Posted by Dan on August 26, 2010 · 5 Comments
Life comes at you fast. I knew it was coming since I left for China over 4 months ago.
“August 25th” – return flight to the USA. The return home…
Home. I’ve been trying to grasp my sense of that word for awhile now. There is (at least there used to be…yes, its been awhile) a little religious plaque in my home in Frankenmuth, MI that says “Home is where the heart is.” But I wonder, for a wanderer, for someone that has pieces of his heart scattered across the world, where is home really?
Of course, a huge portion of my heart is in Frankenmuth. That is where I grew up, where my parents still live, and my youngest brother Kent is still in high school preparing for his life journey. Basketball games, midnight runs to the (used to be) 24 hour Exit Restaurant in Birch Run, and all the quirks and hijinks of adolescence, so many memories filling the lines of my life there.
The Boys, Christmas '09 - from left, me, Brad, Kent
But that’s incomplete. Brad, my basketball phenom brother, plays ball for Xavier in Cincinnati. Certainly, that’s home too.
Hmm, of course, my heart is with my grandparents. Grandpa Neil and Grandma Phyllis in Bradenton, FL are presidents of the “Follow Dan Redford Fan Club.” They even skyped me throughout the summer…impressive. I was lucky enough to have Grandpa Jack and Grandma Ann 10 minutes from me while in college. Weekly dinners, piano playing, and laughter in their small apartment in Lansing, MI taught me so much over my four years of education at MSU.
East Lansing will always, definitely be a home for me. Crazy nights, Final Fours, study cram sessions, kickin some back with the boys…oh yea, and graduating college (though I did finish up while in Beijing).
2010 Saint Patrick's Day in East Lansing
It is these experiences, though, these growing pains, that prepared my heart to place itself in so many places over the last three years. China is a big place to put your heart, but its amazing what the possibilities are when you do. Jeez, even as I write this, I haven’t even made it back to Michigan yet.
Remi and I on the Bund in Shanghai
My heart is still in Shanghai, where my first post-college pseudo-job experience was. I had many life-defining moments, and so many great memories with so many great people. That’s home too, right?
I met my girlfriend at the Expo in Shanghai, and here, in North Chicago, IL, she is beginning her own journey at medical school. Wow, another place where my heart landed. I’m taking advantage of some frequent flyer miles to see her here for a bit before going back to the Muth.
I think part of my heart has to be in Hong Kong. Its definitely my favorite city. Remi and I spent four awesome days there in June. Breathtaking views, beautiful architecture, and an aura of success permeates the air (yes, along with other things I’m aware of, its still kind of China). It is an amazing world city.
My heart is with village students and their families that I taught English to in earthquake stricken Northern Sichuan last summer. Haha, funny that I taught them
Sitting down for dinner in a Sichuan village
English, and in exchange, they taught me about life, about struggle, about living behind the curve. Not a bad trade. Part of home is definitely there.
Well, how about Beijing? I will never forget the amazing moments I had at Tsinghua University with some unbelievably smart and talented world changing students in Project IMUSE. I actually was fortunate to go back this summer and see the new crew…its wonderful to see dreams continue to grow.
Sometimes you just have no control over your heart at all…you learn in life that it just has a mind of its own. Such was my trip to Israel. I think that, even after all my time in China, Jerusalem is probably the furthest extent of my heart’s reach. It was a point in my life in which, ironically, many things in my life came together. Home is there too – we actually lived in an apartment in Jerusalem not too far from the prime minister’s home. What’s less known is that outside of his home is half a block of tents that has been the home of the family of Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier that has been held in captivity by Hamas for over 4 years. I met his father, Noam, and I saw that his life has been turned upside down – his home is now a tent, and part of his heart is in Palestine with his son.
Planting a tree in Jerusalem with the Jewish National Fund
Jerusalem allowed me to reconnect with parts of my life that I had almost forgotten were there. I became emotional standing on the Temple Mount, where it is believed that Jesus Christ angrily overturned the gambling and sales tables at the sacred House of the Lord. It reminded me of the vivid memories of Sunday School, and the lessons that my parents regularly taught me from the Good Book.
It is amazing that it is in Israel of all places that I think I really started to figure out this whole question of home and heart, heart and home, etc. etc. In Tel Aviv, we visited an art gallery that doubled as a home of a very famous new age artist (name escapes my memory now). Not normally a connoisseur of art, there was one particular piece that really caught my attention. It was a large glass box, full of small dolls that I think were made from cotton. There were at least one hundred of them, each one with a unique look unlike any of the others. Some were pretty. Some weren’t. Some were small, some were tall. You get the idea. But, there was one doll that was not in the box. It was outside the box by itself. According to our guide, that is the one that is supposed to represent the artist, because she was non-conformist, she always thought “outside the box.”
I started at it for awhile. Something wasn’t right. The interpretation was wrong, at least, I thought so. I thought to myself “I’m the box.” I am the box, not because I think that I’m an inside the box thinker, but that the box encompasses all of me. All of the dolls (the people inside) have all come together throughout my life to define who I am. Some represent bigger parts of my heart, and thus, a more tangible understanding of home to me. But its amazing that I think about all these different parts of my life, the different parts of my heart, every day.
I’ve found that it has little to do with the physical places, the buildings, or even the scenery. It’s about what you do and who you do it with. Its about connecting hearts, and knowing that though you might live in one place, your heart, and your home, is in many.
Understanding this has made me start to begin feeling like I’ve partly reached my goal of becoming a world citizen. Now, I think its time that I start making a real impact in the homes that I care about the most.
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Posted by Charles on August 22, 2010 · 2 Comments
The 42 hour train took me to Kunming, the Capital and largest city in Yunnan province, but my plan was only to pass though as I already had booked train tickets for the next day to Dali, a touristy backpackers’ destination deeper into the mountains. I had originally planned to be alone for most of this Yunnan journey but began to regret that decision in Kunming. I am really not the person to enjoy more than a few hours of solitude at one time, and was beginning to feel more than lonely after the long train ride.
But my luck was changing, I ran into a friend from the Australian Pavilion at the hostel I was staying at and shortly after my Taiwanese-American roommate Alex from the Expo Village texted me saying he would be in Kunming that night. We all hung out that night and checked out the bars in Kunming, and the next day Alex went with me to the train station and somehow got a ticket, although standing, on the same train.
The train to Dali was amazing; it was an 8 hour journey, but the windows were open and the scenery was magnificent. I sat with a Chinese family that asked me if the US had places as beautiful as this, and I said yes but they were beautiful in a different way. I got out my computer and began to show them pictures from the trips that my father brought my brothers and I on hiking through Alaska, California and Wyoming. I showed them that in the those places the mountains were more rocky and had less trees, but they agreed they were every bit as beautiful.
view of the Chinese landscape from the train to Dali
The American landscape from Yosemite in California
While enjoying the beautiful scenery with the wind blowing in face, I browsed pictures from my previous trips in the US and began to realize how thankful I am to have had those experiences. In a way, they have helped me develop the independence that defines who I am and characterizes a very strong and admirable part of American culture. Not until coming to China and seeing the differences can I truly appreciate this aspect of American culture. In China people travel in groups and rely on tour guides for everything, but in the States my father, my brothers and I would embark on our expeditions by ourselves. In our 40 mile hike through the mountains of Alaska years ago, we each carried our own 40 pound bags and every night set up the tent and hung our food so the bears could not get to it. I strongly feel Chinese is missing that independence building characteristic in their culture and cannot be more thankful to have had the experiences I did growing up in the US.
Now I was in China traveling more independently than ever, without even my family, and only by luck having my friend Alex accompanying me for a brief segment. We both enjoyed the seeing the beautiful landscape and glimpses into rural China the ride offered. We passed by many farms and villages along the way and could see the people taming the land, a job they would probably do until they die. Again I felt good to be afforded the opportunities I was growing up where I did, but at that moment I felt very happy to be where I was then — exploring realities that exist so far away from home and so far removed from the average American mindset.
We got to Dali that evening, which turned out to be a much bigger city than I imagined. Where we actually wanted to go was the Dali gucheng or ancient city, closer to the mountains and a 30 minute bus ride away. Dali from the beginning was not as I imagined it: a small little touristy destination nestled in the mountains. However, when we arrived at the gucheng we were not disappointed. The city was everything you would imagine an ancient Chinese city to be but with touristy characterists; it was walled on the outside to protect from invaders in ancient times, paved in stone, had several canals, but was full of bars, coffee shops and even had a street called yangren jie or foreigner street. It was very aesthetically pleasing and the location was unbeatable being between the mountains and a large fresh water lake.
Alex left the next day to go to Tiger Leaping Gorge and Shangrila, two absolutely breath taking destinations, from what I have heard, that I regretfully will not be able to make it to this trip. I stayed 2 days in Dali total and at that point was happy to be back on my own again. With finishing my Expo job and then traveling I had got behind on a lot of work. I found the perfect environment outdoors at a cafe in the gucheng with the mountains in the background and the very temperate climate, to bring my computer and work all day catching up on stuff and drink the Yunnan Coffee. I could, however, have gone without all the 80 year old Chinese women asking me “you smoka da ganja?” Interestingly marijuana grows naturally in the mountains by Dali and somehow the elderly females have taken up the entrepreneurial burden to bring that good to the hippie backer market in Dali. Maybe its because they have the least to loose if they are caught.
My last morning in Dali I decided to hike a nearby Mountain called Cangshan. The girl working at the hostel said it was beautiful and recommended this 13 kilometer climb to me it because I was looking for a challenge. I actually did not get much of a challenge because it ended up not being a climb. I took a cable car into the mountains, and walked on a completely flat carved out path for 5 miles, and then took a cable car back down. So it was not that tough, but the view from the top of the mountain rage was unbelievable. It rained at the beginning and then once I got past the clouds it was clearer than ever and I could see the mountains, the city, and then the lake far in the distance. At the end of the hike, before I got on the cable car down, I cooled off by sitting down and enjoying a cold Dali Beer (pretty bad actually) and egg sandwich that some of the locals living in the mountains prepared for me.
The mountain was not that dangerous, but its good to know the Chinese are looking out for their homies.
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Posted by Charles on August 15, 2010 · 2 Comments
So my work at the Expo is over and the original plan was to go to Hong Kong and enjoy a dose of Western culture after, in many ways, being overexposed to Mainland Chinese culture for the last four months. But after missing my train to Hong Kong, plans have changed and I am headed to Kunming, the capital of Yunnan, on a 42 hour train ride as the only Westerner. What have I got myself into? There certainly is not going to be anything “Western” about this trip…
I took a sleeper bed in a cell with 5 other strangers and did not even have enough room to sit up in bed. 5 hours into the train ride and after reading an entire Malcolm Gladwell book in one sitting, I decided to get something to eat in the restaurant cable-car, which as luck had it was 10 cars away because my sleeper was the very last on the train. Passing through the crowds of people on the long journey to the dining car happened as expected. I tried to lower my head while I surged past the onlooking Chinese, but I could not maneuver quickly enough through the crowd without hearing “Oh Laowai” (foreigner) or the proud but heavily accented “Hello!” that always seems to necessitate some kind of acknowledgment. I basically felt like Barry Sanders dodging around all the people, comments, and stares in my simple 100 meter journey to get some food.
The next day on the train I read another book while laying in my quarters called China Underground. It was very interesting to read about the crazy things that have happened in Chinese bars and clubs that I have actually been to in the last few summers, mainly in Qingdao and Beijing, and was nice to read about Yunnan, where my train was headed, and how beautiful of a destination it is for the curious backpacker. I was half way there, coming from Shanghai on the coast, going to Kunming central-southish region of China, and the view out the window was still not so interesting, just villages, factories, and nothing more than mildy hilly landscape — not too much different than driving through Ohio.
The next morning I woke up and found that many people, including the five people I was bunking with, had already “xiache’d” (got off) the train at the various stops along the way. I felt much more comfortable now and started a third book while also enjoying the increasingly beautiful scenery in the last few hours of the journey. A little girl and her older sister sat down across from me while I was reading, and started making comments about every aspect of my body, such as “tade yanjing hao da a” and “tade bizi zhen gao” (his eyes are so big, and his nose is so tall). I heavily debated pretending not to understand Chinese, which was obviously the assumption, but my natural facial reaction conveyed immediately to them that I knew everything they just said and got sucked in to generic conversations about where I am from, why I am in China, how long I studied Chinese, etc. Of course, as I answered more and more questions, more and more people sat down next to me to hear the laowei speak Chinese.
I guess after 3 months at the expo I just got burned out a little, and was tired of the same old treatment and conversation. Finishing my job there, I wanted to escape from the trivial and meaningless conversations I encountered everyday; however, as our chat progressed, people on the train became more interesting as I took my turn asking questions about China. I learned more about Yunnan, the lifestyle and culture of the native residents, and of course, got some good Chinese practice in at the same time. They told me that Yunnan has the largest amount of shaosuminzu (minorities) of any province in China, and is known for their mushrooms. Well I hate mushrooms, but the diversity of Yunnan seemed very intriguing. I looked out the window once more as we were closing in on Kunming station and noticed that the scenery was more beautiful than ever. All of a sudden, I felt completely reinvigorated: I was excited to embark on my exploration of this beautiful landscape and learn more about the diversity found in the southern regions of China.
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Posted by Dan on August 13, 2010 · Leave a Comment
Lansing to Shanghai to Jerusalem
by Dan Redford
August 13, 2010
JERUSALEM — If you’ve been reading my blogs on Shanghai-Exposed.com you may have been confused by the last few days of posts. They have nothing to do with Shanghai or the Expo or even China.
The simple reason for this is that 13 days ago I flew from Beijing to Tel Aviv to take part in a “Once in a Lifetime” experience…in Israel.
Three other “young, world-renowned” bloggers and I were brought here by a group of 24 students at Hebrew University, who are part of an organization called “StandWithUs,” to describe what life is like here in one of the most conflicted and controversial places in the world.
“What does Israel have to do with China?”
This has been the most popular question among my followers. This entire trip, I’ve been seeking that answer. I’ve been looking for ways in which Shanghai is connected to Jerusalem and, going further, how these places are connected to Lansing — the place I call home.
It hasn’t been an easy search.
On the surface, Jerusalem is entirely different than any place I’ve ever been. Its history goes back thousands of years. It has been built and rebuilt, destroyed and reconstructed seemingly hundreds of times over the course of the last few thousand years. It is a diverse place. Christians, Jews and Muslims live within the city, and though most of them seem to live peacefully in coexistence, “a few bad apples spoil the whole bunch.”
They have to worry about things here that we don’t in America. Our closest neighbors in Michigan are Canada and Ohio. In Jerusalem, the threat is terror organizations like Hamas in the Palestinian Authority, a 10-minute walk from the neighborhood of Gilo in Jerusalem. This used to be a place where bullets would fly into residential homes and apartments from Palestine before the Security Fence was built in 2003.
It is hard to compare Lansing to Shanghai, as well as Shanghai to Jerusalem. With a population of almost 20 million, Shanghai is an enormous place. And it’s growing.
Since 1990, the city has grown at a staggering pace — increasing by almost 3.5 million people, up 25.5 percent in a 20-year period. People are still moving in, the opposite of what is happening in Lansing and Jerusalem. Yet, this is not necessarily the best thing for the city. It is becoming too large. The quality of medical care is not good enough to support the masses and, because a large and increasing part of the population is made up of migrants, the city will inevitably see the returns on innovation dwindle.
Yet through all these differences, I still find that there are many things that we can learn from each other. It starts with what is common between all of us.
I had the opportunity to meet with the mayor of Jerusalem along with a couple of city councilmen and economic developers last week. They were talking to us about their strategies to promote the city and create a better image of the city that doesn’t look like what we read about in the mainstream media. They were talking about their ideas for attracting and retaining young people in the city.
Today we met with a representative from the Jerusalem Development Agency. She went through a presentation in which she showed us plans for expanding Hebrew University to bring in more international students. They want to develop business incubators and are preparing to offer grants to people doing life science projects. They’re trying to be new, hip, and modern. This meeting was, by the way, only minutes before we toured the city on Segways.
Shanghai’s goals, though maybe bigger and grander, are not all that different. The whole purpose of the Expo is to show the world China’s entrance into the modern world. They invested $50 billion into their biggest city in order to present an image of modern China that has a future of sustainable living and technology. They want to attract people to this “new China.”
All of these things make me think about Lansing. I think about the Technology Innovation Center at 325 Grand River Ave. I think about the Greater Lansing Next initiative. I think about the push to bring Zipcars to the city.
This is how success is defined in the modern world, no matter where you are. We are competing with people all over the world who are fighting to make their places the best places to live.
This fight does not have to be malicious. There are so many things that we can learn from our differences. We can learn from best practices in Jerusalem, and Shanghai, and they can learn from us. If we can recognize this, maybe we can begin to understand each other, to be aware of each other’s perspective, and to contribute to peace and development.
It is easy to pigeonhole a place, to ignore something or someone thousands of miles away. But I’ve learned in my travels that it is no longer a luxury — it’s imperative — that we develop a society that has knowledge of places like Jerusalem and Shanghai that seem so far away.
This blog can be viewed in Dan’s Column on Dome Magazine
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