I had less really impressive photos in my second semester. I guess I did most of the cool touristy stuff so I didn't have as much good materiel. I remember I had way more food and drink photos.
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While "random photos from around Asia" might not be the greatest blog title this is in essence what these are. I quite like the photo of the Beijing Bird's Nest Stadium and the tourist with the drone from Laos. Overall I think I am most happy with this set of photos. I guess with travel I saw new places so consequently the photos of those places are new. In Shanghai I often did just my daily life or saw the same things several times.
These are just some of my favorite photos arranged in no particular order. Many of my photos in the first semester were from some of Shanghai's more touristy and more famous areas, like Pudong or Thames Town. That doesn't bother me too much, sometimes places are famous for a reason. Still, I do have some great photos from the less famous places, like the subway stop photo. To be honest though, I think the picture of East China Normal's Mao statue overlooking the Global Harbor Mall is the best photo I took all year.
Now that I am back in China and had some time to stew I now feel like it is time for a South East Asia (Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand in my case) retrospective. The first thing I would like to note is that Thailand, particularly Bangkok, is clearly more developed than ether Vietnam or Laos. While Vietnam is trying, and to a fair degree succeeding, in becoming a developed country Laos is simply not. Chiang Rai did feel more like Hanoi in terms of development, but both cities were clearly more developed than Luang Prabang. I would also like to note that I think Luang Prabang is Laos's "model city." The problems I heard about Laos, like starvation level poverty and corruption, are not visible in Luang Prabang; this dosn't mean that these aren't issues Laos faces, it is simply that the government has put there effort into saving face in Luang Prabang for the tourists. Hanoi and all the cities in Thailand felt like better representations of their respective countries than Luang Prabang did.
It is interesting to compare temples in the three countries, since I seemed to spent most of my time in Buddhist temples. Vietnam had temples but they seemed touristy. I did end up in one temple that was actually used by real Vietnamese Buddhists and many of the restaurants had little shrines but the Buddhism was not as visible. I think Luang Prabang gets tourists by marketing itself as a Buddhist temple city. The locals are apparently religious but all the temples did feel like they were set up to handle tourists. The Thai are a remarkable religious people. All of the temples, even the touristy ones, were all used by real Thai Buddhists and basically every public building had a spirt house that people would pray and make offerings to. Another interesting comparison is the attitudes toward their colonial past. Being colonized seems like it plays a big role in the Vietnamese national identity, at least historically. Vietnam is moving past that but it is still very evident in many of the historical sites in Vietnam and I would argue in some of modern Vietnamese foreign policy. While Vietnam and Laos had the same colonizers, the French, Laos seems way more accepting of the French then the Vietnamese. For instance, many young Lao can still speak French while most young Vietnamese can't. I believe that this is because Laos was granted more self government under French administration than Vietnam was. Thailand has a totally different colonial narrative. Thailand was never actually colonized and remained independent through the Age of Imperialism. In Thailand this is attributed to the wise leadership of the House of Chakri (the family of the current Thai monarch). The depictions of The House of Chakri, in particular the late Thai King HM Bhumibol Adulyadej, and Ho Chi Minh were remarkably similar. Both are show as wise leaders who are above criticism and are loved by all. Their images can be seen around, although I saw way more of HM Bhumibol Adulyadej and even the current King HM Maha Vajiralongkorn, who is far less popular than his father, in Thailand than I did Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam. Still, Ho Chi Minh is still on all the money and he is sitting in a glass box in Hanoi (while Bhumibol Adulyadej was also sitting in a glass box when I was in Bangkok the government had plans to cremate him soon). The reverence for Ho Chi Minh extended to Laos, who's current governement was put in place by Ho Chi Minh and the Vietnamese Communists during the Vietnam War. Ho Chi Minh seemed to pop up more randomly in Luang Prabang than he did in Hanoi actually. The relationship between Laos and Vietnam andros and Thailand is kind of odd. All three are ASEAN member states so Lao, Vietnamese, and Thai citizens can all easily travel to and work in any ASEAN member state. This seems to mean that Vietnamese and Lao citizens go to Thailand to work and not the other way around. Furthermore, while the Lao language is actually closely related to Thai (and are actually mutually intelligible) and Thailand (still called Siam thrn) even ruled over parts of Laos for a time, Laos is still closer to Vietnam. While I could go on, this post has to end somewhere and that might as well be here. If I end up feeling like I have more to say I will do a part two. I decided not to pull a Jill Stein and contest the public vote because my group won, so instead I will pull a Donald Trump and both accept my victory while still stating the voting was rigged. In short, we had to give our final presentation on Tesla in China in front of the judges, who were all ECNU professors, and the other participants. Four of my group mates were doing the presentation, my other group mate along with myself were doing the Q&A. My odd degree came in handy when one of the judges started asking us Tesla questions about stuff we didn't research but I knew anyway. Afterwards they announced the winners (not one of the eight groups got any lower than third place) and the foreign and domestic excellent students from each group. You may be pleased to know that I won that dweeb prize too. Finally they gave us all certificates of participation and gifts for the winners of the contest and the dweeb prize. Very nice gifts mind you, I now have three nice notebooks and two pretty pens in addition to the three certificates I got. While I have a thing for paperwork, that is a bit much. They then took us to the campus restaurant (not cafeteria, sit down restaurant) for dinner. Dinner was alright, it was free so that is nice but it was too Shanghaiese (delicate as the Shanghaiese say or too sweet and too oily as the rest of China says). We played some games, took some pictures, then we're ushered back to the bus to return to our campus.
Overall it wasn't a bad experance. I wish we spent more time with our groups and less time on the bus. I also wish it was a bit better organized (I actually have to write my own name into my first prize "Certificate of Honor"), sometimes it felt like they were just hunting for stuff for us to do. I also wish it was worth a bit more, I put a lot of time into this for a certificate I might not be able to use. I am glad I got more interaction with the Chinese ECNU students as I believe the internationals and the domestic students don't interact with each other much at all. I feel like the Global Business Project has potential, it just needs some kinks worked out. It is its first year so I don't want to be too harsh. I hope the GBP succeeds because then ECNU might introduce more, similar, programs in the future, which I believe would be a plus to both the international and domestic students. I have had a bit of time to think about my trip to Beijing. While Beijing is a cool city I personally like Shanghao more. To get the two biggest things out of the way: Beijing has a fare superior collection of historic stuff than Shanghai and definatly feels more Chinese (Shanghai is often discribed as being basically its own thing). The food in Beijing is also pretty good even though the Hui make better noodles then the Beijingers. Beijing is a very poluted city though, I still have a cough I picked up in Beijing. Beijing also has a slower pace than Shanghai and, unlike Shanghai, closes. If I had to conpair Beijing to an American city I would say it feels like Phildelphia with different major problems. Both Philly and Beijing close early and are very historical. While Beijing is more historical then Philedelphia that is kind of an unfair conparison since Beijing is so much older than the discovery of America. For some Chinese this statement will be contreversial, since Beijing and Shanghai have a New York LA rivalry thibg goung on, I enjoyed Beijing but I like Shanghai more. I would still recomend going to Beijing if you are ever in China, you simply can't beat the history.
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AuthorI am a junior at Juniata College spending a year studying abroad at East China Normal University. Please feel free to join my on my journey to China and beyond. Archives
November 2021
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