Vicki Mayfield and her husband Robert Bianchi

Yangshan Port

My husband and I are currently living in Shanghai where he is conducting research at Shanghai International Studies University. This is our second long-term stay in China; we had previously been in Nanjing. But whether we're in Shanghai or Nanjing, the one thing that we've learned is that we never stop learning in China.

When we travel, we set out with a tentative agenda and a checklist of places we'd like to see or do. Invariably, our plans change. Case in point: prior to China, I can say with 100% certainty that neither of us had any interest or knowledge in the mechanisms or logistics of import-export.

Then one day, we were driving someplace in the US and listening to an interview on the radio about the development and evolution of container-based shipping. If I remember correctly, container shipping for commercial purposes grew out of tools and technologies used by the military in the second half of the 20th century. As a result, containers became standardized to fit ships, trucks, and rail systems around the world. Manufacturers followed suit by packaging their products to fit containers. I still remember what the man on the radio said, it was cheaper to make and ship clothing to a store in Manhattan from China than it was to make and ship the same item from Brooklyn.

We went to Guangzhou and stayed in a hotel that happened to be in the middle of an export district. All day long, Chinese exporters and foreign importers sat in the hotel lobby negotiating deals. Pick a language, pick a country, the common phrases were built around 'the best price for the best quantity.’ Strolling near the hotel, we found an office building that turned out to be mostly showrooms of merchandise for export. When I inquired about pricing, most showroom staff wanted to quote prices by lots or container, not by a single, individual item. A few years afterwards, we visited Yiwu and wandered through the showrooms there. Again, showroom staff would be willing to sell you a single item, but mostly they wanted to talk very large quantities. It must be working, because in every country of the world you can find a hairdryer or a child’s toy or a sweater made in China.

Did I mention we visited Shenzhen to attend a conference on China’s “One Belt, One Road” initiative? Representatives from governments, think tanks, and universities were all there to discuss the evolution of the ‘new Silk Road’ to further exchange of goods, peoples, and cultures. Shenzhen was the right place to hold the conference: created as one of five Special Economic Zones in 1980, it has grown to be a world-famous manufacturing, financial, and trade center.

We were learning.

Of course, learning doesn’t always happen sequentially. On a recent trip to Hong Kong, we visited the Maritime Museum, which has two displays that were fun and very ‘hands on’: a captain’s bridge and a display showing the development of a modern port, complete with shipping container! We walked along the shoreline of Qingdao and watched ships in the far distance make their way to the port. One of my husband’s colleagues there explained how Qingdao serves ships coming from the northern routes, including those coming through the Arctic Circle.

Then, last week, we and other foreign experts from Shanghai International Studies University took an excursion to Shanghai’s Yangshan port. For us, it was our chance - after seeing containers, harbors, and ports all from a distance - to get close to an actual operating port!

Getting there means crossing a long, narrow bridge that winds across a shallow portion of the East China Sea. Look out the window and you see not fishing boats or barges, but a never-ending wind farm with the big white wind turbines hovering like so many ghosts above the water on a misty, overcast spring morning. We watched the turbines, hoping to see them turn and spin. During our journey, however, only about half the turbines were spinning: there just wasn't enough wind to move the turbine blades or to even have much effect on the sea below.

Cross the bridge and you soon get to the port itself. First, of course, you see the parking lots for empty containers. From a distance, they resemble a child's toy room: brightly colored boxes stacked in towers four or five stories high. Here, a stack of yellow and red. There a stack of blue, over there all the colors laid out in no special order.  As you get closer to the docks, there is a lookout that you can climb to get a better view. When we climbed up, we could see two long grey cargo ships at the docks, waiting for whatever was to come. The big, red cranes used to move containers off and on a ship look like something from an Erector set, so you can easily imagine a giant 5-year old child moving all the pieces around this over-sized playroom.  We then learned that this is the largest container port in the world. But there was still more to see.

That meant going to Shuyuan village, a real village whose ancient buildings have been renovated or expanded to turn it into a modern conference center. Compact in size, this recreation of a river town took us back to the time when Chinese people were intimately networked to their neighbors and connected to the rest of the world via the waterways of the eastern coast.

We will return to the US this summer and our knowledge of trade and how trade happens has increased a hundred-fold. Our hands-on experiences have given us new reasons to keep learning about China.

While this past year and this specific trip were both fun and educational, and took us to places we probably would never have seen otherwise, there is something else to mention. The group of foreign experts on our trip to Yangshan and Shuyuan Village consisted of people from the USA, China, France, Australia, Japan, Iran, Latvia, India, and more. We all got along well and shared a unique experience in China, thanks to Christine and Grace and others at SISU.

The author's husband Robert Bianchi is a Fulbright scholar at the Middle East Studies Institute of Shanghai International Studies University (SISU).