I would be hard pressed to find a theme for today's site visits and dialogues, but that in no way diminishes the educational value of what we have just experienced. All three topics – environmental NGOs, government corruption and the history of the Garden of Perfect Brightness – are all quite important in contemporary Chinese society. Here is a brief overview of our day:
We began with a “late,” 8:30 am departure from the hotel. A half-hour bus ride took us the offices of Friends of Nature, an active and well-established environmental NGO. In the space designated for community outreach and education, we listened to a presentation by Mr. Huo Weiya, the founder of the Youth Environmental Review, a publication which aims to raise awareness of environmental issues facing China. Mr. Huo has been interested in environmental issues since starting university in 2004, and after graduating was a contributor to chinadialogue.net, a bilingual website affiliated with the BBC which discusses environmental degradation in China.
Since the first words out of our mouths when we landed in Beijing were related to air quality, it was easy to see how this topic was relevant to our course. We have already seen pollution in many places – the sky, the waterways, the layer of grit that settles on cars after being parked overnight – and so were not entirely surprised at the statistics offered by Mr. Huo about, among other things, high cancer rates near heavily polluted fields and water sources.
We also learned about how, in a single-party state, NGOs are able to exist in the first place. While their existence is itself a hopeful sign and they are experiencing ever more room to function, NGOs in China are still closely monitored and strictly limited in their activities. An overly active or disruptive NGO may lose its registration with the government and be disbanded.
Even with these challenges, we ended the site visit on a hopeful note. As Mr. Huo led us through the offices of Friends of Nature, we heard stories of successful anti-pollution campaigns, growing participation and widening fields of influence. Environmental NGOs in China certainly face an uphill battle, but those fighting still have hope.
After a short break on the public exercise machines that decorate seemingly every public space, we proceeded to our next site. Tsinghua University is considered China's equivalent to MIT, and along with Peking University is at the forefront of higher education in the country. As such, it attracts China's most respected and decorated academics and researchers, one of whom we had the good fortune to meet.
Dr. Cheng Wenhao is one of the founding directors of Tsinghua's School of Public Policy and management. He studied at Peking University in the late 90's before getting his doctorate from Yale in political science. Since then, he has been a leading researcher on public administration, government reform and anti-corruption in China.
China's corruption problem is so serious and destabilizing that fighting it has become one of the cornerstones of Xi Jinpings's new administration. On transparency.org's (rather inherently subjective) Corruption Perception Index, China ranks 80th in the world (1st place, being the best, goes to Denmark; the US is in 12th). Bringing down corrupt government ministers is in the interest of the Chinese government because it appeases outraged citizens and improves its international image. The anti-corruption campaign has made huge strides in recent years. With this commitment by the top levels of government, improved technology and investigative methods, international cooperation and, of course, the help of Dr. Cheng's research, reducing corruption in China's government seems inevitable.
Dr. Cheng also led us on a tour of Tsinghua's huge campus, which features a great number of buildings which vary in both use and architectural style. One of the most striking is one that was built in the 1960s, modeled after the main building on the campus of the University of Moscow. Because China was then seriously lacking in resources, this show of admiration for China's Soviet friends was unable to match its counterpart in size; it remains an impressive structure nonetheless.
We thought it was merely happy coincidence that Tsinghua was adjacent to our final site visit, the Garden of Perfect Brightness. In fact, it turned out that the land where Tsinghua stood was once part of the massive Garden. As we learned more about its history, this fact began to make perfect sense. That history was introduced to us by Liu Yang, a specialist in the history and preservation of the Garden of Perfect Brightness.
The Garden of Perfect Brightness was the summer residence for Chinese emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties. It is truly an enormous complex, once so large that it would have taken three days to walk across it. It was there that emperors escaped the discomfort and claustrophobia of life in the Forbidden City and were able to stretch their legs, so to speak. They had incredible structures and monuments built, including unbelievable fountains and clocks. It was the center of architecture, innovation, science and culture during those dynasties.
As foreign influence grew during the Qing Dynasty, the architecture in the garden began to change. Paintings of European-style palaces brought by missionaries inspired mixed styles and, in some places, full-scale imitations. But ultimately, there was a far greater impact that foreigners would have on the Garden.
As the Qing tried to limit political and economic ties with Europe and Europeans tried to force their way into China, things inevitably came to a head. When European forces entered Beijing in the mid-1800s, they trashed parts of the Garden of Perfect Brightness. Whatever remained was further demolished by Chinese in the Republican and Communist eras who wanted the stone for other building projects. Finally, much of the land was given away to other projects – see Tsinghua University.
Today, the Garden is still an impressive place. The ruins only hint at the scale and grandeur of the original Garden, making visitors use their imaginations to surround themselves with images of what the complex might once have been. This can be a rather emotional experience for locals, for whom the Garden of Perfect Brightness is one of the clearest symbols of Chinese humiliation by foreign powers (the other is the Nanjing Massacre Museum).
Since the Garden of Perfect Brightness does not offer any tour guides, we picked up a sizable following of Chinese tourists, glad to take advantage of Mr. Liu's expertise (and good Mandarin). Before we knew it, we Americans were the minority on our own tour by a margin that grew every minute.
After two hours we had looped back around the park and returned to the main gate. The day had been packed, as had the day before and the day before that. Even with our Great Wall adventure looming at 5:30 am the next morning, most of us were already busy making evening plans. We said goodbye to Mr. Liu at the front gate of the Garden and jumped on the subway for the hotel.
We began with a “late,” 8:30 am departure from the hotel. A half-hour bus ride took us the offices of Friends of Nature, an active and well-established environmental NGO. In the space designated for community outreach and education, we listened to a presentation by Mr. Huo Weiya, the founder of the Youth Environmental Review, a publication which aims to raise awareness of environmental issues facing China. Mr. Huo has been interested in environmental issues since starting university in 2004, and after graduating was a contributor to chinadialogue.net, a bilingual website affiliated with the BBC which discusses environmental degradation in China.
Since the first words out of our mouths when we landed in Beijing were related to air quality, it was easy to see how this topic was relevant to our course. We have already seen pollution in many places – the sky, the waterways, the layer of grit that settles on cars after being parked overnight – and so were not entirely surprised at the statistics offered by Mr. Huo about, among other things, high cancer rates near heavily polluted fields and water sources.
We also learned about how, in a single-party state, NGOs are able to exist in the first place. While their existence is itself a hopeful sign and they are experiencing ever more room to function, NGOs in China are still closely monitored and strictly limited in their activities. An overly active or disruptive NGO may lose its registration with the government and be disbanded.
Even with these challenges, we ended the site visit on a hopeful note. As Mr. Huo led us through the offices of Friends of Nature, we heard stories of successful anti-pollution campaigns, growing participation and widening fields of influence. Environmental NGOs in China certainly face an uphill battle, but those fighting still have hope.
After a short break on the public exercise machines that decorate seemingly every public space, we proceeded to our next site. Tsinghua University is considered China's equivalent to MIT, and along with Peking University is at the forefront of higher education in the country. As such, it attracts China's most respected and decorated academics and researchers, one of whom we had the good fortune to meet.
Dr. Cheng Wenhao is one of the founding directors of Tsinghua's School of Public Policy and management. He studied at Peking University in the late 90's before getting his doctorate from Yale in political science. Since then, he has been a leading researcher on public administration, government reform and anti-corruption in China.
China's corruption problem is so serious and destabilizing that fighting it has become one of the cornerstones of Xi Jinpings's new administration. On transparency.org's (rather inherently subjective) Corruption Perception Index, China ranks 80th in the world (1st place, being the best, goes to Denmark; the US is in 12th). Bringing down corrupt government ministers is in the interest of the Chinese government because it appeases outraged citizens and improves its international image. The anti-corruption campaign has made huge strides in recent years. With this commitment by the top levels of government, improved technology and investigative methods, international cooperation and, of course, the help of Dr. Cheng's research, reducing corruption in China's government seems inevitable.
Dr. Cheng also led us on a tour of Tsinghua's huge campus, which features a great number of buildings which vary in both use and architectural style. One of the most striking is one that was built in the 1960s, modeled after the main building on the campus of the University of Moscow. Because China was then seriously lacking in resources, this show of admiration for China's Soviet friends was unable to match its counterpart in size; it remains an impressive structure nonetheless.
We thought it was merely happy coincidence that Tsinghua was adjacent to our final site visit, the Garden of Perfect Brightness. In fact, it turned out that the land where Tsinghua stood was once part of the massive Garden. As we learned more about its history, this fact began to make perfect sense. That history was introduced to us by Liu Yang, a specialist in the history and preservation of the Garden of Perfect Brightness.
The Garden of Perfect Brightness was the summer residence for Chinese emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties. It is truly an enormous complex, once so large that it would have taken three days to walk across it. It was there that emperors escaped the discomfort and claustrophobia of life in the Forbidden City and were able to stretch their legs, so to speak. They had incredible structures and monuments built, including unbelievable fountains and clocks. It was the center of architecture, innovation, science and culture during those dynasties.
As foreign influence grew during the Qing Dynasty, the architecture in the garden began to change. Paintings of European-style palaces brought by missionaries inspired mixed styles and, in some places, full-scale imitations. But ultimately, there was a far greater impact that foreigners would have on the Garden.
As the Qing tried to limit political and economic ties with Europe and Europeans tried to force their way into China, things inevitably came to a head. When European forces entered Beijing in the mid-1800s, they trashed parts of the Garden of Perfect Brightness. Whatever remained was further demolished by Chinese in the Republican and Communist eras who wanted the stone for other building projects. Finally, much of the land was given away to other projects – see Tsinghua University.
Today, the Garden is still an impressive place. The ruins only hint at the scale and grandeur of the original Garden, making visitors use their imaginations to surround themselves with images of what the complex might once have been. This can be a rather emotional experience for locals, for whom the Garden of Perfect Brightness is one of the clearest symbols of Chinese humiliation by foreign powers (the other is the Nanjing Massacre Museum).
Since the Garden of Perfect Brightness does not offer any tour guides, we picked up a sizable following of Chinese tourists, glad to take advantage of Mr. Liu's expertise (and good Mandarin). Before we knew it, we Americans were the minority on our own tour by a margin that grew every minute.
After two hours we had looped back around the park and returned to the main gate. The day had been packed, as had the day before and the day before that. Even with our Great Wall adventure looming at 5:30 am the next morning, most of us were already busy making evening plans. We said goodbye to Mr. Liu at the front gate of the Garden and jumped on the subway for the hotel.
- Alex
Photo: Our guide, Liu Yang, stands among the ruins of the Garden of Perfect Brightness
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