Arvinder Singh is itching to travel again. The destination:

Beijing, or Shanghai, or maybe Baoshan, a small city in Yunnan near the border between China and Myanmar.

 

It was in Baoshan that Singh felt closest to home.

 

"When I woke up in the morning, I had a feeling that I was walking towards India," he said. "Baoshan gave me the feeling that India is not far. Somewhere there is the smell in the air."

 

Singh, 45, is resident fellow economist at the Center for the Study of Developing Societies and honorary fellow at the Institute of Chinese Studies in New Delhi.

 

Since January 1997, he has visited China 15 times, making stops and giving lectures in universities across the country, from Beijing and Shanghai to the southern tip of Hainan island, or from Hangzhou in the east to Chengdu, Xi'an and Lanzhou in the west.

 

In Hainan, he said he'd never seen such heavy and luscious coconuts. In Lanzhou, where he spent a week in June last year, he said he'd never seen so many watermelons.

 

He has attended economic forums at Bo'ao, Hainan, and been involved in a number of multilateral projects, such as the Forum on Regional Cooperation among Bangladesh, China, India and Myanmar through the Indian Government.

 

Singh said he made a conscious decision to work on China while pursuing his PhD.

 

That was more than 10 years ago, and he recalled that people were surprised that he was "wasting his talent" on China. No economist in India had worked seriously on China, he said. The Institute of Chinese Studies, which is 40 years old, was focused on history, culture, politics, and foreign relations.

 

"Until I joined, there was no economist at the center," he said.

 

"But I found China fascinating," he said. "In normal education I was never taught about China; I was taught about the Soviet Union, Western Europe or North America. But China was so close. When I studied this, it felt like someone must start talking about China.

 

He also believed that as an Indian he would be offering a different perspective from that of Western scholars.

 

"It was not so easy; we didn't have materials, or opportunities to travel, for instance," he said.

 

But things have changed, especially now "China has rediscovered India and India has rediscovered China," he said.

 

"Today if someone asks me what I work on I say 'China,' and they aren't surprised anymore," he said.

 

Moreover, he is witnessing history. "I am part of history," he said.

 

Whenever he visits a city for a second time it is transformed. "The same street is no more and new buildings have gone up, and I find China is the most booming place on earth today."

 

Academically, he has discovered that his Chinese colleagues are good listeners.

 

"My lectures in China somehow have also found their way to Stanford or Harvard in the United States," he said.

 

"Dr Singh is very open-minded, and has an in-depth understanding of China-India relations and the economic development of the two countries," said Lu Feng, deputy director of Peking University's China Center for Economic Research, who first met Singh in 2000 when the Indian scholar delivered a speech at Peking University.

 

"He differs from many other international experts on China in his willingness to conduct fieldwork," said Gao Haihong, director and senior fellow at the Department of International Finance and Trade of the Institute of World Economics and Politics.

 

"He is always willing to communicate with Chinese people, he visits China frequently, and tries to know various types of people to get an in-depth understanding of China," said Gao, who got to know Singh during her visit to India last year.

 

In fact, Singh said his motto is to walk and to go to places off the tourist trail. He has taken buses to rural counties outside big cities "to experience the ordinary daily life of the Chinese and see the real thing (China)," she said.

 

Of course, he invites stares: A Sikh, he has a moustache and wears a turban. People also ask him questions, such as where he comes from.

 

Once in Shanghai, an elderly American asked if he was a "Shanghai Sikh," apparently referring to numerous Sikhs this man was used to seeing, shopkeepers, businessmen or British Sepoys, while he grew up in pre-1949 Shanghai.

 

"But Chinese children always know I come from India, apparently they are taught nowadays about India in their textbooks" he said, adding he often spices up the conversation with his small amount of accented Chinese.

 

"I never find it hard to communicate with him, because he really knows many Chinese people's habits," Gao said. "When we talk about academic issues, he can be very serious, but he is also very humorous in daily life."

 

He has encountered unhappy moments in China. One time a young man in Kunming asked him why India, such a great country, would allow the British to rule it for more than 200 years.

 

"It was shocking to me in the street when this question was posed," he said.

 

He said he has more than 100 Chinese friends to count on. "Wherever I am in China, I have some 50 telephone numbers in my pocket," he said.

 

Professor Lu recalled that Singh took him to many bookstores and introduced him to some really useful works during his visits to India in 2004 and 2005.

 

"I left some money for him for some books he gave me to help my research, but when he came to China again, he brought me new books," he said.

 

(China Daily November 21, 2006)