Well other than one quick post last week, I have missed a great deal to blog about over the past few months. So for the third time ever here, I’ll do a quick recap of a few different things.
So without further ado, here is a recap of the last few months…
Way back in May I had the absolute pleasure of heading to China’s Western Frontier, Xinjiang Province. It was simply a breath-taking experience. I got to see pristine mountains, vast seas of desert, and bargain for goods in several different languages.
The main reason that I have not made a post about it here, is because I had the chance to make a post for it elsewhere. I had the chance to write about my experiences on ChinaTravel.net a very popular and excellent China Travel website. If you are at all interested in reading about my experiences in a very unique setting, then give it a read.
Now I was very lucky to go to Xinjiang in May, as opposed to July. As many of you know, there were a series of riots in Urumqi by the Uighurs against the Han Chinese. Since then the province has been more or less on lockdown, and the tourism industry has slowed down. While it is apparently safe at this point, there are still a wide range of restrictions including a complete blackout of the internet and international phone calls.
A fantastic blog worth following about Xinjiang is FarWestChina.com, ran by Josh Summers, an expat living in the province. While he is understandably blogging less than usual at this point he made an excellent post entitled “Urumqi: A Week After the Riots” were he describes a visit to “Ground Zero” for the riots. Powerful, powerful stuff there.
So if any of you are interested in heading out that way, I would HIGHLY recommend it. It is one of my favourite trips that I have ever made (remember, you can read what my thoughts here). But as always, be sure to stay informed of the political situation.
Safe journeys,
G
Greetings fellow nomads,
It certainly has been a while since I have been able to type anything of substance anywhere. Things have been rather busy for me the month or so since my last post. In an effort to get caught up here is a rough list of what I’ve been up to.
July 5: Fly from Shanghai to Toronto. I slept maybe 2 hours on the 14 hour flight, it left at around 5pm in Shanghai and landed at around 7pm in Toronto on the same day. Time zones are a killer. Last year I did a journal post on a 14 hour flight, if you are interested in understanding the joy of that experience give err a read.
July 6 – 12: Slept at very odd times throughout the days. Visited family and friends. Good times had by all.
July 13: Flew to New York City to visit Elvina. It is simply an astonishing place. I honestly can’t recommend New York City enough to anyone out there. I thought that I would be indifferent to it as I have been to other major modern cities, but I noticed something special about it. After some reflection I realized that New York is special because it is the big modern city that all others try to emulate and pay tribute to, with varying degrees of success. Highlights of the trip included The Ellis Island Immigration Museum, Central Park, Times Square, and The Statue of Liberty. I thought that the latter would be cheesy, but it was simply breathtaking. Here are a few sample pics which will get uploaded to The Book and Flickr soon enough.
July 17: Return home with Elvina for a few days. Family related business ensued.
July 28: After saying goodbye to many of my family members and friends (including a jaunt up to my camp for a few day visit) I head back to the Orient. While three weeks sounded like a long time in the planning, it certainly was not in practice. I feel like I hardly saw anyone at all in my travels. My utmost apologies to the many of my friends that I missed.
July 29: Land in Shanghai after yet another 14 hour flight where I slept very little. Spend the evening in Shanghai and try to sleep on a couch, fail drastically.
July 30: Hop on a plane headed towards Xining, in Qinghai province. As the plane begins to board the rain begins to fall with a great deal of vigour. An announcement comes on that says that the plane is delayed for two hours on the runway. I eventually fall asleep despite all of the very loud chatter. Four hours later we take off.
Now I am spending the next few weeks traveling around a bit more of China. I am going to be in Qinghai, Gansu, and Sichuan provinces over the next few weeks spending my time at monastaries, pand reserves, and eating some very spicey food. Needless to say, I am excited for it.
My first full day in Xining was yesterday and I went to Ta’er Si, a nearby Tibetan Monastery. While it was full of loud, obnoxious tour groups who routinely took pictures in areas they were not supposed to, and were very loud in quiet parts, it was still very beautiful. I could not help but think that they were there to test my resolve as I struggled for enlightenment. Here are a few snaps.
Expect more to come in the near(ish) future.
Safe journeys,
G
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
Party Mottoes, 1984
Some days I feel like I am living in Orwell’s nightmare.
Today is an important anniversary of a solemn event, or maybe it is a day like any other, it all depends on who you ask, or who you don’t ask. As many of you may know, twenty years ago today an infamous student protest in China drew the wrath of the government and their tanks, and many people were killed. Pardon me for using cryptic language, but I do not want to attract the attention of the powers that be in the country I reside in.
There has been a huge crackdown in the buildup to this day. A few months ago YouTube was banned, and blogger is currently banned (I am posting this via a proxy), while Wordpress has been banned since I arrived in August. The most recent additions to this were Twitter, Flickr, and Hotmail which went down on Tuesday (eerily as I type the rough draft for this post). Interestingly, the on-again-off-again bans on sites like BBC, Wikipedia, and Google are not in effect. In essence websites that allow regular people like me to communicate with the outside world (through posting videos or blogs) are not allowed. Somebody is worried that something is going to happen.
Also, the popular messaging system Skype, is very difficult to download in this country, instead it diverts you to a program called TOM-Skype, which restricts some of the messages that you send. For example, if you try to send the F word the message will not go through. I read reports (not going to link, too dangerous at this time) of it tracking the use of certain hotbed words that the people in charge would not like.
But the internet is not alone in it’s censoring. Apparently there has been some grassroots movement to get people to wear white (the colour of mourning in Asia) on the day. There is a rumour persisting that newscasters are not to wear white for the next several weeks (which appears to be adhered to by turning on the television). A few weeks ago, an interesting bit of news came out that 300,000 newspapers had to be recalled because it had an incredibly subversive photo in it. Just in case you didn’t see it when it made the rounds a few weeks ago, check it out.
Do you get why it was somehow subversive? I’ll give you a hint, look at the pants of people in the front row. Now divide the picture in two and count the people on either side. Now think of today’s date.
There are six people on the right side and four people on the left side, translate that into a date and you have today. Look at the four digit number on the little boy’s pants in the bottom left and you have the year that the event took place.
Think about this for a second or two. If this was something that someone caught after the fact, what more obvious things are being caught before publication? I imagine someone refusing to publish an image because it bears a picture of someone who resembles a certain spiritual leader or not taking an ad for the classified because every 5th word spelled out the National Anthem for the island that China claims to be its own. I’m probably wrong, but maybe not too far off. If this picture is deemed subversive, what else gets to be in the same category?
All of this is done with one simple mission in mind: to restrict the flow of information. In other words, the government wants to keep people ignorant in order to keep the nation strong. Ignorance is strength.
What I find the saddest about all of this is how most of the concern comes from outside of the country. In the two decades that have passed since this event China has undergone a tremendous economic boom. Naturally in times of economic fortune people tend to not focus on problems with the government, and demands for change lessen. This coupled with the party’s crackdown has made many of the demands of the original dissenters disappear.
Most people in this country seem to be living in a bit of a fool’s paradise, similar to how I imagine America being in the 1950s, and even the 1990s. There were certainly bad things happening in the country then, but people mostly kept quiet because things were going well and they did not want to rock the boat. Flash forward a decade in either case, and the economy starts to fall and people start to protest more about the “corrupt government” and “illegal wars” which were going on before, but nobody ever cared when they were making money.
The party seems to have found the right mix of 1984 and Brave New World. Oppress people and control information while giving them all sorts of distractions that they have never imagined. Either way, it is keeping people in this country from the one thing that they truly need for development, the truth.
Until next time,
G
It seems like whenever I click on some news somebody is always talking North Korea, and their nuclear ambitions. It seems like everybody is ready for World War III to start on the Korean Peninsula. It seems like nobody is taking the time to realize that nothing is going to change.
That’s right, there will be no nuclear war, no reunification, just more of the same status-quo that has persisted for the last 56 years. This is just another big scare that will inevitably blow over, and things will continue on as they are.
Sure, the North seems to have nuclear capabilities (maybe), and long range missiles (definitely) which seem like quite the game changer, but we can’t forget the ultimate x-factor, and biggest benefactor from the way that things are, China.
Allow me to give a quick overview of East Asian geopolitics. The unquestioned forces are Japan and China, which are currently the 2nd and 3rd largest economies in the world, respectively (although they will probably flip by the end of the year). China has a very large military, and while Japan does not have any forces of their own, they have near unquestioned support of the Americans. Japan and China have long been distrustful of the other, and have been at war with each other several times in their history, most notably during WWII. Conveniently, between the two nations, there is the Korean Peninsula. This was divided at the conclusion of the Second World War, with the southern half being in the US sphere of influence, and the Northern half being in the Soviet sphere of influence. North Korea quickly became a reclusive state, relying on itself, and only itself, with the South has grown into a very vibrant economy and has served as a model for development in Asia.
While the South has been culturally closer to Japan, in recent years it’s economy has been getting closer to China’s. According to John Pomfret’s blog on the Washington Post “Why China Won’t Do More With North Korea” (the inspiration for this post), he mentions that China is South Korea’s largest trading partner. While this may seem surprising, let me tell you from the inside that there are a LOT of very wealthy Korean companies doing business in China. Almost forty percent of the students at the international school that I currently work at are Korean and those kids do not come from poverty.
This huge amount of money pouring into the PRC is helping fund the current economic boom, and China needs to keep it that way. Obviously a thermonuclear war in a country that has so much investment in China is not in their best economic interests. So they will do nothing to help empower the North in a horrible to “reclaim” the South.
All of this Korean money is flowing into China because, quite frankly, there is not much else for them to develop in their own country. However, should the North collapse a massive humanitarian and economic undertaking would ensue. The North would need to be developed in a bad, bad way which would trigger require a flow of capital and efforts from companies like Samsung and Dae Woo, which are currently doing business in China. Given the current economic climate, it is likely that any of those companies would need to contract elsewhere in order to set up shop in North Korea, which would probably mean a lot of them would move out of China. China can not let this happen, certainly not while their economy continues to benefit from Korean involvment in the country.
Also, should the North fall and the Peninsula become unified, there is the pesky question of the ethnic Koreans living in the Chinese Northeast. A huge swell in Korean nationalism would no doubt catalyze the notion that those people should join their reunified homeland. Jilin and Liaoning provinces both have sizeable Korean populations, and should they ever get vocal about their land leaving China, then the PRC has large problems on its hand. They already have enough seperatist regions to deal with, why add another one? Especially one that would have Japan and America’s sympathy? Jilin in particular has a great deal of national resources, notably iron, coal, and oil, which an industrializing nation like China certainly needs and could not afford to jeopordize.
China is in a clear case of “damned if we do” with very little “damned if we don’t”. This can only lead us to one conclusion, we’re going to get more of the same, so you can crawl out of the bomb shelter.
Until next time,
G
This is certainly an interesting time to be in this country right here, and right now. What with the 20th Anniversary of a certain incident at a certain square that may or may not have involved a lot of tanks coming up. Couple that with sabre-rattling in North Korea, rapid development all over the place, and of course those pesky people in the Himalayas that always want human rights, Asia seems to be the place to be right now, and the bloggosphere is keeping it well documented. While I may have been slack at posting on this (and my other) blog, there is no shortage of information out there about Asia. Here are some of my recent favourites that I have read:
Someone I know quite well in real life, Elvina, makes a great post Identity Crisis, which talks all about the challenges of being a Chinese-American while living in China. Needless to say, it’s full of all sorts of problems that we may not have expected to begin with.
In that post, Elvina mentions friends complex’s having over-zealous guards. Well if you read that friend, Don’s, post you will see just how intense the guards can be there. He talks of having a church gathering at his place, and havint the guards come it to see if there were any Chinese people there. This may seem like a strange question, but it has some deep seeded questions about freedom and “foreigner rules” in China. Check out Just Checking Who is Home… on The Arizona Anachronism for more info on that one.
Keeping with people I know, my friend Ryan, also known as thehumanaught, a B-List celebrity in the English language China blogging community, makes a great post about Living Without Trust, where he talks about how difficult it is to find trust in this country. A few months ago, his dog was killed as a result of dog food that went bad, and his new dog got sick, only to have the doctor run a series of expensive tests, when a simple internet search showed that it was nothing to worry about. A frightening read that makes you appreciate some of the wonders of the West.
As I have mentioned a few times, I am also writing for a blog (ran by the same Ryan as above), called Lost Lao Wai. Earlier this week, I read a fanatastic post about a Chinese family and their dirty little secret, liking Japanese food. This is very topical, given the outcry that has came out surrounding the new fim, Nanjing, Nanjing! Read Itadakimasu! by Quincy on Lost Lao Wai.
Now of course, not everythign great is writen by myself, or my friends, there is a lot of other stuff out there. Michael Rines, at the New York Times, did an excellent article called “To Protect an Ancient City, China Moves to Raze It“, about the destruction of Kashgar’s ancient city. China is starting the demolition of 2/3 of the ancient city, in order to improve it for tourists. As a recent tourist of the region, I am a little torn on that one. On one hand, I hate to see something with so much character destroyed, but on the other hand, I would hate for people to continue living in such sub-standard living. Also, I deeply dislike the thought of having a culture and region get turned into an attraction, but yet I just went there and loved every minute of it…
In an equally debatable post on a vastly different topic, John Pomfret of the Washington Post, makes a great blog entry about the PRC and their strange relationship with everyone’s favourite Hermit Kingdom titled “Why China Won’t Do More With North Korea“. It raises some very interesting perspectives that I certainly had not thought about. It examines China’s economic, cultural, and geo-political interests in keeping the Korean Penninsula divided, and it really is a fascinating read that could serve to explain some of the complexities of the Korean issue.
Lastly, I should mention that I have continued to post on Lost Lao Wai, which you can see all of here. Some of these may end up reposted here, but I would encourage people to read them where they are, as the comments are part of the fun (especially for The Bargaining Debate).
Anyway, with that I should be off. I hope that you take the time to enjoy the posts I have highlighted for you, since this is certainly an interesting time to be in this strange, strange continent.
Safe Journeys,
Greetings all,
A little over a month ago, I made a post notifying people about YouTube being blocked (note: it still is). Well it turns out, as of this morning blogger and blogspot have been blocked as well.
You may be asking yourself, “How are you posting then?”, and if you weren’t, then, surely you need to do a bit of thinking. Well after ranting about it on twitter my friend Ryan (aka thehumanaught) turned me onto a service called Hotspot Shield. For those of you who don’t know what it is, it is a VPN (Virtual Private Network) which are designed to both keep your network secure, but also to circumvent any firewalls, including the most comprehensive in the world, The Great Firewall of China, which periodically bans like (like YouTube and blogger, and all sorts of other fun stuff).
Hotspot Shield is a free service, and so far, so good. I can access my blog (obviously) and other sites which were previously blocked. It is a free service, so it occasionally throws up ads as either pop-ups or at the top of a window, but it is far from disruptive. If that bothers you too much, there are several more that you can find and pay for.
Either way, I would highly recommend you make use of one of these services….which I realize, that if you are in China then you can’t access such a thing, but it could be coming back on later. This is especially important given that a few weeks from now is a certain anniversary of a certain event at a certain square, where nothing important happened…
So expect further delays for anyone trying to access any amount of truth within this interesting nation.
Safe journeys,
G
For further info on The Great Firewall, check out Wired magazine excellent article on the subject.
And here we have yet another LLW repost, you can see the original (And the multitude of comments) here….enjoy!
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“You know how every major city in the West has a China town? Well, I live in the opposite of that”
Yes, I hate to say it, but I am a resident of one of the many laowai ghettos that exist in the major cities all around China. Whenever my family or friends from home ask me about where I am living, I often have to answer with the above statement.
While I make many efforts to go and explore “Real China” as often as I can, I notice far too often that my friends and colleagues appear to be completely ignorant of their surroundings, and consider going to Starbucks to order their double-mocha-latte-something-or-other in English to be a genuine part of their Chinese experience. To assist these people (or anyone else in their situation) I have devised a surefire 25 point checklist to tell if you are not living in a section of “Real” China.
You might be in an Expat Enclave if:
So if much of the above list applies to you, please, do yourself a favour and branch out, because you’re probably missing out on a heck of a lot of this great country.
Here is another repost of mine from Lost Lao Wai. You can find the original post, with some VERY interesting discussions in the comments here.
Since I moved to China eight months or so ago, I’ve came across a large amount of challenges. They have ranged from communication breakdowns, to awkward stares, to being witness to things that you just can’t unsmell. However, the question that I have been asked the most by my friends and family back home have centred around one clear topic, food.
I have spent much of the last five years as a practicing vegan. While this decision is one that I certainly consider to be a great one, it has certainly not made dining easy, especially in China, where meat is less an option and more a way of life. Worry not though, fellow herbivores, maintaining your lifestyle choices can be possible in the Middle Kingdom.
Eating an animal free diet in China is indeed a challenge, but one that is certainly possible to overcome. But before you step right in, you need to be clear of meat’s place in China, both on the tables and in the minds of the people.
Meat is considered by many Chinese to be a status symbol, as it is generally more expensive than fruits and vegetables. As a result, the wealthy people tend to eat the most meat. This is a huge reason as to why the global consumption of meat has increased so rapidly in recent years. The Chinese are getting richer, and therefore consuming far more meat. This means that a wealthy foreigner should obviously eat lots of meat, since we clearly have lots of money.
Clearly, this in itself gives you quite the uphill battle. I had many occasions were I would communicate that I do not eat meat and it would be followed up with some very quizzical looks from the locals. It’s not that I felt judged or harassed for my beliefs, I was just alien to them.
That being said, it still doesn’t hurt to try to tell people that you are a vegetarian. If you can say the following phrase (or show the following characters) to a waiter, you could be off to a good start. “Wǒ shì sùshízhǔyìzhě” (我是素食主义者), this translates pretty directly to “I am a vegetarian”, which is of course a very useful thing to say. However, to be honest, I find it to be quite a mouthful to say, and don’t feel that I can do it properly with all of the “sh” and “zh” sounds being thrown around. So if your Mandarin sounds as garbled as mine, try the much easier “wǒ bù chī ròu” (我不吃肉), which is saying “I eat no meat”.
Also, in many traditional Chinese dishes, meat is used less for substance, and more for seasoning. There are many great dishes in China that use just a little bit of meat to add flavour to the food (I would assume because the original cooks were too poor to use all of the animal), so be prepared for many dishes to contain some sort of meat in them.
Menus at Chinese restaurants can often involve some interesting, and unintentionally misleading translations, which can lead you to get tofu full of beef chunks, or a plate of broccoli given to you covered in ham. This can be avoided by a simple bit of character recognition. The character 肉 means “meat”, and it appears on most menu items that would contain any meat, as the direct translation of beef and pork are “cow meat” and “pig meat” respectively. So if you think that you see something like “Grandmothers fragrant garden roots”, check to find that character, because those garden roots may end up smelling like pig intestines. I find that character easy to remember, as it looks like a few cows in a pen unaware of their fate, or two wishbones sitting on a table waiting to be cracked.
If you still aren’t certain, sometimes it can be helpful to point at something on the menu and ask “zhè ge yǒu méiyǒu ròu” (这个有没有肉) which is “Does this have meat?” and hope that they say “méiyǒu (没有)” indicating that there is no meat and you can stop stressing about the ordering and get back to enjoying your meal.
Of course the most important thing to remember, is to relax. There will more than likely be times were you are brought something with eyes or a beak on it despite your best efforts. My best advice in those situations is to just give the food to your friends (Chinese meals are meant to be family style anyway), and enjoy your rice or whatever else you may have. Then get ready to try again for the next meal, which of course may be soon given that you only had rice for dinner.
China can be a very frustrating place for a lao wai, but if you try to skip the food and stay with the Western establishments then you are missing out on an interesting and important part of Chinese society. So, Veggies out there, please do yourself a favour and try to brave some Chinese restaurants. After all, with the rate things are going here, all the Western restaurants will just be KFC soon enough anyway, then what are you going to eat?
Safe journeys,
G
That Other Blog of Mine