I experience a kind of debate when I write about China on this blog.  Writing in English partially or completely deprives myself of getting message to my Chinese friends and relatives. And my expressiveness in English is not good as in Chinese, my mother tongue. However, to write in English, it is easier to bypass the Great Fire Wall and touch on certain relatively sensitive issues. I also know of some American friends who occasionally read this blog. So I have to apologize to those of my readers who wants to read Chinese. Maybe I'll translate some of the articles with good responses into Chinese in the future.

This late spring (late May to early June) I was in China visiting my parents. This is the first time I went back to China after three years since I came to the U.S. to study. Before I went back, I was as much excited about meeting my parents after a long absence as about seeing how China and Shanghai, my hometown, have or have not changed in the three years, from a renewed standpoint, influenced by Western values and views.

The first thing I experienced could be summarized in a word, "change". The place across the street from our neighborhood was a bare ground surrounded by construction fences three years ago, but now it's a simmering shopping center. This large building complex contains countless firms ranging from supermarkets to electrical appliance retailers, from restaurants to hair salons, and from book stores to florists. It even had a gym. I felt that it was on the same scale as the Prudential center in Boston. But remember that the city of Boston has only one Prudential tower as its major tourist attraction, but this shopping mall near our neighborhood was located at a very off-center spot of Shanghai, which was just beginning to be developed in the recent decade. Near the outer beltway of Shanghai, there are many such kind of shopping centers, built from sketch in a matter of a couple of years, to meet the demand of a sprawling mega city.

Another aspect of change I observed was how ephemeral the small local businesses on the same block as my neighborhood has changed. There are about two dozen small shop spaces near the entrance to our neighborhood. These are small restaurants, food shops, construction material retailers, copy and print stations, media retailers and hair salons. Only about half of the ones I saw this spring were there three years ago. In other words, half of them had somehow gone of of business and closed down. In other parts near our neighborhood, I observed similar things. This can be a little bit frustrating to a person who hasn't been home for a while, like me. For example, my parents and I used to buy ice creams and popsicles from a small shop near our home three years ago. But now that shop was no where to be found. I used to like to by some pirated DVDs from a small media shop, that shop was gone too (maybe this is a good thing?). The same kind of thing doesn't happen often in the U.S. It can be easily seen how active small businesses are in China, and in the meantime, how ephemeral many of them tend to be. Maybe this characterizes the economic sector of today's China, full of opportunities and risk. It is very easy to open a small business, and equally easy to lose it.

It is hard to appreciate how much Chinese people like food without going abroad for a while. The Chinese saying that "food is heaven to the commoners" definitely is right on. Among the small businesses I mentioned, many of them are restaurants.We went to about six different restaurants, five of which were newly opened. These included several Chinese restaurants, an pizzahut-like Italian restaurant, and a Japanese barbecue restaurant. The good restaurants were always full of customers, day or night. When people meet with friends, they go to restaurants. When one do business, it is unavoidable to go to restaurants. When people marry, they hold extravagent banquets at resturants. When someone wants something from a government official, he treats him an expensive dinner at a restaurant. It is as if restaurants are homes to Chinese peoples, and they just occasionally go back to their apartments to take a break from eating. This is defintely a feature of the Chinese culture. It is hard to miss on comparison with western culture.

Sometimes I think Chinese are overly obsessed with food. The fondness of food actually is a hotbed for corruption. I heard a lot stories of government officials drank to death. Those are really sad stories. Maybe those unfortunate government officials were not really gluttons, but they were forced to eat on countless occasions, very frequently. It would cause misunderstanding if they refuse to eat. What's worse, when they eat, they often have to drink a lot in order to show that they are indeed wholeheartedly into the business, and that they are really serious about the people treating them or being treated by them. It really is in fact a part of their work. Many important business and administrative agreements are reached on the dinner table. This is a reason why there are so many restaurants in China. What makes the situation sadder is that the money they spend on the dinners are from taxpayers' pockets. This is a widely known fact in China. Yet few people questions it - or what use it is to question it, this fondness of food is rooted deep in the culture. I am sad about this - the more blood you have your gastrointestinal system, the less blood you have in your brain.

The traffic in China was a shock to me, who learned how to drive in the U.S. On the first day I went back there, I was almost ran over by a car on a road crossing because that car refuse to yield to me. In fact, drivers in China don't have the habbit of yielding to pedestrians, which is a norm in the U.S. But that's not the most crazy part of driving in China. The most shocking thing is definitely how many cars there are in Shanghai. Countless cars are packed day and night on big and small streets. Traffic jam is quiet often, and it can be seen that the situation is getting even wose. A road near my home used to have little jams three years ago, but now it is congested very often, especially during morning and afternoon rush hours. The average speed of cars in a Chinese city is much lower than those in an American one, simply because one can't drive too fast because there are so many other cars, plus bicycles and pedestrians. Chinese drivers generally like to use the horns a lot. They honk at every one, including pedestrians and bicycles. They change lanes a lot, often for the necessity of getting forward quicker. Many of the lane change manuvers would be seen as dangerous in the U.S. Drivers cut in at a very short distance from the car behind, and the car behind often has to hit the brake very hard in order to avoid collision. But drivers don't complain of this kind of behavior, because they are used to it. I was thinking, what's responsible for the kind of reckless driving behaviors in Chinese cities like Shanghai. Is that people tend to be less polite in general? Or is it that when a city has so many cars on the street, sharing roads with even more bicycles and pedestrians, drivers have to behave that way? I can give no answer to this question.

Two very important things on people's mind while I was in China were the Olympic Games and the Sichuan earthquake. Olympic decorations were everywhere, from lamp posts on Nanjing Road to bus-stop advertisements boards. Even foreign firms like McDonald's like to include the Beijing 2008 symbols in there new products and marketing strategies. TV news broadcast news about the counting down to the Olympics and the torch relay in China every hour. In those torch relays, you can see people bowing down their heads in silence to mourn the victims of the disastrous earthquake, after which they donate their money. People in general are for the Olympics. They regard this as a chance to show the world the economic achievements China has made so far and win some respect from the world. When someone spokes out against the Olympics and China, they get widespread mass snubbing and attacks. Sharon Stone was the latest in the bouffant spotlight. With regard to earthquake relieve, people seem to impose an obligation on companies to donate money. This is especially true for foreign companies doing business in China. People talk about how much money a foreign company has donated and compare among them. If a foreign company donates less money than other companies of the same scale does, people will spread the word and call for massive boycott of its goods. I think this is not a correct thing to do. Philanthropy should be based on voluntariness, not on social pressure. But what's really scary is that Chinese people as a whole, seemed to have developed a habit of forming massive movements in unison recently. These include denouncing western media's allegedly biased covrage of Tibet, denouncing the Tibetan freedom and independence movements, pointing fingers and demanding apologies from Jack Cafferty and Sharon Stone, and imposing social pressure on foreign companies to donate a lot of money. Seeing these things, I felt easier to understand why Cultural Revolution occured. Indeed toda there are more people thinking independently and against such massive movements. They express their views on their blogs. However, such people are still hopelessly outnumbered by bandwagon jumpers, and they are often labeled "Han Jian" by the mass.

I went to Beijing to visit my future parents in law. We had a very good time there. We went to visit the Bird's Nest, the main stadium for the Games, and the Water Cube, where most swimming and diving events of the Games will occur. Those buildings were indeed very unique in their architectural appeals. One can't help being impressed by them. Many visitors were taking photos near the two buildings. Unfortunately those buildings were not open to public visit, perhaps for the fear of various kinds of sabotages. We also went to visit the newly completely National Theater near the Tiananmen squares. Viewed from outside, the building is shaped like a gigantic floating on a lake. It was very interesting to observe the main entrance, which was under the water. The interior of the building was also very impressive. It housed at least two concert halls and an opera house. My mom and mother-in-law liked the building very much. But my mother-in-law also mentioned the many critiques of this building, that its architectural style is completely inharmonious with the buildings surrounding it, and that it took such a huge sum of money to build. She said, the second critique was especially nagging in such a country still poor.

Beijing's air quality seemed to be okay during the two days I was there. Maybe the government's partial car banning has taken some effect. In comparison, I had to admit that Shanghai's air quality was miserable. I think it was worse than I used to be three years ago. I could always see a grayish smog when I stare to the far. There was not a single blue-sky day during the three weeks I was there. Sometimes I regard it as a wonder that people can breath such air without getting sick. They reason behind the bad air quality, as many say, is that there are too much automobiles in the city. I tend to agree with this opinion. Chimneys were rare in the city. In fact, most of the factories had been moved faraway from the city. But when you are on the road, you can see a lot of cars and trucks ejecting blackish waste gas from their rear ends. I feel that the emission standard is not as strictly enforced as in the U.S. If it had been, the air quality might have been better. But I won't bet on this, simply because there are so many cars in the city. Big American cities as Los Angeles also have smog problems. Shanghai is already imposing strict license control on new cars. License are auctioned , and often cost even more than the car itself. This is perhaps what the city government has to do. Many Shanghai residents can afford cars these days. But with only a small fraction of the people having cars, the city is already a mess. It's hard to imagine what will happen if all that can afford cars drive cars on the street. They whole city may come to a lock down.

Media in China was quite boring. Newspapers like to report negative news about the U.S. and the west in general. For example you can find news about New Yorkers turning to restaurant left-overs for dinner because the economy is getting into a recession in the International News Section. Mention of Tibet and other sensitive issues is very rare. When there is coverage, it tends to be single-sidely positive. For example, you can find news of some Tibetan students taking colleage entrance exams in Shanghai in the front page of a newspaper. The Internet was still censored. A lot of websites were completely blocked. These include most news outlets in Taiwan, the Chinese version of wikipedia, and many blog space providers like WordPress, etc. But English wikipeida, which used to be blocked, is now open. So are many foreign news websites such as BBC, the Economist and CNN. In general, I found that the Great Fire Wall had been cut down a little bit, perhaps for the purpose of holding the Olympics. However, we don't know what will happen after the Olympics. As long as the Great Fire Wall is still there, it shows that the Chinese government is still not confident enough to face the engage the world, which will inevitably and justifiably offer you criticisms.

In sum, Shanghai, and China in general are changing quickly. The red hot economy can be felt on an everyday basis. People are in general optimistic about the future and very enthusiastic about the coming Olympic Games. However, there are many serious problems facng the Chinese society, including environmental pollution, corruption, media censorship and a general lack of independent thinkers, just to name a few. In my view, if these problems don't get solved, China will not hold the potential to become the next superpower. China is now singlemindedly headed toward economic development. Will economic development alone lead to solutions to those problems? We have to wait and see.