China is big.  No, China is huge. If a city such as Philadelphia, with its population of 1.5 million, was placed in China, it wouldn’t even show up on the map - there are villages with more people. And China, in its hugeness, is undergoing a change so dramatic that one wrong move could threaten to unravel the whole social fabric. This delicate balancing act is truly a sight to behold, and it is something one cannot genuinely appreciate for what it is unless you see it on the ground, firsthand.

The crane is China’s state bird. Indeed, no skyline is complete without them, especially in Beijing where I live. They are responsible for throwing up buildings so fast that the skyline changes not decade to decade, but year to year. The rapidity of the construction is absolutely mind-blowing. But it doesn’t take gazing at the skyline to appreciate the pace at which China is developing. Not far down the street from the apartment complex where I live, there is a nice hotpot restaurant. Before I landed in Beijing, my roommate, also from Penn, had scouted out this restaurant. He marked it down as a candidate for our end-of-semester celebration, because at that time, construction work was still being done on the inside of the building. Light fixtures were being installed, walls were being painted and there was no furnishing to speak of. By his reckoning, if the pace of construction resembled that of the Moravian Cafe, we would be lucky to eat there once or twice before returning to America. The place was open for business three days later and the business was good.

The swiftness of change and the chaos of it all really makes China a wild and exciting place. The rampant capitalism that has taken hold of this country produces some truly interesting businesses.  Interesting in the sense that it evokes the questions “Can they actually do that?” and if so, “Should they be doing it?” I remember when my roommate found a place he called the Boulder Bar online and suggested we check it out one night. I understood the part about the bar. That much was in my field of experience. But what of this boulder?  Is it some kind of haven where geophiliacs gather to discuss rock formations over a Tsingtao? He explained, “You can go rock climbing and order mixed drinks all at the same place!” I thought he was kidding me until I found myself standing at the doorstep of the Boulder Bar – motto: Extreme Experience. At that moment, I could not think of a more irresponsible combination than alcohol and high places. Extreme the experience was and thankfully, someone had the foresight to make sure the foam cushions at the base of the climbing wall were extra, extra thick.

It’s not hard to appreciate how being an American makes China a consumption paradise. Money talks in America. But it screams in China, especially if those are dollars you are holding.  The depreciated value of the reminbi makes China very easy on the wallet, for the most part.  For example, with 1 reminbi, or around 12 cents, I can get popsicle ice cream in one of an endless number of flavors - I’ve been working on trying out every flavor out for three months.  On the other hand, there are places like Bai Jia Dazhaimen where cuisine is served to you in an imperial atmosphere with waitresses decked in imperial garb calling you “Master” or “Madame.” They bow and curtsey too which can be a bit difficult to get used to. A reservation for the pavilion by the pond must meet a minimum 1,200 reminbi baseline expenditure excluding drinks.  That said, $150 is not that much to pay for a fancy night out, but the same figure in reminbi represents more than a third of a rural Chinese household’s annual income. It doesn’t take much searching to find evidence of the dangerous bipolar society created by marketization and globalization between the haves and the have-nots.

The effects of this marketization and globalization can be seen in China’s dizzying 10% year-on-year GDP growth, but the benefits accrued by these effects are enjoyed by the very few. With about 900 million rural citizens, China is looking at a couple of painful decades ahead as these people migrate into the urban centers for work, connecting them to the global economy. But this is not the only source of stress on the system. On a trip to Nanjing, I found myself lost in an undeveloped zone to the north of the city that borders the Yangtze – I had strayed a bit too far from my traveling group. There, I met a laid off crane driver, just one of the many losers of globalization. With no job and no way of acquiring new work skills, he had planned to start a small convenience store in the neighborhood, but there was no one who would lend him the money. All at once, the problems with the lack of social welfare and an archaic banking system were laid bare before my eyes. On another trip to Taiyuan in Shanxi Province, I took a taxi to the northwest part of town where there were supposed to be some vineyards according to my map. Instead, I found a bulldozed wasteland being prepared for future warehouses. In the sliver of unrazed land that was left, I met two men laying traps to catch wild rabbits.  They told me both of them used to work these fields before this land was appropriated by the government and sold to land developers for a nice, fat profit. Now they have been reduced to wage-laborers who can only find time on Sunday to come out here and catch rabbits. Rights to land can be ambiguous in China, and without an effective outlet to voice their discontent, who else can these disenfranchised turn to? There is only a government too blinded by their pursuit of GDP growth to care about these individuals.  By the way, they were catching those rabbits to eat them.

Make no mistake; China is a great place to study. It’s a great place to be, but at the same time, it is all too easy to get lost in the monumental changes that are raging through the country and forget that these changes come at a cost.  For anyone interested in studying in China, I challenge you to step outside the ivory towers of academia and see how the other half lives.