Unblocked!

Well, for some reason or another, Blogspot has been unblocked by the Chinese government. It was blocked for a little under two weeks for reasons unknown. This is sort of a "hell week"-- with a 3 page paper for Globalization and Health, a 2-page "reflection" on our Case study, and a 1-hour presentation on our case study all due tomorrow (Friday). Last night I stayed up till three, getting lung cancer in this awful internet cafe with little ventilation and where everyone is smoking.

This past week has taken on a much different pace, where we students are given much more freedom to do research for our case study. I'm doing one on NGO/Gov't response to HIV/AIDS in China, and we've met representatives from the WHO, MSF (Doctors Without Borders, the Belgium branch, which is actually working illegally in China. Long story.), some GONGOs (Government-Organized NGOs, Chinese style), etc. Every morning we have classes in Globalization and Health, as well as Culture and Health, which frankly have been a bit disappointing. In the G&H course, my general feeling is that statistics and polemics are just being thrown at us, while in the C&H course, tons of questions and an obviously slanted (and in my opinion, poorly argued) view of medicine is given. I've found myself taking fewer notes and raising my hand in objection far more often, probably to the dismay of my classmates. It bothers me how so much of social science is simply the study of phenomenon, how we're not really supposed to have any interesting ideas or theories about what might be happening. For instance, in the C&H class, we were TOLD that biomedicine is hegemonic in systems of medicine. It bothers me how science is treated as a Western construct-- to me it seems dishonest and in fact insulting to other "traditions," that they aren't rational and are somehow more mystic and experiential. That is, other systems of medicine, such as TCM, only have "ancient knowledge" to legitimize it, as supposed to any sort of rational thought. Then the teacher said I was simply someone bound by my Western cultural mindset, a philosopher. This is of course inaccurate and an oversimplification, for many reasons not worth mentioning here. Alex (a philosophy major) joked that in that class, philosophy implies arguments, and I added "discursive and Western culture-bound" arguments. I'm not particularly a big fan of overly academic philosophy, but it's kind of ridiculous when someone tells you that making cohesive arguments is a culturally-bound syndrome.

In other news, I finally did meet with Joan Hinton last weekend. To refresh, Joan Hinton was an American nuclear physicist during WWII who worked on the atomic bombs dropped on Japan. Once they were used, however, she had a moral crisis and came to China in 1948, and has been here ever since. After meeting her, she seemed to be best described as a Maoist, someone who believed that someone who rose from the people should have power. It seems like her trust in authority is a bit contradictory, since to her, no one from Deng Xiaoping to Hu Jintao ("Who I have illusions about," she says) has been able to follow Mao's act. So what happens when a government gets hijacked? I just wrote a paper about state centralization, democracy and reform in post-Mao China. I'm beginning to think that democracy cannot exist with over-centralization; a government must be ruled by the people as opposed to a government ruling over the people. I'm not positioning capitalism over communism or vise versa, but merely thinking about the importance of a true democracy in the world today.
I'm strongly considering writing an article for the Concord Journal about the visit, or possibly one about local democracy in India. Ok, maybe I'll post some pictures later, but for now I must do work. In one week, I'll be off to South Africa.

Uh Oh.

It looks like Blogspot has been blocked in the People's Republic of China, again. Strangely, you can update your blog (at least right now), because blogger.com loads, but no .blogspot.com page will. It was this way for most of my stay last summer in Beijing, until at the very end it became unblocked. But it looks like it's back on the blacklist.

Beijing!

Fewer words, more pictures. Here's 鼓楼大街, Guloudajie.


Oh yeah, on the second day of class, while taking the bus to school, our bus crashed into the bus in front of it. We got off and walked to class. This is the bus:


“Socialism with Chinese Characteristics," Deng xiaoping called it:

(Wangfujing, 王府井)

Consulting a Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) doctor. He spends a long time stroking his beard and reading your pulse.



Beijing West Train Station, with trains to everywhere.


This is the hutongr (胡同) where I live. The name is Baochao, 宝钞胡同, off of 鼓楼东大街, with a wonderful view of the bell tower. There is no good translation for Hutongr, maybe "alleyway." I don't think Chinese people even know where it comes from-- most convincing thing I've heard is some bastardization of a Mongolian word during the Yuan dynasty, when the Mongols ruled China in the 1200s.




Okay, so no indoor plumbing, right? Without going into details, this is where things that have to happen, happen. I should add that the bathroom I use does have dividers between stalls, albeit sans doors. This bathroom is equidistant from our little place, but the bathroom I use is usually bustling with activity, while I suppose this one gets far less use. You can probably figure out why.



Some final pictures from the hutongr.

Hijacking Shaolin Temple

Allow me to preface this by noting that I knew, as the previous entry indicates, that Shaolin Temple was a tourist trap. Perhaps I underestimated its trapping abilities though, because it got me. Here's what happened.

I arrived at the Zhengzhou Railway Station on schedule, at 7:00 AM, and having noted the previous night the long distance bus station was directly across the Railway station, I ignored and walked past all the hustlers and bustlers who run up to you asking if you want a room, a bus, where you're going, and other shady things. I successfully bought a bus ticket from the bus station to Shaolin Temple, and get on one of the public buses which says it's bound for Shaolin Temple.

I chat with a bank worker from Jiangsu about barefoot doctors, but as soon as the conversation becomes more complex and academic, I completely lose my Chinese vocabulary and end up nodding dumbly, until we both eventually nod ourselves to sleep. About an hour into the ride, just as we're approaching the Temple, we pull over on the side, and a tour guide jumps on the bus. She goes, "Before we go to Shaolin Temple, allow me to introduce a few other tourist attractions." She takes us to Zhongyue Temple, a Daoist Temple mentioned in the LP guidebook. Okay, I think, this isn't so bad.
An hour later, we board the bus, and I notice the "destination: Shaolin Temple" sign on the front of the bus has been replaced with a "Something something Tourism Service." Interesting. Now the tour guide wants to bring us to someplace else, and I go, a bit more reluctantly. Hey, at least this place, Songyang Academy, has cypress trees over 4500 years old. But the game is getting old really quickly. To amuse myself, I take an out-of-focus photo of the cypress tree.

I ask the tour guide when we'll get to Shaolin and she assures me it's the next stop. Doubt churns in my stomach. Sure enough, we end up at some pathetic little nunnery whose only tourists are tourists that have fallen prey to such fearmongering tour guides. I refuse to get off the bus and strike up a conversation with an elderly couple from Nanjing. They were also clueless about this little game the bus driver and tour guide got us into. Knowing that "real" Chinese people were also unaware makes me feel a little better, and the couple seem to be fired up from my good old American complaining. They ask about life in the US, and despite my attempts at playing it down, they are convinced the US is vastly superior to China, and don't believe me when I say I like China. "I'm Chinese American, of course I like China!" They then tell me that I'm welcome to visit them in Nanjing, and that they have an 18 year old daughter that I "should come talk with in English and become friends with."

Things are getting weirder by the minute, and I want out.
So as soon as we reach Shaolin, I tell the tour guide I don't want her, I never wanted her, and she offers her 5Y "tour guide fee" back, which I gladly accept. She continues playing passive-aggressive and harrasses me whenever she can in the temple, even　though I try to run away from her. Then this creepy old man starts following me, and approaches me several times asking me to “follow him." Even when I escape into the pagoda forest, I see him waiting for me, ever so patiently.

I walk 2 miles, and he's still following me, even though I've warned him several times to stop following me. Eventually I decide the best way to shake him off is to take the gondola up Songshan, a Daoist mountain outside of Shaolin Temple. I get on the gondola. Finally, peace. One of the nice things about travelling by yourself is that it's relatively easy to escape annoyances. I tend to think a lot more, too, but even I can grow angry and tired of myself.


It's getting lonely on the gondola.



I get to the top, and there is snow. It is cold and quiet.


This is what I wanted, just some peace and to be able to be by myself. I can't stay for long, though, since the gondola stops running at four, and the trek down the mountain would take too long.

I haven't said anything about Shaolin Temple. It's pretty amusing. A skimpily-clad girl introduces some teenage "monks" (quotes explaining shortly) who show off their kungfu skills. After the show, I see the monks change into their Nike sneakers and jumpsuits. Unlike Jiuzhaigou in Sichuan, there is little escape in this tourist trap. It's all for show-- who knows where the "real” monks are.

They're on top of the telephones. That's it for now, because I decide I don't want to spend the night at Shaolin and I　catch a bus back to Zhengzhou, then an overnighter back to Beijing.

Off to Shaolin Temple

Tonight, in 35 minutes, my train leaves for Zhengzhou. From there I'll take a bus to Shaolin Temple, a tourist trap Buddhist monastery known for its fierce gongfu monks. I'll be there till Sunday. Nonetheless, there are mountains where I can escape my worldly longings. Speaking of which, my cell phone number here is 13522282553. However, I'll have it mostly off this weekend to conserve electricity. 88!

Some Beijing pictures, plus a colorful surprise

Not Beijing (Mysore market, Karnataka, India)

The Singapore Airport at sunrise

Arrival at Beijing International Airport. They're expanding it; no surprise there.



This is Seth and me with our host mom.


This is near where we live; near the Gulou drum towers just north of the Forbidden City, within the Second Ring Road. Beijing is constructed with the Forbidden City, the Emperor's old palace, at the center. As one goes out from the Palace, "ring roads" that circumscribe the city spiral outwards. So everything within the Second Ring Road is considered "central" Beijing. Unlike many other major cities, the center of Beijing is largely bereft of hi-rises. The Olympics will be held in the north of Beijing, beyond the Third Ring Road.





Cranes



A futuristic bathroom in "Your Town," where we had hot pot with Professor Angle. The faucet came down from the ceiling (not pictured).


Pictures of our Hutongr are forthcoming, have not yet been taken. Away I go.

Beijingers

So I arrived in Beijing on Saturday night, and moved into my homestay near the Gulou Drum Tower. I live in a hutong, one of the old alleyways that predates the CCP, most likely from the Qing (1644-1911) or Ming (1400? - 1644... China's blocked Wikipedia so these dates are from memory) Dynasties. The hutong is called Baochao hutong, it's a rough and tumble, down-to-earth, unrestored hutong that's bustling with life. I like the feel of it, the vendors, the haphazardly constructed houses (as opposed to the neatly-laid out quadrangles that package tours bring you to), the bathhouse down the street, the public toilets and lack of indoor plumbing. There's no courtyard; which is fine. I'm really lucky to have gotten a Hutong homestay. Only three other kids on the program got a hutong, including my new roommate, Seth. It's strange the way they set it up. They tried to make it so that Chinese-speaking students like myself were put in homes where the host families couldn't speak English, although that doesn't seem to be the prevailing theme-- my host brother speaks English very well and my host mother is not so bad herself. Other students, who don't speak any Chinese, are paired with families that don't speak any English.

Last night I met up with Prof. Angle and several Wesleyan people-- mostly recently graudated alumni-- for an informal Wesleyan-in-Beijing dinner. It was lots of fun and it felt great to be with others familiar with both Wesleyan and this city that we've all taken in, for some reason or another. I found out that one of them, Jesse, lives in a Hutong just one street over from mine-- and he often takes baths in the bathhouse in "my" hutong. A pretty interesting guy, he travelled overland from France where he had been at a winery for a couple months, going through Turkey and the "Stans" all the way to Beijing.

Well, that about raps it up for my first Beijing entry. I'm happy here and I'm glad to be back. Even though I'm not much of a city person and Beijing is not even my favorite city, I realized I've become sentimental and nostalgic about this city. It's strange, too, because the past three times I've been in Beijing I was here in the summer. Now, Beijing seems to have acquired a much quieter, quainter personality. I don't know whether it's the weather which makes people want to stay inside, or the increasing urbanization which pushes people off the streets and into hi-rises, or what. And the pollution seems a lot less serious. Again, I don't know whether it's simply seasonal or (hopefully) a point in a larger trend towards better air. Construction cranes are everywhere and buildings have sprung up. A Wal-Mart is now open near my old university. Beijing is changing, changing.

To Beijing!

And I'm off to Beijing in a couple hours. Not much to say here, if only because I have about 2 rupees left on this internet cafe card. Expect a change in scenery. Don't trust my photos; they're just photos.

Fishing Communities near Trivandrum, Kerala (2007)

Tomorrow we leave for China. We've just arrived in Bangalore from Mysore, which was the last stop on our 7 day vacation. Things change; plans are never concrete. For me, the best part of this vacation was the time we spent just outside of Trivandrum in Thumba, a fishing community near the southern tip of India. Here was an entire community that had lived intimately, with each other and with the sea, for many generations. Fishermen went out with their nets, often in little more than a few strapped-together pieces of wood, and spent the night on the sea. It was beautiful, but the prevailing sense from the community was that things were changing rapidly.

The 2004 Tsunami, even though it never hit this side of the coast directly, dramatically reduced the catches. Large trawlers with bigger nets catch all the big fish, and it seemed as if these fishermen were left to clean up the scraps. It was depressing to see a man come back after an entire night of fishing, alone, with nothing more than a few pathetic looking fish.


About a week earlier, we had met some fishermen who had come up to Thrissur in northern Kerala to talk about the hard times they had fallen in. They came with Peter, the local politician who represented their community. A couple of students asked if it would be possible to join these fishermen. At the time, I honestly didn't take their plight too seriously; it all seemed so abstract. Sitting in that large forum in a 3 star hotel, it was difficult to imagine the dangers these fishermen faced-- the raging sea, the eroding coastline, the water pollution, the shrinking fish supply. Our original intention was to go nightfishing with the fishermen, and it was only when we arrived at Peter's home did I realize the potential danger of doing so. The last thing I wanted was to drown, at night, in the middle of the Arabian Sea with fishermen who didn't speak English. Ultimately, though, the Sea Gods (or Peter, I suspect, who understandably didn't want to be responsible for the deaths of a bunch of clueless American students) would not let us go off to the sea.





The first night, they said the sea was too rough. The second morning, they said that the fishermen said that the catch wouldn't be big enough to justify a fishing trip. Thus ended our fruitless attempts at nightfishing.

We were also lucky enough to go to one of the morning markets where they sold fish. At 5 AM, before the sun rose, we arrived at a fishing market where trucks would come in with the previous night's catch. Some trucks arrived from Tamil Nadu and beyond, perhaps because of the dwindling fish supply in Kerala. As each truck pulled in, men would scramble for the back in what appeared to be an auction for whatever that truck had. The auction took place quickly. Crates flew off the backs of trucks and within five minutes the truck was cleared and the men would scramble for the next truck that came honking in.




The highest bidder would take the crate of fish, and would often then sell them to venders in other markets.




After that first market, we visited some of the other markets around Trivandrum, where most people would buy their fish. It was still early morning, and fish blood splattered on me when I got close to the fish cutting and cleaning.






Throughout our time in Trivandrum, I was lucky enough to stay in the home of Peter, his wife Magdalen and his daughter Dona. A large percentage of the Malayalam people of Kerala are Syrian Catholics, an esoteric branch of Catholicism I know little about. Apparently, this branch of Christianity has been in Kerala for many centuries, long before the Portuguese arrived with Roman Catholicism. THere are Roman Catholics, who have surnames like Pereira and Saldanha. The Syrian Catholics, at least the ones I met in Kerala, have an interesting tradition where the children take their father's last name as their surname. So Dona's last name was Peter, and my last name would be Fritz. Our family treated us wonderfully, and by the time we left, we all felt that there was an enormous debt that remained unpaid.

Kerala vacation

One final post before we officially leave kalpetta to go on vacation. Today was the first day of vacation and we climbed Mount Chembra, the highest peak (about 2000 m) in this area of Kerala... in the "Western Ghats" region. It was pretty strenuous; even though it only took about 2 hours, we raced up because our guide wanted to be done as soon as possible. Plus, I'm out of shape.
Now we're going to Trivandrum, near the tip of India, taking an overnight bus. We hope to meet up with some fishermen that we met in Trissur. From there a couple of us are going to Kochi (colonial name = Cochin), where there is a "Jew town" and is generally an interesting place. both Trivandrum and Kochi are on the coast, and are going to be bloody hot. Then we have to be back in Bangalore next Thursday morning, to catch a plane to China on Friday, the 10th.