Our trip to China is hard to describe in words, so I'll save that for later.

The amount of construction going on in the cities in China is impressive. The rows of apartment buildings were the most interesting to me. I heard that some of them were completely empty, I think Steve Wilmarth said that, and that people would invest in the buildings like they would the stock market and never end up living in them. Steve also said that China was a “debt-free country.” This was really interesting as well because our country basically runs on borrowed money these days, from the people all the way up to the government. I was watching the news on CCTV, the only Chinese television station broadcast in English, and it was reported that the top twenty percent of people in China were in possession of eighty percent of the nation's wealth. I'm not sure whether or not the reason for this is capitalism. I would like to see some statistics about how many people move into the cities each year. There seems to be enough room in the cities for more people, but probably not many more large vehicles.

The traffic was crazy. I couldn't figure out if there were traffic laws or not, but there appeared to be none except stopping at red lights. I would have loved to go driving in and around Wuhan (it wasn't as exciting in Beijing), where people weaved in and out of traffic and dodged each other and people on the streets, just to see how well I'd do. It wasn't that the people were bad drivers, it was more that they were driving in such an open system that ability to stay in a lane was almost irrelevant. I was surprised that we didn't see any accidents happen on the road.

Multimedia Storytelling Plan

1. Which media environments and technologies/applications/platforms will I use in documenting and telling the story of my China trip?

I haven't decided exactly what I'm going to do yet, but my documentation will definitely include pictures taken on the trip.

2. What equipment/gear will I need to bring to capture my stories?

The only things I will need are a camera and a notebook.

3. How will I capture and "bottle" my stories while traveling in China?

I am going to save the pictures on the SD card in my camera and write down what was going on when I took them in a notebook.

4. Please provide a "sample example" of your multimedia approach here.

Pre-trip Reflection

I don't know much about China. My world history class in high school barely mentioned Asia and I don't care for politics so I don't read much into the media. The way things are going though, I do know that China will eventually pass the United States as the world's top consumer as well as economic and, as a result, political power. I know that the Chinese built the railroads that connected the east and west coasts of this country. That's about it.

The thing that I would most like to know about China is what they think about the United States and its people. In a country with censored and controlled media, I wonder how much of the outside world is actually available to the people. I would also like to learn more about what everyday life is like in China from the countryside to the cities. I imagine life there is similar to life here, but there are obvious and unknown differences that I would like to see for myself. I also have an interest in China's government structure. There is a reason that China has been relatively poor until recently and there is also a reason that it is growing in economic strength. My first guess at what caused this change would be government. Another subject that I would like to learn more about is China's energy consumption and pollution statistics. I've been wondering for a while now what China will do with its rising energy usage and industrialization. There are so many people there that they can't afford to pollute the air too badly but there is so much fuel being burned that it seems unavoidable. The United States (and I assume the rest of the modern world) is heading toward clean energy and technology. This technology might not be available or affordable in China and the Chinese will run into environmental problems as we have. I'm interested to see what they end up doing about it because I've seen the green movement in this country cause a shift in focus in various technological fields.

blog

I am going to China over spring break and this is a blog about it