The Forbidden Kingdom

Somehow it did not occur to me that my Internet-powered lifestyle would be significantly crimped when coming to China.  Facebook?  Pretty much expected a two week detox.  But Dropbox?  Google Docs?  Come on.  That's a way of life.

Luckily, my "ppt's" - as they are called here - had saved locally.  

My first presentation was on Monday to a room full of excited freshman economics majors.  These 100 or so students represented a mere quarter of the incoming class.  

That's right.  Freshman economics majors.  There is such a thing.

My talk was a casual description of university life in America and life in Alaska generally.  My ace in the hole was a collection of stunning pics by Sebastian Sarloos that I had pinched from his Facebook page.  Good thing too because I had been misinformed of the English capabilities of my Chinese charges.  I had also been told I would have a translator but none was in the offing.  

Just smile a lot and SLOW DOWN, right?  Not exactly my style.

I stumbled through, put several students to sleep, but received the most remarkable applause I have ever heard.  I'll refrain from amateur sociologizing, but I can only imagine the thrill Chairman Mao got hearing it.  It was as if each clapper was desperately trying to match the enthusiasm of those around her.  Not at all the pathetic, half-hearted, free-riding slow clap of distracted, atomistic Americans.

Today's lecture is on the use of economic experiments in the classroom.  My smartphone software actually works great here but there is simply no way to manage the language difficulties on the client side.  So I have scrambled to put together a hand-run double auction with Chinese instructions and record sheets.  I am not expecting a home run, but a solid single that hints at the potential for classroom experiments would be satisfactory.  

I was loathe to fall for all the clichés about differences in American and Chinese instructional styles, but as they say, clichés exist for a reason.  The students here are taught by rote with little opportunity for critical engagement.  And micro is looked down upon as the lesser sibling to mighty macro.  The horror!

One professor approached me after my first lecture desperate to learn to run experiments.  He had a bookbag full of the seminal works in experimental economics translated into Chinese.  And he told me he thought "Harrick" was truly beautiful.  Harrick?  Ohhhh.... Hayek.  Got it.

He said the aesthetic appreciation of markets as organic and natural is almost entirely ignored by the Econ faculty and that his own students were unmoved by his persistent insistence that the price system is one of mankind's great wonders.  

I was looking at my own flower dying in the shade.  

When he told me he made $500 a month, that cinched it.  We are all so lucky to be so lucky.