Back in Beijing

We returned to Beijing last Saturday after a nine-month absence. (We'll post videos and pictures tomorrow, when we're in Japan) Despite attempts to defend our dissertations in the United States, either by teleconference or with Chinese law professors doing international exchanges in New York, we had to fly 13 hours for a twenty-minute defense at Peking University. We both passed and we will both receive our degrees in July.

People who visit China intermitently often talk about the amazing changes in the PRC that occur between their visits. For us, however, China seems mostly the same. Internet access stinks. Crushing polution, illegal street vendors, and migrant workers returned with a vengeance once the Olympic whitewash ended. Shops again display pirated DVDs and pirated goods again, including a trademark infringement "two-fer" in the form of fake Crocs with air holes in the shape of Mickey Mouse. Chinglish t-shirts say things like, "Def Foxy," "Ticklish Little Big Chief," and "Color Yourselves Up with Robinhood," while our hotel reservation was for a room with "twin bads." A new-to-China American made fast friends after we showed him how to use the ticket machine in the subway.

In small ways, though, Beijing changed significantly. My old firm laid off four people in Beijing. The video monitors on the subway play music videos about how the 2008 Olympics rocked. Close friends and classmates who defined our experience in China left for other cities. Once oblivious paramilitary guards now stop every entrant to our school's campus and check for student identification, presumably because of Project 6521 and the fact that several transformative social events in China's history, including the Tian'anmen square incident, began at Peking University. "Beijing Review," a magazine left in our hotel room, highlights China's role in ending feudalism in Tibet. An hotel next to the infamously expensive CCTV tower remains a burned-out shell thanks to an errant fireworks display.

The government has also shifted priorities. Due to the H1N1 influenza scare, health ministry staff used infrared technologies to scan all incoming passengers for fevers at the airport at least three times. We completed special immigration forms which asked if we had "been in close contact with pig within the past 1 week." State-owned media seems to have convinced cab drivers throughout Beijing that we brought swine flu into China.

Perhaps because of the continued pollution in Beijing and the risk of unrest, the environment has assumed center stage. CCTV-9 spent at least one third of last night's evening news broadcast on renewable energy stories. A classmate wrote his thesis on China's renewable energy law. China Daily, the English language newspaper in China, contains a number of stories about biomass, solar, and wind farms. The CEO of ABB, appearing on local television, spouted platitude after platitude about government efforts to improve the environment in China.

Overall, our return feels strange. We visited with some friends, classmates, mentors, and former colleagues, but we know that we will not see some of them again. Whereas returning home involves familiar faces, returning to China feels like returning to a high school reunion with half of our class missing.

I hope I feel differently when we next come back.