Dreamer ant

… would probably require some way of preventing your head to move at all, but wouldn’t that be neat, and a great way to keep you relaxed?

In this era of high technology, of wireless information, GPS, satellites, multi-featured cell phones and user-friendly user interfaces, yes, I bought a compass And yes, it also has a thermometer (and if you wonder where in the world it’s 30 degrees in late November, answer is: an overheated room in Tokyo).

I can read a map but I do not own a GPS. And even if I did, it wouldn’t tell me towards which direction I should start walking when getting out of a metro station (unless I walk a little while, see where my new position is, and figure out the north from there). It just feels natural and comfortable to me, when I am in unknown places, to have a slight idea of my environment

Like most, I love to go out and talk with people. And like most, I often do that over a drink. But I just don’t understand when people go to places either so crowded or with music so loud that it’s really hard to hear what the other person is saying.

I see this fairly often: a group of people obviously came to some place only to talk — and not to dance, for example — but they have to shout into one another’s ear to be able to communicate. I just don’t get it, or maybe no one wants to be the first to suggest moving some place else.

… is usually the kind of place I first think of when going out to have a drink and talk with people.

This post will probably not interest many visitors, apart from the French people who went to China with me during this program, and maybe the Chinese people who took good care of us back there (and that’s why I don’t write this in French).

Intro

Last month (October 23-30) I took part in what was called an “exchange program” between young people from China and France. Last October was the first part of the program, with 400 French people going to visit China (actually 4 groups of 100 people — not all at the same time), and we should see the same number of Chinese coming to France in 2007. I was in the “100 young scientists” group, and we went to Beijing, Wuhan and Shanghai.

I hadn’t planned on writing or blogging about this, but it seems like another guy from this “exchange” program (I’ll explain the quotes in a moment) felt like expressing his point of view in a small booklet, and while I mostly agree with what he seems to be saying (I could only read bits and pieces from Pierre Haski’s blog post — in French), I thought it needed to be said in a more moderate and constructive way.

I had already been to China a few times, I speak Chinese and I’m fascinated by many aspects of Chinese culture, so the bottom line is basically that I love the real China, which in big cities sometimes looks a bit like this:

And I just think we really had too much of this:

and this:

Before flying to China

Let’s skip the part about how we get selected (I didn’t actually apply, I just sent an email asking how to apply — along with my resume — but they selected me nonetheless, maybe they were short of Chinese-speaking people, I’m not sure…). By the way, each of us only had to pay some 500 euros, which is a very small fraction of the actual trip, given the flights, hotels, etc. So, prior to the actual departure, we all received some sort of schedule telling us what we would be doing during this week in China (the schedule read, by the way: “This exchange with China is more important than the purchase of 150 Airbus” written by the Chinese Prime Minister!). This was the first surprise: although there was indeed mention of “Visit of the Forbidden City” and “Visit of the Great Wall”, the rest was just lots and lots of “Drink at the French Embassy”, “Meeting with the French and Chinese presidents”, “Arrival at the /insert name of the most expensive hotel in the city here/”, etc. Whoa, wait a minute, aren’t we mere students or did we just become a bunch of 100 diplomats!?

About a week from the departure, we were all invited to the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where we could get some foreshadowing of what was waiting for us, both from the surrounding (small challenge: find a square inch that is not made either of gold, red velvet or marble) and from what we were told: “this is a very political visit”, “don’t forget to bring your tuxedo”, etc. We had been warned.

Hey wait, wasn’t this supposed to be an exchange program?

The first few days were just like what I had feared: we were running from gold-marble-velvet-5-stars hotels to gold-marble-velvet embassies, from gold-marble-velvet embassies to gold-marble-velvet restaurants, etc. Where did all the Chinese students go? I had had a faint hope when I had read “Dinner organized by the National Federation of Chinese Youth”: great, does that mean we’re going to sit, eat and talk with Chinese people? Huh, no. We were indeed able to meet new people: the previous group of 100 French people who had just finished their trip around China and were about to go home. And yes, that was really nice and I met some really interesting people… but, hey, why did we all need to go to China for that? We couldn’t see the shadow of a Chinese student during that dinner, and the food wasn’t even really Chinese (were they afraid we might not like it?…).

I had had another faint hope when I had read “Visit of the Chinese Academy of Science”, “Visit of the Qinghua University”, “Visit of the Hubei University of Science and Technology”, etc. I thought “great, we’re gonna meet Chinese students, or at least Chinese searchers…”. But this was deceptive as well: each time, our buses (4 buses, about 25 people each) would bring us into the campus, directly in front of some building where the head of some department was (we couldn’t have walked through the campus, we might have actually met some Chinese students!), and we would watch a Powerpoint speech were the guy would explain what the college was, what research domains they had, how many millions of Yuan they were allowed, how many students they had, etc. And that was about it: bye bye, let’s hop onto the bus and let’s head for the next gold-marble-velvet place. Once or twice during these visits we were allowed to actually meet with Chinese students, and that was just great. But it was always much too short: after 15 or 20 minutes (30 at most), we were told that we had to hurry back into the buses or we would be late for our next appointment.

On the second day, I thought that was enough: after entering the gold-marble-velvet-home of the French ambassador and listening to his short speech, I escaped (the Chinese guard kindly opened the font door for me) and went to take a long walk in the streets of Beijing (I hadn’t been there since 1998), sat down in a café and spent an evening speaking with real Chinese people I hadn’t met before… that was the best part of the trip so far.

What I liked

Okay, there still were a lot of really good things about this “exchange” program:

• The whole idea of doing this is great, and I hope it doesn’t stop here. This was their first try, let’s give them some time to improve it. I really want to thank all the people involved in this program, on both the Chinese and French sides.
• Chinese people have dinner pretty early, so the “gold-marble-velvet” part of our schedule ended at 6 or 7 pm most of the time. This gave us plenty of time to go out and walk in the cities at night, eat real Chinese food in real Chinese restaurants and meet real Chinese people if we wanted to.
• A few Chinese “guides” were with us (mostly people from the National Federation of Chinese Youth), some of them were really nice, and they did a really good job at leading us through this busy schedule. A few people from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs were with us as well, and they shared some of our surprise towards this busy schedule but were really friendly the whole time as well.
• We had the chance to spend an evening with a Chinese family (two of us for each family) in Wuhan: we went to their home, had dinner with them, and walked in the streets of Wuhan with them). This was really great:

• We went to see the Forbidden City and the Great Wall (at 司马台).
• We could bring a big poster about our research (most of us were PhD students) and we had some time to discuss it with students from the Beijing University (although the time for this was a bit too short, like many other things).

• We were treated just like Princes from the West everywhere we went. The result is that we ended up not seeing a lot of the real China, but we shouldn’t forget that the Chinese side made a lot of efforts to show us that we were important guests and impress us (and we were, indeed, impressed!).
• We went to visit different cities: Beijing, Wuhan, Shanghai (I hear that other groups went to other places like Chengdu instead of Wuhan).
• Although many of our meals were in hotels or fancy restaurants, we were able to have two or three meals in real, nearly-normal Chinese restaurants, and actually eat what local people eat.
• Of course, seeing MM Chirac and Hu was interesting (although I wouldn’t say that their speech was mind-blowing…):

• I was thrilled when I saw the acrobats show in Wuhan.

What I disliked

• Apart from the evenings when we could do whatever we wanted (provided we were in the bus at 7:30 am or sometimes 5 am the next morning…), we were always moving in groups of 25 to 200 people. And since we couldn’t really walk in the streets of Beijing or Shanghai with groups of that size, it meant that we basically had to travel with our buses all the time (even when walking would have actually been shorter). When going to the Great Wall, we even had a police escort:

• A consequence is that, most of the time, the bits and pieces of “real China” we saw, we were seeing them through the bus window.
• If you followed the “official” schedule, you ended up being with 90% of French people 90% of the time.
• We spent too much time in gold-marble-velvet rooms/hotels/restaurants and we finally didn’t see much of what China is really like (fortunately, I had been to China several times before, but that was not the case of most students, and I wonder whether this trip gave them a loyal image of China).
• Nearly all “official” visits were mandatory. Only the last visit, the Shanghai Urbanism Museum, was optional (I escaped right away — although it must have been pretty interesting, but I just had to go and actually see the city! — and went to walk in the streets of Shanghai and visit some friends there). But the rest of the time, our “guides” were checking lists of names each time we went on the bus to see if nobody was missing. I understand that they didn’t want a poor non-Chinese speaking French student to be lost in Beijin or Shanghai, but come on, most of us were 25 years old or so, not 10, and we could figure out what to do in case we lost the group. One morning we waited about an hour in the bus because one of the students was still sleeping in his room and they were trying to find him.
• “Visiting university X” basically meant “sitting in a room and listen a Powerpoint speech — in English — about University X”. No real campus tour, no visit in the classrooms (I don’t think we saw a single classroom), no visit in the research labs.
• Given all the official stuff we had to undergo, and given the fact that we seldom had time to go back to the hotel, we were wearing tuxedos pretty much all the time (which strengthened the idea that we were diplomats, not students, and probably didn’t make casual meeting with Chinese people easier…).

Suggestions for next time

Let’s try to be constructive now, here’s a list of what I thought could be interesting ideas, should they do this again.

• Select 400 people from both sides at the same time (the 400 Chinese who will visit us next year obviously hadn’t been selected yet).
• Match each of the 400 French people with one or two of the 400 Chinese, depending on the languages they can speak (Chinese? French? English?) so that they can communicate easily and improve their Chinese/French/etc., and maybe depending on their field of interest (research, etc.).
• Make schedule for the morning, but leave the afternoon free.
• Make up groups of, say, 4 people (2 French, 2 Chinese) who will meet at lunch time, go and eat together, and visit the city in the afternoon (Chinese students acting as “guides” in China, and vice versa, they can bring us to places they like — not necessarily where most tourists go). Maybe change groups every 2 or 3 days, or depending on cities.
• Let us wear our usual, casual clothes most of the time. I understand that wearing a tux in front of Chinese officials is a mark of respect, but then it means we need to walk in the streets like this all the time… Students don’t usually dress that way and don’t feel very comfortable with it, especially if they want to meet with plain, normally-dressed Chinese people.
• Having lunches and dinners at the hotel is a bad idea: they’re both really expensive (given the hotels we were in) and really not Chinese at all (they have food to please international travelers). Eating in “normal” restaurants all the time would be cheaper, better, and much more interesting. Do this for breakfast as well if possible (scrambled eggs, bacon, sausages and pastries… is that really Chinese now?).
• If we have a meeting somewhere, why not let us go there by ourselves instead of using 4 large buses? It’s a pity that we didn’t use public transportation — either bus or subway — one single time during this trip (except in the evenings, if we wanted).

All right, that’s about it. I’m looking forward to meeting the Chinese students in Paris next year, I’ll be glad to show them around, and I hope this whole thing happens again in 2008 or later. Although lots of things can be improved, the idea itself is really great. Thanks again to everyone involved in this program!