A China Diary

Daniel J. Borgia

2002 – 2003 Fulbright Professor - China

Associate Professor of Finance, College of Business

Florida Gulf Coast University

 

January 10, 2003

 

Hello to all the students, faculty, staff and friends at FGCU.  I have just finished up my first semester as a Fulbright Professor at Nanjing University in Nanjing, P.R. China.  During the past few months, I have been teaching corporate finance and investments to International Business Communication majors in the School of Foreign Studies.  I have also been traveling and lecturing all over China about the development of China’s financial system and the implication of China’s achieving membership of the WTO last year.  I wanted to send this note – a sort of progress report – to those of you who might be interested in my and my family’s experiences, and about what life is like in China.

 

I applied for the Fulbright program in China for both personal and professional reasons.  For those of you who don’t know, my wife Jia is a native of China and hadn’t been back to her home country since immigrating to the U.S. nearly three years ago.  Although I had been to China three times before, my visits were relatively short and only provided a small glimpse of a modern and culturally and historically rich country that most American’s know embarrassingly little about.  My wife and I have a son Nico who is currently one year old.  Living in China for a year also would give him and his maternal grandparents an opportunity to get to know each other and to introduce him to his mother’s culture.

 

I also sought the Fulbright in China for professional reasons because of its growing importance in the world economy.  China only began to open to the outside world in 1978 under the leadership of the late President Deng Xiaoping.  Since then, China has experienced tremendous social and economic change during its transition from a centrally planned economy toward a more modern, open market economy.  However, economic reforms, especially with respect to its financial system, are expected to accelerate tremendously after China became a member of the WTO in December 2001.   In fact, many China experts such as Nicholas Lardy of the Brookings Institution predict that China will become the second largest and most important economy in the world by 2020.  China’s financial system is expected to undergo the greatest change and this offers unique opportunities to those like me who study economics and finance.

 

During my stay here, I have also begun to explore the possibility of establishing a student/faculty exchange program between FGCU and a major Chinese university.  Many major U.S. universities have established relationships with Chinese universities and these linkages will only increase in the future as China continues its integration with the world economy and its citizens continue to become wealthier and better educated.   FGCU stands to gain by getting its foot in the door early.  A relationship between FGCU and a Chinese university would also be likely to help forge business linkages and relationships between southwest Florida and China.

 

My wife’s family is from Tang Shan, which is about a two-and-a-half hour drive east from Beijing.  Our plan was to visit with family from August 7th until we checked into the Kerry Center Hotel near the U.S. Embassy in Beijing on August 19th.  My wife’s family had never seen Nico before (other than in photos).  Needless to say, they were very excited to see their daughter and new grandson (nephew, cousin, etc…).  During our visit to Tang Shan, we stayed with my wife’s parents in a spare bedroom.  I found our stay to be quite pleasant.  They took great care of us and made sure we were comfortable

 

Tang Shan is a medium sized town (by Chinese standards) of about 4 million (ha!).  Some of you might be aware that Tang Shan was the sight of a terrible earthquake in 1976 that killed nearly 300,000 people and injured hundreds of thousands more.  My wife’s family lost some relatives during the tragedy (an aunt and two cousins I think).  Since then, Tang Shan has been completely rebuilt and they have a memorial to commemorate the tragedy – which I visited.

 

My wife’s brother owns a restaurant in Tang Shan.  We ate dinner there twice with the whole extended family.  The dinners with the family were much fun and the food was fabulous.  We also had lunch once with a group of Italians who own a 60% joint venture with a Chinese government State Owned Enterprise (SOE) where they manufacture high-end plumbing fixtures for sale in the Chinese market.  After the lunch with the Italian’s, we toured their manufacturing facility which I found to be quite insightful as a professor in business (finance in particular).

 

We also toured a couple of porcelain factories in Tang Shan.  Tang Shan is world famous for its high quality fine bone porcelain dinnerware, tea sets, and pottery.  My wife and I are interested in possibly establishing a dinnerware/porcelain shop in the states when we return so this was a fabulous personal and business experience.  The factories we visited were also SOEs but our tour suggested that they were running efficiently and productively.  One of the factories had some dishes they were putting the finishing touches on with a Pier One stamp on the bottom.  Fascinating! 

 

If you’ve never been to China before, be prepared for terribly dirty air and streets.  During one of my earlier visits, I realized that the Chinese have adopted a compulsive habit of removing their shoes before they enter their tidy homes because it’s so dirty outside!  Unfortunately, a sizeable number of Chinese use the streets and sidewalks as their dumpsters and wash rooms.  Many also have a habit hawking and spitting which most Westerners would find extremely repulsive.

 

We took a trip with the family to Shan Hai Guan, which is a port city directly east of Beijing and is a famous Chinese tourist destination as the point where The Great Wall of China begins at the sea.  Although seeing the part of The Great Wall was a memorable historical experience, I didn’t care for our visit to this particular location.  It was mobbed with thousands of tourists and those that prey on tourists.  Street vendors were hawking all sorts of touristy junk like “I Saw the Great Wall” t-shirts and other memorabilia.  You could get pictures taken dressed up the Emperor and Empress complete with flowing robe, pigtails, and throne.  It really felt like Niagara Falls or any other American tourist trap to me.  Yuck!

 

In late August, all of the twenty or so China Fulbright grantees attended a mandatory orientation session produced by the US State Department in Beijing.  The orientation was excellent and it all began with our stay at the Kerry Center Hotel in the Embassy District.  The Kerry Center Hotel isn’t much to look at from the outside (compared to say the Ritz Carleton in Naples), but the inside is spectacular.  It’s definitely 5-star all the way from the meeting rooms, fitness center, dining facilities, free Broadband internet access, management, and service staff.  The rooms were fabulous and comfortable with plush bedding, a spacious walk-in shower with adjoining oversized Jacuzzi tub, and a fabulous view of the Embassy District of Beijing from our 12th floor perch.  I would recommend this hotel to anyone who has a chance to visit Beijing.

 

The sessions produced by the State Department during the next few days dealt with issues such as personal security, the impending change in China’s leadership, economic issues such as the WTO and its implications for China, social issues, changes in the structure of civil law, teaching in China (of course), and family medical issues to name a few. 

 

The vast majority of the 2002-2003 Fulbrighters were going to be positioned at universities in Beijing and Shanghai.  Of the remaining full-year Fulbright grantees, one was going to be teaching economics at Sichuan University in Chengdu, and another would be teaching law at Xiamen University in Xiamen.  We, of course are going to be at Nanjing University in Nanjing.  These three cities are far less “western” compared to Beijing or Shanghai so would require greater adjustment for attendees in some ways.

 

On one afternoon, the State Department arranged an excursion for all Fulbrighters and their families to The Great Wall outside of Beijing in the mountain resort town of Badaling.  It was a great outing.  We all took a tram to the top of the mountain and descended back down the Great Wall by foot.  What an experience!  It was quite hot and I got a great workout with Nico riding on my back in our baby-backpack all the way down.  When we got to the bottom, we had lunch at the Badaling Hotel and then took the tour bus back to the Kerry Center Hotel to prepare for our trips to our respective universities the next day.

 

On the Friday evening before we left for Nanjing, we went out with my wife’s good friend Maggie (her English name) to visit a popular Beijing weekend shopping and dining nightspot called “snack road.”  It featured a series of street booth vendors offering all sorts of Chinese “snack” foods such as fried grasshoppers, grilled snake, and sautéed scorpions.   It made me think of a variation on the popular Campbell’s Soup jingle: “Mmm, mmm, good; mmm, mmm, good; that’s what “snack road” food is; mmm, mmm, good.”  Although I was tempted to sample some of the exotic fare, I settled for barbequed lamb, which was indeed fabulous.  We also did some window shopping in a mall near snack road.  Many Americans would find shopping in this mall quite similar to shopping in one of the nicer malls in any large city in the U.S.

 

On Saturday, we flew to Nanjing, my home away from home for the next ten months.  My immediate impression of Nanjing was that it was much more humid, wet, and tropical compared to Beijing and Tang Shan.  The flora was lush and green everywhere.  This was in great contrast to the arid, almost desert-like conditions in the north.  In fact, I was a bit surprised to see a fair number of palm trees in the area.  I had heard at the Beijing orientation that Nanjing gets very cold in the winter.  In terms of latitude, Nanjing sits in a position similar to say Charlotte, NC.  I guess it does get cold in Charlotte, but not nearly so as say Erie, PA, my home town (where there will never be a Palm tree!). 

 

Nanjing University is located fairly close to the center of this former southern capital city of China of over 6 million residents.  In Chinese, “jing” means capital, “nan” means south, and “bei” means north.  Thus, Beijing is the northern capital and Nanjing is the southern capital.  Our drive to the university impressed me.  Nanjing seemed to be much cleaner than Beijing, Tangshan, and Guangzhou.  The streets are tree-lined nearly everywhere.  The air is much cleaner I suspect because the traffic is not as heavy and because the abundance of trees may act like a filter absorbing the carbon dioxide emitted by cars.

 

We arrived at our apartment located in the “foreign experts building.”  The foreign experts building is like an apartment complex/hotel located on the south side of the main campus.  We were a bit anxious about our living arrangements since we would depend on them for year.  However, we were fairly pleased with our second floor apartment.  It is a spacious two bedrooms plus living room, balcony (mainly used for drying laundry), small kitchen, and bathroom.  The living areas have hard wood floors and the hallway, kitchen and bath are all tiled.  We have one air conditioner in the main bedroom, steam heat in all rooms, a refrigerator, a two burner stove, and one double bed in the master bedroom and a single bed in the small bedroom.  We also have some rather shabby wood furniture that are basically desks but will also have to double for dresser/drawer space. 

 

To make our apartment livable for the next year, my wife and I decided we needed several things and made those purchases during the next several days (the Chinese currency unit is the Renminbi (RMB) or “people’s money”).  Some of the items we bought included a washing machine at RMB 500 (US$ 60), a baby crib at RMB 400 (US$ 50), and a water cooler with a water filter system for RMB 500 ($US 60).  Other items included towels, a baby tub, portable closet, rice cooker, frying pans dishes, desk lamp, and toys for Nico, a walker for Nico, silverware, containers, plastic shelving, and clothing and towel hooks.  Altogether we probably spent somewhere near RMB 5,000 (US$ 600) if you include taxi fare to and from the stores several times a day.  Not bad considering what we bought.

 

At Nanjing University, I am teaching in School of Foreign Studies which is composed of several foreign language departments: the department of English, German, Russian, Japanese, and French.  I am a faculty member teaching in the department of English and International Business Communications (which are actually two departments in one), so most of my students (junior and senior English majors and International Business Communication majors) are extremely proficient in English.  Nanjing University also has Business School but I was not placed in that college due to the difficulty many business college students would have understanding a professor who teaches only in English. 

 

On the Friday before classes, I (and another Foreign Expert, Chris) sat down with several Nanjing University faculty and administrators to go over our class schedules and talk about some basic policies and expectations the University had with respect to its professors/lecturers.  Any discussions in class about religion and politics are basically off-limits.  I found that I had a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday afternoon teaching schedule which suited me well.  On Monday, I was to teach Investments to both English majors and International Business Communication (IBC) majors.  On Tuesday, I was to teach Business Finance to IBC majors, and on Wednesday, to English majors

 

On the Saturday before the start of classes, we decided to take it easy and relax with a stroll down tree–lined Zhongshan Road which is adjacent to the eastern side of the campus and a few blocks from our apartment.  Zhongshan Road is one of the main arteries in Nanjing and is lined with shops, stores, and restaurants of all sorts.  Although it was quite hot – even in the shade – the three of us walked along the avenue until we got to a main intersection that was surrounded by city-malls and department stores.  We shopped a little and had lunch in a second floor Chinese restaurant overlooking a plaza with a Pizza Hut and KFC along one side.  We saw scores of Americans or Europeans streaming out of the two American eateries.  Why not try Chinese food when you’re in China for goodness sakes!

 

Overall, my experience with the students at Nanjing University has been very positive and they seem more inquisitive than I expected them to be.  During the Beijing orientation, much of what we learned from our sessions was that Chinese students were quiet, timid, and rarely spoke up in class.  For my first week, I didn’t find that to be the case at all.  Maybe they feel comfortable with me.  Or maybe it’s because I have a Chinese wife.  Then again, maybe it’s because I could say their Chinese names by reading them in pinyin pretty well.  I’m not sure.  In any case, it was clear that I felt comfortable with them and they felt pretty comfortable with me.

 

On the Friday at the end of the first week of classes, all of the foreign experts were invited by the Foreign Affairs Office to a meeting followed by a dinner at the Ramada Inn Hotel.  The invitation also included an agenda for a Saturday all-day sightseeing tour of the Nanjing area.   The meeting was basically an orientation that partly served as an introduction of the faculty of the School of Foreign Studies, but mainly as a personal security briefing by the Chief of Police.  The dinner was great and gave my wife and me the chance to meet and bond somewhat with the other foreigners at Nanjing University.  The foreigners included one Russian, two Germans, one Australian, a French couple, two Spaniards, three Japanese, and at least six Americans.  Two of the Americans included an older couple from Utah (Ken and Becky), two were semi-permanent Nanjing-Americans Chris and Bob, and two were newly-minted female graduates of a University in Iowa on a Fellowship here for a year (brave young girls).  The dinner was really great and the chance to bond with the other foreigners was great too.  I had a chance to talk one-on-one more with Dean Wang and the Chief of Police Mr. Hu.  I found them both to be fantastic guys.  It was a really good time for us and really began to make us feel more comfortable in Nanjing.

 

On Saturday, we had a long, professionally-guided tour of the Nanjing area with all of the other foreign experts.  The first cool front blew in from the north a few days earlier and cleared out the oppressive heat and humidity.  The wonderful weather promised to make the tour that much more enjoyable.  The tour included a visit to the Sun Yat-Sen Mausoleum and the Ming Tomb in the morning, a nice lunch, a visit to KMT presidential palace and Confucian Temple in the afternoon, a boat ride on the Yangtze, and dinner at night.  The “eastern suburbs” were just spectacular.  They were lush and green and forested.  The heavily wooded mountains were beautiful and the environment was as clean as anywhere in the U.S.   The tour was great!

 

By the end of our second week in Nanjing, we were all beginning to feel more relaxed and comfortable.  Our apartment was pretty settled and we finally had all of the comforts of a home away from home. 

 

The Tuesday of the second week was National Teacher’s Day in China.  I received two lovely email cards from my students and a small bouquet of flowers.  My students are great and I enjoy teaching more than I have in some time.  They’re eager and thirsty for knowledge.  In general, I have found that the average Chinese undergraduate student is brighter, more mature, and more hard-working than the average American public university undergraduate.  There is a good reason for this, however.  In China, there are simply not enough openings at China’s universities to accommodate the millions of students who wish to pursue higher education.  Because of this, the competition for these limited slots begins in elementary school.  By the time a student is accepted to a university, he has established himself or herself as the brightest of the brightest.  Because of this, most tend to be on par with the best undergraduates at FGCU.

 

On Wednesday, I walked to the northwest end of campus and registered for a Chinese (speaking) class that’s offered every day of the week.  They were going to charge me until I flashed my new Nanjing University ID and Expert Card (The name’s Borgia, Dr. Dan Borgia); didn’t cost me a thing.  After registering for class I walked over to the Johns Hopkins – Nanjing University Center for Chinese and American Studies.  When I walked in, I just happened to meet Robert Daly, the Co-Director of the Center.  Robert is an ex-China Foreign Service professional who speaks fluent Chinese.  The Center focuses on international relations and houses 100 students a year – 50 Chinese and 50 (mostly American) Western students.  They put two students per room, one Western and one Chinese.  Robert gave me a complete tour of the facility and gave me blanket access to everything the Center offers, including books, periodicals, newspapers, barbeques, dinners, lectures, etc…  He also invited me to give a lecture during the course of the year. 

 

Aside from Chinese (lunar) New Year, China has two other major holidays: National day in early October and Spring Festival in May.  During these holidays, most employers shut down and give their employees a few days off for vacation. 

 

During this year’s National Day, we decided to go to Shanghai which is only a three hour trip by train from Nanjing.  We met Maggie there and stayed in a hotel near The Bund, the area in Shanghai that lies along the Huang Po River that is famous for the Western European architectural style of its buildings.  Shanghai is by far the most Western of all Chinese cities, both today and historically, because of its central location and its role as China’s major international trading port.  During the 19th century before the end of the Qing Dynasty, Shanghai was widely known as the “Paris of the East” because of its rich array of culture, arts and fashion. 

 

Compared to American cities, Chinese cities are much more crowded.  Chinese cities are so crowded that it’s practically impossible to walk down most any main street without constantly bumping into other people.  As China’s largest city with over 20 million people, Shanghai is perhaps the country’s most crowded and on National Day, millions more Chinese traveled to Shanghai for the holiday.  Thus, as you can probably imagine, Shanghai was extremely crowded and this made the trip a bit uncomfortable, especially with a baby in tow.  Nevertheless, we visited several areas of Shanghai including the Bund area and Cheng Huang Miao, an area famous for its original Chinese architecture and shopping, especially for Chinese antiques, jewelry, furniture, and decorations.  We also went to a modern mall which I thought was more impressive than any I had ever visited in the U.S.  In the evening, we strolled down Nanjing Street which also had a pedestrian mall that featured all sorts of entertainment such as singing and dancing acts. 

 

The China Fulbright organization has a separately funded Fulbright Speakers Program which provides funding for Fulbright grantees to travel to almost any university in any city in China to deliver lectures on topics selected by the grantees.  For my part, I selected the following as topics for my lectures: The Impact of U.S. Stock Markets on China & the World; Comparing the U.S. & China: Current Conditions and Future Directions; American Financial System Development: Lessons for China; Financial Market Reform in China: Problems, Progress, and Prospects; and The U.S., China, and the WTO: Challenges & Opportunities.  The Fulbright Program publishes a listing of each grantee’s self-selected topics and circulates them to the U.S. Embassies and universities around China.  In some cases, the Chinese universities will proactively contact the grantee and in other cases, the grantee must seek out the engagement at a university and city in which he or she would like to travel.  During the fall semester, I was invited to speak by Zhongshan University in Guangzhou, the Shanghai University of Economics and Finance, Jinan University in Guangzhou, and the U.S. Embassy in Guangzhou. 

 

I didn’t proactively seek any of my engagements because I was still busy working on my lectures during the fall semester.  You might have noticed by my lecture topics that they were all related in some way to the Chinese economy and financial system.  Prior to my selection as a Fulbright grantee, I knew almost nothing about China’s economy and its financial system.  However, I decided when I was awarded the Fulbright that I would fashion myself as much as possible into a “China expert.”  The best way to do that, I reasoned, was to force myself to study and research China’s economy and financial system by lecturing about it.  After about six months, I have finally finished all five lectures.  And based on the overwhelmingly positive responses I’ve received from my audiences so far, I now feel confident about calling myself a “China expert.”

 

Now that I’ve finished writing my lectures, I am going to more proactively pursue speaking engagements at other universities in other cities throughout China.  A couple of the places I’d like to go are Harbin in the far north, Lhasa Tibet in the far Southwest, Xiamen in the Southeast, Kunming near the Vietnam border, and Lanzhou in the Northwest.  From what I understand based on my time in and study of China so far, each of these regions differs substantially in terms of culture, religion, language, and customs.  Traveling to these different areas should be enriching and provide me with experiences that few in the world have an opportunity to savor.

 

It’s now January and the fall semester has just ended.  The weather in Nanjing has turned much colder as advertised with highs mostly in the 40s and lows in the 30s.  Not frigid like Erie, PA (where I was born and raised) but not as warm as Fort Myers to be sure.  My classes have gone very well.  My students are happy and I think they’ve learned a lot both about America and Americans (me) and about finance and investments as well.  I’m looking forward to next semester.  My wife and Nico are doing well and both are happy.  All in all, life is great!  Although we have been happy in China these past months, we miss Florida and our home.  It will be good to get back in a few months.  If you want to read more about my experience, see some photographs, and visit some useful Chinese web sites, feel free to visit my web site at http://itech.fgcu.edu/faculty/dborgia/ . That’s it for now!  Bye-bye!