Has it really been over a month since I last posted an entry? I guess it has been; for most of that intervening time, I have been traveling and, based on my travel experiences, thinking about what I discovered, experienced, and learned. The world is changing rapidly it seems.
Just a couple of days after I returned from our Dominican Republic study tour, I repacked my suitcase for a trip that took me to partner organizations in China, Cambodia, and Vietnam, a trip of just over three weeks. Because there were unique purposes for each country visit, I think I'll discuss my experiences and impressions in three separate entries, one for each country starting with China, the first stop on our journey.
I was joined on this leg of the trip by three fun and sophisticated fellow travelers: Bonnie Nasca, Shao Lin, and Syni-An Hwang. Our primary purpose was to visit Sun Yat-sen University's Medical and Public Health School in Guangzhou (formerly Canton). Sun Yat-sen is one of China's leading universities and the alma mater of Dr. Shao Lin, a faculty member iin the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the UAlbany School of Public Health and a Research Scientist in the Center for Environmental Health at the New York State Department of Health, and her husbamd who is also a Department of Health employee. We have had a partnership agreement with Sun Yat-sen since 2009 but this was the first opportunity to visit their universiy and meet a significant number of their faculty. Shao is taking the lead on this partnership which will stimulate collaborative research on environmental health issues common to both our countries with a focus on those brought about by global climate change.
The last and only time I had previously visited China was about 10 years ago. What a difference a decade can make! We all know what an economic powerhouse China has become (and how much of our debt it owns!) but the pace of development there is mind-boggling. Guangzhou is a city of 20 million (a bit more than the entire population of New York State!) and is spreading outward at a rapid pace with new roads and hundreds, if not thousands, of new high rise apartment buildings going up. What you see from the highways are contruction cranes and new clusters of buildings rising in all directions. Of couse if you are a PBS listener and NY Times reader, you also know of the concerns this is raising among those landowners who have had their homes and lands conficated and leveled to make way for these massive construction projects . . . The new China is shiny and modern; the traditional China is disappearing fast. But what is also remarkable is that things seem to run efficiently. Ten years ago, you saw more bicyclists and small vehicles plus lots of public transportation. Today there are lots of cars--new cars made by every manufacturer from Japanese and Korean to American models. But they have also built the roads and tunnels and bridges to accommodate the traffic and everything flows smoothly; there is no gridlock like you find in Moscow or some of our cities. Another remarkable thing was the number of trees and the beautiful landscaping everywhere. Even in the city, trees have been preserved or newly planted, highways are landscaped with colorful flowers and bushes, and hanging flower baskets adorn every major street. Sometimes the glitz seemed excessive. Guangzhou had recently played host to the Asian Games and may have spruced up their city for that but an evening boat trip along the Pearl River demonstrated the charm and glitz of neon in abmdance: many of the buildings and all the bridges along the River have been turned into light shows! We were wined and dined by colleagues at magnificent banquet houses and taken to a circus that was Cirque de Soliel on steroids. For some reason, everything seemed out-sized and a bit excessive but admirable in terms of ability to "get things done." Maybe dictatorships are bad in many ways but when I see our Congress at an impasse and so little progress being made here on the major issues facing our nation, I can't help but think we'd be better off with a stronger Executive.
In addition to the visit to Sun Yat-sen University, we were able to meet with leaders of the Provincial Centers for Disease Control for Guangdong Provincial. That province alone has a population of 100 million! They are housed in a very modern building in Guangzhou with four floors of laboratory space fully equipped with the latest equipment. However, they were pleased to show us plans for their new, expanded and even better equipped, facility which they will move into soon.
We certainly have a lot to learn from our Chinese colleagues!
Next time I will write about our experience in Siem Reap, Cambodia where we visited an NGO, The Global Child, which was started by people from this area to help street children and orphans stay in school and off the streets.
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