Yunnan Trip

So i finally got my camera battery from the Bad Monkey. I left it there on the last day of me and Bean's trip to Yunnan, so I haven't been able to access my pics since then. So here are some pics and descriptions of the trip we took 12/27 to 1/2 ...


This is my friend Huang Jun, a Kunming native, and his lady Thearanee, from Thailand. They came up from Thailand to celebrate his father's 60th birthday and before the festivities we had some local 挂桥面 Cross the Bridge Noodles.


Story goes, a loving wife brought her man noodles on the daily. He worked a little bit away from home, and she had to cross a bridge to get there. When she showed up, the noodles were always cold. This angered them both. He didn't say anything, being a good man and all, but she wasn't about to have her man eating cold noodles. So she thought about it and came up with a plan: she would cut up all the ingredients and put them in the bowl and bring a pot of boiling hot water along with her. So when she got to his place of work, she placed the bowl in front of him, poured in the hot water and mixed it up. Worked just fine.

That night, they made passionate love.










Me and Bean went to the 翠湖 Cuihu Lake in the middle of Kunming and walked around it three times. Siberian black-headed gulls migrate through here every winter and everybody loves it. The gulls eat good, the kids squeal in the winter sun and i get to take pics with my lady.

I got a bit more, put them up in a day or two.

I can't stop laughing at Western businessmen

I don't even know where to start laughing and where to end. It doesn't matter. For years and years people like me (but with better jobs) have been saying that China has some issues and we need to help them along, but the money-men always trumped everything by drooling all over each other in attempts to get into the China market.

"Can't push the gov, nononono they might not let us cash in ..."

Now, only now, at the end, do they realize. And so I have to laugh at them.

The mainstream has caught on to the glaring reality: China's bureaucrats and businessmen always hated and despised you. They stole your stuff, smiled in your face and sold you shit and now they don't need you anymore. So Time Magazine whines. Big time China Hand and Businessman supreme, AllRoads, jumps on the band wagon: "Did we get suckered?"

Of course you did fool. Then again, I know a lot of people who made it rich here (me excluded, hence all of the Schadenfreude) and they basically took a good look at the China business scene, saw it for what it is and jumped in and swam in the feces with all of the other sharks, diving for doubloons.

And this guy here, Paul "I told ya so" Midler. I feel ya Paul. I told a lot of people too. You ain't the only one who saw the signs and such, that feeling. I know it. Hope yer book sells dawg.

I gotta laugh. Even though, now that the drooling suits are hating on this modern China and the Chinese netizens are hating on this modern China, the big bad bureaucrats and their brainless, soulless New Rich cronies might have to bring in their bigger, badder even more brainless PLA bully to keep this country from Gorbacheving. Or not.

I am headed out to take a walk in the sunshine (THAT'S RIGHT SUNSHINE IN THE DU!!).

Holla atchu.

Lu Guang's Photography: Pollution in China

Makes me real nervous to see pics like this. I know that pollution is everywhere, but seeing it up close and personal like these pictures by Lu Guang is still disturbing.

For an English translation, go to ChinaHush's post here.

In related news, here is a small story about "grow houses," which are houses built quickly by farmers who believe their land might be taken soon. If they manage to register a building, the compensation they receive can be higher. Ignore most of the text and the comments, except this one here:

“The non-existence of truly legal private land in this great socialist motherland probably also complicates matters further.”

You hit the nail on the head. That’s not the complication, that’s the reason for the phenomenon reported above.

The fact that people don’t actually own their unincorporated (non-urban) land and can be dispossessed quite easily is the major reason to engage in such tactics as these. If the government is going to dispossess one anyway, that person is given incentive to maximize whatever payout the government is going to make. I suppose in a system with transparency in government development plans, as well as clear and private land title, private developers would buy up well placed land, the government would lay clear claim (and pay fair prices) on the land it actually needs for the infrastructure itself. The farmers would make money, the developers would make money (building concessions, etc.), the farmers might even make enough money to start businesses in private developed companies… on the flip side, the government’s costs would not be artificially low, and it wouldn’t make any money renting out concession properties it developed itself.

Its fair to say that the government can see a clear advantage for itself in the current system: Its only expense to maintain the status quo is money for chengguan and demolition equipment to knock down these “grown houses” every day."

by Dr. Jones, Jr.

"Don't be Evil" -- Tell that to Wall Street

After Google announced that it might leave China, Wall Street and other stock exchanges around the world reacted in typical fashion, by buying Baidu stock and selling Google stock. Baidu's stock jumped by at least 12%, while Google's slid by about 1%.

For the money-men -- the same people, let us not forget, who caused the real estate bubble, the ensuing collapse and rise in unemployment, who received billions from the government and are now giving each other BJs and bonuses -- these men (and women) are the core of what allows China to censor with impunity and keeps companies here way passed the point of violating their own principles.

In the world of capital, evil is rewarded and Wall Street's "golf clap" for Baidu's unexpected "good fortune" is a perfect example of evil at work -- or perhaps better said, a perfect example of the unwillingness to do good.

Sock it to 'em Google!

Google unlocks the vault!!!!

Everything the Chinese government has blocked is now available via Google, including pictures of Tiananmen, articles on Free Tibet and the Dalai Lama and everything else.

According to Google's own stats, the most searched for terms in the past 24 hours were Tiananmen and the Chinese for it 天安门

And this picture here says it all:

"Google is a Badass!"

This comment here says:

Facebook的原罪是它能让人认识想认识的人，Twitter的原罪是它能让人说出想说的话，Google的原罪是它能让人找到想找到的东西，Youtube的原罪是它能让人看到想看到的东西……所以它们都被干掉了……

"Facebook lets you connect with your people, Twitter lets you talk with your people, Google lets you read what you want to read, Youtube lets you see what you want to see ... so they have been banned!!!"

Bet those hackers didn't see this coming.

Stick it to 'em Google!

Google fed up with China

You can check out the full article on Google and China here at Chengdu Living. Check it out and leave a comment.

Peace
S

China reacts to Avatar the Movie

Avatar the movie opened up in China on January 4th, 2010. Lines stretched for blocks outside of most every theater in the nation for the next week as waves of Chinese went to see the next stage in movie evolution, 3D fantasy on a Hollywood scale. I went on the 6th and from the first few seconds, when water droplets from the crygenic sleep chamber floated right in front of my face, I sat agape and fascinated by the visual spectacle. All around me, I heard the elated gasps and shrieks of an enraptured audience.

What followed afterward, all across the world, was an analysis of the movie's visuals and message from dozens of perspectives. In the US, editorials criticized the movie for employing the same old "white guy saves the natives" guilt-fantasy that has been the theme of many a movie, from Dances with Wolves to a New World. In China, the reaction to the message was no less intense, but focused on a much more immediate, more Chinese problem. The problem of Home.

For the past 20 years, China has been playing catch up, economically, with the rest of the world. China as a nation is catching up with the big boys and is many ways surpassing them and an integral part of that success has been the real estate boom that has turned villages like Shenzhen into international powerhouses and forever transformed the skylines of every major (and minor) city in China. China is urbanizing very quickly and the long-sought after goal of turning farmers into factory workers and laborers is close at hand, but the sacrifices made by millions of Chinese in the name of their Motherland and Progress is starting to tear at the social fabric.

The theater fell silent near the middle of the movie when the Nav'i were forced to watch their home, the Mother Tree, be destroyed and razed to the ground. The silence was full and begged for expression. At the time, I thought it was the pain shared in a theater and did not realize how big the outpouring of comments and essays and blogposts would be the very next day. On popular blogs like Mop, hundreds of comments compared the destruction of the Navi'i home with the widespread demolition of homes across China. Other sites, like ChinaSmack and EastSouthWestNorth translated fragments of these posts for foreign consumption, but they could only give a small taste of what was really boiling underneath.

One essay in particular, posted on the wildly popular Douban.com, is an emotional and in depth response to the rampant demolition of peoples' homes. The essay does not deal with the old, cultural neighborhoods and their value as historical relics, but goes into the very emotional idea of one's home. The author questions whether or not Chinese today actually can call any place they live in a home, because in China one cannot "own" a piece of property, but only "rent" it for up to 70 years. Not only does one never actually own the home or the land one lives on, but the local government can at any moment change their plans and decide to build a road through your neighborhood. Even more galling is the fact that private developers and local officials often conspire to get rid of poor workers and farmers, then use the land to build (or not to build) high rises -- the government forces the people off of the land with minimum compensation then sells the land to the developer for a good price, after which the developer sells the land and any improvements to the growing affluent class of Chinese that are thoroughly enjoying China's economic miracle. The workers are left with inadequate compensation and the destruction of their community.

The comments on this essay are also revealing, in that the majority of them express the same disgust for developers and officials and fully half of the responses say "we are waiting for you to be erased," because essays like these, stories like these are suppressed by the government in order to maintain social stability.

A case in point is the recent tragic death of a woman in Chengdu, who climbed to the roof of her home in November 2009 and set herself on fire in full view of onlookers, police and the demolition crew poised to destroy her home. The woman, named Tang Fuzhen, has a very typical story: in 1996 she built her home here and lived for 10 years without any interference from the authorities. In August of 2007, the local government decided to build a waste management plant near her home. In October, they told her her home was illegal and she would have to leave.

This story, although one of thousands of similar tragic tales, swept through the web like wildfire. Netease quickly deleted their coverage of the story, but not before thousands of netizens left their often angry, but mostly hopeless remarks.

Avatar, or more specifically the spectacle of Mother Tree falling in flames, has brought the anger of the netizen and the tragedy of the common, poor laborer into everyone's living room. People who normally would not even think of such things, just go about their daily business in a fast paced growing economy that requires fast wits and daring, these people are suddenly talking about the pain of losing a home and the absurdity of "renting" a plot of land that cannot be passed on to children or grandchildren. This is a matter of great concern for Chinese parents. The family structure here is still very strong, even after years of being battered by wars, famines, revolutions and unfettered capitalism. For a Chinese to not help his children buy a home is still very rare, so with each demolition and accompanying tragedy, this very deep-rooted need -- to provide for one's children -- is threatened.

It is very revealing to see that many Westerners, especially Americans, choose to see the guilt/fantasy of the white man redeeming himself and saving the planet.

Crib finalized

Contract signed. The crib is real nice, we is happy. I wish I could show you pics, but i have to wait till those greasy bastards at the Bad Monkey send me the battery I forgot at their bar. (Excuses ...)

The house has two big courtyards, a lily pond, a chicken area, two floors, three pear trees, four peach trees, two tangerine trees, a host of bushes and herbs and stuff that I don't even know about and I think there is some sort of fig tree too.

So its all good.

If you are interested in China matters, check out Sisci's new essay on Atimes.

Chengdu Living

Spent all day yesterday cooking up various meals and eating them on the spot. I've been brewing the soup for two days (into the third) now and its got sausage and taters and pork and garlic and ginger and all sorts of other random stuff in it. I keep imagining an inn back in the day with some unnaturally rotund innkeep's wife with huge moles on her nose and a shawl shuffling back and forth, dropping things into a bubbling cauldron. Big bearded refugees dip in and sip from cracked bowls and grumble, cuz its the first warm thing they've had.

that's my soup.

We also made wontons and sweet mushroom porridge and this weird corn meal thing and fried up some greens.

Today I go to sign the contract on my place out in San Sheng Xiang -- the flower town i lived in in 2007-08. These guys who own the spot are really amazing. They are the ones manufacturing fake eggs and trying desperately to hoard more money whatever the cost -- they are on the low end of the totem pole and the jealousy of small town small village cash competition seems to drive them nuts. I get to sign a contract with one of these fine individuals today. His God is money and it sometimes feels like i am talking to a different species. My man Zhuang helped me haggle and watching Zhuang and Yushi talk with this guy really tired me out.

Nevertheless, I should be getting everything together today.

You all should check out Chengduliving.com -- its where some of these fine stories will come out in time. We juststarted this site, but its coming along nicely and we'll be doing this for some time. So stop by and holla.

No surprises anymore

Almost a year ago today, I posted a link to China's Charter 08 and mused about a possible "transition" led by China to a more ethical and just governance ...

Well the architect of the Charter is in jail and was sentenced recently, according to BBC reports, but that is just a small indication of the pipe-dream of an "ethical China."

Folks, it is not going to happen. Even taking into account the real national security reasons for China's scuttling of the Copenhagen talks, as reported by the Guardian, what we can look forward to is a China confident and arrogant enough to do whatever it pleases.

My friend Zhuang once pointed at a nouveau rich Chinese guy we saw at a restaurant and said:

"When China gets powerful enough, that's exactly how they will act."

Needless to say, the guy was arrogant, brutal, venal and self-serving at the expense of anyone who stood in his path. Superpowers come, superpowers go but the corrupting influence of power is immortal and universal. War between China & Co. and US & Co. in 2012 as the catalyst for the mystic Mayan prophecy? Not outside the realm of possibility.

The American Dream and the Written Word

So I am reading Daniel Boorstin, The Seekers, which is the third in a series that begins with The Creators and continues with The Discoverers. Boorstin is one of my favorite historians.

So in Seekers, Boorstin explores the philosophers and "idea-men" that helped to establish the foundations for Western political and social systems. What I found most interesting was the disdain the ancient Greeks had for the written word.

For Socrates, especially, the flame of understanding can only be passed through direct eye to eye mouth to ear contact between individuals. And have you ever noticed that the conversations you have with your brothers and sisters lead you to the Truth, but to write those conversations down is futile and silly? I have. It makes sense. Writing, for Socrates, impaired the memory, excluded dialogue and basically provided an inaccurate sketch of what it actually feels like when you make a breakthrough sitting around the fire with some friends, looking at the stars.

Socrates used the title "Poet" as an insult. I suppose he wasn't thinking about us, when he did all of his deep thinking about the Sage-King, Wisdom and Ignorance. If Plato and Aristotle hadn't written the "useless poetry" that survived the centuries, then Socrates' contributions would have drifted as far as the borders of ancient Greece and no farther.

Ironically, Islam's problems can be traced back to a related problem: Tyranny of the Written Word. Truly, Islam focuses the most upon the written word (Quran=Word of God=Law), but their great prophet Muhammad spoke to his people in Medina about Good and God. When he died, he did not leave written instructions as to how to lead the Ummah/Community. Only the Koran survived, along with an ever increasing collection of hadith, or lessons and interpretations. The wrangling over the written word led to the dissolution of the Community and wars between the factions and eventually war with anyone they met, including their cousins, the Bible worshipers.

**************************************************************************************

So, while I was listening to Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings yesterday morning, I heard her rendition of "This Land is My Land" (awesome version btw) and It reminded me of a rambling post here about where America is headed and also about a conversation I had with a Chinese friend of mine the other day.

He asked me why Americans, who come from all sorts of different backgrounds, are willing to raise the red, white and blue and fight for a country they have no blood ties to. He said this in the context of the Mainland's view of all people of Chinese descent: that they are Chinese first and forever. For him, it was self-evident that any Chinese in the USA would betray the USA if it came to a conflict with China. This is a very typical sentiment in today's China. Now, I know plenty of Asian Americans who have a hard time when they go back to seek their roots and meet the ethnic nationalism of China, Korea and Japan. Its a weird place to be in, I am sure.

Anyway, my response to his "question" was, that being American is a state of mind, not a bloodline or an obligation. It is as close to a "choice" as one can get in terms of nationality. I tried to explain the Manifest Destiny as an example of this state of mind. Unfortunately, he wasn't trying to talk about being American as much as he wanted to assert his idea of being Chinese. So I have to carry on this thread of thought with ya'll.

The Mainland Chinese have a VERY hard time with non-Mainland Chinese who consider themselves American, French, Thai or whatever. These weird creatures are deluded at best, outright traitors at worst.

Free to Post

I wrote an essay a while back about censorship in China, for Antiwar.com, and I basically said that within the parameters of black and white, all life transpires.

Well i am now, thanks to Freedur, safely within the gray. Freedur is a VPN protocol that allows me to surf through a proxy and avoid sneaky, evil Chinese censors. If you have problems with haters or just wanna be anonymous, check it out.

If you are interested in buying the service ($60 for one year), type in "chengduliving" and you will get 10% off. chengduliving.com is a website I am working on with my friend Charlie and it should be going live in a few days. Check it out when you have the chance.

So it is a trip to be back. The sky is always gray, which makes me feel completely isolated from the world, like the movie Dark City. I feel enveloped by the grayness and the thing about gray fog is it stretches on forever and has no borders, no shapes, no delineating lines -- it just is. So that can get kinda old.

And walking around is one of those things I forgot about. You have to get into a "China state of mind" to handle the throngs and swarms of people and vehicles passing in and out of your path with missions and dreams and plans and fears of their own. I miss being inconspicuous and part of the scenery.

Bean is plump and healthy. We brew up warm milk with anti-viral honey and sleep in late. The apartment we are in now is just a two-minute walk from the hospital. Tomorrow I will go to Dujiangyan house hunting.

to all the beauty in your life

back in Shanghai, listening to Christmas music. i had a small panic attack in the vancouver airport as i watched asian people be asian and realized that my ass was headed back to China to live for a while and be a father and all that. started trrrrriping. in my own head of course. was waiting for the whole world to shimmer and disappear. probably had something to do with the fact that i was still drunk and loopy after a night at Beckett's with my man Big Scott. It was a rough morning. but as soon as i was on the flight it was all good and now that i am back in the old familiar hallways of China, all is good and as it should be.

i watched the movie Public Enemies and that was a good one. Special Agent WInstead's message to Billy at the end really got me. busted out in tears, but no one saw me do it.

also watched 9 and that was enjoyable. I couldn't help myself and watched the Time Traveler's Wife (Aliya really wanted to watch that one) and it is sweet and lovable and emotional too. got a little teary there too. i am a sensitive guy you know.

this could have been anyone of us

In this story right here, I find a very familiar young man:

went to evergreen and became slightly radicalized. got a girlfriend and did what he thought was best -- take action instead of talk. got caught and ran for his life to Dali, a place i know well. ran around the town and got into the drug trade there, got caught up in the dragnet last year that we all knew about when it went down. none of my people got got, except for this kid right here, whom i never met.

good luck kid.

Sigh

Headed back Here

And just to make it even more lovely, i read more about Chinese products ONCE AGAIN making consumers sick and otherwise doing everything they should not be doing.

My lady wants to stay just one year or so, because in 2011 a chemical plant will be built just a an hour or so down river from us. And it makes her feel nauseous to have me buy baby stuff here in the US -- although the same stuff is available in China -- because she does not dare buy stuff over there.

there is, of course, a silver lining. Its called Dujiangyan, Qing Cheng Shan and the Min River. I keep that in my head along with the courtyard enclosed home i dream of -- it can still be all good, even in the very belly of the belching beast.

Moses in the NYT

Dr. Russell Leigh, that is. My old Professor at the U of M was on CNN last year during the Olympics and now he has an Op-Ed in the NYT clearly and coldly explaining what is really going down.

Check it out.

In my last post i said that the Han arguments of "ingratitude" are laughably weak -- and they are -- but not the force that supports and enforces these arguments. In that same post, in the last paragraph, I share the sentiment that Moses clearly states in his Op Ed: Uighers and Tibetans are doomed.

Here, a relevant quote from Wendell Berry:

"A community, especially a rural community, is understood by its public servants as provincial, backward and benighted, unmodern, unprogressive, unlike 'us,' and therefore in need of whatever changes are proposed for it by outside interests (to the profit of the outside interests). Anyone who thinks of himself or herself as a member of such a community will sooner or later see that the community is under attack morally as well as economically. And this attack masquerades invariably as altruism: the community must be plundered, expropriated, or morally offended for its own good -- but its good is invariably defined by the interest of the invader. The community is not asked whether or not it wishes to be changed, or how it wishes to be changed, or what it wishes to change into. The community is deemed to be backward and provincial, it is taught to believe and to regret that it is backward and provincial, and it is thereby taught to welcome the purposes of its invaders."

Xinjiang protests continue

Here is the BBC on the protests ... there is some decent video here showing a large group of Han thugs headed to the Uigher part of town for revenge and also a crowd of Uigher women demanding to know where their men were taken.

The NYT has a repeat of yesterday's story with a little more from today added in ... not much different than the BBC version, but check out the slideshow, there is a great pic of the Han thugs as they march. You can see that for many of these guys, this is a show, some fun, something to take the monotony out of the day. Sure, they might hate Uighers because they're Uighers, but this whole gang thing is just a bit o the old ultra violence for them.

Whereas for the Uigher this is life and death. What does it take to take to the streets as a protester in a country where such acts result in life in jail, death and a heavier hand on all those left behind? How do you escape the futility that fills you up?

In this article in the Asia Times, Dr. Jian Junbo gives a sober rundown of the situation and blames the unrest on a variety of factors that are basically breaking down the Marxist-era policy of making all ethnic groups within China "members of one great Chinese family" of laborers, with Capitalists and landowners as the common enemy.

He goes into Han grievances, which seem to revolve around the one-child policy and affirmative action in the universities and in some economic sectors. I find these arguments laughably weak.

First off, the Han are the overwhelming majority in China and the one-child policy is a function of over-population, not ethnic preference. Second, the minorities tend to live in rural, poor and/or remote areas like: the Himalayas, around the Taklamaklan and Gobi deserts, in the mountains of Guizhou, southern Sichuan and Yunnan. These are "underpopulated areas" (relatively speaking, this is China after all). Han far outnumber all the minorities put together, 1.3 billion to 123 million.

And affirmative action is also a very weak premise for Han anger, because the very very small number of minorities who benefit from affirmative action is absolutely insignificant compared to the advantages shared by all those who call themselves Han in China.

The real reason for bringing up these arguments is simple tactics. Did Rebiya Kadeer cause these riots? Or were they cause by one man posting rumors? or were they caused by simmering ethnic hatred? or were they caused by a failing Marxist system, as Dr. Jian proposes? For the majority of Han and the current Chinese leadership, the simpler the answer, the better. China wants their people to remain sheep -- money spending sheep -- but still sheep.

The most important thing to understand about this is that Uighers are actually X and Han are actually Y and these variables and the relationship between them can be superimposed upon any values (i.e. ethnic groups) across the globe.

If seen in this light, then we find a common mistake: one value is "heavier" than the other, resulting in imbalance and dis-harmony and then, eventually, violence. So far, across the globe, the common solution has been to increase the weight of the heavy value and hope that through an even larger imbalance, the problem will solve itself, perhaps with the elimination of the lighter value. All we have seen this approach produce is prolonged violence and suffering.

The real solution is to find a balanced, sustainable relationship. This invariably requires the heavy value (Han, Whites, Israelis,) to step back and allow the lighter value (Tibetans, Uighers, Blacks, Hispanics, Palestinians) to gain weight. "Gaining weight" can mean: gaining control of their religion, gaining control of their economic future, gaining control of their political future. These things will immediately remove the need for violence. People with jobs, a place to worship freely and a choice in who their leaders are will be content.

The rub is, of course, that the heavier values FEAR this above all things. Because this is an existential thing. To dominate and crush the weaker value ensures not only survival but sustained survival for whomever is doing the crushing. To step back and allow your "rival" for resources to grow sounds like suicide.

Sigh.

Sometimes, i feel i talk myself into circles and in the end all of this is quite meaningless. What i really believe? In this new world there is no place for Uighers or Tibetans or Native Americans or even Palestinians as they were. There is only one type of person who can and will make it and that is the person who believes wholeheartedly that the way we are moving is the one and only true faith. Progress, Modernity, Capitalism. All other faiths WILL die. The rest of us who don't believe better pretend or find a place to hide or be converted.

Violence in Xinjiang

Uighers in Urumqi rioted over the past 24 hours, destroying property, killing people and fighting the police. The immediate cause for the riots was a brawl in Shaoguan, Canton Province that began after some fool posted a note on QQ saying that 6 Uigher boys had raped 2 Han women. Han workers then rampaged through the Uigher worker dormitory and killed an unknown number of people.

Seems a lot like LA after the Rodney King verdict right? Well the similarities do not end there. The conflict between the Uigher minority and the Han majority is racial, cultural, economic and political. It spans the entire community. It is one community vs. another and the battle is very uneven. On one side is the state, and on the other is a minority incorporated into the state through force.

After the Communists liberated China in 1949, they went about pacifying and unifying the nation. That included invading and occupying Tibet and invading and occupying Xinjiang. Throughout history, "Uigherstan" and Tibet have been under the control of either local strongmen/religious leaders or split along local tribal/power lines or subjugated to erratic and temporary Imperial rule. Only after 1950, when the Uigher leadership -- on its way to Beijing for a conference with Mao -- all were killed in a "plane crash" and the Tibetan leadership escaped into exile in India, only after the leaders were disposed with did the regions of Tibet and Xinjiang come under Imperial/Communist rule.

This is nothing new in the history of these areas. The only thing different is that it is happening now, in front of our eyes, in a globalized world with the media there to project images and words.

Yes, the Han are absolutely oppressing both the Tibetans and the Uigher. In this old column here, I wrote about the Cultural Revolution-era techniques still being employed in Tibet and Xinjiang and the religious oppression that is a focal point of discontent.

There are other points of contention that add to the anger:

1) Han immigration: Han now represent the majority in both Xinjiang and Tibet. This is a recent development -- since 1950 -- and represents, for Tibetans and Uighers, the inevitable destruction of their identity and their way of life. There is nothing one can do when waves of "the Other" set up shop and start having kids. It is a peacful and highly effective tool of ethnic cleansing.

2) Han economic domination: Han Chinese dominate the government in both these regions. In both, the governor and/or spokesman is a native Tibetan or Uigher who is either completely brainwashed or completely venal. These "traitors" are in place to respond to crises such as these in the strongest manner, to give the rest of the nation and the world the idea that rioters and protesters are "inhuman", as opposed to demanding humanity.

Government domination by one ethnic group over another has another, more important effect: the unequal distribution of income and of justice. Funds reach Tibet and Xinjiang directly from Beijing and are then distributed "as needed" by the central authorities in Lhasa and Urumqi. No one needs to go into the corruption that hampers China's development as a modern nation. Now imagine that corruption in an area where domination and oppression of "troublesome" minorities is encouraged.

So in both Tibet and Xinjiang we have the following situation:

a leaderless, highly religious people ruled by a centralized, motivated non-religious people. The rulers have the economic and political power. The ruled find themselves with the choice: become Han in nature or die.

It is a soul crushing battle -- like between a boa and a small deer. Aimless dead-eyed young men watch their women choose stability and wealth over ethnicity and religion, watch their friends turn their backs on Uigher-ness in favor of a good job in some factory, watch their fathers retreat into the back room to pray and wait for death.

That is why they take to the streets, because making a Han face bleed, even for a moment and at great consequence, makes up for everything.

If you can feel the hate for the Han, then step back from this narrow view of life and feel the hatred and anguish of all the other peoples of the world that have faced this same dilemma and have already died, already forgotten their language, already retreated to the most remote outposts of what was once their home to slowly go through the motions.

When i traveled through Xinjiang I noticed that if the Han did not fear the Uigher as much, did not dread "splittists" as much as they do, there wouldn't be any.

It is the need to dominate that creates these conflicts, not the need to be Uigher, or be Black or be Palestinian.

Summer in Portland

is almost perfect. its not too hot and when it does get hot the rains come politely like butlers in the morning to dress up the day in dew making sure i dont know it even happened till i stretch yawn put my slippers on and walk out. a faint whiff of brimstone and stains on the concrete.

I took a trip north from Chengdu to a place called Wudu, in Gansu, with my friend and mentor Ivan. He's an engineer specializing in roads and highways and bridges and tunnels. He keeps quite busy in China. Below is a map of the area. We drove north from Chengdu to a place called Guangyuan (the birthplace of Wu Zi Tian the only Chinese Empress and also the site of Jian Men Guan -- the Sword Gate -- for years the fortress that protected Shu/Sichuan from northern invaders).



From there we headed deep into the wild mountains that blur the borders between Sichuan, Shanxi and Gansu Provinces. This region of brown dirt waterfalls and soaring cliffs is also the rocky heartbeat of the west. When properly connected, development in the western half of China can proceed as envisioned. We stayed one night between Guangyuan and Wudu in a small town called Luo Shui, I believe. I find it hard to believe that this town is real. Rock rises up on all sides and constricts the town into one or two lanes. They seemed nonchalant about our presence and one woman said they had a foreigner here for three months. Engineer. or maybe an oil guy.

In the morning kids straggled into school in ones, twos and threes. The girls held hands.

So remote yet so full of the smell of man.

It is also the area hit hardest by the earthquake ... a strip of mountain ranges that ebb out of Tibet like rings, straddling the boundaries between Han China and Tibetan China ...

there is not one inch of this road that is not under construction. we passed through tight gorges with tent cities nestled in the folds above the river. men and machines hauled stone and silt and sand from the river bed up to the road to pave another section, raise another column, wall in another home.

We headed back on a different route, along the outskirts of Aba Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture and the valley of Jiu Zhai Gou. We passed through the county seat and saw the plunder that pours out of the tourists pockets. The seat is as glorious as Beijing's Tiananmen .. government buildings rise up proudly. Hotels serene next to a snowy peak. Lights flashing in calm acceptance of their own irresistible power. Down the road, where the valley actually dives into the range, where azure lakes blush and fade like young girls in different seasons of love, Tibetans smile and wave and cook yak meat over yak shit coals in adobe houses. Some don't smile anymore.

In the brothels of Chengdu, pimps boast Aba girls ...

In the wilds of China, doozers cause muddy traffic jams deep into the night.

Work is the Enemy of Doubt

Fortuitous fortuitous this is the word of the day.

I spent the last two days meeting my old tea suppliers Bai Ting Ting who provides me with the Honey Dew Tea that I love so much and my man Chen Su Yuan who has tea ware for sale and twin brothers Xiao Song and Da Song who are acknowledged tea gurus. Drank so much tea my bladder couldn't take it. Wore myself out taking trips to the john.

I found some amazing Qing Cheng Mountain tea that comes from the same people that rolled with Charlie in this story right here. Its a bitter tea with a very sweet aftertaste with an amazing green color like natural neon lights in a glass.

But i suppose the topic of the day should be the huge music festival going on right now here in Chengdu. It is an outdoor fest with a pretty big lineup. Goes for three days on the outskirts of the town and everybody and they mama is showing up. The fest is the kick off bash for an all-Chinese MTV channel -- so goes the rumor -- and in true MTV fashion the place is crawling with TV crews and streaks of light from huge screens onthe maiin stage. It is quite a show, I must say. I saw Brain Failure as soon as I walked in and the SJ Family (wak dudes, amazing girl) took it to town with some serious singing from their female lead.

Peep Chengdoo here for more info on that fest.

My boy Josh of Proximity Butterfly was there with his wife Heather and their child Aetheria Hope Love.

This one here is for you lil girl:

First time I saw you
You were passed out in a tent with red splotches on your face
Two young Chinese girls cute as could be
stood guard outside the tent flap.
They kept checkin to see if you were awake
Cuz they wanted to coo and coo and coo
Yer daddy said:

"She's gonna walk before she crawls ... she ain't down with crawlin."

After that me and yer dad sang the blues, the funk, the soul, the lament of love and cracked pitchers of beer together under the lights of Chengdu's biggest outdoor fest.

When you woke up, girls materialized out of the muck of the field
and gathered round you,
fingering your curls and fat cheeks and looking deep deep deep into
your mama's blue eyes.

I told you what i thought about the whole thing,
but you had Shrek-like earplugs in yer ears.

So instead I talked about Giving Voice to Others
And Daniel Boorstin with yer dad.

Love ya.