Shaoxing redemption

Fudan University, in its all-encompassing wisdom, decided what our program needed was a trip to Shaoxing, an ancient canal city a few hours' drive south of Shanghai, in Zhejiang province.

Shaoxing has remade itself in the past two decades as a centre of industry and manufacturing, and is now the tie capital of the world (take that, Italy and South Korea!), among other things. It accomplished this through the magic of China's unique brand of free-market economic development (it's remarkable how a loosening of restrictions and a couple of tax breaks for key industries will trigger a "market-driven" economic boom).

It's also the birthplace of Lu Xun, a famed Chinese writer from the early 20th century who is beloved not only for his writing but also for his social activism and criticism of government corruption in a post-Yuan Shikai China (I've been assured he also hated the Guomindang, and would have adored Mao Zedong if he hadn't died in 1936, 13 years before Liberation in 1949).


For the approximately 33 hours we were in Shaoxing, we were herded from one tour or lecture or organized meal to another. It was very strange, but also englightening: Our tours and lectures were all led by local government officials whom we couldn't really talk to but who were officious and friendly and assured us that this was a shining example of the successful marriage of heritage preservation and modernization, leading to a wealthy, beautiful municipality that attracts oodles of tourists and foreign investors.

The plethora of tourists was visibly evident when we got a tour of Lu Xun's birthplace and the tomb of this dude called Da Yu (literally Big Yu, or Yu the Great), who's a kind of Chinese Noah and saved the country from a bunch of floods around 4,000 years ago.

We got a taste of the foreign investment landscape when checking out a high-tech electronics factory that designs cool stuff like the touch screens on cell phones and crazy high-definition flatscreen televisions. They make things to order for big brand-name companies, who then turn around and sell them at a grossly inflated price.

All the workers were wearing these bizarre biohazard-type suits. 70 per cent of the company's 600 employees are migrants from other provinces, and they live in dormitories on-site. They get 1,400 to 1,800 RMB per month, which is more than minimum wage but not amazing (it's about $300 CDN, now that the dollar has slipped majorly).

The most hilarious part of the trip, though, and unfortunately the least discussed by our effusive tour guides, was our accomodation: We were put up in a Party school, which is where CCP members go when they're being promoted to "learn to love the Party more," as one of the Fudan students explained it to me. The school was located outside the city in a surprisingly North American-looking suburb (there were more private, standalone houses than I've seen anywhere outside rural Xinjiang, except these ones were enormous), which the student said is necessary because the Party schools are so luxuriant they don't want people to get resentful.

The compound consisted of a series of blindingly white buildings, a basketball court, running track, a gleaming gymnasium with a bunch of badminton courts, a two-storey militaristic cafeteria with predictably caf-like food and a series of lecture buildings. The dormitories where Party members-in-training live for the two months they attend CCP ideology lectures here all had ensuite bathrooms, fancy sheets, those weird packaged slippers, teakettles and surprisingly soft mattresses for a country that doesn't really do soft mattresses.

We kept running into Party members in the caf or heading to or from their dormitories or the basketball court, but no one would talk to us. Very, very strange.