Layover Purgatory in Japan

It's been quite a few years since I had the pleasure of transiting through Tokyo's Narita Airport where I am sitting now. The airport authority has drastically enlarged the shopping choices since I was last here but they've payed particular attention to keeping all of these alternatives well outside my range of interests. They've added a McDonalds but they have six items on the menu and the only non-meat item is french fries - and you can't buy them without buying a meal set that includes meat. No, I'm not going to spend $8 to buy a meal set and throw half of it away.

All the other eateries in the airport are Japanese - even the ones that call themselves "Western". You have all the choices of cold noodles, fish thingies, and pickled vegetables you want. I don't. I've retreated to the airline lounge and am subsisting off of a spongy substance they call cake. Only five more hours of layover left to go.

On Sunday we had a tour of a U.S. Coast Guard cutter that is visiting Shanghai. This is a photo of the ship's 76mm gun pointing at downtown. Oops.

Two Tragedies, Two Journalisms

While Americans have been transfixed by the plight of six miners trapped underground in Utah a similar tragedy has been going on in China, but the way the very unfortunate incidents have been treated by the media have been very different. In the USA the media has talked with every expert on mine safety, family member, and critic of mine operations they could find. In China by contrast, the official media has been very careful to treat the story of the 181 miners trapped in a flooded mine very gingerly and under the control of the state propaganda agency. No criticism of the local or provincial authorities has been allowed. Beijing warned media to get out of the area of the tragedy and to let the government's official Xinhua news agency do the reporting. Some journalists were reportedly roughed up when they didn't get out of town fast enough. A few Western journalists managed to get some of the story out to the world, including information from Forbes that the miner's families were being treated pretty shabbily. But readers of China's newspapers will not be reading of this.

Pig Man Pushes Qixi Gift-giving

The pink pig balloon industry is, no doubt, one of the industries behind the effort to establish the Qixi Festival as the Chinese version of Valentine's Day. "Scholars and business people" are calling for this traditional celebration of the devotion between a cowherdsman and a fairy seemstress to have some officialness pumped into it. The Japanese and other Asian countries have more or less gone along with a slightly modified version of the Western holiday. It remains to be seen whether St. Valentine's Day (already celebrated by China's city youth) or Qixi becomes the big profit opportunity for China's purveyors of balloons, candies and fancy dinners. (photo by G-man)

Sailing Through the Middle of China

Last Friday we flew into Chongqing to catch a cruise boat (the Oriental Emperor) down the Yangtze River to Yichang. The 200 km cruise downstream took three nights and included three shore excursions, a passage through the locks at the Three Gorges Dam, and a lot of (mostly) beautiful scenery. With the waters rising behind the new dam, I wanted to see what was left of the Three Gorges before more of them disappear below water. I'm glad I did.

Most of the cruise passes by rolling hills and mountains but when the four-level boat passes through the narrow gorges with their sheer cliffs looming over the river, it is breathtaking. The immensity of the landscape is difficult to describe or to convey in 2-dimensional photographs. In the passages where there is no human habitation and all I could see was a mammoth river cutting between even larger mountains I felt that I was at the center of the world and there was nothing else beyond. This is good therapy for anyone that's been shut up in Shanghai for months on end.

Now for the downside. The waters are ruining a great deal. Much of the history, towns and cities, and scenic areas are already underwater. Much of what was authentic has been replaced by eyesores and tacky tourist traps. Ancient towns have been razed and moved up the mountains into new cities of pillbox concrete buildings that are monuments to ugly. Once beautiful tributary streams that people used to float down in small boats are now choked with silt and trash from the Yangtze waters that have backed up. Over three days I did not see a single fish that was not on a plate. Nor did I see more than a handful of birds and not one mammal of any description. It's amazing how the great gift of the Three Gorges has been damaged in the course of twenty years.

The last thing we saw was the dam that has caused much of the ruination. All tour boats stop for a bus tour of the project and are told, over and over again, how wonderful it is, what a great symbol of China's might it is, and how ALL Chinese have welcomed it. We know this to be far from the truth. But the great dam is dwarfed only by the great propaganda machine.

Still, those of you that have not seen the Gorges of central China I urge you to do it while you can.

Internet Blocks

In the past year I haven't noticed any letup in the amount of Internet censorship by the Chinese censors. The blocking of specific websites comes and goes but, overall, it's just as bad as it was last year. More than half the time, Google News is blocked. The BBC's news website is always blocked. Other sites that are blocked include the VOA, Wikipedia, My Space, most blogs (I can't even view my own blog), and most sites ending in .gov or .mil

All of this makes it very hard to get information in China. The absurdity of this comes home when your children, trying to do research for homework, can't get the information they need because the censors are blocking their access to entries about science or culture on Wikipedia. Children here can't even use MySpace to stay in touch with their friends around the world. You have to feel pity for a government that is so insecure that it has to keep children away from knowledge.

No matter how you spell it these made-in-China cough drops were very popular at the Ming Dynasty Imperial Court but when the unfortunate side effects became better understood the brand fell on hard times.

Sailing Down the Yangtze River

We just returned from a three day cruise down the Changjiang, or Yangtze River in central China. More about that tomorrow. Too tired tonight.

Of Torii Shrines and Plastic Flies

I was looking through a journal entry of mine from 1992 today and was reminded of an ingenious invention I noticed on a trip to Tokyo. "to keep men from urinating on alley walls, merchants painted small images of the sacred torii gate and shrines on the walls at knee-level."

This in turn reminded me of a remark that Chen Shui-bien, currently the president of Taiwan, said in a meeting I was in some years ago when he was mayor of Taipei. With some excitement he told us that he had just had a brilliant idea on how to clean up public toilets around the city. "I'll have our sanitation department glue plastic flies in strategic places in men's urinals so they'll aim better." This is how leaders think.

When I die...

I'm enjoying rereading Robert Fulghum's "Words I Wish I Wrote", a collection of writing that inspired this American philosopher-writer. My favorite piece from this book is the following:

"When I die, I want to go peacefully and quietly in my sleep like my grandfather did - not screaming and shouting like the passengers in his car at the time." - unknown author

When I showed this to some of my Chinese colleagues at work most thought it was funny - after I explained it to them. But one middle-aged man, missing the meaning, said he thought it was in poor taste to make fun of old people who couldn't stay awake.

This pedestrian walk signal in Shanghai that has both the red stop and green go symbols glowing simultaneously, nicely encapsulates the dilemma of people trying to figure out the rules in China. Do you go? Do you stop? Do you do both at the same time? If you do neither, you won't get anywhere. If you do, you'll get in trouble.