A Blog on McConnell Center Life

Samantha Roney (left) with Cathrine Mountain (right) By Samantha Roney , Class of 2015 It is crazy to think that I have less than a week left in China. It seems like just yesterday I was on the plane ready to begin my summer expedition, but alas the McConnell scholars have arrived in Beijing, our final destination. Today we traveled to the Olympic Park and the Chinese ethnic park surrounding the area. The ethnic park was the first structure built for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. It was intended to be a park that highlighted the various cultures throughout China with various small areas where guests could interact with special traditions and see some of the structures seen in the different regions. In all honesty the park was built to show the better parts of China to Westerners flying into China for the Olympics. Since 2008 it looks as if the Chinese government has done little to maintain the culture park. Walking around the over 100 acre property today, my friends and I were ast...

Arsh Haque By Arsh Haque , Class of 2015 Travel abroad is an exceptionally reflective experience. In Louisville it is easy enough to stay busy enough to not reflect too often. I can rush from meeting to project to midterm without too many seconds to spare. Any reflections that occur bubble up organically and explosively into the hidden corners of the day and feel all the more important because of it. In travel, however, it is not the same. The dead windows of time in-between events cannot be filled with texting and emails. Cab rides and long lines are spent watching people and looking at the sky between leaves of a tree. There are reflections everywhere, all the time. It is hard to condense it all into a nice succinct essay. I feel like I should be writing one long Virginia Woolf never-ending stream-of-consciousness sentence. That would be more appropriate than a thesis statement. But if I have to choose, then this: I prefer narrative. Travel in China has been distinct becau...

Benjamin Whitlock By Benjamin Whitlock , Class of 2015 Often, there are people in life who impress us immediately. The way that they communicate with us, the way they look at the world, or the ways that they conduct themselves on a first meeting impresses us somehow and influences our communications with others, our idea of the world, and our own immediate perception of them. However, first impressions are usually false because the people we are immediately impressed by prove less than stellar over time. The people who truly change our lives are those who impress us over and over again.  There are those that we fail to connect with immediately. It is the latter, through tedious and constant example, who have the power to change our lives entirely. The latter gives us a new way of looking at the world, entirely. The latter gives us a new reference point. The latter convinces us that they are more than the sum of mere first impressions. Half-way through my experience in Ch...

Cathrine Mountain By Cathrine Mountain , Class of 2015 Although we weren't in Xi'an for very long, I fell in love with the city and was especially fond of the campus that we lived on. There was something intangible about the spirit of the city that seemed so familiar and comfortable. One of my favorite places in the city was a cozy little coffee shop right outside of the campus gate. On one of our romps about the city, Paige and I stumbled upon the Standing in Time Cafe and found a beautiful scene of college students playing live music and sitting around chatting about things we couldn't decipher. This incredibly personal yet welcoming little scene could almost have been one of Jeri Katherine Howell's beautiful concerts at the Kentucky Coffeetree Cafe, a familiar scene in Frankfort, Kentucky.  The next morning, I was determined to finally start reading The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac, so I roamed back to this little haven and made myself at home near an open ...

Joel Ben Thomas By Joel Ben Thomas , Class of 2015 Though I haven’t had much “reflection time” since arriving in Shanghai, I have come to realize how culturally confused my mind and body are. American, Moroccan, and Chinese culture(s) have combined to make me feel confident in calling myself a “global citizen.” That is to say, my experiences in all three places have left varying imprints on me; I find myself adhering to cultural customs accordingly sometimes, but sometimes not. For example, whenever I first greet someone I extend my hand to greet him or her with a friendly handshake. Immediately after, I place the same hand over my heart in an endearing motion (this is norm in Morocco, though not so much in China). It’s these types of things that come to mind when I find myself trying to assimilate. While I attempt to navigate this cultural confusion, I am becoming more and more intrigued with notions about Chinese culture—many purport it to have been, to currently be, and t...

Sam Whittaker By Sam Whittaker , Class of 2015 In 1978, roughly two years after the death of Chairman Mao Zedong, the Chinese government came under the control of Deng Xiaoping. Deng, the leader of the right wing of the Communist Party, came out on top of the intraparty power struggle that ensued after the death of the revolutionary and charismatic leader, Mao. The right wing favored free market reforms based on modern western-style economies rather than central planning advocated by Mao and the left wing which sought to continue his economic policies. With the right wing firmly in control of the Party in 1978, Deng Xiaoping announced his “Reform and Openness Plan.” This plan included free market reform of the economy in order to facilitate improvement in Chinese industry, agriculture, science, and technology. The free market plan initiated in 1978 and 1979 continues in China today.  The scholars' stay in Shanghai has caused us to fall in love with this beautiful, ult...

Andrew Stewart By Andrew Stewart , Class of 2015 Shanghai so far has been an adventure. As a group we are starting to become more comfortable with navigating the city. But there is still so much I want to know about China. We are learning a lot through class discussions. I learned that China is an atheist state. I guess I always wondered about which religion is the national religion of China, but I guess there isn’t one. But I find that interesting with the moral and cultural structure being shaped by Confucius and Buddhist teachings. Obviously there are some people in the Chinese culture that take these teachings of Confucius and are able to direct religious rituals to these different moral beliefs.  I spoke with a woman today here in Shanghai who was a professor at the University of Michigan. She married a Chinese man, and he was Buddhist. But she told me that in America, Buddhism is really a way for people to follow a specified moral code. I asked her if she was Bud...

Benjamin Whitlock By Benjamin Whitlock , Class of 2015 I was hesitant to get on that looming plane ride in O'Hare International Airport. Nearly 15 hours in the air did not appeal to me, let alone the totally foreign culture and place that awaited at the plane's destination. However, the proverbial first step led to more steps onto the flight, and here I am, on my first trip out of the country.  I will leave out the details about traffic (which is crazy), the food (which is different but delicious), and the government (still trying to gather how I feel about it) - I'll skip to the most fascinating part of Shanghai, China! The most interesting and totally wonderful part of Shanghai is the young people!  For 3 years at the University of Louisville, I have struggled to find more than a meager handful of people who think the way I do. I have desperately searched for quiet people who enjoy talking about what is important to them in a realistic way and who want to go int...

Cathrine Mountain By Cathrine Mountain, Class of 2015 Although the majority of our class with Dr. Hua here at Shanghai Jiao Tong University has mainly focused on China-US relations, we were able to talk with the Chinese students in our class today about China's relationship with African countries.  Since Li Keqiang, the current premier of the People's Republic of China, just returned from a series of visits with a few African countries, I was able to hear news of the trip on the CCTV news channel that is broadcast in English. Li visited Ethiopia, Nigeria, Angola, and Kenya and described the trip as very "fruitful". He was able to witness the signing of a deal between China and Kenya that will build a railway from Nairobi to Mombassa, Africa's second largest city and an important trading port. According to Xinhua Net News, 90% of the project will be financed by China's Ex-Im Bank. This deal seems to be a definitive landmark in the economic relationsh...

Arsh Haque By Arsh Haque, Class of 2015 I don't mean China's most recent political strategy - I mean the genuine smiling arms into which Cathrine Mountain and I were welcomed when we came to China. A rambunctious duo, we set out to visit China a week earlier than the rest of our class to climb a mountain. Unlike Odysseus, our odyssey relied not on our wits, but on the kindness of others.  Sanqingshan is a holy Taoist mountain located southwest of Shanghai. After flying in we took a six hour train ride in that direction. While adjusting ourselves to hard-top bunk-beds a local girl handed us custard pies from KFC and a handful of colored pebbles. Cathrine passed a note of thanks forged from our phrasebook. She surprised us by responding in English. We learned that her name was Zooey and that the mountain was much further than we expected. When we got to the station the taxi drivers guffawed at our gesticulated request. Under the hope that we had communicated the ri...

Paige Brewer By Paige Brewer , Class of 2015 McConnell Scholars travel to China because Senator McConnell believes it is important for young Political Science scholars to understand the complex relationship between the United States and China. I agree with him. Even Dr. Hua has acknowledged that more comprehensive learning extends beyond the classroom. At the end of each class he encourages Chinese and American students to converse openly, not just about politics, but about our everyday lives as college students. What many of us have learned is that we have more in common with the Chinese than we originally thought. I believe it is human to divide people and things into categories. Creating stereotypes helps us break down, analyze and better understand the world. Without them we'd probably be more confused, less curious and less eager to learn. Part of pursuing an education, however, is also challenging those stereotypes and searching for a common thread in humanity.  ...

Danielle Robinette By Danielle Robinette , Class of 2015 Each and every one of my study abroad experiences has been touched by social protest movements. In Brazil, those of us from UofL were the only ones attending classes as the UNESP student body was on strike. Then, the country experienced widespread demonstrations in protest of government corruption and exorbitant spending on the World Cup and Olympic venues. In Spain, as the country suffers from crushing unemployment, numerous groups went to the streets to protest anything from EU austerity measures to CocaCola factory closures.  Here in China, we have yet to witness any protesting of any kind, but our assigned text, China: Fragile Superpower by Susan L. Shirk, makes it a point to explain that the Chinese government's fear of political demonstrations like that which occurred in Tiananmen Square in 1989 is a major driving force of their decision making in nearly all fields of politics.  For weeks in the...