It pays to be familiar with the capitals of each province, the history of the two SARs, and each Autonomous Region. The Western, and Southwestern provinces are targeted in the present five-year plan for extensive development. These are the areas experiencing rapid urban growth. How many provincial capitals can you name? Can you name a few key characteristics of a few of them? Dig around in Wikepedia, and be ready to ask people in China where they are from and what their city is famous for.
I will have to work on this. Trying to remember Chinese vocabulary and provincial capitals!
ReplyDeleteWell, I can't remember the names of all you guys, so I don't expect you to know all these provincial capitals. But pick one or two and learn about 'em! Chengdu is my favorite (Just say: "Ah! Cheng Du! That is the relaxing place, where you can drink tea!"
ReplyDeleteor
Ah! DaLian! The beautiful sea-side place, so clean!
and folks will say "you really know China!"
But be careful. Beijingers don't much like Shanghai people, and Shanghai people turn up their nose at those Beijingers. That is always a fun and interesting conversation: "what makes Shanghai and Beijing different?" That conversation goes on and on, and the cab driver will keep you in the cab while he/she goes on and on about it!
I was surprised by the number of autonomous regions and I am curious as to how that works. Is Tibet the only one trying to become more independent? Will these be a source of turbulence or conflict in the future?
ReplyDeleteI'm not quite sure, but I believe autonomous regions are what they are because they are linguistically and culturally distant from the Chinese mainstream. There are indeed sub-rosa independence movements (some Chinese would use much less pleasant names for them). The biggest source of problems for the Chinese state are the disorder from unemployment and a threadbare social safety net. There are frequent protests in small cities in China that one never hears about. Disorder is perhaps the greatest fear for Chinese policy makers, and that is, in fact, understandable when you consider the size of China and the size of the challenges it faces.
ReplyDeleteIt may be instructive to look at the one country-two systems approach in Hong Kong to see how China has been fairly successful at integrating a very different polity into the nation-state. But that's for another time. . .