CAPS—China and Asia-Pacific Studies Program

Google in China Update

And they’re out-ish.

A little bit of Beijing in New York

A WSJ article on the NYC Department of Health implementing a grading system for cleanliness in restaurants. It’d be interesting to see how things pan out. From what I vaguely remember, most restaurants in Beijing were Bs and Cs; when you went to an A restaurant, you knew that the food was going to be really expensive (and by that, I mean USD $7 per meal rather than $1).

A picture from a hole-in-the-wall eatery Caitlin, Adi, and I went to in Zhangjiakou. Please notice the plumbing system on the left side of the picture. This is an example of a place that we hope would get at least an E rating on both the Chinese and American sanitation scale. Did we end up eating there?  Ohhh yes.

Friday night dinner

When CAPS majors aren’t creating extended metaphors about regional alliances, peripheral powers, and bandwagoning on Google Buzz while referencing Bob Ross’ candid lecture from last Wednesday’s seminar, we like to get together for dinner.

Did I mention we’re nothing short of amazing?  谢谢 to Matt Silverstein and Jon Delikat for organizing the get-together!

恭贺新禧!

While February 14th is known as Valentine’s Day (情人节) to many of us, to several billion people this year, it marks the start of a new year on the lunar calendar — a.k.a. Chinese New Year.  It’ll be the Year of the Tiger (which, come to think of it, is the year most of the CAPS Class of 2008 are born in…), so I think it’ll be fitting to have some pictures of felines, which were exceptionally ubiquitous on the Beijing University campus:

When I got to Beida, one thing that surprised me about the stray cats on campus (besides the fact that there were A LOT of them) was that they…well, they looked awfully good. I mean, check out their coats:

The next cat, by the way, does have two front legs and two eyes, it’s just that it has a very thick coat and it was reaching out to get down from the sidewalk.

Their large fluffy coats are probably largely in thanks to the Lost Angels Club, a student organization that leaves food at various locations around campus for the cats (which explains why there’re so many). They even built little houses for them:

During my last week at Beijing, a friend I met through the Violin Society brought out Niunai (牛奶, which means milk), a cat that apparently has quite a reputation with the students on campus, for me to meet. Niunai isn’t a stray, but stays inside 老地学楼 or 老化学楼 (I forgot; it was one of the buildings in front of the library), lovingly cared for by teachers and students —  she gets a lot of visitors bringing leftovers from their dinners.

While Niunai was a good sport for the first 5 minutes when I was cooing at how adorable she is (honestly, can/does anyone disagree?!), but at 5 minutes and 1 second, she started getting annoyed because it was cold outside. Like almost-single-digits cold. Niunai gave me a glare and looked away, which I deserved.

2010 CAPS Reception Photos

On Thursday, CAPS students, staff and faculty gathered at A.D. White House for a classy evening together.  The CAPS reception provides a chance for underclassmen to meet with upperclassmen returning from D.C. and Beijing, and for students to meet faculty.  It was also an excuse to eat a lot of food, which is always good!

The sophomore class gathers for a glamour shot.

A gathering of Cornell's most beautiful people.

There are also a lot of important CAPS people who aren’t pictured here; sorry if we missed you!

China Bridge Winter Program Overview

Over break, 51 Cornell students, including 13 CAPS majors, visited China at the invitation of Hanban, the Chinese government’s language council and Confucius Institute sponsor.  Over the course of three weeks, CAPS students had a chance to visit Beijing (1 week) and Hangzhou (2 weeks).  Highlights of the Beijing portion of our trip included visits to the Forbidden City, Great Wall, 798 Art Zone, Olympic sites, Beijing Science and Technology Museum, Peking University and Tsinghua University.

During our two-week stay at Zhejiang University’s Yuquan campus in Hangzhou, we took Chinese classes in addition to attending lectures on various topics and participating in taiji classes.  Highlights of our stay in Hangzhou included visits to the Wuzhen historic water town, Coca-Cola and Wahaha factories, Leifeng Pagoda, Chinese Medicine Museum, Hu Xueyan Residence, and various historic streets.  A few CAPS majors also took a one-day trip to Shanghai, where they got a chance to visit the Oriental Pearl TV Tower and tour historic gardens.

The program concluded with an elaborate closing ceremony, during which us CAPS students had a chance to show off our new taiji, singing and dancing skills.  We were even served sea cucumber soup at the final banquet, which proved that 海参 (remember MBD 12?) can have real-life applications.

The CAPS students would like to offer a special thank-you to the CAPS faculty and staff for helping to make this trip possible.

CAPS Social this Thursday!

The annual get-together where CAPS faculty and students hang out, eat food, and chat is going to be this Thursday, February 4th, at the A.D. White House (next to Rockefeller Hall) from 5-7 p.m.  I’m sad that I can’t go because of chamber orchestra rehearsal (disclaimer — I do like rehearsals, I just wish it didn’t conflict with this event), but I really encourage everyone interested in the CAPS major to drop by.  It’s a great chance to meet upperclassmen who’ve just come back from D.C. or Beijing and chat with professors in an informal setting.  Everyone’s super friendly, and being able to get to know everyone in the department is one of the best parts of being in a small major!

On the way back from New Orleans, a friend of mine, who’s a freshman violinist, told me that a friend of hers from high school had applied to Cornell and wants to join the CAPS major if she gets accepted to the school.  I mention this because I just want to let anyone in high school reading this to not be afraid to ask us any questions that you may have as you’re picking through the dress rack of colleges and majors.  Really, any questions — about CAPS, about studying at Cornell, etc — just leave a comment on a blog post.  It will not increase your chances of getting into the University, but we’ll send you good thoughts. 🙂

Blowback from the 2008 Olympics

Apparently reaction to the 2008 lip-syncing fiasco (in which the seven-year-old singer at the Olympic Opening Ceremony was deemed “not cute enough” and replaced with a girl who lip-synced to a recording) was stronger than I thought: Lip-syncing has now been banned in China, and two pop stars are facing fines.

This is the Chinese government at its most emblematic: Endlessly policing its manifold departments by wielding the Banhammer over anonymous underlings in order to save face.

Google & China

Check out the statement issued by David Drummond of Google Inc. and the 10 minute interview on CNBC with David Drummond by Larry Kudrow regarding the issue.

It’ll be interesting to see exactly how the issue will play out over as Google meets with the Chinese government to see if they really can set up an uncensored search engine — and, in the case they cannot, exactly how they’ll modify their operations in China. Shutting down their offices in Beijing seems drastic, especially because they have an awfully large Google sign on their building overlooking 成府路 (the office is about halfway between Wudaokou and Beijing University so we’ve passed it a lot), but at the end of the interview, while Drummond expressed a strong interest in staying in China, he stated, “[The business in China] is quite small…[it] was never really a financial move for us. We thought we needed to serve the market, our revenues from the China business are truly immaterial,” and the bottom line is that they want an uncensored search engine with the Beijing government’s approval. Which’ll probably be harder than, say, buying 烤地瓜 (roasted sweet potatoes) from street vendors in Beijing. Speaking of which:

亲爱的卖烤地瓜的小贩，
请你们来纽约。
谢谢，
我

It is cold in New York and it’ll also be cold in New Orleans, where I’ll be for a week starting tomorrow (!!!) to go on an orchestra tour. 1 kuai roasted sweet potatoes never sounded so good.

Postscript: Just heard from a friend of mine across the Pacific— Google, or least GMail, is now blocked in China. Also, here are some reactions of Chinese netizens regarding the situation.

新年快乐！

Happy 2010, everyone!  In China, it’s a traditional custom to eat oranges to celebrate the new year.  We ate oranges all the time in China (being health conscious after eating the sodium and calorie fortified dining hall fare, you know) — it’s easy to get a bunch for a couple kuai on campus.  There’s one lady who sells outside the 西南门 in the evenings who ALWAYS, ALWAYS gives you free fruit.  I still remember her giving me a quarter of a watermelon the first time I bought fruit from her.  Anyway, it’s colder in the wintertime, so free watermelon quarters cannot be had, but adorable tiny mandarin oranges can.  Please observe.

These pictures make my hands look humongous, but these oranges are seriously small, about 1.5 inches in diameter.  No less delicious than its larger counterparts, of course.