetime, there’s a little gift shop with all sorts of Mao memorabilia.  The Nanjing Massacre Museum focuses on the tragic events surrounding the Japanese invasion of Nanking (modern Nanjing) in 1937, and the deaths of over 300,000 people over the following six weeks.  The Museum also offers a historical account of various Japanese invasions of China between the mid-19th century and 1945 (end of World War II).

… so why was Mao in a gift shop for events that he had absolutely nothing to do with??  It would be like putting little statues of Ronald Reagan in a Civil War museum.  Odd…

So yesterday was a shopping day.  I like to shop.  There’s something invigorating about going shopping, and making a day out of it.  Especially when it’s in a city, and you can walk around various neighborhoods and admire architecture and city life in-between entering boutiques.  A small group of us along with our Chinese classmate Ricky and his sister (her name is pronounced Meow Meow, like a cat) went to a few major shopping districts in Nanjing.  Daneen and I were the troopers… we lasted from 1pm to 10pm.  Pfft, that’s nothin’.

It’s amazing what you can find in China, and how frugal the currency difference can make you!  I would often catch myself being disgusted by a price tag on a pair of jeans that read about 140 yuan, before realizing that I get to divide by 7 to equal $20 American dollars.  And still, even with that math in mind, I’ve still been increasingly frugal in my spending.  I guess that’s a good thing, since all these bills with Mao on them can tend to feel like Monopoly money, especially with the exchange rate.

In Nanjing you can find all the bigs brands, the knock-offs, the European clothing you’ve never heard of and the foreign high-end boutiques that you see in magazines but never in real life.  We found a 6-story mall that looks like the area of King of Prussia mall where Tiffany & Co. is located.  There was a Korean brand called G-Star Raw and some brand called Odbo that I’ve never heard of, both with some amazing clothing (www.g-star.com; & www.odbo.com says “coming soon”).

By the way, I learned quickly that in that mall you don’t divide by 7.  You take an American price and you multiply by 7.  Some of the numbers will make your head spin.  A couple of us went into Versace just to see if all the numbers would fit on a price tag.  They did.

Elsewhere in Nanjing we found a place called Hunan Road that looked like a Chinese Las Vegas.  The streets were lined with clothing stores that I’ve never heard of.  By the way, Chinese sizes are a little intimidating.  I’m a small in America and a large over here.

We found authentic Diesel jeans, cool sweaters with Chinese characters on them, and I even had a crazy experience in a clearance/wholesale boutique where the clerk tore apart the store to try and sell me Gucci sneakers.  When we couldn’t find my size, she tried to act out the concept of me ordering the sneakers and them being shipped from Italy.  This charades act was complete with airplane noises, typing clicks, and other strange & fascinating sounds.

In one Chinese boutique store that sold t-shirts and jeans, the three female employees kept pulling on Daneen’s hair to see if it was real.  I guess these three girls had never seen someone of African descent before!

We finished our shopping day in a DVD store, where I picked up five foreign films and a DVD carrying case for a total of about 65 yuan (close to $10).  I parted with a lot of Mao’s yesterday.  There’s nothing quite like shopping in China.

For those of you who have been following the news pertaining to China’s recent (and devestating) earthquake, you know that it occurred within the Sechuan province.  Recently Genevieve and I had the opportunity to eat lunch at a Sechuan restaurant, so I thought it might be neat to comment on here about the food from that region.

The Sechuan restaurant is nowhere that our American group would have ever gone on our own, simply because there’s no storefront, and no English on their signs.  It’s literally a little house with an open door that shows into a room where people are sitting at makeshift tables.  You walk through an alley around back of the house and there are tables set up outside, along with a grill and a whole lot of food.  There are no pictures on the menu and it is entirely in Chinese.  Fortunately we had our Chinese classmates with us.

Genevieve & I were accompanied by Joanna, Abigail, Ricky, and Nancy.  These four wonderful friends of ours selected the food (good call, since Genevieve and I would have a tough time ordering off of a menu of Chinese characters).  We had rice, along with two large bowls that contained a mixture of food I couldn’t decipher.  The one that I fell in love with had pumpkin and chicken mixed together in a brown sauce.  Both dishes were very spicy!  The southern Chinese sure know how to do it.

A funny aside: yesterday I was walking with Weiping to Shanghai Road, and we passed by the Sechuan restaurant.  I told Weiping that we had eaten there recently, and she half-freaked out, half-burst into laughter.  I don’t think she expected us to digest the food (Genevieve and I are troopers!).  I got “be careful,” about 4 or 5 times from her on the way to Shanghai Road.

Another interesting thing to note: Today I was walking to Shanghai Road with Anne and Genevieve and noticed another Sechuan restaurant on the same road as the other.  I’ve recently been reading a book on rural-to-urban migration in China, where peasants from the countryside move to cities for factory or entrepreneurial work, and often set up enclaves within a certain area.  Within these enclaves a certain minority group will often specialize in a given field (e.g. In Beijing, Henan migrants are known for selling vegetables and recycling trash, and Anhui migrant women are known to work as maids).  With two Sechuan restaurants on the same road, it made me wonder what other Sechuan businesspeople are in that area and to what extent of a Sechuan migrant enclave exists?  And, how will those dynamics change as a result of the recent earthquake, the deaths of hundreds of thousands of natives and the displacement of over five million people?

Food for thought.

- Anthony DiFiore

(Anthony, center; with Popo, right, and another student, photo AG)

As a quick intro, I’m the economics student among the group, so coming to China has been especially fascinating for me, given that its economy has experienced so many changes (and so much growth) over the past century. My research topics, and what I’d like to post in most of my blogs, revolve around my perceptions of China’s urban economies. Hopefully these can give some interesting insight to our blog readers of the differences between China and the United States!

This blog is about the Chinese marketplace. First, here’s some Econ 101: China considers itself to be a “socialist market system,” which is sort of an oxymoron. The Communist Party rose to power in 1949, but theoretical communism was never practiced in China. Theoretical communism implies an absence of government, and can only be achieved after the success of a ’socialist’ system. Socialism implies collective ownership by the people, for the people. When socialism has been used in governments (e.g. Soviet Union, Cuba, China, etc.), it has often turned into a situation where a dictatorship controls all modes of production (i.e. all companies), and one despot has unlimited power over the people.

So why is this important in China?

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I didn’t know what to expect from Nanjing. I knew that it was formerly the capitol of China, and holds much historical importance. I knew that it’s a major economic center for the country. I also knew about its dark history during World War II, when the Japanese military slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Chinese (numbers are estimated to be as high as 350,000). In a country where family precedes the individual, I couldn’t help but wonder what differences we’d find in a city of families that have lost generations of members in unimaginable ways.

Downtown Nanjing can be attributed with giving a warm first impression. Salespeople aren’t as pushy. There’s not as much commercial flash. And we’re stationed in the middle of Nanjing University’s campus, in a beautiful hotel with modern rooms. I got my first taste of local friendliness on my first evening in Nanjing, when the owner of a local bubble tea shop gave me a free drink after chatting with him. Since then our group has given the shop a decent amount of business.

There’s one special thing I’ve noticed about Nanjing. When our group has walked along the streets, touring malls and boutique shops and little marketplaces in dimly-lit alleyways, I’ve noticed that there’s something missing. We’ve seen dessert shops, dvd/cd stores, restaurants & cafes, salons, clothing shops, and boutiques dedicated entirely to sunglasses or makeup. What we haven’t seen are law firms, offices for dentists and doctors, accounting offices, and a host of other services operations that would be deemed ‘professional.’ Where is the professional community in Nanjing?

In a place like Philadelphia, one can’t walk along Market or Walnut streets without seeing a townhouse that has been converted into a law firm. Even my hometown of Media, PA, is ripe in its downtown area with professional services firms, which sandwich the retail boutiques, restaurants, and salons.  It seems odd that a city of 5 million people wouldn’t have an established and sustainable professional services community.  Shouldn’t our host university be a local harbinger of professional services for its hometown?  Or could the generations who should be building this local economy be among those lost in the tragedies of war that happened a long time ago, but maybe not long ago enough?

For whatever the reason, one has to look very hard to find the woes of beautiful Nanjing, hidden within the economics of development.