Kunming, the capital of Yunan province, is a rapidly expanding metropolis that surprisingly, given China’s 4,000-year history, lacks historical sites. The 270 million-year-old Stone Forest, a two-hour drive outside of the city, makes up for this dearth.

Looking at the karst landscape is a bit like cloud watching: you have to use your imagination to find the pictures, but once you do that's all you can see. Here's what I mean:

Halfway through our hike, one of the Stone Forest’s workers began to walk with Susan, my dad’s business client, and me. Speaking with him personalized some of the problems you hear about in China. In addition to working at the Stone Forest, he is a field hand. He used to own land, making him a middle class peasant (as defined in our Chinese history class), but now must work for others, making him a poor peasant. The land he owned was taken to create a golf course; I did not mention that my brother, at that very moment, was hitting balls on what probably used to be his fields. He said that he did not want to “rent” his land to the company to create the course, but in China you don’t have a choice. Under a Communist government, projects are completed much more efficiently than in a democracy, for the benefit of the group at the expense of the individual.

At the Stone Forest, he works for four hours a day, seven days a week, picking up trash and helping visitors. In a month with 31 days, he works 868 hours; for this work he is paid 500 kuai a month, or $73.52. That is 1.74 kuai, or $0.25, an hour. A quarter will get you much more in China than in America, but still, as Susan commented, that really is not a lot. Meanwhile, admission to the Stone Park is 169 kuai ($24.85) for an adult, 130 ($19.12) for a student, and there were at least a thousand people there that day. Clearly this worker is being exploited, but by whom?

The Chinese Communist Party should be proud to own this beautiful UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Last week I went with my group to 金山泠 (Jinshanling), a much more dilapidated section of the Great Wall, making for a more challenging and fulfilling hike. In case anyone is wondering, I went to Northwestern this past year and am transferring to Columbia in the fall. Right now I am on a two month Northwestern summer study abroad program in Beijing called Emerging Legal and Economic Structures; we study Chinese for three hours in the morning, and history or economics for an hour and a half in the afternoon. I am loving the program, and definitely would recommend it to anyone at Northwestern interested in speaking Chinese and understanding China.

Anyway, some pictures from 金山泠:

I'm very grateful I got to go to both sections of the wall. Badaling is the best-preserved section of the wall, and most resembles how the wall looked during the Ming dynasty. Jinshanling is representative of how the majority of the wall currently looks, and as I mentioned it was a more difficult and fun hike. Plus, it was great to have the wall to ourselves; like many other tourists, I hate being surrounded by tourists.

The Great Wall is 5,500 miles long. That’s a difficult number to grasp. According to Google maps, you need to drive 2,905 miles to get from New York to California. So it’s as if a giant wall existed along that route.

And then as if a wall was built along 984 miles of this route, and the remaining 1,970 miles were trenches or natural defense barriers. (Getting this composition from BBC.)

A map of the Great Wall. Most of what remains was built in the 16th century during the Ming dynasty to keep the Monguls out.

Two weeks ago I went with my dad’s friend Tina and her boyfriend to 八达岭 (Badaling), the most visited section of the Great Wall, receiving millions of Chinese and 老外 tourists each year. This is the section of the Great Wall President Nixon visited in 1972.

After the break are some pictures from my trip to 八达岭.

The Chinese perspective on pale skin is a good example of how some markers of beauty are socially constructed and can vary completely from country to country. 

In America, people compliment my hair, but rarely has anyone ever said to me, “I love how incredibly pale you are.” Tan skin is much more desirable than Casper-white skin. It is associated with good health, with having leisure time to go to the beach or money to go on a tropical vacation, and with American celebrities, whom we emulate. But while America has tanning lotion to achieve a fake glow, China has whitening lotion to reverse any natural suntan.

In China, as in Thailand, tan skin is associated with poor farmers, who must work in the fields instead of indoors at higher paying and more desirable jobs. Everywhere girls and guys carry umbrellas to shield their skin from Beijing’s brutal sun. Even in sweltering weather, girls cover their arms with detachable long sleeves and many wear pants. Here, soaps and creams are marketed as whitening soaps and whitening creams. I accidentally bought a whitening soap the other day. I’m afraid it might have worked, although admittedly it’s difficult to tell.

To this:

To celebrate the clean air and normal sky, I went for a run around Tsinghua, my first and so far only run in China. At some point I left the campus and ran along the highway. When I tried to reenter a different set of gates, the guards were reluctant to let me in without an ID. After explaining in Chinese (or rather trying to explain) that I am a student at Tsinghua but my ID still has not arrived, one took pity and let me in.

From the signs on the buildings I quickly realized this was not a part Tsinghua’s campus, but still I wanted to explore. It was really fancy for a high school. In the center of the quad koi fish swam in shallow ponds, and red winged blackbirds hopped around. Towards the back of the campus, past the red-bricked school buildings, was an outdoor stadium. I then observed the wire gates and security cameras—time to go, really sorry, didn’t mean to trespass.

As I turned to leave, I noticed two guards coming at me, Pac-Man style: one from the center, and one from the right. I apologized and told them I was lost, just trying to find my way back to Tsinghua’s campus. Then I power walked out; running might be considered suspicious.

It turns out I ran to The High School Attached to Tsinghua University. Yesterday I learned that this is where the first Red Guard formed in 1966 during the Cultural Revolution. The Red Guard at Tsinghua High School was a gang composed of the children of high-level Communist officials who were inspired by Chairman Mao’s orders to purge the party of the rightists and capitalists. At first, with Mao's approval and encouragement, they began putting up big-character posters. Then they developed a bloodline theory: as the offspring of the revolution, it was their duty to pursue radical policies.

This group of high school students looked around them for the rightist and bourgeois elements of the party. It couldn’t be their parents or other high level officials. Clearly the rightist, capitalist, bourgeois, elitist, anti-Communist members undermining the party were their teachers, who still used corporal punishment, and principals.

So the Red Guard started to punish the academics, in some cases beating them to death. Mao tolerated this for two months, then sent these Red Guards to jail for years, and after that the countryside for hard labor. It turns out that being the children of high-level officials—the people who threatened Mao’s power, the so-called “rightist” members of the communist party Mao wanted to purge through the Cultural Revolution—was not an automatic invitation to rule the party, at least not back then.

Today, some of these people—the members of the original Red Guard, those who created a bloodline theory, who beat to death their teachers, who were sent to jail and then the countryside for "re-education"--control much of China. They are the very important CEOs (such as Kong Dan, the chairman of China CITIC Bank, whose father, Kong Yuan, was once the Minister of Investigation), chairmen, and party officials. Would you want to mess with them?

It was really interesting to learn all that history yesterday, and find that I had accidentally penetrated the site where the Red Guard formed. The Red Guard spread all over China’s high schools and universities during the Cultural Revolution, beating or  killing their teachers and principals, or forcing them to commit suicide. From January 1967 to 1968, the Red Guard--just a bunch of university students, really--replaced the Municipal governments, ruling China alongside the military in Revolutionary Committees.

Crazy history, right?