{"id":63163,"date":"2012-06-15T12:09:48","date_gmt":"2012-06-15T16:09:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=63163"},"modified":"2017-10-23T14:29:01","modified_gmt":"2017-10-23T18:29:01","slug":"bright-future-chinas-economy-and-bates-students-were-awakening-in-1981","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2012\/06\/15\/bright-future-chinas-economy-and-bates-students-were-awakening-in-1981\/","title":{"rendered":"China’s economy, and a group of Bates students, were awakening in 1981"},"content":{"rendered":"

Like the vivid hues of spring\u2019s first flowers, the flashes of color in these images of China three decades ago signal big changes to come.<\/p>\n

In spring 1981, Professor of Sociology George Fetter took 27 students to China to observe a country in transition. Looking at these photos, taken by trip participant Steve Stone \u201983, you can see how reforms under Deng Xiaoping were steering the country toward world economic power.<\/p>\n\t\n\t

\n\t\t
\n\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t
\n\t\t\t
<\/div>\n\t\t\t
<\/div>\n\t\t\t
<\/div>\n\t\t\t
\t
\n\t\t\"\"\n\t\t

People\u2019s diplomacy: John Vivian \u201981 invites children to blow bubbles as their elders watch.\nPhotograph by Steve Stone '83.<\/p><\/div>\n\t\t

<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\t
\n\t\t\"\"\n\t\t

When Bates students arrived in China in 1981, billboard adver-tising of TVs, clothes and the like was a fairly new phenomenon. The rise of the consumer had begun.\nPhotograph by Steve Stone '83.<\/p><\/div>\n\t\t

<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\t
\n\t\t\"\"\n\t\t

Bates student and Chinese youths play basketball in 1981. While here the Americans overall seem taller than their counterparts, socioeconomic development since then has meant the average height of an urban Chinese male has increased by nearly three inches.\nPhotograph by Steve Stone '83.<\/p><\/div>\n\t\t

<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\t
\n\t\t\"\"\n\t\t

Long an economy focused on heavy industry, China's reforms under Deng Xiaoping by 1981 were slowly steering China toward becoming a capitalist and consumer economy.\nPhotograph by Steve Stone '83.<\/p><\/div>\n\t\t

<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\t
\n\t\t\"\"\n\t\t

Some things don't change: Red flags still fly over Tiananmen Square today as they did in 1981. Photograph by Steve Stone '83.<\/p><\/div>\n\t\t

<\/div>\n\t<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n

You see, for example, billboards offering consumer products, like electronics and clothing, for the first time.<\/p>\n

Stone kept his Ektachrome slides safe through the years, digitizing them recently and sharing them with Bates Magazine<\/em> as the trip\u2019s 30th anniversary got him thinking about the experience.<\/p>\n

Another student on that landmark Short Term was Paul Marks \u201983, and he was back on campus last fall for the dedication of Hedge and Roger Williams halls as new academic centers.<\/p>\n

Marks is now CEO of the global aerospace technology firm Argosy International Inc., based in Shanghai. He\u2019s done business in China since 1988, and at the dedication he spoke about that transformational trip with Professor Fetter.<\/p>\n

\"In<\/a>

In 1981, Paul Marks ’83 listens to the Bates guide, Mr. Xu. (Photograph by Steve Stone ’83)<\/p><\/div>\n

Back in \u201981, most Chinese citizens still had good reason to blend in with the crowd \u2014 politically, socially and even sartorially, by wearing bland clothing. The nation was wary after Mao\u2019s brutal Cultural Revolution, which had ended in 1976.<\/p>\n

The lingering feeling was that \u201cyou didn\u2019t want to be identified as the next possible target if the political winds changed again,\u201d says Margaret Maurer-Fazio, the college\u2019s Stangle Professor of Applied Economics and an expert on China.<\/p>\n

\"Paul<\/a>

Paul Marks, here talking with students during a Bates Career Development Center lunch during his visit in October 2011, has done business in China since 1988. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n

If the winds shifted one way, \u201cyou wouldn\u2019t want to be accused of being a bourgeois capitalist \u2018roader,\u2019\u201d she says. If the wind shifted the other way, \u201cyou wouldn\u2019t want to be accused of clinging to feudal Chinese culture.\u201d<\/p>\n

So the adults in these photos are wearing mostly unremarkable, drab clothing.<\/p>\n

But look at the young children in a traditional classroom: They\u2019re wearing bright orange, blue and rose-color sweaters. A little boy and girl watching a Bates student blow bubbles wear bold red and blue coats.<\/p>\n

Like the billboards, it\u2019s a sign of what\u2019s to come.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn traditional Chinese society, many people would consider themselves lucky to get one new set of clothing each year, on the Chinese New Year,\u201d says Maurer-Fazio, who studies the dramatic impact that economic liberalization has had on China\u2019s labor markets. \u201cAnd in Mao\u2019s day, the economy was focused on heavy industry, and consumer goods were in short supply.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the newly colorful clothing of these children, she says, \u201cyou see today\u2019s modern, consumer society.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI watched peasants hoe fields adjacent to the runways. The only peasants nearby today are landscapers for the villas by the airport.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Thirty-one years ago, when Fetter and his students landed at the Beijing Capital Airport to begin their Short Term, the airport wasn\u2019t today\u2019s glorious, gargantuan Norman Foster\u2013designed facility. It was a simpler airport \u201cand a simpler China,\u201d Marks recalled during his address last fall.<\/p>\n

\u201cI watched peasants hoe fields adjacent to the runways. The only peasants nearby today are landscapers for the villas by the airport.\u201d<\/p>\n

Between Marks and Mike Bonney \u201980, chairman of the Board of Trustees, there were jokes aplenty at the dedication ceremony about the Roger Williams\u2019 former identity as a funkadelic dorm, where beer flowed like, well, beer.<\/p>\n

As Marks quipped to his friend Liz Drolet \u201984, \u201cThe contractors handled the remedial aspects of both asbestos removal and beer odor in a technically proficient manner.\u201d The Bill and Hedge, he noted more soberly, are now enlightened by intellect rather than soaked with beer. \u201cNow that\u2019s progress,\u201d Marks notes.<\/p>\n

Roger Williams is home to the college\u2019s language programs and Off Campus Study Office, while Hedge houses religious studies, philosophy and environmental studies.<\/p>\n

Marks himself was an unenlightened student early in his Bates career. Then came the 1981 Short Term trip to China. It was the second in two years led by Fetter, who once said of his first trip that it was the product of \u201cfour years of negotiations and a lifetime of yearning.\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact, that first visit was notable enough that Sen. Ed Muskie \u201936 spoke about it on the Senate floor. \u201cIt is a tribute to Professor Fetter\u2019s commitment to educating American students about a culture so distant but so important in today\u2019s world.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Children<\/a>

Children in a classroom wear brightly colored sweaters, a sign of new socioeconomic forces at play. (Photograph by Steve Stone ’83)<\/p><\/div>\n

Richard Nixon had made his historic visit back in 1972, but it was a trend toward people\u2019s diplomacy \u2014 nongovernmental exchanges such as those by Fetter and his students \u2014 that did much of the real work of normalizing relations between the U.S. and China through the 1970s and into the \u201980s.<\/p>\n

Marks\u2019 parents initially objected to his going to China. Up to that point, \u201cmy academic performance was not stellar,\u201d Marks said. A long trip to China looked like a boondoggle.<\/p>\n

But Fetter had faith in Marks even though there was little obvious reason for it (which is the whole point of faith, anyway). He called Marks\u2019 parents, promising that the experience would change the course of their son\u2019s life.<\/p>\n

It did. \u201cEverything was different and amazing,\u201d Marks recalled. During five weeks in Beijing and other cities, \u201cI became hooked on China. I wanted to understand this chaotic, totally different world.\u201d Marks had grown up in New York City, where the music of the city was honking horns and emergency sirens. Beijing was a \u201ccity of bicycle bells \u2014 not the Beijing of today.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"In<\/a>

In cities and villages in 1981, bicycles were still the dominant mode of transportation. Beijing was \u201ca city of bicycle bells,\u201d Marks recalls, \u201cnot the Beijing of today.\u201d (Photograph by Steve Stone ’83)<\/p><\/div>\n

Marks returned to Bates eager to learn Chinese, but Bates didn\u2019t have a Chinese language program. What the college had, as noted in the 1981 Catalog, was a \u201cSelf-Instructional Program in Less Commonly Taught Languages.\u201d<\/p>\n

In practice, the \u201cprogram\u201d was a black book in French professor and foreign-language chair Dick Williamson\u2019s office, which he would flip through to find someone able or willing to teach a language not offered in the curriculum of French, German, Russian and Spanish.<\/p>\n

Marks\u2019 first instructor was the wife of a Taiwanese dentist in town. She tried to teach him Mandarin, \u201cand I tried to teach her how to teach.\u201d Marks was soon joined by CJ May \u201980 as the college\u2019s first students of Mandarin.<\/p>\n

For Marks, the late Williamson\u2019s help, along with Fetter\u2019s and history professor Ernest Muller\u2019s, represented the college\u2019s can-do spirit. It\u2019s also \u201ctypical,\u201d Marks says. \u201cProfessors go beyond the call of duty to find opportun-ities for their students to engage, explore and find themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today, Marks says he\u2019s encouraged by strides in Chinese instruction and Asian-focused academic programs and opportunities at Bates. \u201cYou can be quite proud \u2014 I am quite proud \u2014 to see where the college\u2019s journey has arrived.\u201d<\/p>\n

Back in 1981, the Bates group\u2019s official guide, Mr. Xu, told Marks that foreigners never learn their language. Marks rose to the challenge, betting the guide five bucks that he could indeed learn Mandarin.<\/p>\n

\u201cMr. Xu owes me five bucks. Or 31.7 RMB.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The flashes of color in these images of China from 1981, taken by Steve Stone \u201983 during a Bates sociology Short Term trip, signal big changes to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":221,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[10856,11024,11031,5631,6827],"class_list":["post-63163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-batesnews","tag-bates-magazine","tag-magazine-features","tag-magazine-spring-2012","tag-margaret-maurer-fazio","tag-paul-marks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/221"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63163"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63163\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":110627,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63163\/revisions\/110627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}