October 31st, 2006 Chris
Since I’m preparing to head up to Dandong this weekend, here’s a rundown of the situation on the Korean Penninsula, as of this week:
First off, it looks like Kim Jong Il is backing down a bit. Chinese officials announced last week that the DPRK had no plans for a second nuclear test (that wooshing sound you hear is all of East Asia breathing a sigh of relief) and today comes news that the North will return to six-party talks.
It’s unclear, however, how far negotiations will get so long as the North Korea remains in possession of a nuclear arsenal. Japan and the US seem unlikely to give Kim much running room while he has even a half-functional bomb in his back pocket.
China has beefed up its border of late, especially around Dandong. The border town is the busiest crossing between the tentative allies. And here’s an interesting bit: China didn’t send any crude oil to North Korea in September. None. From the New York Times (via IHT):
In September, China exported 125,185 tons of crude for a reported value of $62 million. All of that was exported to the United States, with North Korea receiving nothing.
North Korea depends on China for up to 90 percent of its oil, much of which is sold on credit or for bartered goods, according to Chinese energy experts. Any sustained reduction could cripple its isolated and struggling economy.
There is no clear indication that the September figures represent a policy shift on providing vital food and fuel supplies to its neighbor and Korean War-era ally. Pyongyang conducted a nuclear test on Oct. 9, after the period covered by the latest customs data.
But North Korea tested ballistic missiles in July, defying sharp warnings from Beijing. China supported a United Nations resolution condemning the missile tests. It urged North Korea in the ensuring weeks not to take any steps that might “worsen tensions” in the region.
Beijing did not announce a reduction in oil exports. The figures were released by China’s customs administration. The drop in supplies to North Korea was first reported by Reuters.
It was possible the statistics were an anomaly or that supplies were cut because North Korea did not need more oil in September. Officials at China National Petroleum Corp., which sells oil and manages an oil pipeline to North Korea, declined to comment on the matter.
As the article points out later, the DPRK also imports crude from Iran, but in much smaller amounts. Maybe China is finally doing some arm-twisting.
And finally, something that seems less and less surprising:
Increasingly defiant toward international pressure since his nation’s first nuclear test in early October, North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il condemned this morning’s sunrise, calling it “another hostile, deliberately timed act by the world community” and “a clear and blatant declaration of war.”
OK, so that last bit was from The Onion and was made up, as far as I know. Anything else I should be reading? Drop me a comment.
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October 30th, 2006 Chris
So, the plan for this weekend is a much-anticipated trip up to Dandong. I know, it’s a dull city, and every westerner heads there for the same reason: It’s right next to North Korea. I’d like to say I have a more profound, complex or just plain original reason to go, but let’s stop kidding ourselves.
I want to see North Korea while it still exists.
I’m not pointing any fingers here, but really, how long is this country going to last with nukes? Somebody (the US, Japan, China, the DPRK itself) is going to slip one day and just blow the whole place to hell. Personally, I’d like to see it as the pile of rubble it is now, not the pile of rubble it will be then.
I asked my students today what I ought to bring along. Here’s the list: Rice to barter or give to North Koreans; cigarettes for border guards so I can get a picture with them; bread, in case rice is too heavy; money, can’t forget that, about 1000 RMB should do (because I have that lying around); there may have been more, but I stopped taking notes at this point.
Now, I know at least a few people reading this have been to Dandong, so I’m asking for input. Know any good places to stay? to eat? to get close to the DPRK without being shot? Post ‘em in the comments and I’ll be ever grateful. Departure is tentatively Friday afternoon.
Oh, and I won’t be spreading hugs on the border. Word is, that doesn’t work so well here. (Tip o’ the hat to James for the link)
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October 30th, 2006 Chris
Arizona is considering a ballot measure that would turn elections into a lottery, holding out a one million dollar prize for a lucky voter. A nation-wide ad campaign, meanwhile, features actresses urging young women to “do it”—vote, that is.
“We’ve tried everything under the sun and nothing has worked,” Mark Osterloh, a Tucson doctor and political activist who is sponsoring the Arizona measure, told AFP.
“Let’s motivate them with a good old capitalist incentive.”
Really, who wouldn’t want people who view lottery tickets as a sound investment choosing who will formulate the state’s budget, tax laws, educational policy, infrastructure development and resource allocation plans, penal codes and welfare system?
I’m a frequent voter. I’m usually in charge of analyzing ballot measures so my family can vote as a block of six. I give voter registration cards for 18th birthdays. But when I look at the candidates both major American parties tend to field, I kinda feel for the half to two-thirds of the country for whom election day is just another Tuesday. And it’s hard to feel your vote matters with the power of incumbancy weighing so heavily.
Even this year, supposed to be a landmark, will likely see at best 30 seats change hands. That’s 7%. Sure, it will have political consequences for the president if Republicans lose either house of Congress, and maybe that will mean a slightly different policy in Iraq or on immigration or [insert contentious issue you find important here]. But for 93% of the country, you’ll have the same guy going to Washington to fight your fight.
Presidential elections offer no further hope. My friend Trevor and I split the 2004 presidential election. He went one way, I went the other. We both marked our ballots with a groan. It’s not that we don’t have convictions, quite the opposite. It’s just that voting for the guy you think will screw up the country least isn’t what we thought this whole democracy thing was going to be about.
On a more personal note, I’m going to miss the midterm elections. I didn’t figure out how to vote abroad in time, and I hate myself for it. I’ve voted in every election since I turned 18, even the boring school bond initiatives and city council races. I love chatting up the old people at my polling place (most recently a retirement home, and a church before that). Now I’m in China, where I can’t vote or talk to old people.
Quote of the Day:
I’m all in favor of the democratic principle that one idiot is as good as one genius, but I draw the line when someone takes the next step and concludes that two idiots are better than one genius.
—Leo Szilard
Posted in News, self-indulgence | 4 Comments »
October 29th, 2006 Chris
Quiet meditation. A rare moment of quiet in China. Breathe in, breathe out. Circulate your internal energy, move your qi and maximize your vitality.
Crash. Honk. “Can I be friends with you?”
Who disturbs our meditation as a pebble disturbs the stillness of the pond?
Uhhh, us, the 1.3 billion denizens of the People’s Republic of China.
Boot to the head.
China has done plenty to piss me off this week, from paying me a day late to blocking access to this very blog (and every other BlogSpot site) to asking me for impossible favors. And yes, I’m blaming everyone and the country whole.
So I’m giving China a big boot to the head. Think of my one-pound Gortex hiking boots, in a whir of constant motion, landing on the skull of every pushy bus-rider, every English major sleeping in English class, every censor cutting off information from the outside world and every other Ed Gruberman.
While I’m doing that, watch this video and be entertained. And expect the leather to fly again in the future. I’m already stretching. Suggestions, anyone?
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October 26th, 2006 Chris
I meant to post something else this morning. I don’t remember what, now, but it doesn’t matter at the moment. I pulled up my bookmarks and clicked this blog to check for any comments on this week’s little payroll problem, but I found only an error message.
I flipped through my bookmarks, hitting other morning reads: The Humanaught was up and running. Granite Studio wasn’t. The Hao Hao Report worked fine. Wish I could say the same for my friend James in Turkey.
I switched browsers. Safari was no better.
Safari could not open the page “http://eyeseast.blogspot.com/†because the server stopped responding.
BlogSpot, it seems, is back on China’s bad side. I can’t be sure of this, but the pattern is consistent, and a simple proxy took me right to the previously unavailable pages.
This isn’t the first time the Great Firewall of China has clamped down on BlogSpot, Google’s all-popular posting tool. The server came back into the light the week I arrived in China, relieving me of the need to be righteously offended at having a blocked blog.
Well, now it seems I have a reason to be indignant. Someone said something that somebody upstairs didn’t like, and so, because that somebody just couldn’t deal with it, we’re getting the firewall again.
Quote of the Day:
Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government
—Lenny Bruce
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October 24th, 2006 Chris
What, me worry?
Today was supposed to be payday. I was set on buying a new jacket for the coming winter. I told Will I’d buy lunch, then we could go collect our salaries, paid in cash on the 24th of each month, from the foreign affairs office.
We called ahead, just to make sure the money was there. We couldn’t reach our usual rep on his cell, and he wasn’t in his office. I was sitting on my couch, listening to Will’s side of the conversation, when I did, in fact, start to worry. My Chinese remains awful, but I caught the word for money and some questions that sounded less certain than I’d like.
“That’s not acceptable,” Will told the woman on the other end. Now I was really listening.
Where was Ricky, our handler, whose sole job (as far as I can see) is to get us legal and get us paid? Who has our money? The woman on the phone was useless. “Why wasn’t that done yesterday?” Will asked her. Not her job, it seems.
There are three desks in the foreign affairs office. The school has five foreign teachers: one American (me), a Canadian (Will), and three Japanese. And yet no one was capable, today, of going to the bank and getting the 11,800 RMB necessary to pay us. What reason do I have to believe they’ll be able to accomplish this tomorrow?
Fortunately, I saved almost half of last month’s pay. Today’s post was supposed to be a happy one, about how I’d manage to be frugal these past 30 days and sock away some cash for traveling in the Winter. If the money comes tomorrow, that will still be true.
If it doesn’t come, I won’t be teaching.
Epilogue: They did, in fact, have my money the next morning. I caught my foreign affairs handler on the stairs, where he told me he feels “really bad about this,” and “it won’t happen again.” The guy in charge (head master or something) left town without signing the necessary forms to get us paid. Why that wasn’t done before he took off is beyond me, and apparently beyond anyone in the FA office. As Ricky said, “it won’t happen again.” Until, of course, it does.
Posted in the Dalian life | 1 Comment »
October 22nd, 2006 Chris
I’ve been promising a lot of people for a long time that I’d cook them an Italian meal if they could just find me the right ingredients and a kitchen with a few burners. I told my friends Lindsey and Alex in Beijing I’d make them some meat sauce, and I promised a girl in Dalian I’d cook for her sometime after she gave me a tour of the city my first weekend here.
Somebody finally cashed in.
My friends at Pippa’s Cafe, where I’ve spent much of the past two weeks enjoying their wireless connection (I’m there now), provided both the kitchen and the essentials. Their cook even helped me out a bit, although he doesn’t speak English and we had to play a bit of charades while I stirred the sauce and tried to get him to find me another pan.
The food took longer than I expected, as it almost always does. The tomatoes weren’t ripe enough, so I stewed them for a few minutes in a bowl with a pinch of salt to bring out the flavor, then cooked them slower than I usually would until the sauce was darker and more homogenous. We even had fresh basil that Molly, one of the owners, found at a 5-star hotel in town. For the main course, I fried up some steaks in a bit of the tomato sauce.
Italian food (especially home cooked) is one of those things I’ve been pining for over the past month, whispering, “What I wouldn’t give for…”
It turned out to be just what I needed. Homemade sauce over fusilli (spiral pasta) with steak, followed by a nice espresso. At our table were three Chinese, one Japanese and an American. We enjoyed the food and listened to the cold wind howling outside, thankful not to be in it.
Life ain’t bad.
Posted in the Dalian life | 1 Comment »
October 18th, 2006 Chris
Two recent events in the world of online video have me wondering lately: Is China ready for an onslaught of Stephen Colbert, The Real World and Chad Vader? Or will the Chinese answer the potential invasion of American amateur video and pop-reality TV with Lightsaber Kids and Capitalist Roader Rules of their own?
Last week, Google made a much-publicized purchase of YouTube, making three Silicon Valley techies rather wealthy overnight (one of them wealthier, as he helped start PayPal, which eBay snagged).
Then a few days ago, Viacom announced a deal to distribute MTV in China through Baidu, the Middle Kingdom’s home-grown search engine. The deal gives the channel that long ago stopped saying “It’s about the music†a shot at 123 million Internet users over here. MTV has a similar deal with Google, which could mean a lot more now that the super searcher has YouTube in its pocket, but I’ll get to that in a moment.
Keep in mind, Baidu still trumps both Google and Yahoo in China, getting about 250 million hits a day. It also plays by Beijing’s rules, happily blocking material deemed “inapprinappropriate” for the fragile eyes, ears and minds of Chinese netizens. This might be the winning strategy, as the Times writes:
Analysts, who often insist that internet users in China is far more interested in entertainment rather than search or information, say the alliance shows some promise, particularly because China lacks high quality television programming.
“It sets a good example in the industry,†says Hu Zhengrong, a professor at the Communication University of China in Beijing. “Most of the products that Chinese traditional media provide are only used once. They don’t generate any circulation value. The Chinese media need to explore more channels.â€
But MTV officials say they are teaming up with an extraordinary partner in Baidu, which is the country’s fastest growing web site and is populated by search and entertainment sites as well as blogs.
As for GooTube, the effects of last week’s merger remain to be sorted out.
Google Video remains unavailable here (if you’re not in China, you can watch this), whether for technical or political reasons, I’m not sure. YouTube, on the other hand, is perfectly accessible. Google, like Yahoo and Microsoft, has made concessions to operate in China. I’m not aware of any such dealings with YouTube. Will that change now that the purse strings are now tied to Mountain View?
What happens when Free Tibet protesters put up video of one of their little stunts? Perhaps someone has video of that incident in Tiananmen Square 17 years ago. There’s likely some b-roll floating around of at least a few of the 87,000 public demonstrations from last year (those are just the avowed ones).
All of this is probably on YouTube now. I haven’t done all the searches. But Google has baggage that its latest acquisition didn’t. The question is, how many will still be there when Google takes over?
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October 15th, 2006 Chris
When a friend invited me out on a hike Saturday, I figured I was in for a lot of stair-climbing with a few photo ops near the summit. Daheishan measures 622 meters at its highest peak. I climbed Huashan mountain near Xi’an (2,160 meters, or about 7,087 feet) in August, so this sounded like cake.
Elevation aside, I really knew nothing about this miniature mountain. I vaguely remembered reading something about it on The Humanaught’s blog (had I read this closer, I might have reconsidered) but basically I was going in blind, much like with Hua Shan.
We got a late start—entirely my fault. I slept a bit late, took the bus one stop too far, got lost and did all the things I always do to make myself perpetually late. But we made it to the mountain—located in the Development Zone, a bit north of Dalian proper—and we were climbing by 9 a.m.
Most mountains in China come conveniently equipped with stairs from base to summit and handy-if-over-priced vendors along the way hawking snacks and water for the ill-prepared. This is true of Daheishan, too, if you take the main route. Our group, however, decided to find its own way up.
We went a few steps down a tree-lined brick road, then made a right turn onto a narrow trail up the rock face. We climbed—really climbed—a steep grade until we came again to a flat dirt road. Here, I though for sure, we’d settle in for that casual hike I’d expected. But no, this was just a brief interlude. At an unmarked juncture, we again took to the rock face, clawing up the granite slope and making our way through dense underbrush.
We continued this way until there was no more mountain to climb. We reached the first summit after maybe two hours and looked down along the ridgeline.
That ridgeline—a dragon’s spine of granite jutting up at all angles—was our path for the next four hours. We scrambled, balanced, tiptoed and crawled between peaks, heading toward the highest one. The granite under our feet came up in crystaline spikes, pushing at my joints and reminding me that I was walking on the ankle I broke in January.
At the top, we finally reached a familiar site: Stairs. It seems this is a Chinese mountain after all. We took them down to the base, where we found more locals getting ready for the trek up. The usual groups of teens, smoking and buying junk food before running up a thousand steps, greeted us at the bottom.
After two months in China, and especially after the zoo-for-plants that was the International Horticultural Festival, it was nice to see a bit of wilderness, even if there was a staircase on the other side.
More photos are posted on my Flickr page. Coming up: What ever happened to “Take only pictures, leave only footprints”?
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