Average week
I don’t have much to talk about this week. My main project, to make an informational booklet for the staff, has kept me in front of the computer for most of the last 2 weeks. For this portion of the project I have been updating the biographical information of Northeastern Provincial (3 Provinces: Liaoning, Jilin, and Heilongjiang) and Municipal (19 Municipalities) Government officials.
This is a pretty daunting task for two reasons. The first is that the Chinese Bureaucracy is so unbelievably dense. It is not uncommon for a city the size of Shenyang to have five, six, or seven Deputy Mayors. Likewise a province like Liaoning can also have the same amount of Deputy Governors. There is definitely a hierarchy of importance amongst the government officials. How that importance is determined is a based on a number of factors such as: Party loyalty, Competence, Personal Relationships, Wealth, etc. I was only concerned with the important officials so I only updated and created 96 biographies.
The second reason is that finding the information on government websites is not very easy. Every website has the same menu headings however, the content under each heading was totally different.
That was pretty much my week. Not too impressive but I learned a great deal. Next week’s topic will be about the 4th of July Celebration and my Qingdao vacation.
