China Meiguo

I don't think I'm alone in my belief that the American healthcare system has become a disaster. We seem to be paying more and more money to receive less and less care. While the much-criticized healthcare reform law recently enacted is in theory intended to deal with some of the problems and abuses that have become prevalent, it remains to be seen whether any significant improvment will result.

I've had personal experiences that have helped form my pessimistic view of American healthcare as well as hearing of similar experiences from other people. For example, a few years ago, I was having some stomach problems that caused a lot of pain. After seeing several different doctors over 2 years and being billed God knows what for the battery of tests (thank God, most of it was covered by insurance), I was no better off. No diagnosis, no cure. So I ended up going to a doctor who practiced traditional Chinese medicine who a friend recommended. After a few sessions of acupuncture, acupressure and drinking some herb tea, I felt a lot better. Although not covered by insurance, the cost was much less than what I paid (not covered by my insurance) for all the fancy modern Western healthcare.

Tiananmen Square (天安门广场; Tiān'ānmén Guǎngchǎng) in Beijing is the largest city square in the world. Tiananmen literally means Gate of Heavenly Peace and the square adopted the name its northern gate, originally built in 1417 during the Ming Dynasty, which leads into the Forbidden City. Here are some photos I took during a visit in June, 2010 as part of Belmont University's summer study abroad program in China.

During my recent trip to China with Belmont University's summer study abroad program, we got to spend 4 days in Tibet and on one of those days, we took a 4.5 hour, very bumpy bus ride trip to Namtso Lake (aka Nam Co; Chinese: 纳木错; Nàmù Cuò; English: Heavenly Lake). It was worth the trip since the lake, which is the highest salt water lake in the world (4,718 m), and its surroundings, offer some spectacular scenery.

Next month (late August), I'll be moving to China to teach at Florida International College (FIC) of Zhengzhou University so I've decided to start blogging again about some of my experiences. FIC is a partnership between Zhengzhou University and the University of Florida which began in 2007. I'll be there for at least one year and am looking forward to teaching in China, but have a bunch of things to try to take care of before leaving the U.S. (moving internationally is no simple task).

I also spent part of this summer in China with a summer study abroad program from Belmont University (as well as doing some traveling in Thailand, the Philippines and Hawaii). The Belmont groups spent 3 weeks in China visiting Beijing, Zhengzhou, Luoyang, Xi'an, Tibet and Shanghai. It was a great trip and I'll post more about it in future. For now, here's a few photos.

Google, the world's most popular search engine, has had a troubled existence in China, but is still hanging in there to some extent after being given a reprieve of sorts from the Chinese government. While Google dominates the online search business in the U.S. and much of the world, it has been a distant second place in the world's most populous nation.China's leading search engine Baidu is known, among other things, for providing links to lots of unauthorized online music. However, since Baidu merely links to, rather than providing the unauthorized music files, it is not liable for the resulting copyright infringements under Chinese law.

In an effort to compete with Baidu, in 2008, Google introduced a free legal music service in China.The Google Music service is an innovative experiment in an attempt to convert illegal downloading to legal downloading. The music service is operated by Chinese Internet music company Top100.cn, owned in part by NBA basketball star Yao Ming. Top100.cn secured licenses from record companies and music publishers to offer their songs and recordings for download in China. Mainland Chinese Internet users can therefore legally download a huge variety of music for free although Google and Top100.cn hope to eventually make the venture profitable through online advertising (which has so far proven not to be a profitable business model for most music websites).
Google's China operations took a major turn for the worse in March, 2010, when it publicly announced that it would no longer comply with Chinese censorship regulations for online content. However, instead of totally giving up the the Chinese search engine market, Google simply rerouted users in mainland China to its Hong Kong website (although Hong Kong is part of China, it is largely self-governing and therefore not subject to mainland China's censorship regulations).
While rerouting searchers seemed like a clever solution, the Chinese authorities indicated that this still violated Chinese law and that Google's Internet content provider license (which allows commercial websites to operate in China) might not be renewed as a result.In response, Google recently started merely providing a link to its Hong Kong webpage instead of automatically rerouting Chinese Internet searchers. It appears that this change may satisfy Chinese authorities which indicated today that Google's license will be renewed.

Interestingly, in addition to providing a link to its Hong Kong search engine, the google.cn page also provides a link to Google Music which is still operational in China. Despite all the problems Google has experienced, it seems that it is not yet willing to give up on the Google Music service and has accordingly made an additional investment in Top100.cn. Chinese media have reported that both Google and Yao Ming have invested in a second funding for Top100.cn.

Although its impossible to know how all this will turn out, Google's music service is still hanging on even though Google's main incentive in offering the music service (gaining search engine market share in China) has been seriously diminished. Google may hope that if its music search service ultimately becomes profitable in China, it can be introduced in other parts of the world as well. As with most online music business ventures, continued existence is iffy and profitability is only something that can be hoped for in the future.

James Clavell was a British author who wrote several novels set in Asia (Hong Kong, Japan and Singapore). Clavell’s interest in Asia was sparked by his actual experiences. He joined the British Royal Artillery at age 16 and fought the Japanese in Malaya where he was wounded by machine gun fire, captured and became a prisoner of war at Changi Prison in Singapore. This could not have been a good experience since Changi was notorious for poor living conditions and the brutal treatment of prisoners by the Japanese. Its therefore somewhat surprising that Clavell’s novel’s generally portray the Japanese in a positive light, especially the samurai culture portrayed in Clavell’s most famous novel, Shogun.

In 2006, I visited several cities in China as part of a summer study abroad program with Belmont University. One of the cities we visited was Nanjing, an important city in many parts of Chinese history. One of the darker parts of its history occured when the Japanese invaded in 1937 and brutally massacred several hundred thousand Chinese residents which became known as the Nanking Massacre or the Rape of Nanjing (the title of the book by Iris_Chang). I was shocked, not only by the atrocity itself, but also by the fact that I'd never really heard much about it and didn't realize the extent and exceptionally barbaric nature of the Japanese troops which rivaled if not surpassed the worst atrocities committed by the Nazi's. None of the American students in our group had heard of it at all which seems to illustrate the overly Westernized version of history in the U.S. education system.

The German/Chinese co-produced film, The Diaries of John Rabe was shot in Shanghai as well as Nanjing and features an international cast including German actors, Steve_Buscemi (playing American doctor Robert Wilson), Chinese star Zhang Jingchu and Japanese actors Teruyuki Kagawa and Akira Emoto. It was released in 2008 in Germany and China, but to my knowledge hasn't made it to the U.S. There are several other films dealing with the Nanjing massacre so it looks like this chapter of Chinese history may finally get some more international publicity.