{"id":591,"date":"2011-05-27T10:35:54","date_gmt":"2011-05-27T15:35:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/?p=591"},"modified":"2025-05-30T11:23:20","modified_gmt":"2025-05-30T16:23:20","slug":"from-the-middle-of-the-middle-kingdom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/2011\/05\/27\/from-the-middle-of-the-middle-kingdom\/","title":{"rendered":"From the middle of the Middle Kingdom"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>They say you can\u2019t do everything in 3 \u00bd days in Beijing, but I think we\u2019ve come as close as possible to exploring this majestic center of the center of the Universe. We\u2019ve joined 19 million residents (it\u2019s China\u2019s third largest city, behind Chongqing and Shanghai), who all seemed to be on the subway tonight, 5 million-plus cars (so many that certain license numbers\u2014today those ending in 5 or 0\u2014are banned, though it\u2019s hard to tell what 20% less means), and hordes of tourists.<\/p>\n

The capital of China since the Yongle emperor of the Ming Dynasty, worried about the barbarians from the north, moved it here in 1406 (from Nanking; it had also been the capital while Kublai Khan and the Mongols ruled for 80 years). Beijing was built to impress, and that it does. The phrase, \u201cOh My God,\u201d overused (in my opinion, by some of our students) truly applies here. China has historically not only been the most populous country, but at times the richest. Certainly, the 24 Ming and Qing emperors who lived here lived as though they were rich, and they were successful in impressing foreign devils with the might of Chinese civilization\u2014even today. Tourism is the biggest business, and China has both the history and the infrastructure to deliver it, aided by the \u201ccoming out party\u201d called the Olympics. One benefit of that extravaganza (China reputedly spent more money on the opening ceremony than the country spent on education that year!) was the moving permanently of a major steel plant, which improved the air quality, noticeably for those of us who haven\u2019t been here for a while.<\/p>\n

The old Chinese saying, \u201ccome and be transformed,\u201d is obvious from the sites we visited. This morning, we assayed the Forbidden City. Even though \"\"<\/a>only a small part of it is open, it dazzles with length, breadth, and opulence. I can only imagine what it must have been like to be a foreign ambassador and walk through the city (the gates have three openings, one for the emperor, his empress or empresses, and the three top students on the annual imperial exams). If you haven\u2019t seen The Last Emperor, you ought to\u2014it\u2019s a portrayal of the end of the Qing Dynasty. It\u2019s filming in the Palace Museum (what the palace became after Puyi was thrown out in 1924) caused the sacking of the mayor of the city, who allowed foreign cameras to be placed on the buildings, etc. I had to point out the spot where Starbucks had been, evicted after an email campaign unusual for China in that it was bottom up.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve walked in the mornings, which is a great time to be up and about (the People\u2019s Liberation Army unit housed in the Forbidden City hoists the flag at sunrise\u20144:51 this morning when a few of us got to watch it), and I\u2019ve found parks that used to be part of the Imperial Court. \"\"<\/a>On one side, what used to be the ancestral tablets and shrine is now a workers\u2019 cultural palace, which has all the features of the palaces\u2014centuries-old cypress trees in shapes meant to amuse (the Crown prince\u2019s forest was planted by \u201cnaughty and playful\u201d princes who planted them randomly), huge rocks in fantasy shapes, walls, buildings resplendent in red and gold\u2014and no tourists. The other side is dedicated to Dr. Sun Yat-sen, but was also an imperial playground. I sought to explore more on the west side of the Palace when I rented a bicycle one evening, only to be warned by the army on guard that I was getting close to Zhongnanhai, the home of the chief party officials; the new emperors who replaced the old.<\/p>\n

Three other imperial sites reinforced the awesomeness of the middle \"\"<\/a>kingdom and its all-powerful emperor. One was the tombs. Tourists usually go to the Ming tombs since they\u2019re on the way to the Great Wall at Badaling. Here, the Mings buried 13 of their emperors in a valley whose entrance is guarded by the \u201cSacred Way,\u201d animals and officials in pairs, one resting, one serving the needs of the emperor, to serve him in the afterlife. The tomb-type construction predates the Mings, at least as far back as the Qin Dynasty, 200 BC, whose emperor (the first emperor) unified China and gave his name to the country; his tombs have the terra cotta warriors etc. I\u2019ve also been to Korea for a visit to King Sejong, who created the Korean language, and his tomb is a smaller version of the Chinese (but he was a king, not an emperor), and also to the tombs in Hue, which again reflect the notion of what it meant to be imperial in Asia\u2014copy the model.<\/p>\n

The second imperial site was the Temple of Heaven, which Beijing uses as \"\"<\/a>its logo. With good reason. This imposing edifice also exists at the north end of a long walkway, where various preliminaries occurred before the emperor prayed for a good harvest (which provided job security!). If you think about a country based on agriculture, you realize that having a good harvest was important. Part of the wisdom the Jesuits brought to the Orient was their knowledge of Western science and astronomy, which intrigued the Chinese enough to allow the Jesuits to convert Chinese to Christianity.<\/p>\n

The third \u201cmust see\u201d is the Great Wall. The current version recreates the \"\"<\/a>Qing great wall, although a wall protecting China from northern barbarians (and keeping Chinese in) predates the first emperor, one of whose accomplishments was to consolidate the existing walls. A business run by the City of Beijing, it has some of the most persistent hawkers in China. Steep, it never really kept out the barbarians or kept in the Chinese, but it\u2019s a magnet for tourists.<\/p>\n

We also learned a lot about doing business here at our visit to Caterpillar, a $40 billion company (doubled in the last five years). I thought it was interesting when our three speakers noted they\u2019d been with the company no more than 3 years. From what they said, there is a lot of competition for \"\"<\/a>skilled labor in China; they have 90 positions which have not been filled for a year. Competition is so stiff that 30% pay increases have to be offered as an inducement. \u201cTalents are assets,\u201d one said, \u201cnot people.” Cat has had a presence in China since the 1970s, and seeks to get more business from China, which is the world\u2019s biggest market for certain of its products. What they said, though, was that China is a price market, and Cat is 20% more expensive than Japanese rival Komatsu, and 50% more expensive than Chinese products. Consequently, Cat gets only 10% if its sales from China. The company has introduced a GPS technology which tells where the equipment is located; it sounds like sometimes equipment in arrears has vanished. The other lesson was about doing business with State Owned Enterprises, which many of Caterpillar\u2019s customers are. The company has hired someone with military experience who went to study public policy in the United States, and returned to head a program emphasizing corporate governance. In other words, someone who can navigate the bureaucracy. She noted that China is top down, where the United States is bottom up. Her point was that the rules of engagement are changing, from an export-driven economy to one that wants high tech and management skills, and stressed the idea of being a good corporate citizen.<\/p>\n

China views its \u201cmodern history,\u201d as the monument on Tienanmen Square indicates, beginning in 1840 with the Opium War. It is the current administration\u2019s goal to restore the glory that was China, and from what I\u2019ve seen in the last 21 years, has come a long way toward meeting that goal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

They say you can\u2019t do everything in 3 \u00bd days in Beijing, but I think we\u2019ve come as close as possible to exploring this majestic center of the center of the Universe. We\u2019ve joined 19 million residents (it\u2019s China\u2019s third largest city, behind Chongqing and Shanghai), who all seemed to be on the subway tonight, … Continue reading “From the middle of the Middle Kingdom”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-southeast-asia-china"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=591"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9085,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591\/revisions\/9085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}