Flight to Shanghai

I left from Cedar Rapids early in the morning on January 21st so I could catch a direct flight to Shanghai from Chicago. I was understandably not looking forward to the 14+ hour flight because I like legroom and I can't sleep on planes. I breathed a huge sigh of relief when I realized the plane was not fully booked and in addition to my window seat, I also had use of the seat (and legroom) of the spot right next to me.

The plane took off at 11:30 a.m. CST, headed due north. From Wisconsin on, it was snow-covered ground as far as the eye could see. Canada was a desolate, frozen tundra (as if you needed reminding, eh?). It gradually grew darker as we flew farther north into the Arctic. The North Pole was pitch black (at 4:00 p.m.); the only light coming from the full moon. I could tell there was still a lot of ice in the polar ice caps, which is good news for the polar bears (and elves). I occupied my time watching movies and TV shows on the personal seat-back screens and my iPad, so I was never too bored.

Suddenly, we were no longer flying north, but south, without ever changing direction. Finally, we were over land once again, this time over an area, popular with Soviet dissidents, known as Siberia. I could see Russia from my seat. You betcha! Unsurprisingly, it looked a lot like Canada: lots of snow, some lakes and rivers and thick forests scattered about. The ground became a bit more interesting a few hours later over the Gobi Desert in Mongolia. Contrary to popular belief, deserts can have snow cover, as the Gobi did. It also had a lot of exposed barren areas interspersed with mountains.

Over China, I kept my eye out for the Great Wall. Unfortunately, I never spotted the thing, athough purportedly visible from space. I later read that the Wall is no more visible from space than a human hair is visible from across a wide river. Leaving the countryside, we were now flying over large expanses of developed areas and had traded snow cover for smog cover.

After flying 7050 miles, we finally arrived in Shanghai at 1:21 a.m. CST (3:21 p.m. local China time). As with most travelers to China, I was impressed by the shiny and new Shanghai Pudong International Airport (even though by this point I had just seen the arrivals gate and baggage claim). After going through customs, I was greeted at the airport by Bill Shen, the driver for the USDA office, who drove me to my boss' home so I could stay with him and his family for a few days before heading to Beijing.

Shanghaied!

So it's about time I start my blog, as I've been in China for a while now. Incidently, Blogspot, the site you're viewing right now, is blocked by the Chinese government, lest I post things to stir unrest in the country. I'm accessing it and other blocked sites, like Facebook and YouTube, through a VPN. I wasn't able to post things my first few weeks when I was traveling around China. I first arrived in Shanghai on Jan. 21, and after I had adjusted to the 14 hour time difference, made my way to Beijing, then Shenyang, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Hong Kong before returning to Shanghai for work.

Through this blog, I hope to share what I'm doing and experiencing here, as well as offer my own insights into Chinese government and everyday life. I'm in China for an internship in the Shanghai Agricultural Trade Office (ATO) of the Foreign Agricultural Service of the United States Department of Agriculture. The mission of the ATOs around the world is to increase U.S. agricultural exports by offering help and market information for American companies looking to export products around the world. Though I'm working for the government, the views expressed in this blog are not necessarily those of the U.S. government or its agencies.

Naturally, I'll be drawing on other life experiences for comparisons to China. Forunately, I'm blessed to have many points of comparison: I've lived in both rural and urban parts of the U.S. (Iowa and Washington, DC), western and eastern Europe (Germany and the Czech Republic), and Japan. Still, going from Traer, Iowa, (pop. 1,600) to Shanghai (pop. 23,000,000) is a big change. Having already lived in the world's largest city, Tokyo (metro pop. 33,000,000), I'm not phased by large Asian metropolises.

As a political scientist with an interest in economics, I'm going to be including a lot of information about the Chinese government and economy. Obviously, China is very interesting and contradictory in those aspects; it has the world's second highest GDP but is still very much a developing country run by a communist government with an economy that is more cut-throat capitalist than most others. For those of you who have no interest in politics or economics, fear not, you can easily skip over these parts and just look at my pretty pictures.

By the way, the title of this section of my blog, "Shanghaied," refers of course to the city in which I'm living. The term originally meant to be put aboard a ship by force, often with the help of liquor or a drug, and has since come to mean to kidnap or put into an undesirable position by trickery, force, or threat. The practice was popular in the U.S. northwest in the mid-19th century due to a combination of factors, including: 1) Once a sailor signed onboard a vessel, it was illegal for him to leave before the voyage's end and 2) There was a shortage of labor as crews abandoned ship because of the California Gold Rush. Some were sailors who joined a crew on their own terms, only to realize later they were stuck. Often, men were the victims of "crimps," or kidnappers. The most straightforward way for a crimp to shanghai a sailor was to render him unconscious, forge his signature on the ship's articles, and pick up his "blood money." Finding crewmen was the job of boarding masters, who were paid blood money "by the body." The boarding masters would pay the crimps and by the time the sailor regained consciousness, he was on the ocean somewhere, commonly Shanghai.

I'll try to keep these posts coming. If there are aspects of China that you're curious about, feel free to email me or comment. I'm always looking for topic ideas.