“Where has the proof of China’s history gone?” This thought came to me after spending two weeks with Wei traveling around a well preserved England. Awaking with jet lag in the dead of night awaiting the choking dawn, I felt the well deep of anxiety of a father about the state of this nation’s health. I couldn’t think why I hadn’t asked myself the ‘vanishing history’ question before now, perhaps blinded by the modern progress. China has evidence of modern civilization that has created great monuments including the Terracotta Warriors (221BC), the Great Wall (214BC) and the Forbidden City (1406-1420), but when I came to consider it, it dawned on me how few and far between these are for a country so vast and with such an expansive history. In England we visited many monuments and institutions that had endured the test of time. Stone Henge (5,000 years) pre dates all but the Peking Man (400,000 years ago!) England still has relics from the Roman occupation (AD 43 – 410) including Hadrian's Wall (122 AD) that ran for eighty miles from Newcastle in the east to Carlisle in the west. Canterbury Cathedral (597AD) and Wells Cathedral (909 AD) are still centers of worship. Oxford University (1096) and Cambridge (1226) are still active campuses, which have spawned generations of academics and leaders. By contrast, Peking University (PKU) is the first national university in Chinese modern history, founded in 1898. A travel guide to China recommends ten top sites: (about.com) 1. The Forbidden City 2. The Great Wall 3. The Terracotta Warriors 4. Karst Mountains in Yangshuo 5. The Yangtze River and the Three Gorges Dam 6. Jiuzhaigou 7. Potala Palace, Lhasa 8. The Bund, Shanghai 9. Giant Pandas 10. Modernity in Hong Kong Somehow in a country the size of North America with over 2,500 years of history and over 1.4bn people there are only a handful of recognizable heritage sites. Three of the top ones are the result of Emperors ambitions and anxiety, and two are havens of commerce. There are of course some extra smaller sites, e.g. the Venice of China in Suzhou (2,500 years old), but I have to admit to questioning what kind of a culture preserves so little of its heritage. What the UK and China do have in common this week is environmental chaos. In Oxfordshire the Thames broke its banks and in Xinjiang the Yangzte river flooded leaving 32 dead; a far cry from the 2,700 who died in 2006. On returning to Beijing the air quality has been such that visibility has been down to 750m making a mockery of the newspaper quoting an Olympic official confident of Beijing’s ability to create clean air in time. Beijing Olympic Chief Lui Qi called on “every citizen to clean the environment and clean the air.” (Reuters 2007-07-26) However it was unclear how they would be doing this except by stopping ‘cussing, spitting, littering.’ In fact what appears to be happening is rampant opportunism. Hotel prices are increasing by 8 fold. In conversation with other business owners I hear that office rentals are being doubled in spite of the acres of new space being completed at the end of this year. The central business district apartment for which we entered into negotiation at RMB5.5m (US$680,000) was bought by a Chinese buyer for cash. Meanwhile our office building is still not registered with the Agency for Industry and Commerce (AIC) and therefore even though we have paid increased rental we cannot legally register EASTWEST in the building. We have the dubious honour of being the first to try. The truth is that I often wonder if the system really wants entrepreneurs who attempt to follow the rule of law because it appears almost impossible to build a business that is both legal and profitable. All of this worries me as Wei and I facing bringing a baby into the world here in China. After three Chinese women doctors all made Wei anxious about being too large, eating too much, and telling her of the raft of procedures that they should undertake without themselves appearing able to operate either a keyboard or a unsheathe a biro, we elected to switch to an Australian doctor. “Chinese doctors all think childbirth will go wrong unless you are lucky,” Brook told us in a ‘heard it all before’ manner. “In Australia we think the baby will all be alright unless you are unlucky,” he continued, reassuringly entering information into a database while putting a cap on his pen and smiling. Wei and I both wanted to have the baby in China with a Chinese doctor, but I have to admit to being relieved by Dr Brook’s BBQ side manner. In a survey online conducted by the China Daily this week it asked the following question, ‘One in four Americans think China will beat the US in the next decade as the world leader in innovation, according to a survey by Zogby International. Do you think China will become the leader? Why? 
Not surprisingly over 50% concurred with the findings and were asked to vote and say ‘why’; but there was nowhere to write an answer. I suggest that this may be another case of jet lag where body and mind have not yet caught up with time and space.
Not surprisingly over 50% concurred with the findings and were asked to vote and say ‘why’; but there was nowhere to write an answer. I suggest that this may be another case of jet lag where body and mind have not yet caught up with time and space.