Week Nine: The Seminar Ends
Presentation Day
Monday was the big day. Lawrence and I were set to present on the role of technology in child protection, and how it can be best used to further the industry's goals. After eating at Slowboat on Sunday, we had gotten a WeChat from our supervisor asking us to add in more simple examples, since the things we were focusing on at this point were modern, and still relatively unexplored technologies like Internet of Things and blockchain. So that morning, we huddled in our office and plunked several more examples out, which ended up being for the best. Our presentation was meant to be 45 minutes and we would have been quite short without the new ones.
We weren't first up on the docket for the day, however. The morning started off with a presentation from a representative of Alibaba group, talking about how they use facial recognition technology to help find missing children, among other things. One of the pieces of technology they mentioned sounded suspiciously like an Amber Alert to me, but I have no complaints The presentation was interesting, but unfortunately I didn't retain much of it. I was too busy fretting over our presentation. I've never been one for public speaking, so I was pretty eager to get the presentation done and over with. While I spend a lot of my time back home tinkering with tech, I'm by no means an expert in any of the types of technology were were presenting on, and am also not an expert in child advocacy, so it felt a little odd to be giving a presentation like this to people who really are experts.
Overall, though, the presentation went well. The seminar participants were much more sympathetic to us than they were to the Alibaba representative, and refrained from tearing into us too harshly, though they did seem extremely eager to move on to the afternoon session's content - the potential harms of technology.
Tik Tok at Work
Tuesday's seminar session was...interesting, to say the least. Several representatives from the parent company of Tik Tok came to speak today, and talked about implementing various safety features - many of which seemed to be what essentially every other internet-based platform does immediately after release, but on the bright side, they're trying. A coworker and I had a good conversation about part of the tik tok representative's speech, in which he stated that kids needed to take responsibility for their internet usage. While it's not necessarily a good idea in countries where there is significantly more browsing freedom, the concept that internet users should be able to access content and control what they have access to is a great sentiment in China, particularly.
Listening to the representatives from tik tok speak was a very interesting experience, particularly as an American, since they were recently fined for collecting data on children, and are outright banned in multiple countries for other issues regarding children. It seemed odd to have them presenting at a children's rights conference, but since it is one of the most commonly used apps in China, it is understandable as to why they were given a place at the table. Not to mention, the protections provided for children here are much greater, particularly because there's a lot of censorship in general.
The afternoon session continued relatively uneventfully, with some group activities and discussions about the negative impacts of technology, and how best to prevent things like data collection from happening altogether, instead of just reacting when it does occur. Because I didn't have any work to do that afternoon, I started looking for a way to stay an extra week. My flight is on the 22nd, and I'm just not quite ready to go home. Unfortunately, it's looking like changing flights is going to be immensely expensive, but I really would like to stay longer.
Another Field Visit & Another Round of Hot Pot
Wednesday consisted of two particularly interesting activities. In the morning, the seminar participants listened to a presentation from Ms. Wang Yiwei, a child legal advocate and the Vice President of the Beijing Zhongzhi Child Care Foundation. Her presentation introduced a program started by the All China Lawyer's Association and BCLARC called the New Start Child Victim Support Program. The program was created to bring together a large network of children's rights lawyers in order to spread the influence and positive impact of BCLARC throughout China. While the entire presentation was interesting, my favorite part of it was Ms. Wang's closing remarks. She shared with the group her "four 8s" that she believed can get anyone through both good and bad times. First, drink eight glasses of water a day, with the first glass being a glass of warm water before breakfast. Second, eat only until you are 80% full, and avoid buffets. Third, walk 8 thousand steps a day, and finally, sleep 8 hours a night and fall asleep before 11pm. It was both extremely adorable, and a little shameful, since I'm pretty sure I follow exactly none of those points of advice.
That afternoon, the seminar participants and the interns hopped on a bus to visit Beijing Normal University's China Philanthropy Research Institute (CPRI). The session began with a brief presentation overview of what the CPRI does, who works for them, and their history. Next, each of the seminar participants was asked to introduce themselves and quickly describe the work that they do with their organization, and finally, we were treated to a tour of the CPRI offices. After the short, yet informative, tour, we headed back to BCLARC to wrap up the day.
That evening, it was time for another outing for dinner. Emily, the new intern from Australia, had not had hot pot before, so we headed to a Chongqing hot pot place for dinner. It was similar to all the other hot pot experiences I've talked about, with too-spicy food (at least too spicy for me), and various strange animal bits. This time, we added pig brain into the mix - not really my thing. The texture reminds me too much of a pate, and it just kind of grossed me out. We also had Spam that night, which I avoided. I'm not sure if many of you have ever heard of Austin, Minnesota, but it's the hometown of the SPAM Museum and the Hormel factory. The entire town smells like low quality bacon and SPAM, and as a result, I just cannot bring myself to eat the stuff. As it were, there were two definite highlights of the night. The first, this was my first time taking the bus in China! I'd avoided it simply because it's a slower method of public transport in general, and I find it easier to lose my way when trying to navigate which stop to get off at on a bus. But this was, in general, a successful operation, mostly thanks to Lawrence and Anna. The second was that, while we were walking to the hot pot place, we got somewhat separated simply due to differences in walking speed. As a result, Lawrence and I were walking relatively far ahead of Anna and Emily. An old man walked up to us and tried to convince Lawrence to purchase some perfume, which according to Lawrence had never happened before. It's always interesting to see how people's experiences in China change when they're with someone who is very obviously a foreigner, and this was no different. I'm constantly approached by people asking in a mix of English and Chinese to purchase random items for clearly inflated prices. It's gotten to the point where I've looked up how to say "sorry, I don't speak English" in some rather obscure languages just to avoid having those conversations.
After hot pot, we went out to find some bubble tea, since Emily had never tried it before. It ended up being a bit more of a hassle than it was worth, however, since the tea shop was somehow out of not only their brown sugar tea, but also their standard milk tea. As a result, Emily and I ended up getting an odd taro milk tea drink that I don't think I would order again.
Overall, another wonderful night with amazing people and great food was under my belt, and as always after eating hot pot, I was ready for bed.
The Seminar Comes to a Close
Thursday was almost entirely uneventful, with a quick trip for actual milk tea after work, but other than that it was just another day at the seminar, chatting about various things. As we've drawn nearer to the end of the seminar, the meetings have gotten shorter and the cultural outings/dinners have gotten longer.
Friday, the last day of the seminar was similarly casual. The discussion felt much less organized than normal, and a lot of the day was spent saying our goodbyes to the participants and exchanging contact information. I'll miss seeing everyone's faces in the office and it's going to get much quieter, but it will also be nice to get back to some of my regular work. Most of the afternoon was spent doing transcriptions and finishing up the last blog post. Emily was out of the office today, and Lawrence had to leave right on time to catch a train out to Xi'an, so I stuck around a little later than normal to finish things up, and plan out my weekend alone.
Suited Up
Saturday, I had an appointment. Lawrence had introduced our group to a tailor who does a lot of work for the people working at the U.S. Embassy, and since it was cheaper to get a tailored suit here in China than it was to just buy a regular suit in the U.S., I figured I would go for it. So, I was up early and scrambling to make it across the city before noon. That may seem like relatively late, but when you have to brave the subway for an hour-and-a-half ride during weekend rush hour, it generally takes quite a while.
I was headed to the Silk Street Market, one of the best places to go to barter and get knockoff goods, or something fancy to bring home. The Silk Market was nothing less than overwhelming, with seven floors of goods (though the top two were closed for renovations), a food court, and hundreds upon hundreds of foreigners. I heard languages from all over the world: English, German, Russian, Afrikaans, Korean, and a plethora of languages I can't even begin to identify. My destination was on the third floor, where all of the personal tailors, silks, and furs were available. Unlucky for me, Mr. Sheng's store was all the way across from the elevators, so I had to put my head down and do my best to ignore everyone asking if I wanted a silk scarf, silk bedsheets, or a qipao (a traditional Chinese dress). The silk bedsheets were almost tempting, but there's no way I would have had space in my luggage for them.
The second I stepped into Mr. Sheng's shop, he got to work. He started off by asking me what kind of clothing I wanted, and what style, as well as the fabric type (I chose 100% wool because why not), and the color. After about ten minutes of him taking my measurements, I was out of the store with instructions to return on Thursday. Since the whole encounter took maybe twenty minutes total, I decided to explore the market a little bit more. I stayed away from the fourth floor, where all the jewelry, jade, and pearls are sold since there's no way I could afford anything up there, and instead headed down to floor two, where the souvenirs and antiques are sold. After wandering around for a couple of hours, I exited with souveniers for my parents, and a chop stamp engraved with the name my Chinese teacher gave me in 6th grade (though thinking about it now, I did just realize I forgot to purchase ink for the chop, oops).
Marx & Friends
Sunday, I headed over to Tiananmen Square, since I'd yet to do any of the super stereotypical tourist activities, and this was my last full weekend in Beijing. Getting into Tiananmen was its own adventure. After getting my passport checked three times, and going through two different bag check/security scanner stations (and being patted down because apparently one of my nose piercings set off the metal detector), I was finally in. I started off by going to 国家博物馆 (guójiā bówùguǎn), or the National 
Museum. It was definitely an interesting experience, since a lot of it just seemed to be empty space, but the most interesting exhibits (in my opinion) were a random display of massive bronze and porcelain statues - mostly of men in dramatic poses, or Karl Marx - the ancient currency exhibit, and the "diplomatic gifts" exhibit (fun fact, Reagan gifted the Chinese government a massive display of two stuffed white swans, which if you ask me seems like a little bit of a dig at England since swans are the Queen's property, but who knows).
A lot of the museum seemed very focused on propaganda, with exhibits on the Silk Road, and "the Road to Rejuvenation", touting the wonderful relationships China has with the various countries along the Silk Road, among others. Overall I'm not sure I would visit again, since a large majority of the exhibits were solely in Chinese and I didn't want to stand around slowly translating everything for hours, but it was certainly an interesting experience, especially since a lot of the other attendees didn't seem to be interested in looking at much of anything either.
Afterward, I headed to explore some other parts of Tiananmen, including the 
square itself, Mao's Tomb (which was closed, so I didn't get to actually go in), and some of the surrounding hutongs. After, I met up with one of my managers, Anna, for some dinner at a local mall. This was our second round of dry pot (the first being on Monday), and honestly I preferred the first more. I am, however, a huge fan of lotus root (the little wheel-looking things), which is something I wasn't expecting to enjoy as much as I did.
I also experienced a new take on water ice. While I live for Rita's in the summer ever since moving to Virginia, China does it
differently (and, honestly, better). It was certainly an odd dessert, but still delicious. I think the flavor was supposed to be "brown sugar", and it included red beans, and strange brown sugar gelatin. If anything, it reminded me a little bit of maple syrup snow candy - which apparently is a weird thing to eat, but whatever - except instead of rolling the syrup onto a popcicle stick, you just leave it on the snow - ice, in this case - and eat it that way.
I headed home for the rest of the night to read and work on some things for the following week, but I'm still not ready to go home. Maybe, if I'm lucky, I'll find a way to stay just a touch longer.