Mike Conklin

In the summer of 2009, I taught journalism courses at Xiamen University in China. I was the first participant in an ongoing exchange program between DePaul University, where I was full-time faculty, and the Chinese school.

Xiamen was a beautiful coastal city on the South China Sea with white sand beaches that, like San Francisco, sat on a bay encircling a historical island. In this case, the island, Gulangyu, was a square mile of colorful shops, restaurants, hotels, palatial homes once occupied by wealthy foreigners, and training schools for classical pianists. Motorized vehicles were not permitted on the island.

Xiamen is a modern, domestic tourist destination. The air is clean. Its strip of hotels on the water remind of Miami Beach. The port city also serves as a commercial hub for Southeast Asia. The population then was 4.3 million---7.2 million for the metro area---and it easily ranked among the top 3-4 U.S. cities. In China, it barely ranks in the top 20.

The university, at 28,000 students, was the size of DePaul. Its neatly laid out campus was lively with benches, gardens, basketball courts, food stands, bike racks, artwork, and spacious buildings. In one corner was a popular art museum with a busy coffee shop. Almost every day I walked through a colorful campus flea market. Nanputuo Temple, a sprawling, serene Buddhist oasis of greenery and meditation stations, was just outside the school’s main gate.

Students in my classes were non-stop with questions, mostly wanting to know about American pop culture. They were intrigued by the journalism films I showed in my classrooms. Surely, I am the only person to show “China Syndrome” in China.

This experience demonstrated how little I knew about China. It was a wakeup call. Maybe that’s why I purchased this alarm clock in the flea market.