Silly Little Country

What's Wrong With Exploring for Oil?

One of my nieces is teaching English in China and has started a blog describing her experiences (I've added it to my blogroll).  She writes well and has a sharp eye.  In one of her recent posts she discovers the aspirations of some of her students.  I do want to comment on a couple of her observations.

It’s funny the number of them that want to study accounting or finance.

I think it would be funnier here - but what has made China a much better place to live as these children have grown up is exactly a sensible application of finance and accounting.  Seems to me this would make it a very attractive direction to go, giving one the sense of contributing to the enormous and growing success of the new China.

I even talked to one bright eyed sixteen year old girl who told me she dreamed of going to Calgary and working in oil exploration. Strange dream I thought.

Strange?  Maybe if you come from Eastern Canada and have Eastern Canadian attitudes to Alberta.  But surely the idea of those oil rigs and hard hats, and cowboy hats and the Calgary Stampede, and the ranches, and the wide open spaces, all would be attractive, nay even romantic, to someone in China.  Oil is after all a vast improvement on coal (especially as coal use is implemented, or was, in China.)
I find Gengbaoli's blog wonderful, as I spent a couple of weeks in China in 1997 (I think) and her pictures show me how far China has come in ten years.  Makes me feel good about the world overall.  The farther the Chinese stray from Mao's foolishness the better we all are.

posted by Alan Adamson @ 9:07 AM