Huge Tracts of Land

2008-01-01T22:43:00.000-05:00

Greek islands, Selcuk, and London

2007-06-29T00:38:00.000-05:00

This is the last installment of pictures from the Europe leg of my trip.

Santorini. There are lots of dogs and Annalisa likes them.

Oia, Santorini.

Oia, Santorini.

Naxos. First sunset.

Naxos.

Mykonos.

Mykonos.

Ferry from Samos (Greece) to Selcuk (Turkey), and the first sunset in Turkey. Samos is only an hour away by ferry from Turkey in the Aegean sea.

Tourists at Ephesus.

LONDON AND LONDONERS

These are anti-war protesters outside Parliament in London. One of them, I think his name is Brian Haw (not pictured), has been there for six years, before the Iraq invasion. They have permits for twenty people to camp out there.

Monty Python's Spamalot is playing!

Island hop to Turkey and a bus to Istanbul

2007-06-20T16:52:00.000-05:00

A mess of photos

2007-06-19T23:19:00.000-05:00

It's late, and I have to get up early tomorrow for clinical rotations (I'm in New York, and with internet!), so I'm not going to bother commenting on these yet. Just in case you happen to check in before I edit this entry with appropriate tags and captions.

Crash

2007-06-15T17:00:00.000-05:00

My worst nightmare might actually be coming true... that is that all my photos from my five months abroad may be lost. My portable hard-drive seems to have frozen along with my laptop; the good news is that I at least backed up all my photos from India and most from China. The bad news is I don't have any backed up from South Africa. The good news is that it is a portable hard-drive, so if it doesn't un-freeze there's a chance the photos can be rescued. Incidentally, the hard-drive crashed as I was transferring all the photos to a more secure 500 GB, external hard-drive I just got.

I need a functioning, fast computer.

2007-06-14T16:42:00.000-05:00

For the record, I am indeed home, but I am sifting through almost two thousand new messages, old mail, getting tested for TB, and re-packing for New York on Saturday. My computer is having issues (crashing randomly) so I may be slow in responding to emails, blogging, and getting around to the thousands of photos I took (I think the last count was about 9,250 photos). This means not only will I be slow in posting pictures on my blog, but processing these thousands of photos for my fellow IHP students.

Oh yes, one last thing. I got to add one more country to my list of countries visited on this trip. I'm still highly jealous of Laura, David and Bazazi for going to Lesotho and pony-trekking (this was my dream BEFORE the entire program began, and one of the main reasons I decided to spend an extra week in Africa), but I suppose France, Greece, and Turkey made up for it. And, I was able to jump through British Airway's bureaucratic hoops and check all my baggage back to Boston, which ultimately meant I could go into London and walk around for a couple hours during my nine hours in transit. I took out ten pounds (around $20 USD) at Barclays, Bank of America's British partner, and spent it very wisely:
6.70 pounds for an all-day London metro pass
2.25 pounds for a McDonald's cheeseburger happy meal (you learn to be calorie-efficient/cost-effective when travelling on a budget).
65 cents on a grape-drink.
I got to see quite a lot of London in those couple hours; my favorite parts included the free "Photographer's Gallery" which had an exhibit on Found photographs (of "Found" magazine fame), and talking with the anti-war protesters who've been camping outside of Parliament for six years. Pictures will come (I know I keep saying that, but they will.).

Yesterday, Turkey. Today, Paris. Tomorrow, Home.

2007-06-11T06:11:00.001-05:00

I'm finally going home to Concord, Massachusetts tomorrow. I'll be there for less than a week and then I'm moving to New York for two months. Pictures will come, at some point.

İn İstanbul (yes, the İ İs dotted)

2007-06-07T08:18:00.000-05:00

Allow me to excercise all the new letters the Turkish Roman alphabet has afforded me:
Şş
Ğğ
Üü
Çç
Öö
İi
Iı
Yeah, I thınk that ıs ıt, unfortunately I cannot fınd many of the normal punctuatıon and letters so I am not goıng to use contractıons and sound hıdeously formal (hats off to you, Ellen).

İstanbul. More later. You do not get a real entry now, suffice ıt to say that ıt ıs a bıg bıg cıty that for some reason remınds me of Beıjıng.

Fire Chicken

2007-06-04T07:32:00.001-05:00

The Lonely Planet guidebook for iStanbul says that the word "Turkey" probably comes from Chinese, who apparently referred to "them" as "Tu Kues" (with an umlaut over the U). The word for the animal "turkey," in Chinese, translates to "Fire Chicken."

-Apparently buses in Turkey are really nice. I keep thinking about the buses in Chile, i.e., with waiters and attendants, who give you blankets and tea and breakfast on the bus. We'll see.

-There's a lot of interesting stuff in Turkey, biblical things, religious things. I don't think I'll be able to see the whirling dervishes.

-Flipped through the Istanbul guidebook and it seemed like it could have been describing Beijing. Huge migrant population, not much green space, old political and cultural capital of an empire, and so on.

-There are Chinese clothing stores in several of the Greek islands. I think we saw at least three clothing outlets, selling Chinese imports and owned by Chinese people, in Samos.

-Ferry schedules changed, and last night we took a ferry from Mykonos at midnight that arrived in Samos at 6:15 in the morning.

-One new Turkish Lira is equivalent to 1,000,000, that's right, one million, old Turkish Lira.

-Off to the Fire Chicken in about an hour!

2007-06-02T10:35:00.000-05:00

... I briefly convince Annalisa that the Mediterranean is freshwater.

Off to Turkey in two days. Next stop: Samos island.

greek roundup

2007-06-01T14:14:00.000-05:00

So: I'm not going to make you jealous quite yet of where I've been recently, i.e., no photos for now (I don't have my USB cable on me).
But, here's a quick roundup of what comes to mind:

-Vietnamese restaurant in Paris is cheap, and delicious. The Pho reminds me of the Vietnamese restaurant in Middletown Connecticut where I go to university.
-Met up with Sunny, one of the program participants while in Paris, if only for a few hours.
-Chinese men and women peddle "traditional Chinese massages" on the beaches of Santorini and Naxos, both Greek Cycladic islands in the Aegean Sea.
-I continue to slap myself for not trying the Chinese food in South Africa; we went to a Chinese restaurant in Santorini called "China H Kina." The owners were from Hong Kong, and the last page in the menu said "For Chinese People" in Chinese (and not in English or Greek), for no apparent reason. As far as I could tell, the Chinese menu consisted of simple things like noodles with fatty chicken/beef meat on the bone. Interesting.
-Naxos is beautiful. Really beautiful. Apparently they don't ride as many Vespas as I thought they did in Greece, but they are quite plentiful in Paris.
-Am reading "Red Dust" by Ma Jian, an "On the Road" (Kerouac) taking place in China in the early to mid-eighties. Highly recommended.
-Read "Disgrace" by J.M. Coetzee, a South African author. I got the book at the airport in Cape Town and the book has perpetuated my fascination with South Africa. I find myself talking about South Africa a lot.
-Greece is far more "developed" (I quote this because I've realized that development is highly subjective) than I remember it being when I came seven years ago.

Soon, I am off to Turkey. This journey ends when I return to Concord, Massachusetts on June 12th, but it also continues when I spend two months in New York City starting June 18th.

in Paris

2007-05-22T07:19:00.000-05:00

It's nice to see the brighter side of colonialism, to see some Global North after all this Global South stuff. In all seriousness, Paris, in a word, is pleasant. As David (my roommate from India) put it, Europe is just so "tastefully done." I'm not snapping as many pictures as I did in South Africa or India, and I don't want to include any pictures of the Arc de Triomphe or the Eiffel Tower, but hopefully some will appear at some point.

Done with the program, now onto the unknown

2007-05-18T04:15:00.000-05:00

Well, I've actually just come back from a week long road-trip along the coast of South Africa. A couple of us bungee-jumped off the highest/longest bungee-jump in the world, which I think was 216 m. I didn't-- I never even considered it because I couldn't afford it. We stopped at a couple places along the way, including this awesome castle that this German guy built a couple years ago in the countryside.

Eventually, we made it to near Port Saint Johns, on the "Wild Coast" (a region along the Eastern coast of South Africa that is relatively undeveloped). We stayed at a guesthouse on the Indian Ocean without electricity or running water-- "off the grid." The owner caught his own rainwater for drinking, used gray water for everything else, and dug dry toilets. For three long lazy days, we hiked to a shipwreck, sat around with cows on a deserted beach, played around in tidal pools, had candlelight dinners, and all that other good stuff. The owner trained as a chef in Europe and made delicious seafood pizza, too.

I haven't said too much recently about the program I was on, "Health and Community," which ended exactly a week ago. I'm not going to say much now either, because summarizing is boring and I want to reflect before I say much more. Hopefully, when I get my act together, I'll show some pictures and add a few words.

Cape Point, Cape of Good Hope, Penguins, Apartheid

2007-04-24T04:18:00.000-05:00

This is Cape Point, the "most southwesterly" point in Africa. A lot of people wrongly assume its the lowest point in South Africa, but that is Cape Agulhas (I think thats Portuguese for "Needles," just a guess though). Its beautiful and there's water on both sides of this peninsula. It takes about an hour and a half from Cape TOwn's city center.

This is Cape of Good Hope. It's about an hour and a half walk from Cape Point; both are on the same peninsula.

This is my host father cutting a cricket bat for his youngest son, Mayeer. They are "Cape Malays," who are mostly originally from Indonesia. They are Muslim, and think they are probably originally from India. He does look really Indian, and they feed us lots of neo-Indian food.

Boulders (Point? Town? Beach?) in Simons Town, between Cape Town and Cape Point. Its famous for its African penguins. They used to be called Jackass penguins, because of their donkey-like braying mating call. Apparently someone decided that a species of penguins in South America also had a donkey-like bray, so the Jackass penguins of South Africa are now merely African penguins. They're pretty funny to watch. You could walk up just a few feet, sometimes less than a foot of some of them nesting. This one gave me a look.

This is an underexposed picture of the Bo Kaap, the area where I'm staying.

Ok, I've been meaning to talk about apartheid, because it's something I really didn't understand before coming here (and to a large extent, still don't understand). So when the Nationalist Party was voted in in 1948, they basically started putting into legislation a set of laws similar to the Jim Crow laws in the South-- segregating races in South Africa. The Nationalist Party was composed completely of whites, and as far as I can tell, Afrikaaners, whites that originated from the Netherlands. Blacks were prevented from voting of course (for if they could vote, they would vote out the Nationalist party-- Blacks compose about 80% of the population). Blacks were also forced into townships, like Zwelethemba (see previous entry), which were basically shantytowns outside of major towns/cities. The City of Cape Town was thus almost completely white, and "Coloureds" (not Black or White, this included the Cape Malay population from Indonesia and South Asia) were forced into segregated districts such as Bo Kaapand Coloured townships, not too different from the Black townships. Bo Kaap is a Muslim neighborhood in the hills overlooking the city, separated from the center where whites were allowed. Whites were allowed to live in the city and suburbs. By separating these different non-white populations, the NP created a system in which there was little solidarity among these oppressed groups.
Even today, many "Blacks" and "Coloureds" and "Whites" hold resentment against other racial groups. Conquer and Divide, just like the British in India. Even today, with the end of the apartheid regime in 1994, the effects of segregating populations is still felt in all parts of South Africa.

Your humble correspondent,

South Africa pictures, finally

2007-04-17T10:35:00.000-05:00

These are from the Zwelethemba township outside of Worcester, about an hour or two north of Cape Town, where I was this past week. No more commentary. sorry.

Out of Cape Town

2007-04-08T08:32:00.000-05:00

On Monday we're off to Zwelethemba, a rural township outside of Worcester. I think Worcester is about an hour or two northeast of Cape Town, where we flew into yesterday and we're spending the weekend resting.

No pictures, unfortunately, since I don't have the cables on me now. We went to Camps Bay, which is a beautiful beach in Cape Town. We've been staying in Sea Point, which isn't quite as fancy, but is still a nice area. The area by the beach reminds me a lot of San Diego-- it's dry and hot under the sun, but gets cool at night. My number here is: 0786068771. The country code is 27, and I'm a little unclear on how to call from abroad, but I think you might drop the first zero. It's free to receive calls but really expensive to make them, even within South Africa.

Much of Cape Town seems like a little European colony. Things are expensive and there are rich people in their walled-off compounds. It's strange to imagine that apartheid existed just over ten years ago, during my lifetime. You wonder, too, how much has actually changed. One of my classmates observed as we were descending into the airport that the houses got progressively smaller and run-down as we flew towards the airport from the Cape area, until they were just a mess of shacks without roads. Right outside the airport.

Oh yeah, this morning we went to an Easter service at St. George's Cathedral near Bo Kaap in downtown Cape Town. It was a pretty nice church, and they held services in English primarily, but also in Afrikaans and Xhosa, the other two official languages of Cape Town (South Africa has 11 official languages).

So, this coming week I probably won't have internet access. Just warning you.

Cape Town

2007-04-07T14:39:00.000-05:00

After a 27-hour marathon journey, we made it to Cape Town safely. Too tired to comment further, but I am very happy.

The New Socialist Countryside, and something else

2007-04-05T00:07:00.000-05:00

I know I have a dog/animal fan club out there, and it doesn't get much better than this big fluffy dog in this village we visited last weekend. I think he may have been half polar bear. He was so big and acted like a king; he was never walked, he walked us.

So now that China is industralising the urban rich need to escape the pollution and what not, so they go to the countryside. But the problem is that the countryside is still very poor; urban-rural disparities are increasing, as everyone is acknowledging (including the Chinese government ::cough::). Anyways, they've decided to create these little mountain hamlets where there's AC, hot water, karoake, even bumper cars so wealthy Beijingers can feel at home in the rural areas. They call it "The New Socialist Countryside."

While at the New Socialist Countryside, we climbed an unrestored section of the Great Wall. At times it thinned out to nothing more than a pile of stones-- and it seemed like we were walking on some stonewall in Concord, except for the deadly valleys on either side.

Since I have no other pictures of me, you've no option but to see me shake the flowers off this tree on the Great Wall.

Group picture atop the Great wall. That's our country coordinator, Hong, leaning over my shoulder.

After about two hours of hiking, we reached this tower. There were two main "types" of Great Wall-- the ones where the towers had three windows, and the other ones with four. The ones with three, such as this one, were constructed during the Qin dynasty around 220 BC. The Qin dynasty is often referred to as the "First dynasty of China," since the emperor Qinshi huangdi, united a bunch of the warring states and unified the Chinese script. He was a pretty cruel guy and his dynasty didn't last long, but he certainly left his mark on China. Interestingly enough, I think Mao admired him-- he sacrificed a lot (mostly, people) for "The Greater Good" of the nation.
In case you're curious, the four-holed towers were constructed during the Ming dynasty(1300? - 1644). Super cool.

These loudspeakers would go on at 6:30 AM and go on and on. I didn't bother trying to figure out what they were saying; that would've require too much effort. The propaganda was well salted with words like "MaKeSi ZhuYi" (Marxism), "GongChanDang" (Communist Party), "MaoZhuXi" (Chairman Mao), and "SheHuiZhuYi" (Socialism), so I think I can justify my laziness in listening.

Remember what I said about rich Beijingers?

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT, (Monty Python, anyone?)

So I was looking to get some old Mao-era Chinese cameras, and found out about a camera market on the West Fourth Ring Road. Well, imagine a middle school-aged girl going to a mall. That was me yesterday. Except before I went in, I saw this crowd gathering, and all these (quite hideously-dressed) models just sort of milling around, and a bunch of people with their new fancy cameras taking pictures of them. I wanted to try to capture the oddness of the event, but I'm not sure if I did a very good job. Trust me though, it was WEIRD.

Afterwards, I went in, and saw all these cool cameras, including the one I posted a picture of above. It's a super rare rangefinder with an f-stop of 0.95 (I know, super nerdy, but really cool), a huge spanking lens. They had all these old cameras, of course I couldn't afford any, but I did end up buying two Mao-era rangefinders. I forgot to take pictures of them before I came here, but they were pretty neat little critters for not that much (about twenty bucks a pop). Who knows whether they'll work, I'm going to use them in South Africa so I don't have to carry around my big expensive digital camera. Perhaps I'm being paranoid, but I need to justify the purchase somehow, right?

Beijing, Panjiayuan

2007-04-04T23:51:00.000-05:00

There's a very good chance that taking pictures of soldiers is illegal in China. I snuck this one in near Tiananmen Square. Today I got yelled out for taking pictures of a construction site. Perhaps the Chinese really do know the power of the photograph, how easily political they can be.

On the Beijing subway.

They sell these little mangos that are like pebbles. They are so cute, they're worth every bite even if you spend 10 minutes peeling the skin for just a sliver.

A horse at the Panjiayuan Antiques market. I wanted to get a statue but ended up getting two pre-Great Leap Forward posters, one encouraing the Chinese to help out North Korea during the "War of American Aggression in Korea" (I'm not actually sure if that's the exact name, but it's something to that effect), and another one pre-1960 when Mao was still friendly with the Soviets.

More at Panjiayuan.

These gramaphones (is that what they are?) were in the exact same place as they were last summer when I came here with Annalisa. I remember because I took a picture of them then, too, except last summer there wasn't that pig. Happy Year of the Pig! That means my sister is 24!

I'm trying to figure out this picture but it was all cut up and scratched and really beautiful.

Beijing.

Joan Hinton Visit

2007-04-04T23:35:00.000-05:00

It's my last day in Beijing and I have a lot of loose ends to tie up. I've wanted to post more pictures from Beijing, but I've been unmotivated because of the blogspot block (which is still up) and because I generally don't bring my camera cable with me to the Internet cafe. I'm now writing from a coffee shop, mostly because the internet cafe is filled with lung cancer and cigarette smoke. I think I've developed an allergic reaction to cigarette smoke, it's so bad and I get so angry now when I see those toxic fumes floating in my direction.

I'm posting pictures from my visit to the diary farm Joan Hinton ran. I can't remember if I posted earlier about it, I probably did. Unfortunately it's too hard to figure out with the block and all. But here it is in pictures, I have more to say about it but for now all you get are pictures. I have more to post.

On that last photo, there's a little story. When I whipped out my fancy schmancy camera she goes, "Wow, that's a great camera. Is that digital?"
"Yes, yes, it is. I suppose capitalism does have a few good things to offer," I said. Then we head to her study so she can make some copies for us of a little essay she wrote, where her room was decked out with a copy machine and a new flatscreen computer with webcam and all the accessories. Very interesting.

Unblocked!

2007-03-29T12:05:00.000-05:00

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.

2007-03-20T03:30:00.000-05:00

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!

2007-03-18T07:23:00.000-05:00

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

2007-03-18T06:36:00.000-05:00

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

2007-03-16T09:02:00.000-05:00

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

2007-03-13T07:09:00.000-05:00

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

2007-03-12T05:58:00.000-05:00

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!

2007-03-09T02:40:00.000-05:00

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)

2007-03-08T06:57:00.000-05:00

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

2007-03-02T06:18:00.000-05:00

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.

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

2007-02-20T08:51:00.000-05:00

As you become more familiar with a place and with your first impressions out of the way, your senses begin to dull. I've realized that my ability to take interesting photographs has suffered as a result, and that good photography requires active "seeing" and looking for interesting things. We're now in our third week in Bangalore, and we're soon off to Kerala on Friday. Schoolwork has picked up and we're all being gently reminded (by impending deadlines for papers... ahhh papers) that this is in fact "study abroad."
Another thing worth noting is that in this setting, one must be active in looking for new experiences and stimulating oneself. A famous Concordian once said, "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of a feeble mind" (I think that's how it goes). This requires a lot of effort, especially when you're surrounded by thirty interesting and complex peers that you want to share your experiences with. Well, now for some pictures, many of these are from Sri Sri Ravi Shankar's ashram about an hour outside of Bangalore, a pretty sweet compound if you ask me. We (three of my fellow students and I) all needed a break from the constant honking of Bangalore. Ravi Shankar's ashram was a fascinating place, one which you could arguably call a cult. But it seemed a bit more gentle, although frankly I couldn't understand all the hooplah around this one guy who, as far as I could tell, ripped off some breathing exercises from the Buddhists and Hindus and added some inspirational taglines. There was so much attention around this one guy, it made me wonder, what'll happen when he's gone? Will his "art of living" (artofliving.org, I think) die as well?
Finally, I should also note that David, my roommate and comrade (in the non-post Communist sense, studiers of Chinese take note), helped in selecting some of the pictures shown in the previous installment, and is featured in one of the photos. Where is he? I'll give you a clue (no prizes awarded): he's sideways. David also provides friendly if untimely reminders that taking pictures of mosques is considered taboo.

Ok, one ultimately final note. Some of the pictures are from the Muslim section of Shivajinagar, a sensory-overloading marketplace very close to where we live. It's absolutely nuts. I can't describe it; refer to the Che quote on the right.

Randoms

2007-02-18T09:45:00.000-05:00

I don't have time to comment on any of the images below, but try to guess which one is:
1) Tuberculosis through a microscope
2) Shiva night festival

Prizes may be awarded.

Belur, Halebid, and Sravanabelagola

2007-02-18T09:24:00.000-05:00

These were from Sravanabelagola, a Jain site/hill about 70 miles outside of Bangalore. The statue is the "largest standing monolith in the world." I quote it because I don't want to take responsibility for false advertising.

Okay, these pictures got mixed up but they're from Halebid and Belur, two sites from the Hoysala dynasty which I think is from about 1100 to 1300 CE. They are Hindu sites, and were not particularly large places but had really intricate carvings on stone which hardened upon oxidation and exposure to sun (these were two interpretations I read, you pick). Really cool.

Dalits (Untouchables)

2007-02-14T21:47:00.000-05:00

Here is a series of images from our recent visit to a government project building built for slum residents just 2 years ago. The residents, 90% who are part of the "Outcastes" in the Hindu varna (caste) system, wielded enough political power to get their local politician to truly represent them. I think we can all learn something from India's democracy. Two of the shots are of a Hindu temple and a night shot of a building in the Lalbagh Botanical Gardens in Bangalore. Oh, and one of them is just a street shot of... the street.

Most of what I've learned has been about India's history and politics, about partition.

Sorry about the unrotated pictures. Turn your monitor on its side.

More Bangalore pictures, still first impressions (2007)

2007-02-09T10:05:00.000-05:00

Bangalore, First Impressions (2007)

2007-02-06T21:21:00.000-05:00

Quickly, some pictures. We'll be in Bangalore for about 3 weeks, then will travel to Kerala for one and then vacation for one more week. The weather is absolutely amazing; its at about the same latitude as Nicaragua so right now it's the "winter" dry season and it's about 80 degrees and sunny every day. Some pictures:

Long Island Shelter (2007)

2007-01-31T21:25:00.000-05:00

On Tuesday we visited Long Island Shelter, a shelter for the homeless on Long Island in Boston harbor. The island and facilities used to be a TB sanatorium a century ago, but it got converted into a homeless shelter several decades ago. The shelter provides many facilities and programs for getting homeless "back on their feet" that I won't get into now. There is a bus service that brings the homeless in and out of the island everyday. We were not allowed to take pictures of the "clients" or "guests," so these pictures may seem especially eerie.

Not much about anything

2007-01-27T22:57:00.000-05:00

I'm slightly torn whether I should make this a blog, in the traditional internetty journal sense, or a photo-blog, as it has pretty much been up to now. I'm a terrible writer and have never been able to keep up an interesting journal for either myself or for others. Interesting... being the operative word. So in this post I have decided to experiment with a little bit of both, I will *blog* about my first week with my study abroad program in Boston and will also add some unrelated photos.

This past week's packed schedule has conjured up somewhat unpleasant memories of 8 hour days in high school. Regardless, I've thoroughly enjoyed this past week and have already learned a lot about many things I was previously uninformed about. I'd say that the most enlightening thing we covered was the complexity of insurance schemes, especially the mess that we've made out of health insurance here in the states. Most students seemed pretty convinced that Canada's single-payer system is the best alternative, where the government is responsible for EVERYONE's healthcare, yes, every1, and everyone receives the same care and service. Larry (see below, or as he would say, "See Last!") noted that while many Canadians complain about long waits and other small aspects of their healthcare system, Canadians by and large would not trade it for anything else. Certainly not ours.

You may be asking, what about Massachusett's new healthcare law, which is supposed to provide universal healthcare? Good question. Well, I'm pretty convinced too that the way it is being implemented is not going to work, if providing adequate healthcare and low cost is your goal. I'm not going to get into specifics, but the policy basically works by "filling in" the gaps in patient coverage, and fining those who don't have insurance. Yes, think about that last one.

We have three dedicated and admirable professors who juggle several jobs and literally commute between countries. There is Larry, the affable avuncular (token) MD/MPH who is a model human being. His powerpoint lectures always draw much laughter; during one lecture he made students walk around aimlessly while he talked instead of mindlessly scribbling down his slides. There is Janneli, a midwife/medical anthropologist who has spent a great deal of her life in the rural community of Raramuri in northern Mexico, and apparently has recently been teaching at the WashU college and med school. She has a warm and wonderful laugh and a sweet syrupy voice. Finally there is Ellen, the polemicist. She comes to class with so much energy and enthusiasm for her cause-- creating reasonable labor laws for the world's workers (she works at the UN's International Labor Office/Org.(?) in Geneva). This reminded me of Sebastiao Salgado's excellent photo book, "Workers: An Archaeology of the Industrial Age."

This semester will definitely be challenging. It will force me into situations that I might otherwise avoid and confront realities I might normally conveniently ignore. And it will be difficult, too, for sure. But I am so excited and passionate and eager. Several students were asking on Friday, "will I still care about the problems in the U.S. after three months?" A very good question, indeed, but I feel proud to say that I feel like I've moved beyond that. The kind of 'structural violence' we've talked about is as rampant in India, China, and South Africa as in the U.S. This reminds me of Amartya Sen's graph about life expectancies in Kerala (the state we will be visiting in India, not-so-coincidentally), China, and the U.S., with the U.S. given in terms of Blacks and Whites. Somewhat to my surprise, Blacks in America had a lower life expectancy than both the Chinese and Keralans (?), for both sexes. A higher GDP and higher wages don't necessarily translate to better health outcomes. The point is, while conditions and quality of life in the U.S. may *seem* better for the poor, that isn't necessarily the case. I mean, infant mortality in Harlem is worse than in some "Third World" countries like Cuba. C'mon, U.S. We can do better than that. And as Americans, we have a both a political and moral responsibility to do something about it.

Perhaps the most important thing that I've gotten out of this first week is the reaffirmation that public health is not, in fact, a commodity. STOP PRIVATIZING HEALTHCARE!!! We need to stop treating it like it's something that can be traded and bought for the highest price. It seems like a truism to restate that healthcare is a public good, and for that matter, so is public health. The funny thing is, most people would answer "Yes" to the question of whether or not we should have universal healthcare. This is not to say private practices can't exist. But a comprehensive public one MUST exist.

It might also be worth noting that a single-payer system in which the gov't pays for universal healthcare would be more expensive. It won't be. We spend a lot of money already on healthcare, often on treatment that doesn't work. The money we spend for healthcare goes to private insurance companies that have responsibilities to their shareholders, and many insurance companies have essentially bribed doctors to NOT treat patients. Essentially, if a doctor can convince a patient to forego treatment, the insurance company won't have to pay the doctor as much, but pays the doctor enough so that the doctor makes money and saves time. And doesn't treat the patient. Go capitalism. A single-payer system would get rid of all those nasty insurance companies that make life so difficult when you get sick.

Don't get me wrong, I love capitalism, it has given me a computer, camera, and other wonderful technological wonders I hold dear to my heart. Without these gadgets I wouldn't be able to share with you the photos below. Perhaps you'd have wished capitalism didn't exist after you see these pictures, but I hope that's not the case. So here are the pictures, whether you wanted them or not:

My grandma's apartment on Liberty Ave in Queens, NYC.

Another attempt at a photo posted previously:

My grandma lives above Chopsticks, a restaurant my uncle opened ages ago. It is a Chinese fastfood restaurant in the heart of a predominately Indian neighborhood. Even though my uncle is gone and the restaurant is no longer run by my family, I still enjoy going back to that neighborhood. Returning to that neighborhood opens the door to memories that have been stored away, memories that are only retrieved when I return to Chopsticks or write posts like this.

Until next time,

No photos this time

2007-01-24T18:08:00.000-05:00

Our program began last Saturday the 20th of January at the Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM). Every day we have to walk about 25 minutes from our hostel to get to class at 9 AM, and we're basically at the BUSM until at least 5 PM with an hour lunch break and a couple 15 minute breaks in between lectures and class. I think we'll have about 3 hours of class each day, and the rest of it is filled in with guest lectures/activities/field visits (we start those tomorrow).

The class is great, and I'll chime in with the rest of the kids and say we have so many talented and interested and intelligent people on the program. I am surprised, however, that it seems like a lot of kids are kind of shy, and perhaps it's somewhat a weakness of mine, but many of them don't fit the stereotype of the kind of kid who would attend a program about health and community (for better and not for worse, of course). There are only 7 guys on this program of 31 students, and frankly we tend to self-segregate.

i gotta go, sorry to be abrupt, see you all soon.

Faces of Middletown (September - December, 2006)

2007-01-11T15:13:00.000-05:00

These photos were shot over the fall of 2006 in Middletown, Connecticut. In general, I asked people whether I could take their portrait, usually with a tripod. I usually shot with two cameras, one medium format camera and a smaller 35mm camera to take candids in between. All were developed and printed in a traditional B&W darkroom.

For some of the shots, I had to do very little artistically. For example, the portrait of Mia sitting down with a cigarette and the two portraits of Jeff are mostly technical portraits. Mia told me she used to be a model, and appeared slightly spaced out (for whatever reason...) when I tried to talk to her. Jeff at first refused to allow me to take a picture of him, even as we chatted for about twenty minutes about life, his unemployment and accident over twenty years ago. Only when I realized I had a couple of portraits I had taken of other people, and showed them to him, did he finally agree.

For the Lama, I ran into him one day on the street as he was walking to the bank. He offered me his business card with two addresses, one in Middletown, CT and the other in the Tibetan exile community in Dharamsala, India. Phone numbers were given for both locations. He is a Tibetan lama with little English ability and when he gave his Dharma talk he spoke through an American interpreter who sat next to but below him. I arrived early to take pictures, and stayed after as he gave his talk.

Missouri (2006)

2007-01-06T14:53:00.000-05:00

Okay, so this is the BP gas station mentioned in the post below.

Queens, New York City (2007)

2007-01-06T14:07:00.000-05:00

Queens, New York

So recently I acquired a new digital SLR (a big fancy expensive camera) off eBay and have been experimenting with color. This idea came about while at a BP gas station somewhere in Missouri on Highway 55 South, going from St. Louis to Memphis. BP's company colors are yellow and green apparently, and everything at this gas station seemed to be some mix between these two colors.

I went to New York on Thursday immediately after flying home from Memphis. We always stop by my grandma's place in Queens, wherre she lives above a Chinese fast food restaurant my uncle opened many years ago. These two pictures were taken just outside here apartment. I should note that on that January afternoon, it was 65 degrees Fahrenheit. In the second picture, I was sort of waiting around by the car when suddenly three red elements came together... the car, the post thing, and the girl's backpack.

American Color

2007-01-02T02:14:00.000-05:00

[The Protagonist in Pink]
The Loop, Saint Louis, Missouri

Middletown abstracts (2006)

2006-12-25T02:12:00.000-05:00

Two in a series

China Moving (2006)

2006-12-25T02:04:00.000-05:00

Photographs taken between June and August of 2006 in Beijing. The donkey is at the Great Wall near Beijing. After taking the "Gambling" picture, I was promptly kicked out of the restaurant. Apparently gambling, like so many other "capitalist ills," continues to go on despite laws forbidding it.

terminal cancer (2005 - 2006)

2006-12-25T01:32:00.000-05:00

我舅父（我妈妈的弟弟）有了一年多的癌症。这些照片是我在纽约拍的。他十月三十一号去世了。

Brittany, France (2006)

2006-12-25T01:16:00.000-05:00

I travelled to St. Malo in Brittany in January 2006. It is a resort town, yet it has a long history full of pirates and wars and heroics. In the winter, it is cold, quiet, stormy. I know no French and being by myself, I felt the deep solitude and slumber of this beautiful town at rest.

Wangfujing, Beijing 王府井 (2006)

2006-12-23T02:11:00.000-05:00

These skateboarders were hanging around the old Catholic church on WangFuJing Street, Beijing. Now, the street is the premier shopping district in Beijing, lined with all sorts of malls. The church, which was built about a century ago, still has services every week. However, it does not have the official recognition of the Vatican. Before I took this picture, I talked to many of the skateboarders, who despite showing off their rebellious tattoos, hairstyles, etc., were really quite shy.

Pine (2006)

2006-12-22T23:51:00.000-05:00

Oklahoma (2005)

2006-12-19T01:43:00.000-05:00

Beijing (2006)

2006-12-19T00:18:00.000-05:00

::BLOG CREATED::

2006-12-18T23:53:00.000-05:00