Governor Tim Pawlenty In China--Shanghai

Feng Shui In Shanghai

Yesterday after the tour of the Hormel plant, we flew to Shanghai.

I don't think any of us realized how drab Beijing was until we saw Shanghai.

Shanghai rocks. The city boasts more than 3,000 skyscrapers and the architecture of each one seems to be distinctively unique. The photos I took of the skyline simply don't do justice to the futuristic feel of the place.

There are many buildings with strange holes in them.

That's because of Feng Shui, "The Chinese art or practice of positioning objects, especially graves, buildings, and furniture, based on a belief in patterns of yin and yang and the flow of chi that have positive and negative effects." Before any building can be constructed, the space and design must get the approval of a "Grand Feng Shui Master," who decides where, exactly, the spirits need to pass. In the building above, for example, that hole in the middle could be making way for the Spirit of the Dragon.

What a foreign concept for Americans: a spiritual advisor dictating architectural changes that will cost many millions more. That wouldn't fly at St. Paul City Hall...although perhaps in Minneapolis...

I might as well have taken the photos because their faces will forever be burned into my memory.

The faces of human beings rejected by China. Faces of people whose pain defies comprehension.

Faces of people too painful to photograph.

Several days ago, I wrote about our visit to the Forbidden City in Beijing. But I did not tell you about the most important part.

Our tour buses, like dozens of others, were parked on a major thoroughfare directly north outside the City. Immediately upon leaving the confines of the City, we were accosted by beggars.

This is a typical phenomenon outside many of the world's major historical sites--people who beg for a living.

But to get to our bus, the Chinese beggar gauntlet was like none other in the world.

Each beggar was in his or her late teens or early 20s. Each beggar was more aggressive than any I had ever encountered.

Each beggar was severely deformed.

There was the boy without half of his arm who shoved his stump a few inches from my nose and screamed at me.

There were the two young men with undeveloped legs who were somehow attached to skate boards (I could not look closely because that would have been seemingly rude). Back and forth across the sidewalk they quickly and loudly skated, almost blocking it. Wailing loudly, creating an atmosphere of panic.

There were those with cleft palates.

It was a Ripley's Believe it or Not of what can go wrong with the human body.

And the most haunting person of all: a young man in his early twenties. He had arms the size of my hands. Certainly there was no way he could have ever fed himself let alone take care of any of his personal needs. But Mother Nature had not stopped there. He could barely walk, and his skin was stretched over his face, downward. Like someone had poured acid on it.

He was the last person to accost me before I got on our bus. I don't know why, but he followed me from the sidewalk, peering into the window from the sidewalk where I sat down on the bus.

His eyes locked onto mine, and mine his. He would look at me, and then go hide his head in the phone booth six feet away. This happened a dozen times or so, in the next five minutes. Back and forth he went.

In my mind, it was if he was trying to tell me, "This is not the life I wanted, this is the only life I know. I want to go hide but I cannot. You cannot imagine my life, and I cannot fathom yours." It struck me that this young man had probably never been hugged or warmly touched.

Over the next several days, I questioned a number of Chinese about what I encountered on that street. China has a high birth defect rate, particularly in the more remote rural areas. Many of those born deformed are abandoned as babies. They are picked up by "operators," who take them in, raise them, and teach them to beg. And so, they do. Every day, for the rest of their lives. Each night, their "caretakers" empty their pockets. It is the sickest pimp/whore relationship on the planet.

And the byproduct of the "one-child only" policy instituted by the Chinese government in 1978. For many, that limitation fostered abandoning the not-so-perfect first child.

In the last fifteen years, China recognized the problem and started orphanages for abandoned children.

Yesterday, First Lady Mary Pawlenty visited the orphanage in Shanghai. As will Maria Shriver, California's First Lady, do today. Apparently, the Chinese want every first lady to visit the Shanghai Children's Home. It is five-star hotel opulence for orphans.

But before I get to the orphanage, let me tell you something about Mary. She makes our state proud. Personally, I cannot imagine carrying off what she did at the orphanage: genuinely smiling and conveying sincere interest and concern throughout a long, translated conversation. Mary did that, and it was made more difficult because in some ways, much of what was said there by the Chinese was BS.

BS line number one was the one not spoken. Why were all those children at the orphanage in the first place? No one mentioned the societal casualties of the government's one-child only policy. BS line number two was the perfect gender balance among the rooms we visited full of healthy children. The children abandoned are primarily girls (a recent poll taken in China found that 90% of couples want their only child to be a boy). BS line number three: why were there such a disproportionate number of disabled and/or physically deformed children? Here, the Chinese couldn't cook the numbers; in the room we were taken to, there were about a dozen boys and only two girls. Finally, as best I could tell, there was some acknowledgment from the Chinese that the Shanghai orphanage was one of the nicest in the country. But there was no acknowledgment that the Chinese government and the lack of a social safety net failed an entire generation.

So, as you look at the photos of the orphanage, bear in mind the gauntlet of shame outside the Forbidden City. I couldn't escape it, particularly the face of the young man with whom my eyes locked for those long and painful minutes.

Here is the entrance to the school at the orphanage. The sculpture is of the sun and the planets, which also represents the sun as every child in need of connections. [The sculpture is also used as the logo for the orphanage in its promotional DVDs. The fact that there is a logo and that there are promotional DVDs speaks for itself.]

Here is the residential hall. That's Mary Pawlenty in the teal sweater set. The pool around the fountain is filled with koi. The gravel before the pool is a sandbox for children to play in. I thought it was kind of weird that the Chinese made it a point to let us know that the orphanage's grounds have a "greenway coverage rate" of 60%.

Other orphanage facts. The home currently handles 1,700 children; 600 live on campus and the rest in families in nearby communities. There are 350 employees (40 of them are doctors and nurses and another 100 are babysitters).

Here is Mary visiting the nursery. The amount of physical touching and hugging given to the children looked to be genuine and warm. Minnesotans, by the way, adopt more children per capita than any other state, and an increasing number of them are coming from China.

Some other striking things. The children were perfectly groomed; each in a seriously coordinated cut outfit (parents will recognize that's no small feat!). I ventured off the beaten path during the tour. The place was immaculate.

Here are several children in the disabled wards.

For the press corps present, cute kid photos with First Lady Pawlenty were a dime a dozen (which, of course, was the point), and I skipped those. Instead, I shot the journalist-with-cute-kids photos.

That's WCCO's Eric Eskola letting one child play with his microphone

And here's Star Tribune photojournalist Glen Stubbe. First he took pictures of some children, and showed them in the view finder. Then the children got smart, and they wanted to photograph Glenn. He carefully handed over about $6K worth of camera to them. Here's Glen reacting to the picture taken by the Chinese children.

The exchange of gifts is usually part of the common practice at the end of business meetings with the Chinese. As of today, the delegation head schlepping the most gifs is U of M President Bob Bruininks, and his wife, Susan. Between them they have 6 bags--and the trip is only half over.

As the Star Tribune's Janet Moore notes in her blog and story, a great time was had by all last night at "Minnesota Night in Shanghai." Many former Minnesotans living in Shanghai came for the comradeship, Minnesota style, including freelance writer Adam Minter, who writes for the Wall Street Journal-Asia, the Los Angeles Times and The Rake in Minneapolis.

Much to your publisher's and Danielson's delight, Zhang insisted on taking them all out for a real contemporary Chinese dinner. But first, he had his driver show us The Bund at night which left us speechless.  The restaurant was an Asian fusion place called East. The best dish was the crispy fried eel. It was crunchy, smokey, chocolaty and caramelly--all at the same time.