A Scale Model of the entire city? yes please

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Without any concrete plans we slept in a little bit, laura woke up and researched activities for the day.

On our way out of the hotel we spoke to the concierge, and he hooked us up with a map, and his personal notes on things to see, and things to avoid.

We went down the street to a popular dumpling place. They were only making 3 types of dumplings that day. Pork and Egg yoke, Pure Crab, and a Crab Roe dumpling. We went with the pork, and a beer. It was very very good, and again very inexpensive, a dozen pork dumplings, and a 600ml beer for 33CNY.

We then headed to the Shanghai Urban Planning Musuem. This museum was built in preperation for the 2010 World Expo ( wikilink) and was updated in 2014, so it was very up to date. The first section was an overview of the river, and all the of the things built up around it. The next part was a history of the city, going back to early days of the area when it was just an agricultural county within the chinese empire, through the colonial period when the West opened up the city, to the modern ultra-modern megalopolis of today.

It had a 1:500 scale of the main city on one floor that was spectacular. I love scale models of things, so this walk around model was awesome.

The next section was the pre-human history of Shanghai, talking about the geological processes that gave the city its current landscape. Another section covered transportation, the growth of the metro, and proliferation of buses, traffic control and infrastructure development. And then the last section discussed the plans and current projects in Shanghai.

It was a very good musuem, informational, and visual, there was alot of stuff to read, and even more to look at. Our inability to read Mandarin did not limit our experience in any appreciable way.

We then wandered through parts of the French Concession (remember when i said the West opened up Shanghai )
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_French_Concession

We spotted the US Consulate, not as overt security as i would have expected, but certainly not a friendly welcoming place.

This whole neighborhood has been taken over by foreigners for 150 years, and it was apparant in the architecture and some of the businesses, to include hooters.

pic here

We hopped the metro back to our neighnborhood to research what to do for dinner, and was once againt almost mildly kidnapped.

As we exited the train station a young couple asked if we could take their picture, we obliged, they then engaged us, asking where we were from, and complimenting our English (i think it is wierd that they will ask us where we are from, and when we say the US, they compliment our english, buddy, thats the language spoken here, i dont compliment your Mandarin when you speak to me). They asked us where we were going, and what else we had seen. At first they seemed just really friendly, i was immediately suspicious, cause no one in the world is that friendly, but then they started talking about how they were planning on going to a tea house, and invited us to come with them. We were friendly and cordial, I wanted to see how much of their time we could waste without putting ourselves in danger. Ultimately the engagement lasted at least 5 minutes, only for them to walk away empty handed, and us with a good story.

We then made our way to dinner, a noodle place. I got a dry noodle dish, and laura got a tomato-sauce, and beef rib dish. My food was great, the noodles were tossed in a vegetable oil, and had a side of that same green relish that we have been unable to identify, and lauras beef was delicious, the soup the noodles were in was just ok. satsfied with dinner, we walked back through the market area we navigated to get here,

this place had meat, im guessing halal, because there were alot of lambs and no pigs.

I

it was interesting, not that i have any way to cook these things, but the meat looked good. One of the shops had little puppies that were eating scraps, and presumably keep the vermin away, laura was very excited.

We stopped at a grocery store to snag some sweets, and bought some bananas at a fruit vendor down the street.

We went home for an early night, so we can start the next day a little early.

early reflections

6712 had the final today, two essays, i wrote them up in about an hour and a half. i am confident in my answers, any stress i have is based upon who is doing the grading, we have an English teacher here as a TA, and i am worried he will knock off points for not liking the way i write. the questions basically had us go through the initial development of communism in the Czech Republic and the rest of Eastern/Central Europe, and the second question was the post-communist development of the Czech republic and one of its neighbors. after class i took another sweet nap, before heading off for the end of dialogue boat ride. the boat ride was fun, not only were (most) of us students there, but there were a few of our lecturers and tour guides. the boat took us up the river (so northwestish) and through a lock, and then back down the river some. about a 2 hr trip, i was enthralled in conversation with the clique of girls i hang out with for much of the time, (though the tank fell asleep at various points, apparently not appreciating not only our final moments together, but also our final moments together in such a beautiful city as Prague, she claims she felt), and enjoying the scenery, so i did not follow through on any discussion with the guest lectures. the end of the boat ride also meant our last interaction with Harlow over the course of the trip, and likely my last physical encounter with him ever. we shook hands and said our goodbyes, ill probably follow this blogpost up with an email to him, i hope to use him as a reference for my grad program applications in the not so distant future i suppose there should be some reflecting going on now that we are near the end. i will surely have better stuff after my hours of flight time, but ill put some ideas out there now. overall this was a great trip, the various excursions (barring the long walk) were engaging and educational, i have actually been to most of the locations we wandered through, but i was still enthralled at every turn. the various lectures, and guides that went with us to these places were all very knowledgeable, and for the most part engaging. my feelings are torn as to the variety of students on the trip, my last dialogue was filled with international affairs, or poli sci, or history kids, so to be here with different majors, the bios, the journalists, the comms, made it a different experience. their lack of knowledge about the region made the discussions were a little more broad than i would have really liked. but it also gave me a chance to reexamine my outlook and knowledge on all this stuff when they (namely the troop of ladies) turned to me in an aside to ask something or other.

Wednesday 3811

Today we visited the Croatian presidential compound, speaking to a chief foreign policy analyst, these are my notes

Croatian Presidential Palace/office

Built in 1960s as one of the residences and workplacees of Tito. During the initial monts of the war, this building was not the original presidential workplace, the presidential seat was in the center of Zagreb, however when this facility was bombed during the war, Tudjman moved the seat here.

He spoke about the architecture and decor of the building, the building is new and modern, however is filled with older traditional folkish artwork, and he thinks that the art should be changed to more modern stuff, to indicate how new Croatia is, despite its ancient heritage, in that this new Croatia is ready for new challenges.

Chief foreign policy analyst
(Croatia recognizes Kosovo)
(Croatia will likely encourage (Bosnia and Herzegovina [BiH] and Serbia joining the EU if Croatia does, because it does not want to be the border security for the EU at large)

Croatia exists in a Europe that is fraught with ideas of globalization and coexistance, where multinational NGOs have lots of power (EU), but here the worst genocides took place in all of recent history.

Many Europeans forget that there have been numerous conflicts, and examples of very ugly nationalist, secessionist, seperatist, revolutionary movements within Europe.

There are many examples of countries/peoples that have gone through times of extreme tumult, and within that framework, The Balkans are not all that unique, however it must be acknowledged that the Balkans are in a better position than they were 100 years ago.

While the Balkans, and Croatia especially, is trying to move on, and forget about the past, knowing that it is not productive to dwell on the conflict, it is difficult, there are still many people missing, and emotional and physical scars are deep.

Over the past century, the people of the region have learned to never trust the state, as every state will betray you at a crucial time, your taxes; may very well be used to finance the army, which will undermine your civil liberties, and restrict your rights.

However, todays Croatia is trying to earn/gain the trust of the people.

Transformation for Croatia was 5 fold

Economic, state to private, led to corruption and favoritism while
establishing capitalist elites from politicians friends

Political, democratic, while it was mostly democratic, there was still only one party in power for 17 of the last 20 years of independence

Statehood, establishing an efficient state, abolishing or consolidation of parallel structures, or reform of inefficient or redundant structures

Identity, geography and history makes a contiguous identity difficult

War-peace, this includes transitional justice, should we insist on remembering and getting justice for the past, or should we forget about it? ICTY was a good thing to have to encourage this transition with repsect to transitional justice. Accession to the EU has also helped to expedite this transition.

Many people believe that joining the EU is the end of the transition phase of independence, they see it as a movement towards sovereignty.

The speaker believes that joining the EU is best for Croatia and Croatians, it means military protection for the country, solidarity; and receiving of funds from the more developed countries of the union, and freedoms; mostly of movement of people and goods, and progressivism; the EU is seen as a superbloc of progressive states, and by joining this progressivism would envelope Croatia as well.

Speaker believes that there should be more optimism about BiH, because there has been peace from the last 15 yrs. Also nationalist issues should be dropped, while developmental issues should be the focus. BiH is not unworkable.

We also met with a language expert

Leksikografski Zavod Miroslav Krleza

The institute was founded in the 1950s, by the most important modern Croatian writer, Miroslav.

The speaker put the Balkan conflicts of the last hundred years into a social/linguistic framework, and compared it to other identity conflicts of the same kind, such as that or Scandanavia in the 1900s or Spain nowadays.

he was very interesting, and i liked how he put the language politics into context, and the long standing conflict over the issue, i love the whole historical anthropological explanations for todays conflicts, so i found this fascinating.

We also wandered around Zagreb, and stumbled into a cool Catholic church from the 1100s.

so yeah that was cool, reminded me why i like Catholicism, cause i havent found any other places of worship that as thoroughly induce the fear of god with its oppressive, opulant, ostentatiousness.

so yeah that was today now ima sleep