Research

So I haven’t written about my research at all. That’s because my research really just involves buying ever flavor of Chinese ice cream there is and spinning around in circles to prove to passerby that I, in fact, will never get dizzy (to the Charles Kao, Friedman Family Travel, and Summer Environmental studies: I have been hard at work comparatively analyzing mode transportation shifts in urban landscapes). Here are just some very preliminary thoughts before I finally start writing my reports and papers:

For the past two months, I’ve been in Shanghai, China and surrounding Jiangsu province conducting research on Chinese attitudes towards different modes of transportation and their consequences, from widespread smog to the growth of a wasteful consumer culture to the exacerbation of class differences. I surveyed around 1000 students, conducted interviews, and read a constant stream of news stories about cars and public transportation.


One thing for sure: the Chinese want cars. Chinese consumer demand recently surpassed that in the US and the car craze is evident in pretty much every publication. In my survey, most students expressed strong feelings to buy a car as “as soon as they were financially able.” According to a recent Chinese news piece, whereas the “big three” items a bachelor needed to find a wife in the 1980s were a bicycle, a washing machine, and a television set, the big three that a single dude needs today is a car, a house and over 10,000 yuan monthly (now you know, eligible bachelors and creepy nerdy white dudes with Asian fever otherwise known as all my friends!). Interestingly, according to the survey, more people expressed strong feelings for a car in Shanghai as opposed to the smaller, less developed Zhenjiang.
All of this has widespread consequences. People know it too. But despite a high degree of concern expressed for global warming, acid rain, air pollution, and more, the concern did not ameliorate the desire for a car. It’s also important to remember that most people living in China today have experienced firsthand what poverty is and wanting a better life is only natural. I came into the project vehemently opposed to private car ownership but have somewhat revised my views. Cars are a novelty, a luxury that many people have envied for decades. Before people start getting on bikes or returning to public transportation en masse, a culture in which most people have experienced the novelty of driving a car is must already be present.


I maintain my love for public transportation, however, and I think that the gradual replacement of public transportation with cars will result in subtle, but important effects on living in cities. For example, public transportation is one of the last truly public places, where the rich mingle with the poor and people are forced to watch and interact with each other. The white-collar car driver goes to work enclosed from the rest of society, works in his high-rise building, and then returns to his isolated, high-rise apartment. It’s a sad living and with my first long experience with public transportation, my environmentalism increasingly has become a means towards understanding how modern life as a whole can be improved.