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Thursday, June 24, Today was English weather -- a heavy mist that occasionally turned vertical, but not quite rain. We had a leisurely start by our standards -- 9:40, heading to the campus of Nanjing University, a college as pretty as the rest of the city. Our topic was Chinese history and the professor concentrated on the period between 1911 and 1949. He says that the tradition in China is to study the previous dynasty, not one's own, and interesting choice of words. I videotaped the entire lecture so anyone interested can have a look. He talked a lot about Mao's interpretation of history for the period from the Opium Wars to the 1930s. He said recent scholarship has a much better appreciation of the accomplishments between 1911 and 1934 -- when the Communist Party starts to become a major independent player. He commented on the two periods 1920s and World War II when the Guomindang and Communist Party were allies. He never mentioned the United States in any context, except to mention that Sun Yat Sen studied there. A number of members of our group were interested in questions about historiography -- how do university historians do their research, what sort of documents are open to them, do they do oral research, etc. Our leader pointed out that there are still risks to being too innovative, but our professor insisted that while he would no write all his thoughts, he never hesitated to express them in class to his students. After the lecture we had a tour of the campus -- a very friendly, and seemingly smaller place. It certainly has a smaller scale that Beida in Beijing. Our tour took us to Pearl Buck's House-- I hadn't realized it was on the campus -- it is now departmental offices. We were welcomed to go inside, but there was no photograph or plaque to recognize its heritage. We saw a building created in a joint venture with Johns Hopkins University. It has a program where Chinese and American students actually share rooms while they are in a program where the Chinese students study under American professors in English and the Americans study related material under Chinese professors in Chinese. This is distinct from most programs here which welcome foreigners but keep them separate. After lunch we headed to a Sharp electronics factory to see televisions being made. It is a joint venture with the Japanese. We saw some amazing flat television screens in the display room -- the going price in Japan for a standard size set is 30,000 US$, but it will surely come down. The factory is outside of town in an economic development zone. The building is bright white, unusual in China where few buildings are white. I was pleased to see little sycamore saplings planted all along the roads of this new development-- a sign that someone is thinking about maintaining city traditions. In the assembly area we were able to see and photograph the soldering of the circuit board, the assembly of the components, the testing of the picture and sound and finally the packing of the unit first in a plastic bag and then between the pre-molded styrofoam blocks. The last guy staples them shut and the forklift moved them out to the warehouse, ready for shipment to Japan. Ninety percent of production is for the Japanese market--about 5% goes to the US. The situation was different upstairs (which we didn't see) where audio components, mainly for the US market, are assembled. I have a feeling the conditions and pace may have been different up there, and there are two shifts in audio, while only one in the video unit. We saw about sixty workers on the line, but in all 1400 people are employed in the building. One third of the workers live in a dormitory built by Sharp. The rest are brought in daily on busses -- these are not the kind of workers likely to be able to afford a car. We had great photo opportunities for the three Sony video cameras we have among us... Our leader kept reminding us that this was not was a typical Chinese factory looks like, but I am not sure we are going to get to see any others.. She also mentioned that this was not what a Japanese factory would look like because the workers were not wearing white uniforms. They did, indeed look very serious, and the idea of working on any assembly line for two hours straight (followed by a ten minute break) is beyond my imagination. On the way back into town our guide mentioned the foreign language bookstore and there was so much interest in our group that the driver kindly let about half of us off there. I was eager to find a globe with Chinese characters. I had seen one attached to a pen set for a desk, but I didn't want the pen set. Others in our group were desperate to find postcards of Nanjing. It is hard to imagine that a city this pretty would not have postcards everywhere. It has many hotels, but they seem geared more to the businessmen from Silicon Valley than to tourists. Our tour guide said she knew of only one place-- the tower bridge gift shop -- but since were had gone up the local side, we had not passed through it. Once inside the bookstore (which was really more of a book mall with many independently owned shops, some of which sold the same items) I found my globe. The price was reasonable, but I don't know how I am going to get home if I buy stuff like that. My mah jong set must weigh several pounds. Oh well, I will face that problem when I return to Beijing. As usual, I took advantage of the occasion to practice my Chinese. I was telling the clerk that I was a teacher and that my students would like the type of music that was playing (these are all similar conversations based on the same limited vocabulary). Just then the music changed and the song was Chinese lyrics to the tune of Yankee Doodle Dandy. I got quite excited and managed to make clear that I wanted to find the cassette of the music that was playing. They sent me down to the music department, which turned out to be a completely different operation, and there was no music playing down there. So after getting help there from about 8 sales clerks, all eager to help me, even after I had tried to explain what I wanted by singing Yankee Doodle, I finally decided to head back up to the globe department and find out where the music was generated. Despite my efforts, no one seemed to know enough English to help me find the source of the music, so I gave up and headed off for other areas of the store. In the children's department I found another member of our group talking to an elderly man. Eureka. If she was talking to someone, the conversation was surely in English. Sure enough, he was talking to her about his planned trip to the United States to visit his son who lives in Dallas. He was concerned about changing planes in Los Angeles, and we assured him that he would get plenty of assistance, and that his English was definitely up to the task. I then explained my quest for Yankee Doodle, and asked him to write something in Chinese for me. He suggested it would be easier if he came with me to the department in question and so we headed there. Needless to say on this third trip I was now quite well-known and got lots of smiles of recognition from the sales clerks. I pointed to the speaker and told him this was where the music was coming from, but just as we turned around to look for the source, a young man came over waving his hands in a big X across his face saying „Bu Mei¾ -- no sale. I know that much, but I couldn't figure out why he was so adamant. It turns out that the music was a CD he had bought in Taiwan -- it was not available in the store and he could probably get me one in a couple of weeks. I told him it was not that important, but to show his goodwill, he got me the CD case, and when he opened it, there was a little promotional card inside, so he gave that to me in case I wanted to find the artist. I can certainly live without Yankee Doodle in Chinese or otherwise, but it was an interesting reminder of the limitations of this rampant capitalism. The day ended with dinner in a three star hotel -- sort of an odd place to send people staying in a 5-star hotel -- especially when they specifically requested to eat with the locals. To make matters worse, during dinner they brought a plate of white bread, butter and jam to the tables. I thought our leader was going to have a stroke. Needless to say it quickly disappeared, but not before one of the men in our group, sitting at the other table, had helped himself to a piece. He is a sweet fellow, but the only one of 17 who still asks for a fork -- so a little teasing was quite in order. Tomorrow we leaving at 7am for Suzhou, a "garden city" and arrive in Shanghai at nightfall. Assuming the Internet connections in the hotels continue, the journal entries will continue, too.