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Category Archives: China Trip

Sewing and Reaping

(Balinyouqi town, Chifeng prefecture, Inner Mongolia) So more people can hear her story…

Congratulations! In the face of a very difficult selection process, one of your photos was selected to be included in the Weatherhead East Asian Institute and Columbia University’s Photography Society’s upcoming exhibition. This is a strong testimony to your talent, as we received over 130 photos submitted and had room for only 25. The jury was very impressed by your work and looks forward to including it in the exhibition.

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Posted in China Trip, Development.

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By qui tacet – September 19, 2009
Wokai microfinancing China’s development

(Balinyouqi town, Chifeng prefecture, Inner Mongolia) The seamstress I interviewed had used her loan to purchase an electric sewing machine, boosting her productivity. I’ll post the interview transcript soon…

Dear readers, you’re probably aware I’m involved with a China microfinance nonprofit, but just in case you aren’t:

What is Wokai?

Wokai delivers an internet microfinance platform that allows individuals to provide Chinese microentrepreneurs with loan capital. Our organization acts as an intermediary in this process, transferring funds from contributors abroad to microentrepreneurs in China through our field partners. Watch our video presentation!

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Posted in China Trip, Development.

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By qui tacet – June 6, 2009
Development with eyes open

(Beijing) She was there early every morning outside the subway stop.

Since I was staying with a friend who goes to the Foreign Affairs University, I had quite a walk every morning to take the subway to the Wokai office, and on the way there was a BOC branch office, and right outside was a covered area where homeless people congregated to play chess and chat. The one I noticed the most was this old man, who was always there reading a newspaper. He had a dog (everyone in Beijing has dogs, even homeless people!) and when I was walking back late at night from the subway, I would see them cuddled there asleep.

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Posted in China Trip, Development.

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By qui tacet – March 3, 2009
Pyongyang Diaries: Getting There

(Beijing station) The Dandong express gets you halfway there.

It was a time-tested trail: Get to Dandong, join a tour group, and cross the border. Geoffrey had done the same, and before him, different groups of Singapore students at Beida. All I had to do was follow in their footsteps. A Korean friend who studied in Beijing had went up to Dandong but decided to stay on the Chinese side of Mt. Baekdu, peering across the border into the land of the morning calm. That was probably the closest she could get with an ROK passport, at least before the Hyundai Asan tours started.

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Posted in China Trip, Korea - Pyongyang Diaries, Politics.

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By qui tacet – February 7, 2009
Counterfeiting and the Renminbi

(Beijing) Trans: Warning: If we discover counterfeit bills, the police will deal with you!!!

Before going to China, I had considered acquiring RMB from the banks in New York, but decided that the exchange rate would have been poorer since the supply of RMB here would have been very limited. So I brought a stack of US dollars to China with the expectation that I would exchange it there. But when I arrived at Beijing’s terminal 3, I found that the moneychangers there were offering a terrible rate, so I resolved to go out into the city and find a better one.

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Posted in China Trip, Development, Economics.

1 comment

By qui tacet – January 28, 2009
Game theory and the Beijing subway

(Beijing subway) Lost in an ocean of people…

Despite the frequent exhortations of station attendants to “先下后上” (let passengers get off before you board) and to respect “中华人民传统美德” (traditional Chinese values), taking the Beijing subway at peak hours is like an epic battle.

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Posted in China Trip, Economics.

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By qui tacet – January 5, 2009
Beijing’s dogs and the one child policy

(Beijing) Nick loves dogs!

Despite the ‘one dog policy’, Beijingers still have a lot of dogs. There must be at least a million small dogs in the city – maybe there are more dogs than kids. I walk by dozens every day on my way to work, and usually none of them are leashed. They just roam around while the owner walks behind. You have to be careful because they leave plenty of deposits everywhere (surprising for their size), and dog owners don’t seem to pick up after.

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Posted in China Trip, Development.

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By qui tacet – January 3, 2009
Practical Languages

(Yonghegong road, Beijing) Actually, I prefer menus with pictures.

I had a conversation with an entrepreneur friend who told me he had hired a Beida grad to join his AI-development team, and I jested that his Mandarin must be much better than mine to have cross-lingual collaboration, to which he replied that he was also learning Spanish. When I asked him why Spanish, he proceeded to list languages in order of the number of speakers worldwide.

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Posted in Business, China Trip, Economics.

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By qui tacet – December 31, 2008
The backdoor to Zhongnanhai

(Zhongnanhai, Beijing) The red sign reads “Long live the great Chinese Communist Party”. A similar sign on the other side reads “Long live the undefeated Mao Zedong theory”

When I was in Washington DC last summer, I really wanted to join a White House tour, but it never materialized – our internship coordinator put one together before I had joined the think-tank. Instead I got to see the Capitol and various congressional buildings through the course of the summer. The closest I got to the White House was with all the other tourists on the South side of the park, peering through the fence, trying to identify which little speck in the distance was the oval office.

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Posted in China Trip, College Life.

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By qui tacet – December 23, 2008
Dragon 100 2008

Celebrating my arrival! (Hong Kong)

Someone somewhere has made a terrible mistake: Somehow I have been numbered among the hundred “young Chinese leaders”.

Congratulations! You have been selected as a delegate for the Dragon 100 Young Chinese Leaders Forum 2008! The Dragon 100 Young Chinese Leaders Forum 2008, will take place in Hong Kong and the Pearl River Delta Region in Mainland China, 22-30 August 2008, where 100 delegates worldwide would register to our hotel in Hong Kong on 21 August 2008.

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Posted in China Trip, College Life.

3 comments

By qui tacet – July 6, 2008
Microfinancing the harmonious society

One World, One Dream? (Jianwai SOHO, Beijing)

When I first got to Beijing, my roommate Nick, who is a licensed tour guide, wanted to show me the central business district Guomao (国贸) where there’s been quite a bit of commercial development, such as the architecturally impressive CCTV building. One of the building complexes there is Jianwai SOHO, an upmarket mostly-expatriate residential and shopping area, where the glass-and-steel towers have rooftop gardens. Posh.

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Posted in China Trip, Development.

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By qui tacet – July 4, 2008
Business Today International Conference 2008

That’s a… different kind of leadership (Forbidden City, Beijing)

So I get to stay at the Marriott again:

CONGRATULATIONS! You have been accepted to the 34th Annual International Conference, “The Dynamics of Leadership: Transformation and Innovation in the 21st Century” held at the Marriott Marquis in Times Square, New York City from November 22nd-25th. Out of over 1,100 applicants, you have been selected to participate in our all-expenses paid affair. The applicant pool was outstanding, with over 100 schools and 30 countries being represented. The conference will be a phenomenal experience as you now have the opportunity to meet over seventy CEOs from across the United States in small seminars and explore New York City with fellow students from all over the world. Get ready to break down Harvard Business School case studies with your peers, discuss crucial topics in politics, business, and entrepreneurship, meet recruiters from top companies, and have an overall incredible experience! To give you an idea of the types of executives you will meet, I’ve attached a list of executives who have participated in our programs over the past year.

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Posted in Business, China Trip, College Life.

2 comments

By qui tacet – June 8, 2008
Microfinance and Post-Disaster Reconstruction

Is microfinance the key to saving us? (Beijing)

As my internship on Chinese microfinance has begun, it is timely to consider the role that microfinance institutions are playing in the reconstruction and recovery of Sichuan. Many MFIs around the world operate in post-conflict zones and post-disaster regions (such as the 2004 Tsunami), and there are important lessons to learn from how they negotiate the challenges and risks involved. During my research I came across a Mandarin press release from an MFI in Sichuan province, the Association for Rural Development of Yilong County. I did a rough translation of it below:

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Posted in China Trip, Development.

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By qui tacet – June 2, 2008
The Great Wall of the Chinese Consulate, part 3

I finally got my visa. The Chinese do have a sense of humor: It has a graphic of the Great Wall printed on the design. Life is full of irony.

The best visa I could get is a double-entry tourist L type with a maximum duration of 30 days per entry. Now my internship is likely to include a day-long bus ride to the Mongolian border and back to use the second entry. Thankfully I brought my econometrics textbook along for self-study, and I don’t think anyone would want to steal it while I’m napping unless he were some rogue social scientist. While I would love to visit UB and meet my friends there (one of which is a real life tribal princess), I hadn’t actually planned on going there this summer. Thank you Beijing, for working so hard to welcome me to the Olympics.

Posted in China Trip.

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By qui tacet – May 23, 2008
The Great Wall of the Chinese Consulate, teil zwei

After a mad eleventh-hour cramming session, I sat for my final exam in statistics. I think the worst thing to possibly think during an examination is “Please let the curve be awesome”, next to “How many points do I need to not get a D?” (As it turned out the curve was pretty good, and I got an A) I staggered out of the stats department back to my room, picked up my suitcase, and made my way to JFK. My summer of adventure and discovery had just begun, but it would not be without obstacles.

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Posted in China Trip, Politics.

1 comment

By qui tacet – May 20, 2008
The Great Wall of the Chinese Consulate

Detoured to Hong Kong… (Beijing)

A month or two back, when discussing summer plans, I told my friends that I was spending my summer interning with a non-profit in Beijing to pursue a research project on microfinance in China, while traveling widely. I felt proud of myself for not following the crowd of investment bankers with their summer analyst positions in the city or in Hong Kong, squandering their precious summer days and nights (and yes, weekends too) in a cubicle in downtown Central peering through arcane Mandarin spreadsheets. And then the visa situation suddenly changed, and my carefully planned summer of productive work and exciting adventures has been frozen in purgatory.

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Posted in China Trip, College Life.

4 comments

By qui tacet – May 9, 2008