Greg Sanders

Slight change in blog format

For some time now, I’ve noticed that I tag far more articles and websites for potential blogging than I ever actually discuss. So, I think I’ll make it a little easier for myself by defining a few broad categories of what I do, and thus what I don’t blog about.

• Reporting: Travelogues, event write-ups, reviews, etc. This will probably be my most original content.
• China: I may broaden this to Asia, but for now I’m trying to keep things narrow.
• Rights: Democratization, feminism, discrimination, inequality, etc.
• Data: Solid non-anecdotal data on topics that interest me.
• Pet issues: transit, public diplomacy, contracting, whatever I’m working on at the moment, that sort of thing.

I may end up assigning a day to each of the topics, we’ll see. I figure the advantage would be having a day to do link round ups and such and provide a bit more predictability for my readers. In the short term, I might just break up my shared article feeds to make each of them more focused and thus more useful.

You can visit the Summer Palace even in Fall [Mon. 11-05 Morning]

[See more pictures of the beautiful Summer Palace]

For my last day I didn’t need to leave for the airport until about 3 pm and so I decided to take a trip to the Summer Palace.  The original palace was destroyed by the 8 Allied Powers and my guide book recommended against it as mostly being a nationalistic complaint.  That said, it did get a picture in the Baltimore Sun that made it look like an interesting ruin, so maybe I’ll stop by next time.

The intact palace was built back in 1750 but was most strongly associated with the later Empress Dowager Cixi and is a sprawling park with a range of temples, courtyards, and gardens.  To a greater extent than at the Forbidden Palace, many of the buildings have been converted into antiquities museums.  Sadly most of the indoor museums didn’t allow pictures, but that’s no different than the West.  This is my kind of palace really.  I like big castles and fortresses well enough, but when it comes to Palaces I prefer them broken up and generally park-like.

The picture above is from the Garden of Harmonious Interests which was quite delightful.  There were actually a few different choirs, amateur I'd think, that were performing in the various stages, a phenomenon I saw elsewhere in the Summer Palace and back in Xi'an.  They didn't always live up to the name of the garden.  After leaving the Garden we swung by the a stage/palace area which had live shows.  After that, wandering by yet more pretty buildings, we came to a museum with a neat range of historical artifacts.  Not quite up to Shanxii Provincial museum standards but none too shabby.

We'd actually bought the fully inclusive ticket in advance, I think it was a good deal if you have the time, all the special locations were worth it.   I'm not sure I can say the same of my 2 yuan Corn popsicle, it was unique but that's about all I could say for it.  Also, on a tourist advisory note, use bathrooms whenever you can, they're hard to find.

Dani Rodrik: One Economics, Many Recipes

[Gah!  I fixed this up yesterday but apparently it didn't publish.  Oh well, three today then.]

[The event was a discussion of Dani Rodrik's book: One Economy, Many Recipes]

Known for being skeptical of globalization and more recently for his economics blog.  Economic development is really working in the most populous parts of the world.  400 million or so lifted out of poverty.  However, development policy hasn't really worked; what's been promoted from the D.C. or Cambridge, Mass hasn't really correlated with what's succeed.  Globalization has been working for China and India, but similarly globalization policies aren't.  Financial liberalization hasn't produced expected results.  Trade liberalization has led to a backlash and legitimacy problem.  Thus globalization and economics must be saved from its cheerleaders.  Current policies, including the new governance/anti-corruption agenda, aren't soundly based in mainstream economics.

The main policy pushed by the West, the Washington Consensus, was not sound economics and overly relied on rules of thumb.  It was more a political than an economic model. The problem wasn't just not looking at institutions, it overlooked that removing all distortions simultaneously was impossible.  Similarly there will always be transaction costs when crossing borders, regardless of eliminated tariffs or other controls.  Thus we're not in a "first-best" world where all restraints can be removed, we're in a "second-best world" which has a different set of mainstream economic models.  Sound economics is also context-specific, policy prescriptions should always be contingent on initial conditions.  Successful policies are selective, sequential, unorthodox: targeting binding constraints.  The best globalization isn't minimizing controls but enabling countries to pursue developmental/social objectives.

Development is about structural change.  Markets are bad at structural transformation.  For expanding non-traditional economic activities, market failures can be as important constraints as government failures.  This is why almost success cases have had an industrial policy, including Pinochet's Chile according to Bob Davis.  Standard line: industrial policy is too hard for weak government.  Markets provides the sticks, government provided the carrots, rents that induce entrepreneurs and investors to try new things.  Government will always know too little, design institutions that can elicit information from the private sector.  Industrial policy is a process, not favored sectors and instruments.  Don't "pick winners" instead "let losers go."  A successful industrial  policy needs to be adventurous enough that it picks some losers.  Development banks should invest in lots of small activities rather than a few large ones.

The best globalization isn't minimizing controls but enabling countries to pursue developmental/social objectives. In creasing social expenditures can lead to Dutch Disease and weaken exports.  In long run, no relationship but can be in the short-run when you want growth fast.  Increasing the profitability of tradables will typically give a boost.  Social services might run contrary to that short term goal.  However, since there's lots of friction on most borders, generating high-productivity jobs at home will consistently be a priority.  On the whole shallow integration will work better for most countries.  The GATT model probably better for China than WTO model.  However, if a country is locked in to such liberalizations they become part of the initial conditions.  The good news is that most any end can be achieved by multiple ends, if one way is blocked try another.

After the break I cover the panelists responding to Prof. Rodrik.

Veteran of the first nationwide Cyber-Attack

This afternoon Estonian Minister of Defense Jack Aaviksoo gave a Statesman talk at CSIS on "Real Threats of the Imaginary World."  Why Estonia?   

They were taken by surprise on by a cyber-attack on April 21st, 2007.  The minister learned about it when he couldn't get online.  However, the mid-level unofficial network was already to work by then and had already called in specialists from abroad. There second move was to cut off access from some foreign servers.  No formal decision-making to react and its unclear whether the response steps were authorized by existing legislation.  After the initial onslaught the third step to get experts from abroad.  The later waves were on the 4th and 9th of May and Estonia was able to reduce the volume tenfold.

Most of the attacks were against government websites and servers, new portals, two banks then all banks (one at a time), and internet service providers.  The volume raised Estonia internet traffic more than 400 times the normal rate of traffic. This led to some street riots (up to $10M in damage), no access to banking over computers (90% of transactions in Estonia; a few million in damages), and cut off of news. Not just volume but also well coordinated, in a set time, and coordinated with real world demonstrations.  The attacks were carried out via botnet of a million zombified computers (maybe 10% from the U.S.) that were rented in advance from illegal groups.  Renting one costs ten to fifty cents a computer.  Perhaps 1% of any given audience has a zombie computer. 

This happened when Estonia displeased Russia by moving an old statue celebrating the Red Army.  However, they have no solid evidence of the organizer. All they can note is that they were well-organized and coordinated with diplomatic actions by "their big neighbor." There were minimal long term consequences, some of the attacks were neutralized thanks to friends inside and outside of Estonia.  What it did was psychological: Caused confusion, intimidation, cut off information access.  More developed are more vulnerable, but it isn't limited to developed countries.

After the cut, what to do on the defense?

Event Write-Up: Muslim Integration: Challenging Conventional Wisdom in Europe and the United States

[Download the Report]

This discussion covered some differences between American and Europe. It basically went along the lines I thought: American Muslims tend to be better integrated and more prosperous than European Muslims. This can drive radicalism. One difference a questioner pointed out is that Americans might think more of integration in a more pluralistic sense while Europeans may think of it more in a complete assimilation sense. 

That said, this can't entirely be credited to the American model, as Matt Yglesias (not finding the post) has noted the Mexican-American population is more comparable to the Muslim European population in terms of often being brought in on menial labor.  For perhaps a better analogy, one questioner, Michael Werz from Georgetown, made an between second generation radicalization in Europe to African Americans and Islam in 1968 with the Nation of Islam and such. Where the issue was really one of civil rights and affirmative action and not interfaith dialog.  Similarly, the bombers in the UK were from secular families and while radicalized in Europe had little association with local mosques.

Enough context.  Here's some interesting raw data from Ceri Peach, the specifics are often hard to get as governments often don't track religion or even ethnicity.  The Muslim population is about 21 million with a third being 'old Muslim' groups that date back to the Ottoman Empire.  The other 14 million are more tied in to the guest worker phenomenon.  The Muslim population is also younger than Europeans in general.  Not surprisingly, the population is also heterogeneous: by size there's the most Turks (mostly in Germany), secondly North Africans (mostly into France), finally South Asians into the U.K. 

After the break, more from Ceri Peach and some highlights from the other speakers:

The Hutongs are not yet underwater developed [Sun 11-04 Evening]

[More pictures of hutongs, subways, and our excellent dinner]

After getting back from the Great Wall I did some money withdrawing and shopping before we headed off that evening to get Peking Duck. The restaurant was in a hutong, which is a neighborhood with one story buildings and small windy streets. They used to be quite common in Beijing but are steadily being replaced with denser developments. They also don’t tend to have many amenities, so restrooms are often outside of the houses and communal. The PRC’s concept of eminent domain doesn’t have nearly as many protections as in the West, so not surprisingly all the bad things that can happen when your neighborhood gets razed are a bit more common here.

The Peking Duck place was actually quite class even so. I’d never had it properly before. Apparently the routine is to get a crepe, put soy sauce on it via a cucumber slice, get a slice of duck, and then roll them all up and eat the crepe like a mini-burrito. All of this should be done with chopsticks to really do it right. Took a little effort but I could pull it off. The dinner was quite tasty and an excellent note to end the official part of the trip on.

Afterwards Rick and I went to take one last look at Tiananmen Square at night. Unfortunately, while it was just a ten minute walk away the group took a bit too much time touring the hutong the restaurant was located in, so the lights were already out. The square proper was actually fenced off and had the occasional patrolling guard, which is apparently not standard practice. After taking the subway back, I hung out a bit with my fellow travelers and slept my last night in China for this trip.

When Scrabble is outlawed, only outlaws will play scrabble

I actually didn't bother with a lot of the English mistakes.  They're still quite common but in an era of LOLcats I'm not sure they're still all that funny in their own right.  I considered Article 11 to be an exception.  This was from the area near the big Goose Pagoda which was highly touristy but interesting.

[Note: This may be a repost.  I originally published it as a page and not a post, so I'm not sure if anyone actually saw it (nor am I sure what the difference is).]

Great exit from the Great Wall Descent [Sun 11-4]

[More pictures of the second half of the Great Wall walk]

The total distance we walked was just 7-9 km but we took our time looking at the scenery and there were a lot of rough bits, so it took about three hours. There was actual a variety of sources of difficulty that made the wall trek fun:

• Steep stairs, as previously mentioned the stairs are sometimes no wider than my feet.
• Rough bits where the stairs had devolved into basically broken rock or might not have been properly carved in the first place.
• Smooth bits where the whole top of the wall was sheered off. The walk was still rough enough to give some traction, but there weren’t really fortifications on the side to use for support.
• Parts where the wall has given way (typically at former gates or such where there was only an arch and not the full wall base) that you had to traverse by going on a trail.

Anyways, I fairly stupidly did all my planned purchasing from our "helper" in the first half of the trip. This left me in a bit of a foul mood regarding the "helper" in the second half who regularly pointed out what great friends we were and how I could buy a book later. (I ended up buying a bit less than a book, but still). However, the trip was still far too fun for even that to really throw me. Katie showed more wit and wisdom than I did and actually managed to shake off her people for the whole second half.

The final exit was neat. There’s a gorge with a small river that you can pay 10 yuan to cross by a hanging bridge. After that there’s an easy and well-maintained walk down an artificial bit of wall to the tourist trap entrance/exit. We had lunch there and took our group shot. Traversing the wall was actually a fairly expensive journey (40 yuan at the start, 40 yuan for the second half, 10 yuan for the bridge (so $15 or so total) plus stuff I bought). However, it was well worth it particularly because the hike was fun in its own right even before considering the unbeatable views. That said, my favorite of the trip bit was probably still the bike-ride through karst country since that got me more of a feel for modern China.

My China Trip slideshow

2007 China Trip

I’ve thrown one up on Google Web Albums.  It’s about 230 so about 20 minutes at 5 seconds a picture.  I think I may later throw in a few slides to establish location, but I haven’t found a good tool for that yet and am a bit too busy to make them by hand.

Gah! Missed a day

I think my standard practice is just going to be to have a tripple entry day for every day I miss. The fiancee’s brother was around yesterday so we played more Rock Bank.

A few more quick comments:

• The song/set selection interface on the whole is inferior to Guitar Heroes. We were flummoxed by the fact that our band leader was the drummer and couldn’t find a way to play with two guitars and singing. The manual is fairly worthless for this sort of thing. I realize a lot of these issues are introduced by being multiplatform, but that’s no excuse for not providing platform specific stuff in the manual.
• In Rock Band, you can collect energy towards the bonus mode even while in bonus mode. This isn’t true of Guitar Hero. Rock Band’s method is superior.
• While bonus mode (overdrive) multipliers apply to all, each player earns point towards the bonus mode separately. The same applies to the multipliers you earn by not messing up. I think this is a bit superior to Guitar Hero’s coop mode in which all of these are shared. That said, it doesn’t make as big of a difference when you only have two people.
• I got my set lists mixed up in a previous post. Rock Band does have ’Don’t Fear the Reaper’ and more important they have a cow-bell! That is to say, for some songs there’s bits where you can tap the microphone to emulate triangle playing, cow-bells, or the like.

No more Rock Band for me for a few weeks, but I may throw up a full review once I have it in my apartment for a while. My singing could use the solo practice.

Dated Review: God of War (Some plot spoilers)

First, I’m going to include some plot spoilers. It’s an old game, there’s a sequel, this seems like a great excuse to not pussy-foot around.

Finally got around to playing God of War over the past few weeks. Button-Masher action RPGs aren’t really my genre, but the game was still fun. Definitely a lot better than the Lord of the Rings games I tried which had harder to pull off combos, far less cool powers, and not as much enemy variety (at least in the bits I played before I got bored and quit them).

Anyhow, graphics are great for a PS2 game, particularly given short load times. The combat system is fairly enjoyable for an amateur like me and allows for a fair amount of variety. There’s a reasonable mix of challenging enemies with their own special moves. It keeps combat fair exciting and they tend to do a good job of being able to defeat any tactic that involves doing the same thing over and over. Even the skeleton grunts tend to have attacks that often punish you for letting them get behind you.

One particularly neat feature was a rebuilding super-power mode that was nigh guaranteed to get you out of a jam even if you were running low on magic and health. There’s not a horde of magical powers, but the ones they include (medusa stare, circles of lightning, are all pretty sweet). One of my favorite mechanics was regaining health and magic from enemies you killed, that was generally more satisfying than med-kits and such and getting health from walloping on but not defeating a boss nicely rewarded aggression.

Game-play downsides: They offered little mini-games to do various finishing moves. These were optional except for bosses but would give extra health, experience, or magic as a reward. As the end of the game got closer, these were often just too hard for me. I’m not great at rapid button pressing or very quick response when they throw up a symbol, so I just came to avoid these when possible. Also it would be cool if the button sequence wasn’t essentially random. The system worked alright for the one sex mini-game, but that was mostly thrown in for controversy I think, it’s entirely superfluous to the plot.

Main obnoxious bit was the platforming. I didn’t enjoy the beam walking when they were just fall and die beams. When they were rotating spike filled beams they were hellish. This successfully evokes the spirit of Hades, but not in the way you want to. I generally found the jumping puzzles manageable and the regular puzzles pretty good, but please spare me from areas where I"ll continue five times. That said, while the wall climbing and rope hanging bits could be a little slow they were generally fun, particularly when you grabbed skeletons by the feet and tossed them down to knock off other skeletons.

The level design was solid. Aside from the end of Pandora’s temple there was fairly little backtracking and yet you’d often go through the same area from a new vantage point. Good balance there. The main critique I’d have is that there wasn’t quite enough variety. Pandora’s Temple takes up like half-the-game and has some great sub-temples that I think would have stood on their own as separate stages. Athens was good but not to the extent that it really held my interest. Similarly isn’t really that exciting and Hades is warmed over. Similarly the boss fights were frigging amazing but not common enough. There were a total of three if you don’t count Medusa, and given that she plays just like the gorgons that come later, I don’t.

So finally the plot. The story is told well, there’s an appropriate amount of cut scenes, and they do some good setup with payoff often much later. That said, I’m kinda meh. They got the idea that the Greek gods are vicious and petty, so that’s accurate enough. Ares didn’t really interest me, he was too into being evil.

I’m only really being whiny because I just didn’t find Kratos sympathetic. There’s a difference between being a cold S.O.B. and being simply unpleasant. He was actively cruel to anyone that wasn’t a loved one or tool of the gods. The worst part was a puzzle that involved knowingly implementing a human sacrifice while ignoring pleas for mercy. Look, sex mini games, bare breasts, mature themes, lots of violence, fine; when puzzles start demanding killing innocents without offering a work around (a tougher workaround would be just fine) count me out. Finally, Pandora’s Box does not work that way!

So, on the whole, I’ll probably check out the next of the games. My complaints were mostly quibbles, this really is a terrifically done game. But if the suicide that opens a new game ended in success, I wouldn’t have found the outcome full of pathos so much as appropriate.

Quickie Rock Band Review

Through a fairly complex and yet unimportant arrangement with my fiancee's brother (brother-in-engagement?) I'm ending up getting an X-Box 360 in several weeks rather than solidly in January.  As a preliminary bonus, we got Rock Band and played it.  Between the fiancee's dad and the brother-in-engagement's friend, we often had four players, which was a lot of fun.

So a few quick observations:
* The new tour mode is more like actual band touring, multi-song sets, slower progression to new songs, scads of places to play.
* Drumming is hard!  Even on easy you're using the footpedal and all four pads.  Not surprisingly, rhythm is key.  That said it was fun and felt real.
* Singing worked about as expected.
* Crazy free play periods, common for drum, only on some songs for everyone else, rock!
* Lots of options for character equiping, fair range for basic model.  Blows Guitar Hero out of the water there.

More review in December once I've played it more.

Ascending the Great Wall [Sun 11-04 Morning]

[The journey up to the Great Wall and the first half of the hike]

We had quite a journey to the Great Wall. We got up early in the morning, piled into a bus, and rode for around two and a half hours. The point was to get an entry area that would be largely devoid of tourists and it did indeed pay off. There was a bit of a climb to get to even one of the lower points of the wall.

On the way up, we were accompanied by a batch of merchants with a new skill: unrequested assistance in exchange for guilt. Some of our more experienced travelers were able to shake off the help, I wasn’t quite so strong and occasionally didn’t actively refuse assistance and felt obliged to buy a few things. Ultimately, it would have been a better experience had I just said no solidly at the start and stuck by it. Our ’guides’ had some useful information and did make things easier, but I enjoy rock scrambling. Fortunately I did have the willpower to do many bits on my own often having to shake off a helping hand.

The Wall is nothing short of amazing. It’s hard to really grasp the sheer scale of the thing. The great satisfaction of the Great Wall is being able to look forward, sometimes with slight horror, at what you have to climb and then being able to look back at how far you’ve come. It’s a trick a fair number of action RPGs have picked up, to their credit. Anyhow on the first quarter the walk was reasonably smooth, although the stairs were often quite steep and at times no more wider than the width of my feet. The stairs within the towers tended to be particularly bad, although the view from the top was often worth it. In the end, only myself, Katie, and Mick decided to go for the whole walk and rather than heading on to the bus decided to trek all the way to the restaurant where we’d have lunch.

As a side note, in one of these pictures, I helped Mick hold a Union Jack. While I’m an Anglophile, I pledge my allegiance to the U.S. However, the guy’s crazy enough to carry it around with him and he served as a police trainer in Iraq, so I figured as an American the least I could do to show some gratitude is to help him hold his flag.

Climbing to the bottom of the moat [Sat. 11-3 Afternoon-Evening]

[Pictures of Jingshan park, an acrobatics show, and dinner]

As I mentioned in my Forbidden City post, I went to Jingshan park after leaving the Forbidden City. The park is quite large and has a hill made of earth dug up to make the boat and some nearby lakes. There’s a small admittance fee and getting there also demands shooing off bicycle cart drivers. Both Bob and my guidebook strongly recommend against using them, apparently they tend to go places you don’t want to go and then renegotiate the price. When we went for Peking duck on a subsequent night, there was actually an angry group of drivers that briefly followed our taxi. Apparently the driver was treading on their turf.

Anyways, the ascent has stairs and such and isn’t that bad. However, I was feeling a bit sick and tired so I strained a bit. The view from the top is quite good and as my pictures show Beijing is defined by sprawl. The city just spreads out with both dense and low-rise sections. The city does benefit from a good subway system, so it isn’t that hard to get around, but the feel is very different from Hong Kong. There’s also a series of ring roads that reminds me of the attempt to deal with D.C. beltway congestion by just building an additional farther out beltway.

After our misadventures on the taxi ride home I enjoyed some downtime and then went with the group to an acrobatics show. I had a bit of a headache, so I’m fairly glad I didn’t try for the high pitched Beijing opera instead. Anyways the show was quite good, but I didn’t really feel comfortable taking video during it so the footage doesn’t really capture what was going on.

Anyhow, there was a group of girls who seemed to be in their teens and boys who seemed a bit younger and they were all quite good. The main point of note was that they were trying bits that clearly pushed the limits of their abilities. They sometimes didn’t quite make the jump and a half-dozen bowls were kicked up by unicycle riders but not caught on their heads. In an impressive feat of stamina, one acrobat managed to do her full range of contortions while suffering from a nosebleed. Some of the cutesy bits involved the boys who for one act had stagehands dressed as turtles and for another wore about four hats each and then passed them all around. All in all a great show.

Bit of a walk to dinner which was fairly good and had some spice. The bathroom at the place was a good deal less pleasant and made me miss the relative luxury of even cruddy American restaurant bathrooms.

Surprisingly, cheap food is available in the Forbidden City [Sat. 10-3 Midday]

[More pictures of the Forbidden City (like the Forbidden Planet, but smaller)]

The Forbidden City is actually quite the large palace complex. I’d say it has the area of a couple city blocks. The general design, courtyards broken up by large sub-palaces, is fairly repetitive although the art varies some with each section. Interesting, you can tell a building’s importance by the number of little animal guardians it has at the upper corners of the roof. If it’s eleven, than the building was used for the Emperor’s most important functions. It is neat though being able to freely wander, back when this place was in operation for a guy like me to get in I’d have to be a top scholar or artist or give up hope of children.

There’s a lot of paintings on the buildings, statuary, and carved stone. The statuary and some of the giant water buckets used for fire extinguishing were gold coated. Some of that gold was stripped off when the place was raided by European powers back during the Qing Dynasty. The most precious treasures are actually over in Taiwan, although there is a neat clock museum. I didn’t actually see what they did have in the treasure gallery, Mick said it wasn’t that great and it cost extra. And speaking of costs, there was a quite affordable resturant. I got a good lunch and drink for around twenty five yuan (~$4).

Spending only a few hours wasn’t enough to really explore the place, although if we were guided (it was just me, Rick, and Mick) we may have seen a few more highlights. The audio tour was alright but the wifi proximity sensors didn’t always seem to trigger and there was no rewind or fast forward available. Also my guidebook incorrectly promised Roger Moore. The garden at the far end was quite neat and were I to go back I’d definitely take more time to explore it. There was one neat climbing area that apparently the Emperor and a consort would go up once a year to dine at the pagoda at the top. After we left we climbed the hill in Jingshan park, which was created using the soil from the moat. Good quick hike and a nice view from the top.

Capital gathering space showdown! [Sat. 11-3 Morning]

[See more pictures of Tiananmen Square and environs]

After my post noting the downsides of Washington’s National Mall I’ve got to say that Tiananmen Square makes us look good by comparison. The main problem with the Square is Chairman Mao’s mausoleum which is large, ugly, and central. It’s surrounded by communist art that’s not too shabby, except for the one guy who looks like a fascist. Apparently the mausoleum might not be around forever. Mao had specifically requested that he be cremated and I’m told the building destroys the Fung Shui of the square. If you like you can wait a few hours to shuffle by what’s allegedly his corpse, but I passed on that one.

This is actually one of the few places I saw guards with guns. Most everywhere else they were unarmed. Amusingly, I saw one changing of the guard in Xi’an that included a ceremonial walky-talky handover. That said, most of the patrols didn’t have weapons even here. There wasn’t a huge presence on the mall itself although this was the first place I saw marching squads. Instead I’m told they just have a huge surge capacity available within a minute or so.

Surrounding buildings include an old school Victorian architecture station, a national museum that’s presently closed for renovations (I saw trucks driving in and out at night), the Great Hall of the People, and the entrance to the old imperial city. The portrait of Mao was certainly big, but still a bit smaller than I expected. Anyhow, for all DC’s problems, the monuments are prettier, there’s more museums, I prefer earth to stone in a square of this size, and that’s not even counting the whole police state and massacre thing (China in general doesn’t feel like a police state but Tiananmen certainly does). I think the Mall is definitely the better gathering spot of the two.

Taxis 0 Subways 1 [Sat. 11-3 morning]

[Picture of the fare gates that aren’t yet in use.]

[Pictures from the departure from Xi’an and our trip to Beijing]

[Start reposted from last entry]

Evac from Xi’an was a bit hectic because the central train station is overwhelmed and doesn’t have room to expand. After getting through security, higher than usual for US trains but well less than US trains, we had to sit for a bit awaiting boarding. I was fairly miserable due to a cold that only then decided to hit me really hard. When our train arrived we crammed in through the ticket gate and then up and over a pedestrian bridge to our boarding platform.

Incidentally, I carried two backpacks on this trip, a big one of mostly clothes and a smaller school-sized one that had my laptop as well as clothes I couldn’t stuff into the main bag. My big bag could also function as a roller bag and I sometimes used it as such when pavement was available. I did so on this occasion.

It was a mistake, it mean that my hands were tied up and made the stairs going up to the bridge a real pain. As a result of my hands being tied up, my wallet got nicked, I suspect this happened in the crush right before the stairway. Happily, I had heard from Bob that pickpockets would be a problem in Xi’an. As a result, after getting sick of using a money belt, I transferred most everything to my passport satchel bag. Only lost a wallet, less than 100 yuan (~$15), and my Library of Congress reader ID card. I was still a bit sick for the train ride, but we had fun celebrating. Maureen’s birthday and the boxed dinner they offered was pretty good.

Regardless, the train ran a couple hours late. I actually was glad, this cost us some time in Beijing but meant we didn’t have to leave at an early hour. We caught a taxi to our hotel, or as the case may be a similar sounding hotel near by. Bizarrely even having cards with the name of the hotel and maps doesn’t seem to be enough for the taxi drivers. This actually happened again later in the day. I have an instrumental approach to taxis, if I can get within a block or two of a weird destination I try to get out immediately, my traveling companions were trying to get to the exact location, took another fifteen of lost taxi driver to convince them to go with my methods.

By comparison, I only made one or two mistakes on the subways and the signs were always excellent. The subways were actually dirt cheap here, only 2 yuan. They’re installing fare gates, you can see them up. But for now, you just pay to buy a ticket than give it to a gatekeeper. Not that efficient. James Fallows actually has a post with some of the cards that will soon be used. The new system should probably be in place for the Olympics this coming summer. Regardless, moral: subways rock!

[I added a bit more to this entry within a few minutes after first posting it.]

Ringing the Chapel Tower Bell [Fri. 10-2 late afternoon-evening]

[More pictures of the tower, the performance, and the surrounds]

After having been thwarted twice by limited and even inaccurate ticket window hours, I finally made it up the Bell Tower in Xi’an as my last tourist act in the city.  It was well worth it.  There was a traditional performance on the inside including a massive set of chimes that had to be rung with this big wooden rod.  Not surprisingly the bell pictured above was even louder and you could get three rings for a couple of bucks.  Afterwards they recommended putting your hands on it, which was a lot of fun because you could feel the thing vibrate.  There was also a shadow puppet exhibit on the inside and a few bush sized bonzai trees on the outside, all and all a fun place to visit.

[Trimmed bit about the departure from Xi'an so it can go with next entry and the pictures.]

And to end this particular entry on an even happier note, the ringing the chapel bell pun in the title is not entirely inaccurate.  When I got back from China I proposed to my girlfriend who I suppose, much to Gene Weingarten’s dismay, I’ll now refer to as my fiance[e].  The actual pieces of jewelry I gave her I picked up in the Shaanxi museum back on Thursday[, silver and jade, I hope.  Back at work my co-worker pointed out that the Dragon necklace actually fits well with the typical Chinese Dragon-Phoenix wedding theme.  However, she added that the Dragon typically went with the male.  Oh well, who said we went with traditional gender roles (or traditional gendered spellings of fiancee)?]

[Update: Finished the thought.]

Hitting one another with foam swords: The documentary

Sadly I apparently missed the airing of Darkonon the IFC. Well, at least it’s getting attention. It’s a great documentary that I saw like a year and a half ago at the Silver Docs festival.

Here’s Slate’s review:

Founded in 1985, Darkon is one of America’s oldest and largest LARPs, and the showdown between two kingdoms within it, Mordom and Laconia, was captured in the documentary Darkon, a movie so mighty it needed two directors (Andrew Neel and Luke Meyer). The film has its television premiere on the IFC Channel tonight at 9 p.m., where it joins the ranks of movies like Hoop Dreams and Murderball as one of the great documentary dissections of how Americans play....

Darkon has 700 members, fielding up to 150 people at any given battle. "The documentary shows us at the height of our imperialistic pretensions," says Kenyon Wells of his country, Mordom. "We’re dominating the world and reveling a bit in being the imperialistic bad guy. We hadn’t lost a land fight, let alone a war, in 15 years." Mordom attracted the best new players, they had the deepest pockets, and they loved winning.

The movie was fantastic because the story it told was interesting. ’Good’ kingdom versus ’evil’ kingdom. House husband versus an executive. The competing leaders are both hams in different ways and a lot of fun, as are the various other participants that get interviewed. That and there’s the clash of foam sword on foam sword. What else could you want?

The DVD apparently comes out late February. I’ll buy it when that happens and have a showing. But prior to that, or for anyone that isn’t in my area, it’s probably worth checking On Demand if you have it to see if you can watch this thing.

Question to Readers: Anyone know any Darkon players? It’s MD/VA based but bizarrely while I was a fencer and knew a fair number of Society for Creative Anachronism guys I had never heard of this particular game before the movie. Go figure. Not looking to join up, I’ve got other empires I’m worried about, but I’d be interested in stories.

Interested in reading more about traveling in China?

I still have a few entries to go, but let me recommend James Fallows blog over at the Atlantic. If you want to skip the non-China posts, go straight here.

I think he’ll soon be on my blog-roll.

Quite the unique mosque

After heading back from the Terra Cotta Warriors, Rick and I went to visit Xi’an’s great mosque. Not surprisingly it was located within the cramped streets of the Muslim quarter. It took a bit of doing to find, navigating this area reminds me some of Quest for Glory II, large spaces can be hidden within small streets.

Regardless, the mosque itself is quite impressive with elegant gardens. If memory serves the mosque had five sperate courtyards, all in a row, with the main worship area at the far end from the main entrance. There was a worship service ongoing when I visited and side rooms were curtained off while the sound of prayers reverberated from loudspeakers. Overall it was more what I think of as a temple aestetic. A pagoda served as a minaret and so forth. That said, there were the occasional bits of Arabic, more common as I got deeper in, as well as depictions of Mecca and the like.

My timing was good and I arrived at the largest square near the main worship area as the prayers turned into a speech of some sort followed by fairly overpowering chanting. I didn’t get too close to the enclosed worship area since there were signs requesting that visitors not do so. Regardless, the site was definitely well worth the visit. By being a bit more ascetic it kept the beauty of Chinese temple design while toning things down a bit. I rather like the balance. The churches I noticed looked a bit more like western churches. Probably because Islam arrived comparatively early via the Silk Road and I don’t think Christianity made inroads until later.

Bit of good news from Pakistan

Not from Musharraf of course, but it sounds as if the opposition forces are finally joining up:

"Pakistan and Musharraf cannot coexist. He must go. My dialogue with him is over," [former prime minister Benazir Bhutto] told a cable TV channel. She said that once the seven-day detention order against her expires, she intends "to build a broad-based alliance with a one-point agenda for the restoration of democracy and the rule of law." Sources said intermediaries had arranged phone conversations involving her, [former prime minister] Sharif, Khan and Qazi Hussain Ahmed, head of the Jamaat-e-Islami religious party.

...A spokesman for Sharif said that he was "very happy" about Bhutto’s comments and that they "vindicated our position that all democratic forces must put aside their differences." The "new twist of martial law" may end up being the impetus for "a new start, and a new movement to restore democracy," the spokesman, Ehsan Iqbal, said by cellphone from an undisclosed location in Pakistan.

Sharif was actually the one in charge when Musharraf launched his original coup. Despite that, the U.S. has mostly worked with Bhutto in an attempt to work out a power sharing deal that would have avoided this crisis. So far we’ve been weakly critical of the emergency rule. There’s efforts in Congress to cut-off military (if not other) aid until this situation is resolved, I tend to think that’s a good idea. That said, the U.S. only has so much voice in this.

Anyways, I don’t know how this is going to go down, but no good result would be possible without the opposition first unifying. Since the U.S.’s preferred deal is now off the table, hopefully we’ll move more firmly into the pro-democracy camp.

[Linking] up to China pictures

I’ve started throwing in links to the photosets for past travel blog entries.  I’ve done a few early ones and have linked to all the sets for Xi’an.  [They’ll be in the start in brackets]

Go here to see all the albums for my China trip.  I’ll throw new sets into the collection as I put more up.  They are still grouped by blog entry to keep it to a manageable number of pictures at a time.  I’m presently working to get it down to my 100 best photos, but that’s taking a little longer than I hoped.  Check in early next week, hopefully, to see that.

The Terra-Cotta Warriors: The World's Largest Jigsaw Puzzle [Fri. 11-2 Morning]

[Here there be more Terra-Cotta Warrior photos (hopefully)]

The Terra-Cotta warriors are about an hour out of Xi’an and adjacent to the tomb of the Emperor of Qin.  He was the first one to unify China, quite the tyrant he put his people to work constructing thousands of terra-cotta warriors and the earliest version of the Great Wall.   The terra-cotta warriors were to be his army in the afterlife, which is better than having people killed in order to accompany you I suppose.  After his death his dynasty fell apart and a rebel general attacked the underground chambers housing them, stole their weapons, and burned the place.

Thus, the warriors were found in pieces.  Hence Doris’s comment that this was the world’s largest jigsaw puzzle.  Apparently for centuries when peasants found them they figured they were parts of evil spirits and hung and smashed them like a pinata.  A few decades ago, a local well digger had a better idea and reported his finding to the authorities and has been making his money selling and signing books ever since (he was there when I visited but he doesn’t like having his photo taken because of the flash).

They’ve reconstructed whole columns of the warriors, although many are still buried in part to preserve the original paint job.  The picture above is of the reconstruction area, which had figures that made me think of terra-cotta zombies-- arms were missing and their mid sections often had sizable chunks gone.  Still, they made for a quite impressive sight.  There wasn’t as much variation of expression as there was in the figures in the Shaanxi History museum, but the warriors are still quite distinctive.  They also have horses, but they’re for chariot pulling and not riding.

Sadly, the second dig site was under renovation so we skipped to the third.  It was much smaller, the first is literally in an aircraft hanger, the third site could fit within the basement of a good-sized house.  That said, the third site did have a slightly better view on the broken pieces of the warriors.  Finally there was a museum with two half-scale bronze carriages that would apparently transport the Emperor around the afterlife.  I’m not sure the way afterlife scaling works, but practically speaking it seems the more precious the material the smaller the model can be,

Xi’an needs a subway [Thur. 11-1 Evening]

[Pagodas, a Temple, and the Kitchen of Looove]

After hitting the Shaanxi history museum I split with the group to go on a whirlwind tour of Xi’an’s pagodas and temples.  The cold I caught on the boat felt particularly terrible the next day, suggesting that for a longer trip I should probably pace myself better.  Xi’an lacks a subway so my locomotion was by cab since I didn’t have a proper bus map and was in a hurry.  The cabs were pretty cheap, typically between $1 to $2 US.  That said, I was twice turned down by drivers who apparently thought my comparatively short hops weren’t worth their time.

The two pagodas, the Big Wild Goose and Little Wild Goose, weren’t that exciting as they were both made of brick.  The Little Goose Pagoda was a bit more interesting because the top had been damaged by lightning and was still quite irregular.  Obnoxiously, there were separate admission charges to enter and climb both pagodas.  I only saw the Big Goose from the ground and saw the Little Goose from outside the gates due to a 50 yuan charge.  (That charge apparently included a new museum, there may have been a way to avoid paying it but I didn’t see it).

My last stop to the Baxian Temple of the Eight Immortals, which unlike hte Pagodas was predominantly Taoist.  However, like the Small Goose Pagoda, I didn’t get by the gates .  For whatever reason, the temple proper was closed, although there was a neat set of vendors on the pedestrian street leading up to it, on the whole I was reminded of the activity around Shinto shrines in Japan.  I then walked back through a poorer neighborhood.  There were a fair number of school children happy to say hi and a blessed absence of vendors. 

The one thing I really noted is that everything seems to get reused in China.  There were guys, often in fatigue jackets, stripping the building material from demolished housing.  I don’t think the fatigue guys were active military, may have been vets or it could just be a fashion statement.  I also saw a kid carrying away coach stuff and later saw the coach lying on the sidewalk that it had been stripped from.

After walking back to Xi’an’s central city and noting what looked like painting day-laborers, I caught a taxi to the hotel and eventually rejoined the group.  We had a great dinner to celebrate Doris’s birthday (thanks Jacob for picking up the tab) at the rather class Love Kitchen.  Good food, Bob says the spice was tuned down a bit, an 8 not a 10, but it certainly hot enough for me.

No Country for Old Batman Rogues

From Salon’s review (emphasis mine):

Bardem’s character has an outlandishly made-up-sounding name, Anton Chigurh (Gesundheit!), but he stomps through the movie like a nameless ghost. He also wears one of the most absurd haircuts ever committed to film, a kind of Prince Valiant bob, minus the fringe. And he’s a nasty piece of work, all right: He kills ruthlessly and thoughtlessly, loading bullets into people’s heads seemingly just for kicks. Existentialist to the max, he tosses a coin to determine whether or not he’ll spare the life of the owner of a small convenience store.

I’d be much more inclined to see this movie if they acknowledged they were ripping off Two-Face. That particular detail has made every review I’ve seen, although none of the reviews I’ve read mentioned the repeat. That’s actually something I miss about Roger Ebert, he’d tend to note such rip-offs and praised Office Space when it acknowledged stealing an idea form Superman 3. Not that he really knows comics or anything, but Two-Face has been a major antagonist in a modern Batman movie.

This forest of stones is a library [Thur. 11-1 Midday]

[More pictures from the Beilin museum and the Shaanxi History Museum]

After finishing our bike ride and navigating by foot Xi’an’s treacherous traffic circles, we walked through the Shuyuanmen art street to the Beilin Museum.  The museum has the standard temple look but the contents are more interesting to me than the collection of pots and bronze-works.  Instead, this museum held giant stone slabs with scores of characters on them.  Think the ten commandments only bigger.  Included among them was one etched landscape that I subsequently bought in rubbing form.  I really have to say, as means of preserving your words go, carving them in stone really does the job.

Next stop was the Shaanxi History Museum.  Named after the province it covered the areas history from the earliest dynasties through Xi’an’s time as the capital of China on to the final Qing dynasty.  The pieces were interesting and well presented.  I thought the coins with holes were particularly neat.  One attendent told me that in times of inflation they were further broken up into a smaller coin with a hole and a larger ring coin.  Also of interest was a giant soduko style board where each line added to 111, apparently a way of warding ghosts.  Also I thought many of the figures had funny expressions.

The main thing I learned is that what I thought of as a Ming vase was really a Qing vase.  The blue and white vases with highly complex patterns are probably Qing, which makes sense as they were more recent and thus had more technology available.  There weren’t even any blue and white Ming pieces in the museum at all, although I did later see a couple in the Summer Palace.  They were still quite pretty and reasonably complex with drawings of dragons and such.  However, unless I was the only one confused by this, the popular image of Ming vases is totally wrong.b

What could match bicycling through karsts? [Thur. 11-2 Morning]

[Pictures form biking around Xi'an's walls]

We got up early to hit Xi’an’s city wall.  The enclosed central city is 4 kilometers by 3 making the perimeter a 12 k which is just about right for a nice picture rich bike ride.  The rental place was actually on the wall itself, which makes sense as who wants to take a bike up the steps?  The wall is rather well maintained, although there’s a fair number of broken bricks, particularly near the end.

The gate houses were massive, each with their own courtyard.  Not surprisingly, many tunnels have been added to access to the city core for modern traffic.  The main cardinal roads go by the gate houses although there are also other points where traffic is allowed to pass.  Along the wall there are fairly regular smaller guard houses although they aren’t at every single interval.  I’m not sure if they used to be there or if they weren’t always deemed necessary.  The guard houses in each of the four corners were a bit bigger, although at least one was missing.

Beyond the fun of riding on a city wall, there were some neat sights.  Pagoda style buildings, particularly on rooftops, were fairly common.  If you wanted to make a live-action Chinese version of Gargoyles, finding a setting wouldn’t be the hard part.  Seeing one building under construction was both interesting and a bit disillusioning.  The whole of the pagoda style, including the supporting beams, appears to be done using painted concrete.  Oh well, still looks neat and a definite step up from the drab communist architecture of many areas. 

On the outside, there’s a neat park and a still maintained moat.  Lots of people doing tai chi and the occasional musical group practicing.  Finally, we got to see one temple from above.  The obstruction between the entrance and the first courtyard is apparently a ’spirit wall’ meant to keep evil spirits, who apparently can’t turn corners, from entering.  My first flippant guest was that it was to make sure sightseers would enter and pay.

Explanatory addendum on ENDA

So I heard from Nic that the second paragraph of my ENDA post was fairly unclear. So here’s a quick clarification:

I think I’ve got a middling read on the politics. ENDA with the transgendered probably won’t pass this year and I’m guessing Rep. Frank doesn’t think he has the votes right after the ’08 election either. In the longer term, they probably can get it but that would mean putting off the protections for an indeterminate amount of time. I think it will be a bit easier to get the transgendered in once its demonstrated that ENDA for sexuality isn’t so scary, but at the same time there won’t be quite as much drive as the group to be protected will shrink substantially. So, from what I know, its basically a wash.

As for the personal part, I meant self-interest. I don’t have any skin in this particular game. Thus since I don’t see the politics clearly coming down one way or another, I defer to those with in the affected communities to work it out amongst themselves.

Hope that was a bit more clear.

Quick note of celebration on ENDA

The Employment Non-Discrimination act, which protects against firing on the basis of sexuality, passed the House. Whoo! As is well known to anyone following this issue, there was a rather divisive fight over whether transgendered individuals would also be covered. Rep. Barney Frank, the measure’s sponsor, ended up excluding them because he didn’t think he could get enough votes were it included. The bill is likely to be vetoed if it gets by the Senate, although it would be a meaningful symbolic victory as if a Dem wins in ’08 he or she would likely sign it.

As for the inclusion of the transgendered, this is one of the issues I tend to stay out of because I think the political calculus is best left to members of the relevant communities. There’s both political and personal considerations here and the two can’t really be seperated. I can evaluate the political circumstances but my grasp of the personal calculus is a lot weaker. If I were in Congress I’d probably have a meeting with my relevant constituents on which stance to take. Be that as it may, the more limited bill ultimately won out and as the winner of that particular debate I’m glad it passed.

Happiest I've ever been to see a Starbucks [Wed. 10-31 Afternoon]

[Pictures from my arrival in Xi'an]

Arriving in Xi’an we had an hour ride from the airport. On the way we saw some mounds that held various tombs, big ones for emperors, fairly small ones for other top officials. Xi’an’s got a population of a bout 8 million and the core of the city, about 12 sq kms, is within an old city wall. It had been the capital back during the Tang dynasty and earlier and also the end of the Silk Road.

Much of the city is on a gird pattern with the cardinal directions each getting a eponymous street. The origin of the Chinese word for shopping transliterates as East-West and refers to going to the city’s East and West markets. There’s a beautiful bell tower in the city center and a large Muslim quarter adjacent to it. After hitting the Starbucks, finally getting net access (I also had a brief spell at the airport), and wandering a bit, we went as a group to the Muslim quarter. There was a neat range of shops and we had dinner at a kabob and bread place. It was quite tasty and cheap, although they definitely overdid the seasonings.

A transfer through the world's biggest city [10/30-31 Rest of Tues. to Early Wed.]

[Picture from earlier in the day than Chongqing, but I thought it looked cool]

[Rest of the pictures, including some rainy Chongqing and some more on the river]

The rest of the boat trip was fairly uneventful. There was a lot of shipbuilding and bridge construction along the shore. Massive new towns have sprung up filled with those relocated by the dam. That evening there was a cabaret with alternating crew and passenger acts. Our group took a pass, most of the other groups may have been well advised to do the same, although I did like the Germans’ two songs. The crew dances tended to have bad audio but the costumes and dances themselves were rather good.

We disembarked at Chongqing, which counting surrounding areas has a population of 33 million. It had been the wartime capital during WWII because it was far more defensible Come 1997 it was granted municipality status and given special benefits and has grown rapidly since then. Our local guide pointed out that there were few bicycles because the town was so hilly. It was rainy and misty this morning, which is apparently the standard whether due to the convergence of two rivers and the surrounding mountains.

The airport was quite new and sleek. It also felt comparatively empty, even by Western standards. Near as I can tell it is mostly used by tourists and the rich. Our flight to Xi’an was full so they’re doing good business, but they’re far from capacity and aren’t presently oriented to mass-use. There was a fair amount of leg space on the plane, which was both nice and surprising. Lunch was odd, white bread sandwiches with lettuce, ham, and possibly mayo. The crusts were removed as often happens in China. Felt like a mistranslated Western meal.

Fengdu [Tues. 10-30, Morning]

[See more of my Fengdu pictures; there's ghosts and demons!]

Under Taoism, everyone comes to Fengdu after they die, tourists just get to come here a bit earlier. The multi-temple compound is up about 400 steps, you can also do a chair lift but Grim Fandango firmly warned me against taking shortcuts when it comes to the afterlife. The journey was doubtless once much longer, but along with the old city the original approach is now underwater. The new city is visible across the river.

There’s a lot of neat statues, temples, and legends. There’s three tests for determining if you’re a good soul. First there’s a slippery bridge to cross, bonus if you can do it in nine steps. The nine steps was actually a little tricky for me because it meant tiny steps at the end which made it harder to balance. Supposedly if you cross holding your spouses hand it means you want to be together in the next life. The next test is just crossing a high threshold without touching it.

The final one is hard and involves standing on one foot on a small round stone for three seconds. I could do it for a count of three but I’m not sure I counted slowly enough and I certainly wasn’t looking up at the characters of virtues whiles I did it. That was the one test where I intentionally eschewed using my left foot, as I was supposed to as a male. I suppose it shows that without male privilege I can’t make the grade. Alternately that I’m too held down by earthly possessions, namely my laptop bag.

Finally, on the way back you can choose the silver bridge for long life or the gold one for wealth. Long-life all the way. Initially most of the other tourists seemed to be making the same call, although I’ll note that the temple to prosperity had a lot more offering candles burning than the temple of health.

The scenery is 'now underwater' [Mon. 10-29 Afternoon and Evening]

[See pictures of the scenery that isn't underwater]

Qutang Gorge is the shorted of the gorges at only eight kilometers and is also said to be the most beautiful. I tend to disagree, that may well have been true pre-2003, but as is much of the grandeur of the gorge has been reduced in proportion with the amelioration of the danger of the travel.

Originally it was highly unsafe and only allowed one boat through at a time. One tenth of all boats going through were supposedly lost with another tenth damaged. There were signal houses to control traffic in addition to forts that were there to defend the gorge, most recently against the potential threat of further Japanese incursion. There used to be a hanging timber pathway that’s now underwater and famous writing on the wall that has been reproduced well above the water. The gorge ends in a ‘gateway’ with tall cliffs on both sides. That gateway is pictured on the back of the 10 yuan note.

The city afterwards was interesting and had a few more historical buildings including an old elevated elaborate path that would soon be at river-level. That night there were a few other shots of interest on the river and a fairly lame party in the evening that only had a single CD of dance songs.

[Sidenote, the entry was posted before accidentally appended to the Meeting the Goddess entry. No picture with the first post and I added the bit about the 10 yuan. I also backdated it to get the order right.]

Meeting the Goddess [Mon. 10-29 Midday]

[More pictures of Gorges and a Goddess (zooming in might help)]

After we got back to the ferry and then the boat, we were going through our second gorge. In addition to limestone formations, both these peaks and those in Shennong spring are known for their clouds. It was raining off and on in the morning, so clouds were in abundance and they stayed around for the rest of the afternoon.

The most famous of the sites in Wu Gorge is the Goddess, a standing-stone on a peak that looks over a fork in the river. On many days she’s shy and surrounded by clouds, but today, surprisingly, she was in clear view. According to legend she’d slain a dragon that had caused typhoons and then stuck around to safeguard travelers.

Back in the states

I'll have some more travel posts up soon, but I'm back (and at work, hence no posts yet).

To pad out this entry, I'll note that while looking through old blog posts, I saw that Guitar Hero 3's setlist is posted.  Of note, they've got "Don't Fear the Reaper."  It's a shame that Rock Band didn't get to license that one, or we could look forward to a cow-bell accessory.

Up the river in a pepod boat [Mon. 10-29 Morning]

[More pictures from Shennong not really a stream anymore]

We switched to a smaller boat to ride up Shennong Stream.  The area is known for its hanging coffins, which were put in caves in the cliff back before written history so nobody knows how they did it.  They’ve almost all been taken down now and put in museums or the like, although they did recreate one.  Originally the ferry we used could only have made it a short distance up the stream, but with the higher water it could go another twenty minutes.

As the gorge closed up we switched to ‘peapod’ boats, which are about the side of sampans.  They had a captain in front and in back with rudders and poles.  In the front there were another four oarman.  We had a good pace and there were an amazing number of caves and ‘stalactites’ that were really just hanging rocks leftover when the rest of the limestone around them was eaten away.

We finally turned around at the end and saw a brief demonstration of seeing the boats hauled by ropes pulled by the four oarsman.  The water high up in the stream is shallow enough that they have to portage.  They’re fairly famous for having done in naked with special sandals, as they didn’t have non-chafing clothing.  In our case, they just hauled to turn our boat around, which was obviously just for show but still neat.  On the way back down, our guide sang a few songs of the traditional Tejid ethnic group.  She was a member of it and hadn’t been good enough at math to be the child sent to high school, but had gotten support from her parents to go learn English.  She was an excellent singer and I bought a recording of the traditional songs.

Homeward bound

I'm catching a taxi in fifteen minutes or so to bring me to the airport. I'll have about three hours to spare there. If I get wifi I'll queue up some more posts, otherwise there may be a bit of a gap after the next one. I'll keep them up after I get home and settled.

One-Child Policy [Sun. 10-28 Evening]

[No pictures for this one]

Bob discussed China’s one-child policy at dinner and as little else of interest happened that evening (I fell asleep early), I thought that may be of interest to some readers. I’d been under the mistaken impression that it was being largely lifted, that’s not accurate, instead it’s just being relaxed. There were already exceptions, ethnic minorities were allowed a second child and farmers who had a girl were similarly allowed to try again, once, for a boy. Enforcement varies, for example our guide the next morning mentioned that she had two siblings of varying ages, perhaps by stacking the rules for farmers and ethnic minorities. 

The main form of loosening is that, to reward law-abiding parents for their sacrifice, when two only children marry they are allowed a second child. However, many won’t as there are more urban Chinese and having only children is now a larger part of the culture. For those that marry foreigners, the policy can be skirted by not giving one of the children Chinese citizenship, but that causes a host of complications when living on the mainland and means the government has less responsibility to them.

The means of enforcement was originally a giving several people, typically women, in each village responsibility for monitoring childbearing. It sounds like it now is done more by doctors. From menstruation to menopause, checkups each three months can fairly easily find signs of pregnancy. Similarly, birth control particularly **EUDs (sp?)**, is actively pushed. Married couples are required to seek permission before having kids. Having a child before 25, having a child when not married, or of course having multiple children can result in shaming, loss of government job, or fines. In more extreme cases, there have been forced abortions or sterilizations. The old fees of several thousand yuan are becoming weak deterrents because of inflation, but new fees are based on the child’s total cost to the government and allow for more punitive flexibility.

Opening the Gates of the Three Gorges [Sunday Afternoon]

[See more pictures of the locks]

Going from a height of 70 meters above sea-level to 155 meters, let alone 170 meters in short order is not a simple task for a boat. They’re presently working on an elevator that can in about a half hour raise a 30k ton boat. However, that won’t be completed for a few years and our boat is too large regardless. The more conventional system method is a lock, in fact a series of five interconnected locks although only four are needed at present water level. 

The doors to these locks are like something out of fantasy, protecting a stronghold of giants or perhaps containing a full-sized dragon. The locks can handle a full ocean-going 100k ton ship and can handle two ships of our type abreast. The first lock was full of ships when we approached, so there was a half-hour plus wait until we headed in. After that, the whole process of getting up the four gets took a few hours.

The pictures at the end, showing both the fourth and fifth lock open at the same time, will in a few years no longer be possible. The dam inspires a sort of twisted parlor game, ‘guess what will be underwater next?’ It’s quite easy to play as there are fairly regular markings. That said, most all of the flooded or likely to be flooded buildings have been demolished to allow reuse was their building materials. As a result, you’d only occasional see doomed structures.

Three Gorges but Dozens of Dam Photos [Sun. 10-28 Morning]

[Pictures of the Three Gorges Dam and environs]

The ship we’re riding on has four stories for passengers, a rooftop viewing area, and at least one level below decks for the crew.There’s a nice central lobby two stories tall, a third floor with artists plying their trade, and a fourth floor bar and viewing area.Rather perversely, the chairs all face inward in the bar, although they can be moved and there are ample full length windows at least.The weather has turned cold and rainy, so I’m often in the bar’s viewing area when the sights aren’t quite good enough to draw me into the damp.

Our first event was seeing the Three Gorges Dam (in Xiling Gorge).Officially it displaced 1.3 million, their houses were moved, they went to live with relatives, or they were relocated to Shanghai or the like.Unofficially, according to Bob, it was closer to five million and not surprisingly according to Jacob and common sense not everyone is as happy about being relocated as the guides claim.That said, the area has at least had a real inflow of cash, transportation infrastructure, and electricity.

The dam is not curved because the Yangtze is wide enough to make the pressure manageable.The water behind the dam is still not at full height.The river started around 70 meters above sea-level and it’s around 155 now, and it will be 175 in the end.The scale is quite impressive although the visuals aren’t quite good enough to be awe inspiring.That said, the local tourist sites play it up fairly effectively.The area is under military guard but security is a joke, just pass through a metal detector, which beeps, and then a wand sweep, which also beeps.It may be able to notice truly concentrated metal or shifty-looking people, but by and large seems pointless, particularly since you can just leave something on the bus.

The true terrible power of the dam is the change in water level, but not having been here prior to its construction, I can’t really tell what’s changed.All I can see is some of what’s left to be submerged and to try to process what things used to be liked based on what the guides tell us.

Trains, Busses, and Boats [Sat. 10-28]

[Pictures of the journey from Wuhan to Yichang]

We had a four hour or so ride to the boat dock. Interestingly, while Wuhan isn’t really a tourist city it had more temples and what is often thought of as traditional Chinese architecture. We stopped by a supermarket that included a trip through a department type store that had a wide range of separate businesses in close quarters. The supermarket itself wasn’t that different than a standard large-scale Western one although the seafood selection was broader than I’m used to seeing.

The farms we were driving by generally seemed a bit larger. The land was more like northern Illinois, relatively flat with a lot of arable territory. Similarly there were more houses, so I think this land was probably richer.

We got to the boat in Yichang, which involved walking through a floating dock and another boat. The dinner was available on the boat at 120 yuan (~17 dollars) versus the standard 30 yuan meal. We immediately rejected that idea and walked up the fairly long path from the main road. The restaurant we picked was actually operated out of an outdoor cart. We had a standard buffet meal, much of it seemed fairly mediocre to me, but that’s not surprising for the first place available in a neighborhood that didn’t seem particularly great. That said, the vegetables were alright and the fried potato strips were terrific and quite new to me.

Train to Wuhan, Sometimes efficiency trumps amenities [10-26/7 Friday night through Saturday morning]

[Pictures surrounding scenery and a few of the train]

After Ping An village we had a bus ride on the treacherous roads back to Guilin and grabbed a train up to the conglomerate city of Wuhan. Dinner was at a nearby restaurant where we ordered off pictures with at least a third of the entrees unavailable. This was a non-tourist train with less amenities, but perversely it was more comfortable in some ways. By dropping the room-hallway divider they made things less private but also less claustrophobic. There was also a nice ladder that allowed access to the higher beds with minimal difficulty or disruption.

I think Amtrak might be well served by offering a sleeper service something like this. Bob said that they’d have to drop the hallway seats as they offer far too little privacy. Similarly the rooms might have to be dropped to two double-decker beds (I got a picture of one of them) or a triple in a room with more amenities a la  Scandinavia. I think that the capacity would be substantially more than Amtrak sleepers, substantially more comfortable, and at least as private as sleeping in coach.

Arriving at  Wuhan, we saw the one of the few outright slums I’ve seen. There was also a factory that was an obvious source of much of the haze in that area, the vegetation was coated with grey. Interestingly, that approach was also the first place I’d scene rooftop solar panels. They have a standard triangular setup with the panels on one-side and then held up at the best available angle. Some buildings would have three or four. I haven’t seen any of the ones that rest directly on the roof like is common in the West. There was also another factory painted pink which actually did make it much cheerier. The station at Wuhan was quite large and under construction.

Not all that wander are lost, yet [Fri. 10-26 Late Midday]

[Could you find your way through the pictures of this village?]

I then went and wandered a bit.  Our seems like one of the older sections of the village, although the guesthouse is new.  Other areas had regular construction and little shops, often in briefly dormant construction sites.  The entire village seems to be booming as a result of the relatively new road.  My apparently outdated 2007 guidebook warned that you should be sure to bring up everything you need because there’d only be two stores available.  That’s off by at least one order of magnitude now.

After making a small purchase and seeing Mick and Katie I headed off on my own as they were getting sucked into picture purchasing.  Should only be a five minute walk and I had an extra fifteen minutes to spare.  After about five minutes I realized I was lost.  I increased my pace and tried to find landmarks, such as red lanterns opposite a building hanging corn, only to discover that those particular accessories were everywhere. 

Aside from the balcony, I couldn’t figure out a single feature of my inn that made it different from any other area.  I knew the rough part of town my inn was in but that proved insufficient as I managed to just cross by the same area repeatedly.  Five minutes before we had to leave, ten minutes after I was suppose to be there, I finally discovered the spot.  Managed to fall on my face on the stairs on the way out.

I still think the town is beautiful, but I think it suffers to a degree from strict fidelity to traditional building methods.  There’s a lovely variety of elevations, streams, and the like.  Chickens and ducks wander the streets.  But the basic patterns are repeated again and again and aside from some old buildings and the primary school there’s very few landmarks.  Most of that is just a result of rapid growth, but I missed the variety that white-wash, paint, and the like added to the traditional buildings on the road here.  Hopefully with time the variety will return to the town.

I drive a poor bargain [Fri. 10-26 Early Midday]

[More of the Yao along with some pictures I didn't have to pay for]

The walk back was the first time I saw much of the village.  Navigating was fairly tricky, but we found a nice woman that guided us all the way thanks to the hotel direction card.  After the walk we had a good lunch, I got chicken curry with rice if memory serves.  Dessert was birthday-cake to celebrate Meloney’s birthday.

Afterwards I tried to log-on to the net to update you, my dear readers.  Unfortunately, while it had worked earlier for Bob, it wouldn’t work for me.  I might have been able to figure it out if I was at controls rather than the innkeeper, but I’m hesitant to fiddle with a computer in a foreign language.

So, with that out of the way, I had forty-five minutes or so to wander the town.  When I left, there was another three Yao women who offered to lower their hair for five yuan each.  I offered ten yuan for the three and they agreed, only to walk me up a bit, I initially attributed this to wanting a better location for a shot, except that the spot they picked wasn’t particularly picturesque.  Soon, another Yao appeared and the rest informed me that this upped the price to 20.  This was consistent with the walk earlier, they consistently demanded pay for all-or-none.  This kind of labor collaboration wasn’t with women climbing the karsts, one woman to one hiker, with poaching on one another’s hikers strictly forbidden.  Anyways, I sucked it up and paid the Yao women a bit of extra, only to not get change.  Moreover, the group pictures they took were terrible, although they got better the second time.

Hiking the Dragon Scales and fleeing Yao merchants [Fri. 10-26 Morning]

[More shots of terraces and the village from a distance]

I woke up, mercifully lacking any signs of a hangover, and after a quick breakfast we went on a walk.  Our objectives were viewing points to admire the village of Ping An and the surrounding terraces.  The scenery was quite beautiful, despite the haze that was only partially formed by mountain mists.  These farming terraces, called Dragon Scales due a resemblance resulting from to their combination of curves and sharp edges, allow the locals to use arable land that would otherwise be denies.  As later pictures will show, the use of terracing is not uncommon in China, but rarely is it more pronounced than in this area.  I later learned that the government encouraged terracing for a time along the Yangtze and in other areas, but it subsequently backed off in an attempt to minimize the resulting erosion,

The mountainous trail was fairly demanding, but it couldn’t match the women of the Yao ethnic group that met us on the trail and followed along.  They offered to unfurl their legendarily long-hair and let us take pictures for 5 yuan a person.  For those not excited by hair, they also offered an assortment of craft goods.  In olden days, their hair went down to their ankles.  In more recent time, many use hair extensions, but their hair still does reach their waist.  Normally they keep it bundled atop their head which makes it less likely to get in the way or offer free views to tourists. 

At this point, I managed to keep firm hold of my wallet, although poor Rick was swarmed.  I feel we were fortunate to see him again after that.  To be clear, I have no objection to paying for some things.  We all contributed a fair amount to the Zhuang show with no regrets.  That said, I don’t like to be hounded.

Beyond the terraces and our Yao escorts, there are a few points of note.  First, there were a few gravesites along the way.  In order to preserve arable land Mao had ordered an ended to burials mandating cremation in their stead.  To reinforce this, he promised that senior party leadership would be cremated (he wasn’t, although I suppose in fairness he wasn’t buried either) and that any who were buried in violation of the edict would be exhumed, which was viewed as a great dishonor.  This particularly edict was largely successful, so you’ll see burial markers and the like but rather few cemeteries with gravesites.  There was a cemetery back with my Hong Kong pictures, but obviously until recently that city wasn’t under Chinese communist control.

On a less authoritarian note, the other point of interest is irrigation.  Despite the height, the local farmers manage to keep the terraces quite irrigated.  Ditches and pipes (often made of bamboo) abounded.  Most of the water came from streams from higher mountains, but for the very top terraces the water could be hauled up by hand.  Bob said that typically vegetables, which demand less water, would reside in the highest terraces, although that wasn’t the case here.

Part of us choose to extend the walk to a second viewpoint which had multiple shops and was easily accessible via a road from the village with, you guessed it, yet more shops.  I bought a few multi-postcard sets about a dollar each.  The one new form of commerce was comely local women in elaborate traditional costumes who would take a picture with you and even download and print it in a laminated case immediately.  We got a group shot, which I’ll have to scan later.  For now, I just have pictures of Mick alone with the women.  There were yet more on the way down, but the group at the top had most complete operation.  Later on, I’ve seen more photo-printing and CD burning services, which can doubtless be quite useful for those people who don’t feel like hauling a laptop around.

The Zhuang have the best drinking games [Thur. 10-25 evening]

[Shots of dancing and drinking (much better than drinking and driving)]

After a quick walk to see more of Ping An we had quite a tasty sharing dinner including some bizarrely good French fries among more traditionally Chinese cuisine.  Dessert was rather tasty, bananas in dough.  Following the meal was a folk show put on by members of the Zhuang ethnic group.  As a warm-up, they sung a welcome and poured a rice wine with floating ginger for each of us.  The wine was delicious, which was quite a good thing, as I had a lot of it.

Each of the singers would pick someone to sing to and would refill our cup and then encourage us to drink as they sang.  For those of us who picked the front row, this kept up each time we finished the wine or would happen if we were nursing a drink too slowly.  There was only one way to respond, by singing back once they were done and forcing them to drink in turn.  (Bob had told us of this before hand, but it makes sense really.)  Mick sung the first response and soon enough I followed up with a verse of ‘Old Man River,’ one of the few songs my girlfriend thinks I sing well.  My dancer replied with another song and I replied with a verse of ‘America the Beautiful.’  This rather amused the rest of the troupe and they had us link elbows and drink from the cups held in the linked arms.

This went on for a bit and was a great way to start the evening.  Afterwards, it was our turn to sing a response and we did a bit of ‘Yellow Submarine,’ ‘The Grand Old Duke of York,’ ‘Summertime,’ and a bit of ‘American Pie’ which is apparently known throughout the English-speaking world. 

A series of dances followed, sometimes with accompaniment by drums and the like.  My favorite involved each of them holding a rod, made of bamboo strips I think, and rhythmically hitting one another’s rod.  Not long after, that was followed by a game with a blindfolded dancer in the middle and the rest of us in a rotating circle singing a fairly simple Chinese tune.  The first dancer was one of them, she tagged Mick who was then in the middle and had to find his way out.  He ended up with the Doris, the wife of  Jacob (and not Mick).  The two subsequently had to share drinks in the way I had.  Both sets of drinks were met with engagement jokes (jokes, I swear), although only the one between two of our group went on to become a running gag.

Later dances involved forming a tunnel of arches in pairs (and with us) and then having to travel under it, another involved them donning masks and grass skirts.   The most energetic dance for us involved bamboo poles laid on the ground and then rapidly moving back and forth.  The one dancer at a time navigated them with ease, although when paired with one of us more mistakes were made.  Particularly by me, my feet are large and I’ve never been particularly agile.

All-in-all a terrific night.  Afterwards, Bob told us that Mao had made folk dancing and music illegal on pain of death, with the only exceptions being a few patriotic numbers of his own design.  Even now, these groups are rediscovering and reinventing their traditions.  If the enthusiasm of the group and one young girl that accompanied, they should have a vibrant future.  [Fairly ironically, today I saw a store labeled ‘Mr. Mao’s Folk Instruments,’ I suspect that was a bit of unintentional irony.  I’ve thrown that photo in with this lot.]  Afterwards there was a bit more drinking and some political discussion, making it a nigh perfect night in my view.

Henching ain’t easy [Thur. 10-25 late afternoon]

[View our epic journey up the mountain!]

When the bus drops you, you’re still a good uphill walk from Ping An village.  There are local women with baskets that are happy to carry your bags, for the small price of 20 yuan (<$3 US) or about two days wages.  Since I am trying to save money and I have some pride, I hauled my bags myself.  The ascent was made first by road, then by trail, and then a final climb through the steps of the village itself, each often steeper than the last.  For the road portion, there’s the usual range of merchant stalls.  If the walk were 25% longer, I think I’d have paid even more without regret, I was winded by the end. 

Our lodge is quite nice.  The building is new but it’s built with old methods.  There’s a specious first floor with balcony and reasonably sized individual rooms.  If this trip to China is going to do one thing for me, it will be to give me new respect for the size of my apartment as now I consistently treasure all the space I have.

The buildings in Ping An village are wood, with occasional use of other supporting materials in the foundations.  They tend to have attractive patterns in the windows and doors, particularly at higher floors.  The higher floors often extend out over the lower floors on wooden support beams.  Bob tells me that much as with Amish villages, building is a community project.  At this point a large portion of the village seems consistently at the task of building, we saw the ends of timber being detailed on the way up and materials are regularly hauled up the hill and around the village. 

The style is one I don’t really recognize, although in some ways it reminds me of the lodges in National Parks in the U.S. and at the same time I’m reminded of Mononoke Hime, although I think that’s more the hillside construction than the architecture.

Country roads, take me to Guangxi semi-autonomous region [Thursday afternoon and back again on Fri. 10-25/6 afternoon]

[More pictures of the perilous journey to Longji]

Our next stop was Longji, in Guangxi semi-autonomous region.  The area has some autonomy because there’s a large population of non-Han ethnic groups.  They are given some special funding for cultural programs and developing the tourist industry.

We first rode back to Guilin and then we headed through a rather agricultural area.  No small cities at all.  There’s a wide range of crops and it was here I first noted what made Chinese rural landscape different: all the arable land is in use.  Even small sections, like 25 square meters, will have their own lots.  This was true to an even greater degree in Longji which is known for its terrace farming.  There was a neat mix of crops and I tried to get a good sampling in the pictures.

We crossed two or three toll gates on the way to Guangxi.  Apparently many of China’s highways collect tolls.  Unlike much of the developing world this is workable here because the Chinese government certainly has unity of force.  We did hit one gas stop bathroom that had a trough as urinal and a trough with walled out sections for stalls.  Although at least there was running water in the sink, unlike the one we hit on the way back.  As a note to self, bring hand sanitizer next time.

Leaving the karsts long behind we got into hilly and then mountainous territory.  There was less traffic and some of it was highly efficient, with three people on a motorcycle (there was one family of four seen on the way back, but I didn’t get a look myself).  There were often steep drop-offs, signs of landslides, terrace farming, and neat wooden buildings.  On the way back, I had a bit more appreciation for the diversity of the buildings, as Ping An village used the same tradition style but rarely mixed it up with paint or the like.

As with all traffic in China, the driving and passing was often a bit erratic, particularly with our new driver on the way back.  The turns were often quite sharp and the driver typically beeped before hand to alert anyone coming the other way.  We had to pay a park fee at one point and then switch busses to go to the end of the road.  The government keeps a bit of a monopoly on the last bit under the name of safety standards, although in fairness the final roads are quite windy.  All-in-all a fairly neat ride, although if my mother didn’t particularly enjoy West Virginia style roads I might have found it a bit more harrowing.

Downtime [Thursday morning]

I stayed up the night of the show writing entries.  Using the local net café was a bit of a bother because the front USB slots of the computers didn’t work, the backs would give you shocks, and apostrophes came out all funny.  I had hoped for more wireless or Ethernet hook-up places, but Bob tells me they’ll be some in Xi’an and Beijing.

The next morning I blogged a bit more, grabbed a few little oranges for breakfast (persimmons? Good stuff, people have shared those and bananas with me after my grapes got nabbed).  Took a class on landscaping and made a picture of bamboo.  My brushwork suchs, so I have trouble with even getting the paint brush clean but not watery and getting the ink level right.  Still, it was fun, I learned that you do leaves with your wrist, not by moving your hand, and that you can make gradiant bamboo by dipping both corners of a wide brush and then just making a single stroke per stalk segment.

After that I wandered about a bit, got a lemon chicken at Rosewood, blogged a bit more, and then met up for a rapid evacuation onto the bus.  Our driver was apparently in trouble for diving into the touristy area to get our bags.  Saved us a bit of a walk though.  At some point in Yongshuo or perhaps on the train I kept up a long standing tradition of luggage reduction by losing my light jacket.  When my bags were fully loaded I didn’t have anywhere to put it and its been far too warm to wear it comfortably, even with sleeves off.  I must have just put it and down and forgotten about it.  Oh well, it was a good jacket but I’ll live.