Discovering China
In October, 2005 I had the pleasure of experiencing what is without a doubt the highlight of my journalism career to date, and indeed my life to date: a month spent in China, traveling across the country and investigating its electronics industry, with the goal of separating the reality from the hype. But it turned out to be much more than that. While travel abroad wasn’t new to me, it was the first time I had the opportunity to spend that much time in one country, mixing with the locals, eating their food, and learning their culture. I think I learned as much about myself as I did about China, and I often think about going back. In spite of what can be said of China’s government and politics, both external and internal, its people are amazing and wonderful.
The powers-that-be at the now defunct Electronic News – 50 years of history, gone; it’s a shame, really, but the way of the journalism world – at the time dubbed the project the Silicon Road, a play on China’s Silk Road, obviously. The project had its own microsite at Reed Electronics (Electronic News was part of parent company Reed Elsevier’s Reed Electronics Group, at the time; it has since been absorbed into sister publication EDN), where all of the stories I filed from China were aggregated, along with my blog and photos from my travels.
Those travels started out in Beijing, where I was graciously hosted and assisted by colleagues at Electronic Business China (they were invaluable, and also provided my student interpreter who accompanied me on most of my trip; he also proved invaluable). Then we moved onto Shenyang (via overnight train, sharing a room on a sleeper with two other curious Chinese travelers) in northeast China; back down to Shanghai; onto Xiamen, a former Dutch colony on the coast across from Taiwan; inland to Chengdu, capital of Szechuan province (and home to some of the best food in the world); and finally to bustling Shenzhen and Hong Kong, that international jewel of a city.
The Silicon Road microsite is long gone along with Electronic News, but the stories and blog from China remain on EDN. They can be a bit tough to find however; if you search EDN for “Jeff Chappell” you’ll get 1,803 hits; “Jeff Chappell” and “China” yields 232 – slightly more manageable, but most of those stories are ones that were filed stateside and not necessarily part of the Silicon Road project. To make things easier, I’ve compiled here the entire list of links to stories that I filed from China, as well as several that I filed after I returned to the States but were intended as part of the Silicon Road project. I’ve also compiled a number of the more interesting blog entries; the entire Silicon Road blog can still be found over at EDN (although most of the internal links in the blog posts are now busted, and some of the comments from various posts are missing; I guess I’m gradually becoming part of the Internet’s detritus archaeological record).
And before you ask, yes, I ate dog; no, I didn’t eat monkey brains. Pretty sure that one is a myth, at least as far as China is concerned.