Beyond the Yellow Brick Road

TrackBack -- Life as of This Moment

It puzzles me, really, that a year-and-a-half after the China trip, this blog still gets about a dozen hits a day.

What's interesting about it is finding out from the list of referring Web addresses what searches and sites bring people here. The most common search that leads to this site is the phrase "Ni hen piaoliang" (You're very pretty). It was the best-read post on this blog, and every day a couple people still want to know more about the phrase. The second-most-popular search is "stupidcensorship," the Web site that helps people unblock blocked Web sites. I've been told that China has liberalized its blog blocks since I was there. Maybe that's why I don't get those hits like I used to.

Mentioning "Ni hen piaoliang" and stupidcensorship in this post undoubtedly increases the chance that they will continue to be dominant sources for my trickle of daily traffic, thus justifying the $4.95 I give Typepad every month to keep the site alive. The reason I'm posting today, in May of 2007, is an attempt to learn about what brings people from my other main source of hits: my blog from the 2004 political campaigns.

Through the inscrutable logic of Google, that paleo-Ozblog is the first thing that pumps up on a search for my name, including the now-embarrassing, misspelled "Enjoy if yer curious" tagline. (The "yer" is an obscure Janis Joplin reference, and if yer still reading, I can safely make that digression and not lose your attention.) A lot of my hits come from the link on that site to this site, and THAT means that THOSE people may actually be looking for ME, a theory always strengthened whenever I'm on TV (like when I was on C-SPAN yesterday moderating a National Press Club luncheon) and those Ozblog hits jump right at airtime.

(Apparently people Google other people while watching them on TV. What the Internet teaches us.)

So -- here's my question. If for some reason you arrived at this site in a search for "Alan Bjerga," who _are_ you, and why do you care? Send me an e-mail if you feel like it. Maybe you're a lobbyist or a PR person probing for info before I interview your boss. Maybe you're doing a longitudinal study of ex-"Jeopardy!" contestants for signs of increased desperation over time. Or maybe you had a crush on me sophomore year and you were wistfully sighing over what might have been while sipping your soy latte. If so, I have no idea who you are -- nobody had a crush on me sophomore year -- but please, do tell. Ni hen piaoliang ma? 

Whoever you are -- hope you're well, and welcome to the site. It was a pleasure. Thanks for stopping by.

There's no place like home

Blog traffic, understandably dormant since the China project ran, experienced a spike yesterday with my rerun on "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire." Millionaire searchers, sorry to disappoint -- since I'm not in China, I haven't been posting regularly, though my ashes are scattered all over the Internet.

But Kansas readers, here's an alert. I'm in Arkansas City next Thursday, speaking on China at Cowley County's regional economic forum. Should be a hoot, and given the title of the blog. There's no place like home.

If only I could click my heels to get there. Would save on airfare.

Where do we go now?

Final story of the Wichita series is here: http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/13454538.htm .

So now what? The Project is complete. I have a story coming out on the Knight Ridder newswire this weekend that includes some material not included in the series, but for the most part, the published portion of this project is over. I'm pursuing some freelance opportunities, but we'll see how those play out -- sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. Beyond that, top priority now is to face the Big What Next: How a person takes a great international experience and builds on it.

I'll be in Wichita next month, for housekeeping and a speaking engagement in Winfield on Jan. 12. And I'll be meeting with editors, plotting the next move in terms of stories and in terms of career. All that's on the horizon. I guess right now the big priority is getting back to Minnesota for Christmas. See the folks, reflect and be thankful. Yeah. Thankful.

It's 4 p.m. in China

WASHINGTON -- And 2 a.m. here. Which is a problem, since I'm wide-awake.

Jet lag does bizarre things to one's body. How can I spend 32 hours awake yesterday, including packing, a last-minute basketball shootaround behind the Beijing bureau, a delayed 13-hour flight, which caused a 5-hour pushback in New York, followed by a one-hour flight and a two-hour conversation with my mother, then sleep for eight hours, put in a full day, then sleep another two hours, then wake up at midnight, wide-awake and unable to fall asleep two hours later?

This will create problems over the next few days. But no use fighting it. Might as well get something done.

I promised a post from the plane, but if I can't stomach pseudo-deepness in my writing, I'm not going to subject you to it. All I came up with were tick-tock observations common to any transcontinental flight, so chalk one up to writers' block. Jet lag -- now there's a topic for the muses. I'm thinking about late afternoon in Beijing on the Tuesday after I've left, and I'm thinking about everything I have to get done in the next couple weeks, and how life in America would be simpler if my internal clock weren't still set to China time.

I saw my mother back to Minnesota today. She's been house-sitting my condominium in Virginia the entire time I've gone, and my condo is the better for it. I don't think it's ever been so clean, and my mother, who I think could do home improvements professionally, did some necessary caulking and some appreciated painting. She even made a new short-curtain for my kitchen window. These are the things that remind one how special home is after the grand adventure. And of how thankful one should be to come from a loving family. Blessings abound this Thanksgiving season.

End of the debut

BEIJING -- Truly, truly gloomy day out. Smog blanket drizzle day of packing and organization. The next post will be written on an airplane, and posted in Washington, D.C.

Housekeeping on the blog, which has an expiration date of Nov. 24, Thanksgiving. That's been the plan throughout. Some people blog as sitcom, some blog as melodrama, and I do mini-series. The blog I did last year on the '04 campaign was successful because it followed the Powell Doctrine: Clear objectives, overwhelming force, and an exit strategy. The blog I tried after the election was more like Bush in Iraq. So I started this thing with several specific goals. The goals have been met, bringing light to the end of the tunnel.

Next week still brings pertinent information. The other members of my fellowship program will be presenting their own work and I'll be debriefing my own. Also, all news articles generated by my journey will be posted on this blog as they're published -- my series is planned for mid-December. In other words, there's reason to hang on to this site a few more days. Thank you for your patience.

As it turned out, Karl Zhao was not my last interview in China. Yesterday I got a last-minute opportunity to speak with the marketing head of Deer Jet, China's largest charter-jet operation. The interview was facilitated with the assistance of Jason Liao from Raytheon, who has by far been the best person in China to work with on this project. Several key interviews in this project would not have happened were it not for his persistence. I like to think his graciousness has to do with his great respect for my skill, but I know better. Liao lived in Wichita in the 1990s, and holds the Eagle in high regard. It's Wichita's guanxi, not mine, that has helped me through this odyssey. Thanks.

A valedictory: Through twists and turns, I got what I came for. Sometimes I had to substitute B for A, and the travel itinerary got a bit odd toward the end, but that's to be expected in a trip to China, especially a first-time trip. Saw a lot, did a lot, thought a lot. Did some things suprisingly well, deeply disappointed myself at other times. But it worked out, as experiences often do.

Flight leaves tomorrow, early afternoon. Not much planned between now and then. President Bush arrives in the middle of the night to stay in a hotel a few blocks away from me. Traffic is all backed up due to closure of the Third Ring Road, and the main public mood is curiosity more than anything else. Once again, stories play differently depending on the vantage point from which you view them. The big story in America is, "Bush goes to church," but one Chinese person, when asked his opinion about that by Linjun, Knight Ridder's translator, asked in return, "Is Bush a Christian?" He was surprised to find out the President Bush believes in God -- Christians are rare in China, so they must be rare in America, right? And it's not like he's captivated by the activities of the American religious right.

Bush's visit is the "important" story, but the anecdotes are the truly interesting stories, I think. But someone else will be writing them, as sadly, I really must be going. The fellowship requires my return date to be strictly followed. Journalism in China will have to go on without me. I'm going to meet with a student discussion group I wrote about earlier ("Parklife" was the entry, I think), and I'm going to a documentary this evening. Nice to relax, once the goals have been met.

And oh yeah. Speaking of goals. I almost ran out of time, but I did manage one final, vital objective last night: My Asian karaoke debut. Linjun got a group together, and we went to this place called Tango. At first I thought they were just humoring me -- until people started singing and I realized I was in the presence of pro-level talent. I think I mostly did OK, but you can be the judge of that. Clip is here. Download denver1.wmv

See ya in the states.

Banned in the PRC

Touched down in Beijing town
The first kick I took was when I hit the ground
End up with a blog people read too much
And I spend half my time fightin' cover-ups

Banned in the PRC, I've been -- banned, in the PRC now ...

OK -- Springsteen I'm not. But as the sands of the hourglass trickle me back to D.C., it's time to share a few facts about this journey I haven't been talking about because I'm here on a journalist visa and in an extreme case, the People's Liberation Army could Shanghai me back to America whenever they want to. Not that that is in any way likely. A less-than-honest reporter could play up the element of danger to make this whole trip seem more adventurous and exotic than it actually is, but I'm trying to be honest here, and honestly, I haven't faced anything that would even make James Bond get out of bed, much less reach for a martini (shaken, not stirred, right?).

Honestly, the most unsafe I've ever felt on this trip was last night, when for the first time I checked into a hotel and immediately checked out. Maybe it was the woman in the thigh-high mini dress standing in the hallway, chattering on her cellphone. Maybe it was the man who ran past me as the woman drew near, waving his arms and screaming for no apparent reason. Either way, I decided that the place wasn't worth its $10 savings, and I immediately fled to the nearest Home Inns, the cTrip-run budget hotel chain I am convinced will be in Topeka someday because it's awesome.

China, by and large, seems like a pretty safe place. Much of this, of course, is because a giant state security apparatus is always watching people. And they're especially watching me, the blonde guy with the heavily scrutinized J-2 visa, and I'm not too hard to pick out in a crowd.

Thus far, I've seen no signs of being followed. I also doubt my phone has been tapped, as my cell phone was bought for me by a Chinese -- leaving no record of me owning my number -- and I never call from hotels. I'm pretty sure my belongings have been searched at my hotel. And one night I forgot to log off my laptop and left it at the office. When I came back the next day my Web site records showed visits made during middle-of-the-night hours when no one from the bureau would be around.

The biggest nuisance, overall, has been the Internet -- namely, this blog. I hereby apologize for any broken links, weird photos or odd typography that may persist on the blog. This blog, you see, is banned in the PRC. The entire time I've been writing this, I've never been able to call it up on my computer by simply typing http://ozblog.blogs.com. The service that hosts it, Typepad, is reportedly blocked by the Chinese government. (They'll never confirm or deny that's what's happening.) Because of this I can write entries, and I can post, but I've wasn't able to figure out how to read my own blog on my own computer in China until two days ago I stumbled on http://www.stupidcensorship.com, a site that takes blocked material and de-blocks it using whatever mysterious black magic they use to do such things. (Of course, my site views can still be traced, so even though I can see the blog through the site, it's also clear to whomever may be monitoring me that I'm looking at things I'm not supposed to be viewing.)

I did see the blog once, last week, in a Beijing apartment complex that hosts a lot of foreign visitors -- some new friends showed me the blog, which allowed me to make a couple changes. I also have readers in Fujian province, which isn't far from Hong Kong -- I'm thinking server access may be freer there.  And I have some stupidcensorship readers too, as evidenced by a Google search under my name.

So mostly I've been blogging blind. Access to other Web sites is weird too. The rule of thumb is, if it's critical of China's government, you can't read it. But I've been able to get any news story I've wanted, including AP stories about Bush criticizing China, etc. Kansas.com is readable from China (though not my blog, and not several other Knight Ridder papers). It may be that English-language sites aren't as controlled. But try reading any English-language site that mentions "Tiananmen Square," on the other hand, and that impression is dispelled quickly.

Such is life in a control-freak country, and it's challenging, to say the least. Every request becomes a complex negotiation, and some interviews I've wanted badly were simply impossible. Some newly discovered resourcefulness, and some dumb-luck kindness from strangers to whom I owe a lot, has helped me pull through. When all is said and done, I got what I came for.

That doesn't mean that every interview I do get is a canned government message. To the contrary, many of the conversations I've been having are as candid, if not more so, than I would expect to encounter in the States. It may be that, once the pressure of simply getting the interview has passed and all the questions have been parsed and perused, the pressure on the subject to be "on message" isn't as great. In America, getting the interview is easy, but from the moment you sit down with someone, the corporate PR people are watching everything you and the subject says. (I suspect that many people in American corporate PR would have made fine PRC bureaucrats had only they been born in China.) So in some ways I've found the culture to be surprisingly more open than I would have thought.

Those details aside, that doesn't obscure the much larger truth here: The country I'm dealing with is tougher to crack than the one I'm used to, which would be true even if my Mandarin were fluent, which at this point is a fantasy. Is China still the hermit worker's paradise of Mao? Absolutely not. Is it still often closed, tough and frustrating? Yes.

It's a learning experience. But that's why I'm here -- to report. To learn. To grow.

To be a cool rockin' daddy in the PRC.   

Banned in the PRC ...

The good news according to Karl

It's appropriate that what appears to be my last interview in China is with one of the first people I met here -- Karl Zhao, director of the new Kansas trade office in Beijing. Karl's point man for Kansas business efforts to expand relationships with Chinese companies, and he brings wide experience to the job: In the '90s he ran a similar office in Chicago for his home province of Jilin, and two years ago he was setting up New Jersey's Beijing office.

So he understands relations between businesses and governments and the U.S. and China, which can get complicated. For a Kansas business seeking to expand its China presence, Zhao said the advantage of a state office is the legitimacy it confers on the business transaction. Unlike the U.S., where businesses contact one another all the time without interference from the state, China's central government is much more involved in all levels of a transaction. So if an American company tries to go it alone, the government doesn't see it as having much clout. Stick a State of Kansas seal on it, and suddenly the government takes that business more seriously. Zhao's office is  "eyes, ears and legs" for Kansas businesses in China -- especially small and medium operations that don't have the resources to establish the presence themselves.

Zhao's head of a four-person office in a 1,300-square-foot plat in a new office complex going up in downtown Beijing. He's on the 31st floor of the building, working for a state that doesn't have a 31-story building within its own borders. The office has a reception area, Zhao's office, a bathroom, and space for a second office that right now is -- a bedroom. Working with state officials halfway around the world, Zhao keeps weird hours and sometimes sleeps in the office.

He does it because he senses opportunity, he said. "Kansas has what China wants -- agriculture, aviation, energy and education." Globalization presents a challenge to economy of Kansas and every state, but he said he thinks the state can benefit -- if it's smart about it.

"We can create more business for Kansans," he said.

Meditation on a fungus

"Excuse me, but do you speak English? You look like you may be an American."

"Yes ..."

"Good. Can you tell me where I may find cheese? I want to find good American cheese, and I have been told I can find it here. Do you know where I can find the cheese?"

I peered past the aisles at Super Wal-Mart and jogged through my memory of what I had seen. Eighteen-cent toothpaste. An 85-cent basketball. And the big expense I held in my basket -- five dollars per box of something called -- the label is printed in English -- "Black Fungus," the better to fulfill my fellowships' requirement of "bring us back something to eat when you return."

"I'm sorry, I don't remember seeing any," I said. I was sorry to disappoint him. He had come to Super Wal-Mart seeking America, a reasonable enough quest when in Beijing. But no cheese.

"OK." He looked at my basket, eyes widening. "You like the black fungus!"

"Love it," I lied. "I've never seen it in America," I didn't.

"Black fungus is a delicacy in northern China," he said. "I hope our Ministry of Agriculture will let you take it with you."

So do I, so do I.

The project's final days means it's time to start shopping for authentic Chinese gifts to share with friends. And what better place to find those gifts than the company that's done more to jumpstart China's retail trade than any other -- Wal-Mart! I sort of stumbled upon it -- on my way back from the Beijing Aviation Museum, dawdle-watching pickup b-ball at the university Download hoopin.wmv , I saw the sign across from a subway stop. Drawn in with curiosity, I left with about $40 worth of stuff -- great bargains guaranteed to please my friends from next week through Christmas.

The cheese shopper was well-traveled. He said this Wal-Mart was larger than ones he had seen in American visits, which as far as I could tell were limited to the East Coast. The store was on three levels, making it hard to tell if Beijing Super Wal-Mart is bigger than, say, west Wichita Super Wal-Mart. But it seemed comparable, if not larger.

Wal-Mart's low-price reputation is global. But the visit also showed that not everything in China is less expensive than in the U.S. Shaving cream is sold in smaller, more expensive bottles. A  can of Barbasol might cost a dollar in America, but at Beijing Wal-Mart you only have Gillette, and it costs a little over two.

Some differences are dramatic. The 85-cent basketball, or the $3.50 knapsack (all numbers converted from yuan). Bar of soap? 37 cents. Big box o' Oreos? 75 cents. Liter of vodka? (Hard liquor is sold in Chinese grocery stores.) Buck and a half.

Of course, much of what Wal-Mart sells is made in China anyway, so I suppose they don't have to worry about transit costs or taxes. The store's doing well, packed at 2 p.m. Outside, charter buses shuttled shoppers back and forth.

Aside from some product differences (or maybe not. Maybe Black Fungus is all the rage in America now. I've been gone a month.), an American consumer would feel at home in Beijing Wal-Mart. It's not, however, an advertisement for America. It's interesting to see how different companies treat their foreignness in China. McDonald's, for example, is all about the U-S-A. Hip-hop plays at the entrance, and its menu is almost identical to America's. KFC, on the other hand, has tried to tailor itself to China. Its Chinese chicken is not like American chicken. Trust me, I've tried.

Wal-Mart is just Wal-Mart, minus all the American flag-waving. Globalization, united worldwide by everyday low prices. And whatever you think about that, it's packin' 'em in in Beijing.

So, should I tell my friends where I bought their gifts?

Wo yao qu Xiamen

XIAMEN -- I realized early in this adventure that much would be happening at the last-minute, and that I’d have to improvise to get what I needed. And so, with a heavy heart, I bought a last-minute plane ticket for Xiamen, a southern coastal city flecked with palm trees, cool breezes and 80-degree November days.

Yes, I have a difficult job, but someone needs to do it, and there is no tropical beach I won’t visit in pursuit of the story.

Xiamen is located just across the strait of Formosa from Tiawan – it could be its distinction as a possible site for World War III that makes it less combed over by Western tourists, but it definitely felt less discovered than many other places to boast similar climes. Before doing the work that brought me here I spent much of my day on Gulang Yu, the "island of pianos" (or so it's billed) and a place of sidewalk musicians. Download sidewalk.wmv The island was home to the Xiamen (then better known as Amoy) foreign community during its days as a treaty port.

Those days were fateful for both Amoy and Fujian province. As part of China’s territorial concessions after the Opium wars, Fujian was opened to emigration, the result being that much of the Chinese-ancestor population in the U.S. and other countries originates in Xiamen. The province is less provincial than many of its counterparts, and while Xiamen shares the country’s ambivalence toward the mid-nineteenth to mid-20^th centuries, it’s proud of what the Chinese who left it accomplished. The city hosts an overseas Chinese museum to celebrate the achievements of those who left. It’s funded by Chinese who emigrated from Fujian and sent their money back home.

The trip was a bit of a jag, born of necessity and not something I had planned. But I was fortunate to make it to Xiamen -- Beijing, Shanghai and Xi’an are important cities, but visiting them and then saying you’ve seen China would be like traveling to Washington, New York and Wichita and saying you’ve seen America. My experience remains very, very narrow, but Xiamen added an important piece. I guess that now I’ve seen Washington, New York, Wichita and Tampa. Hey, it’s variety.

Good(rich) translation

BEIJING -- "Excuse me for my frankness," said Andy Wei, pouring another cup of tea in his top-level Beijing office, "but American media report little about China."

"Whenever someone comes to visit from the U.S. or Europe, they always see things that are different from what the media tells them, if they're told anything at all. People will ask me if Deng Xiaoping is president. They don't know Hu Jintao. They know about bird flu, SARS. They don't know China."

Andy Wei knows China. He heads the Beijing office of Goodrich, a supplier for Boeing and other companies that has something on nearly every airplane made today. Wei's been at Goodrich and predecessor, pre-merger companies since shortly after he left the Chinese Air Force for 18 years in 1991. He started in the Air Force as a translator, and he still translates -- China to his bosses in America, America to his employees in China.

Aviation has symbolic importance for China, he says. "It's an industry that has involvement from all other industries -- electrical, mechanical, materials, everything." That's part of why aviation is so tough to get off the ground in China, he said -- a plane is only as strong as its weakest part. Planes have lots of parts. China has lots of weaknesses.

It's leadership is also, he added, somewhat misguided in its hope for technology from the West. "China expects to make big aircraft with foreign suppliers, and that's not reality," he said. The country's best hope, he said, is to become a valuable supplier for companies that are already making big aircraft -- work like that Goodrich is doing for Boeing in China.

Wei contrasted the success Western-based suppliers in China are having with AVIC-controlled companies. He maintained that the Western companies are getting more out of the Chinese labor force, with better management and better technology imported from abroad.

State-run companies, he said, are still locked in "iron rice bowl" inefficiencies from the days of guaranteed jobs at low wages. A machinist in Xi'an may make a dollar an hour with AVIC, but twice that with a Western-based supplier. As a result, better workers go to companies like Goodrich -- the West still gets cheap labor, but China's indigenous aviation doesn't improve much as a result.

"In machine trades, the Chinese are two decades behind Russia and four decades behind the West," he said. "This is my personal opinion."

That said, Wei still said China will inevitably take jobs now done in other countries, due to low labor costs and improving industry.

"It's not China's decision" to get jobs, he said. "Businesses will need to do it to stay competitive. It's the basic structure of the international economy. If China can do something of high quality and cheaper, then why do it in the U.S.? These are the laws of fair competition."

Outsourcing is global reality everywhere, he said. "Singapore used to be strong in shipbuilding. Now that's shifted to South Korea and China. Singapore concentrates on IT and services. If they compete in shipbuilding, they fail. Americans and Europeans must also adapt to change."

But he said he wonders if they will -- if they're informed enough about economics to understand the basics of global development. And that brought him to his original point.

"I don't think Americans are informed about what's happening here, the good that's happening here. This country is underdeveloped, and it needs growth," he said. "This is fair competition, and you can't stop that."