The final Friday of the trip involved an early start to Jiaxing, a city near Shanghai that is working hard (and successfully) to transform its economy from a textiles and manufacturing base to one with richer contribution from high-tech manufacture, internet-based industries, services such as business process outsourcing and culture industries.

We had a very hectic schedule, kindly organised by the Foreign Investment Division of the Jiaxing government, and we are very grateful to Shen Wenping and Louis Liu for their efforts on our behalf.

The day started with an introduction to the history and culture of the city, visiting South Lake, a site of a man made Qing era island and the site of a museum about the founding of the Chinese Communist Party (which effectively had its first congress on a boat in the lake).

We then had a short panel discussion with business school students from Jiaxing University, which was particularly useful in understanding different professional career paths and gender issues in professional work in China.

Following the visit to the university, we received a detailed briefing and question and answer session with the Vice Director about Jiaxing and its economic development plans and were hosted for lunch.

After lunch we had a business schedule visiting Science City (to understand the role of science and technology parks), Join BPO (a business process outsourcing company) and Wilke (a Scottish company with a factory in Jiaxing). Photos of our hosts and students at Science City and Wilke below.

After the overnight train journey from Xian and hotel checkin, the students spent the day working on the their assignments and making visits to more cultural industry sites. I caught up on email, expenses, paperwork and sorted tickets for our Friday and Saturday trip to Jiaxing and Yiwu.

I’m a little behind posting updates (as I write the students are not long on the plane and I still have 4 or so days to write up).

Our Wednesday in Xian was spent at Xian International Studies University (XISU), which is one of four specialist institutions that teach and examine in foreign languages.

Our day at XISU was a treat, the highlight of which was a play performed by the XISU students. The day started with a warm welcome from the head of the business school (Professor Pan) and some remarks on our time in China from me. Then the students performed an adaptation by Yuan Yizhou of Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice (with Chinese characteristics). In the play Shylock is reappraised as a Chinese merchant and the adaption explores issues of cross cultural adaptation and communications.

I have a recording of the play and video footage of most of it, but no photographs. Hopefully, I can edit the audio and post it in due course.

After the play, students enjoyed lunch together and discussed issues arising from the play as well as the usual subjects of mutual interest.

After lunch we headed to the station for the last of the overnight train trips.

Tuesday we spent visiting the Huxia painting village with students from Xian International Studies University.

The village is home to three prominent painters in the peasant painter tradition.

Here is one of the painters holding one of his paintings.

The day’s activities provided an excellent opportunity for a number of new experiences. First, Nottingham and XISU students had the chance to interact with each other for a full day. Second, their interactions were nicely structured by the visit to the painting village, where the painters paint agriculture scenes anchored in socialist collectivisation. Third, we got to examine the painting and have a lesson from a prominent painter of the tradition. Fourth, we had meals in family homes, to understand different culinary traditions. Finally, we got to examine another model of cultural industry development.

In the photos below we see the artist Pan Xiaoling demonstrating paper cuts, students working together on their papercuts and paintings and some of the outputs of their outcomes.

You can see an interview we conducted with Artist Pan Xiaoling on an early trip here

Monday our exploration of history and the commercialisation of culture continued, with a visit to the Terracotta Warriors. The scale and scope of the endevour (the army intended to protect the emperor in the afterlife).

The presentation of them and the commercial environment around them though could do with a little more gravitas.

Saturday was spent exploring two of the key cultural sites near Dongsheng, the Genghis Khan Museum and Mausoleum. The sites provided a sense of the importance of Genghis Khan to the the Inner Mongolians and to China, as well as providing more insight into the development of the cultural industries in China.

On Saturday evening, we took our only internal flight, on China Southern to Xian.

After our tour of Kangbashi we when to Ordos University, the second time Overseas Project students have visited.

After a warm welcome, the first activity was some group discussions, where students from Nottingham and Ordos Universities shared views and asked questions of each other. Here we see Ordos students asking questions of one of the Nottingham students.

We were then treated to a performance by the Ordos University students, which included calligraphy demonstration (and required participation by our students) and traditional dancing (as well as individual and group singing.

The calligraphy demonstration was excellent, with the Ordos students producing a touching friendship message. The Ordos students were also great teachers, taking two Nottingham students and showing them how to write ‘China’ and ‘England’.

The traditional dancing was a treat, the highlight of which was the Ordos students balancing bowls on their heads while performing the danse.

The day concluded with a group photograph, campus tour and dinner in the student canteen.

As with last year we were treated wonderfully during an afternoon organised by Kate, one of the English teachers at the University. She’s seen in this photo watching the students’ performance.

After one of our few relaxed mornings we headed to Kangbash, a new district in Ordos about 30km from the centre of Dongsheng.

Kangbashi has been built as a city housing about 1 million people, though as yet almost nobody lives there. We all noticed how quiet and peaceful the place was, with almost no cars and very few people.

At the heart of the city are government offices which overlook a magnificent statue of Genghis Khan and his advisors. Genghis Khan is the most famous Mongol, having created the largest empire in human history and setting the foundation for the Yuan dynasty.

The central part of Kangbashi is host to a number of impressive civic buildings, including a new library and museum.

Like Las Vagas, the city rises from land that for much of the year looks like desert, though in summer is grassland.

The last day in Beijing finished at Beijing West station, where once again a large group of foreigners playing cards and writing their diaries provoked interest from the locals.

We arrived in Dongsheng around midday after a 15 hour journey on the overnight train from Beijing and spent the afternoon exploring the city a little, getting a sense of how small (though a little atypical) cities in China feel, visiting the Bronze age museum and dining on traditional Mongolian food.

On Wednesday we visited Shijingshan district of Beijing.

This district is to the West of the centre of Beijing and is developing as a cultural and recreational hub for Beijing.

Through the dedicated efforts of our alumni we were privileged to have a meeting with senior government officials, including the district vice governor. The meeting was useful in three ways, to understand the role of local government in economic and cultural development, to hear about the specific development ambitions of district and for the students to see how typical government meetings and briefings run.

The key plank of Shijingshan’s development is the regeneration of the 8.5 square kilometre Shougun steel plant into a cultural and entertainment area. We learned that the district has already been successful in developing some of the key underlying capabilities to enable this regeneration. Specifically, they have been successful in developing tourism and cultural activities and related high technology (as applied to virtual reality and online communities).

After the meeting visited Dotman, a firm based in the science and technology park. The firm’s key development is a full 3-D model of the city that can be used for entertainment as well as business purposes. As part of the visit, the students brainstormed some questions about the future of online communities with the management of the company.

Shijingshan district kindly hosted us to a wonderful lunch after which we visited one of the cultural sites, at which we were treated to a traditional Chinese painting display by a famous Chinese artist.

And the painting was presented to us as a gift recognising our visit to the district.

The trip to Shijingshan concluded with a visit to the Shougan factory gates to get a sence of the scale of the districts cultural and recreation industry development ambition.