Welcome to Beijing, Yale delegates of the China 2012 YIRA Trip! Congratulations on all of your hard work, and on making it to Beijing, the second-largest Chinese city by urban population, and China’s national capital. As the nation’s political, cultural, and educational center, Beijing will serve as the perfect geographic context in which we will study the nearly four-decade-old one-child policy. But, as the aptly named title of our blog reminds us, “er ting wei xu, yan jian wei shi,” or in English, “What you hear might be false, but what you see is true.” In the past year, stories concerning the one-child policy have exploded in global journalism, leading to controversy over the necessity and ramifications of the policy. While the true force of this economic and demographic crisis, and more importantly, the personal effects on the Chinese family are obscured in press coverage, you will be delving into a two-week-long series of seminar-style discussions, presentations, and tours to think critically on this issue. On top of it all, we will be immersing ourselves in one of the most quickly expanding cities in the world, the reconstruction of which mirrors the reconstruction of China on a grander scale.
Again, welcome to China, and welcome to our blog, readers!
Li Boynton