GeoGrow

It’s getting to be winter here on the northern edge of the Southern Coast.  Or maybe it’s the southern edge of the Central Coast–I’m still not sure about that.

There are many aspects I’m still not sure about, but the few months since we’ve returned from China have been educational.  There weren’t any notable wildfires this year, but evidence of the 3 severe fires in the last decade is visible on the mountain slopes.  They say it was an unusually foggy summer, but I’ve seen the charts:  it was average.  And now the perhaps prettiest time of year is here.  The vegetation has re-sprouted after two storms (a third is due this weekend).  Mornings are brisk and either fog bound or crystal clear.  Where we are living, sometimes I can look in one direction and it’s fogbound, then turn around and see blue skies and green hillsides.

Campus has it’s share of autumn color, but add palm trees and other tropicals and you get a very strange feeling walking around.  And then there are the seasonal migrants like the one shown above.  There are just about always monarchs floating around, but apparently at this time of year the wintering butterflies make the population much more dense.  Walking around campus, you can’t help but spot 20 or 30 in just a quick walk to the lagoon or beach.  This one was stuck on a shady sidewalk this morning, so groggy he (she?) barely gripped the concrete when I picked him up.  Perhaps he fell out of a tree overnight?  After the 30 seconds it took me to grab my phone and snap this photo, he had warmed up enough to hold on tightly to my coat when I put him on a street sign.  A couple more minutes in the sun and I’m sure he flew away.

It’s been raining steady and hard for a couple days now, on top of several big storms over the past week.  China Daily provides some images of the scene today. China has historically been prone to floods, and major disasters often signal the end of a dynasty. But people hardly seem concerned with today’s high water.

Being a semi-developed giant city, Wuhan isn’t really set up to dispose of its stormwater very well.  Brand new streets retain water like crazy, while the campus has six to twelve inch gutters on the steeper roads around the hills.  The stairway behind our building has been a waterfall several times.  The ubiquitous blue metal construction fences are bricked in on the bottoms without regard to drainage. Even a shower creates big puddles for days.

While it’s kind of a drag, it is fascinating to see people just going about daily street life in much the same ways.  Sure, there is a bit less street food, but many of the more formal stalls have umbrellas or have a bit of storefront space to vend out of.  Our breakfast baozi is a good example.  It occupies a twelve-ish foot wide storefront on the bottom of a three story building.  Some resaurants occupy three or four times wider and extend deeper into the building, as well as up.  Our baozi stand goes back perhaps twenty feet, with the front ten occcupied with production and the back living quarters (I presume–I see the couple at all hours and I’m pretty sure I’ve spied a bed and TV in the back).  The interior is unimproved–basically a concrete box.

The retail end of the establishment is half under an overhang of the building, and half protected by an awning.  The steamers, cash register, blender for the soy milk sit under this awning.  The overhand is shared with the restaurant next door and creates sort of a common space for several businesses.  After the breakfast rush the female half of the couple typically socializes with the restaurant workers doing prep work for their lunch rush.  The afternoon is quiet–husband and wife seem to take turns napping.  Today seemed like business as usual for them even though there was three inches of water out front.

East Lake is a good two feet higher than usual.  The water is lapping at the bottom of the nearby boat dock.  The storm drains on the street that runs along the shore on campus have not been keeping pace with water coming off the hillside, so the road is covered with running water in a number of places. This wasn’t too surprising to see as we bussed to the grocery store today.  What was more surprising was the brand new road which recently opened.  Huge puddles and a number of places where it was downright flooded.  Take a look at the China Daily photos linked to above:  some of those streets are ’state of the art.’

L thinks that campuses mostly work the same, and more often than not I agree with her. There are a lot of similarities.

WuDa has at least one other campus right next door (Hubei Normal University) and the businesses nearby naturally cater to the students.  As we set up our own apartment, I made two trips last Saturday to a big supermarket on the street between the two schools.  At night, as the streets were full of students returning from trips home for the Spring Festival, the store was also full of students stocking up on necessities.  It was hilarious to note our similarities:  as we waited in the checkout line, we noticed that almost all of us were buying the same articles:  Pringles, toilet paper, and instant noodles.  L and I had 2 of those 3, and I had bought the 3^rd earlier in the day when I went to the store with my helpers.  The only difference was about 20 years of age

It helped that a basketball team was in line in front of us–lessening the height disparities.  For once—nobody batted an eye at us.

Also similar, many of the students were looking at items that they might not ordinarily spring for:  expensive cosmetics (there was some sort of feeding frenzy at the Oil of Olay counter) and electronics.  I’m assuming this was in part to use gift money that they were coming back to campus with.  Others were concentrating on basics:  fresh underwear, socks, and towels.

Last Sunday, campus had a festive atmosphere as folks enjoy a spring-like sunny day:  every basketball court had players; there were couples necking on the grass of the soccer stadium; and, just as you think campus is full, students lugging roll-y bags continue to stream onto campus.

But of course there are differences.  Fish and pork don’t usually hang from clotheslines outside American cafeterias.

And I’m not used to people hanging out their laundry quite so much.  It seems every quilt and comforter in Wuhan is hanging from roofs, balconies, and even shrubs.

Laundry hangs just as frequently to dry, as most don’t have dryers.  I’d commend the Chinese for saving electricity and/or gas, but whatever savings comes from line drying gets sucked away by uninsulated buildings and running heaters with the windows open.  They really like fresh air.

As during my first visit to campus, I can’t always get where I’m going.  Just as American universities are constantly updating buildings and undertaking construction projects to expand capacity and replace post-WWII-GI Bill boom buildings, every Chinese campus I have visited is growing leaps-and-bounds.  This causes me to always read my campus map with a grain of salt.

But it’s not just new construction.  I have been trying to keep my habit of dangling from a chinup bar twice a day to elongate my L5-S1.  I spied a bar at the soccer stadium, but couldn’t find my way into it.  While leaving campus, a new roller-blader hobbled past me.  Then I saw him on the track through the gate.  When I got back onto campus, there he was again.  So obviously he got into and out of the stadium when I couldn’t find an entrance.  Perhaps it was through a building?  I did see students going into a run-down looking shack next to the stadium.  But that would be a funny entranceway.

My preferred dangle location is the soccer field that sits between the two oldest buildings on campus.  On my first visit I was told one was for the faculty:

While the other is (was?) the president’s office:

Most mornings so far I have climbed Luo Jia hill and then stopped by for a stretch.  This morning was the first time I struck up a conversation.  I got some health advice from an elderly man (eat more seeds and vegetables.  我知道。我知道。) and he insisted I should do different stretches, especially in winter.  He then showed me up by flipping himself up and over the bar three times.

The mingling of young and old on the soccer field is fun to see.  Many retired faculty live on campus (though all the current professors I know live off-campus in private market housing–this will perhaps be a topic for another day) and they do gong fu, fly kites, walk their dogs, and tend to grandchildren.  In the morning, the gather in bunches on the soccer field.  However, the individuals you see in the photos (they’re really tiny–I haven’t managed to get a decent shot yet) are students reading English out loud to themselves.  Every large open space on campus will have 12 or 15 or 25 students orating.

Maybe these characteristics are similar to other non-Western countries and I am just not well travelled.

I like this.

And I think my library will be getting these:

Knowing that this winter I’ll be teaching students whose first language is not English (and for some English will be their 3rd), I’ve been giving pedagogy a lot of thought.  I ain’t no expert on learning methods, but I pretended to learn about them in library school.

One thought is, for each unit, accompany a difficult academic reading with something from the popular press:  a New Yorker or Sunday supplement article.  I’m thinking particularly of longer articles from Wired–there was one a few years ago that compared containerization to packet-switched networks that really explained alot about how the world works.

This isn’t an original idea at all (the double-reading idea. I can’t comment on the originality of the packet-switched network metaphor).  It originally came as a reference question:  a very smart geography professor wanted to pull easy-to-read articles from outside the discipline to reinforce concepts from her textbook.  Her question was:  how do I search for them?  Sadly, after a couple days of concentrated effort a few of us concluded there isn’t an effective way (although ASP worked pretty well–you just can’t put a ‘NOT’ on the ‘limit to peer reviewed’ toggle).

I’m also recycling an assignment from a class I taught a few years ago.  Early on in the term students will write an ungraded biography of their experiences with information thus far in their lives (previously it was a personal biography of the Internet).  I’ll read them with an eye towards language assessment; 5-minute feedback is on the agenda for the first day; I’m limbering up my chalkboard arm; and maybe I’ll carry the
Glossary of Library and Information Science: English-Chinese/Chinese-English to class each day.

Maybe I’ll have them read last week’s New Yorker article on decades of in-fighting among China’s literati.

Anything else my loyal readers would like to suggest?

A new friend has posted thoughts and a talk on Google, China, and posits the idea of neo-informationalism.  It’s well worth a read.

When things were going down with Google and China, I didn’t follow the issue too deeply. I guess I was assuming that the hacked gmail accounts were a red herring for some other negotiation that was going badly. Or: someone inside the Google organization who is a Tibet supporter got personally hacked and the wrath of the corporation came down on the government–or at least the portion of it responsible for (from the Chinese point of view) white-hat hacking.  But CultureBytes fleshes out the story really well.

I love Tricia’s analysis that Google hasn’t caught on because they haven’t localized enough. It rings true–especially with her close reading of the semantics of their name.   If that big building on Chengfu Lu is their main China presence, it’s located in a very polyglot, hi-tech area with an international focus.  I wonder what the labor force is like? One time I was having lunch in an Indian restaurant across the street and the owner, a Nepali, said that much of his customer base was Indian engineers working in that same research park.  So if Google’s enterprise in China is globally focused rather than China-focused, the Tricia’s analysis is completely correct: they’re spending too much time hanging out in Wudaokou with the elites rather than in Wuhan with the migrants.

There is also the argument that Chinese youth live with an IM paradigm rather than email. My memory of recent research, along with some of my own observations, is that this is a generational thing: kids message, adults use email.  One analysis I’ve heard is that college students consider email a business tool while IM (at least a few years ago in the US–before phone texting really took off) and SMS are communicating-with-your-peers tools. If what I observe anecdotally is true, then the US college-age students have at this point abandoned AIM and MSmessenger for Facebook, Twitter, and SMS text messaging.  Email?  Still for grown-ups.

All 6 modes communication?  All available on the phone.  Essentially, person-to-person communication has moved off the desktop and onto the phone.  Huh, not too unlike Chinese college students 3 years ago.

What about search behavior?  Tricia talks about one of the killer applications where Baidu trumps Google:  mp3 search.  Again:  in the US  iTunes seems to have a lock on music-seeking-behavior.  And there remains a lot of hand-to-hand file trading.  Real enthusiasts likely all have favorite warez and sites to get what they’re looking for.  Oh:  and MySpace remains a viable source for 3 or 4 songs from most any band one is just becoming familiar with.  YouTube also remains a good source for introductions to new music.  Looking for a live show?  Not only are the social networking sites able to keep you up to date, but a number of new phone applications let you set up preferences and then Firefly-type searches (maybe we should start saying Pandora’like?) alert you to bands crossing through your location.  (I would assume the same applications work if you change locations.  Going to LA this weekend?  Make your music widget location-aware and maybe it lets you know which bands you might like are nearby tonight.)  The entire music infrastructure is there, and I’m sure there are a wide variety of places and applications that I have no clue about.  Again, in the US they are probably becoming phone based.  Beijing?  Probably already there, along with the slightly older qq and text messaging that are direct analogs to hand-to-hand information trading.

And what of Google and the mobile space in China?   I would guess that Google doesn’t have much traction there because Chinese companies got there first.  Indigenous companies certainly seem to have just such a lock on the cellular market.  And Google continues to lack a local partner for droid.  A recent report shows a Chinese fork in the Open Source development path:  Ophone cuts Google out by allowing:

handset makers and mobile carriers to replace the parts that are controlled exclusively by Google and integrate their own alternatives—thus allowing them to adopt Android without having to make any concessions to the American search giant.

That is exactly what the Chinese mobile industry is doing with OPhone. They are creating a completely distinct third-party Android software ecosystem that is independent from Google and they are building a heavily-customized userspace stack that integrates with completely different Web services and allows them to deliver the kind of user experience that they want.

And China has plenty of handset makers and mobile carriers to do support the labor necessary to build this ecosystem.

As for the ethical part of the CultureBytes pieces: for me, this was the most interesting part of the  analyses for me. It very much gave me a lot to think about, primarily about privacy policy and Open Source ethics.  I’m not sure we can equate Open Source with  open and transparent policy making-but it’s something to think about.  For example:

“Currency is border-less, free from regulation, and mobile” Is it? Carrying too much currency over a border is a great way to get pinched. And large wire-transfers are regulated–it’s an elaborate system, and it’s full of holes, but it’s a system nonetheless.

Google collects way too much personal information to be considered morally pure by anyone’s standard.  But it is a necessary part of their business model.  So statements like: “This moral framework of neo-informationalism is so naturalized that Google and like-minded companies work their way around the world unquestioned for their position on open information” need to be unpacked a bit. Google has a ton of critics who suggest that they are not in any way transparent nor does it advocate for open information. The book project is very scary to librarians because they are locking up a ton of public domain material behind their project walls. The project seeks to digitize materials now and figure out a way to monetize it later–at least that’s what we’re told. What if they already have plans on how to monetize it but simply aren’t telling us because their plans are nefarious?  Regardless of the ethics, the issue is already in the hands of the courts to figure out.

What I do completely agree with is that freedom of access (not to be confused with free information) is a trope for western ideology. I love that thought, because it it opens up the possibility that Google is posturing, and that the West itself is posturing: Let’s make the PRC out to be the bad guy while we negotiate draconian IP laws outside of our own legislative frameworks. Let’s draw attention to the Red Hackers in order to distract from the global movement of Free Culture.  Because if we pay too much attention to free culture, you’ll have to start looking at free software, and other non-market actors such as those Benkler’s ‘Wealth of Networks’ describes.  And then what?  Then we have to start looking at all the corporate and government workers toiling away on Open Source cyberinfrastructure projects, and the economics of that are very, very difficult to measure.  Better we just blame the Chinese for being overly restrictive and pirates.

儿。

Oh: and Tricia also points us to this commercial for Chinese search-provider Baidu.

I’d never seen this. Google and Yahoo and the rest of the imperialists are represented by a white guy in  tophat and tuxedo, looking alot like a skinny, scruffy Rich Uncle Pennybags (better known simply as the Monopoly guy). For non-Chinese speakers, basically the white guy keeps saying “I know” in a bad western accent.  The personification of Baidu, over the gasps of the crowd, which includes clearly impressed and aroused ladies, states clearly:  “You don’t know. I know.  You don’t know.  I know.”