Photo courtesy of Liz Voeller

My friend and Northwestern University classmate Liz Voeller is doing some really interesting research in Lijiang (southwestern China) to examine the impact of tourism on the Naxi people’s ancient water supply system, and how this relates to China’s development as a whole. It’s a fascinating look at the balance between culture and technology and its impact on the natural environment.

You have to check out Liz’s blog, Cultural Impacts on Infrastructure, to learn more. She says:

I want to know:

A. How did the Naxi DESIGN and USE their ancient supply system so that it successfully provided them with clean water for centuries?

B. How can these factors be REPRODUCED in new water supply projects–so that these new systems can better MEET the Naxi community’s needs?

Liz, who studies environmental engineering and cultural anthropology, struggles with some language barriers, which limits the depth of her ethnographic and scientific research, but she definitely has some great ideas and insightful questions. Her blog is  worth checking out if you’re interested in the cross-sections of modernization, environmentalism, tourism, natural resource management, and community development in China.

Image via Behind the News

I don’t live in Beijing. I don’t even live in China. So I’m not able to observe first hand the Olympian efforts made by the Chinese government lately to clamp down on air pollution. But from everything I’ve read so far, these efforts are futile.

And I know this isn’t a new story, either. China has been trying to control the pollution crisis ever since Beijing won the bid in 2001. Back then, the headline was “Gasp! An Air of Olympic Inevitability.” Now, it’s…well, much of the same: “Air Pollution Causes Headache Ahead of Olympics.”

Between then and now, there have been many different attempts to make sure athletes aren’t wheezing their way around the Olympic Village on 8.8.08. “Polluting enterprises” were ordered to move elsewhere, much like a dirty roommate might sweep dust under a rug and hope his cleaner housemates would never notice. “Tree belts” were planned to circle the gray metropolis, like planting a few flowers around a nuclear meltdown. And gas stations were “retrofitted” to reduce the production of harmful chemicals, much like giving your Grandma a makeover to pass for a high-schooler.  All of these measures have exacted heavy tolls on businesses, and, not to mention, everyone’s sanity.

Some days, the outlook was positive. “I anticipate the improvement in Beijing’s air quality next year, and we will continue to monitor it, so the air condition is not a concern for U.S. team,” said Steven M. Roush, chief of sport performance in the U.S. Olympic Committee. Other days, everyone seemed to be freaking out. “We’re worried,” said Jon Kolb, a Canadian Olympic official, of Beijing’s air pollution, adding, “There’s no doubt about it. It’s off the charts.” For the most part, it’s been a “mixed bag” of opinions and analysis, according to one USA Today article, in which there is Mr. Roush–remember him? so optimistic just a few years earlier?–quoted again, this time saying pollution is the “No. 1 uncontrollable concern” for the U.S. team in Beijing.

Even in the past 24 hours, there’s been a proliferation of news stories dedicated to the issue of *choke* smog and gunk and other airborne “particulate matter” that threaten to RUIN EVERYTHING!

The Associated Press even shot a video to show viewers like me, so far away in almost-clear-as-crystal Chicago, just how nasty the view from the Bird’s Nest really is:

Beijing Air Still Murky As Olympic Village Opens

Some Western media ask questions about whether Beijing can fight this mess less than a week from the opening ceremonies:

“Will Beijing’s Efforts Clear Air For Olympics?” NPR asks.

“Will smog choke Beijing’s games?” echoes the Chicago Tribune.

Other news organizations make more decisive conclusions:

“Smog chokes spirit of Olympics” and “As Olympics near, Beijing still can’t beat pollution.”

In stark contrast to these stories of gloom, Chinese news media have taken the opportunity to spin a greener yarn. Xinhua boasts: “Confidence strengthened in ‘Green Olympics’“, attributing the haze mostly to the hot and humid summer weather; just “mist,” actually. Mmm, how pleasant! Oh, and don’t be alarmed: “Beijing ready and calm at 10-day countdown,” according to Xinhua just a few hours ago.

So, everyone, just chill out. Think of this summer’s Games as one big outdoor sauna. And all that smog? Yeah, it’s kinda gross, but at least it’s a level playing field–everyone will have to breathe the same air, right? Think of it as an added challenge, like a hurdle. And that’s very in line with the Olympic spirit of sportsmanship. If you ask me, the first one to pass out from piddly smog is WEAK!

But seriously, banning cars and shutting down factories is only a temporary fix to a more significant problem. Lo Sze Ping, Greenpeace’s campaign director in Beijing, blames the dirty air on what he considers a “develop first, clean up later” approach by the Chinese government, according to today’s front page story in the Chicago Tribune. “Beijing has missed a golden opportunity to use the Olympics as a platform for more ambitious programs to clean up the air,” Lo says.

Don’t get me wrong: The Beijing Games can still be fun and inspiring and successful. But hopefully, everyone who watches will learn an important lesson and realize that it takes more than a few last-ditch measures to truly create sustainable change. And that goes for all countries, not just China.

Basically, it’s too late for clear, blue skies. The smog will be in Beijing next week. And probably at the closing ceremony, too. So don’t hold your breath. But do hold on to your ideas about what we can do after all this momentary pollution paranoia subsides. Because that’s when policies and reforms will really count.

(Image via Science Daily)

The white-handed gibbon, which used to live in Yunnan Province, has been declared extinct after not having been seen for twenty years. Scientists are calling the loss particularly tragic since the sub-species was unique to China.

It joins a long list of long-gone (or almost gone) monkeys and apes in China.

What I find equally absent is the coverage of the Gibbon’s final death in China or environmental news. A handful of sites picked it up like gokunming.com, an expat news and lifestyle website, and sciencecentric.com, all quoting the same source from sciencedaily.com.

The loss is another strike to biodiversity, which is important to humans for a number of reasons:

• maintaining clean and healthy water and air
• offering biological resources such as medicine and plants
• keeping us from relying on too few food crops (which protects us from crop failure) and high price

Such natural processes are worth trillions of dollars annually. Yet because most of their benefits are not traded in economic markets, they carry no price tags that could alert society to changes in their supply or the deterioration of underlying ecological systems that generate them.

For further reading on the importance of biodiversity to humans, our society and our economy, check out any of the links above or “Sustaining Life: How Human Life Depends on Biodiversity.”

Biodiversity is on the radar screen for companies practicing CSR in Asia. A few examples:

• CSR Asia listed biodiversity as one of the top CSR focuses in Asia in 2007
• Titan Chemicals and the United Nations Development Programme teamed up for a biodiversity project in Malaysia in 2005

If you have any further leads on who is reporting on the “ke lian” gibbon, please comment and let us know!

Have you seen in the latest issue of Wired magazine?

It says:

ATTENTION ENVIRONMENTALISTS:

Keep your SUV.

Forget organics.

Go nuclear.

Screw the spotted owl.

If you’re serious about global warming, only one thing matters: Cutting carbon. That means facing some inconvenient truths.

And, according to the magazine’s list of “10 Green Heresies,” China is the Solution.

Pop quiz: Who’s the volume dealer in alternative-energy hardware? If you said choking, smoking, coal-toking China, give yourself a carbon credit.

(Image via National Geographic)

The May issue of National Geographic is devoted entirely to China.

“Inside the Dragon,” as it’s called, covers a variety of topics, from the Olympic Games architecture boom to the dismal state of the Yellow River.

The Yellow River story, titled “Bitter Waters” by Brook Larmer, shines light on the urgency of the pollution crisis in China’s legendary waterway.

Few waterways capture the soul of a nation more deeply than the Yellow, or the Huang, as it’s known in China. It is to China what the Nile is to Egypt: the cradle of civilization, a symbol of enduring glory, a force of nature both feared and revered. From its mystical source in the 14,000-foot Tibetan highlands, the river sweeps across the northern plains where China’s original inhabitants first learned to till and irrigate, to make porcelain and gunpowder, to build and bury imperial dynasties. But today, what the Chinese call the Mother River is dying. Stained with pollution, tainted with sewage, crowded with ill-conceived dams, it dwindles at its mouth to a lifeless trickle. There were many days during the 1990s that the river failed to reach the sea at all.

The demise of the legendary river is a tragedy whose consequences extend far beyond the more than 150 million people it sustains. The Yellow’s plight also illuminates the dark side of China’s economic miracle, an environmental crisis that has led to a shortage of the one resource no nation can live without: water.

There are other contributions by famous writers, including a piece on China’s emerging middle class by Leslie Chang, a story about the vanishing Dong minority in Guizhou Village by Amy Tan, and ruminations about China’s future by Peter Hessler. And, of course, stunning photography.

And I got a good tip from Marilyn Terrell, chief researcher from National Geographic Traveler:

The online edition has two stories from the archives of NatGeo that don’t appear in the print edition: a 1955 story by Heinrich Harrer, an Austrian soldier who escaped a British POW camp in India during WWII and hiked over the Himalayas to Tibet, and became tutor to the young Dalai Lama.

and a 1971 story by Canadian Audrey Topping who attended college in China before Mao’s revolution, then returned years later to find the country transformed in many ways.

The stories are rich, engaging and informative. If you can’t get your hands on the print edition, no worries — the online version is rich in multimedia and interactive tools. And there’s even a “How to Help” section, in line with the publication’s mission to “inspire people to care about the planet.”

(Image via  Small Worlds Magazine)

We are all bombarded with information about our “footprint” and how big and bad it is. But what exactly are we supposed to be doing with this information in China, a country where “green” can be few and far between?

Two groups, Shanghai Roots & Shoots and SCMC, a Coca-Cola vendor, are working together to reduce Shanghai’s carbon footprint by planting the right kind of trees in the right kind of places. “Tree planting” is based on the idea that trees can reduce the threat of global warming because they basically suck up carbon and other greenhouse gases (GHG) in the air. While no one is pretending that you can plant trees and negate your impact on the earth, it is an example of what China can do to acknowledge its environmental impact and make a quantitative change. Shanghai Roots & Shoots raises money and awareness for the tree planting program and then purchases trees from a nursery in Inner Mongolia. The organization plants pine and poplar trees, which scientists and biologists have certified as appropriate for the area.

The trees benefit the earth in the following ways:

• rehabilitate the eco-system in the area
• stop desertification
• help alleviate local poverty

The Shanghai Roots & Shoots tree planting program is responsible for guaranteeing that local farmers are supplied with seedlings and that they are then responsible for re-planting the trees they cut down, after 20 years, in order to guarantee there is a new tree in its place for up to a 50 year period.

In April, SCMC sponsored two trips involving a total of 28 Shanghaiers, who planted more than 2,000 poplar trees in the Kulunqi desert. As one SCMC rep said, “Coca-Cola Bottlers Manufacturing Co Ltd is…addressing environmental concerns on multiple fronts - holding back desertification, carbon offsetting, sustainable local economic rejuvenation that compliments the environmental objectives and finally environmental education.” In one corner of China at least, tree planting is firmly on the CSR menu.

For more information about the Roots & Shoots program, please visit www.jgi-shanghai.org.

Photo via British Council

It seems the British Council these days is busy cultivating youth climate change leaders in China.

This past Saturday evening at the Bookworm Chengdu, a cultural events center in central Chengdu, several youth ambassadors spoke to an audience of largely grade school students on climate change action, as well as their own involvement in an international climate change conference in London this March.

The International Climate Champions, organized by the British Council, consists of 38 youth ambassadors from 13 countries, including China. The project is targeted at 12- to 18-year-olds, which, according to the program’s site, are a “persuasive global generation, [one that] can network very effectively, and are skilled at engaging with other young people and the wider public.”

Wang Yifei, of Sichuan, is the Chongqing Climate Champion, one of the initiative’s three China youth ambassadors. He spoke on the recent conference, where he gave a presentation on the decrease of diversity in Sichuan due to climate change, using giant pandas as an example. The Beijing ambassador gave a presentation on weather change, including snowcap melting in Inner Mongolia.

The Chinese delegation offered the following as an option for the “Kobe Challenge,” which will be presented to environment ministers at the G8 Environment Ministers Conference in Kobe, Japan this May: “Climate change is the problem and our generation is changing to become the solution.”

The trip included a visit to 10 Downing Street, an interview with BBC and a meeting led by Hillary Benn, the UK’s Secretary of State for Environmental Affairs.

Wang expressed confidence in young people’s ability to deal successfully with the climate change problem, citing education of the country’s current youth generation and a “positive attitude” as integral to success. Citing the UK’s official target to reduce carbon emissions by 60% by 2050, he was unperturbed.

“I think China can do much better than that,” he said, before a receptive audience, most of whom appeared to be younger than him.

The discussion also mentioned the British Council’s “Climate Cool” initiative, which “aims to raise awareness of climate change and encourage participants to take individual action to reduce the impact of climate change.”

Judging by a survey referred to on the Climate Cool site, Wang’s confidence may need to come along with some serious alteration of current Chinese youth sentiments.

The survey, performed through China Youth Daily and based on 2,500 questionnaires involving nearly 10,000 participants, shows that “80 percent of surveyed youths indicated their concerns on the climate change and related disasters.” In particular, they cited rising sea levels and subsequent reduction in land area and the potential for “some coastal cities and islands to disappear” as causes of concern.

However, “there would be strong resistance if people were asked to sacrifice their current living standards for the sake of sustainable consumption,” cited by the Climate Cool site.

According to the survey, approximately two thirds of participants still “indicated a willingness to purchase a car within their financial capabilities,” even though “most had noticed the negative effects of automobile exhausts on urban air pollution.”

General young Chinese attitudes, the survey found, are lagging well behind their older counterparts. According to the survey, while 76% of adults surveyed “have a positive attitude to saving energy,” only 34% of under-18s had similar attitudes.

–

Additional Info:

Climate Cool Initiative focuses on ways to reduce carbon emissions and energy use through three main ways:

1. distribution of media for educational purposes
2. reducing consumption and change lifestyle through innovative ways, including using renewable materials within society
3. taking action on campuses.

It also provides training that teaches students how to measure their school’s carbon footprint, perform an environmental audit of their school and how to mobilize teachers and fellow students by demonstrating the impacts of climate change.

Check out the monthly news briefing from the Auto Project on Energy and Climate Change (APECC). Here are some highlights:

• Cold weather adding to nation’s power problem
• New fuel standards take effect in Beijing
• Forum urges country to reduce dependence on fossil fuels
• China sets agenda to curb pollution for green Olympics

Peter Bosshard, policy director of International Rivers, a nonprofit group based in Berkeley, Calif., urges Chinese companies to more carefully consider the environmental and social impact of their investments, but he says China is not alone. Other superpowers–namely, the U.S.–must also halt wasteful consumption and adopt more environmentally friendly policies before expecting China to reduce its global footprint, too.

• We Are All Chinese
  By Peter Bosshard
  San Francisco Chronicle
  February 8, 2008

China is rapidly buying up the world’s resources. The new global superpower is exploring oil fields in Africa and Central Asia, drilling for gas in Burma, building hydropower dams in the Mekong region, prospecting for minerals in the Congo and cutting down forests in Indonesia. China’s hunger for raw materials is pushing up the price of oil and other resources, and stretching the ecological limits of the planet.

China is joining the party at a time when other countries and companies already control most of the world’s resources. China’s response has been to explore sites which other actors have considered too risky. Chinese companies are developing oil fields, mines and dams in areas that are geographically remote, politically unstable and ecologically fragile, often ignoring the environmental and human rights impacts of their
investments.

A Chinese company is building a large dam on the Kafue River in Zambia that puts important wetlands, including two national parks, at risk. The dam will generate power for nearby mines, which produce copper and cobalt for China’s industry. When Western financiers hesitated to fund the Kafue River project because of environmental concerns, the Chinese developer immediately stepped in, and urged Zambian authorities to cut
the environmental assessment process short.

A backlash against the social and environmental impacts of Chinese investments has already begun. Workers have protested the poor labor conditions in Chinese mines in Zambia. Rebel groups have targeted Chinese oil installations in Nigeria and Ethiopia. Environmental groups in Burma and Sudan have asked Chinese dam-builders to stay away from their rivers. And the government of Sierra Leone has outlawed timber
exports because of the ravaging impacts of Chinese logging.

Like any long-term investor, Chinese companies have an interest in avoiding human rights abuses and environmental destruction in their host countries. The Chinese government has issued guidelines for Chinese
companies to protect the rights of workers, local communities and the environment. Chinese companies have started to adopt environmental standards, but have yet to effectively implement them.

The responsibility for China’s global environmental footprint does not end in Beijing and Shanghai, however. A large part of the minerals and timber that China extracts around the world ends up in furniture, computers and toys in our homes. An estimated 70 percent of China’s timber imports are re-exported in products for the world market. And the copper from China’s mines in Zambia may well provide the wiring in our television sets.

China has become the world’s factory, but its own per-capita consumption is still modest. The carbon-dioxide emissions of average Chinese citizens are only a quarter of the U.S. levels. Most Chinese don’t drive cars, and already now, the fuel economy of Chinese cars is higher than the standard that the U.S. Energy Bill has set for 2020.

The carbon balance is telling. Goods that were consumed in other countries accounted for 31 percent of China’s carbon-dioxide emissions in 2004. Our own carbon-dioxide emissions were up to 30 percent higher if we included the emissions of goods consumed here but produced outside of the United States. China’s role as the world’s factory allows us to outsource much of our dirty work.

Chinese companies need to strengthen the environmental standards of their overseas investments to protect workers, communities and ecosystems in their host countries. Global textile, furniture and computer companies, which manufacture many of their products in China, should also consider the environmental impacts of their supply chain, including the origin of their raw materials.

Yet environmental standards alone will not do the trick. China, India, Brazil and other countries will continue to grow, and hundreds of millions of people are eager to join the American way of life. Their rapidly growing environmental footprint demonstrates that our lifestyle cannot be multiplied within the world’s ecological limits.

We need to speak up for the rivers, forests and local communities that China’s global resource spree is putting at risk. But we can only do so credibly if we cut back on our own wasteful consumption and adopt smarter energy, transport, planning and industrial policies at home. We can only expect China to protect the global environment if we reduce our own oversized footprint on the planet.

Read Bosshard’s new blog here.

Bosshard says: The first entries cover the adoption of the Equator Principles by China’s environmental protection agency, the export of dirty industries to Africa, the increasing cooperation between the World Bank and China, and the role of Chinese oil companies in filling our tanks.

This post is part of an occasional series of interviews with those working on development and sustainability issues in China, particularly southwestern Sichuan province.

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Contributing blogger Mark Hiew brings you an interview with Meg Young from Ecologia, an example of social entrepreneurship through rabbit farming in Sichuan. Here, Young explains some of her successes and development difficulties.

Rabbit breeders and interviewers. Photo credit: Meg Young

Young got her start in microfinance during college, while on a five-month long research program in Senegal, where she was introduced to a hunger project. She later connected with Ecologia, an NGO based in Vermont, during an international involvement conference.

Young came to Chengdu as a researcher in the summer of 2006 to conduct a feasibility study. Upon graduating from Middlebury College in Vermont, she returned to China through the Oxford World Leadership Corps in August 2007 on a 12-month program, which places people internationally within NGOs, following a similar pattern as the Peace Corps.

By 2006, Ecologia had been laying partnership roots in Dayi, a town 45 minutes outside of Chengdu, with a social entrepreneur named Ren Xuping. Known as the “Rabbit King,” Ren has been working with local farmers over the past 20 years, training them and providing rabbits as capital. He has affected an estimated 300,000 lives since he started his career in social entrepreneurship. Ren, like Young, was also interested in working with Ecologia when he found he was “hitting a wall” in terms of assisting beneficiaries.

A peasant from a poor family, Ren started raising rabbits at the age of 13. He later became a millionaire (in U.S. dollars) through a meat and fur factory entreprise. He was encouraged to extend his wealth to others by Deng Xiaoping, and then in 1984, through the American NGO Heifer International, he began providing direct lending of rabbits as capital. Heifer’s model of providing direct gifts of livestock for animal husbandry has been used successfully in many developing countries.

Ren Xuping helps farmers like this happy guy, who now takes his family on vacations to Shanghai, thanks to the money he earned through rabbit farming. Photo credit: Meg Young

Ren is building his own socially responsible supply chain through his philanthropy, since farmers can use rabbits locally or sell them back to him. He has great “guanxi,” or social relationships, that lie at the heart of what makes his efforts so successful.

Ren’s work in rabbit farming seemed like a natural place for microfinance. Many rural micro-entrepreneurs often still lack the start-up capital to run business. But Ren had instituted a gift model, wherein beneficiaries receive a 20 rabbit loan, then, after one year, they are then encouraged to pass on 20 rabbits to another beneficiary.

Ren’s NGO, the Rabbit King Poverty Alleviation Research Center (RKPARC), has three main pillars: working with female entrepreneurs, providing girls with education scholarships, and microfinance.

ResponsibleChina: What are some of the major challenges you face in working with your beneficiaries that may be different from those that other microfinance organizations face?

Cultural communication and language is the major difficulty Young cited for Ecologia. Ren said a cultural gap between American and Chinese staff made conversations lengthy and difficult. There are also differences in the way Ren’s RKPARC and Young’s Ecologia work together. Whereas both parties have a lot of clout, from Young’s perspective, Ecologia was looking to add “two grains of salt” to their ideas and procedures, whereas from the Chinese side they felt like “ball was in [Ecologia’s] court,” in terms of procedure and protocol.

Also, Heifer had given RKPARC firm deadlines and benchmarks that they had to follow; however, Ecologia follows a less task-oriented approach, more akin to a consulting partnership. This difference in expectations caused some difficulties.

Young says getting face time with beneficiaries is another difficult aspect of the project. Face time “ebbs and flows,” and it can be “intimidating” to beneficiaries, in that they are revealing sensitive information, which is then made more unusual by the presence of foreigners.

RC: What is the current state of organization of microfinance within the communities you work with in Southwestern China? Are they already on a quite large scale, or are they just starting off?

Microfinance is becoming more advanced and is currently scattered throughout the country. Wokai.org, a Beijing-based Web site, has plans to create a network of microfinance institutions across the country.

According to Young, many NGOs that have tried to cut and paste the “Grameen” microcredit model are struggling in their fledgling stages. They fail in China because of an underestimation of a couple of key points: 1) the important role that social relationships play in conducting business in China, and 2) the often extensive involvement of the government. For example, it’s still illegal to help people keep savings if you are not an officially registered bank. But Young also mentions that microfinance has gotten relatively easier to accomplish in China, as some regulations have already been lifted.

RC: The integral role of women in many microfinance contexts is well known. Are there any particular gender dimensions to your work that have become apparent?

Women’s role in Senegal is more focal, Young says. She quotes a development worker there as saying, “give the money to the woman, or it won’t feed anybody.” Gender relations in China are more balanced, Young believes, but there is still an expanding degree of impact when funds are given to women. Doing so changes some societal roles, and a greater percentage goes into education and long-term benefits.

Ren’s wife Zheng Shuping, the “Rabbit Queen,” has been focusing on female entrepreneurs and girls’ education.

RC: Do you see much room for innovation and creative development models—along the lines of Ashoka and the broader social entrepreneurship movement—within China, particularly at the grassroots level?

Backed by the Rockefeller Fund to expand corporate social responsibility (CSR) through social entrepreneurship, Ecologia has been creating CSR profiles of socially responsible entrepreneurs within the Chengdu region. It considers why people are making the decisions they’re making as far as social sustainability, with an eye towards internal networking within Chinese communities. The goal is to create a mentoring program between beneficiaries and those who’ve already succeeded.

RC: What are some major current issues that rural Sichuanese are facing, and what are some of the solutions that have worked?

Young says environmental policy changes have created major economic hardships for rural communities in Sichuan. A lot of farmland is being returned to forests, stripping farmers of their source of income. In many areas, coal mines are the major source of income, and while many are being shut down for environmental reasons, it leaves a great number of newly unemployed with no alternative source of income. Young also mentions the incredible rural-urban migration movement that separates many rural families. She often sees women beneficiaries who care for their in-laws and parents, as well as their own children.

“A lot of environmental solutions are Band-Aids for the scratch, when people need to be asking why are these things happening in the first place,” she says.

RC: Have you felt restricted or stymied working for an NGO in China, given civil society’s closer relationship to the government than might be the case in other countries?

Young explains that the government has been deeply involved and “very helpful.” At the moment, however, village elections are currently happening and so Ecologia has had to pause the project because it requires the full cooperation of village leaders. The microfinance lending cycle is six months to one year, which can be tenuous depending on the personal sentiments of the village leader.

As for major sources of inspiration, Young cites the “dedication and heart” of the Rabbit King and Queen. “That [two people] who have been working in philanthropy and development for over 20 years can continue to work at [such a pace] astounds me.”

She sees the project as a big victory as an example of successful multilateral cooperation—a small, Vermont-based NGO working with local Chinese social leaders using U.S. funding.

When asked for advice for young Westerners interested in coming to China to work in development, Meg offers some tempering words of wisdom:

“Know that even if you come over with a ‘can-do, idealist’ mentality, in the mean time, you’re gonna get your butt kicked and its not going to be easy. You will not learn Chinese in a day. You will learn to [take pride in] small accomplishments.”