Class of 2002

Josh Lotz, Glasgow Alumni Class of 2002 - Studies in China
The below excerpts were from letters sent to a Glasgow High School Teacher

November 3, 2003
...Finished my first semester in China in June.  Spent the whole summer living in a small village in Tibet.  I'm now currently studying Chinese at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China's equivalent to Harvard.

Yes, the summer in Tibet was quite awesome.  A Tibetan friend of mine that I met in Beijing invited me back to his home in eastern Tibet, a little town called "Chyabchya".  After riding a train for 30 hours (a hard seat, not a sleeper!), I arrived in the city of Xining, the provincial capital and only big city in eastern Tibet.  The next day, I got on a small minibus and headed towards Chyabchya, my friend's hometown.  At first everything was fine, just a regular bus ride, but about 10 minutes out of town, the road gradually started deteriorating into nothing but a skinny, bumpy dirt road.  At some points it was barely wide enough for our own bus, let alone any traffic coming the other way.  At one point, we had to stop and wait for almost half an hour because we encountered a semi-truck coming the other way and there was no room to pass.  The semi had to carefully back up onto a hill and let us go though... anyway, the scenery kept getting more and more green as we went along, going steadily uphill the whole way.  About 3 or 4 hours later, we finally made it to my friend's town.

The first thing that hit me when I got off was the altitude.  A simple walk down the street left me breathless and wanting to rest.  It took 3 days before my heart and lungs finally felt like normal again -- and the town I was visiting was only on the eastern grasslands...

Temperatures during the day were hot and scorching, but you still have to wear long pants and long sleeves.  Because of the high altitude, even a few hours of exposing your skin to the sun will leave you quite brown.  A whole day on the sun and you'd be hurting!  Nights, however, regularly got down to freezing, even in the middle of June.  I'd imagine winter nights would be chilly to say the least.

Food was based largely around the three Tibetan food groups of meat, butter, and fat.  Most meals consisted of some combination of yak, sheet, intestines, potatoes, and noodles.  Drink was inevitably Tibetan yak butter tea ( a bowel-wrenching concoction made with brick tea, yak butter, yak milk, and salt) or beer.  Sometimes I also ate "tsampa", a Tibetan staple made by mixing roasted barley flower, yak butter, unrefined cheese granules, and tea in a bowl with your hands and eating it by rolling it into little balls...

The scenery was pretty much just rolling grasslands for as far as the eye could see.  Some places would have a few mountains or some patches of desert, too, but there were no trees except for the ones people had planted in their own yards.  I visited a number of surrounding villages, many of them even smaller than the town where I was staying.  The houses were all made of earth and grass, although quite surprisingly, most of them managed to have electricity. Toilets, running water, and telephones, however, were not to be seen except in the bigger towns.  All in all, it is without a doubt the poorest place I've ever been in the world.  A large portion of the population are nomads, living in cloth tents and tending to herds of sheep and yak on the grasslands.  The population density is extremely low and many places don't have public roads...

Anywho, that's just a little bit about my trip to Tibet...

- Josh

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January 28, 2004
...I've been in China for more than a year now...and as a result there are now few things left on this planet that I haven't eaten in one form or another.  Also, my "Chinglish" has gotten exceptionally good, too.

Despite having previously planned to do so, I didn't make it back to the State for Christmas.  I'll be coming home in June for a visit.  Currently, I'm living in the same village in Tibet that I visited during the summer.  I've been here about two weeks now and the Chinese New Year holiday will be over tomorrow.  I'll be staying here until May studying Tibetan language and culture.  We get a one week holiday for May Day and then after that my brother and mother will be visiting for two weeks.  If we have time, I'd like to take them up to the upper Tibetan Plateau (near the Himalayas) and see if we can make a side trip to Mt. Everest base.  That should be a pretty good trip...

...I picked up a laptop and digital camera just before coming to Tibet.  I've already taken quite a few pictures - as soon as I can get my laptop hooked up to the internet (this town has only recently gotten connected to the internet, so it's still a little bit of a hassle) I'll post them on the web for you to check out.

I've been lazy in scanning my pictures, so there are only two sets of pictures:  Tibet pictures from the summer and Beijing pictures from the winter...  But now that I have a digital camera, I'll hopefully have a lot more online soon.

Other than that, not much to report at the moment...My college plans are still up in the air.  I was planning on studying medicine in the US, but since I've stuck with Chinese for a year so far (and have become quite fluent in it), now I'm figuring I might as well stick with it and major in Chinese.  If I'm still interested in medicine after college, I might study Chinese medicine, but who knows.  As to whether I'll be going to college in the US or in China, I'm still undecided.  I've been accepted to Ohio State and if I go to school in the US, that's where I'll go.  If I end up staying here, I'll probably just go to school in Beijing.

All right, well that's the whole kit and kaboodle.  Any news on your end?  Oh, yeah, I just remembered, CCTV-5 (the Chinese state-owned sports channel) will start broadcasting one NFL game every Thursday starting next week - something to look forward to.  Apart from the sports channel (which is mainly soccer, NBA games, and ping-pong), the only other good channel on TV is the movie channel from the 80's and 90's dubbed in Chinese.  Sometimes the dubbed voices turn out to be quite funny - image Tom Cruise speaking in Chinese and you'll get the picture...

OK, well, wishing you a happy and prosperous "Year of the Monkey"... Everything's pretty much closed down and everyone has returned to their hometowns for the Chinese New Year which ends this week.  After things open up and get moving again, I'll try to write more.

Take care,
J-

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February 3, 2004
...As far as history goes, I've found out that Americans know hardly anything about Asian history.  Not that it's really all that important to the average American, but since you are doing a unit on China, it might be good to at least brush over major events in relatively recent Chinese history.  One of the most important of these being the separation of China into 4 separate political territories:  the Mainland, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau.  The China/Hong Kong separation was the result of British trade efforts in the Far East, which eventually led to the Opium Wars and colonization of Hong Kong.  Macau was given to the Portuguese in similar colonization concessions.  The big split, however, is the Mainland/Taiwan split, the result of civil war become Mao Ze Dong's Communist Party and Sun Yat-Sen's Nationalists, which ended with the Nationalists fleeing to Taiwan and communism rising to power in China.

Other important events include the Japanese invasion of China (during World War II, I believe), which led to the mass murdering, raping, and torturing (Japan even performed Nazi-style human medical experiments) of tens of thousands of civilian Chinese (known as the Nanjing Massacure).  Japan never apologized or even admitted that such a thing even happened.  To this day Chinese hate Japan because of it.

As for modern Chinese culture, etc... one of the most important factors in Chinese culture, even up to today, is the influence of Confucianism.  Close-knit families with many generations living under one roof, children obeying their parents at all costs, "saving face", and winning honor for your family's reputation and all leftover elements from Confucianism still seen in today's China.

The other big topic worth discussing is China's economy, and it's past 20 years or so of transforming to a pseudo-market economy after Deng Xiao Ping's "Opening-Up Policy" in the mid 80's.  Perhaps you could invite your students to think about or discuss the problems a country such as China faces transitioning to a market economy.  You can't take a former socialist country with 1.4 million people, most of them living in the countryside, and instantly transform it into a free market economy even if its leaders wanted to.  In the countryside, there are no jobs to be found, so there is currently a mass migration towards the cities.  Beijing is notorious for its enormous population of migrant workers, people from the countryside with little money or education that come to the city to do its dirtiest and most low paying jobs.  These people form the backbone of the city, building buildings, constructing roads, and working in restaurants, yet they are often looked down on by the city's more wealthy residents.  Perhaps a comparison would be made to early America's migrant workers, such as those in "The Grapes of Wrath"?  Other problems include the government's policy of "over-employing", which means using 2 or 3 people to fill a job that could easily be done by 1 person - this is done by the government to deliberately keep the unemployment rate down.  If China switched to a market economy, these extra workers would have not jobs and the unemployment rate would skyrocket.  Also, the average Chinese citizen lacks the education or experience to survive in a capitalist culture.  The older and middle-aged generation all grew up in Mao-style communist China, so they only know how to survive under that kind of a system, which means things such as using "connections" to get things done and bribing government and business leaders for their approval or consent.  Without controls or proper education, China could easily become riddled with corruption and fraud (more so than it is now).  A good example is the recent case of Amway, the American pyramid-sales company.  A while ago, Amway started operations in China, but things quickly went sour as Chinese Amway sales representatives used the Amway pyramid-marketing concept to cheat lots and lots of people.  It was stopped and now Amway is only allowed to operate as a regular retail store in China.

Besides the above-mentioned ideas, perhaps you could ask your class to think or write about what ideas, concepts, and other elements in modern American culture have come over from China.  Examples might include Chinese herbal medicine, acupuncture, "feng shui", Chinese food, kung fu (Bruce Lee, etc.) and martial arts, the concept of yin-yang, "saving face", Chinese food, silk, Taoism, Buddhism, people getting Chinese character tattoos, etc.  Anyway, that's just some ideas.  If you have something more specific in mind and need some information or ideas, let me know and I'll be glad to help you out.  As for travelogues, I don't know of any specific sites, but if you have a special topic in mind, let me know and I can write something up from your own experiences.

...In other news, it's now official that I'll be going to Ohio State this coming fall (Go Buckeyes!)...

Alright, catch ya' later...

- Josh

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