Taken in Jiansu and Shanghai these are two pictures by China Photo group member Richard Duarte.

Taken in Shanghai, China:

Beijing Bikes:

An update for new readers and a reminder for long-time fans: we regularly publish photos from our readers and group members who want to show others the interesting, curious, creepy, unusual, mysterious, elegant, odd, lovely, frumpy, and otherwise fantastic China that they have found from behind the lens. We publish work from beginners to veterans of photography, and our only requirements are that you only send us photos you have taken.

Some examples:

These first photos come from the China Photo Contest group on Facebook and were posted by Robert DaBoss.

These next photos come from our Facebook group A Million People Who Love China and were posted by Elisabeth Rowley Mitchell.

To see your photos here, post your photos first on the Blog of Dreams’ associated groups on Facebook: China Photo Contest and A Million People Who Love China. We will feature weekly photos on the blog from each group and from any part of China and its autonomous regions. Stories, anecdotes, notes about context, and information about the location where the photo was taken are more than welcome.

All money raised as a result of views of these photos and click-throughs on ads for these sites go directly to the Library Project and the Library Project Earthquake Relief Fund, a China charity now leading a campaign focused on helping to rebuild libraries and schools.

This week’s photos come from Ken Yip, a blogger and photographer based in Shanghai.

This is a photo of South Station Shanghai, one of the two train stations in the city. Though the station was originally constructed in 1908, it was recently closed for rennovations and reopened in 2006 as the world’s first circular train station. The station now services all passengers heading to locations south of Shanghai, including the increasing popular Hangzhou, though Nanjing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Hong Kong are always popular destinations.

To see your photos here, send them to or .

Shanghai Signal House: A Daily China Photo

This week’s photos come from Ken Leaf, an amateur photographer and architect-to-be living in Shanghai.

This is a photo of the old signal house in Shanghai. Originally constructed in 1865, the signal house is a symbol of Shanghai’s vitality in the earlier part of the century. Moved in 1993 and restored in 1998, there is now a museum at the bottom of the tower’s spiral staircase that provides pictures of the Bund and other key documents and memorabilia that display Shanghai’s rich and complex history.

To see your photos here, send an email to or .

Shanghai Neighberhoods: A Daily China Photo

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Today’s photo from Ken Leaf was taken in the Jewish Quarter of Shanghai, an often-forgotten portion of Shanghai that once was a booming portion of the city. Jewish migrants originally came to Shanghai in 1942, creating a small and vibrant community,only to leave a few years later before the massive changes that would take place in China.

A Canadian artist and group of investors have taken on the preservation of the neighborhood and are continuing to develop and add the neighbor with respect to its local culture.

To see more Shanghai photos from Ken Leaf, continue checking back here. To see your photos here, send them to and .

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Shanghai Bridge: Daily China Photo

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This week’s photos come from China blogger Ken Leaf, who sent a few of his favorite Shanghai photos for this week. You can see a great panoramic view here of the the fourth longest cable-stayed bridge in the world. Extra points go to the readers who can see the Chinese flag.

To see more Shanghai photos, check out the posts later this week. To see your photos here, e-mail them to or .

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The University of Maryland Smith School of Business Shanghai, China

Recently, during my trip in Shanghai, I had the opportunity to speak with Steven Feld, the Executive Director of Professional Programs and Services at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business at the Maryland Center China in Shanghai. What I found was a man with a conviction to foster the growth of a business school in China that could live up to the growing needs for talented managers and can provide people who have already succeeded at doing business in China a chance to hone their skills to a new level.

I have to admit that the interview’s beginning was little rocky. Because of a delay in my flight, I arrived at the Center, bags still in hand, about an hour and a half later than I’d planned. Fortunately, I was able to sneak into another interview and get a few shots at a question and answer. Dr. Feld was happily answering questions from a Chinese newspaper. I decided to go for the big one.

“So, how are you going to compete with Harvard? How about Duke? What have you got for the big guns?” I ask. Dr. Feld Steve Feld just grins. I know he’s been asked this question a dozen times before, and his response is fitting for a man who left Wharton to manage a program sitting on the fence between great and unbeatable.

“It’s all about service,” he said. “If you come to the University of Maryland’s EMBA program here, you get the same quality and the same teachers you’d get as if you were in the US. We don’t water down our program for China.”

And with that, I smiled, reached for my notebook, and realized I’d left it in the cab. Red-faced, I grabbed a sheet of paper from my bag and began writing furiously as Dr. Feld talked about this EMBA in China.

He also pointed out the way in which the program had been made administratively simple. “Our students have an average of 15 years of experience,” Dr. Feld pointed out, “and they are juggling families, running their companies, and completing 54 credit hours of school in 18 months. So we need to help them by making the administrative process of this course–buying books, registering for courses, receiving grades–as simple as possible.”

There were several key points that stood out as Dr. Feld talked. One was his sense of commitment: from everything he said, I could tell that the Smith School is not some kind of attempt to offer a mediocre program to a China hungry for, but an administratively simple program designed to produce the same quality of education that has given the University of Maryland its distinctive international reputation. A key point of the program is that the same professors who teach at the University of Maryland deliver the lectures and do the teaching just as they do in the US. Dr. Feld also stressed the three core competencies of the program: globalization, techonology, and innovation and entrepreneurship, which he believes will be core principles rising entrepreneurs and businesspeople need to master in the coming years of business.

Smith has some impressive ranking as well. Though it’s name is just beginning to come to China, it’s international reputation (ranked #17 in the world and #5 for its research department) is long-standing. One of the most interesting points of discussion I had with Dr. Feld was about the school’s impressive research rank. Can a school with a rank like that deliver good quality teaching, I wondered? Or would the faculty at the U of Maryland feel so much pressure to perform in research that they would neglect their teaching duties? Dr. Feld, as always, gave a delightful response. “Well, we have two ways to respond to that. First, we have research centers designed to disseminate the information from our researchers to the public and to interested parties. Second, we have a really smart dean who created a staff of teaching professors who aren’t obligated to do research. And what this has done is increase the standard of teaching at the University of Maryland, so that both the teaching staff and the research staff frequently get rated highly for their teaching.”

There is a saying China (isn’t there always?): “麻雀虽小, 五脏俱全.” Though the sparrow is small, it has all the vital organs. And though Maryland is by no means a small school in any sense of the word–its reputation and abilities place it among the best in the world–its name is only beginning to gain weight and force in China. Despite this, the programs the University of Maryland offers in China–its EMBA as well as its professional development courses–are designed with care and clever precision to deliver high-quality instruction to China’s business leaders.

A final update: interested readers can check out the Smith Business Intelligence site, a great source of useful information about the latest business information in China.

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This past weekend I traveled to Shanghai in order to attend the 2007 China Education Expo, an annual traveling expo showcasing international study abroad opportunities for Chinese students. While there, I also had the chance to catch up with several bloggers, speak with Steve Feld, the Executive Director the University of Maryland’s Smith School of Business, and spend some time with Christine Lu of the China Business Network. I have to admit that serendipity seemed to follow me as I met up with a number of people, from a helpful and friendly group of Casablancan businessmen on the plane to the Chinese watch salesman that helped me find an Internet Bar when I needed it most.

This week I’ll be writing stories about my adventures and some of the fantastic dreamers I met in my few short days in Shanghai. Photos and maps will follow. Unfortunately, my camera battery died a quick, painless death on this trip, but others have been generous enough to donate their own photos.

Photo courtesy of Ken Yip.

PS–My regrets to missing Chris Carr of Cal Poly MBA Trip’s latest visit. He was in Beijing and I was not able to meet up with him to hear about the latest on his MBA program in California.

Read on »

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Shanghai Clothes 上海衣服: Daily China Photo

Today’s photo is day 5 in this week’s feature on Ken Leaf. This photo was taken in Shanghai and features a different side of life from the stunning skycrapers and rapid devleopment we so often see in photos of one of China’s premier cities:

To more of these photos from Ken, continue coming back to this week’s China photos and tune in for Ken’s interview later this week. To see your photos here, send them to or . And keep dreaming! Read on »