The People's Republic

Hey CEP,

I’m in China! It was frantic at work before I left, and being in Beijing sometimes feels very frantic as well (especially compared to Santa Fe), but actually now that I’m here I am much more relaxed. China is surprising and at the same time matches many of my expectations. Wikipedia.com is blocked here so some students we are working with don’t even know what it is. I expected that information would be carefully controlled so blocked sites aren’t surprising. But how can a country move so quickly and have so many McDonalds when they can’t access certain web sites? How can this balance of freedom and state-exercised control co-exist and not get in the way of 1.3 billion people?

Beijing is like a bigger version of New York City, larger in geographical terms and population but less dense. I can’t get my bearings as the streets change name every few blocks, and the names are long and so foreign to me that I can’t seem to remember many of them. There is construction everywhere- new apartment buildings and office buildings on every block. Apparently mountains surround the city but you can’t actually see them because of the huge buildings and immense blanket of smog that sits on the streets. I feel quite safe, maybe because I’m taller than most people I pass. This must be what my boy Yao Ming feels when he walks around Houston.

I have been thinking about you and talking about you with a few colleagues here. I have a new audience to help me work through my emotions out loud on long walks through the city- I don’t think they had any idea of what they were in for when they gently asked about you and me and my life and current state of confusion. They’re “good people,” as you and Rich would say, so I feel comfortable sharing with them and I appreciate their patience with me.

On another note, I’m sure you have seen Netty’s blog on her myspace page, the one that makes me laugh and makes me cringe when I see pictures of my baby sister with a red plastic cup in her hand. Now I have dragged her in to this blog, as she is posting messages for me while I’m traveling. Turns out most blogs are blocked here, because, you know, people expressing their thoughts and feelings are obviously bad for the state. Paranoid much?