This morning, we heard from Dr. Freda Murck, a Chinese art historian and the only foreigner consultant working at the Forbidden city. She made a lot of great recommendations for places to visit on the weekends. There are nice art galleries like the Red Gate and Ullens Center for Contemporary Art. She also recommended Bookworm for those people who are book savy. There is also a nice flea market called 潘家园旧货市场, but buyers should beware that most of the antiques there are fake.
In the afternoon, Holly Chang, CEO of Golden Bridges, came to talk to us about China Foundation Center (CFC). This one was really interesting, but unfortunately, jetlag hit me hard around 3 in the afternoon, and I was only able to concentrate on staying awake and not really paying much attention to her powerpoint :(
Somehow, I managed to fight through the drowsiness and after that certain threshold, I was back to normal and ready to go for the last speaker, Eleanor Dougoud, who is a consultant in disaster relief for the World Bank. She told us about their involvement with the Wenchuan Earthquake Relief efforts. The reconstruction project is projected to take 3 years and over 700 billion dollars, one of the most massive undertakings in the world. The government has maintained a lot of control over the entire process and will guarantee housing to all residents in the affected areas with a hukou. The goal is to not only reconstruct the cities but to build them back better, with modernized infrastructure. She also talked about her work in Angola and Afghanistan, which were most interesting. There were a lot of ethnic and political tension in these areas and for a humanitarian to come in and help them is amazing. The 30 year long civil war in Angola had just ended and major work needed to be done in the reconstruction process. At the time, they needed a large source of general food due to the displaced agricultural sector during the war recovery period. Now, all sources of international relief funding have stopped due to the current corruption in the government. Over $1 billion went missing in the government budget, presumably usurped by the president, who incidentally is the largest land owner in Brazil. With the Afghanistan project, she talked about how she was trying to decrease mortality during child birth. There was a huge lack of doctors in Afghanistan, and even midwives were hard to find. A lot of complications resulted in massive bleeding, infections, and ultimately deaths. The barrier broke when one chief's wife had birth complications and required C-section. He okayed a male gynecologist to operate on her, which was considered very taboo and inappropriate for this area. Very cool and inspiring story about how one group of individuals made a difference in another country.
Ah yes, now dinner... COMPLETE CHAOS AND LACK OF PLANNING. There was a group of us who decided to get haircuts. Then when they finished, they would call us to go eat dinner at 鼎泰饭店. Somehow, we ended up meeting up there at around 9pm. By that time, we were already starving. My group bought some 肉串儿 from street vendors. I'm not sure if they were really that delicious or it was just because we were starving, but we agreed that they were amazingly good. The restaurant closes at 10pm so we were basically rushed through dinner. The restaurant is famous for its 饺子 and 甜点. The food was indubitably exquisite, classy, and expensive, though not by American standards. After the conversion factor, the dinner probably cost each person less than $10. For a meal of that caliber, it was a good bargain.
Okay, that's all for today. I'm wiped... must sleep now or I will not wake up till tomorrow afternoon!
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