ModeShift - Part 37

In Hunt For China’s First Shale Gas Wells, An Encounter With The Police

by Keith SchneiderJune 19, 2012June 20, 20121

XINCHANGZHEN, China – The default position when confronted by the police, in the United States or anywhere else, is to follow directions and be respectful. So when two police officers in a white and blue van blocked our vehicle, then deliberately strolled over to the driver’s side window to ask for my passport and the national identification card of my translator, I reminded myself that they’re just cops. Do as they say. It was Thursday …

Bill, Monica, and Hillary: A Chinese Artist’s Homage

by Keith SchneiderJune 17, 2012June 20, 20120

CHENGDU, China — Peter Marsters, a colleague, friend, and Fulbright Fellow studying at Sichuan University, led me to the basement of the Shangri-La Hotel here the other night. “You have to see this painting of Bill Clinton and Monica,” he said. The back story is that a Chinese artist and friend of the hotel owner painted an homage to Bill, Monica, and one of America’s great political sex scandals. The hotel owner displays the painting …

TIC – This is China

by Keith SchneiderJune 17, 2012June 20, 20125

CHENGDU, China — There’s no place that I’ve been in China — and I’ve visited 13 provinces — where cell phone service isn’t excellent. Cell phones connect in deep mountain highway tunnels in Sichuan, in the dry mountainous valleys of Gansu, and in the subways of Beijing, Chengdu, and Shanghai. But the Internet? Awful everywhere. Slow. Blocked. Unreliable. How does a nation so intent on taking its place at the head of global leadership deliberately …

Chengdu’s Modern Beauty — Bustling, Not Bursting

by Keith SchneiderJune 13, 2012June 20, 20121

CHENGDU, China — Sichuan University, one of China’s best, held its graduation today. The campus, which is green and shady and is woven into this giant city’s central business district, much the way NYU’s campus is sewed into lower Manhattan, was abuzz with young energy. Not far away, the Fuann River (see pix below) flows through the city, contained in an engineered channel bordered on each side by river-length walkways, parks, and shade trees. At …

Qingdao, A Beautiful Pacific Coast City, Beckons To Be China’s Cleanest

by Keith SchneiderJune 10, 2012October 22, 20121

QINGDAO, China — The Pacific Ocean tugs at the rocky shoreline on this city’s eastern boundary. Rugged claw-peaked mountains are sentinels to the north and west. Qingdao lays out on a plain of flat ground and rolling hills between the natural barriers, a just-built urban center of high rise office and apartment towers, 10-lane boulevards, and a goal of achieving stature as a model Chinese “eco-city.” I am spending a couple of days in this …

Outside Shenyang Lessons in Rice, Water, and Farming

by Keith SchneiderJune 8, 2012June 20, 20120

SHENYANG, China — The rice paddies start immediately beyond the borders of Liaoning’s provincial capital, a growing city of 8.1 million residents. Like a whirling turbine, the city flings 10-lane boulevards and 30-story apartment towers ever farther into the countryside. I’m out tracking down new irrigation systems, part of my research on Chinese grain production for Circle of Blue. Finding the rice and evidence of China’s new investment in modern irrigation infrastructure is a 50-minute …

In New York Times, Cincinnati’s Riverfront Revival

by Keith SchneiderJune 5, 2012July 28, 20121

CINCINNATI â€“ The shoreline of this Ohio River city, which thrived in the 19th century with 30 steamboat visits a day and then died in the 20th as pollution and industrial disinvestment pushed people and businesses inland, is emerging again as a new hub of civic and economic vitality. The New York Times published my article on Cincinnati’s riverfront development, more evidence of the Ohio River Valley’s new upward economic vector. The Times piece is …

Annals of Excess in China: The $317,000 Wedding Cake

by Keith SchneiderJune 5, 2012June 20, 20120

SHENYANG, China — Does excess consumerism represent the measure of a great nation? Or does it portend something darker, a treacherous crack opening in society? Either way, the wedding cakes for sale at the Black Swan bakery here in Liaoning’s provincial capital are a clear reflection of 1) the astounding wealth some attain in China’s bursting economy, and 2) the indecorous way that the rich communicate their separate stature. The biggest cake, aswirl in swans …

The U.S. Energy Boom and Ohio in The New York Times

by Keith SchneiderJune 5, 2012July 21, 20142

My interest in the Ohio River Valley, as readers of ModeShift well know, is keen. Today, the New York Times published my latest piece about the billions being invested in mineral leasing for oil and gas drilling. Tomorrow, in the NYT Business section, is another piece I did on Cincinnati’s improved economy and surging riverfront development. You may recall this article on Owensboro Kentucky’s improved prospects for the NYT late last year. I did this …

Production, Water Savings, and a Heroic History on China’s State-Owned Farms

by Keith SchneiderJune 4, 2012October 10, 20120

HONGXINGLONG, China — When she was a very young woman Liang Jun was one of the tens of thousands of durable adults dispatched by China’s new Communist Central Government in the early 1950s with orders to break open the prairie of this cold and formidable northeast province. Until agronomists and engineers from the Soviet Union offered their assistance, and their steel-tracked grey tractors, the work of cutting open land that was bound together by the …