Random thoughts

• It is still rather difficult for someone who does not speak Chinese to get around in China. If you stick to restaurants and hotels that are priced like their American counterparts, then you can count on English-speaking staff. But almost everywhere else it is Chinese only. The situation reminds me of when I visited France in the early 80's. By now, you can use English in most French cities; I expect the same to happen in China over time.
  
  
• I was quite surprised by how well professors and retired professors are doing. In the West, it is an axiom that people paid by the government have incomes that do not keep up with rising living costs nor with incomes paid by the private sector. The Chinese government, which I guess is flush with cash, has been able to break out of this pattern. Every professor, retired or not, I spoke to expressed great satisfaction in the way their living conditions had improved rather dramatically in recent years. This was a sharp contrast to how most American professors feel about their economic status.
  
  
• It was explained to me that the economic status of universities is inversely related to their academic status. What I observed firsthand was consistent with this. The top universities, such as Peking University, are national universities, so they receive all of their funding from the national government. Based on what I saw, the national government is providing plenty of funding, so Peking University is not doing so badly.
  
  However, local universities, such as Shanghai University, which are viewed as being ranked much lower academically than Peking University, receive funding from both the national and local governments. Since both have lots of money, these universities are able to build large new campuses and pay their professors much higher salaries than Peking University.
  
  Finally, the so-called normal universities, whose original mission was to train teachers, get even more funding, because they get money from the Ministry of Education, as well as the national and local governments.
  
  
• Am I wrong in believing that the cities are much cleaner places than they used to be? Although you still see and, worse, hear people spitting, the streets and sidewalks seem much cleaner and almost completely free of litter.
  
  
• I also found the quality of service in restaurants, stores, and hotels to be quite good. The waitresses, in addition to being young and pretty, were almost always very friendly and patient, especially after I explained that I could speak only a little Chinese and read none.
  
  The most notable exceptions were the taxi drivers. Although some were helpful, there were too many who did not know what they were doing, tried to hide it, and were quite unhelpful. I think they need to be trained more systematically in both knowledge of the streets and proper customer service behavior. In particular, if a taxi driver does not know where the destination is, he should admit it and not take the customer. The one bad experience that we had was a taxi driver who took Lauren and Nicholas to the entrance of Qinghua University instead of Peking University, despite her saying repeatedly, "BeiDa". He simply had no idea where BeiDa was. Lauren was quite fortunate in that someone off the street who knew where BeiDa was willing to get in the taxi and guide the driver to the right place.
  
  
• I found no firsthand basis for the claim that the Chinese treat badly people like me, who look Chinese but do not speak or read the language well. In fact, no one seemed surprised or annoyed, and everyone tried to be helpful. And it was not because they thought we were Japanese or Korean, because I almost always explained that we were from the US. This did sometimes lead to some puzzled looks.