Note however, that if I am beginning to get an inkling of understanding of China, I am a complete and utter neophyte on India, having spent only a few weeks here, and being continually baffled by almost everything. I have also seen almost nothing of the country so far, and a half-assed knowledge of Hindi, and more Bollywood movies than I can count, scarcely qualifies me to say anything at all. Yet you cannot shut down your brain, and with all the caveats possible I will try to “think aloud” and see if putting my thoughts down on the screen will make them any clearer.

Inequal development
Trying to quantify a country’s level of development is very treacherous stuff. I have travelled all over China and seen both luxury hotels in Shanghai, and rural schools in Shanxi, bicycling through tiny villages in Xinjiang, and taking buses through southern Yunnan on horrible roads. But how many percentage live in nice flats, and how many sleep on the streets? And how do you weigh certain factors up against others? For India, I have seen only a tiny part of the country so far, although I have read and heard a lot.

It still seems quite clear to me that the difference in development between China and India, today in 2008, is stark. This is especially relevant in all sectors pertaining to government. The train system, the level of roads and other public transportation, the quality of government schools, environmental controls, etc. There is no doubt that there are many problems in China, and I am sure that there are often reasons to criticize the government. Yet there is also a sense that it is continually and relentlessly working to improve the conditions of the entire country. The poorest rural schools are not in great shape, but teachers mostly show up, and so do students - literacy levels are very high.

Roads are quite well maintained, train stations are paragons of order (although this would not necessarily be felt by a random foreign visitor), and cities are well-ordered and orderly developed. There are large urban libraries in bigger cities, as well as cultural centers and museums. In general, althoug there is no doubt that corruption happens frequently in China, it still seems to happen a lot less frequently than in India, where many NGO workers have claimed to me that 80% of all government funds disappear between the central government, and the local level.

So during my weeks in India, both personally experiencing the level of urban and rural neglect (living in one of the poorest states of India, and also recently returning from a visit to a rural site, taking 7,5 quite uncomfortable hours to complete 145 kilometers of distance), I kept struggling with the concept that India being a democracy, with a very vocal press and a large number of independent NGOs, seemed to have a government that was much less efficient, and accountable, than that of China - where freedom of press is curtailed, organizational freedom is very low, and obviously voting the party out of power is impossible.

A tentative solution
Turning this over in my mind (I had plenty of time on my before-mentioned trip), I came up with a tentative explanation for why the Chinese one-party rule would actually be more likely to be accountable, than the Indian system. Let me try to explain.

Just like we learn in economics that although monopolies can charge more than companies in a competitive situation, they can in fact not charge any price they like (or rather - they can, but would not make any money), in the same way one-party systems that wish to remain in power long-term can not drive through any politics they like. China has no tradition of democracy, and Confucianism would seem at first to support very authoritarian rulers, but there is a provision that this is because God’s will is projected through the ruler. If God should cease to view a certain emperor favorably, which would result in widespread economic and social problems in his society, it would be the duty of the citizens to overthrow the ruler.

In this vein, the Chinese government made a kind of social contract with the Chinese people in the 1980’s. They would radically reduce political supervision (total control through work units, people spying on you, etc) to increase economic growth. Their bargain was that they would bring continual growth in welfare and prosperity for all of China, as well as the global ascent of China as a nation (the communists certainly did not invent Chinese nationalism, although they skilfully played to it), and in exchange, the citizens would not bother about politics.

So far, so good: Total responsability
So far, this bargain has worked wonders. Chinese growth has been in the two figures for years, and although it is certainly a much more inequal society than it was 20 years ago, the growth has to large extents benefitted the whole country, and more importantly: most people see opportunities and possibilities, rather than being locked into a situation where only others may prosper.

Certainly overthrowing a government as powerful as the Chinese is a much more difficult task than replacing a leader in India, thus on the outset one would think that the accountability in India would lead to better governance. However, in India there are many parties, as well as local, state and national governments. It is very hard for the common man to place blame on any level, as they continually blame each other, or blame the last party in power. In addition, I am guessing that many voters are voting mostly out of clientelism (we give you rice/loan-waivers just before election), or ideology (the BJP will create the great Hindu nation), rather than rationally for those who promote their long-term interests.

China is different - because there is only one party, for the last fifty years, on all levels. They have total control - and this leads to total responsibility. If the economy should start to falter in China, they can certainly try to blame all kinds of external and international forces like high oil prices, but within China, there is only one force - the Communist Party. They made a bargain, the people have done their part, and they will darn sure make sure the Communist Party does its part.

Planning for the long-term
When I was travelling through Kazakhstan I saw posters everywhere with the number 2030. It later turned out that Kazakhstan’s strong president had an economic 30 year vision for how to turn his country into an “Asian Snow Leopard” (not content to be an Asian tiger, clearly). At the time, I though tthat it was a bit scary with a “democratic” politician with a 30 year plan, it didn’t seem like he was planning to go somewhere.

On the other hand, there are good things to be said for long-term planning as well. The Chinese Communist Party clearly plans to be around during the next 10-20 or even 50 years, and since there is no election tomorrow, they are able to make long-term strategic plans that will enable the country to continue its steady growth. There are no four year terms that cause silly actions like the recent Indian loan-waiver for farmers (which penalized those who had actually paid back their loans, and destroyed all loan-repaying discipline for the future) and they can concentrate on things that will strengthen the rural sectors in the long term, building infrastructure, increasing educational investment, shoring up resources globally, etc.

They lucked out and got some nice non-democratic leaders
Ethan Zuckerman (can’t find the direct link), when writing about Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, has written that ideally you’d want a dictator that is planning to stay around for a while, because he is not likely to run the society completely to the ground, since he’d like to have something to extract resources from even in the future. Although China has gone through incredible upheavals and hardships during the first 30-40 years of the Communist Party, one could say that they have been rather lucky during the last 20 years, and this is likely to continue. Because the leaders of China are not out for personal enrichment at all (if they were, they would rather have started internet companies). Certainly some mid-level caders skim off transfers and sustain mistresses in Hong Kong and nice houses, but I believe strongly that the motivations of the top caders are all to make China stronger and better for all that live there. They are patriots who want to see the rise (or the return to their proper place) of China, after their 150 year of humiliation.

One might surely not agree with all their actions, one would hope for a much more open internet, more freedom of speech and assembly, etc. But on the whole, they are pushing China forwards, and they are taking full responsibility for their actions - in the long term. And honestly, if I had the choice between that, and hundreds of random politicians, mostly with a criminal background, killing their opponents, squabbling in parliament, busing in peasants to demonstrate in their favor, and caring only about power and privilege and not at all about the progress of the nation, and taking no responsibility for the outcomes of their actions… I might have to go with the current leadership. And that’s no easy choice for someone who is at heart an absolute democrate.

I might be giving India a hard rap here, and I am excited to be exploring this fascinating country more and learning more about it. However, this writing is more about China than about India, and for me it’s interesting because I believe I did come up with two reasons - total responsability and long-term perspective - why a one-party system in a relatively open state, that is committed to the long-term growth of the country can be more accountable and produce better governance than a (dysfunctional) democracy. Doesn’t mean it will always happen.

Comments welcome.

Stian

They have started a system of free city bicycles - similar to what they do in for example Paris. It’s not as smooth as it could be yet, borrowing a bike requires an ID card, and a 300 yuan deposit, and the worst part is that the bicycle has to be returned to the place where it was borrowed. However, there are stations all around the West Lake area, and some others in the city core, and the first hour of borrowing is free. If you want to borrow it for longer, it’s only about 1 or 2 yuan per hour. Although this is a relatively new program, I saw many people enjoying a bike ride on a sunny Saturday around the lake.

I would love to know more about the development of health insurance programs in China, but my friend told me that all children in Hangzhou are automatically covered, and most adults with proper jobs receive coverage through their companies (my friend is self-employed, and pays about 100 yuan per month). This health insurance does not cover all costs, but it provides a “ceiling” for annual health expenditure at 1500 yuan, after which health care becomes free. This is incredibly important, because the newspapers are full of stories about families that go bankrupt and end up in destitution, because on of the family members fall seriously or chronically ill.

I also read in the newspaper that there were now projects to extend the health insurance that farmers in Sichuan receive for a very low price, to hospitals out of the province. Many farmers from Sichuan go to Beijing or Shanghai to work, and if they fall sick there (or have an accident), they often cannot afford to get treated in Beijing, and have to take the train back to Sichuan to get treated. Now, at least two hospitals in Beijing have signed an agreement with Sichuan province, and will honor Sichuan health insurance. Clearly, health insurance is at an early stage in China, but I still think all these different moves are incredibly valuable to citizens.

Primary schools in China have long been supposed to be free, but this has not been the case in practice, with schools charging all kinds of extra fees, and depending on these to stay open - thus excluding many children, whose parents cannot pay, especially in rural areas. From last year, it seems that the policy of free primary schooling, followed by increased transfers from the government, has finally been carried out, and all the schools I talked to in rural China said, with considerable pride, that the school now was completely free (including textbooks, but excluding 10-20 RMB per year for note books), and that enrollment was virtually hundred percent.

There are lots of problems in China, and innumerable challenges. Certainly I would like to see more freedom of speech, less blocking of the internet, and many other things. But as I write this, sitting on a modern and clean train that does Hangzhou to Shanghai in 160 km/h, and I think about what I mentioned above, and also what I wrote earlier about the greening of China - I also see a huge amount of positive developments, large and small. And I see many “democratic” governments in the world that are doing a lot less to benefit all their citizens. I can completely understand why the West’s complete lack of understanding or appreciation of this, can frustrate and anger Chinese who are tired of being scolded and belittled. Let us keep criticizing the bad things, but let us also celebrate the good things.

Stian
PS: Harmonious society (和谐社会) is a term introduced by Hu Jintao to denote that Chinese development will focus more on the social development of all citizens, and not just blindly on GDP.

Introduction

In May 2008, I visited two Rural China Education Foundation field sites. I wanted to examine the evolution of their relatively recent library programs, and see if I could make any suggestions. Site 1 was located in Shangdong province, and Site 2 in Shanxi.

My involvement
I spent six full days in Site 1, arriving on May 6th and leaving on May 12th. I lived in an empty house behind the village head’s house. I spent four days at the primary school, listening in on classes, and talking to students and teachers. I also taught a few English classes, and participated in a parents-teacher meeting. I met with the reading committee three times, and the reading committee arranged for me to meet with a number of readers from the village at a “mass meeting” in the school. I was supposed to do an English corner in the weekend, but I think the information was poorly announced, and only one student showed up.

I spent May 13th to 20th at Site 2 school. I lived in an office at the village government compound, and spent all my time at the school. I listened in on classes, taught a few classes, observed students using the library, and spent a lot of time talking to the RCEF volunteers there, as well as talking to the teachers and interacting with the students. Together with the RCEF volunteers, I also visited a farmer’s organization in a nearby village, including their library, and their handweaving cooperative.

Outline
I will describe each field site, the current library situation as I perceived and was told, and the feedback that I received from the teachers, children and villagers at each place. At the end, I will provide some of my own suggestions for the future. I will provide more background information about Site 1 than about Site 2, because there are permanent RCEF volunteers at Site 2 that understand the place very well. Note that much of what I report here is what I have been told by only one informant, and might not be correct - it should be quite clear what is based on my own observation, and what I was told. As for my suggestions, evaluating whether they are appropriate or not is dependent on a deeper understanding of the teachers, students and villagers, and they are offered with the hope that RCEF members will be able to evaluate which might be practicable and not based on their deeper understanding of the dynamics at the field sites than I was able to gain.

Report from Site 1

Village
There are officially 1400 inhabitants in the village, but actually 1800 - 400 are “unregistered”.  About 70% of the families are economically doing well, and 30% are not doing so well. Many of the older people are illiterate (half of the over 60’s, some of the over 40’s). There are large gaps in education between men and women among older people.  The head of the village took over as village head in 2001 when they began with democratic elections. The economic situation has improved after they began a market for used machine parts from factories. Shandong is richer than the Western provinces, but Site 1 is in one of the poorest corners of Shandong. According to the principal at the primary school, the villagers that do farming and trading make at least 30,000 yuan per year, whereas the villagers who only do farming might make as little as 10,000 yuan per year. There are lots of opportunities for “dagong” (looking for factory jobs etc) in the area, so not many migrate far away.

Village head
The head of the village lives in a very simple house - the principal, who is a friend of him, says that if he had not been a village head, he could have made a lot of money, and that his poverty was proof that he wasn’t corrupt. He has a lot of books and magazines about development of the countryside lying around, the old guys from the reading committee seemed to often hang out there, and read some of the material. He has been five years in the army, and lived in many places in China. He says he is the most highly educated at his age in the village.

School system
There is an elementary school in Site 1. The middle school is very close by. The high school is in a township, not that far away. Finally, there are about 20 university students in the village.

Since last year, the schools don’t require any student fees (which the principal was proud about), only 15-20 RMB per year for the notebooks (the textbooks are free). According to the principal, there was virtually 100% enrollment in primary and secondary school. As for high school (gaozhong), he said that any student that wanted, could get in, but many parents chose to keep the children at home to put them to work when they reached that level. There are also a bit more boys than girls attending high school, but the situation is better than before.

Elementary school
The principal also teaches science. He has gone to the RCEF training in Beijing, and was proud of being a “member” of RCEF. The school has 13 teachers, 10 are “real” teachers with more or less than a specialization in teaching, whereas 3 are “daike laoshi” - villagers that don’t have any higher education or teacher training, and are paid much less (280 yuan per month). The teachers are paid between 1000 and 1700 yuan per month. The schedule is daily from about 7:30 to 12, then a three hour break when the students and teachers return home to eat and sleep, and teaching proceeds again from 15 to 18 - 18:30. I asked if some of the time during the “lunch break” could be used for activities, but they said that was very difficult, everyone wanted to eat and sleep.

The school has 200 students (counting the kindergarten), and has won the best school in the district for the last 7 years, which they are very proud of. It is also the smallest school in the district. Many students from other areas would like to enroll, but are unable to, since it is based on where you live.

A very positive aspect is that they seem to really encourage continual improvement and peer-critique, with a system of teachers listening in on other teachers’ classes (sometimes even across schools). During the last teachers’ meeting on Friday, they distributed who would listen in on whose classes during the next week. I never heard anyone provide feedback on what they had seen though - but this might be done in private to save face, etc. The principal presented it as the school having always been quite good, open-minded, etc, but with the RCEF volunteers in the summer, they had received a “real boost”. His superior, who was visiting to listen in on classes, also said that he noted a “new atmosphere” in the school after the RCEF summer volunteers - hard to tell if he was being sincere though.

One teacher I talked to, when asked what he wanted in terms of future training, said he would love to visit other schools to see how they teach - especially city schools.

Use of computers
They have two computers, with a quite fast internet connection. The teachers stated that they often used the internet to look up information etc. However, they did not seem very internet savvy, and I am sure some training in information finding, judging what material is reliable, etc, would be useful. They also have incredibly slow typing speeds - the principal spent a lot of time typing up a report or something. Some of the more wealthy villagers also have computers (I visited one such family - according to their bookmarks, they mainly watched movies online, and got information about weather etc). The cheapest computers cost around 3000 yuan, but according to the principal, a larger obstacle was the fee to connect the computers to the internet, which might be more than 1000 RMB per year.

Impressions of RCEF volunteers
Everyone I met seemed to be very excited about the RCEF volunteers that had been there in the summer (zhijiao). They showed me lot’s of pictures, and always talked about them. Especially an American volunteer came up a lot, and I was often asked if I knew him. The students said they had liked the volunteers a lot, especially the fun English classes and the hands-on science classes. They also believed that the teachers were getting “better and better” since the RCEF volunteers had been there. (Their main complaint was against teachers that used physical punishment frequently).

Library

The library was started by RCEF volunteers from Shandong university in March 2008.

Custodian
If I understood correctly, there was originally an older teacher who lives in the school building (the only one) who was in charge of the library, however - possible because he or someone in his family had been sick for a month, and he had been away - the main responsibility now seemed to rest on a young local teacher.

Physical location
The library is stored in a small room with two shelves. The room is kept locked and the young teacher, as well as some from the reading committee (dushihui) have keys. The books all seemed to be in very good condition (not strange since the library has not been open for very long). The library holds books both for children and for adults in the village. Each book is marked with a category, and a unique number.

Procedure for students
The students are not allowed into the room, but every Wednesday they can choose from a list of the whole book collection - a teacher then goes and fetches the book immediately. This list only contains the code (including the category), the title of the book, and the price. Currently there is only one printed list in the entire school. I never got to witness the actual distribution, but it seems clear from interviews that the teacher handling the distribution - often the young teacher - plays a guiding role in the selection, for example suggesting certain books that might be relevant to their studies and preventing them from accessing books that she deems inappropriate for them (for example books about ghosts or other scary things). They said that in the future each teacher would have a copy of the list, and would perhaps be able to arrange borrowing for his/her own class. All borrowings are written in a notebook, with the name of the student, and the name/number of the book borrowed. This makes it very easy to get a quick count of how many books have been borrowed (the students and teachers are noted in one side of the book, and starting from behind, are the names of the villagers, and the books they have borrowed).

The students do not pay deposits for the books, but they have to pay the cost of a book if it is lost. This has happened one time so far. Some secondary school students who know about the library also come directly to the young teacher to borrow books.

Feedback from students
They like to read tonghuashu (children’s stories), gushishu (story books) and zuowenshu (essay books?). When shown examples, these categories looked very similar to me, but I was told by the students that zuowenshu can help them with their schoolwork. One of the common desires of the students is that they be able to enter the library. They would also like more books - since some of the most popular are often lent to someone else. They would all like to be able to read magazines, and their families never bought them any. I asked if they had any books in their homes, and they all said that there were no books, except for school textbooks. They had been to the bookstore in the township (a bikeride away), but only to buy school supplies etc.

Feedback from teachers
The principal, when asked about the success, said “Although having a library in itself is already a big success, when it comes to promoting the use, we are still in the very beginning phases.” They didn’t have a place large enough for all the students to enter, and he was also very worried about control, and books disappearing. Several of the teachers did borrow books on teaching methods, and they would like more books on this topic.

One young teacher was reading “Optimistic teaching”, and said it helped her whenever she was depressed in her teaching. She also said that in total she read a lot more, now that they had the library, because there was often a lot of “downtime” during the day, and she always kept a book in her drawer ready to be read. They also said they would like more “tool books” (gongjushu), like dictionaries, encyclopaedias etc. However, given the procedure for using the library right now, that doesn’t seem very helpful (one would have to “check out” a dictionary for two weeks to look something up).

One young Chinese teacher said the library was great. He used to read a bit every day for his fifth grade students from a novel that he loved, and he said he couldn’t have done that if the library wasn’t there to provide the book (I later observed him reading in class from this book). He also underlined that more books were needed, because students got frustrated when the books they wanted to borrow were not available. He said he often tested his students orally on the books they had borrowed to see if they had actually read them. He also suggested having a quite corner reserved for reading somewhere, for those students who wanted to read during breaks etc, because the classroom often got very messy and loud (which I also observed).

The young teacher, who is now responsible for the lending to students, said that having the students enter the library would be impossible, they were far too wild, and would drag apart books that two students both wanted to borrow, etc. The sixth grade was the worst, the younger students might be a bit better behaved, she said.

Procedure for villagers
The villagers are usually introduced to the library by the 12-15 members of the reading committee who tell their friends and neighbours etc about it. They have one copy of the book list, and stated that they often introduced appropriate books to people depending on what they worked with, for example books on growing vegetables, books on raising animals, or on fixing machines (because of the used machines market). The reading comittee then goes to the library to get the book for the villager (as far as I understand, they have a key to the library, but not to the school gates. maybe the old man living in the school can open in the evening).

The reading committee never mentioned this, but the young teacher told me that some villagers that had already “understood the system” would come to find her directly at the school to borrow books. The same with some middle school students that didn’t have a library at their school. However, this was difficult, because the school gates are locked during school hours, and the young teacher is often busy teaching, etc.

The villagers pay a deposit for the books according to the price of the book rounded up to the nearest whole yuan. This is returned to them, if they return the book in a good condition.

Reactions from the reading committee
When asked if they didn’t think it was a lot of bother (mafan) to have to go get the books for the villagers, they said they didn’t mind (bu pa mafan), and that they were especially inspired by the RCEF volunteers that had been there in the summer - if these young people can work so hard for free, then we old people should make a contribution as well. They said that both young and old people borrowed books, but a bit more men than women. They would like more books about machines (including how to repair them), raising animals and growing crops, how to live healthy, cooking - what different dishes go together, etc.

One member suggested that they take some relevant books with them when they go around to the villagers, and that in this way, the villagers would be more easily enticed to borrow books. They also wanted to hold more “mass meetings” to promote the library. They are quite happy with the general procedures for the library, said that the RCEF volunteers put down so much “blood and sweat” to write them, so that we shouldn’t change them easily.

Statistics
So far only one book has been lost, and the price was compensated by the student’s family. The library has been open for about 1,5 months (opened 2,5 months ago, but was not operational for one month because of sickness in the family of a key person). So far, roughly 160 books have been borrowed by students (and teachers). Although there are 200 students (including kindergarten) at the school, the teachers said that the lowest grades never borrowed books, and that the “borrowing public” might be around 140 students, which indicated a bit over one borrowed book per student in 1,5 months. When I talked informally with students, fourth grade students indicated that they had borrowed 1-2 books each, and sixth graders that they had borrowed 3-4 books each. Not sure how accurate these numbers are. Among the villagers, about 40 books had been borrowed, which is of course very little. In total, the library has around 530 titles.

Specific suggestions for the library in Site 1

For the school children

• More books - all the teachers, students, and villagers mentioned this. I am guessing that this would be especially relevant to the children’s books, since if every student borrowed one book, that would remove half of the library books from the shelves. If only part of the collection is appropriate for children, and some books are more popular than others, it seems like this would often lead to popular books being unavailable. I would have to study the current collections much more in-depth to ascertain what kind of adult books should be added, although there seems to be a great interest among the teachers for teaching/pedagogics related books, which might be a great place to start. The suggestion about books like dictionaries and encyclopaedias would only be useful if the library was able to be kept open regularly for students to access books.
• Although there is a lot of resistance from teachers to keeping the library open to students, this idea should still not be completely abandoned. Being able to access the library would both promote reading interest (it is much easier to get enticed by a physical book, than a printed out list), but also be a pre-requisite for actively using the library as part of the teaching and learning. The current location is clearly very small, and I am not sure if a larger location can be found. An alternative would be to only let in a certain number of students at a time. Alternatively to take out a number of books at a time to show to a class - either for reading in class, or for borrowing. For example, it is likely that also the younger students would be interested in picture books etc, but might not be able to choose from a list. If a teacher went into the library and picked out a number of simple books with big pictures etc, and brought these to the class and let the students spend an hour doing silent reading, I think even first graders and kindergarten students would be able to benefit from this. Many of the things I will write about improving the experience with the open library at Site 2 would be relevant to a possible future open library at Site 1 as well.
• All the students mentioned that they would love to read magazines, and that they had no access to them currently. I wonder if either the library could subscribe to some youth magazines (perhaps we could be sponsored by the magazines?) if the library is open (this applies to Site 2 as well), or if the library is closed, if each class (nianji) could subscribe to one age-relevant magazine that could stay in the classroom to be read by students between classes, etc. (The old issues could then be cut up and provide material for posters and projects etc).

Reaching the villagers better

• In general, lending to the villagers is still at a very early stage, and this is clearly the area that needs the most thought in Site 1. In a way, what RCEF is doing here is moving from trying to improve primary education - a very narrow and well-defined topic - to the much tricker task of “village development”. In order to do this well, one would have to understand the social relations in the village to a much deeper extent than what I was able to during my short stay. However I have a number of suggestions.
• The library might be promoted during communication to the parents from the school, and especially during parent-teacher meetings (jiazhanghui).
• It seems like it might absolutely be worth experimenting with adding some DVDs/VCDs to the collection, given that almost all villagers have access to DVD player and a television. Many of them are very interested in learning more about farming, taking care of their families etc, but might not be comfortable enough reading long books. There are different considerations here - would the availability of DVDs and VCDs entice more villagers to use the library at all - and thus perhaps in the future also borrow more books? Is it an important priority for RCEF to improve the reading skills also of older villagers, and in this case, would DVDs or VCDs hinder this? Some DVDs might also be used by the teachers, but so far, the big television is hidden in the teacher’s lounge and does not seem to get almost any use.
• Currently the villagers are charged a deposit equivalent roughly to the cost of each book. Although the reading committee insisted that this was never a problem for villagers, I still have my doubts, since everything that makes borrowing more difficult will reduce the amount of borrowings. I wonder if the deposit is really necessary, and if it is, perhaps it would be possible to set a fixed, low amount, for example 5 or 10 yuan, rather than a varying and uneven amount (like 24,50).

I think availability of the books is a huge problem - currently the books are only available either through the reading committee, which shows a list of titles and then fetch the book that is needed, or through villagers directly finding te young teacher at the school, here are some suggestions to either improve these methods, or add new methods:

• It seems like the reading committee, although very committed, only reach a specific subset of the population. This subset is certainly limited by age (quite old) and gender (male), and possibly only to their friends (I don’t understand the social relationships well enough to tell). A possibility would be to either extend the reading committee, or to create separate committees. One possible venue to reach women would be the informal dance groups that exist - perhaps we could work with them to not only distribute books (through the book list), but ideally also form reading groups that meet and discuss the books they read, etc. Even though literacy might be lower among women, I believe that some books, like recipes, books on child health etc, would still find a ready audience - and perhaps starting from this, they could work themselves up to novels, etc. I was wondering if we could also work through some of the female teachers at the primary school, although they are all quite young, and I am not sure how well connected they are.
• Another group is the younger people. I was wondering whether we could for example induce the university students to take a leading role here - possibly against some kind of symbolic reward or “honor”, however I am not sure how much time they spend in the village (but even if they are just there during the summer months, this option would still be worth exploring). The same applies to the high school students. I don’t know how many young men and women live in the village, or if they have mostly left to find work, but they would also constitute and important group.
• Although the teachers are strongly opposed to opening the library for children, I would propose that the library be opened for access by the villagers during for example one or several nights each week. There are unlikely to be many of them coming at once, and so the small space available would not be a large problem. The only thing needed would be someone volunteering to keep it open, and record borrowings, which if rotated among the reading committee should not be an insurmountable burden. This would enable villagers to directly browse for books, and immediately check out interesting material.
• One of the members of the village committee suggested that they bring some of the books with them around in the village to show to the villagers. This is not a bad idea, and to take that a bit further, one thing that would probably increase the access of the library enormously is some kind of a library-bicycle. I am thinking of a three-wheel bicycle with a luggage rack, of the kind that already exists in the village, with the capacity to carry 50-hundreds of books in display format. In this way, a good selection of the library’s adult material could be put on the bike, and taken around to the different locations in the village where people congegrate, for example in the machine-part market, or outside some of the shops. Villagers would be able to immediately borrow the books they liked (or return books they had finished). It’s quite possible that the necessary material already exists in the village, and the investment would be minimal - what is needed is someone who is enthusiastic about taking on the role as an ambulant librarian. This method is frequently used in Indonesia.
• In Indonesia, much of the idea behind people’s libraries (reading gardens, as they are called) is to make it as informal, and easy to access as possible. Usually the libraries are housed in someone’s house, or, when it expands, in a small structure in someone’s backyard, etc. This idea might not fit at all with a Chinese village, but I still wanted to mention it: What about housing the adult part of the library collection (minus the books on pedagogy and teaching) in for example the head of the village’s house? He or his wife seemed to almost always be around, and many of the other villagers seemed very comfortable about dropping in, leafing through the reading material that his house is already full of, etc. I didn’t discuss this with him, so I don’t know even if he would be willing to do this, and there might be all kinds of problems that I cannot foresee - whether other villagers would be “jealous”, or whether only his friends would use it, and not those who didn’t like him, etc. But unless the library in the school radically expands access to villagers, the primary way for villagers to access books would still be through the reading committee - whether through the list of titles, or in a possible future, through an ambulatory book-bicycle etc. In these cases, the storage location might be arbitrary, but storing it with the head of the village, or someone else in the reading committee, would make it much easier to access for them. Certainly, it would not be hard to find space for the 200+ books in question.

As far as I understand, the different middle schools (chuzhong) near the primary school do not have their own libraries. As seen above, a few middle school students who know about the library come directly to look for the young teacher, and borrow books. Perhaps in the future, this could be expanded, either by giving them a list of book titles, having them order the books they want, and then having a teacher, or student volunteers etc, fetch the books from the primary school library. Or, by using the “library-bicycle” to provide access to library books on a/some set day(s) a week. In both cases, this would probably be contingent on adding more books to the library, and RCEF would have to decide whether it would be a better idea to contribute to libraries directly in the middle schools themselves, and whether they should keep their focus on the primary school. It is natural (and realistic) to believe that primary school students who have had positive experiences with borrowing books during their years at the primary school will be looking for access to more books when they reach middle school, and it would be sad if they did not have access. In fact, a generalized service with an ambulatory library bicycle in the village, would also potentially reach the middle school and high school students who reside there, so it doesn’t have to happen through the schools.

I will provide ideas for integrating the library into teaching and learning, and how to manage an open library, after a description of the situation at Site 2. Most of this is or can be relevant to Site 1 as well.

Report from Site 2

Brief introduction
As I stated above, I will not describe the village and the school in as much detail as above, because there are people in RCEF who understand this much better than me. Suffice to say that the village itself is a lot smaller than Site 1, and is also quite a bit further removed from the closest township (still in bicycling range). There is also no regular public transport to this village. The primary school was originally a publicly run school, that was closed down because of low student numbers, and taken over by a local couple who have turned it into a non-profit (minban) dormitory primary school. Many of the kids, who stay at the school for 12 days, and then go home for two days, are the children of migrant workers, and stay with their grandparents.

Because the school is not run by the government, it has a bit more wiggle-room in experimenting, but they are still tied to a lot of regulations, and it would be more correct to call it a Chinese primary school that is committed to excellence, teacher development, and a slightly more rounded view of development, rather than a full-blown experimental school with an alternative pedagogics. The classes I attended at Site 2 were very similar to the ones I attended in Site 1, but the teachers were often trying to push the envelope a little bit, and involve the students more. In addition, because it is a dormitory school, there is a much larger space for activities outside of class that can contribute to the children’s development. A great example is the fields behind the school, where different grades grow vegetables, and where the kids run enthusiastically every day after class to water “their” plants - this is a great way of connecting the children to their agricultural heritage, and also provides a potential plethora of opportunities for integrating real life into teaching about for example the environment, plants, etc.

Two volunteers from RCEF have been living on and off in the village since October, and the school currently has one long-time teaching fellow who teaches English. The school is also connected to a primary school in the US, who has provided pen pals for one grade, and there were also pictures of a school class from that school in the library, etc.

The library
The library is in a room the size of a classroom, with shelves lining all the walls, and a large table in the middle of the room, with a few benches. The books are organized by groups and displayed around the room - there seems to still be a lot of space for more books (partly because a lot of the books were in circulation when I arrived). There is also a computer in the library, with an internet connection, as well as a number of masks for disguises, and some sports equipment that the students get access to by asking a teacher. As far as I understood, the students are able to use the library once a week, during which time they enter the library and spend time reading books in the library, as well as check out books to bring with them. The books to be borrowed are noted on individual index cards for each student.

Statistics
It is much harder to provide statistics on the use of this library for two different reasons. First of all, because it is a partly-open library, many books are read during “opening hours”, and not officially registered as checked out. In addition, the way registration of borrowings happen makes it very difficult to quickly estimate borrowings. It also makes it hard to find out who has borrowed a specific book. However, the library seemed very well liked - students were enthusiastically reading books during their visits in the library, and during some of the “quiet” hours during the day, when students have to self-study, I saw many reading intently in their library books (including some of the youngest students, which is an interesting contrast to Site 1).

Suggestions

Improving the library environment, and access hours

• Site 2 has already begun well, by finding a well-sized room for the library, and allowing students direct access. That this is successful is clear from the enthusiasm of the children. However, I believe that the real potential of the library has not yet been realized. Right now, the students are only able to access the library one or a few times a week.  Because the school is a dormitory school, students - in contrast with the students at Site 1 - spend all their day at the school, and have lot’s of free play time, where individual students could potentially visit the library. Barriers to more general “opening hours” are both the need for supervision, and the fact that the library, when I was at the school, was frequently used as an “office” by RCEF volunteers, a place to hold teacher meetings etc.
• As for the fact that the library is being used as an “office”, is a result of the lack of space at the school. Hopefully this will be partly remediated by for example the new wooden buildings that will arrive. To a certain extent though, if individual teachers wanted to use the library to study, this wouldn’t be an obstacle to opening it to the kids - but when RCEF volunteers use laptops, with cables stretched across the room, etc, combining it with library services becomes problematic.
• Supervision is also a difficult problem. Perhaps the situation will be easier next year, with the addition of more teachers, and some library service can be assigned to each teacher - during which he or she can also be correcting papers, preparing for class etc. I wonder if it would actually be possible to use students to supervise the room - perhaps selecting among the oldest ones. This would depend on turning the library into a calm reading and studying environment, which is the next point.
• Currently, some of the students entering the library still act in a “wild way”, chasing each others and shouting, etc. This is not improved by the fact that there are masks for disguises, and sports equipment also stored in the room. I believe that successfully extending access to the library would depend on turning it into a place with different rules, and a different atmosphere, than the rest of the school - and instilling into the students the rules of behaviour in a library. The library should be a calm and peaceful oasis, where students can retreat from the wild games and shouts of outside (which are wonderful expressions of youthful enthusiasm, but not appropriate in a library). When one enters the library, one should automatically speak with a lower voice, and calm down. Running around and shouting will not be tolerated. Perhaps the interior of the library can also support this atmosphere, for example one could experiment with playing low classical music, etc. I don’t know if this is too idealistic, but if the students were really trained well in how to behave in a library, it is possible that students could eventually supervise the opening of the library, making sure that students behave, and that all books taken out are registered as borrowed. This would mean that students could go to the library during their breaks, their self-study sessions, or in the evenings, and study on site. This is also a prerequisite for many of the ways of integrating the library into teaching and learning, which I will discuss next.

Integrating the library into teaching and learning

• In addition to simply promoting pleasure reading - which by itself has a hugely positive effect on literacy skills and school learning outcomes, it would be very beneficial to tie use of the library into the curriculum. I have already seen teachers send their students out to find certain countries on the world map pasted on the exterior wall. In the same way, we can imagine sending students to the library to look up something, especially in a reference book (gongjushu), such as a dictionary, encyclopaedia etc - which now become really useful tools for the students. If this happened during class time, the teacher could open the library and bring the students in, even if it it usually closed.
• To extend this, one of the most characteristic features of Western education is project-based work, and in this, a library is essential. From what I understand, this has yet not been tried, but with an open library a teacher could give a group of students (or individual students) the task of gathering information about a topic, for example a certain foreign country, a profession, an animal, etc. They then have to go to the library in their spare time (when it is generally open - see above), find the resources needed, and write up their findings. I think this kind of taks would be very appropriate for at least the 4th-6th graders, and would teach them to work independently, to search for information themselves, to summarize and choose the most important points, to organize their thoughts logically, etc. It also teaches them to regard the library as a place where we go when we are looking about information, and will be a useful preparation whether they will go on to be university students, or farmers who one day will need information about a certain disease, or a certain kind of fodder. If material is available, the results of the students tasks could also be presented on posters, that could be posted both in the classroom, but also in public areas, so that other students could read about it. Or even written on the blackboards. For example, currently, one group could research about earthquakes, another one about Sichuan geography, big disasters in history, etc.
• When it comes to Chinese class (yuwen) and perhaps to a much smaller degree English class for the most advanced students, many of the suggestions I make in the section on increasing reading interest can also be applied.

Increasing reading interest/use of the library

• I would suggest that with increasing reading interest, we set two different goals. The first is to get the students who are not very enthusiastic about reading more interested in the library, and the other is to push students towards more advanced reading materials. I noted that in some of the higher classes, some students would be reading proper novels (for children), whereas others would still be leafing through picture books meant for first and second grade. This isn’t necessarily only linked to reading capabilities, but also in “laziness”, and I believe that these students need to be “challenged” in a positive sense to “stretch further”. Here are some ideas.
• Have students write short book reviews about the books that they like the best, and post them on a board for the other students to see. (Teachers and others can also contribute to this, of course). Variation: Choose one each month, as the most well-written, or the most enthusiastic, and have a small prize, or recognition.
• Have some kind of a price for number of books read, for example a bronze (or white jade, etc) for five books, silver for 10 and gold for 15 books. The students would have to write a tiny book review for each (enough for us to know that they’ve read it, but not so much that it feels like a burden). We should also have some limitation on the kind of books - for the early grades, any books can be OK, but for the higher grades, there should be a minimum amount of pages for example, to avoid them reading five picture books. We could also tie this to the Olympics, having a “reading Olympics”. The people who win can be written on a list (blackboard?), get a recognition (diploma), and even be awarded during an “Olympic prize ceremony”.
• Having a “reading day” or “book day” every year, where all the different activities are tied to books, reading, and libraries.

General ideas around literacy and creativity

• In addition to promoting use of the library, we should promote literacy, writing, and creativity in all forms and shapes.
• We could have a story writing competition, where all students were welcome to submit stories around a certain topic. The prizes could be divided by grades, the best stories could be posted around the school (and also on RCEF’s web page, etc). (They could also exchange stories with the American school - we send you our best three stories, and you send us your best three stories. This would need translation. For example, for Site 2 students: Based on everything you know, write about a day in an American students life).
• How much does custom publishing of books cost in China? What if all the students contributed poems, short stories, reports from field trips and drawings to a book, that was printed, and distributed to the other RCEF sites?
• In fact, the RCEF teaching fellow who teaches English also gave me an idea. What if all the students contributed in making an English textbook - designed around the lives of children in Chinese villages, with texts about farming, studying, parents going to apply for jobs in Beijing, etc. with all the illustrations done by different students - there is no lack of talent!). This could be a wonderful learning opportunity and challenge for the older students.

Conclusion

Although the library program is very young, and it was implemented without much preparation, I believe that it is already quite successful in reaching primary school students. There are many possibilities of increasing the use and utility of the libraries, and I hope that some of my suggestions can be useful. As for the ambition to reach villagers in addition to primary school students, in Site 1, is very ambitious, and has not been as succesful as the program for primary school students. I provided a number of suggestions for how this can be improved, but these should be reviewed by someone who understands well the social dynamics in the village.

It will be very interesting to follow these two programs in the future, and it would also be good to find out about what models the other library sites employ, and see what we can learn from them. A possible task for the research team would be to look into what kind of success indicators, and ways of evaluation, that other library programs - even public and school library programs in developed countries  - use, and whether we could adopt any of these in measuring the success of RCEF libraries. I would like to thank RCEF for giving me this opportunity to get a first glimpse at RCEF programs, and I hope to be involved in different ways in this discussion in the future.

I have quite a few more, especially from the village and the primary school, that I will try to post soon.

Stian

Chongqing
In Chongqing, I was meeting up with an old student of mine, who has now gone on to become an English teacher herself. I had never been to Chongqing before, but knew that it was one of the cities that had received the most of the relocated villagers from the Three Gorges area, and was growing very rapidly. Later I realized that the Chongqing municipality, with its 30 million people, is probably the largest municipality in the world. The size, though, underlines the problem with defining “the biggest city in the world”, since the boundaries of a city are hard to define - the municipality is the size of Austria, and contains a lot of rural areas. The dense city core itself contains around four million inhabitants.

It’s an interesting city to walk around in, because it’s very hilly - not very common in big Chinese cities. I kind of like hilly cities, because they provide for interesting walks, sudden vistas, crooked roads and so on. In Chongqing’s case, it also provides for a huge amount of big bridges, and a city that often seems “layered” - at one stage we took an escalator a few hundred meters down from one “level” to another (on what was, my friend proudly told me, the world’s longest escalator).

The city was in rapid expansion, with new fancy highrises being built everywhere. We took our afternoon tea in a bizarre rainforest themed cafe, with lush plants, and once every ten minutes the sprinkler system in the middle would erupt, to canned sounds of tropical wildlife. In the middle of the concrete jungle in Chongqing… Then we enjoyed a cable-car ride over the Yangtze river, which is more or less as polluted here as it is when it gets further downstream in Wuhan, but here it’s much thinner.

The Western People Street
Yangrenjie (洋人街), or the Western People Street, is a bizarre fun park in Chonqing, that is still under construction (or at least I hope it’s not done yet). After the cab driver dropped us off, we had to walk for twenty minutes on a very rickety road, before we reached the park, which was packed with people - since it was during the holidays, and it didn’t honestly seem like Chongqing had that many other places worth going on an outing to. There was an upside-down house, with an Indian restaurant in it, lot’s of people selling cowboy hats and sugarfloss (I got a pink one!), some petting horses, a castle, a brick installation that was supposed to look like Manhattan, a ton of outdated slogan signs, “the world’s largest toilet”, and a whole lot of noise. I kept thinking “I hope this isn’t how Chinese really picture a Western street”…

Hechuan
After enjoying Chongqing, we took a one hour bus ride to Hechuan, where my friend’s family lives. I had wonderful food, and it’s always fun to see your friends’ homes. On the second day, my friend had to leave to go back to work, and I staid behind with her parents for another night, because my train wasn’t leaving yet. That night, her parents took me to the street by the river, full of restaurants, where the locals liked to enjoy life in the evenings. We had great food, beer, and once the father had downed two baijiu’s (pretty strong Chinese alcoholic drink) he began talking about philosophy, history and critical thinking. He didn’t care much for Marx he said, but he was a huge fan of Hegel, and his dialectical thinking. I love coming across older Chinese that have lived for a while and have their own ideas and experiences, so I found the conversation very interesting - although my philosophy vocabulary is still a bit limited - I kept looking for the Chinese words for utilitarianism and rule ethics.

Via Beijing
After Hechuan, I left to start my volunteer work with Rural China Education Foundation. I was going to a village in Shandong province, and had to transit through Beijing. So I spent 24 hours on the train to Beijing (was able to upgrade to a sleeper from the very beginning). Most of the time I was lying on my bed, looking at the very mountaineous Chinese countryside outside, and listening to a Swedish crime thriller. Kind of absurd. I arrived at Beijing West station in the morning, bought a ticket to Linqing for that evening, dropped my luggage and went downtown.

I had no real plans in Beijing, and also no travel guide or anything. I decided to head straight for the Tian’anmen square, just because that’s the first place I visited in China back in 2000, and I thought it would be fun to go back. I visited the People’s Great Hall, where the 3000+ people’s representatives gather each year to rubber-stamp government decisions. Then I decided I wanted to go find the new fancy Olympic constructions - the swimming hall and the bird’s nest. At the Tian’anmen metro station, they had a great overview over possible interesting tourist locations and how to go there - which metro station to go to, which bus to switch to.

So I took the metro to a certain station, but there the clues ended - the bus I was supposed to take didn’t exist, and there was no more indication for tourists. Perhaps that will exist before the Olympics. I took a bus that purported to go to some Olympic area, and got off at that station, but could not find what I was looking for. I wandered around for a while, and chanced upon the China Ethnic Minorities Museum, which I decided to visit just for fun. The museum is built after a similar idea of the Taman Mini (Small Garden) in Jakarta, with small areas representing the 56 different official minorities in China. Each area had representative buildings from that ethnic minorities, and some posters describing their lives. There were also dance exhibitions, and souvenirs. The whole was kind of kitschy, although it was interesting to see some of the dances.

The most interesting part, however, was that when I walked over a big “ethnic” bridge, I saw the Bird’s Nest from afar. Finally. I exited the museum, and was finally able to get a good look at both the Bird’s Nest, and the Swimming Hall, that are next to each other. They were still working around them, so I couldn’t get too close, but it was still fun to think that the world’s attention would be focused right here in a few months (when I will be far away, in a small village in India).

One thing that I noticed about Beijing, since I first came there in 2000, is the enormous expansion of the metro system. At that time, I think they only had one or two metro lines, that were very constrained to the inner ring road. It was also much more expensive to ride the metro than the buses, so people still preferred buses, contributing to incredible gridlock in rush hour traffic. During the last few years, they have been building feverishly, especially adding lines up to the Olympics, but also planning ambitiously ahead. Currently, Wikipedia gives the NY subway system, at 370 km, as the largest in the world, with Moscow Metro at 293 km. The Beijing metro is today 142 km, but before the Olympics, a further 58 kilometers of rail will be opened - and before 2012 and 2015 they are adding a number of extra lines. This is incredibly positive, and will hopefully do much to alleviate traffic and pollution, and make Beijing commutes easier.

In the evening, I had dinner with a friend, and left on the late train to Linqing.

Stian

No, this is about public security, as implemented by the state, and felt by the common man and woman - kind of as a parallel to all the crazy public security measures that have appeared in the US after 9/11.  (The following is just a collection of my musings and observations on a loosely common topic).

Train stations
I have spent a lot of time in train stations, both when living long-term in China, and these last few weeks. Nothing much has changed these last eight years at all. It’s still an incredibly efficient and huge system. Already back in 2000, I thought it was funny that they had you send your bags through an x-ray at the entrance of the train station (only for those actually going on a train, not for going to buy a ticket etc). Of course, the farmers often bring gigantic bags - some of them might be migrant workers literally carrying all their belongings. Not quite sure what they are looking for, they certainly have never pulled me over for some liquids or nail clippers or anything like that.

Today, they actually searched everybody’s bags quite throughly also, including mine, which has never happened before. Not sure if they were worried about something in specific, or if this was simply the result of boarding at a tiny “rural” station, with all the “farmers”.

I think what they are most worried about is explosives, although I’ve barely ever heard about any train exploding. But with the farmers bringing all kinds of stuff, it certainly wouldn’t be surprising if some of them brought a three liter can of petrol, and with all the smoking going on in the corridors… They have huge signs everywhere, even on buses, cautioning people not to bring explosives or flammable material aboard.

I remember once, taking the train from Shenzhen to Wuhan, when we were treated to a half an hour long expose about the kind of dangerous articles we shouldn’t bring on the train, thorugh the train loudspeakers. In typically pedogogical Chinese, which sounds ridiculous when translated: “Travelling friends, you might have noticed the sign saying ‘Don’t bring any dangerous articles onboard’? But what does ‘dangerous articles’ mean? Well, there are 9 kinds. The first kind is knives. What kinds of knives? Well there are…”, and so on.

Tickets
There is no registration of name or checking of ID, neither when buying tickets or when entering the train (in contrast to for example Russia), although I heard that they are considering implementing this to slow down on hoarding of tickets (not sure to what extent this really happens). However, when I took the train from Chongqing to Beijing, for the first time, the train attendant went around with a little very fancy gadget, got everyone’s ID cards, and “scanned them” somehow. She put them on a plate, and clicked a button, and I am not sure if it just read the barcode or actually took a digital picture of the entire ID. Most of the passengers had modern VISA-card size national ID cards, but a few had the older ones, and then she had to enter them manually. She wasn’t even interested in my passport. Not sure what they are using that for - and it only happened that once, I’ve taken several trains after that without that happening.

Your ticket is checked several times during your travel, and it would be incredibly difficult to sneak in without a valid ticket. First, it is checked when entering the waiting room (passing the x-ray machine), although you can buy a platform ticket for a few yuan, to get in. You then sit at the assigned place for your train, often there are several waiting rooms, and in each waiting room there will be several gates. Twenty-thirty minutes before the train is about to leave, the gates open, and you pass through the gates (often several per train), getting your ticket clipped in the process. Usually each gate leads onto only one platform, but sometimes you have to go over a walkbridge, and could theoretically enter different platforms.

Then, if you have an assigned seat or sleeper, you go to that car, and at each car door there is an attendant who checks your ticket again. If you get onto a sleeper, after a while the attendant will come around and exchange all the tickets for tokens. She puts the tickets in a books, with little plastic windows for each bed. This way, she can easily see who gets off where, and can wake you up when you reach your destination in the middle of the night. Then you get your ticket back. This doesn’t happen in the hard seats. I’ve never taken a soft seat, so I am not sure if it happens there. Finally, when you get off at the station, you again have to show your ticket to excit the arrival area.

Hotel registration
Theoretically all hotels should require registration of all guests. In practice this often does not happen. It has happened in the cheapest of hotels, which just includes filling in a form (and a certain amount of head-scratching as you present them with a passport - they are very happy if you just tell them what your Chinese name is). The two main kinds of lodging options in China are hotels and guesthouses (zhaodaisuo - 招待所). The first can range from incredibly expensive, to fairly cheap, whereas the other one is always very cheap (although there is still a range, one can choose from single rooms to shared rooms with 6 people).

During my first time in China I was stopped a few times and told that I was not allowed to live somewhere because I was a foreigner - this was usually at cheap hotels, costing around 60 yuan per night. After that, I have never been stopped, but I am not sure if that is because I go to the cheaper zhaodaisuo, often paying as little as 15-30 yuan per night (or less in the rural areas), or because restrictions have lifted. When I stepped off the train in Linqing at 3 AM, I didn’t show any ID at the tiny guesthouse next to the station, I walked in and asked how much it was, she told me 10 yuan, and I gave it to her. She showed me a room with 5 beds, and I got to bed and slept. During the night, several other passengers came in and went to sleep as well.

Internet cafes
Even when I was living in Wuhan in 2001, some internet cafes required registration. Often they would have a book, where we would have to enter our name - I was usually exempt. This time in China, I have been to a lot of different cities, and gone to internet cafes, and never been asked for ID before today. When I came to the first internet cafe, they wouldn’t let me log on, because they didn’t know how to register my ID card. Then I went to the one next door, and they were happy to let me on - after noting down my passport number.

One thing that has been a frequent topic in China these last years, has been to require “real names” of net users who blog, or sign up for a social website. One problematic result of this is that overseas participants, who obviously don’t have a Chinese ID number, are excluded from these spaces. A friend of mine in Toronto has had this problem on a number of Chinese websites, where he wished to participate.

Conclusion
No conclusion really, just got to think of this after wanting to store my luggage after coming off the train to Hengshui, and together with another traveller being asked to follow the attendant in the private luggage storage shop. It turned out she wanted us to bring the bags through the entrance to the train station, to have them x-rayed, so she could see that there was no problem, before she asked us to take them back to the shop to store them. I thought it was a funny way to piggyback off the security system implemented by the train station. Then, when I was for the first time in a long while denied entry to an internet cafe, because I didn’t have a Chinese ID card, I decided to write this entry. No conclusions about what is necessary or unecessary, just observations.

Stian

The good stuff
I am going to mention a lot of things that could have been done differently, or better, but I don’t want that to detract from how great the conference was. For me, who has been following the OER movement for quite some time, and recently also began participating online through for example blogging, this was the first time that I actually met most of the actors in person. The general atmosphere at the conference was incredibly positive and welcoming, and without a fail participants - senior administrators and professors at the world’s leading universities - treated a beginning MA student as an equal participant and interlocutor. I learnt a great deal from the many long conversations over the lunch and dinner tables, and I got to know several projects that I will hopefully collaborate with in the future.

All the people responsible for the conference - the international OpenCourseWare Consortium, China Open Resources for Education (CORE), Dalian University of Technology (and their enthusiastic student volunteers), and everyone else - did a great job and I certainly believe that the conference has made a significant contribution to the progress, and especially international collaboration, within the OER movement.

The purpose
To ask how a conference could have been organized better, it’s necessary to know what it is trying to achieve. This is no simple task, because very often large events mean different things to different people. When I participated in the CIES in New York, the purpose was to gather almost 2,000 academics who do research on comparative education, and to allow them to present their papers on (usually) research in progress, to receive feedback from peers. In addition, of course it is a place to network with people who do similar research to you, catch up on the latest books, show yourself off to potential university employers, etc. In that way, the conference itself is more of a platform for a hundred different individual purposes to manifest themselves. In addition, the conference, together with hundreds of other conferences, peer reviewed journals and academic publishers is a part of the academic ecosystem, which aims to stimulate the production, quality control and dissemination of academic knowledge in general (and often forms part of the academic reward system as well).

The Open Translation Conference in Zagreb was very different. It had a clear vision about bringing together users and creators of open source translation software for open content projects, and envisaged some clear deliverables. The conference was built around these deliverables - a mapping exercise of the open translation software space, as well as different translation tool use cases, unconference-style sessions that were designed according to what was needed at each step of the process, with note takers using the Wiki to record information, as well as for example a short film being made with interviews of participants. In this conference, there were no presentations given, papers read, or powerpoints displayed. There was not the usual separation between “the people who present”, and “the people who attend” (except for the one key facilitator that drove the process).

So what is the purpose of the Open Education conference in Dalian? On the one hand it was a general convention of Open CourseWare Consortium members, including elections and legal formalities. On the other hand it was both an academic forum to highlight research on OER and OCW, and a “community of practice”, gathering practioners of OER to share their practices and projects (and tools), come up with common plans, definitions and strategies, and network on future collaboration. The importance of the last aspect is seen clearly from the fact that almost every single person who presented a paper was intimately involved in “doing OER”, there was scarcely a single “disinterested researcher” who did research on the phenomenon because it was an interesting phenomenon and was not simultaneously an advocate.

Layout of the conference
The conference lasted for three days, from the 24th to the 26th. The 24th was the Open CourseWare Consortium day. It started with a great newcomer’s breakfast to introduce some of the vocabulary and definitions that would be useful later in the day. It continues with introductory speeches, and a number of people who did three minute presentations of their challenges to the OCWC community (I spoke about the need for greater focus on learners, and on stimulating more research). Based on these, three strategy breakout sessions were organized. I came late to mine, but I must admit that it did not look to productive, because even by splitting 200 people into three groups, you are still left with groups that are far too large to handle, and with the chairs still in a conference layout, it was just very difficult to get a good discussion going.

The two next days were the actual Open Education conference, and they consisted of roughly four sessions per day, with lunch in the middle, and each session containing perhaps four or five presenters. Perhaps half of the presentations were given by Chinese researchers, in Chinese. There was simultaneous interpretation of the entire conference, and I will talk more about language issues in a later post.

No discussion
One of the most striking parts of the program was that there was absolutely no time set off for discussion after any of the papers presented in the Open Education conference. The only exception is the very last session, where we split into two. Our smaller group had a tiny bit of time at the end, but I think that is because we skipped the official closing ceremony (unintentionally). I’ve rarely ever been to talks that don’t have at least some time for questions, and while in large political talks there are often random annoying people with their own axes to grind, in these kind of specialized communities it is very common that the Q&As are a lot more interesting than the actual papers (and often more applied, and less theoretical as well).

Of course, orchestrating this in a group of two hundred people (although often far from all were present) is also quite difficult. It might have been a lot easier if we split up in two or three sessions for the entire conference. The downside is that you don’t get to hear all the talks (although hopefully they will all be well represented in the proceedings), but you get smaller groups and much more time for discussion. I think this is doubly important in such an international conference, where you have people from all kinds of national and institutional contexts with their different things that are “given”, but might be a lot less than obvious for outsiders. (An example is Fun-Den Wang’s quick and impromptu explanation of the “China Quality OCW” or 精品课程, a topic that is well known to all Chinese present, but not to many of the foreigners. Unfortunately this explanation, given in Chinese, was not translated by the interpreters who just got the feed from the speaker’s microphone, and thus did not help a whole lot.)

The China Quality OCW is also a project that it would be very interesting to be able to discuss - not just listen to presentations about. While it represents an incredible commitment from the Chinese Department of Education and has made available a large amount of very useful resources, it is not placed under open licenses, and it cannot thus really be called OCW. I know that several of the non-Chinese researchers I talked to were curious about this, and would like to know whether this was being worked on, etc, but didn’t have a chance to ask.

Radically changing the format?
So far I mentioned some ways the presentation of papers could have been improved - perhaps several sessions concurrently, certainly more time for presentation, etc. However, a pertinent question is whether organizing a conference as a series of papers to be read and commented upon is really the ideal format. This question is becoming more and more relevant in this age of digital collaboration and sharing. With flying being so expensive and environmentally damaging, physical time spent together ought to be optimized by doing things that can best be done when physically in the same room - and other things ought to be done for example through online communication. Some presenters might have such a presence that witnessing their speech live feels like a great event - yet this is rare, and luckily researchers are not selected based on their stage presence, but on their analytical capabilities.

Thus, I feel that I would have lost very little by reading the papers in the proceedings before the conference started - or even watching some of the presentations online. If this was the case, we would have been able to use the time together on discussion, questions and answers, and structured interaction. A particular reason why this is important in the OCWC case is the fact that the participants are so international, and come from very different backgrounds. In this case, the informal networking over lunch and dinner that is often the lifeblood of conferences might not be enough, because the different networks too easily sit together - which could be easily observed - whether grouped by country or common language. The American researchers that share a common framework, read each other’s blogs, and have met each other at previous conferences have an easy tone, and the Chinese professors might feel much more comfortable with their peers. Thus there is an important need for structured opportunities for cross-community interaction and networking.

This could include time for an unconference aspect, where people who want to run a session write it up, and people who want to participate come (this of course requires the use of more breakout spaces, although there were ample common spaces that could have been used). The iSummit in Dubrovnik did something similar during the pre-conference for the learning track, where two other participants and I identified a common interest in the future of universities, and did a two hour session on the p2p university - which has informed my thinking until today, and might lead to papers and projects in the future. This was never on the conference program before coming to Dubrovnik. Similarily there might be real topics of interest between different groups that occur during the conference, and it would be great to have a semi-structured space to deal with that.

Another activity, which I was introduced to in Dubrovnik as well, is speed geeking. AspirationTech describes it like this:

A tongue-in-cheek rip off of the speed dating concept, SpeedGeeking offers a fully immersive, invigorating and hilarious approach to meeting people … and learning about the cool projects, software tools and crazy ideas that they have been working on. At a SpeedGeek, one group of participants sets up at stations around a room to give 5 minute presentations while the rest of the group migrates in a circle around the room to hear these high-speed raps. The result is an obscene amount of fun, all tied up with a good dose of learning about how technology is being used for social change.

This would be brilliant because so many of the papers were about innovative services, tools, videos, websites etc that projects had developed - but we want to see them! Don’t tell me about Connexions, show me. This is doubly relevant for projects that are in other languages - it might be hard for me to play around with the semantic search tool from Japan, but if someone showed it to me, I might begin to appreciate how I could use this in my own project.

(Note that this would have required better internet access, which was a problem throughout the conference).

Final thoughts
These are just some thoughts about how the conference could have been reworked to yield even better outcomes. I also think some kind of a collaborative activity to yield some kind of common output would have been great. Wouldn’t have to be a manifesto, but perhaps a Wikipage listing all our different projects, or a Connexions course on how to research OpenCourseWare or… And this leads into my final thought: documentation. I received on the first day of the conference a book with the proceedings, which is great - but I sincerely hope this will be made available online, and well visible. I also wish that all the proceedings had been CC licenses, as it is, I saw no references to open licenses in the book. This is the case for the Open Learning conference in Utah, which is great.

Most of what I wrote above talks about the conference in general terms, as an international conference with participants from around the world, but does not deal much with the divide between the Chinese participants and the others - these are integrated topics, but this post is long enough, so I had to divide it. I hope to write another post on that soon, but first I have to catch a 16 hour hardseat train to Chongqing.

It was a great conference, and the above is intended as positive and constructive critique or ideas for how to make the next conference even better, more useful, and more productive to the entire OER movement.

Stian

Description
You can find cybercafes in any city in China, however they almost never have English signs (why would they?). Most of them are called 网吧 (wangba) or internet bar, but some have more innovative names. Usually there is a sign on the street and a staircase leading to a basement, or the second floor of a building. Once you enter, it’s a very large room that might hold 100-200 computers. Near the entrance is a desk, which also sells snacks and cold drinks. There are many signs at the entrance about people under 18 not being allowed access, and there are rules about the minimum distance between schools and cybercafes.

I don’t have membership at any cybercafe, so I go to the desk, pay 10 RMB deposit, and receive a card with a username and a code. Regulars have their own accounts, and don’t need to “check in” like this. In recent years, internet cafes are supposed to check your ID and write down your details before letting you log on. I am not sure how much this is enforced - since I am a foreigner they mostly don’t bother, although one or two has asked to see my passport.

You can then choose any computer. Two things have changed slightly since 2001. Firstly, the computers are turned off between customers, probably to save electricity (often the occupancy is far under 100%). I am guessing there might have been some central edict about this, because it never was the case before, and now it has been at every single place I visited. So I choose a location, turn on the computer, which boots Windows XP (in a few cases Vista). All the cafes use a cybercafe management software to deal with login and accounting. I type in my password and get the Windows desktop. Often number of icons are limited etc.

Not a single cybercafe I have visited so far had Firefox, which is very frustrating. I can’t remember the last time I had to use Internet Explorer for any extended amount of time. This should be a huge opportunity for some Chinese open source advocacy group - we are talking potentially hundreds of millions of new users here!

The computers are all stand-alone tower computers, with fairly large screens, and headphones (sometimes headsets). It’s interesting that they never experiment with multi-head computers, but one of the reasons (apart from the fact that they are running Windows) could be that the computers are frequently used for gaming. Many cybercafes seem to have disabled the USB drive, which is very frustrating, when trying to write an article on your laptop, and post it online at the cybercafe.

Internet access
The one who can understand China’s internet policy will get a prize from me - it’s highly erratic. Generally speaking, they block far more Chinese controversial webpages, than English ones, however there seem to be a lot more pages blocked this time than the last time I was in China. Often whole newspapers, or whole blog hosts are blocked for just one article/blog. This is the advantage of having your own domain I guess (reganmian is still not blocked). Worse than that, using foreign Web 2.0 applications is very slow - I could not manage to play a video on Youtube, even though it did display, and GMail is highly erratic, Meebo and other IM clients don’t work at all. Of course, China has a huge amount of Web 2.0 applications themselves, and they all load very fast. The advantage of having people post their pictures, videos and blogs on Chinese sites, is of course that the government has much more fine-grained control with this.

Users
Almost all users are young males, with the occasional female. This probably depends a lot on where it is located - at the cybercafes near the university where I taught, the gender balance was a lot more equal. Generally the environment is quite “male friendly” - dark, very smoke filled (there is an ashtray next to every computer), and often noisy. The two main activities are playing online games (Counterstrike was the most popular back in the days, not sure what is hot these days), and watching videos online. People who play online games can be quite noisy, shouting into their headsets, and to their friends on the next row over.

Local services
An interesting detail is that cybercafes also provide local storage of popular media - to save bandwidth and offer better service. There is often an icon on the frontpage to a page hosted on 192.168.x.x (local server, not available on the internet), with fancy webpages offering access to hundreds of movies, TV shows, music etc. This is all for watching online. I just watched a two hour German movie about a huge fire in a tower, the quality was quite good. Since the webpages are so professional, I am assuming that there is a company that designs these local media solutions and sells/rents them to the internet cafes, it would be interesting to know how this works - how it gets updated etc. (Of course, it wouldn’t stand very long against the copyright police).

Pricing and economy
The price of going online hasn’t changed since 2001, although the price of food has almost doubled. It’s still usually 2 yuan per hour (30 cents with today’s exchange rates). Some cafes actually have one row of computers that only offer games, and the local media server, at a cheaper rate. I think - but have no evidence for this - that the cafes are usually individually owned. At least, I have never seen any evidence of any chains. There is very little differentiation except for in Beijing and Shanghai, where you might find more upscale, and cleaner cafes, for more money. The initial investment for hundreds of computers capable of gaming must be huge, and I wonder how quickly the recoup it. One important detail is that the cafes usually stay open 24 hours a day (labor is very cheap, so it makes sense to exploit the capital). Students at my university would often stay up all night, because it was the only place girls and boys could hang out together - the dormitory closed it’s doors at 11, and girls could never go to visit boys rooms. There was a special rate from 11PM to 7AM.

Final thoughts
I wonder how the market for internet cafes is developing. The very specific target group makes it clear that many people access the internet from other places. One factor is that it has become very much more common to get broadband internet at home, and I wonder if many universities now offer this in dormitories too (I don’t know about the last one). Even in my friend’s apartment building, where rooms cost only 40$ per month and are absolutely tiny, with no amenities (no hot water, heating, etc), there are many who have broadband internet (I saw notices posted on the wall). Others access it through teir office. As far as I know, wireless internet access is still very rare, but this might be changing - and is probably very different in Beijing and Shanghai.

Stian

When buying any book, but in particular when buying a book in a language that I am still learning, it’s very important to me to be able to look through the book and see the contents, and the level of the language. In Indonesia, I often had to surreptiously take the wrapping off books, without the attendants noticing, so that I could examine the contents (everyone did this), but in China you can collect a few books that look interesting, sit in the window sill, and spend a leisurely half an hour looking through to determine which you would like to buy.

The range of books is amazing, and almost absolutely everything is in Chinese, of course. There are usually extremely few English books, except for a few out-of-copyright bilingual versions (Wuthering Heights, etc) for language learners. (I wonder if CC China could work with publishers to publish bilingual versions of some modern CC licensed novels? It ought to be a lot more interesting for the young English learning audiences to read Cory Doctorow novels, than Gone With the Wind… Not sure if he is using non-commercial though).

English-language intro to Chinese ideologies?
I always find it interesting looking around in the government section, with lot’s of training material for government exams for people who want to work at different levels - this of course includes political exams. I thought it was very fascinating, the first time I came to China, to see their extensive multiple choice exams on Marxism for example.

One thing that I have thought before, and which I was reminded of looking through the political books is this: Are there any books in English at all which attempt to explain the ideologies of China? I remember when I first lived in China, wishing that I could one day meet a Chinese who was a convinced communist, or convinced of the ideology of the party, and could really explain to me. I wouldn’t even try to argue - just listen and try to understand.

Because for someone who knows at least a little bit of Marx, and has been active in left-wing political parties in Norway, where this was discussed, it is very interesting to see how China’s ideologues can justify China’s current development. Once again - I am not trying to attack or ridicule, but rather to understand. I know that in Chinese there is a huge amoung of ideological training material, political philosophy books etc, but the language is quite confusing, especially for someone who didn’t go through political education in high school and university.

With the increasing importance of China, you’d think that it would be important to really try to understand these ideologies for Westerneras. Even if most Chinese might not actually believe in them, they still function as the official guidelines of the government, and are still taught to hundreds of millions of people every year in schools and workplaces.

New developments
The bookstore I visited in Dalian was quite similar to what I remembered from 7 years back, but there were two new developments. One was a number of Lonely Planets in Chinese. I am quite sure these did not exist back then, and they are an interesting indicator of the greater wealth of Chinese, and thus the much larger group of Chinese who are able to travel overseas. As well - how many choose to, and are able to do so, independently - because a Lonely Planet is not that useful, if you are on a tour bus the whole time.

I am wondering whether the content is simply the normal Lonely Planet translated, or whether there is stuff added/edited to suit a Chinese audience (Chinese restaurants?). I also wonder whether most of the people who buy them are actually going to backpack overseas, or whether it’s also bought by people who like to dream about doing so. (I’ve certainly enjoyed reading the Lonely Planet for India long before I actually got a chance to go there).

The other thing I noticed was a series of Chinese-language graded readers for Chinese learners. This is a brilliant development, which might be very useful for students of Chinese. The introductory text explained that they had produced 60 titles, with different levels of difficulty. The easiest books only use the 300 most common words in Chinese (not sure how many characters this corresponds to), as well as introduction 1-2% of new words that are glossed at the bottom of each page. There are also introductions to each story in the beginning, to set the context. The most advanced books include up to 5000 words (or characters?).

I am a huge believer in getting people to “break the reading code” in Chinese as early as possible, and I think these graded readers can be a very useful tool. I really hope that Chinese institutions around the world will stock up on these - they certainly are not expensive.

Stian
(PS: I wrote this a few days ago on my laptop, but this is the first internet cafe that actually would read my USB key and let me post it).

I have spent today walking around in Wuchang, just enjoying the incredible hustle and bustle, the millions of small shops, tiny workshops, the sidewalks that often are two car-lanes wide, the crazy traffic, the smell of coal and fried dough, the old guys playing chess on the street. I have visited Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore (not yet Taiwan - though I’d love to!), but somehow in my mind nothing beats mainland China. And in mainland China, nothing beats Wuhan. It’s dirty and polluted like nothing else, the traffic is insane, you can seldom see the Yangtze river when riding a bus over the ain bridge over it, people swear and spit and shout in a dialect of Mandarin that is almost incomprehensible, but I somehow love it. It’s got an incredible energy, and some kind of “raw urbanism” that I missed intensely in the sprawling slum areas of Jakarta.

Nobody owns a house in Wuhan (or most Chinese cities) - there are no single-dwelling houses. Everyone has an apartment, whether in an eight storey creaking apartment block with edges and windows and laundry hanging everywhere, or a smooth newer building. Almost nobody own their own car - there is not a single parking lot here (thank god!). My friend lives in a tiny studio apartment, with a simple toilet and kitchen, and pays 230 RMB a month ($32 USD). When she walks into the street she is in the middle of busy restaurants, and there are five buses stopping in front of her apartment. I’d take that over a bigger apartment on a highway in Scarborough any day of the week!

What has changed?
China changes so fast that it’s almost impossible to keep up, and I was very curious when coming back to Wuhan if I’d notice any changes, 7 years after I lived here (I was back for a week in 2004). The truth is - not much. (Of course, Beijing, for example, has been developing much faster). There seem to be more air-conditioned buses, and there is more advertising around. Many of the buses have plasma screens that show advertising all the time, as well as as a scrolling marquee sign that lists kind of “classified ads” (more informative, about events, prices of surgery at the local hospital, and exhortations to look to both sides when crossing the street). None of these carry any information about where the bus will stop next etc (but most buses make voice announcements). A lot of the taxis even have a scrolling marquee sign in the back window facing out, with ads.

The Wuchang train station was torn down, and on the other side of the street, they are almost finished building a new one, that is huge and very fancy. I already mentioned that there seems to be more limitations on internet usage (at least in internet cafes), and I have problems using GMail for example, not to mention Meebo or other foreign webpages. This might be a temporary problem leading up to the Olympics.

Food prices have seen a huge increase to almost the double, since 2004. This is notable especially since from 2001 to 2004 there was no difference at all. Fried lamian now cost 10 yuan, up from 5. Reganmian never cost more than 1.2, now cost 2.5. A plate of suanla tudousi (hot and sour potato stripes) used to cost 3-5, now often 8. Partly this is probably due to the international rise in food prices. If calculated in terms of Norwegian Kroner (NOK) though, the rise isn’t so big, because the yuan has lost value to the NOK (in 2001 it was almost at parity, now it’s 0.7 yuan to one NOK).

I am planning to blog quite a bit about the conference, but not sure when I get a chance. Internet cafes are a bit annoying, very noisy, dark, smoke-filled, with poor keyboards, only Internet Explorer, and frequent timeouts of foreign websites. And most seem to have disabled the USB drives (to avoid people to load viruses I guess), so I cannot even upload an article I wrote on my laptop. But I will try to get it posted later.

Stian