Another think I took away from tonight (and it’s not the first time i’ve taken this away but always a good reminder) is how much I’m asleep in my daily life. The constant barrage of stimulation from the web, email, texting, tv, day dreaming has the affect of desensitizing me to my own living breathing experience. The fairly direct consequence of this is greater mental confusion, less connection to my heart, and a broader sense of drifting in my daily life.

I am amazed at how one night, a couple of hours, of meditation and dharma discussion, can snap me out of the addictive cycle of distraction and stimulation (via TV and internet mostly) and help me connect with my interior bodily and emotional experience. When I got home, I noticed that the lure of the TV was not nearly as great as it was earlier today. I did check some sports scores but i quickly put away my blackberry so that I could enjoy feeling the fullness of the quiet space that I was in – and what normally sparks feeling of isolation and loneliness (the quiet) felt full, juicy, and mysterious.

James Fallows has written a great article about the system of censorship itself in last year’s Atlantic. But I wanted to share a few of my own experiences from my time there.

First and foremost, the wordpress.com domain that I use to host this blog was entirely blocked so I could not even access it while in China (except with a VPN connection). Other sites that were blocked during my stay were: blogger, facebook, twitter, and youtube. Second, after trying to view a video of the Tiananmen massacre on Frontline (which is akin to a kid, in response to parents who tell him he can’t smoke pot, smoking heroin instead), my internet connection mysteriously went out for 24 hours. It was a silent warning but I got the hint and never tried to access a “hot” link like that again. Third, after trying to set up another blog on a site that wasn’t blocked, I saved an unfinished draft of a post about Chinese politics. When i came back to finish the draft, I could no longer access it, as evidently, the keyword censors sensed something they didn’t like in the post.

All of this left me frustrated and in the end, I wrote little about my time there that i thought would get censored. Nothing about politics or the government, nothing about the Xinjiang protests or ethnic violence in Tibet, and nothing about censorship. The only topics that I felt I could write about without trouble, were things like food, tourist attractions, harmless cultural observations, etc – all fine topics but rather safe and banal.

The system is not foolproof in the sense that one can access a lot of stuff that is critical of the Chinese government even without a VPN. I was able to read every NY Times article I tried to open, including all of the reporting on the Xinjiang protests, which were raging this summer while I was in Beijing. But I agree completely with Fallows’ assessment that the system does not have to be foolproof in order to have its intended effect.

“Domestic censorship is the real issue, and it is about social control, human surveillance, peer pressure, and self-censorship,” Xiao Qiang of Berkeley says. Last fall, a team of computer scientists from the University of California at Davis and the University of New Mexico published an exhaustive technical analysis of the GFW’s operation and of the ways it could be foiled. But they stressed a nontechnical factor: “The presence of censorship, even if easy to evade, promotes self-censorship.”

While none of the obstructions i faced too large to find a workaround, they were just large enough of a nuisance to prompt a motivated amateur like me to pack his bags. And here I am, a US Citizen who doesn’t face a whole lot of risks. Chinese citizens, however, face the risk of real retribution for political criticism. Hence, Chinese bloggers learn to tow a very delicate and thin line in their commentary. A good example of how they stay within the lines of government censorship can be seen here, in a Chinese blog post about the Xinjiang protests that i translated for a well-known Chinese news aggregation site. In it, a well-known blogger takes pains to soften his criticism of the government for shutting down a popular news site during the Xinjiang protests. It’s a great example of how bloggers try to express their criticisms while still giving themselves cover should the government turn its attention toward them.

I left China feeling stifled by the system and with the sense that there is very little open political discourse on the internet except in probably very small circles. I also left with the sense that the issue of censorship does not threaten the legitimacy of the political regime nearly as much as we’d like to think it does here in the West. Some of this has to do with the ignorance of the average Chinese to this censorship. But even among those that know the government censors, there is a surprising acceptance of it as either a necessary practice, or as simply one problematic aspect of an otherwise legitimate and credible regime.

“But the world doesn’t reward perfection. It rewards productivity. And productivity can only be achieved through imperfection. Make a decision. Follow through. Learn from the outcome. Repeat over and over and over again. It’s the scientific method of trial and error. Only by wading through the imperfect can we begin to achieve glimpses of the perfect.”

So i went on, what else, Yelp, and looked up doctors who had been highly rated. I came upon Care Practice, a small shop whose website says it’s mission is “to break down the barriers put between doctors and patients by establishing accessibility, transparency, and affordability to the practice of medicine.” After reading a few reviews, all glowing, I called them up. After explaining what i had, she asked when I would like to come in. I wasn’t sure what to say.  “Uh, can i come in today?” i asked sheepishly, a ridiculous request in my experience. “Of course, you can come in anytime except 12:30 – 2 today.” Wow, this was new. Not only could i come in today, I got to name the time that I wanted to come in. “Okay, how about 11:30?” That would give me an hour to finish watching the Michael Jordan hall of fame acceptance speech video that has been getting a lot of criticism. “Sure” she said. Appointment made!

One slight hiccup though – she said that they didn’t take insurance. I could get it reimbursed by my insurance later as an out of network expense but I would need to pay out of pocket today. This gave me a big pause because it would just be another piece of paperwork i didn’t have time to do. Still, I was desperate to see a doctor soon so I told myself that i would go in this once.

When I walked in, the doctors office was modern. Black wood floors. Abstract paintings. Elegant track lighting. and rather than the typical dismal selection of reading materials at most doctors offices (think readers digest, highlights, etc), recent issues of Esquire sat on the dark wood coffee tables. I waited for about 4 minutes before my doctor, Vinh Ngo, came to get me. He walked me back through the frosted glass doors, into his office.

The doctor’s visit itself was pretty typical but Ngo was friendlier and calmer and took his time more than any doctor I had visited. He actually seemed like a regular guy (no white labcoat), not crazily rushed, just having a chat with me. After doing his check-up he told me they could do a few tests, a flu-test and strep-test but that I was borderline on both. Did I want to get the tests done?  Implicit in this was a question was “Did I want to pay for them?” My answer, a new one, was no. He did prescribe me antibiotics, some stronger cough supressant, and a homeopathic remedy – coconut oil. Then he got up to leave the office and in a few minutes, he came back with the bag of medicines. No visit to the pharmacy needed – pretty cool.

At the end of the visit, he tallied up the bill and went through it with me. The realization hit me that I had never really ever known how much any of these services cost. The doctor’s visit was 145 (follow-ups are 90). The antibiotics, 35, cough suppressant, 15, coconut oil, 10. Total = 205. Not cheap at all but when compared to the cost of health insurance, which can be upwards of 500 a month, not horrible.

I still don’t know if I would want to use this service regularly. Now, I need to file for a reimbursement which sounds about as fun as going shopping with my girlfriend. I think the “fee-for-service” model makes sense – make people pay the full cost of the regular check-ups so that they don’t over-consume healthcare with unnecessary tests, and let insurance cover the big-ticket catastrophic items. The problem is that there is a current system and I don’t know how we go from here to there. I have good insurance and so the question is: would I willingly choose to opt into it when I could go to another doctor and pay almost nothing for a visit?  Probably not, for now.

Why travel? Why china?

Well, after two years of b-school, I’d call myself a “recovering MBA.” Two years of keeping myself busy doing seemingly nothing but sending emails and planning meetings and events, two years of academic curricula that has no coherent pedagogical theory, and two years of thinking about companies that make products that add only modest value to the world (at best), and yes, you could say I’m glad to be done. To be fair, the experience was great for me in many many ways – but two years of swimming in the b-school pool has left me feeling a fish out of water. What better thing to do now than to throw myself in some more foreign waters?

Why China? Well, in addition to the typical memes – it’s the next world superpower/a fascinating case study in tightly controlled political mechanisms coexisting with some freewheeling capitalist energy/a potent symbol for either the bright future or disastrous consequences that await us in the 21st century– it’s also the home of my grandparents and ancestors. I’m going in many ways to connect to some aspect of that history.

I’m looking forward to exploring the country and writing about my reflections. Some Questions I have going in:

• How savvy are young people in China? To what extent do they see through, past, or around the official line of the government? Where does critique live in the society and how does it get voiced?
• What are the gender dynamics in China? How do the gender stereotypes of Chinese/Asian Americans compare with the gender dynamics in China?
• What is the state of social entreprenuership in China? How can social entrepreneurs bring social change to a country with such large political constraints?
• What is the energy of the place? How does this compare to the energy of a typical US city in which I’ve lived – SF, Boston, DC, etc
• As an American-born Chinese (ABC) who grew up in very white place, what is my connection to China the country? the people? the culture? the place? Where does that connection end? What does China’s rise mean for me as a Chinese American?
• And lots more – food, culture, politics, economics, anything that catches my eye, I’ll try to write about it.

Hope you stay tuned.

The New CCTV Headquarters in Beijing

Here’s a Charlie Rose interview from the summer of the three brothers together. They talk about their family influence and what made them who they are. A fascinating interview with a fascinating family. 

But I think the one quality of Obama’s that has been generally misunderstood by the press, blogs, pundits, and the general public. That quality is the level of his integrative thinking. Here, i draw somewhat from the Integral Theory developed originally by Ken Wilber. Many people have struggled to define Obama’s political philosophy. Some far right commentators have claimed he’s the most liberal member of the senate. Liberal commentators have worried he’s not bold enough or worry that he’s a compromiser that won’t take bold stances (think Paul Krugman). I think both sides miss the point. I think much more telling is Obama’s stance on issues like poverty in the black community, in which he talks both about the government’s responsibility and the individual and community’s responsibility. In this way, Obama is neither the most liberal senator in the Senate nor a weak-kneed centrist compromiser. Instead, what Obama is is an integrative politician.

The key distinction between integration and compromise is that compromise assumes a linear spectrum or fixed pie from which to divide gains and losses (i.e. like a car negotiation). Integration on the other hand assumes that the pie can be expanded and both parties can win with some creativity and thought. 

Obama is not the first politician to have integrative impulses. I wasn’t alive when some other politicans, who might be considered integrative (I’m thinking Lincoln), were in office. But he is the first modern integrative president (cross our fingers) and integrative thinking is badly needed in the world today. The truth is that the problems we face in the world today are too complex to tackle with either/or thinking. Terrorism is a threat that requires military action and effective use of soft-power. Poverty requires both reform of government policy and reform within our communities and in ourselves. Free markets and government regulation are both importance for a well-functioning economic system. 

The truth is, in most cases, both the left and right have a point. What we need are leaders that can know when we need a bit more salt and when we need more pepper. Few dishes can get by without a bit of both. Knowing what the proper blend requires insight, wisdom, flexibility, and judgment. These are all qualities that Obama has in spades and one reason why I think if anyone can handle the immensity of the challenges facing us today, that he can.