The Opening Ceremony Jeff and I watched from a deck maybe 200 meters away from the Olympic green. Weird to see something happen in the distance, and see it a second later on a big screen, and a second later on T.V. Being in Beijing at this time is like being Inside the Internet. The people we shared the Ceremony with were a group of Chinese people and their friends. We all sat on their porch and drank beers. It was the feeling that I had left here in 2005, and had come back to find.
Apart from meetings with IENGOs and others involved in the “greening” effort–the Chinese people call it “The Green Reason” and I kind of like that. Possible name for our film–we went to our first Olympic event yesterday. Olympic rowing and kayaking. We got the tickets from a guy affiliated with our homestay for free. ta-da!
To be at an Olympic event was fabulous. We sat with a group that organized trips for students from Sichuan who were affected by the earthquake. An organizer said to me that he was infected by the spirit of the Olympics and so wanted to do something positive for his country. This Olympic drive is important, and I hope we can relate it effectively in our film–because it’s not immediately apparent or relatable.
Today we are meeting with Steve Blake (Bei) and Zhu Li (Kunming) at The Nature Conservancy to talk about the work TNC has been doing in China. Another IENGO stressing environmental education. I think we have a theme! and it fits into the idea about an “emergent” pattern–a la Steven Johnson–of environmentalism developing in China.
There will be more on this soon. We don’t have meetings scheduled as of yet on Thursday or Friday–although we have a couple pending–so I can ideally put more time into this.
The themes of this film have begun to align themselves thusly:
- China’s environment is bad but there is cause for optimism.
- Most of the positive change is coming from “bottom-up” institutions like NGOs.
- The “bottom-up” institutions can only operate within the Chinese political system because the government (“top-down”) has allowed them to. It is still very hard to start NGOs
- This opening-up of Chinese institutions to be creative in solving environmental problems has tremendous potential for the future of China. Environmental Education in primary schools is a perfect example of “top-down” investment in a “bottom-up” approach to solving the county’s problems.
- Will what the government allows to happen in this fashion be enough to stem the tide of environmental degradation in the country? Things are slowing but not stopping.
All of these items are yet to be proven completely to me – but it is a start for us in creating a coherent narrative of what is going on around us. One of the big problems inherent in this project is that understanding such an emerging concept as environmental education in such a constantly changing society such as urban China, it is hard to get much more than conjecture about the future, even from specialists and professionals. Talking to officials in the CCP would perhaps be our best chance at an anchor for the factual verisimilitude that I crave in telling this story. This project is bringing to my attention the interesting tension between experts and actors. I think constantly about who has the right (or the perceived right) to tell the audience that which is fact. Unless an expert is a participant of that which she speaks, a record of her speaking is still just that: a record of her speaking — not a statement of fact.
This is getting exciting again! We have been very busy. We got into the city on the 5th. I accidentally scheduled a meeting with Doug Whitehead at GEI before we had gotten into Beijing. The time zones mixed me up. So, we arrived in the morning and had a meeting on the day after, and so had a day to acclimate. I’m happy with how quickly I was happy in China again. Today we had ginger tea and it was just like it always was. fabulous.
We rescheduled the meeting with Doug Whitehead to yesterday, and it went really well. I think because Doug and I had exchanged so many emails–he’s a good emailer too–leading up to the interview, we both felt very comfortable. And we got great lighting for the interview, so it looks really nice. We watched some of it today, but I’m looking forward to continuing to check it out. Doug touched on some things that I had been preaching about since earlier this spring, and imparting to Jeff more recently, about how the pattern that environmentalism is developing in China, and so I’m happy to have had my idea validated.
We spent Thursday the 31 meeting with the Roots and Shoots program at the Jane Goodall Institute. This program kind of encapsulates the way that I see Chinese environmentalism developing–in an emergent pattern. By educating Chinese kids, change is affected from the bottom-up, and this pattern depends upon time to see any changes. I’ve told this story fifty times I feel like. We had dinner tonight with our friend Tony–someone who has contacts who are middle and high school teachers–so we’re looking forward talking about the implementation of the government-mandated environmental education regulations in schools. Tony also has connections in factories that were moved outside of the city for the Olympics, and we’re going to try to set up some factory tours–this is GREAT visual evidence, I’m learning all about it.
Coming up this week we have a meeting scheduled tomorrow with the World Wildlife Foundation, Steve Blake at The Nature Conservancy, and possibly a meeting with Greenpeace on Tuesday.
Our homestay is on the outskirts of the city, so we have to take a bus or taxi to the train and take the subway into Beijing everyday, which is kind of a hassle. But, Jeff and I agree that there is a lot that is positive about this homestay. We have lots of space, and feel very comfortable here.
more tomorrow. I want to write about the evening of the opening ceremonies, because this was a fabulous night.
This article on Breitbart.com–which calls itself an “organized grocery store of news”–forecasts that my hopes may be answered. Rain, thunder, typhoons forecast for Beijing Games mentions rain during the opening ceremonies, and predicts isolated typhoons that may disrupt events in other cities. The article does not mention the positive effects on the air of this possible rain. Although I’m sure if I looked further, I may find some mention of it.
Breitbart is also carrying an article IOC says no censorship deal as Games fever hots up that brings up the possibility that the Games in Beijing could liberalize China’s media restrictions. This is what we are interested in–the possibility that interconnections will lead to increased understanding and environmental policy changes. I read some of the comments to this article, and it looks like we will have a lot of anti-communism fervor to contend with.
Reuters posted an article this morning called Beijing bathes in sunshine days before Games, that Matt Drudge carried. This is one of two Olympic-related headlines on Drudge–what an exciting thing. The other is about media restrictions in Beijing. more on this soon.
Experts attribute the “blue sky day” in Beijing to the anti-pollution measures that the city has taken, as well as to the fact that it rained in Beijing last night. Reuters’ Andrew Cawthore quotes one “enthused” student volunteer in Beijing; “You see, we have done it! You can even see the mountains.” The surprise inherent in the student’s reaction is a signifier of how bad it has been.
At the same time, The Guardian carried a story about Internet restrictions in China. Always in articles about Internet restricts in China, the argument is backed-up by the fact that it’s impossible to look up the spiritual movement Falun Gong from China. This is a conversation-stopper. O.K., it’s impossible to look up Falun Gong. There is a lot of really positive societal work that can be done without hitting directly on such a hot-button issue, and you can work your way up to the hot-button issues. I’m understanding that it’s very Western–and similar to the way I’m accustomed to operating–to jump directly to the root of a problem rather than working my way up to it. Falun Gong is a very media-attractive topic in the West. It plays into Western preconceptions about what the problems are in China. I think we should stay away from these sensitive topics, because they aren’t interesting to me. My adviser, Dan Perlman at Brandeis, has thoughts about why this is so and I have not pressed him to share them explicitly with me yet. What I can say is that we are focused elsewhere, and we’re really excited about being hopeful about the improvement work. Hope is a keyword here.
and we’ll hope for rain I guess.
China adds rules to cut pollution is an article in the International Herald Tribune today about emergency pollution control measures that Beijing has in place if the air quality fails to meet approved standards. The measures are meant to close more factories and further restrict traffic in and around Beijing.
Jeff has set up some tours of factories that were closed and moved outside of the city for the time leading up to the Olympics. We wonder what the factories are planning when they are let back into the city–if the factories plan to move back into Beijing, and if they do, will they work in a more environmentally conscious way. We will see. I’m hopeful.
