Life as work... but it aint so bad!

so whats goin on at the moment?
My last entry was such a rush, just tryin to catch up with all travels and events.
So now i've pretty much settled down, maybe i can paint a more elaborate, more captivating picture. subtleties and absurd intricacies not aside....
Yes my life is my work. My apartment is 100m from my office. I use my same laptop at home in evenings and during day in office. I eat most meals in the staff canteen and talk about the same ecotourism topics with my chinese office colleagues during day as with my expat mates in evening. i study the same chinese language books at home and work. In my free time i go to walk and explore in the park. some days i skip office and go to walk in the park, as its also part of the job.
My counterpart is named Jack. Its appropriate coz he's like a jack-in-the-box. Talks loudly and interrupts randomly but his heart is clearly in the right place. gotta giv him credit as he helps me alot and he occasionally lets a word in. For me, i wanna make friends with all the staff. But experienced expats here tell me thats just not the way it is done. they say that is sellin myself short- instead u gotta ignore the non-decisions makers and court the park directors as a way of increasing one's own authority and establishing ones own hgh-ranking persona. Apparently this is part of Chinese culture- act superior and treat anyone below you with contempt in order to get ahead. And coz we foreign staff are outside the usual staff hierachy u see, theres much more flexibility in our position. So i could be chums with the director and head of all the parks $millions new 'ecotourism' projects or just some fella helpin out in the science department. Umm, sounds complicated for a egalitarian aussie like me. not sure if im ready for all these decisions or could conciously be so harsh to anyone. Better get settled in first. I know im smart, but maybe its more comfortable to be a high-potential moderate achiever than to test the limits and really challenge oneself. Hmm
Yeah the hierachy here is very important. Local staff and expats alike keep reinforcing this point to me. e.g. Vice-directors follow the director like puppy dogs and lower level staff look for ways to maneouver themselves for promotion. No-one pushes the limits, innovates or works too hard coz that is a way to make enemies- people may resent u and feel threatened. sound kinda backward? its for real. My science department has spent 5 years and large budgets working on a ecotourism project and achieved almost perfectly zilch. Few reports repeating the same useless flora and fauna survey data. In my meetings with the science director he seems nervous to sound like he knows what he's talking about. And he tries to slow me down in my work planning likely coz the contrast with the past years achievements may put him under the directors microscope. My job is supposed to bridge the divide between science and marketing departments. Both know nothing about each other. But ecotourism projects need involves both to be involved intimately, otherwise you'll have the 'eco' without the tourism or the tourism with the 'eco'.
I also have other choices. Do i wanna launch a business with my expat colleagues or instead focus on capacity building of local staff through training? Would my training have any long term affect? i might even be stepping on communist party toes- as to me ecotourism is almost an ideology in itself.
But surely the future is bright? the 'new china' calls for environmental conservation and education, and this park is one of the most well-known in China. A market of thousands per day is at our doorstep waiting to be sold on the ecotourism concept. Our park director is dynamic and has big plans and grand visions of making this place and surounding valleys, world renowned as a eco-village haven for $$ rich ecotourists looking for a slice of clean and luxurious nature, high-tech in harmony with raw earth. This means they are also very receptive to outside help. They want to draw-upon global expertise - so if one acts like they know what they are talking about they can be highly valued by management.
And hey did i mention this is WESTERN China? big difference here guys. Out here, they're still waiting for the fruits of China's much publicised economic success and organisational innovation. So maybe thats why they still treat officials like emperors out here- never mind socialist equality! Apparently this western under-development is to be addressed by the central governments massive 'Great Western Development Project' in this forgotten half of china.
And meanwhile, though they may call this Sichuan, to me its more like Tibet. Another complicating factor. The local Tibetans here speak their own language, have their own food and customs, different from mainstream Lhasa culture, these people are known as Ando Tibetans, then there are Kangba, Jiarong Tibetans... the list goes on- with different cultures depending on their geograpihcal location and livelihood. The locals here they have benefited much finanically from tourism, but many Han (apart from the tourist influx) have moved in and the Tibetans use their money to send their kids to school in Chengdu and if they come back, they have no interest in the Tibetan language and ways of the elders. So why dont they build a decent school nearby? And what of the cultural preservation aspect of ecotourism? this could be a real challenge...
And hey, did i mention a visit to the Conficius temple in Beijing? it was quite a place. apart from the spectacular architecture there was a museum of the great wall, long explanations and dramatisations of the functioning of the imperial college (which this place once was) for aspiring officials as well as a museum of confucius detailing his life and teachings, and their supposed applicability in the modern world. Wow, there sure are some national self-righteous, triumphalistic confucius-loving scholars in China! take this for example- it was claimed unequivocally in this museum exhibition that the European enlightenment of the 17th-18th centuries was inspired by confucianism and promoted confucian values. Apparently voltaire was the inspiration behind it all and a raging sinophile himself. Not sure i can buy that. Some less grandiose claims perhaps? ahh well, this is China after all. Being overly self-concious, they are over-compensating their national ego after a few centuries under european dominion.
Apart from all this, i've been spending my days wandering in the park with the goal of walking all the trails before the cold of winter sets in. I've enjoyed the fantastic views (see my album on facebook) of autumn coloured forests, flourescent lakes, limestone pools and waterfalls, in spectacular and bizarre formations, you will have to come and see what i mean! The paths have been mercifully quiet- apart from the effect of the terrible may earthquake which has more than halved tourist numbers, almost all the local tourists just ride the bus from site to site and take photos, bypassing the trails through the forest- now thats not what i'd call 'ecotourism'! Neither are the overflowing rubbish bins and lack of interpretive signage- this is the kinda stuff i'll work on with colleagues. Along with much else- it seems there are many and varying tasks i could be doing from contacting travel agents to investigating local culture with elders- but overall i guess i need to balance the business considerations with the 'ecotourism ethics' so that things will work well. I really want to talk with the director- he's the one who makes the decisions- but a hard man to get a hold of, and my chinese is still pretty shabby too...
Alright there much more i could talk about... think i'll save it for nexttime
glad to receive your email at: callum_mcqueen@yahoo.com.au
good luck and all the best until next time!!!
Cheers from cal
:) :) :)