Category Archives: East Asia
…And Back Again
Many readers of this blog will be familiar with my first trip around the world. It was the impetus for starting meanderingwoods to begin with. Well now I’m headed back around the world. I’m leaving in less than a week.
As great as the first trip was, it had one fatal flaw. The direction we took – east to west – sent us traveling with the time zones. When we passed the International Date Line we effectively jumped ahead one day. We continued around and never got that day back. Our bodies ticked off one day less than the calendar. That means we lost a day of our lives in transit. Well I intend to get that day back.
Phileas Fogg had the opposite problem in Around the World in 80 Days – he didn’t realize he’d gained a day. He left from London, heading east. He kept very detailed logs of his journey and it totaled 81 days. But when he arrived home he discovered, to his surprise, that the folks back there thought he’d only been gone 80 days! It’s a bit like time travel, if only on paper.
So that’s what I intend to do. Go from west to east around the world to get back my lost day. Starting in Atlanta I’m flying to Bangalore, India (by way of Amsterdam and Mumbai). Then to Seoul, South Korea with a layover in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Then back around to Atlanta through Detroit, and arrive shortly after I left Seoul. Here are a couple of graphical representations of that trip.
Download the original Power Point presentation.
Stay tuned for details….
Shotgun Guide to Getting Around in China
Friend of mine is going to China for the first time. I wrote him some tips and I figured I’d share.
Language
Take your guidebook to learn things like “Hello” “Goodbye” “Thank you” and other simple stuff. They’ll do a better job teaching that than I would. But you won’t learn some essential things there. Like:
-Bu Yao – don’t want; use this when getting harassed by street vendors. A good quick “Bu Yao. Bu Yao.” will send them scurrying. If not, be more forceful with the words.
-May Yo – none left, we’re all out; you’ll hear this in restaurants or other shops when they don’t have any of something you’re looking for.
-Fu Yuan – waiter/waitress; you have to call them over
-My Don – check, please
-Everybody knows basic 1-5, most know 1-10, please, thank you, etc in English.
Shopping
-Whenever you get a first price from a street vendor, drop off a zero and counter with that. That usually gets closer to the real price. Don’t worry about insulting them, instead it makes you seem like you don’t care. Most of the stuff isn’t worth 1/10 of what they’re asking anyway.
-If you can, watch what the locals pay. Get used to the currencies and watch what is handed over and what is given as change. That’s your price. If you don’t see the locals buying it, you probably don’t need it anyway. If you think you do then ask how much for the thing the local bought and see what price the vendor gives you. You now know the ratio from real price to the tourist price and can gauge your purchase
accordingly.
-Never be afraid to walk away. There’s a dozen more little shops around the corner. Odds are the guy will call you back and give you whatever your last price was.
-Know how to tell genuine from imitation. Nearly everything is fake there. But many times the legit vendors will have the real stuff too. For example, jade supposedly never shatters, but glass does very easily. Ask if you can test the “jade” by hitting it lightly. If the guy says no, walk away. But more often than not he’ll smile, say no
and pull out something different from under the counter which he will let you test. Now he knows you’re not a sucker and you’ll get a better price as well as the real stuff of whatever you ask for.
General
-Many people will treat you like a visitor in their home. Often people will go out of their way to help you or to at least make sure you get where you’re going. Smile and be friendly to everyone and they’ll likely reciprocate.
-You’re not very likely to get ripped off, though there are some scam artists out there. Each locality seems to have their own scams and there are some well known nationwide ones (like the art student scam). Look these up and be wary. Women are especially vulnerable to scammers and pickpockets.
-If you look different than they do, expect to be the star of many photographs. You’re the freak show come to town, get used to it. They’re just being friendly.
-Don’t drink the water unless you’ve sterilized it. And even then be wary.
-Watch out for medications. Many that look the same may behave much differently. Case in point I took a cold medication there that made me vomit all night.
Beer Market Shakeup
This is the first year that sales of Bud Light have declined. Is it a better year for good beer? Are other cervezas overtaking the 27-year old product? Well certainly one is – Snow beer in China. And it’s a Miller product. And it’s (also) a terrible beer.
Chinese Engineering – That Will Save Us
I’m sure you’ve heard of the building in Shanghai t
hat collapsed, as well as a bridge that partially collapsed. Today on the radio they said that the building developer’s license had been expired since 2004. This obviously does nothing to bolster the peoples’ confidence after last year’s Sichuan earthquakes where several schools collapsed (while other buildings still stood) and thousands of children were killed. This tragedy was linked to corruption in the construction and approval processes.
Also from the recent news, the Chinese government wanted special censorship software installed on all computers in their country. Called Green Dam-Youth Escort, the government eventually backed down after its citizens and PC manufacturers protested and after several vulnerabilities were discovered. But it turns out that the company hired by the government the software stole much of the code from a US software developer’s freeware version. Now that US developer is being attacked with custom written malicious code and phishing attacks, tenuously linked to Chinese sources.
When we were in China, Brian and I joked that “Chinese engineering will save us!” But that’s clearly not the case as this past week has shown us. No doubt that these are exceptions to the rule, but they are very public embarrassments for a government which tries to avoid them at all costs.
English Is The World’s Second Language
I think I’ve said before that English is the universal language. Well I think it is better said by Jay Walker here in this TED talk, which is both a little scary and a little inspiring.
http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf
His point is that the local language will always be the first one learned and the primary one used amongst people. But English is quickly becoming the world’s second language.
To use an example to drive the point home, China will next year become the world’s largest English speaking country. Every year 80 million Chinese students will take a test for which they have spent 12 hours a day for three years studying – and 25% of it will be scored on their mastery of English.
Wow!
Welcome, Chinese Readers
I was checking out my Google Analytics stats (it’s not that I care about tracking you, I just like the pretty graphs) and noticed that in the last month I’ve had 4 views from China. That is 4 more than I’ve had since June when I turned on the feature. I’m not sure if the Chinese have begun to allow blogspot through their Great Firewall or if these viewers have found a way around it.
Interestingly, from looking at the data it appears to be three different people. There are three browser languages, none of which are Chinese – all western European. All four views have come from Yahoo or Google on keyword searches, three about Shamian Island and one about the Kunming Cloudland hostel. Three of the hits came from a Mac and one from Windows.
So welcome, viewers from China! If you have any questions that the blog posts don’t answer, feel free to post a comment here or email me at the address in the upper right of the page.
PS. To the person who appears to be looking for a way to get to Shamian Island from the metro, it’s not that far as I recall. Wikipedia gives some more detail: “A metro station (Huangsha) is located within a short walk from the island.”
Overheard Text Messages
Me: I’m shopping at Aldi right now in an anti-Chinese protest.
Me: So if the boycott has less effect the Chinese will feel like the paper tiger they are.
Chinese Culturecide
I just saw this video over on Dan Miessler‘s blog. It’s worth a watch if you’ve got five minutes. Even if you don’t, put it on and listen to the audio. This report originally aired on Sky News, probably sometime around April 2006 judging from the posting date. It shows how the Chinese government is seizing private property (they are capitalists, not socialists, so people can own property) and giving it over to developers.
Yes, this happens in other countries, but you get the sense from the video and from visiting the country that it’s a fairly frequent occurrence. All over the country, you see signs of development, construction, buildings going up, etc. Many of the old areas of Beijing have been torn down and replaced with new construction. In many places, old looking buildings are being put up and advertised as authentically ancient.
I loved my trip through China and would also love to go back some day. But not to see an artificially managed reality of what the government wants the world to see. I want to see the China that is the people and their living culture. That is where the attraction is for me. And if I ever get to go back (Would they ban me for what I’ve written in the blog? If they know it’s out here and can connect it to me they would.), I’ll be seeking out the places where I can find it. Mostly it will be in the smaller cities (only 4-5 million or so) and villages.
I might not go there for shaolin training, but I’ll certainly try to walk the Earth a little bit there. Maybe I’ll find some of the real China lurking. I heard an interesting interview yesterday with a woman who had grown up there but said she had to come to the US to become more Chinese. She’d been indoctrinated with Mao’s rhetoric and even played his wife in propagandist movies. I know that the cultural revolution is over, but the culturecide (that’s probably not a real word) continues. Instead of being in the name of communism or Mao, it’s in the name of capitalism and money.
And I’ve changed my mind about this photo. I now think it is more accurate, as Brian described it, as a small cat seeing his reflection as a tiger. China is not the gracefully powerful nation it imagines itself to be, but it is dangerous in its aspirations. That tiger still has claws.
33 Years of Pollution
The National Geographic Picture of the Day is a great website for photos. It showcases their collection was taken on the Li river in China, near Guilin, in 1974. I took similar photos from there, 33 years afterward. In the National Geographic shot from 1974, the area looks clean and beautiful. My picture looks bleak and ghostly. This blanket of smog covers the entire country, it seems. It is thicker in places than it is here, but is only very rarely clearer.
The slight bit of greying of the distant mountains in the older shot is probably the grandfather of the pollution that I encountered in my shot. You can see how gorgeous the Chinese countryside was at one time and how it has been bathed in the consequences of the country’s rampantly irresponsible industrialization practices. If this is what they are willing to do to themselves, what do you think they export?
In recent weeks, some of China’s biggest problems have been given a lot of publicity. Corruption, quality control problems, toxic chemicals, rancid ingredients…these things are all commonplace in China. Part of it is a Chinese problem, but much of it stems from the global companies who insist on buying and selling things for the cheapest price possible. They turn a blind eye to the consequences of outsourcing production to China in favor of profits.
For a couple of years now, people have been talking about how China is going to own the world. I believed it might happen as well, until I actually saw the world react to the things that have been apparent for years. China is developing their infrastructure at an insane rate, thanks to cutting corners on safety and human rights. I think if anything will check this growth and put China in its place, it will be the public focus in the Western world on these issues. China considers these issues to be internal and believes that the world should not focus on them. However, when globalization causes these problems to affect the rest of the world, we should expose them.
To avoid going off on a rant that would consume several hours, but if you’re interested in finding out more about this kind of thing, do some Googling. Check out China’s newfound love for African nations who share their “anything for a Yuan, people be damned” attitude. See if you can find some reports about poor people being used as organ farms for the rich. Check out any information about what happened in Tibet during the cultural revolution and how that attitude has been turned from the culture to the people and the land — namely breeding out ethnic Tibetans and raping the resources.
update: Check out the Consumerist’s coverage of the Senate commerce committee hearings about the quality controls on Chinese imports.
meanderingwoods 