New York City on the Mississippi River

China is so large that I'm going to say it has two New Yorks. I'm going to call Shanghai "New York City #1" and Hong Kong "New York City #2." I'm not going to call either city a Los Angeles or a Chicago because as financial capitals, they more closely resemble New York. And if you're wondering why I'm posting about a city in my series about China's provinces, Shanghai is a province. There are four provincial-level cities in China: Shanghai, Tianjin, Beijing, and Chongqing.

New York City and Shanghai are the largest cities in their respective megastates. Eighteen million people live in New York's urban area (pictured below) and 18.9 million people live in Shanghai municipality (pictured above). I'm comparing New York's urban area to the city limits of Shanghai because they're similar in size. If you expand both cities to include their metro areas, New York has the larger population, but it's three times larger in size (the New York metro area includes cities as far away as Trenton, NJ and New Haven, CT). So Shanghai is the larger city, and it's growing much faster than New York: from 1990 to 2000 Shanghai's population grew by 25.5% and New York's by 9.3%.

The city is centered on the Huangpu River, which flows north into the Yangtze. The picture below, used on the cover of every book about China's Rise, is of Pudong (浦东), or "East of the Huangpu." It was an undeveloped part of the city until 1990, when it was turned into a Special Economic Zone (SEZ). These zones, established all over China, were an effort to encourage foreign direct investment by creating a very different business atmosphere than existed in the rest of China. Foreign companies got tax breaks, greater freedom in international trade, and other perks. The Shanghai Stock Exchange is in Pudong, as are some of the tallest buildings in China. In the photo below, you can see the Oriental Pearl TV Tower on the left, and the two tallest buildings on the right are the Shanghai World Financial Center and the Jin Mao Building. The Park Hyatt Shanghai is in the building that looks like a giant bottle opener, and you can stay there next weekend for $322.13 a night (I just checked online). Or you could get a room at Aria in Las Vegas for only $199 (and if you do, $0.0000852317 of that is mine). The Shanghai Tower is currently under construction and when completed it'll be the tallest building in China (and 43% taller than the tallest skyscraper in the US). While the US invented the skyscraper and had all of the tallest buildings in the world until 2003, we should take some comfort from the fact that American architectural firms will have designed the four tallest buildings in China after the completion of the Shanghai Tower.

Shanghai is competing with Hong Kong to become China's financial and trade center. Thanks to its proximity to the Yangtze and the ocean, it's the busiest port in the world (by cargo tonnage). In another way, Shanghai is sort of like New Orleans. Shanghai is at the mouth of the largest river in Asia, like New Orleans is at the mouth of the Mississippi. The Port of South Louisiana (between New Orleans and Baton Rouge) is the busiest in the US (by tonnage), but it handles a third of the cargo that Shanghai does. America's busiest container port is in Los Angeles, but Shanghai does four times the container traffic too.

New York and Shanghai are both cities of the future. Their presents and their futures overshadow their pasts. However, as China is still a developing nation ("third world" is so passé), with half of its population in rural poverty, Shanghai's future burns a bit more brightly. Shanghai is already larger than New York and average incomes in Pudong are 16 times higher than in the rest of China. It's already a world capital and it's growing at 3 times the rate New York is! Shanghai's future is tied to China's, and I am optimistic about both.

Some structure for 2010

Demetri Martin inspired me. I watched his "If" show from 2004 and I really like his weekly point system idea. If you haven't seen it, skip forward to 6:40 in the first clip and watch it to the end. Then watch the second clip until 3:56.

So, I've already made the first version of my weekly point system. I only have 5 categories (Demetri had 7) and my score is out of 24, not 35. Here's the list:

MIND
Write in my journal everyday, serious reflection only
Practice the guitar for an hour a day; 4 days
Practice Japanese for an hour a day; 4 days
Read 2 books
Draw for an hour a day; 4 days

BODY
Cook new recipe
Work out for at least 1 hour; 4 days
Brush teeth twice daily & floss once daily; everyday

CAREER
Improve GMAT Score by ____ points
Learn co-worker's GL
Average # of daily open items this week < open items last week
Network with 1 person

MANAGEMENT
Earned extra $50 (or more)
Spent less than $100 for the week (Rent, util., loans, T-Pass, & taxes not incl.)
Did load of laundry
Took trash to the curb
No dishes in the sink at bedtime; everyday
Thoroughly clean one room of condo

RELATIONSHIPS
Talk to friend or family member for 15 minutes on the phone
Do something nice for D
Date night
Get together with friend(s) in Boston

CONTRIBUTION
1 hour of volunteer work
Do something for the Earth

I don't anticipate this experiment being a failure. Demetri seems to think he failed at this. He asks, rhetorically, what would a 35 point day have looked like? I think he missed the point of his own system. Getting all 35 points in a single week is meaningless. The goal isn't to talk on the phone for 15 minutes this week, it's to have better relationships with everyone I know. Talking on the phone is just a way to quantify the progress I'll be making toward the real goal. I'll update when I have serious revisions to the list.

The Rainy Republic of Nevada

This is the second installment of my "Better Know a Chinese Province" series. Up next: Hubei Province. I'm going to call China's Hubei (湖北, meaning "North of the Lake") a smaller, rainy version of Nevada. The capital of Hubei, Wuhan, is famous for its hot summers, with temperatures averaging 99°F in July. The city is known as one of the "Three Furnaces of China." Las Vegas is hotter still, but in addition to the heat, Wuhan gets more rainfall than Boston. Ouch. I've lived in Las Vegas and in Boston, so I can appreciate how awful it would be to combine the worst aspects of their climates into one place. The Hubei-Nevada comparison is also good because The Three Gorges Dam is located in Hubei, and the Hoover Dam sits on the Arizona-Nevada border. If you don't troll Google News like I do, the Three Gorges Dam is the largest electricity generating plant of any kind in the world, producing 20 times more power than the Hoover Dam and far more power than the world's largest nuclear power plant (which is the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Power Plant in Japan).

The Jianghan Plain makes central and eastern Hubei very flat, but the rest of the province is mountainous like Nevada (Bonus: Hubei contains the Wudang Mountains, for which the Wu-Tang Clan is named). Hubei is sub-tropical and very lush. It grows a lot of cotton, rice, wheat, tea, and is known in China as the "Land of Fish and Rice" (鱼米之乡). There is mining activity southwest of Wuhan, which is appropriate given Nevada's history of silver mining. It also has some manufacturing, including automobiles, machinery, power generation equipment, and textiles. Hubei's economy isn't much larger than Nevada's (as measured by GDP) and with 60 million people versus Nevada's 2.6 million, that's pretty incredible. Hubei also has access to the Yangtze River, Asia's largest, which connects Wuhan to Chongqing, Nanjing, and Shanghai.

The Three Gorges Dam was largely completed in 2008. 1.24 million people have been displaced by the dam's construction and as the rising water levels cause landslides, more are likely to be forced out. I'm including the trailer for Up the Yangtze below, which I haven't seen yet, but want to. Nothing funny about this one:

While its actual origin in disputed, the first recorded outbreak of the Black Death, the 14th century bubonic plague that killed between 30% and 60% of all Europeans, occurred in Hubei in 1334. Coincidentally, about the same proportion of frat guys lose all of their money and get Chlamydia in Las Vegas.

Lastly, in 1912, Sun Yat-Sen proclaimed the creation of the Republic of China from Hubei province, ending 2,000 years of imperial rule in China. While Sun believed in democracy, his Kuomintang Party was quickly usurped by Yuan Shikai (who proclaimed himself emperor of China in 1915), and later by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek (pictured here). Chiang would eventually get his ass kicked by Mao Zedong's Communists in the Chinese Civil War and be forced to retreat all the way to Taiwan. From here, he set up a rival government to Beijing, and China and Taiwan have technically been at war ever since.

China's Muslim Separatist Alaska

This is my first post in a 33 part series: Better Know a Chinese Province. Where possible, I'll try to compare China's provinces to their American counterparts. That way, we can all learn a little bit more about our future global overlord. First up: Xinjiang, China's Muslim Separatist Alaska. The word Xinjiang, 新疆, is Mandarin for 'new frontier' while Alaska's nickname is 'The last frontier.' Maybe Mars can be 'the frontier of the future.' Xinjiang has been part of China, but frequently independent throughout its modern history. It was the independent East Turkestan Republic from 1933 to 1934 and from 1944 to 1949 (its flag is pictured above, now illegal to fly in China). In 1949, the People's Liberation Army invaded/liberated Xinjiang and proclaimed it part of the People's Republic. The territory became an autonomous republic in 1955, 4 years before Alaska (flag pictured to the right) became a US state.

There are quite a few similarities between Alaska and Xinjiang. Both have enormous energy resources that their respective states want to exploit (China is planning an oil pipeline from western Xinjiang to Shanghai, 2,000 miles away. A bill signed by Sarah Palin in 2008 has cleared the way for a pipeline connecting Alaska's North Shore [which contains ANWR] to the lower 48 states. Newsweek called it the most significant thing she accomplished as governor). They are almost exactly the same size, but the population of Alaska is 690,000 while 21 million live in Xinjiang. Both have separatist movements, but the pacification of Alaska was aided by the natives' complete lack of resistance to European diseases. In the first two generations of Russian exploration, 80% of the native peoples had died. The Han Chinese have had to establish dominance in Xinjiang the old-fashioned way. I'll let the first 23 seconds of this clip from Braveheart explain. Just replace 'Scotland' with 'Xinjiang' and 'Scots' with 'Uyghurs:'

In 1949, the number of Han Chinese in Xinjiang was a mere 300,000. In 1956, Mao Zedong called on China's youth to "open up the west," or what I'll call 'Manifest Destiny with Chinese characteristics.' By 2000, the Han Chinese numbered 7.5 million and made up more than 40% of the population of Xinjiang. At this point, Xinjiang is solidly part of China and Gordon Chang is probably overstating the ability of ethnic violence to destabilize the state. According to the 2000 US Census, Alaska is almost 70% Caucasian, so I encourage China to keep plodding along and eventually the 169 who died in July of this year will be as distant a memory as when Alaska switched from the Julian calender to the Gregorian calender and got two Fridays in a row.

While many Americans know former governor Sarah Palin, few will recognize her Chinese counterpart, Regional Secretary Wang Lequan, 王乐泉, pictured to the right. Wang is the top government official in Xinjiang and has overseen economic development there since 1994. He's built roads and railways and has been developing oil and gas fields in the region. He's replaced the local language with Mandarin in primary schools, forbidden fasting and praying while on the job, and banned wearing scarves or beards in public. He's known as the 'stability secretary' and when the July riots in Urumqi weren't ended quickly, some publicly called for his resignation.

Wang has been a member of the Politburo since 2004. For those of you not down with politics in China, the Politburo is the 25 member body that rules China. Within the Politburo, there is a smaller Standing Committee of 9 people. Current President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao are members of both. How these organizations work is something of a mystery, but outsiders carefully watch who makes it into or out of the Politburo to guess which direction China is moving in.

水菜 (Mizuna)

I hadn't heard of mizuna before receiving it this week in our farm share. If you're also unfamiliar with it, picture mild arugula. I used it as a salad green, but you can stir fry with it, add it to meat dishes, or pickle it. The produce guy at the Shaw's in Porter Square had never heard of it, so I don't know what it costs. It probably doesn't matter since the produce guy at a grocery store has never even heard of it. Too bad. It rocks.

Mizuna (or arugula) and roasted beets with ranch dressing. Recommended.

Fun with a Bible

I think it was in Running with Scissors that the characters ask God everyday questions, open the Bible to a random passage, and interpret the passage for their response. I thought it was brilliant. And it looked like fun. When D and I were in Oregon two months ago, I found a Bible in the house we were renting, so I dusted it off and used it for that purpose. This morning I thought I'd do the same thing to figure out what I should do today. The results:

What should I do today?

Sirach 31, 14: "Better a poor man strong and robust, than a rich man with a wasted frame."

What should I eat for breakfast?

Psalm 24, 1: "The earth is the Lord's and all it holds, the world and those who live there."

Should I go shopping downtown or take a walk to the library?

Luke 21, The Coming of the Son of Man: "There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on earth nations will be in dismay, perplexed by the roaring of the sea and the waves."

Thus spake the Lord. I'm going to use our Elliptical Trainer and do some push-ups, I can eat anything (or anyone) for breakfast as long as I say Grace, and I'll keep my eyes peeled for a sign about the library thing. Last night I threw another sock away because it was full of holes. Maybe that was my sign.

CNBC Sucks at Geography

I caught CNBC's special The New Age of Wal-Mart on Saturday. I think I hate Wal-Mart, but I don't see why a town should resist getting one if it used to have an Ames or a K-Mart.

What most annoyed me is that CNBC's graphics department doesn't know shit about geography. During the show, CNBC showed the following map of Japan when it talked about Wal-Mart's global presence. Maybe it's esoteric, but does anyone else notice something wrong with this map?


The northern most island that's colored yellow isn't Japan. That's Russia.

CNBC: let's clean it up. I'm available as a consultant.