The Ice Flow

By Red Sox Steve
VagabondGuru.com

The Chinese system of government has three main branches: the Communist Party of China (CPC), the State Council (also known as the “Central People’s Government”), and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). The Constitution of the People’s Republic of China guarantees the legal power of the CPC, which exercises control over the state, military and media. Functionally, the government has three arms which carry out CPC-led policy: the National People’s Congress (NPC), the State Council, and the President.

The NPC meets once a year, usually in March, and, the most recent NPC elections of members (called “deputies”) took place in March 2008, at its first meeting of the new session, officially titled the “1st Plenum of the 11th National People’s Conference”. Terms of office for each delegate are 5 years, with the next likely change of office coming in March 2013. Deputies are elected to the National Congress by each of the 23 provinces, 5 autonomous regions, 4 municipalities, 2 SARs (“Special Administrative Regions” - Hong Kong and Macau), and even the armed forces, over a three month period. The amount of delegates sent by each is related to the number of electors in each delegate’s constituency.

When the National Congress is not in session, legislative work is carried out by the National People’s Congress Standing Committee (NPCSC), which meets every couple of months. The NPCSC is made up of 150 members, elected by the NPC. The NPCSC decides how many NPC deputies are allotted to the NPC from each of the 35 electoral bodies just below the NPC (provinces, regions, etc.), but in any case, the total number of deputies does not exceed 3,000. Furthermore, a minimum of 15 deputies come from provinces and autonomous regions with small populations and ethnic minorities have at least one deputy of their own in the NPC. The Chairman of the NPC is elected by the NPCSC.

The State Council is the chief administrator of the People’s Republic of China. It is chaired by the Premier, and contains the heads of each governmental department and agency, falling under a few different categories - Ministries, Commissions, Organizations, Offices, and Institutions. A comprehensive list of all governmental bodies under the supervision of the State Council can be found here. The State Council also oversees the provincial governments, and maintains a relationship with top Communist Party leadership, as most State Council members are high-ranking Communist Party officials.

The State Council also has a Standing Committee, made up of the premier, four vice-premiers, five state councilors, and the secretary-general (not the same as the General Secretary of the Communist Party). The State Council meets once a month and its standing committee meets twice a week. The vice-premiers and state councilors are nominated by the premier, and appointed by the president with National People's Congress' (NPC) approval. The premier is nominated and appointed by the president with NPC approval. Incumbents may serve two successive five-year terms.

Most, but not all, positions of power within all branches of the Chinese government belong to members of the CPC. The CPC was founded in Shanghai in 1921, and, after fending off the invading Japanese and then defeating the Kuomintang (KMT) in a civil war, took power in 1949. In late September, 1949, the CPC along with a few other groups, held what was effectively, their first Constitutional Convention. On October 1, 1949, they proclaimed China a republic, and in 1954, had instituted the initial version of the “Constitution of the People’s Republic of China”, which guaranteed the legal power of the CPC.

The CPC is the largest political party in the world, with around 80 million members. The most powerful body within the CPC is the National Congress of the Communist Party of China, which meets at least once every five years (a different body from the National People’s Congress). The next meeting should take place in late 2012 (as the last was October 19, 2007). The congress approves changes to the constitution, and elects (only a formality as positions are determined beforehand) both the Central Committee and the Politburo (officially called the “Central Politburo of the Communist Party of China” or “The Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee”); subsequently the Politburo Standing Committee is elected. Currently, the Politburo Standing Committee has 9 members.

The Politburo meets once a month, and consists of just over 20 members. It wields a lot of power because many of its members hold power within the State Committee, and others are high ranking provincial officials. The Politburo Standing Committee meets once a week. This committee, the most powerful, most concentrated body of power in the CPC, has generally consisted of between 5 and 9 members, and its power has varied throughout the history of the republic; it was relatively weakened during the Cultural Revolution; later, many members were ousted by Deng Xiaopeng after their protests to the government’s response to the Tiananmen Square riots in 1989.

The PLA is the third branch of the Chinese government. It unifies all air, land, and sea military operations as well as a strategic missile program. It was established on August 1, 1927 (now called “PLA day”). The PLA has 3 million members, and the army has just over 2 million itself, making it the largest standing army in the world. Technically, the PLA falls under the CPC’s Central Military Commission, although it reports to two Central Military Commissions - one run by the state and another run by the CPC, with both usually having common leadership.

The Chinese electoral system holds both direct and indirect elections - at the village level, citizens vote directly for their representatives (to participate in “village councils”), and then, each successive level of elected official elects the next highest level. Therefore, most outcomes are predetermined, making such indirect elections a formality. At each level, and most especially at the provincial and national level, the CPC exercises a great deal of control over the outcome, allowing only party members, members of smaller parties, or non-party sympathizers to hold power. The divisions of power at the lower levels are complicated, and are typically based on how each area is divided - for example, if an urban area is divided into districts, then the officials who lead each district vote for the city’s mayor. If there is no such division, then it could be a direct election.

When I started researching this piece (mostly via wikipedia, the most accessible source of data on the internet, albeit confusing at times), I knew very little about the fundamental makeup of the Chinese government. I hope that, after reading this, you have learned as much as I have. As always, I am open to any corrections or modifications which can be justified and are brought to my attention.

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By Red Sox Steve
VagabondGuru.com

Three Gorges Dam

Spending three days heading down the Yangtze River was serene and surreal: first, the Yangtze is the world's third longest river and connects inland cities like Chongqing and Wuhan to Shanghai by water; second, the wonder of the Three Gorges - some of Mother Nature's most remarkable work has created massive and deep openings in the terrain, and a powerful turquoise waterway abuts steep, tall rock faces and mountains that seem to go as high as the sky; and, last but not least, our destination was one of China's most significant achievements to date - the Three Gorges Dam.

We disembarked from the cruise at Yichang (population 4m), and boarded busses for the short trip to the dam. Approaching the dam was like approaching an amusement park. There was a large pavilion we all had to enter where we snaked around the guideropes, making our way from the ticket window through security and onto other busses that would take us around this massive complex. Security was tight, and visitors were only allowed off the bus in certain areas.

As the bus started away towards our first destination, what I saw through the window was in sharp contrast to the natural beauty that surrounded me for the previous half week. Gray, almost dingy looking structures were in my proximity, while massive powerlines headed off into the distance. The project is an example of function over form, and NOT the other way around. The first part of the complex we passed was the series of locks which handle all the water traffic.

The locks are a series of four discrete chambers which are drained and flooded to either lower or raise a ship as it passes through the dam. Passing through each lock takes around an hour, and engineers are now in the process of constructing a ship elevator. This structure, which is much more complex, is a single chamber which is filled with water, then raised and lowered. As you could probably guess, the chamber is extremely heavy, but will also allow ships to pass through the dam more quickly - 30-40 minutes, as opposed to nearly 4 hours.

We passed the locks and headed for the best place to view the entire site, Tanzi Ridge. Tanzi Ridge is about 800 feet above sealevel, located on the strip of land between the dam and the locks, and from here you can see off in every direction. There are various artifacts and monuments here related to the dam's history, and a small building called "Three Gorges Project Model Room" that houses a model of the dam.

We spent an hour here before heading down to another viewing area, where we could see the huge dam. Above the waterline, a massive concrete wall has created a reservoir upriver. Thousands of square kilometers of land have been flooded - in some areas the water level has risen 20 feet - creating what some refer to as a lake, between Yichang and Chongqing. Flooding the river between Yichang and Chongqing allows larger ships to travel all the way to Chongqing, through the deeper water. This will increase upriver waterborne traffic and transform the significance of Chongqing as a shipping hub. The other function this part of the dam serves is to control the flow of water and silt downriver, all the way to Shanghai. Silt buildup is a byproduct of halting the flow of such a massive body of water - it changes the ecological makeup of the river and can even cause ships to unwittingly run aground. Dam operators open the dam very carefully from time to time, to allow water and silt to flow downriver.

Energy generation takes place below the waterline, according to one law: gravity. Each of the 26 turbines (also called generators) sit at the end of long descending tunnels. Water flows down each tunnel, spins the turbines, and electricity is created. The turbines weren't cheap: the Chinese paid $150 million for each one. The science behind hydroelectric power generation is relatively uncomplicated - falling water increases its pressure, turning the generator's rotor very quickly; electromagnets are attached to the rotor, housed in coils of copper wire, called "stators". Electrons flow from the stator coils as the rotor spins the magnets. This electricity can then be stepped up in voltage and sent over transmission lines.

Throughout the 20th century, various Chinese leaders dating back to Sun Yat-sen proposed the idea of a dam on the Yangtze. Because of political and social instability, and economic crises, plans couldn't be married to action until the late 1980s. During a 1992 meeting of the National People's Congress, overwhelming approval was given for construction, and before the end of 1994 construction on the dam had started.

This project has been a massive, risky, dangerous and long undertaking - over 1 million upriver residents had to be relocated due to rising water levels. In some cases, families who had lived along the shores of the Yangtze for centuries were uprooted for the first time. In other instances, new cities were constructed either at a higher elevation or directly across the river. In at least one case, a high wall was constructed to protect a city from rising floodwaters.

Various sources estimate the number of workers involved in construction to be anywhere from 20,000 to 250,000, and it has taken them about 15 years to complete the dam (it is fully functional, but the Chinese have yet to complete the ship elevator). The total cost of the project is somewhere around $25 billion - hundreds of thousands of cubic meters of cement were used, hundreds of thousands of tons of steel as well, and the cubic yards of earth that had to be moved was in the hundreds of millions. The cranes used on the project were the tallest in the world, the number of turbines at the dam is the largest of any dam in the world, and the megawatts of electricity generated is the largest as well. And yes, the Three Gorges Dam can be seen from outerspace.

The tour was very comprehensive - it started on one bank of the river, by the locks, and ended on the other side, where we saw a museum and some of the construction equipment used during the project. Looking ahead, the Chinese have to continuously manage the river's ecology and traffic; in addition, because a large reservoir has been created, there is an increased risk of seismic activity in the area. The resettlement wasn't without its difficulties; people's lives were disrupted, and settlements that existed for centuries, in addition to innumerable ancient artifacts, have been lost forever in the flooding. On the other hand, this is the largest "green" project in the world - simply by harnessing the power of one of the world's longest rivers, the Chinese are able to reduce their dependence on fossil fuels to create energy.

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By Red Sox Steve
VagabondGuru.com

Yantze River

I booked my river cruise about a week prior to its departure to ensure I would get my desired accommodation and schedule. We left Chongqing from a port on the Jialing River in Yuzhong, Chongqing’s central business district.

Although the travel agent, the accompanying brochure, and even the Lonely Planet called it a river “cruise”, the accommodations and hospitality were spartan. Even Kathie Lee's old jingle couldn't sell this trip! Nevertheless, I had a nice roommate and settled in comfortably prior to departure. Judging by the other cruise ships at the dock that evening, this excursion was a popular one - through the Three Gorges, and ending at their eponymous dam, with a handful of sightseeing stops in between.

The ship pulled away from the dock after sundown, and we headed east, downriver. I slept soundly until the middle of the night, when a loud boom and accompanying crunching sound woke me up - I thought it was no big deal, but when I woke up in the morning, I got the alarming news: another boat attempted a turn and crashed into us. Not exactly what I wanted to hear. The damage our ship sustained wasn’t enough to sink our boat, but it did force us to remain in port - 12 hours of travel time was instead spent fixing a needless accident. This was no pleasure cruise, for sure.

Eventually, everyone moved onto a new ship and we were on our way. I spent as much time as I could taking in the view from the top deck as we went downriver. For miles we saw various sized riverine settlements, nestled into a rolling, mountainous landscape. Some had just a few small houses and buildings, and others were larger cities with ports, able to handle different volumes of river traffic. From either side of the ship, I could see high hills and small mountains - for millions of years, the Yangtze, the world’s third longest river (the Nile and the Amazon are 1 and 2, respectively) had carved this wending route from the Himalayas out to the Pacific through some of the most remote parts of China.

I was one of the few westerners on the boat. It took getting to know Sam and Ollie, two Brits travelling together, and Virginia, a retired schoolteacher from Brooklyn, to figure out when mealtime was, and what other activities were available to us onboard. I used my best Chinese to get to know about a dozen fellow tourists - off-duty policemen, families on vacation, and even a university professor. Like me, they were here to relax and take in the sites. I spoke to a number of the tour guides onboard - the trip was part of a well-trodden path for them; what I thought would be a discussion about years spent traveling the river (interesting to me, monotony for them) turned into Chinese and English lessons, ensuring mutual amusement.

There were a limited number of things to do onboard - I spent most of my time on the top deck, watching the landscape scroll like a movie reel playing out from side to side. Many of the Chinese played mahjong, a popular gambling game, others smoked (too much, I thought, when I had to breathe it in), while others just sat on the top deck, drinking Tsingtao beer and munching on pumpkin seeds ("gua zi"), carefully breaking the shell away - a tedious undertaking which helped pass the time.

When we passed through the first gorge (Qutang Gorge), before reaching the Daning River (check out this link for an easy-to-read map), it was as if we could reach out and touch this massive rock wall, tens of stories high. As I looked downriver, two mountains seemed to converge with the bending Yangtze disappearing into the distance. The highest peaks extended far into the sky, and were either bare rock faces or green mountain sides. The pristine turquoise river butting up against a muddy brown rock face formed a stark natural color contrast.

We had a few scheduled stops, which, like cruises I've been on back in the US, were geared towards tourism, and set up mostly to separate visitors from their renminbi. Things on the boat weren't so interesting, so disembarking even temporarily was a welcome change. The most notable stop we made was to see the "Mini" Three Gorges, also known as the "Lesser" Three Gorges.

We hopped onto a different boat when we reached the juncture where the Yangtze and Daning met, and took a three hour excursion up a smaller river, passing through gorges known as "Dragon Gate", "Misty", and "Emerald". The Daning was a bit narrower, so at times it seemed that the very tall rock faces blocked out most of the sky. It was amazing to see the work mother nature had put in at the end of the last Ice Age. Nearly flat, perpendicular slabs of rock stood like towering sentries over a pristine yet powerful body of water. And to think, we still had two larger gorges on the Yangtze to pass, the Wu and Xiling, which extended even farther along the riverbanks than Qutang Gorge.

When we passed through the Wu and Xiling Gorges farther down river, the experience was similar - massive mountainsides and cliffs carved out by the river. That we would pass through the gorges was no surprise; seeing their height from close up was unforgettable. Our ship was easily dwarfed by the land masses on either side. Mother Nature had done some of her most outstanding work forcing this river through the terrain, from the highest peaks of the Himalayas thousands of miles east to the Pacific, making its way past what are now some of China's most populated cities.

Up until I boarded the ship back in Chongqing, I had spent my time either in heavily populated urban areas or on crowded high-speed trains. The boat trip, while a little perilous, got me close to some remote parts of inland China. Just days ago, I had only heard about the Yangtze and the Three Gorges. By the time we disembarked in Yichang, I was grateful to have taken in a good portion of China's natural beauty, before heading to one of mankind's most significant construction projects to date: the Three Gorges Dam.

(to be continued...)

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By Red Sox Steve
VagabondGuru.com

Guangzhou

The ancient history of people now referred to as the Cantonese is part of the histories of Guangdong and Guangxi provinces and northern Vietnam. All three areas were unified under the Qin dynasty (221 - 206 BCE) and considered part of the Nanyue kingdom. The kingdom was passed to the Han dynasty (206 BCE - 220 CE), but only after the Han dynasty collapsed did large numbers of Han Chinese migrate to southern China.

In subsequent centuries, political turmoil in the north and Mongol invasion pushed more and more Han Chinese into Guangdong. In addition, Guangdong had established relationships with merchants and traders from as far away as Rome and the Middle East. In the early 1500s, the Portuguese landed in what is now known as Macau, and by the 1800s, the British established themselves in Hong Kong. From the middle of the 18th century until the middle of the 19th century, Guangzhou was the only mainland Chinese port through which the Chinese government allowed foreign trade (mostly in silks and spices), attracting the Dutch and French in addition to the British and the Portuguese. Because the Portuguese were the first foreigners to arrive via the port of Guangzhou, historians think that they are responsible for giving Guangzhou its "romanized" name, Canton, and referring to its population as Cantonese.

By the late 1830s, the British had been so effective at smuggling opium into China via Guangzhou, to balance out the silk and spice trade, that major currency outflows disturbed the local economy. The Chinese began to crack down much harder on opium smuggling, and two conflicts took place over the next few decades known as the First and Second Opium Wars.

As a result of both conflicts, the Chinese were forced to sign treaties opening up more ports to foreign trading and ceding territory and land rights to foreign powers. The First Opium War ended in 1842 with the Treaty of Nanjing, opening four ports and giving Hong Kong to the British. In 1844, the Chinese signed the Treaty of Wanghia (named after a village in Macau) with the United States, giving the US similar access and power in China as the British. The Second Opium War was ended in 1860 with the signing of numerous agreements which came to be known as the Treaty of Tientsin, that involved China agreeing to terms with France, Russia, Britain and the United States. The Treaty of Tientsin opened yet additional Chinese ports to these parties, ceded more territory to Britain (Kowloon Peninsula) and Russia (north of the Amur River and east of the Ussuri River, which still border the nations today), and gave them all the ability to station their representatives in Beijing, a city previously closed to foreigners. The Chinese could not avoid the far-reaching influence of foreign powers.

Starting around the middle of the 19th century, massive waves of immigrants from Guangdong began to arrive in places like Canada and the United States. They established "Chinatowns" in port cities that dotted the eastern and western coasts of North America, in addition to other major cities. Many of these Chinatowns, including the one found in Manhattan, were distinctly Cantonese.

For almost half a millennia, seafaring western powers who sought to tether the Far East to their imperial desires made their earliest connections to China via Guangzhou. In addition, many of the Chinese who have immigrated to nations like the US, Canada, and the UK can be considered to have Cantonese ancestry.

Guangzhou was the final mainland city on my trip. I arrived there via overnight train from Shanghai, and (by now, I had a pretty good idea of what to expect in terms of crowds and transportation) made my way through the hordes who had come for the Asian Games, and onto the subway. Ultra-clean, ultra-modern, covering the city like a net... if you've read my other articles, the high-quality of public transportation is nothing that will surprise you. I made my way to my hotel, finding the tropical heat calmed me down as I walked. I only planned on spending 48 hours here before heading to Macau, and wanted to keep moving, but I needed to settle in first. Unfortunately, my fatigue and hunger led me to do something I had done my best to resist on this trip - In Chinese, I could say, "wo qu le mai-dan-le"... In English that means "I went to McDonald's!"

Soon after I got cleaned up, I headed out. I boarded the subway and headed towards the center of the city. My first stop was the Museum of the Mausoleum of the Nanyue King. In a story very similar to that of the Terracotta Warriors, about 30 years ago, workers had started a construction project, digging up an ancient tomb in the process. Archaeologists studied the findings and realized that the tomb belonged to the Nanyue king Zhao Mo, who died over 2,000 years ago. Ancient relics, along with numerous courtiers of the king (thought to be human sacrifices) were also discovered. The museum was full of Han Dynasty artifacts, like weapons, clothing, cookware and artistic drawings and carvings. Maps depicting the ancient trading routes (by land and sea) that I discussed above covered the walls. The decaying artifacts hidden behind secure glass and maps with ancient city names continued to drive home an overarching theme: Chinese civilization is thousands of years old and very complex; even in ancient times its people and its cities were connected to far off lands.

I could feel fatigue setting in, and I knew I would have a pretty busy day the next day. I hopped on the subway, and headed back to my hotel. After a meal it was easy to fall asleep, even though I was thinking of the rest of my time in Guangzhou.

I wanted to make sure I ventured beyond the well-developed urban environment and took in sites on the outskirts of the city. The Whampoa Military Academy, with a museum open to tourists, was the ideal destination on the far eastern outskirts of the city, down one of China's major waterways, the Pearl River.

In 1924, after requests for support were spurned by various foreign powers, Sun Yat-sen, a major 20th century Chinese figure, gained Soviet assistance for the development of a military base in his native Guangdong Province. Up to that time, China was a fragmented nation ruled by warlords; the warlords had stronger fighting forces than the government, necessitating some action by Sun's ruling party, the Kuomintang.

The history of the institution itself is short-lived, having closed only 2 years after it opened. However, it provides a window into early 20th century Chinese history, and took outside the city. The journey (with excellent guidance from my Lonely Planet) had me take a subway to a bus to a ferry, bringing me far from the city center. Just like most of the other urban areas I'd visited, once I got beyond the huge buildings and traffic, it was either industrial areas or farmland for miles around. The academy and its accompanying museum illustrated the major figures in modern Chinese military history, and conflicts the Chinese were involved in. At this point, I was eager to return to the city, spend the rest of the afternoon wandering around and thinking of Guangzhou's role in the next century as opposed to the previous one.

I had the afternoon free, and nothing in the Lonely Planet had jumped out at me. So, I hoofed it - I walked along the promenade that runs along both sides of the Pearl River. Like so many other cities in China, everything around was new, clean and modern. I thought deeply about my trip, and about this city. Seeing sites recommended by the Lonely Planet was a useful guide, but I wanted a big picture view of Guangzhou. The cityscape here was similar to Shanghai, the major port city in the region starting centuries ago had blossomed into one of the most modern cities in the world, harnessing China's most productive province to the global economy.

My last destination as I coordinated my departure from the mainland (to Macau) was the Peasant Movement Institute. The movement was a coordination between the Kuomintang and the Communists during the 1920s. The institute was led by Sun Yat-sen and later Mao Zedong, educating students in methods that would undermine feudalist and imperialist forces, leading the way to the Chinese Revolution. The Peasant Movement Institute, along with the Whampoa Military Academy, illustrate that Guangzhou's role in 20th century Chinese history predates the internal conflict between the Kuomintang and the Communists.

Guangzhou has a tropical climate most of the year, and when I arrived around mid-November, the backdrop almost everywhere I went was the presence of the Asian Games, a mini-Olympics which drew in tourists and athletes from around the region - nations such as Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, India, Nepal, Japan, Korea and many others swarmed to the city to participate in events like rowing, judo, archery, cricket and dancing. The city was teeming with activity, but, just like Beijing 2 years prior, Guangzhou was made impeccably organized, safe and clean.

The fact that Guangzhou would be the last mainland city on my trip meant I could make informed comparisons about it in relation to each of the regions and cities I'd visited. I was impressed. I was impressed because I could see that Guangzhou fits in well with my conception of modern China. It is a large coastal city with a history that weaves its way from ancient times to modern ones. The massive buildings and impressive infrastructure, as well as the presence of the Asian games, mean that the central government wants Guangzhou to retain its position as one of the nation's most important commercial and cultural centers. I was also impressed to learn that Guangdong Province is China's wealthiest and most populous, exporting through Guangzhou, one of two major port cities in the province (the other is Shenzhen). Because I set out to learn about the culture and economy of the mainland, Guangzhou was an ideal bookend for this part of my trip.

Sources:

1) Shi, Mingzheng. "Guangzhou." World Book Online Reference Center. World Book, 2011. Web. 29 Mar. 2011
2) Edmonds, Richard Louis, and Richard J. Smith. "China." World Book Online Reference Center. World Book, 2011. Web. 29 Mar. 2011
3) Wikipedia

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By Red Sox Steve
VagabondGuru.com

Chongqing

After a day and a half, I had seen quite a few of the sites in Chongqing, which were all in Yuzhong. As I stared at a city map, though, I knew I had only seen a small part of this massive metropolis. With an eye toward my trip to the dam, I knew I didn't have to leave Yuzhong to catch the boat. I wanted to see as much of this area as possible, so I hopped in a cable car that took me over the Yangtze River.

As the car started away, I had to do a double take. On both sides of the river, running up and down its shores, I saw a city more massive than I could have conceived (of course, I hadn't yet visited Shanghai...). Before I boarded, I thought I understood the scale and makeup of Chongqing - I compared Yuzhong to Manhattan; both have rivers running along either side which eventually converge. Taking my logic a step further, the outlying areas would be reminiscent of Jersey City, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx, flatter with more space, fading away in the distance. I was dead wrong. Instead, I saw massive buildings rising up in all directions, a handful of bridges stretching from bank to bank of the bending rivers, and water-borne traffic off into the horizon. Highways ran in every direction through available gaps in skyscraper construction and a network of tunnels weaved through the mountainous urban terrain.

Chongqing is a frenetically busy place and, like many of the other cities I had visited, there were plans for expansion - Chongqing already has two train stations, but now there were plans to extend the subway and build additional universities and technical centers. Sometimes, when visiting a large city in the western world, one can compare the population to a small country. In this case, the massive municipality of Chongqing, with over 30 million people, is more like a medium-sized one.

Before leaving the city, there was one last thing I had to do. Up to this point, I had eaten excellent Chinese food in city after city. I learned what Chinese breakfast was all about in Changchun, regrettably missed the Peking Duck in Beijing (rookie mistake!), but I sampled some great food in Xi'an and Haerbin as well. The Lonely Planet couldn't stress this one dish enough - a fiery blend of meats and vegetables with a side of rice in case things get out of control. In Chinese it's written: 火鍋, which is pronounced ("huǒ guō"). The literal translation is "fire pot".

I'll never forget the first time I went into a hotpot restaurant - I was starving and wanted to give it a chance. I couldn't read any chinese, and I at least thought I knew how to pronounce a few simple words like chicken, beef, pork, vegetables and beer. The waitress handed me the menu, comprised entirely of Chinese characters; I couldn't read it, so I did my best to build an order on the few words I knew.

Weeks before, my teacher Ren, and her cousins from Changchun, taught me how to ask for spice. "la" is the word for spice. If you want something very spicy, you could simply say, "hen la"; a little spicy, "yi dian die la"; without spice, "bu la"; spice on the side in a small bowl, "yi dian die wan la". I wanted the oil filled wok to have a little fire to it and add spice as I wished, so I asked for "yi dian die la" and "yi dian die wan la". I tried to tell the waitress (pretty sure I was flubbing it) that no matter what she put in front of me, I would eat it. The next thing I knew, I had a 40 oz. bottle of Tsingtao an arm's length away, and a wok full of spicy red oil with mysterious contents was placed on the cooking range in the center of my table.

Then, she brought over plates of raw meat and raw vegetables, and I carefully dropped them in the hot oil. The meat was thinly sliced and the vegetables were chopped, so I knew they would cook quickly. I watched excitedly as the entire pot bubbled and the food soaked up the oil and spices. I dipped my chopsticks into the oil, and pulled up an oily, hot, reddened mass of meat and vegetables. I could smell the spices and saw some peppercorns stuck to my food, so I ate slowly, keeping one hand by my beer.

I started to get the hang of it, and my eating became more bold. The portions I grabbed became bigger, and with the increased intake of spice, I took more gulps of beer. I knew the combination wasn't the healthiest, mostly because I was coughing and I could feel my face turning red. The taste was excellent, but the after-effects were tough on my stomach. I couldn't get enough though - the fiery spice, the Chinese beer, and the exotic sensation of eating a regional dish over 1,000 years old, made this an experience I would want to have again and again.

Fortunately, the only climactic event was that I enjoyed everything I ate. From here, though, the best thing to do was hop on the subway and head back to my hostel. Sleeping off a meal like this close to a bathroom was the most advisable idea. Over the next 4 days, I would eat hotpot twice more - good for the taste buds, but rough on pretty much everything else.

One more thing I want to tell you about took place before I left.

I made my way to another hotpot restaurant (they are everywhere), but this time I had help ordering. The restaurant was less than half full, and, because westerners are so rare in Chongqing, I could feel the curious stares on me as I entered. I was in the middle of ordering (again, not having much luck), when - lo and behold! - another foreigner came over to my table and asked me if he could help translate my order to the waitress. I was grateful to have someone who could do a better job of ordering than I could, and invited Sebastien (a German) and his Chinese girlfriend, Sally, to sit down with me.

I appreciated the company, and Sebastien's helpful gesture, and from there we took the conversation straight to a global level. They both live and work in Chongqing. Sebastien works at one of the many Marriott Hotels dotted around the country, and has been here for a few years now. Sally, who speaks perfect english with a Chinese accent, works for Proctor and Gamble. Sebastien works in a "front of the house" capacity, dealing directly with incoming guests. By this time, I had seen the massive globally branded hotels (many, if not all, are somewhere in Manhattan), and had been around the hustle and bustle of the city enough to ask him a single question: "where do most of the guests come from?" His answer: China, Europe, India, South America, North America, Japan, Singapore, London, New York, Buenos Aires, Russia, and the Middle East. Basically, everywhere! He also told me that although Marriott has about 60 hotels dotted around China, there are plans to build about 60 more.

The conversation went on - I laughed when he told me his American boss informed him he had to brush up on his English if he wanted a promotion; as if his native German, good English and fairly good Chinese weren't enough already. Now, looking back, maybe they weren't.

I turned to Sally, who, although she was about 25, was aware of the "financial crisis in America", as she called it. Comparing that to what westerners call it ("the global financial crisis") tells you all you need to know about the economy in China. Sally, along with every student in China, has taken mandatory English classes in school. A small portion of the more than 100 million students in China have even taken extra English classes through private companies. Why? When she told me, the answer couldn't have been more simple: "you can get a better job if you speak English and Chinese."

She came off as articulate, confident, and aggressive and it surprised me how much she knew about America. She discussed the US Presidential Campaign of 2008, and we talked about the financial crisis and its impact on the United States and China. She told me a little about her job - part of her duties are to communicate with P&G headquarters back in Cincinnati about once a month because she oversees the distribution of P&G goods to local convenience store chains. The P&G business model is a metaphor for the economic relationship between America and China: P&G in America finances Chinese manufacturing of P&G goods for distribution to the growing Chinese consumer market, as well as to America; you can come to your own conclusion about the relative number of jobs created in Chongqing vs. Cincinnati.

I got lucky - not only was I able to have tasty hotpot again, I got to speak to a pair of people who, in a small way, represent the shifting sands of the global economy. Sebastien, a young foreigner, has begun his career in China, having almost no work experience in his home country. The company he works for has plans for massive expansion in the local market, and no shortage of opportunity for him in particular. He can't find this in Europe. Sally represents the most modern generation China has ever produced - an unmarried bi-lingual, college-educated woman who works for a major multi-national corporation in one of China's largest cities. When you hear folks talking about the "global competition for talent", Sebastian and Sally are some of the participants in the game.

I don't travel to the other side of the earth to see the proverbial "largest ball of twine." I don't spend twelve hours in an airplane seat or 36 hours sharing a train compartment with 5 other people to be able to say tell my friends I was in this place or that one, and I don't need to go to every country around the globe. I went to China to learn as much as possible about what's going on there, and how China and the Chinese people fit into the global landscape.

It's clear that China will soon overtake the United States as the world's largest economy, challenging every economic assumption we have ever made in the west, and overturning those that are wrong. The Chinese are deliberate and focused on building a better life for all who live within their borders, and, like every other young, powerful nation that has ever existed, they are committed to doing it their own way. Looking back, sitting in my living room here in New York, I couldn't believe the "success" of my trip to Chongqing, mainly because I learned so much.

Posted by Red Sox Steve at 10:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

By Mary Hannington

Here at VagabondGuru.com, we are keeping a close eye on Guru. He's been "gone" before, but this appears to be something altogether different. We know dear reader how much you crave his presence, but we think it's safer for EVERYONE that he remain, for the time being, caged.

Posted by M. Hannington at 11:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted by TIF Staff at 02:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

Posted by TIF Staff at 02:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

By M. LeBlanc

One thing that I, and many other people who are riveted by what's going on in Iran, have been truly heartened by is the extent to which global information sharing means that authoritarian governments and dictatorships can't exercise nearly as much power as they once did. Because of the existence of a [mostly] free press in places like Britain and the United States, and mobile phone technology and the internet, activists and protesters in Iran have been able to get their information out of the country where not only the rest of the world can see it, but other people in Iran can as well. The regime has shut down Facebook, Gmail, Yahoo, access to news sites, and more, but they can't shut down everything. People are still sending pictures and video to the BBC, and Twitter, a home-grown American service, has been indispensable for the resistance.

Here's some good reporting on the censorship and supression of information that has taken place, not just of individuals trying to communicate, but of newspapers, foreign journalists, and even the state's own sources ["Even governmental news sources have been targeted in the crackdown. Four interior ministry officials have been arrested for given results that were different from those announced by Ahmadinejad’s allies."]

The regime is trying to combat the flow of information from the protestors with its own flow of information. Unfortunately, they're making some of it up. Here's just one example, an explanation of how the state-run newspaper photoshopped images of a pro-Ahmadinejad rally to make it appear larger.

But the story's not over. I can't claim to know when or how this will die down, but a lot of people seem to think that Ahmadinejad will be president. The question is--how will the regime deal with dissent? So far, it's not looking good. Young people who have tried to access or send information to outside sources have been threatened:

"Anonymous" from Norway emailed to say a friend in Iran had rung BBC Persian, without getting through.

"Now she has received a message on her answering machine from Sepah [Revolutionary Guards] saying they know she has been involved in criminal activity - and now she has to report to the police."

Fahimeh emailed BBC Persian TV from Shiraz, dismissing such warnings as random scare tactics.



The words she described finding on her answerphone: "We know you went to the rally on Monday, if you repeat that again, we will deal with you" match those described in an email by Parinaz.

Here's some reporting from an Australian journalist who's defying the government ban on foreign media. He says "You've got to realise that what's happening at the moment is that the actual authorities are losing control of what's happening on the streets and that's very dangerous and damaging to them." He also has some interesting information about the security forces becoming more sympathetic to Mousavi supporters--read the whole thing, as they say.

The point of all this is that it matters when people have a right to speak, a right to dissent, a right to access information. People have misinterpreted my and other liberals' anger about what is happening as support for Mousavi. I actually don't know much about him or his platform. No one has any illusions that he would suddenly change the course of Iranian foreign policy to make everything all better. The problem is that it may have been the will of the Iranian people that he be elected president. And if that will was defied, if the election results were fabricated, rigged, inflated, or otherwise doctored, that is a miscarriage of justice. Perhaps Ahmadinejad did win. But it's rather likely that if he did win, he won by a much smaller margin, or won without obtaining a majority of the votes, which would have forced a runoff.

The regime didn't want a runoff. They didn't want a win by Ahmadinejad with 52%. Because with a small margin, they'd have deal with accusations of irregularites. Unfortunately, it seems that they seriously miscalculated the reaction they'd get by rigging the entire thing.

Some Links:

Robert Dreyfuss has some great insight about the kinds of people who are against Ahmadinejad:

The anti-Ahmadinejad coalition is deep and broad. It includes conservative, Old Guard founders of the Islamic Republic, who view Ahmadinejad with disdain and who resent the coming to power of his coterie of Revolutionary Guard commanders; the large and growing majority of Iranian clerics and senior ayatollahs, many of whom have long viewed the Leader, Ayatatollah Ali Khamenei, as an upstart and usurper since he was elevated to his position 20 years ago; nearly the entirety of Iran's business class, especially those involved in high-tech, aviation, oil and gas, and heavy industry, who blame Ahmadinejad for his catastrophic mismanagement of the economy and for the crippling economic sanctions; the entire class of Iranian reformists, from more liberal-minded clerics like former President Khatami to more centrist ex-officials such as former Prime Minister Mousavi, the presidential candidate; a large contingent of Iranian women, energized by the role of Zahra Rahnavard, Mousavi's wife, who I met in Tehran, who campaigned vigorously for her husband and for women's rights; and of course, the educated elite of Iran, including students, artists, filmmakers, intellectuals, writers, and musicians.

Today's NYT reporting of events in the last 24 hours, including threats of execution by a government lawyer:

Reuters reported that Mohammadreza Habibi, the senior prosecutor in the central province of Isfahan, had warned demonstrators that they could be executed under Islamic law.

“We warn the few elements controlled by foreigners who try to disrupt domestic security by inciting individuals to destroy and to commit arson that the Islamic penal code for such individuals waging war against God is execution,” Mr. Habibi said, according to the Fars news agency. It was not clear if his warning applied only to Isfahan or the country as a whole, Reuters said.

More Robert Dreyfuss on the the effect of American rhetoric about Iran:

Right-wingers in the United States are already comparing the Iranian unrest to Hungary, 1956, and calling on the United States to give its full support to the Green Wave. Nothing could be stupider. What they miss is that President Obama's outreach to Iran, including his Cairo speech — which got a word-by-word exegesis prepared for Khamenei and was widely viewed by many Iranians — is in part responsible for the sudden upsurge of support for Mousavi. And it happened not because Obama called for military action in Iran, and not because Obama backed Mousavi, but precisely because he didn't.

Here's Dan Rather (I know!) with a surprisingly good piece about the importance of a free press:

It is too soon to know or to say how the situation in Iran will turn out, but there are lessons in this for our own country, for a democratic system more fragile than we at times like to believe. One of these lessons is the centrality of freedom of the press to the entire enterprise of democratic government: You cannot have the latter without the former. And the other is the lesson that citizen journalism is a way for the people to hold on to freedom of the press, even in times of oppression. In a turn of phrase that seems to be cropping up everywhere, the revolution may not be televised…but it very well could be Twittered.

UPDATE: Here's Ken Ballen reiterating that even Ahmadinejad supporters support a free press and free elections:

Put all together, our polling shows that Ahmadinejad, running a competent campaign, may have had enough support three weeks before the vote to possibly win the election under the electoral rules as they stood. With Ahmadinejad's early lead, it is possible that the vote reported did actually reflect the will of the Iranian people, though now, it is impossible to know...

Yet the government's actions since the election may have changed the debate in Iran from being about candidates to being about democracy. While we do not know whether the election results were rigged, the government's handling of the election itself runs counter to principles of democracy, free press and free elections -- goals our polling shows almost all Iranians, whether or not they support Ahmadinejad, strongly support.

UPDATE II: Here's Yglesias with an excellent point about Obama's role in the Iranian election crisis:

Something I think people don’t always get is that the President is not the columnist-in-chief or the National Blogger.

Posted by TIF Staff at 05:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (1)

By M. LeBlanc

One thing that I, and many other people who are riveted by what's going on in Iran, have been truly heartened by is the extent to which global information sharing means that authoritarian governments and dictatorships can't exercise nearly as much power as they once did. Because of the existence of a [mostly] free press in places like Britain and the United States, and mobile phone technology and the internet, activists and protesters in Iran have been able to get their information out of the country where not only the rest of the world can see it, but other people in Iran can as well. The regime has shut down Facebook, Gmail, Yahoo, access to news sites, and more, but they can't shut down everything. People are still sending pictures and video to the BBC, and Twitter, a home-grown American service, has been indispensable for the resistance.

Here's some good reporting on the censorship and supression of information that has taken place, not just of individuals trying to communicate, but of newspapers, foreign journalists, and even the state's own sources ["Even governmental news sources have been targeted in the crackdown. Four interior ministry officials have been arrested for given results that were different from those announced by Ahmadinejad’s allies."]

The regime is trying to combat the flow of information from the protestors with its own flow of information. Unfortunately, they're making some of it up. Here's just one example, an explanation of how the state-run newspaper photoshopped images of a pro-Ahmadinejad rally to make it appear larger.

But the story's not over. I can't claim to know when or how this will die down, but a lot of people seem to think that Ahmadinejad will be president. The question is--how will the regime deal with dissent? So far, it's not looking good. Young people who have tried to access or send information to outside sources have been threatened:

"Anonymous" from Norway emailed to say a friend in Iran had rung BBC Persian, without getting through.

"Now she has received a message on her answering machine from Sepah [Revolutionary Guards] saying they know she has been involved in criminal activity - and now she has to report to the police."

Fahimeh emailed BBC Persian TV from Shiraz, dismissing such warnings as random scare tactics.



The words she described finding on her answerphone: "We know you went to the rally on Monday, if you repeat that again, we will deal with you" match those described in an email by Parinaz.

Here's some reporting from an Australian journalist who's defying the government ban on foreign media. He says "You've got to realise that what's happening at the moment is that the actual authorities are losing control of what's happening on the streets and that's very dangerous and damaging to them." He also has some interesting information about the security forces becoming more sympathetic to Mousavi supporters--read the whole thing, as they say.

The point of all this is that it matters when people have a right to speak, a right to dissent, a right to access information. People have misinterpreted my and other liberals' anger about what is happening as support for Mousavi. I actually don't know much about him or his platform. No one has any illusions that he would suddenly change the course of Iranian foreign policy to make everything all better. The problem is that it may have been the will of the Iranian people that he be elected president. And if that will was defied, if the election results were fabricated, rigged, inflated, or otherwise doctored, that is a miscarriage of justice. Perhaps Ahmadinejad did win. But it's rather likely that if he did win, he won by a much smaller margin, or won without obtaining a majority of the votes, which would have forced a runoff.

The regime didn't want a runoff. They didn't want a win by Ahmadinejad with 52%. Because with a small margin, they'd have deal with accusations of irregularites. Unfortunately, it seems that they seriously miscalculated the reaction they'd get by rigging the entire thing.

Some Links:

Robert Dreyfuss has some great insight about the kinds of people who are against Ahmadinejad:

The anti-Ahmadinejad coalition is deep and broad. It includes conservative, Old Guard founders of the Islamic Republic, who view Ahmadinejad with disdain and who resent the coming to power of his coterie of Revolutionary Guard commanders; the large and growing majority of Iranian clerics and senior ayatollahs, many of whom have long viewed the Leader, Ayatatollah Ali Khamenei, as an upstart and usurper since he was elevated to his position 20 years ago; nearly the entirety of Iran's business class, especially those involved in high-tech, aviation, oil and gas, and heavy industry, who blame Ahmadinejad for his catastrophic mismanagement of the economy and for the crippling economic sanctions; the entire class of Iranian reformists, from more liberal-minded clerics like former President Khatami to more centrist ex-officials such as former Prime Minister Mousavi, the presidential candidate; a large contingent of Iranian women, energized by the role of Zahra Rahnavard, Mousavi's wife, who I met in Tehran, who campaigned vigorously for her husband and for women's rights; and of course, the educated elite of Iran, including students, artists, filmmakers, intellectuals, writers, and musicians.

Today's NYT reporting of events in the last 24 hours, including threats of execution by a government lawyer:

Reuters reported that Mohammadreza Habibi, the senior prosecutor in the central province of Isfahan, had warned demonstrators that they could be executed under Islamic law.

“We warn the few elements controlled by foreigners who try to disrupt domestic security by inciting individuals to destroy and to commit arson that the Islamic penal code for such individuals waging war against God is execution,” Mr. Habibi said, according to the Fars news agency. It was not clear if his warning applied only to Isfahan or the country as a whole, Reuters said.

More Robert Dreyfuss on the the effect of American rhetoric about Iran:

Right-wingers in the United States are already comparing the Iranian unrest to Hungary, 1956, and calling on the United States to give its full support to the Green Wave. Nothing could be stupider. What they miss is that President Obama's outreach to Iran, including his Cairo speech — which got a word-by-word exegesis prepared for Khamenei and was widely viewed by many Iranians — is in part responsible for the sudden upsurge of support for Mousavi. And it happened not because Obama called for military action in Iran, and not because Obama backed Mousavi, but precisely because he didn't.

Here's Dan Rather (I know!) with a surprisingly good piece about the importance of a free press:

It is too soon to know or to say how the situation in Iran will turn out, but there are lessons in this for our own country, for a democratic system more fragile than we at times like to believe. One of these lessons is the centrality of freedom of the press to the entire enterprise of democratic government: You cannot have the latter without the former. And the other is the lesson that citizen journalism is a way for the people to hold on to freedom of the press, even in times of oppression. In a turn of phrase that seems to be cropping up everywhere, the revolution may not be televised…but it very well could be Twittered.

UPDATE: Here's Ken Ballen reiterating that even Ahmadinejad supporters support a free press and free elections:

Put all together, our polling shows that Ahmadinejad, running a competent campaign, may have had enough support three weeks before the vote to possibly win the election under the electoral rules as they stood. With Ahmadinejad's early lead, it is possible that the vote reported did actually reflect the will of the Iranian people, though now, it is impossible to know...

Yet the government's actions since the election may have changed the debate in Iran from being about candidates to being about democracy. While we do not know whether the election results were rigged, the government's handling of the election itself runs counter to principles of democracy, free press and free elections -- goals our polling shows almost all Iranians, whether or not they support Ahmadinejad, strongly support.

UPDATE II: Here's Yglesias with an excellent point about Obama's role in the Iranian election crisis:

Something I think people don’t always get is that the President is not the columnist-in-chief or the National Blogger.

Posted by TIF Staff at 05:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (1)

Didn't see this one coming...

Chinese vessels harassed American Military Surveillance ships in International Waters, South of Hainan Island in the South China Sea. The small boats dropped debris in the Navy ships path, steered their boats in direct obstruction, shouted at the American sailors and waved Chinese flags...

Ugly Nationalism is apparently not limited to the US and Russia.

The more things change...

What a shame.

Certainly the Chinese have the right to assert a greater degree of autonomy in these Seas, this is an area analogous to the North Atlantic waters off of Cape Cod - it's C-L-O-S-E to China and Hainan is the major Chinese Naval installation. In the spirit of their broad alliance and need to maintain close ties for the good of the World - these are the types of situations that can and should change. The days of American impunity in that region have obviously ended and that will only benefit everyone, America included.

But.

With regular contact established, a positive beginning to the new administration's relationship with China has seemingly been established. Secretary of State HIllary Clinton made China her first destination and made fostering positive vibes the focus of her visit. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is a China expert who speaks Mandarin, and should be a breath of fresh air for the Chinese after eight years of arrogant lectures from the likes of Economic 'experts' advising less savings and more structured finance and, by the way, we'd like to see more Churches...ugh.

A blind, bullet-ridden desperado with a catastrophic haircut could see that President Obama will make a more responsive, engaged partner than his predecessor...

So why would the Chinese set up a confrontation that could, easily, have led to disaster. Those Navy kids kept their cool and used hoses to deter the screamers, thank goodness. Where would the World be this morning if that had been bullets instead of water?

It was reckless symbolism. The LAST thing anyone needs. The sort of thing the Chinese seem to be preoccupied with...perhaps out of a sense of a emerging from a long-neglected period on the World stage, but that is long gone. No Country, least of all the United States is ever going to attempt to place China in a box and none COULD, even if they wished to. The threat to China is internal, not from the Tibetan dreamers, the Taiwanese entrepreneurs or the 'East Turkistanians' - but from the paranoia of its leadership.

Barack Obama must seize this incident as a chance to provide the Chinese with some good-feeling concessions in the South China Sea and to insist, in return, that the next time something is on the mind of the leadership - get Secretary Clinton on the PHONE or call the President directly. Change needs to occur to more accurately represent the balance of power in the region and the world, but that change need not come through intimidation or symbolism, it should come from conversation and negotiated agreement. No Chinese should seek to intimidate Americans with nationalistic displays...

...and Vice Versa.

For goodness sakes, we've got a global economy on its knees, an intransigent Islam on the docket, a resurgent totalitarianism in Russia and a 21st Century need to share science and shift the paradigm into Space. Childishness is not needed, vision and humility are.

The goal for both should be a relationship of mutual respect and open conversation.

Buzzing Naval vessels in the years after the USS Cole was sabotaged by Al Qaeda off of Yemen and Somalian pirates have been hijacking shipping in the Gulf of Aden is a provocation that should never have occurred.

China and the United States must see that it never does again.

Posted by Matthew at 04:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)