East-West Views

By Shayne Hasegawa

Theory was put to practice recently when 26 graduate students from the University of Hawaii, Hawaii Pacific University and Clark University in Massachusetts got their feet wet and hands dirty as they toured community-led sustainability efforts on Oahu.

Students load rocks to help rebuild an ancient Hawaiian fishpond

The group visited He’eia Fishpond in Windward Oahu and several sites along the southern Ka Iwi coastline, including world-famous Hanauma Bay. But they experienced far more than the usual tourist would encounter. Continue Reading »

Journalists like to get up close to any big story, but this one was closer than most.

A group of a dozen East West Center Jefferson Fellowship journalists are in China this week where their plans were to visit the “other China,” developing regions in the west beyond the coastal “boomtowns.” Their itinerary included planned stops in Chongqing and the Sichuan provincial capital of Chengdu, precisely where Monday’s devastating 7.9 magnitude earthquake struck. Continue Reading »

By Teresa Wright

I recently returned from a 10-day stay in Shanghai and Beijing. I’d traveled to China many times, but I hadn’t been back to Shanghai and Beijing since 1990, my first visit to China.

My trip brought me face-to-face with China’s emerging elite as well as the consumerism and environmental headaches that have come with explosive growth. Continue Reading »