Dragons Made of Sand

We have been writing much while in China, but not publishing too many
blogs. Still we fight the firewall: uploading is slow and sometimes
impossible. Shutterfly may be a better way to follow our
travels........

Have you read "Understanding China" written by John Bryan Starr -
distant cousin of my wife Brittany Starr (Ogilby) Shroyer?? If not,
look up the last chapter 'Conclusion: China in the 21st Century.' It
is a 10-minute read but paints some scenarios which could affect us
all. What we know is that China is changing fast; further evidenced by
the countless one-way streets and ridiculously inaccurate city maps.
As our friend Martin in Hangzhou told us, "we [China] have thousands
of years of history, rich culture, and many peoples, yet we learn from
you [the USA] that has only a couple hundred years of history, and who
are constantly changing the world."

A young student in Changsha told her English teacher that she has no
hope that anything can unite the diversity of the Chinese in a
universally compatible way. Chinese, she expressed, cannot, it seems,
get along or respect one another fully. "There is an expression in
China about the peoples who have lived here these thousands of years,"
she tells her teacher, "Individually the Chinese are Dragons but
together they act like sand." Sand, it seems is made up of grains
which may be blown apart and separated easily. What could she mean
about characteristics of [individual] Dragons?

What will a world look like when China spends its riches imitating the
rapid multi-national capitalist development of the USA?

What impact will Chinese consumers have as they rush to adopt the
'one-house, one-car', minimum standard of living of the USA and
Europe?

What is the world impact of China when we have 1.3 billion potential consumers?

What can we expect the environmental impacts to be of China's planned
construction of cities for 400,000,000 people in t next twenty years?

Our first thoughts are that Chinese people deserve a standard of
living equal to those of other developed countries.

Is it possible for China to build in a sustainable way that can
produce an equitable and healthful version of participatory democracy
and become an example of the best practices of government
responsiveness and inclusive decision making?

We think China can and deeply wants to play these roles in the 21st
century and has the wherewithal to get us there!!