tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-85331710430318431992024-03-06T00:51:51.060-08:00the capital in the northA blog about life in China (and anything else I feel like writing about)Ji Xianghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03406727999722525339noreply@blogger.comBlogger188125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8533171043031843199.post-1867368943961926832023-05-23T04:41:00.009-07:002023-05-26T01:40:10.181-07:00China's Zero Covid policy: a summing up<p>Half a year has passed since China's Zero Covid policy ended, and it already feels like a distant dream. Just like everywhere else, people in China are keen to move on and forget the pandemic and the lockdowns. Never mind that there's a new wave of Covid happening; the worst is over, and the majority don't want to think about it anymore. </p><p>It's no longer in the Communist Party's interest to talk about it either: much of Chinese society considers the Covid policies of 2022 to have been a complete disaster, from the months and months of extreme lockdowns to the sudden and complete reversal that led to a deadly exit wave and overwhelmed the hospitals. At this point, any further rhetoric about how much better China is at protecting its people would only be counterproductive. </p><p>We are unlikely to ever see Chinese films or TV shows that deal with the initial Covid outbreak in Wuhan, or the unprecedented lockdown of Shanghai last year. Even in the rest of the world, to be fair, there are very few films, books or other works of art dealing with the traumatic two years of Covid lockdowns everyone went through. People want to forget, even without the government pushing them do so. It's easy now to see how the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918 disappeared from the popular consciousness. Wars may be written about and remembered for decades, but apparently pandemics aren't the same. </p><div><p>All over the world, the Covid pandemic tested the relationship of trust between the government and the governed, as well as between different components of society. In the West it was the populist right that made a show of not taking Covid seriously and pursuing "mass immunity" at a time when this meant mass death. In the countries where they were in power, like the US and Brazil, the cost in lives was massive.</p><p>In China the ruling regime decided to take Covid very, very seriously, starting in late January 2020 (some might argue things would have gone differently if they had started caring a few weeks earlier, but I'll leave that debate aside). The people had no choice but to follow, and for about two years the Chinese approach worked rather well. In fact, for a while it seemed like the pandemic had only made the Chinese people more convinced than ever that being run by a competent dictatorship with unlimited powers was in their best interests. But the reckoning came in the end, and it was dramatic and painful.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhl-bmi_2Pg-k6E3tsypU3034E0dxjg2lRs-1Yzh4KfTD8CvwkFChWX7W0-Y2Bhv_zqDAKRWJM76GD1d8qIyc4DnXaNqQOQD5TgWMnHoOd3o77jVXe4KRVXuWK3VdiiF1IU740JGvgOcLuWAIzkboRc6R1WXPTo6WLiSZVfGUTZuA82dDXJtzeT-xWX/s477/71eeb5bcly1h2svmd6ew2j20ft0kymyh.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="477" data-original-width="360" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhl-bmi_2Pg-k6E3tsypU3034E0dxjg2lRs-1Yzh4KfTD8CvwkFChWX7W0-Y2Bhv_zqDAKRWJM76GD1d8qIyc4DnXaNqQOQD5TgWMnHoOd3o77jVXe4KRVXuWK3VdiiF1IU740JGvgOcLuWAIzkboRc6R1WXPTo6WLiSZVfGUTZuA82dDXJtzeT-xWX/s320/71eeb5bcly1h2svmd6ew2j20ft0kymyh.jpeg" width="242" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p>For those of us who live in China, 2022 is a year we won't be forgetting fast. We lived most of it under the iron fist of a bureaucracy that was given one task, and pursued it with incredible single-mindedness and thoroughness: to eradicate Covid wherever it showed up. The comfort, dignity and in extreme cases even the lives of the public were deemed less important than this ultimate goal (and if you think this is hyperbolic, go and read about the numerous documented cases of people with serious illnesses being denied entry into hospitals because they had no evidence of a negative Covid test).</p><p>In some cases, this huge public health drive descended into utter, surreal madness: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AA99NgoKDKc"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">fish</span></a> and <a href="https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202201/1246769.shtml"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">vegetables</span></a> swabbed for Covid, armies of workers in hazmat suits <a href="https://twitter.com/Byron_Wan/status/1526375122143023105/photo/1"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">spraying empty streets with disinfectant</span></a>, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-62547503"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">crowds storming out of buildings</span></a> before they could be locked inside because someone had been identified as a "close contact" of a Covid case.</p><p>At the time, it wasn't uncommon to hear people in China compare Zero Covid to the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. To some this may seem ridiculous: Zero Covid didn't lead to millions dying of hunger, or to millions more being subjected to struggle sessions and sometimes execution. It started off with the reasonable enough goal of keeping China free from a dangerous virus.</p><p>But in other ways the comparison is a good one, especially when you look at the Great Leap Forward and its "scientifically-based" campaigns that brought misery to millions. A good example is the campaign to eradicate the "four pests", and specifically sparrows, which started in 1958. Sparrows were considered to be a pest because they ate large quantities of grain and fruit. </p><p>The campaign resulted in millions of people all over China banging pots and pans to prevent sparrows from resting in their nests. The sparrows would fly from tree to tree until they dropped dead from exhaustion. In Beijing, many sparrows found refuge in diplomatic missions. The Polish embassy refused to allow the mobs to enter its grounds and it was surrounded by people banging drums for two days, until the sparrows all dropped dead. </p><p>The campaign was very successful in achieving its goal, and sparrows almost became extinct. When the entire Chinese bureaucracy and population are mobilised to achieve a goal it usually gets done, even before the times of smartphones and "digital surveillance". <b>The technology used is a detail; it's the Party's ability to mobilise the country and its reach into every neighbourhood that matters. </b></p><p>The only problem was that sparrows turned out to play an important role in the ecosystem, and when they were gone populations of locusts started rising exponentially, since there were no sparrows left to eat them. This exacerbated the famines associated with the Great Leap Forward, and in the end China had to import sparrows from the USSR to replenish their numbers.</p><p>Especially looking at the last year of Zero Covid policy, it's easy to see the same impulse to control nature itself with mass campaigns, even when it goes beyond all reasonableness and demands huge sacrifices of the population. Of course, what those who were making the comparison with Mao's campaigns really sought to imply was that such disasters are the result of one-man rule, then and now.</p><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYyZk5DvrZPS0qUnGWj_ts5qPKVtIXzbPcSLWRvMDg7JMGRW8_aEqY2WmF4L183-MlO-C78lqWky9cA1QHGWkslB5_xK38Cdu5oGo5MLaV9MdmolOq67WHYlNsgfls7lzgBXkSotcMqepc90e6guHkzXTFrIXIttD5CqwiWX1pc5Enw0wMoOAKKQje/s580/e16-34.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="580" data-original-width="403" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYyZk5DvrZPS0qUnGWj_ts5qPKVtIXzbPcSLWRvMDg7JMGRW8_aEqY2WmF4L183-MlO-C78lqWky9cA1QHGWkslB5_xK38Cdu5oGo5MLaV9MdmolOq67WHYlNsgfls7lzgBXkSotcMqepc90e6guHkzXTFrIXIttD5CqwiWX1pc5Enw0wMoOAKKQje/s320/e16-34.webp" width="222" /></a></div><div><br /></div>There are those who justify China's Zero Covid policy as a well-meaning attempt to protect the public, which bought time while vaccines were developed and the virus mutated to become less dangerous. There is truth to this. We'll never know China's true death toll from Covid, given the way deaths from the virus are (not) counted, but it would have been far, far higher if Covid had been allowed to spread from the start. India <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-60981318"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">probably lost around 5 million people</span></a> to Covid; I doubt the toll would have been any lower in China, which has slightly better hospitals but far more elderly people.</div><p>If there was an obvious mistake the Chinese leadership (or the leader) made, it was to continue the Zero Covid policy in 2022, when the virus became milder but more contagious. Instead of giving up they doubled down, turning China into a theatre of the absurd and squandering most of the goodwill they had accumulated with their own people. This can only be considered a case of terribly policymaking.</p><p>Why did they do this? The idea that the pandemic was a convenient "excuse" to track everyone's movements and close China off from the world was always misguided. The Party has long known everything that goes on in China, and the country has always been just as closed off as they deem necessary. Making it all so obvious was if anything counterproductive. It is probable they believed in predictions that Covid was going to cause mass disability and immune suppression in countries that chose to live with it, and thought it was worth waiting and seeing.</p><p>On top of that, they seem to have done rather little to prepare for an eventual reopening, failing to mandate vaccinations for the elderly or stock up sufficiently on antivirals and ventilators. Perhaps they believed they could carry on with Zero Covid for a long time, and overestimated how far they could push their people's patience. </p><p>Because make no mistake: Zero Covid was abandoned when the Chinese people made it clear they wouldn't take it anymore. Many now claim that the U-turn had already been planned during the 20th Party Congress, in October, because the economy could take the lockdowns no longer. But when had the economy taken priority in the past? And why then were proclamations still being made about how China's Covid policy had demonstrated its correctness and should be followed "unswervingly"?</p><p>It is true that by this point the authorities clearly acknowledged that the lockdowns were exasperating people. But the <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-covid-policy-how-measures-have-changed-2022-11-11/" style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">20 new measures</span></a> on Covid prevention they passed in early November seemed like an attempt to have your cake and eat it too: loosen up a bit, make it easier for people to live and work like normal, but continue to contain Covid at the same time. When cases inevitably started rising in Beijing and other cities, they went back to the old playbook. </p><p>At the end of November 2022, things finally came to a head. Faced with an endless campaign that had descended into grim absurdity and was making normal life impossible, Chinese society reached its breaking point. In what seems like a different era, but was actually just a few months ago, people all over China started physically refusing to be locked down in their homes, and took to the streets in large numbers. Unsurprisingly, this was the point at which Zero Covid was abandoned with breath-taking speed. </p><p>The peak of the protests was reached over the weekend of 26-27 November, spurred by the fire in Urumqi that killed 10 people on November 24. It may or may not be true that the city's strict lockdown prevented the victims from leaving the building, and the firefighters from entering the neighbourhood. The authorities have denied it, but it doesn't matter; the point is that it <i>could</i> have been true, and that's bad enough.</p></div><div><p>It was as if a dam had burst. I have never seen anything like it in China. At the time I was living as the only foreigner in an old residential building in central Beijing, which had been locked down for the weekend. Most of my neighbours were Beijingers of ordinary means. Even in my building's official WeChat group everyone was sharing subversive videos of the protests, demanding to be allowed outside again and raging at the local officials in the group. </p><p>Clearly something had to give. This is why I am dubious about claims that the government had already decided to end Zero Covid after the 20th Party Congress, or that they did it because the economy was on its last feet or because the virus was already spreading unstoppably. No, they did it because <b>the people spoke out very clearly, and said they wanted their lives back. </b></p><p>Within two weeks of the protests, the entire architecture of Zero Covid had been dismantled. No more mass testing, no more health apps and QR codes, no more enforced quarantine, no more restrictions on travel, no more nothing. For people in China it was as exhilarating as it was bewildering. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiytV5KM-4tlT9UMiL2z3BON0Bk18ftN9KbTE-6acrtyyyEX5khmECRIBZdckFSHOuv9vr7RiDI_jKzmzPfZcAuEU5VMfID7acqnpy1WPGmGGEtoMRNfXU8tii2J9jJB2NAtgXrffuEDBjo7nxswb9JQUdmCl59SBKzPRBPqYLGJU1owh65KQKdCL3k/s1422/492152.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1422" data-original-width="800" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiytV5KM-4tlT9UMiL2z3BON0Bk18ftN9KbTE-6acrtyyyEX5khmECRIBZdckFSHOuv9vr7RiDI_jKzmzPfZcAuEU5VMfID7acqnpy1WPGmGGEtoMRNfXU8tii2J9jJB2NAtgXrffuEDBjo7nxswb9JQUdmCl59SBKzPRBPqYLGJU1owh65KQKdCL3k/s320/492152.jpeg" width="180" /></a></div><p>What was most striking to me at the time was the way that the disgust at the extreme anti-Covid policies lead to a wider political awakening among the middle classes and the young, with many asking subversive questions about the nature of state power in China. People who a year earlier would have been proud of their country's unity and sense of purpose and the capability of its leaders were now furious. </p><p>The sense of betrayal was palpable. These were people who had understood China's "social contract" to be that in return for not challenging Party rule they would be allowed to make money and chase enjoyment in their private lives however they pleased. Living in fear of getting taken to a horrid quarantine camp by thugs dressed like astronauts wasn't part of the bargain. Unfortunately, the social contract isn't an actual contract and nobody will sanction a government that stops respecting it.</p><p>The openly political demonstrations in Beijing and Shanghai, where protestors shouted slogans against the Party and Xi (and later got detained), may have been small affairs. But people all over the country were making the connection between the draconian policies against Covid and the authoritarian one-party system, and weren't shy about saying so. </p><p>I remember reading and hearing comments by Chinese saying that they now understood why the Taiwanese didn't want to reunify, or that they now believed the Western reports about mass internments in Xinjiang. I remember seeing a video of a woman in Chengdu speaking to a crowd, saying "in the past I didn't understand why foreigners claim China doesn't have human rights. Now I get it". </p><p>As anyone who's lived in China a long time knows, most middle class Chinese do not normally perceive Communist Party rule as particularly oppressive, unreasonable or brutal. Of course, their rule is all of those things to Uyghurs, Tibetans and anyone who tries to challenge the Party's narratives, but many Chinese see their leaders as essentially reasonable people using only as much force as necessary to lead their unruly population in the right direction. The system's worst abuses are either not known about, or they are believed to be necessary to protect China. </p><p>To some the draconian lockdowns, and the fear of getting taken by force to a horrible quarantine camp in the middle of the night, suddenly drove home the importance of having proper rule of law. I happen to know a woman from a small town in Northern China who works in Beijing as a journalist. She's never lived abroad, but could be considered broadly liberal by Mainland Chinese standards. When I met her for lunch one day in late 2021, she told me that China's successful handling of Covid had "almost" convinced her that authoritarianism is the superior system. </p><p>I spoke to her again in November 2022, and her mood had changed completely. All the residents of her block of flats in Beijing had been taken en masse to a quarantine facility because one person had tested positive for Covid. She'd been confined for eight days to a dingy little room with bad food and conditions. When I spoke to her, she'd just been released. </p><p>She said she was truly disillusioned and wanted to leave China. "In the past I had illusions", she said, "but now I've seen the truth. They can do what they want with you. The legality of it and your rights don't matter one bit". When I suggested that China might drop Zero Covid soon, she said she didn't even care. She'd lost faith in the whole system, not just the policies on Covid. "Today they'll trample on the law because of Covid, tomorrow it'll be because of something else". </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJVYknHDZWxe2viijvS9psbg4Gr6oFu7Mz4W-cApS-MJ2Jb5syJz9WrQhT1itl_E73g2-xcUf3XKhYsV_g46QCMV7ey0s6YamdOxGWPpGQ-LNGH3aI5qADDjtq9oLRIG74vfHtlkiNeEZk_aNclr7TJP9x-rE-2DX_oEvIhcIil9CM9o3FVp9K7IwE/s1820/1445011259.0.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1213" data-original-width="1820" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJVYknHDZWxe2viijvS9psbg4Gr6oFu7Mz4W-cApS-MJ2Jb5syJz9WrQhT1itl_E73g2-xcUf3XKhYsV_g46QCMV7ey0s6YamdOxGWPpGQ-LNGH3aI5qADDjtq9oLRIG74vfHtlkiNeEZk_aNclr7TJP9x-rE-2DX_oEvIhcIil9CM9o3FVp9K7IwE/s320/1445011259.0.webp" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p>Although the lockdowns of 2022 may have produced a political awakening of sorts among part of China's population, I don't know how long the effects will linger. The political, social, economic and cultural factors that drive the Communist Party's popularity and support have not disappeared. Assuming that less than a year of unpopular lockdowns could fundamentally change the relationship between the Party and the people is wishful thinking.</p><p>Certainly, the events of last year were not a success for the Party. But with their sudden U-turn, they have shown that they still know how to let go before the population really turns against them. What should be more troubling to them is the economic storm gathering on the horizon. The old growth model is now unsustainable, and nothing new is there to replace it. The Party used to promise its people growing standards of living, order and safety. Very soon only order and safety will be left. We shall see what happens then. </p></div>Ji Xianghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03406727999722525339noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8533171043031843199.post-21122462995463350442023-04-14T04:36:00.008-07:002023-04-14T04:44:37.651-07:00Cambodia<p>Cambodia is not a country whose name necessarily conjures up positive, sunny images. Growing up, as an avid reader of books on world history, I first heard of Cambodia in connection with the Khmer Rouge genocide, one of the most notorious events of the 20th century, sitting alongside the Holocaust, Turkey's extermination of the Armenians and the Rwandan genocide as an example of the lows humanity can reach.</p><p>Years later, as I started travelling around Asia, I would sometimes hear bad reports about Cambodia from people who'd been there. Several of them said they'd noticed a sadness about the country, as if the terrible events of its recent history still hung in the air. Other travellers, perhaps less perceptive, just spoke about how desperately poor, corrupt and chaotic the country seemed. Everyone agreed, however, that the temples of Angkor Wat were amazing and worth visiting no matter what. </p><p>During my years of studying Chinese affairs, I learnt that Cambodia had essentially become a Chinese client-state, run by a leader who depends on China for support and patronage. I read about how Cambodia vetoes any move by ASEAN to condemn China's actions in the South China Sea, and how many parts of the country have been taken over by Chinese developments, creating some resentment among ordinary Cambodians.</p><p>As I climbed onto a minivan in Bangkok's backpacker district on a blisteringly hot March afternoon, headed for Siem Reap, it was impossible to completely shake off this baggage of hearsay and negative images that I associated with Cambodia. The journey to Siem Reap, the modern town that sits next to the ruins of Angkor Wat, took a total of seven hours, including the border crossing at Poipet. </p><p>After crossing the border, the difference in prosperity and infrastructure between Thailand and Cambodia immediately became apparent. Everything looked less affluent and more ramshackle on the Cambodian side. After entering the country my driver took me to a place where I could exchange money. I was surprised to learn that the US Dollar is accepted everywhere in Cambodia, just as much as the local Riel, and so I changed my Thai Baht into Dollars.</p><p>We drove into the night, through the provincial town of Sisophon (which looked frankly rather miserable) and on to Siem Reap. The place I had booked in Siem Reap turned out to be right in the middle of the bar street. The hotel cost very little, only 13 dollars a night for a room with a bathroom, balcony and AC. It even had a pool. When I booked it, I was struck by how cheap Cambodia is; in Thailand you would never find a room of your own for that price, especially in a major tourist destination.</p><p>It turned out that the hotel's cheapness was not without reason: in my room the wifi only really worked on the balcony, and what's more it was facing a bunch of bars with loud music, and the girl at the front desk warned me that the racket would go on until 1 AM. The hotel did have a pool, as advertised, but it was somewhat miserable and it faced the entrance to the main street, so it provided little privacy.</p><p>The following day I got up determined to go to Angkor Wat, but I soon realised that I'd already missed the opportunity, since the organised tours all leave early in the morning to catch the sunrise and avoid the hottest time of the day. It is possible to rent a tuk-tuk for the day and go to the temples alone, but the cost is similar to an organised tour and you won't have a guide.</p><p>I resolved to go Angkor Wat the following day, and for that afternoon I booked a tour to the so-called "floating villages" outside the city. About 30 kms South of Siem Reap lies the Tonl<span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-size: 14px;">é</span> Sap, the biggest lake in Southeast Asia. Along the banks of the lake there are a large number of fishing villages where the houses are built on very high stilts. During the tour I was bussed to one such village with a group of sightseers. </p><p>The village was quite large, and all the houses were built high above ground, on stilts almost 10 meters in length. During the rainy season the village is submerged, and the water almost reaches the houses. Tours like the one I took have to reach the area by boat. This was the dry season, however, and there was no water in the area. The wooden houses looked simple, but decent. Many had boats parked underneath them in preparation for the rainy season. </p><p>There was a Buddhist temple (which was not on stilts) and a school in the middle of the village. The brown, parched landscape and the features of the local people reminded me more of India than Thailand. At some point a group of children appeared, accompanied by a couple of women who asked us if we wanted to donate some money to buy textbooks for the kids. The initiative was apparently supported by an educational NGO, and quite genuine. I declined to donate, not wanting to feed into a cycle where children depend on foreign tourists to buy their textbooks. </p><p>Further down there was a local wedding going on under a canvas, with extremely loud music played on loudspeakers. Some of the tourists in my group stood right next to the seated guests and filmed the wedding or took photos, but I felt uncomfortable intruding on a private ceremony in this way. After this we were taken to a river and put on a boat which drove us to the Tonl<span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-size: 14px;">é</span> Sap Lake. As we approached the boat, somewhat outside the village proper, local children gathered to ask us for money. Unfortunately, local children begging from tourists was something I encountered several times in Siem Reap.</p><p>The boat took us to a floating restaurant in the middle of a lake, which was clearly a tourist trap, so the majority of us wisely decided to just get drinks and no food. There was also a live crocodile in a cage in the middle of the restaurant. Crocodile meat is part of the diet in Cambodia. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6nWIfZfqYz8H9wgnNs5mk4qmPWhxZuihbCx-RGKblFcf8n1ECQGhZNkbQt1n8g7tBdXAyDBowh29oPoclklB1LGTEUul7zM0xUbUr6APpMaeVQLDeQJmHNaNh0j_5oi8iL0gWJZjMK7g-EgXn-kIQ6zBTEJ7w6gHNcTcQPmphgTDLPdp0SHvWnhHK/s1706/WechatIMG1397.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1706" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6nWIfZfqYz8H9wgnNs5mk4qmPWhxZuihbCx-RGKblFcf8n1ECQGhZNkbQt1n8g7tBdXAyDBowh29oPoclklB1LGTEUul7zM0xUbUr6APpMaeVQLDeQJmHNaNh0j_5oi8iL0gWJZjMK7g-EgXn-kIQ6zBTEJ7w6gHNcTcQPmphgTDLPdp0SHvWnhHK/s320/WechatIMG1397.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdnZmCXJBOHX8RKMsn9RK50-sr8F7vUOPU0Nw4MQPNMehI1yIb9LhN5t5Al9-vVt8gs9Lsb2cTa2akQ5tHuIeXyPPTsWXEEOS3bD6NmhViH9C-oLstPSdNLidRee8BM0E96JuGz5_0O8JHGeFFhrGh00c55LN1uBQ0HjU8Hhzkg53ivtU3gIyLSJij/s1706/WechatIMG1395.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1706" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdnZmCXJBOHX8RKMsn9RK50-sr8F7vUOPU0Nw4MQPNMehI1yIb9LhN5t5Al9-vVt8gs9Lsb2cTa2akQ5tHuIeXyPPTsWXEEOS3bD6NmhViH9C-oLstPSdNLidRee8BM0E96JuGz5_0O8JHGeFFhrGh00c55LN1uBQ0HjU8Hhzkg53ivtU3gIyLSJij/s320/WechatIMG1395.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxPwDIYN_f_kSt_8Shpnp8Q2AAzwthEp0oJzKJ4kbALhlGV4VhjzO4N9puE4fhViCC6apVdtE2VrCaD_1zCiLrxGZkdrClAdxIcVkFRs23GvhY-eUe9BNGaNb_90Z_LDuS-QuiDGlz7TNvvFiwKM_O2KCNXfLbUgYQDHKnxvv4e8Sz7JTiDMQ9N-L7/s1706/WechatIMG1398.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1706" data-original-width="1280" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxPwDIYN_f_kSt_8Shpnp8Q2AAzwthEp0oJzKJ4kbALhlGV4VhjzO4N9puE4fhViCC6apVdtE2VrCaD_1zCiLrxGZkdrClAdxIcVkFRs23GvhY-eUe9BNGaNb_90Z_LDuS-QuiDGlz7TNvvFiwKM_O2KCNXfLbUgYQDHKnxvv4e8Sz7JTiDMQ9N-L7/s320/WechatIMG1398.jpeg" width="240" /></a></div><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCad09yk2nfxmm8_vitLVGQlb7aYGHVzD4_3lBcjf_6Z7YBvpcr8n-Ed10euahACgb9XQIeKKDQv_5st7vx8_ERNo8RiE-UHxq1PZZaaDuoUZNltTVQDiK6pqHh_8DpNhWlEa_-1zIa_6Oq17I733SgItF9il2sY21wvOdV8ndhIrlZbXRnAs_jeI3/s1706/WechatIMG1394.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1706" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCad09yk2nfxmm8_vitLVGQlb7aYGHVzD4_3lBcjf_6Z7YBvpcr8n-Ed10euahACgb9XQIeKKDQv_5st7vx8_ERNo8RiE-UHxq1PZZaaDuoUZNltTVQDiK6pqHh_8DpNhWlEa_-1zIa_6Oq17I733SgItF9il2sY21wvOdV8ndhIrlZbXRnAs_jeI3/s320/WechatIMG1394.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Images of a floating village near Siem Reap</td></tr></tbody></table><p>The following morning I woke up at 5 to join a sunrise tour to Angkor Wat. Almost everyone else in the minivan was English, including a loud and boisterous group of students from London, about 20 years old, many of whom were still nursing hangovers from the previous night. </p><p>Angkor Wat did not disappoint. The temples are undeniably amazing in their size, number and exquisite architecture. This is perhaps the most impressive historical site I have seen anywhere in Asia. There were throngs of tourists, but it didn't spoil the atmosphere. We were taken to the precise spot where Angelina Jolie filmed the most famous scene in Tomb Raiders, and in fact the guide mentioned Angelina Jolie several times over the course of the tour, as if this amazing historical site needed to latch on to her for added glory, or as if only the association with a Hollywood blockbuster could truly impress Westerners. </p><p>Angkor Wat is the world's largest religious structure. But more than that, it was the centre of the great city of Angkor, the capital of the Khmer Empire. Angkor flourished for six centuries, and it came to cover an area of 1000 square kilometres, larger than modern Paris, making it by far the most extended pre-industrial city in the world. At its peak it may have housed a million people. The city was held together by a complicated water management system, the likes of which the world had never seen. </p><p>In the end, Angkor collapsed under the weight of its own success, as the system became unmanageable, the climate changed and the population became exhausted by the constant forced labour needed to maintain the city. The downfall of the Khmer Empire, and of the Khmer people, was truly striking. For centuries their empire extended over most of continental Southeast Asia, and the capital was the most advanced in the world. </p><p>And yet, after their empire collapsed, the Khmer people found themselves hemmed in between the Siamese (the modern Thais) and the Vietnamese, who had become far more powerful. For centuries they were only able to survive as stagnating vassals of one of these two powers, while more and more of their territory was grabbed by their neighbours, particularly the Vietnamese. It was only the establishment of the French Protectorate, in the 19th century, that may have saved Cambodia from complete disappearance. For once a European protectorate really did protect, even if it was by accident. </p><p>The 20th century has also been unkind to the Khmer people and Cambodia. After getting dragged into the Vietnam War, suffering American carpet bombings, the four-year nightmare of the Khmer Rouge, and further years of Vietnamese tutelage and simmering conflict, Cambodia is now a scarred and traumatised nation. </p><p>Until this day the Khmer are unfortunately looked down upon by many of their neighbours as backwards and lazy, and not even a hint of their former glory is in sight. I got an inkling of this when I told a girl from Bangkok that I was going to Cambodia. She told me that all the beggars in Bangkok are Cambodian. I asked her if Bangkok also gets Burmese beggars (Thailand sees massive Burmese immigration) and she replied "no, the Burmese are hardworking people".</p><p>Given their country's troubled present, it is hardly surprising that Cambodians take the huge pride they do in the temples of Angkor Wat. Even the blue and red national flag has a depiction of Angkor Wat at its centre, the equivalent of the Italian flag having a picture of the Coliseum or the Chinese flag a silhouette of the Great Wall running down the middle. All Cambodian flags have displayed Angkor Wat on them since 1850, as if to tell the world "yes, we may be poor and powerless, but our ancestors built something incredible". Even Pol Pot, in spite of wanting to completely destroy the country's old culture, kept the depiction of Angkor Wat on the flag of his "Democratic Kampuchea". In this way he was still a Khmer. </p><p>Our tour of the ruins of Angkor Wat started at 5, and by the time it finished at 1 pm we were all drained from the humid heat. This was, after all, the hottest time of the year. The temples are incredible, but half a day was enough for me to get the idea. Many visitors go back over several days, but I'm not that kind of traveller (the tickets for foreigners also aren't cheap, costing 37 dollars for a day and 63 for three days).</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJEkI5Zjo06EJP5eb5Tbv6QCAtz5NVVDWBnMly1brJH7sKA8DgK-BkPx4iGfkD3FIfXzXyVE-HBe1yUN8jHcL39rwAAkao9pF9rBWqaiQ6dGNAgFsZVhferSdMsk6ySpCRBg1pRhldFXc-ERZ9MDyuZv349e-zSIKhTdT8acMN_OGVrR8ySQB3ytXY/s1706/WechatIMG1426.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1706" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJEkI5Zjo06EJP5eb5Tbv6QCAtz5NVVDWBnMly1brJH7sKA8DgK-BkPx4iGfkD3FIfXzXyVE-HBe1yUN8jHcL39rwAAkao9pF9rBWqaiQ6dGNAgFsZVhferSdMsk6ySpCRBg1pRhldFXc-ERZ9MDyuZv349e-zSIKhTdT8acMN_OGVrR8ySQB3ytXY/s320/WechatIMG1426.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZzTJFpgJLi7hxN1wDpmSNxasrO-opKF-J8KQPSQtnk5zwAUwGU5QTaomAWEz6SnO8gRhGTpvkPITozms9sgsS7kppxWrESO2t6zlAk_-XFkrkrFqj9qU_EHZNm-ktzhSVo3nAHEbW-4e7LLr9DlaC5duGR4El_BDxtPhkF8-wG7IK5d0m_o21jloR/s1706/WechatIMG1434.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1706" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZzTJFpgJLi7hxN1wDpmSNxasrO-opKF-J8KQPSQtnk5zwAUwGU5QTaomAWEz6SnO8gRhGTpvkPITozms9sgsS7kppxWrESO2t6zlAk_-XFkrkrFqj9qU_EHZNm-ktzhSVo3nAHEbW-4e7LLr9DlaC5duGR4El_BDxtPhkF8-wG7IK5d0m_o21jloR/s320/WechatIMG1434.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMKAj2FYoqY9WoR1UbSvVMIWITRF4FVxxcHRbzLH_2mKeKGT3n_apP4nXd31ZQK1JI-crZ-Dzwm3elfYQc9YskusDECh5I2_HCDxTmS3L5Rly-XXo5F67Y_CaYUBfnCbzvX7FjF8S9LVQIhhej8Yg8wxIK9kMH4HHbvZFrYIf45OAWx2-cb3xCb6Vz/s1706/WechatIMG1458.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1706" data-original-width="1280" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMKAj2FYoqY9WoR1UbSvVMIWITRF4FVxxcHRbzLH_2mKeKGT3n_apP4nXd31ZQK1JI-crZ-Dzwm3elfYQc9YskusDECh5I2_HCDxTmS3L5Rly-XXo5F67Y_CaYUBfnCbzvX7FjF8S9LVQIhhej8Yg8wxIK9kMH4HHbvZFrYIf45OAWx2-cb3xCb6Vz/s320/WechatIMG1458.jpeg" width="240" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz2Pvk0KkVkylTzqa2UZV-hBoQOSN03b9yr7zg-dXt5Gsf11-h_mYTw5Ojj6491UChg7-9S9e7oTDDhfCY77QTuJlj6Ycf_cnpLPssVkPLzpAjZ6iQDaq94EKTjTQgiNzFpNz3pcfvuR0_vmo3-n1sFP6WuCp1zywPsmhbDmibIf10PyzK8S8djmJZ/s1706/WechatIMG1473.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1706" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz2Pvk0KkVkylTzqa2UZV-hBoQOSN03b9yr7zg-dXt5Gsf11-h_mYTw5Ojj6491UChg7-9S9e7oTDDhfCY77QTuJlj6Ycf_cnpLPssVkPLzpAjZ6iQDaq94EKTjTQgiNzFpNz3pcfvuR0_vmo3-n1sFP6WuCp1zywPsmhbDmibIf10PyzK8S8djmJZ/s320/WechatIMG1473.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2Asz4_Bxwg4oR1bRWRZoCg-xX84j6U2S-oyy9z045hb9gdSDJ0Wj0v-J_MoykduBO1PTYdTiG2OINeH8aBog42CAEIYrL6W3qCNY0TE574I2oK4q_lVHMjxglShFZ5fZ3ZGKlflcrlKJyOdBAcYVTwLfU3dBtBejorUeKP7EZ6tgGr13xPJ6Uch0M/s1706/WechatIMG1420.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1706" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2Asz4_Bxwg4oR1bRWRZoCg-xX84j6U2S-oyy9z045hb9gdSDJ0Wj0v-J_MoykduBO1PTYdTiG2OINeH8aBog42CAEIYrL6W3qCNY0TE574I2oK4q_lVHMjxglShFZ5fZ3ZGKlflcrlKJyOdBAcYVTwLfU3dBtBejorUeKP7EZ6tgGr13xPJ6Uch0M/s320/WechatIMG1420.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><p>That evening I went to a slightly different area of Siem Reap to visit the Peace Cafe, a place that offers Khmer and yoga class and nice meals. The area was less touristy and more quiet than the one around my hotel, and I walked around a bit by the river, while young locals sat and chatted on the banks. I can't say I liked Siem Reap very much, or at least, I didn't like the touristy area I was staying in. It struck me as a Southeast Asian tourist trap with none of the charm of a place like Chiang Mai, and plenty of seediness and squalor.</p><p>The next day I took a minivan to Phnom Penh, Cambodia's capital. This time all the other passengers were Cambodian. The trip took about five hours. The dusty towns we passed along the way looked relatively poor, with no sidewalks and plenty of children cycling to school on bicycles. There were no malls or supermarkets, but plenty of little shops selling all kinds of goods.</p><p>I was surprised by how much I didn't dislike Phnom Penh. Cambodia's capital is fairly small and compact, sitting mostly on the left bank of the Mekong. It lacks the overwhelming size and bustle of many other capital cities in the region. The centre is quite cosmopolitan and, rarely for Southeast Asia, walkable. Getting around with tuk-tuks is cheap and easy. While it is the capital of a poor country, Phnom Penh itself doesn't look desperately poor, and it has two or three modern shopping malls of the kind you expect to find in any Asian city. </p><p>What struck me the most was the openness and friendliness of the people. Even compared to Thailand, where people tend to be pleasant and smiley but also rather reserved, the friendliness of Cambodians was striking. I never personally encountered the guarded, suspicious or downright bizarre behaviour you often find in countries that have had a traumatic recent history, starting with China. Almost every Cambodian I dealt with was polite, helpful and friendly, and I did not encounter venal behaviour, scamming or insistent pushing of wares.</p><p>I was warned by long-term residents that Phnom Penh has a theft problem, and that people on motorbikes might snatch my phone out of my hands while I walk or take a tuk-tuk. I'm sure this is true, but I never felt any less safe in Phnom Penh than I did in Bangkok, Jakarta, Beijing or any other big Asian city, in other words I felt quite safe. I behaved with the same carelessness towards personal safety that I always do when in Asia, including walking around alone after dark, and suffered no problems because of it. </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifhglemjvi-lHsSjj5zLFC4Bl0nIk3x7tDLCIIp0sGKmFe70YD-HoGCXqCjgf3fpoVCNbmu3216-5opvfJF9TziveuTo4b9i1u0n7JsgykGPPrcBGGopo6MXypRSSBDNB_eJb8rD4OSwMXni7A4QeO36gQNwQVwG5P59_vBT0yBkyOmZqpeI_E2yxp/s1706/WechatIMG1584.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1706" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifhglemjvi-lHsSjj5zLFC4Bl0nIk3x7tDLCIIp0sGKmFe70YD-HoGCXqCjgf3fpoVCNbmu3216-5opvfJF9TziveuTo4b9i1u0n7JsgykGPPrcBGGopo6MXypRSSBDNB_eJb8rD4OSwMXni7A4QeO36gQNwQVwG5P59_vBT0yBkyOmZqpeI_E2yxp/s320/WechatIMG1584.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Riverside view, Phnom Penh</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhebE7S_FfNDXbWg3DSgHyrSFvU87SHM35lE8YUtBf765qMAmhqVogSuoL1e_w7SSMjLPVxXhenZHGloyE1mn6-FpTUVeairdCuFskDeOjchkei0G0M642gfh88Y0eMEHAYBJPEBXHNnJHuDtMbBUSwScIeMvhjoWPCNh3VE92gUupEWxLQsnS-4Qdn/s1706/WechatIMG1559.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1706" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhebE7S_FfNDXbWg3DSgHyrSFvU87SHM35lE8YUtBf765qMAmhqVogSuoL1e_w7SSMjLPVxXhenZHGloyE1mn6-FpTUVeairdCuFskDeOjchkei0G0M642gfh88Y0eMEHAYBJPEBXHNnJHuDtMbBUSwScIeMvhjoWPCNh3VE92gUupEWxLQsnS-4Qdn/s320/WechatIMG1559.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Inside the royal palace complex</td></tr></tbody></table><p>I also found Cambodians' skill with foreign languages rather striking. A working knowledge of English is quite widespread in Phnom Penh, even among tuk-tuk drivers and security guards. In neighbouring countries like Vietnam or Thailand it is considerably harder to find English-speakers, in my experience. This is probably explained by the fact that Cambodia is a small country with a small language unrelated to any other, and it is used to depending on foreign powers. After learning French during colonial times, many Cambodians found it useful to learn Vietnamese or even Russian during the Vietnamese occupation of the eighties, while nowadays the useful languages to learn are English and, increasingly, Chinese. </p><p>This brings me to another thing about Phnom Penh that hit me immediately: the massive Chinese presence. I'm talking here about recent arrivals from Mainland China, not the traditional Cambodian-Chinese minority. The city is packed with businesses and restaurants opened by and catering to Mainland Chinese. Hearing residents speak Mandarin on the streets is quite normal, and you see the language everywhere. A lot of signs in Cambodian banks and businesses are translated into Chinese. Even Cambodia's prerecorded phone messages saying you dialled the wrong number are in Chinese, as well as Cambodian and English. </p><p>On at least a couple of occasions, I found myself communicating with Cambodians in Chinese. On my last evening in the country, in Kampot, a group of friendly Cambodians invited me over to their table. They had come from Phnom Penh on business. The men were all shirtless and drinking beer. They spoke incredibly limited English, although we managed to bond over one of them being a Juventus supporter. It then turned out that two of the group spoke rather good Chinese (one claimed his father was, in fact, from China), and we managed to have an actual conversation in Chinese. </p><p>I spent my last two nights in Phnom Penh in a serviced apartment on Diamond Island, an island on the Mekong which fifteen years ago used to be mostly slums and farmland. It is now full of new buildings and it seems to be populated primarily by Chinese. Most of the residents in my building were Chinese, and the Cambodian staff spoke to them in Chinese with no difficulty. The streets outside could have been those of any new neighbourhood in Tianjin or Changsha.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJsmx9HVA9-wM3g1BcxPjKV-ilgsdB008AXV0aJHOZrg0rMQ66VKJFbiQgARqtyMZZX0qLNx1EXU1ME1ZbHVfOW-TIQJsod9iIEGWF6EAx-qWbAqMuTcxK930IEQ3ALzJE4RRjhEpYMo-7pT8pP20ShI7-Xi8MkvCPVOC9XWbycMT2bhtYvVVE-ddH/s1706/WechatIMG1555.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1706" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJsmx9HVA9-wM3g1BcxPjKV-ilgsdB008AXV0aJHOZrg0rMQ66VKJFbiQgARqtyMZZX0qLNx1EXU1ME1ZbHVfOW-TIQJsod9iIEGWF6EAx-qWbAqMuTcxK930IEQ3ALzJE4RRjhEpYMo-7pT8pP20ShI7-Xi8MkvCPVOC9XWbycMT2bhtYvVVE-ddH/s320/WechatIMG1555.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Street market, Phnom Penh</td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p>While in Phnom Penh I visited the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. It is perhaps the most disturbing museum I have ever visited. It is located in a building that used to be a high school, and was then turned into a high-security prison under the rule of the Khmer Rouge. The building sits right in the middle of the city, surrounded by bustling streets. </p><p>What went on in that building between 1975 and 1979 is beyond description. Around 20,000 people were imprisoned there because they were accused of being in some way connected to the former regime, including plenty of former teachers and professionals whose only real crime was being educated. Later on, purged Khmer Rouge cadres also ended up there. Only a literal handful of prisoners ever survived, mainly because they made themselves useful to their captors in some way. The almost totality of those imprisoned there were tortured to death or killed. Some of the rare survivors of the prison now sit in the courtyard all day, selling books on their experiences, translated into several languages, to the tourists. I wonder how it must feel for them to still be sitting right in front of the place where they were tortured, decades later.</p><p>When the invading Vietnamese liberated Tuol Sleng, they found the bodies of the last detainees, who'd been bludgeoned to death by the fleeing guards. The building has been preserved in the same state it was found in 1979. Walking around it is an affecting experience. Some of the school's classrooms are still divided into lots of little cells, the size of pig pens, made out of rudimentary walls of wood and brick. Seeing these tiny cells made me think about the people locked up there day and night, sleeping on the hard floor with only the prospect of torture and death ahead of them. The corridors were laced with barbed wire, to stop the inmates from jumping to their deaths in the yard below.</p><p>In one room there were graphic pictures of the tortures detainees were subjected to, along with some of the original torture tools the guards used; in another room there were piles of skulls and collarbones of the victims. The audio tour included the testimony of one of the survivors. He said that when he first arrived in Tuol Sleng, in a bus with a group of other prisoners, the teenage Khmer Rouge guards looked at the new arrivals in the same manner animals of prey might look at their next meal. </p><p>I have never visited a Nazi concentration camp, but the emotional effect would probably be similar. Tuol Sleng is a powerful testament to the evil that human beings can do to each other when the right circumstances arise. </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgq6-PDzZXzblxCBIiFpSJH7y5IdgCtBJQhKnLBE_P-LnbPDTwSxW7IY0Hgo5SN5Ki2C-KurThRSOqGRmHoiL_MFZi_b0H6Z3RBQUnf0xSrIa78LjTTFAlCQCjJjtQ6hTxItSBwN3kTWdLIn9baXC4sl_o8_5RfTN7dSWsCOPkYWYbgcn_0gjhtCvtl/s1706/WechatIMG1520.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1706" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgq6-PDzZXzblxCBIiFpSJH7y5IdgCtBJQhKnLBE_P-LnbPDTwSxW7IY0Hgo5SN5Ki2C-KurThRSOqGRmHoiL_MFZi_b0H6Z3RBQUnf0xSrIa78LjTTFAlCQCjJjtQ6hTxItSBwN3kTWdLIn9baXC4sl_o8_5RfTN7dSWsCOPkYWYbgcn_0gjhtCvtl/s320/WechatIMG1520.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tuol Sleng prison today</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV5Q2d7CfsrFQpmiDE0oGbpZWXwzGGdf5Sh8BN89M7xxTOCgDb6ApdT87vEOg4ZZ2jhCyqTCdMIRSOyR6J-e-9jjidgXERfJN6_VR1zoNzOiwpOA6tkPlgkbQ78Oh4R16A-HBcHrEoQ_Qe_1ZKUwrQkOVXsV8g5W0WvWaVeHWbwh0QwKbflUdHEURJ/s1706/WechatIMG1528.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1706" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV5Q2d7CfsrFQpmiDE0oGbpZWXwzGGdf5Sh8BN89M7xxTOCgDb6ApdT87vEOg4ZZ2jhCyqTCdMIRSOyR6J-e-9jjidgXERfJN6_VR1zoNzOiwpOA6tkPlgkbQ78Oh4R16A-HBcHrEoQ_Qe_1ZKUwrQkOVXsV8g5W0WvWaVeHWbwh0QwKbflUdHEURJ/s320/WechatIMG1528.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjN4zYKEnIKDectCkB0aXhT4CndHd0jhhtP1kbNi-dn1Zo_g_fK7TPJzLzA1SbmCddMm0qc6mLIIk0-W-BmKLlSjO_J1DXNfZyY-blEgDe5vFjz2sFVy189dE2_aLxivDYBD30ITJM4oY-jrfODUrH7UINv9UEP5TLndCs_dRvmguzy0p8F3SRgfjvU/s1706/WechatIMG1541.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1706" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjN4zYKEnIKDectCkB0aXhT4CndHd0jhhtP1kbNi-dn1Zo_g_fK7TPJzLzA1SbmCddMm0qc6mLIIk0-W-BmKLlSjO_J1DXNfZyY-blEgDe5vFjz2sFVy189dE2_aLxivDYBD30ITJM4oY-jrfODUrH7UINv9UEP5TLndCs_dRvmguzy0p8F3SRgfjvU/s320/WechatIMG1541.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The corridors of the prison, laced with barbed wire so prisoners wouldn't try and jump to their deaths</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid9Mt3diZ8Khy6E3RDCh_M8CTROgfcY8IvUW9DCTPv4ZCZHQHYfT93rdPbD7t5lD7ku7DumEmh78yYIq1f4nwJ0SV9thBtLRkHs3BmTjj4v86iwGQJjD9xhGC-2OrJjLU4mfDuiC6xyTMPQMCJMzDVYawUfHONUOkh8tozCMk-rAZoXEpl9ejj9A4r/s1706/WechatIMG1532.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1706" data-original-width="1280" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid9Mt3diZ8Khy6E3RDCh_M8CTROgfcY8IvUW9DCTPv4ZCZHQHYfT93rdPbD7t5lD7ku7DumEmh78yYIq1f4nwJ0SV9thBtLRkHs3BmTjj4v86iwGQJjD9xhGC-2OrJjLU4mfDuiC6xyTMPQMCJMzDVYawUfHONUOkh8tozCMk-rAZoXEpl9ejj9A4r/s320/WechatIMG1532.jpeg" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The classes of the high school turned into a prison block, with holes punched through the walls and little cells built of brick to house the prisoners<br /><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5fQvoanGLzfDt6UdTtr6_HLDpW0nsK9Wm-w4xuoaPY7usJRYqdcc22B3VjGqmoU-kb7sOuonkvqHeyk501AOyaqrcXMyGSlkIr9Hjpfl1mKuZIGbSG6xSVvPBw8DjVO0DMtiaWrNZNNnFyGQwV7xVcs74aiSH16bYdNh4m6fY4vAG4caBlnUCO6w5/s1706/WechatIMG1531.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1706" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5fQvoanGLzfDt6UdTtr6_HLDpW0nsK9Wm-w4xuoaPY7usJRYqdcc22B3VjGqmoU-kb7sOuonkvqHeyk501AOyaqrcXMyGSlkIr9Hjpfl1mKuZIGbSG6xSVvPBw8DjVO0DMtiaWrNZNNnFyGQwV7xVcs74aiSH16bYdNh4m6fY4vAG4caBlnUCO6w5/s320/WechatIMG1531.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhX1l3Cj6iNe0GklfH69pGH3cL3bspcQ1EqYvlS_WNgZizq2Gvr36R4GVyxMqL6gAydNWUfxLtg5F1KdPriIro53rblAtAMnlN7-s6ywtWAgub7LRXGNvUJoI-haoqcvx02UbCcqq7ZNhFxAQT6X6zTyAIVc_rO3BhArvasWmbYVKyiv-4wzuTgHoTd/s1706/WechatIMG1543.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1706" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhX1l3Cj6iNe0GklfH69pGH3cL3bspcQ1EqYvlS_WNgZizq2Gvr36R4GVyxMqL6gAydNWUfxLtg5F1KdPriIro53rblAtAMnlN7-s6ywtWAgub7LRXGNvUJoI-haoqcvx02UbCcqq7ZNhFxAQT6X6zTyAIVc_rO3BhArvasWmbYVKyiv-4wzuTgHoTd/s320/WechatIMG1543.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photos of some of the victims</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSeay1G_XcSR9So-T8zr-ru8r6VOiXua82WGq1IxpyvwF155iIa4o8xyHVB4MkBrqyc-MiYWM-Kww-ziuqdfVGhNBrHhnJRgh_8DKyMdYxltI5Dk1y6fzvBJpzupblFBcZ-sSU-l68CejmoSwOa0gAEy21V4cqXLnAXtM5t2fkBAT62akdQNa_y9lZ/s1706/WechatIMG1537.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1706" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSeay1G_XcSR9So-T8zr-ru8r6VOiXua82WGq1IxpyvwF155iIa4o8xyHVB4MkBrqyc-MiYWM-Kww-ziuqdfVGhNBrHhnJRgh_8DKyMdYxltI5Dk1y6fzvBJpzupblFBcZ-sSU-l68CejmoSwOa0gAEy21V4cqXLnAXtM5t2fkBAT62akdQNa_y9lZ/s320/WechatIMG1537.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A letter from a hospitalised Khmer Rouge official to his daughter, showcasing the movement's fanatical mindset. Notice the ranting against the CIA, the "Vietnamese expansionists" and the KGB</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2m7Pvdi579Gr19Xc9LiKbqyMguoJl6fLDLNM0fftlEO-MyBlkECO8gK0kjL_gk48Rin93o3AezRmTlfmt9LfDYJA0f3lR2RvOjWZ4_ay9lbhFSLvmbnucBnCarCgp2dGubQfELFk8mftkCDyYlt0YagvVoIB_Sxt8egqWSg6oQzKpZiy8g6Vlk4Qy/s1706/WechatIMG1538.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1706" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2m7Pvdi579Gr19Xc9LiKbqyMguoJl6fLDLNM0fftlEO-MyBlkECO8gK0kjL_gk48Rin93o3AezRmTlfmt9LfDYJA0f3lR2RvOjWZ4_ay9lbhFSLvmbnucBnCarCgp2dGubQfELFk8mftkCDyYlt0YagvVoIB_Sxt8egqWSg6oQzKpZiy8g6Vlk4Qy/s320/WechatIMG1538.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Collarbones of the victims, Tuol Sleng Prison<br /><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhscdR6mLWpqUKYeEgNZvr16LB7enXsuiPo-smqF9EJGmRpRY0AOmuy6hRCE3sHWZgRUZpbEoK-qlP7lIQlllp7InQad7P3kJk5mj3i-NYSRoFN3gTgLylCzcvMJ-liwE8SfpAgIsJ96PW7v1E3I0myAdpaqhc2-a3bDbUCWnQdr7pVUhi2CbCknpnp/s1706/WechatIMG1540.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1706" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhscdR6mLWpqUKYeEgNZvr16LB7enXsuiPo-smqF9EJGmRpRY0AOmuy6hRCE3sHWZgRUZpbEoK-qlP7lIQlllp7InQad7P3kJk5mj3i-NYSRoFN3gTgLylCzcvMJ-liwE8SfpAgIsJ96PW7v1E3I0myAdpaqhc2-a3bDbUCWnQdr7pVUhi2CbCknpnp/s320/WechatIMG1540.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Skulls of the victims</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><br />What happened to the broad mass of the Cambodian population under Pol Pot was quite unparalleled. Phnom Penh and all the other towns were evacuated, and the inhabitants were forced into communes in the countryside. These communes were ruled by terror, with people forced to work from dawn to dusk for starvation rations, and murdered at the merest hint of suspicion. About a quarter of Cambodians are thought to have died during the four years of Pol Pot's rule. A French author once called it an "auto-genocide", a genocide done by Cambodians against Cambodians, which seems like an apt description.<p></p><p>After the Vietnamese invaded and liberated most of the country, the Khmer Rouge retreated to a small patch of land on the border with Thailand, where they fought on for two more decades. Their movement was provided with a shameful amount of international support. Their biggest supporters were the People's Republic of China, which funded and supported Pol Pot and his movement at every step of the way, and even attacked Vietnam in retaliation for their invasion of Cambodia.</p><p>But the US also have to take a share of the blame, and not only for dragging Cambodia into the Vietnam War to begin with: since this was the time of the Sino-Soviet split, and Vietnam was a solid Soviet ally, the US also preferred to see Pol Pot rule over Cambodia than the Vietnamese. Even after 1979, the US and many Western countries continued to recognise the Khmer Rouge as the legitimate government of Cambodia until 1993.</p><p>Then there is Hun Sen, the current president of Cambodia, who has ruled the country in one form or another for four decades. He started his political career in the Khmer Rouge, but defected to Vietnam when he was 24, when the movement began to cannibalise itself, and then rolled into Phnom Penh with the Vietnamese. After presiding over a "socialist regime" under Vietnamese oversight in the eighties, Hun Sen continued ruling in the nineties as Vietnam retreated, Cambodia officially became capitalist, the monarchy was reinstated and Buddhism was made the official religion again. </p><p>Hun Sen now runs a regime that is close to being a one-party state (although it is not yet). When Western NGOs and international organisations provided much of the country's foreign funding, there was a need to at least pretend to adopt the trappings of liberal democracy. Now that China has become Cambodia's main sponsor, there is no need to play along with that game. All over Cambodia I saw the blue banners of the ruling "Cambodian People's Party" with Hun Sen's face on them. At least on one occasion, to be fair, I did see an office of the Candlelight Party, the country's most serious liberal opposition party.</p><p>Perhaps I wasn't in Cambodia long enough, but I never really felt the sadness and trauma in the air that many claim to have noticed. Of course any Cambodian over 50 lived through a genocide under the Khmer Rouge, and it is often claimed that large numbers of them suffer from PTSD and have passed the trauma on to their children. This may well be true, and it fits in with what I know about Holocaust survivors. Still, to an outsider like me there were no obvious signs of generalised trauma. If I didn't know what had happened there during the 70s, Cambodia would have struck me as just a relatively poor and traditional country, no more troubled than many others in Asia and around the world.</p><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMqgMacWmmeOCdf-j9jD-wbYRIuSk5rv0Sgzc1CIkqHI1_mYtuy_KTQiaWX-GdXvCFgS3Fa6x18_uqRN3YwL3Nge-Nt28UvldfhCAfQjD5Jov0rxpQhiLUB9KtdMI5uSZyvpDmSXugu0lh24Rtl2aguskSXKzwbUPmCFIWwF12ZSAAjeqZoEsAyW1u/s1706/WechatIMG1406.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1706" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMqgMacWmmeOCdf-j9jD-wbYRIuSk5rv0Sgzc1CIkqHI1_mYtuy_KTQiaWX-GdXvCFgS3Fa6x18_uqRN3YwL3Nge-Nt28UvldfhCAfQjD5Jov0rxpQhiLUB9KtdMI5uSZyvpDmSXugu0lh24Rtl2aguskSXKzwbUPmCFIWwF12ZSAAjeqZoEsAyW1u/s320/WechatIMG1406.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">One of the placards of the ruling Cambodian People's Party that seem to dot every town and village in Cambodia</td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_PCiCGfF8dcvyY1r0lEuEEiLTq9l2qL6ctQtxB3m4b6qE5eVqkqb6AHhW8f-WOAt5iTFz75hs0n-DbcWDemwmDTW5UHJj1fvjUKaJ5BvAqCrNPgPmGVI-NkgbsghkCfmAHSIzOL2JIq5wfTRbqrdNUyNQ_lxKRWk8JBjB5gRPYkHiISMS27AklggG/s1706/WechatIMG1583.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1706" data-original-width="1280" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_PCiCGfF8dcvyY1r0lEuEEiLTq9l2qL6ctQtxB3m4b6qE5eVqkqb6AHhW8f-WOAt5iTFz75hs0n-DbcWDemwmDTW5UHJj1fvjUKaJ5BvAqCrNPgPmGVI-NkgbsghkCfmAHSIzOL2JIq5wfTRbqrdNUyNQ_lxKRWk8JBjB5gRPYkHiISMS27AklggG/s320/WechatIMG1583.jpeg" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Cambodia-Vietnam Friendship Monument in Phnom Penh</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSMZ9RB9_-iS_6-aoms6K_VecSIAiKTq0vgQNc1abZXtQBDXi6gRm43i3_aJvdNt0FYs10U9bBV5iE_MYLfVXv3KPgtNa7BiFwBgchdjcONVYf_2co-ZiooZpOzi2nsh6RTSAiGb65HNZB-TIq26b4HcahxGtwsqTYkFUs92OqOD7D_IprAC4bUD_I/s1706/WechatIMG1581.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1706" data-original-width="1280" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSMZ9RB9_-iS_6-aoms6K_VecSIAiKTq0vgQNc1abZXtQBDXi6gRm43i3_aJvdNt0FYs10U9bBV5iE_MYLfVXv3KPgtNa7BiFwBgchdjcONVYf_2co-ZiooZpOzi2nsh6RTSAiGb65HNZB-TIq26b4HcahxGtwsqTYkFUs92OqOD7D_IprAC4bUD_I/s320/WechatIMG1581.jpeg" width="240" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>While in Phnom Penh I also took a day trip to the "Silk Island", actually two islands sitting in the Mekong River. The islands are known for their traditional silk production, and as a rural getaway from Phnom Penh. They are a stone's throw away from the city's Northern' suburbs, and looking at the map I could not believe they could be all that rural. <p></p><p>The islands are reached by taking a ferry across the Mekong. The ferry ride lasts about two minutes. Although the ferry leaves from a suburb of the city, once you get to the islands you are indeed in the countryside, a world away from the capital's hustle and bustle. As soon as you get off the ferry there is a place that rents bicycles, and I paid 3 dollars to use an old bicycle for the day. </p><p>The island's inhabitants mostly live in traditional houses on 2-3 meter stilts, and spend their days under the stilts, in the shade, during the dry season. There were plenty of people, mostly women, making silk on sewing machines. In the first village I crossed I ended up buying a silk scarf from a woman who convinced me to come to her home and see her work. No one else tried to sell me any silk while I was there.</p><p>I ended up finding a little rustic cafe' on the banks of the Mekong, and lying in a hammock while I looked at the river, a favourite Cambodian activity. A group of young Cambodians on a weekend trip happily waded into the river with their clothes on.</p><p>While I'm sure the islanders are wealthier than most rural Cambodians, with their proximity to the capital and their silk industry, the islands mostly lacked new buildings and life still seemed pretty simple, although on the bank facing the city a few fancy boutique hotels are now springing up.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh78p0DolLNMo0_iXXjWI1eLXg55Z7ocA8KfaZ2C--7wNRIaKQ6umlDON1ICjTXoH8h4WH2YSBrKVEaqRpzBJurypwsgCW1VVI3SUHYDlbgqYkJjINt1w7vI_CpdOXJxsDBs_KhS0MTll1inqhtGU0Tv-Uejf8-w-Lu0Lxay9DgnDcK337TpmgjUioU/s1706/WechatIMG1597.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1706" data-original-width="1280" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh78p0DolLNMo0_iXXjWI1eLXg55Z7ocA8KfaZ2C--7wNRIaKQ6umlDON1ICjTXoH8h4WH2YSBrKVEaqRpzBJurypwsgCW1VVI3SUHYDlbgqYkJjINt1w7vI_CpdOXJxsDBs_KhS0MTll1inqhtGU0Tv-Uejf8-w-Lu0Lxay9DgnDcK337TpmgjUioU/s320/WechatIMG1597.jpeg" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Children cycling, Silk Island</td></tr></tbody></table><p>After a week in Phnom Penh I made my way to Kampot, a small town near the sea, known for its old town built by the French and its riverine location. It now has quite a developed tourist industry, with plenty of guesthouses, bars and restaurants opened by foreigners. I was surprised to see bars for backpackers openly advertising that they sell hashish joints. Unlike Thailand, Cambodia has not yet legalised hashish, but the law is widely ignored and the drug is sold openly in tourist hotspots. </p><p>There was little to no presence of Chinese tourists in Kampot, but the town has an important historical presence of Khmer-Chinese, and I did notice quite a few Chinese altars in shops, 对联 on the doors and even a Chinese temple. On the other hand, I saw little in terms of Buddhist worship while I was in Cambodia. There are Wats and I saw the odd monk here and there, but Buddhist rituals and monks didn't seem to be nearly as widespread or visible as they are in Thailand, even though 97% of the population is considered to be Buddhist. Although this is obviously just my outsiders' impression, I do wonder if this might be another consequence of the iconoclasm of the Khmer Rouge.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjm2MvP7lwD7Ae-LKp5i1dVEqQPw19WnnaGedh9Ucuq3a0KKFO0W_MapCLAeQ_-qkgl-Mi0uYf-ROkMDVkuFiXRRjUipyHur9MA_wHcORJHeaWYkE9EmP5n6ewoehx-5ncb4K2SKizJikNKE4ngJp64_zwEP64x0hT6h1MhTkEOr5QLxLSEPJbd1X38/s1706/WechatIMG1519.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1706" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjm2MvP7lwD7Ae-LKp5i1dVEqQPw19WnnaGedh9Ucuq3a0KKFO0W_MapCLAeQ_-qkgl-Mi0uYf-ROkMDVkuFiXRRjUipyHur9MA_wHcORJHeaWYkE9EmP5n6ewoehx-5ncb4K2SKizJikNKE4ngJp64_zwEP64x0hT6h1MhTkEOr5QLxLSEPJbd1X38/s320/WechatIMG1519.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Evening dancing on the riverside, Kampot</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJkqm4iXVhDyZe97BONezT89Tcx6hIbe2BsztJz5ZGHxIjyi48-bMoC8EKxwG51B9ZCy9AZKsRbeY1_NgI1eFOBKS8ESuqYIVm2gWUO_RUTQN845w-UY5CFYhC0gonR-BxP-icvCrjbsp8pUkdRW0Y47c63njkkAFV-2YZDhlb_Dre8BQYTIlvUPL7/s1706/WechatIMG1625.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1706" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJkqm4iXVhDyZe97BONezT89Tcx6hIbe2BsztJz5ZGHxIjyi48-bMoC8EKxwG51B9ZCy9AZKsRbeY1_NgI1eFOBKS8ESuqYIVm2gWUO_RUTQN845w-UY5CFYhC0gonR-BxP-icvCrjbsp8pUkdRW0Y47c63njkkAFV-2YZDhlb_Dre8BQYTIlvUPL7/s320/WechatIMG1625.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A monument to the durian fruit in the middle of Kampot. Durians are the local specialty.</td></tr></tbody></table><p>Kampot is still a sleepy place, where cab-hailing apps don't work and the only way to get around is to rent a scooter for 5 dollars a day, as I did. The roads are in quite a bad state, with potholes everywhere. My hotel, which included some lovely bungalows facing the river, was run in the carefree local fashion. The wifi was weak and unreliable in my room, as it seems to be in many mid-range hotels in Cambodia, and the restaurant was inexplicably closed for two days in a row.</p><p>After spending four days in Kampot, I decided to return to Bangkok. I chose to do the whole trip by bus, which was good for my wallet and for the planet, but certainly tested my patience. The journey took hours longer than it was supposed to. Our minivan carried several local passengers, as well as another three foreign backpackers, two from Turkey and one from Australia. The driver kept stopping to pick up bags of unidentified stuff, and we even had a bag with a live chicken inside squawking in the back. </p><p>The road from Kampot to Sihanoukville was in a horrible condition, with a large tract that had no asphalt and was just a dirt road. We bumped up and down for an hour at extremely slow speeds, on what is supposed to be a national highway. This highlighted the dire state of some of Cambodia's infrastructure, Chinese investment notwithstanding.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwJ6TKdrl3lbCGj6eFvo6iltbwctTrjOIgejBtLIC8oa_Tx_Cs6nloO6Xwy7hFLRb0ujApcbaFKsMTsEbZ9fna5WTd5ege3flubg7wIxt6g1ejKxrWECfnZE5PrXgAyW1g4IjVRaNxuh3-srhsCUUxcUAnrCiXFUZg_6Y3IJtZvEhwHuwzAbnvaagk/s1706/WechatIMG1637.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1706" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwJ6TKdrl3lbCGj6eFvo6iltbwctTrjOIgejBtLIC8oa_Tx_Cs6nloO6Xwy7hFLRb0ujApcbaFKsMTsEbZ9fna5WTd5ege3flubg7wIxt6g1ejKxrWECfnZE5PrXgAyW1g4IjVRaNxuh3-srhsCUUxcUAnrCiXFUZg_6Y3IJtZvEhwHuwzAbnvaagk/s320/WechatIMG1637.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The state of the national highway between Kampot and Sihanoukville</td></tr></tbody></table><p>Even though we were taking the route next to the coast, the scenery was some of the most bucolic and underdeveloped I'd seen in Cambodia, with tracts of rainforest and plenty of raised wooden houses on stilts, with the inhabitants lying on hammocks underneath their houses, in the shade. People rocking back and forth in hammocks is a common sight everywhere in Cambodia, as if to symbolise the unhurried way of life. The road had no proper rest stops, but we stopped at a little restaurant run by a friendly family of Cambodian Muslims, who lived in a house on stilts just behind it. There was a mosque nearby, so it was clearly a Cham Muslim area. </p><p>Once we crossed the border into Thailand, everything changed. The roads were in pristine condition, and there were modern chain stores and proper rest stations along the way. I felt like I was back in a country comparable to China in terms of economic development and infrastructure.</p>Ji Xianghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03406727999722525339noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8533171043031843199.post-78492410587641651982023-03-29T00:16:00.003-07:002023-03-29T00:29:08.241-07:00A Vipassana retreat in Chiang Mai<p>I recently went on a six-day Vipassana retreat in a Buddhist monastery in Northern Thailand.</p><p>The experience was a good one, if rather different from what I was expecting. Vipassana retreats have a reputation for being extremely strict environments, where you wake up at the crack of dawn, meditate for hours a day and aren't allowed to speak, read or use digital devices. </p><p>The particular monastery I went to, Wat Sopharam, takes a far more relaxed approach. The monastery and temple have existed for 250 years, but the "International Vipassana Meditation Centre" was only established in 2018. Outsiders can come and stay for as long as they wish, as long as they ask in advance and there are rooms available. The stay is free, as is the case with most Vipassana retreats in Thai monasteries. You can leave a donation, but there is no pressure to do so. </p><p>The monastery is located in a rural area on the outskirts of Chiang Mai. I took a taxi there from the city, which took about an hour. The taxi dropped me off next to the monastery's living quarters, at the bottom of a hill. On my arrival, a young man who seemed to be in charge of the logistics came and greeted me. He showed me to my room, which was fairly basic, including just a bed with a thin mattress, a plastic chair and a mat for meditation. It was, however, equipped with an air conditioning unit. There appeared to be no concern about leaving the room unlocked, although I eventually requested and received a key.</p><p>After leaving my things in the room, I was taken to meet a monk in saffron robes. The monk didn't look at all Thai, and he turned out to be Russian. The monastery houses at least two foreign monks, this Russian and an Iranian, as well as dozens of Thai monks. It is apparently possible for foreigners who choose so to stay and become monks without too much difficulty. The Russian monk led me up the hill, on the two-minute walk from the dorms to the monastery proper. The area at the top of the hill contained a temple, a <i>chedi</i> (the Thai word for a stupa) and a pavilion where monks gather to chant and perform ceremonies. </p><p>I was taken to the room used to teach the "international meditators", as foreign guests are called. I noticed that the room had a DIY air purifier, the only one I saw anywhere in Chiang Mai. This was welcome, because the air quality was quite poor the whole time I was there. Unfortunately January to April is the "burning season" in Northern Thailand, when farmers burn their crops, and it is also the dry season so there is no precipitation to clean up the air. The AQI on most days hovered close to 200, like a polluted day in Beijing.</p><p>The monk then gave me an initial introduction to Vipassana meditation, during which he told me about the distinction between <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samatha-vipassana">Samatha and Vipassana</a>. While Vipassana is an ancient concept, the modern Vipassana movement started among Buddhists in Burma in the 19th century as an attempt to modernise Buddhism. In Vipassana retreats you generally practice two forms of meditation, one walking and one sitting, during which you respectively focus on your steps and on your breath. The walking meditation also ensures that people get some form of exercise, rather than sitting still all day. The monk lead me through five minutes of each kind of meditation.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdO8NA4-u_-5RasOD7lxx5nFEPW3OjD_h251Xnp4p46KSN0ifA46iXCanpeNIBAH2BpeLIBxDLCAODV6rMp8UTm6PYlyQH_54802abGZ1_VbkBiIGwYMqPs0lKssvN77z-Z7P9Ox8FJgo_MhRmW3ziWQ38HtFkcs3gL_CioKhXe7BjdYxwFOfrXoJ6/s1706/WechatIMG1365.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1706" data-original-width="1280" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdO8NA4-u_-5RasOD7lxx5nFEPW3OjD_h251Xnp4p46KSN0ifA46iXCanpeNIBAH2BpeLIBxDLCAODV6rMp8UTm6PYlyQH_54802abGZ1_VbkBiIGwYMqPs0lKssvN77z-Z7P9Ox8FJgo_MhRmW3ziWQ38HtFkcs3gL_CioKhXe7BjdYxwFOfrXoJ6/s320/WechatIMG1365.jpeg" width="240" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipi-xnXO0wMqnu2J6Pcuc0aZQDHwbTTJRO5Rx0jSwOhGgqWWw9iY6PV6Ks3WpmbniWfAE0MTtx3cqAhJFZEahVPtvgdPqPXF-xMDhS4Ji9pTPbXqhp50LNEmm1WvmCs0KIpYCEQTBHiIw3S4QIcV0A3VZus99lS1TWjM5Sb9EbpFpy4BtU3jSOhf-U/s1706/WechatIMG1366.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1706" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipi-xnXO0wMqnu2J6Pcuc0aZQDHwbTTJRO5Rx0jSwOhGgqWWw9iY6PV6Ks3WpmbniWfAE0MTtx3cqAhJFZEahVPtvgdPqPXF-xMDhS4Ji9pTPbXqhp50LNEmm1WvmCs0KIpYCEQTBHiIw3S4QIcV0A3VZus99lS1TWjM5Sb9EbpFpy4BtU3jSOhf-U/s320/WechatIMG1366.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh879rZKVG0HC4nnVfSmh7M2UzhzFpxY9Xegd6r_tqOYudEzlpCg_J6fq3Iq_Brf3g0Hs1uqWdc_9ZGiSfEyasVHAdsStnvGNp0Ei7wL2asTDv_5Ubo7y-oF53YyqdcIdXauFlkBDpCs2aQ1KQCtb2OrKPWi9feYJ324NkfiIEuDt0Yf1M5SZB1BnWL/s1706/WechatIMG1360.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1706" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh879rZKVG0HC4nnVfSmh7M2UzhzFpxY9Xegd6r_tqOYudEzlpCg_J6fq3Iq_Brf3g0Hs1uqWdc_9ZGiSfEyasVHAdsStnvGNp0Ei7wL2asTDv_5Ubo7y-oF53YyqdcIdXauFlkBDpCs2aQ1KQCtb2OrKPWi9feYJ324NkfiIEuDt0Yf1M5SZB1BnWL/s320/WechatIMG1360.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0m8He8Cjbua-qBdUAyG0GBFNF_cUU_FfVxpikiZU05B0mUZlXz4lRGJ7q8ibseyuA8AbacnhHmrHuXRnV6Tws_uwNsHqv8k7C0x_jKNllgXN16w3u5bQuu5oj157auy3_jjpFH986aXSmOCSotE9JLo33F99HYRR4719tv14MoaJk_ALqzpJyYAAZ/s1706/WechatIMG1337.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1706" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0m8He8Cjbua-qBdUAyG0GBFNF_cUU_FfVxpikiZU05B0mUZlXz4lRGJ7q8ibseyuA8AbacnhHmrHuXRnV6Tws_uwNsHqv8k7C0x_jKNllgXN16w3u5bQuu5oj157auy3_jjpFH986aXSmOCSotE9JLo33F99HYRR4719tv14MoaJk_ALqzpJyYAAZ/s320/WechatIMG1337.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p>While most Vipassana retreats include hours of group meditation a day, in this particular monastery everything is quite lax. There is normally group meditation at 4 pm, but the person who leads it was not around while I was there, so it did not take place. The only scheduled activity while I was there was a class on meditation at 10.30 am every day, which usually started around 15-20 minutes late. The first day I missed the class, because I arrived exactly on time and found no one there, so I supposed it had been cancelled. </p><p>The monastery was very Thai in this way: things tended to start late, and everything was unpredictable and subject to unannounced changes. The Russian monk had warned me of this on the first day. He said visitors from certain nationalities find it hard to get used to the chaos, but eventually people learn to live with the uncertainty and go with the flow.</p><p>The classes were all given in English by the monastery's abbot, a youthful man of about 40. While his English was not incredibly fluent, he always managed to get his point across. Given that the international meditators kept coming and going, there was always a mix of new students and ones who had already sat through many of the abbot's classes. Somehow the abbot managed to give a different class every day, covering exactly the same content but from a different angle each time. </p><p>I could see why the man was the abbot; he was witty, personable, and exuded an air of authority. He appeared to be highly revered by everyone at the monastery. He encouraged us to seek him and ask him any questions we had at any time. I approached him one day during lunch, telling him that I still had some trouble understanding the principles of Vipassana meditation. He beckoned me to sit at his table, and did his best to answer my questions while the other monks listened.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPMgHocvGQH48C5TAk_baeocKogvYLUE55sJEU5XocyJtSojyDLIPcyYOiGVhX0NSSaedshxTpVkOzvVczpO7F1lrHH47sx3wMn5t4Ddi9bhCa8u7i4E0nmcD-bfgpyAEZ-GNTJJM_PJ3NdJFDdxkgWlZMfSVtiWrjiz5akq6nslcz1W2m09nfPLkf/s1706/WechatIMG1346.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1706" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPMgHocvGQH48C5TAk_baeocKogvYLUE55sJEU5XocyJtSojyDLIPcyYOiGVhX0NSSaedshxTpVkOzvVczpO7F1lrHH47sx3wMn5t4Ddi9bhCa8u7i4E0nmcD-bfgpyAEZ-GNTJJM_PJ3NdJFDdxkgWlZMfSVtiWrjiz5akq6nslcz1W2m09nfPLkf/s320/WechatIMG1346.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><p>Unlike what you might expect at a Vipassana retreat, there was no prohibition on talking at the monastery. We had badges in our rooms saying "silent" in English and Thai, which we could wear if we wanted to let people know that we didn't want to be spoken to, but I only ever saw one person wear one. The orientation guide encouraged us not to enter each other's rooms and reminded us that we weren't here to socialise, but there were no strictly enforced prohibitions.</p><p>In practice, I only really talked to people at mealtimes. In the canteen, the "international meditators" all sat at one table. The food was not vegetarian, as those who have spent time in temples in India might assume. It was simple Thai food, nutritious and appetising enough. The monks only ate at breakfast and lunch, since they follow the Buddhist injunction not to eat from noon until dawn of the next day. The rest of us ate in the evenings too. Some tables were reserved for the monks, and some of the best food was also set aside for them. The rest went to us and to the monastery's children, who often come from troubled families and have been sent there to study as monks. Only some of them actually go on to become monks, apparently, while many return to the lay world when they get older.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPNtWm1WiaYpumccQYNTregJI8ZRfJOfEBuwe-vVbXaWW1oS1Lh_ch0bQNB5AwT55ZkPxISWowRrRsjhOWEyMwUPJ8kBx-ATIVhEKTgcoI4Y1SXfVTyYhCp-aTUFRNICHFnJXOIT74sNME3TUQwZjBD7n5EyvPOywqvsWnQ6NsWMfJCk9TgDBTWyt6/s1706/WechatIMG1331.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1706" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPNtWm1WiaYpumccQYNTregJI8ZRfJOfEBuwe-vVbXaWW1oS1Lh_ch0bQNB5AwT55ZkPxISWowRrRsjhOWEyMwUPJ8kBx-ATIVhEKTgcoI4Y1SXfVTyYhCp-aTUFRNICHFnJXOIT74sNME3TUQwZjBD7n5EyvPOywqvsWnQ6NsWMfJCk9TgDBTWyt6/s320/WechatIMG1331.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><p><br /></p><p>The other international meditators were an interesting bunch. They came and went, some only staying a handful of days and some staying for weeks or longer. Among others, I met an older French man who's spent ten years in Thailand and speaks good Thai, an American girl who was volunteering at the monastery teaching English to the kids, a slightly neurotic Ukrainian young man, a friendly Australian hippy who believed Covid to be a conspiracy and told me that the hardest thing about being in the monastery was not being able to smoke hash, and a guy from Novosibirsk who had heard about the monastery from the Russian monk and spoke virtually no English or Thai. There were travellers from Brazil, Israel and Europe spending short spells at the monastery while they took a break from their globetrotting. There were also a few Thais retreating there.</p><p>Outside of mealtimes, there was little to do but meditate, read and go to class in the mornings. I tried to increase the amount of time I meditated by the day, but as a beginner I could not manage more than a couple of hours without break. I did go for a few walks in the local area, but the presence of unfriendly dogs made this seem rather risky. Electronic devices were not prohibited, like they are in stricter Vipassana retreats; in fact the monastery had wi-fi, although it did not reach my room. But in any case I did not open my laptop or read the news while I was there, which I found quite liberating. I did use my phone, but I made a rule of not initiating conversations with anyone and only replying to messages in the morning after waking up, and I generally stuck to it. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjczKe6BtbZLn7netYV25vNRc_fvZDEqqd7MFfpzbVRusSsCbpyI-iZrtbz_akX1GRr1vD50zJCBrw0Qu5wMlhipyZyoBBIBOUxqUrTB4ZNrVUbY91M1JR4yuvOfd_F6C7rRgiHB4nOl3Bn8B11mMpFs49Pz5U7bX15ZLZTkX1Ht0llTQHM76Kk_8XO/s1706/WechatIMG1333.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1706" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjczKe6BtbZLn7netYV25vNRc_fvZDEqqd7MFfpzbVRusSsCbpyI-iZrtbz_akX1GRr1vD50zJCBrw0Qu5wMlhipyZyoBBIBOUxqUrTB4ZNrVUbY91M1JR4yuvOfd_F6C7rRgiHB4nOl3Bn8B11mMpFs49Pz5U7bX15ZLZTkX1Ht0llTQHM76Kk_8XO/s320/WechatIMG1333.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEib0jNpxLK5SzpDlGNoL9DFtowt_vepuYtkiev1dp6csOpKDJJO7e4mPNES3H57idAxJgEcIL4naFwGAMcJ-5fYwXIwwGkJn51L-QumPSGa5ft0QNhuXrG6HFYCreLoU3b7OlkpFleLj13UFmQYwHj9v6IvTy5vXSSwoLECHu8O2eVfXRlpVelyuXtE/s1706/WechatIMG1358.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1706" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEib0jNpxLK5SzpDlGNoL9DFtowt_vepuYtkiev1dp6csOpKDJJO7e4mPNES3H57idAxJgEcIL4naFwGAMcJ-5fYwXIwwGkJn51L-QumPSGa5ft0QNhuXrG6HFYCreLoU3b7OlkpFleLj13UFmQYwHj9v6IvTy5vXSSwoLECHu8O2eVfXRlpVelyuXtE/s320/WechatIMG1358.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxNZx-lZDY6Ey_5SMGssatXqvipOrvusbhbHqguDnGqQOHkADaaf3gT1cipHZo7Qop6UWlSrmG_UF6kgycGsigG10dRR_C8VsAEm7VALpD_l3qcn1mbXUWRBaXmTISXNr29bo0xvPD_WVuTUw99lQCyTX7pPGGwKY8k5KUIkXpsoy1uv-lAXEJib5i/s1706/WechatIMG1329.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1706" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxNZx-lZDY6Ey_5SMGssatXqvipOrvusbhbHqguDnGqQOHkADaaf3gT1cipHZo7Qop6UWlSrmG_UF6kgycGsigG10dRR_C8VsAEm7VALpD_l3qcn1mbXUWRBaXmTISXNr29bo0xvPD_WVuTUw99lQCyTX7pPGGwKY8k5KUIkXpsoy1uv-lAXEJib5i/s320/WechatIMG1329.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaDFfIipna5iumJEh-uxnmhDSFR_pQKeYftuiLBW0zHJV82kCM9STwvjMHMkxrrcgQmTHIPaA-gKYgtKBOnWpJiJdmM0f6Ro5OPH-sIm3bkVAKVDID_iiaMgjYqqtkI3SYzsEDR2q1oSBgw7dbZhg-bUCjpy8Axb0oE2edsPUHudvA6K-i0H0SyMqI/s1706/WechatIMG1335.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1706" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaDFfIipna5iumJEh-uxnmhDSFR_pQKeYftuiLBW0zHJV82kCM9STwvjMHMkxrrcgQmTHIPaA-gKYgtKBOnWpJiJdmM0f6Ro5OPH-sIm3bkVAKVDID_iiaMgjYqqtkI3SYzsEDR2q1oSBgw7dbZhg-bUCjpy8Axb0oE2edsPUHudvA6K-i0H0SyMqI/s320/WechatIMG1335.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photos of the living quarters</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p>Life in the monastery was fairly spartan, but not uncomfortable once you got used to it. The bathrooms were in outdoor sheds, and there was no hot water in the showers (in Thailand this is considered a luxury), but I found that taking cold showers in the heat of the afternoon was quite bearable.</p><p>At night I went to bed no later than 10, since there was nothing to do, and getting up in time for breakfast at 7.30 was never a problem. The monastery's bells ring at 4.45 am every morning, and the monks meet at 5 to chant, but fortunately we were not expected to join. At 6.30 the monks go on their morning alms round, walking around the local area and receiving donations of food from the residents. On my first day at the monastery I joined them, beckoned by the friendly Iranian monk.</p><p>The alms round I joined worked like this: three monks walked around with little metallic bowls to collect the donations. In front of them walked a layperson, in this case a child, banging a drum to alert people that the monks are coming. At the back there walked another layperson, in this case me, wheeling a big basket in which the monks place their donations when their bowls fill up. </p><p>We walked around for about an hour, and by the end my basket had become pretty heavy. At every house we stopped, the residents gave the monks their donations and then got on their knees and placed their hands in prayer as the monks chanted their blessings. Not knowing Thai and not being a Buddhist I did not join in the chants, but I tried to stand respectfully at the back.</p><p>The monastery is clearly a focal point of community life in the area. On one of the days I was there I had the chance to see a ceremony for the full moon, an important part of Thai and Buddhist culture. A lot of local people came to the monastery to join in the evening chants, and then seek the abbot's blessing. After the chanting was over there was a dance performance held by local women in front of the monastery's <i>chedi</i>, as a Buddhist stupa is known in Thailand.</p><p>After the performance everyone, monks and lay people alike, circled the <i>chedi</i> clockwise, holding lanterns and chanting. Finally, dozens of Thailand's characteristic sky lanterns were released into the night sky, quite a sight to behold. The lanterns floated up until you could barely see them anymore. Apparently there is a concern in Thailand that they could be dangerous for airplanes, although no sky lantern has yet brought down a plane.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwRk_woxOEVV1o6G_okZUjBgwcXfHlrhVX0hqbThCZHh99PimZtBfGpHFURMIm8zwBtSAzX4W1--mcp1ZUK0CNSUYa2XEfEg7uxN0vaBmUXuJzU8Nn2LcGwtGN9UDgwiQoejackp-wHICkUAg_CZKDtYIcwEmPFbKN0-dHxvWFPYfBFtMclQQ6oejz/s1706/WechatIMG1349.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1706" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwRk_woxOEVV1o6G_okZUjBgwcXfHlrhVX0hqbThCZHh99PimZtBfGpHFURMIm8zwBtSAzX4W1--mcp1ZUK0CNSUYa2XEfEg7uxN0vaBmUXuJzU8Nn2LcGwtGN9UDgwiQoejackp-wHICkUAg_CZKDtYIcwEmPFbKN0-dHxvWFPYfBFtMclQQ6oejz/s320/WechatIMG1349.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJnxFR-uPFEkPlwUL_kYSieBvp_m22cRKUgsinnyi0jjdoEhzEQB_zIkIvcmPbHybje11G-zDn3hgQIyBHzs20F9dCER-y7SU-d1epwDI0mHYszcsaaDqifOVIHiDIS7BGlltSrvAUiHMqX2i1SYs8vw58eXBPhJHPxfYI93WLZUXRd75sstbSvyIx/s1706/WechatIMG1351.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1706" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJnxFR-uPFEkPlwUL_kYSieBvp_m22cRKUgsinnyi0jjdoEhzEQB_zIkIvcmPbHybje11G-zDn3hgQIyBHzs20F9dCER-y7SU-d1epwDI0mHYszcsaaDqifOVIHiDIS7BGlltSrvAUiHMqX2i1SYs8vw58eXBPhJHPxfYI93WLZUXRd75sstbSvyIx/s320/WechatIMG1351.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi213r4Kg-x0P6JZztlU2DDXYjdHqdpqF9rDkfZLU1MYgVnFZbQFdTatPflOC_9PT1u9X0N8CGe8-J36AdKygcmG54Uf8HGRhLiFdlfl0Lgeq-X_wAjip7-cM4joYe3xPNhSeWEP0ih6r4ea9pfXdW6JHDcLFf7bEVr3tsTcO8s1qia_2IQo-GNJ3ug/s1706/WechatIMG1354.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1706" data-original-width="1280" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi213r4Kg-x0P6JZztlU2DDXYjdHqdpqF9rDkfZLU1MYgVnFZbQFdTatPflOC_9PT1u9X0N8CGe8-J36AdKygcmG54Uf8HGRhLiFdlfl0Lgeq-X_wAjip7-cM4joYe3xPNhSeWEP0ih6r4ea9pfXdW6JHDcLFf7bEVr3tsTcO8s1qia_2IQo-GNJ3ug/s320/WechatIMG1354.jpeg" width="240" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkjZKfFEpjmtQzlvb9DA_ZmrwM2LQhTAQuoK00WB-2TyOCFA4PoTT9VlJpVaL4nxepkPPyLJMA0CVwRxgp0raVUE5Xxe3Nx5kIk7KgosVVHuSkTkBJKS6mubLJXxk1sfYdJl-XEQIwq1EcsyNbg87ZISo7I-qc41W-NlI7xf5zONt8n3edZIOuH_gJ/s1706/WechatIMG1357.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1706" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkjZKfFEpjmtQzlvb9DA_ZmrwM2LQhTAQuoK00WB-2TyOCFA4PoTT9VlJpVaL4nxepkPPyLJMA0CVwRxgp0raVUE5Xxe3Nx5kIk7KgosVVHuSkTkBJKS6mubLJXxk1sfYdJl-XEQIwq1EcsyNbg87ZISo7I-qc41W-NlI7xf5zONt8n3edZIOuH_gJ/s320/WechatIMG1357.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p>I had to leave the monastery after only six days, due to work-related obligations. On my final morning I left a donation. No one pressured me to do so, or even mentioned it. I asked the kitchen staff what I should do, and they gave me an envelope and said I could simply slip it into the donations box in the canteen with some money inside. No one knew how much I donated, or seemed to care. I then went and said goodbye to the abbot and the other meditators. </p><p>While I am not a Buddhist or a follower of any organised religion, I found the willingness of the monks to allow people from all over the world to stay in their monastery for little apparent material reward, simply for the sake of spreading the Dharma as they see it, rather admirable. I have certainly never spent such a lot of time meditating, or alone with my thoughts, as I did in the six days I spent in Wat Sopharam. It was refreshing, and the effect lasted long after I had left the monastery and Chiang Mai for bustling Bangkok. </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnToGHeQGfobYRrjSf67-hY-ztUEuSqaK8gxqHgAzIHSgoez_Wp3hNx9CgpHUprSNKPaWI-2U4iNLnYZ_nw8_C3eCA55e-ieH6JDqik1dKCIKbIpTLljAod3vYtKagqknzdsxyiPVGaXqgm5ARipNl6KNk4HnhsBGEuXV2AGtKHYgnM1I8SpO-LylC/s1706/WechatIMG1341.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1706" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnToGHeQGfobYRrjSf67-hY-ztUEuSqaK8gxqHgAzIHSgoez_Wp3hNx9CgpHUprSNKPaWI-2U4iNLnYZ_nw8_C3eCA55e-ieH6JDqik1dKCIKbIpTLljAod3vYtKagqknzdsxyiPVGaXqgm5ARipNl6KNk4HnhsBGEuXV2AGtKHYgnM1I8SpO-LylC/s320/WechatIMG1341.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A road in the surroundings of the temple</td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>Ji Xianghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03406727999722525339noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8533171043031843199.post-8921431895832524192023-01-23T05:59:00.011-08:002023-01-23T16:37:16.862-08:00A trip to WuhanLast weekend I took a trip to Wuhan.<div><br /></div><div>I had never been before, but Wuhan is in fact one of China's most important cities, both currently and historically. It has become the commercial and educational hub of Central China; it is also the city with the largest number of university students in the world, with over a million students spread out over its dozens of universities. </div><div><br /></div><div>The high-speed train network has made it much more convenient to take short city breaks across China. The fastest line now does the Beijing-Wuhan route in just four hours, amazingly little time given the huge distance involved. There is just one stop on the way, in Zhengzhou. The price, around 600 Yuan for a ticket, is not particularly cheap but still cheaper than flying. </div><div><br /></div><div>Unfortunately, I and the friend I was travelling with set off on a day when much of China was blanketed in thick air pollution. It was heavily polluted all the way from Beijing to Wuhan, to the extent that you could barely see anything out of the train windows. Air pollution is common in China, but it rarely covers such a huge swathe of the country in one go.</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhTcqo7JgSkMy93ScCMvgnI_CmyBIGCXRAyDA1tMXtt7AlHDW97JRoj_qSR4dTl8MNXiNiSfUqBhzJKJIcYnPuEzdyClmznGvINJJ5ahDBavORWCjhq0KEcCMCXrzfvlF2TkO0HcB2ASeKHOcDlB8gxhKFJf9gqNjMxPUP8sIrC9WKLxiyOipgdj3F/s1280/WechatIMG1229.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="960" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhTcqo7JgSkMy93ScCMvgnI_CmyBIGCXRAyDA1tMXtt7AlHDW97JRoj_qSR4dTl8MNXiNiSfUqBhzJKJIcYnPuEzdyClmznGvINJJ5ahDBavORWCjhq0KEcCMCXrzfvlF2TkO0HcB2ASeKHOcDlB8gxhKFJf9gqNjMxPUP8sIrC9WKLxiyOipgdj3F/s320/WechatIMG1229.jpeg" width="240" /></a></div><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaLGJ-HLUERDtdHBqoQ_p4UwweZbkFcqBFD2kKAB2iPwI6rX954a-k4jkMu5T_aKoyk2rupNFW7v2zzDXAzBKwS5189XZfeE1e4FP4t85ARfdRDvXvVz54juoqdsfFjHvRwqedt1sfuBfDea9AbXxJKW6h870SE6vxVZqSCkW3aMgWT6JjwYh7q87X/s1706/WechatIMG1196.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1706" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaLGJ-HLUERDtdHBqoQ_p4UwweZbkFcqBFD2kKAB2iPwI6rX954a-k4jkMu5T_aKoyk2rupNFW7v2zzDXAzBKwS5189XZfeE1e4FP4t85ARfdRDvXvVz54juoqdsfFjHvRwqedt1sfuBfDea9AbXxJKW6h870SE6vxVZqSCkW3aMgWT6JjwYh7q87X/s320/WechatIMG1196.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The view from my hotel window on the first day I arrived (above), and two days later (below)</td></tr></tbody></table> <div>The hotel where we stayed was excellently located next to the Hankou Bund, China's best-preserved colonial-era Bund (or waterfront) after the Shanghai Bund. Wuhan is traversed by the Yangtze River, and in the 19th century it became one of the so-called "treaty ports" that were forcibly opened up to foreign trade by the European powers. At the time it was made up of three cities, Wuchang, Hankou and Hanyang, which were later merged to form Wuhan. Five foreign concessions, run by the UK, France, Germany, Russia and Japan and not subjected to Chinese laws, were established next to the Yangtze in Hankou, to the great displeasure of the Qing Dynasty's rulers who could do nothing about it.</div><div><br /></div><div>The Bund has now become Wuhan's trendiest area, with cafes and nightclubs nestled among the 19th century European buildings and churches that are in many cases still intact. The German and Japanese concessions have mostly been built over, but the British, French and Russian areas are quite well preserved. Although Wuhan has a history that predates the European concessions by centuries and centuries, the European buildings remain the oldest architecture you are likely to see in the city. </div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHx04RT7U6lh7iVU8fDzhEIvPjmwXa3lBxTHdj1HTA-VZWCj3-riQZdpRF_35hn6BbdsfzBIjmMzhwF7VpB30CSsTK6bMpJqaJFNcnsT8IBfMejbuPX2YpGomjJi-LKrPzhEfukiR722aOlo5ASUXpoiQOxFKXNfWXpNp9F8YuyEWTiMv7oVJ_Hej2/s1706/WechatIMG1190.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1706" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHx04RT7U6lh7iVU8fDzhEIvPjmwXa3lBxTHdj1HTA-VZWCj3-riQZdpRF_35hn6BbdsfzBIjmMzhwF7VpB30CSsTK6bMpJqaJFNcnsT8IBfMejbuPX2YpGomjJi-LKrPzhEfukiR722aOlo5ASUXpoiQOxFKXNfWXpNp9F8YuyEWTiMv7oVJ_Hej2/s320/WechatIMG1190.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A street in the former German concession</td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /></div><div>After unpacking we went for a walk in the area, in spite of the pollution, and ate some 热干面 (hot dry noodles), the local specialty, at a hole-in-the-wall restaurant. It tasted excellent. In the evening we headed across town to Wuhan Prison, a well-known bar where punk bands sometimes play live music. When we got there a DJ was performing. The bar is tiny, and it has the sort of grungy atmosphere that you rarely find nowadays in Beijing, with young foreigners and Chinese hanging out together. </div><div><br /></div><div>We barely saw any other foreign faces in Wuhan except for the ones in that bar, by the way. The city used to have quite a lot of foreign students, but most were evacuated or left after Covid began, and few have returned.</div><div><br /></div><div>In the bar I got chatting to a young Moroccan man doing postgraduate studies in one of Wuhan's universities. He was one of those who didn't leave when Covid started. A sociable and multilingual young man, he told me how he had been lucky during the Zero Covid years because he lived off campus. Foreign students living on campuses throughout China were notoriously badly treated over that time, often entirely forbidden from leaving their campuses even when cities were not in lockdown.</div><div><br /></div><div>He said that his university had long tried to push him to move to a dorm on campus, so they could control his movements, but he had found ways to refuse. When they summoned him to the campus, he would claim that he was in lockdown and had been told not to leave his house. On one occasion he left Wuhan, and got a call from the university telling him that he wasn't allowed to leave the city and should return at once. He told them that if they bought him a return ticket with their money, he would go back. They then relented.</div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4pCa1uSHXV6ZerLVqkJNWqo0HlUWCbn0HZvAOWFSBIm6sAKS10rjc091fqRM9eu8_PHCqUl-2WvpndYZqRTYjHtxSohAfxbJ0f93R7f1UmqbYXiDGpsgaaiaBpm7QhDE02A57EqvsVQmP2sqt_u0a69UYNs3_EMzzNyj8LT8fQteQ9d34Ulu9WMQO/s1706/WechatIMG1218.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1706" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4pCa1uSHXV6ZerLVqkJNWqo0HlUWCbn0HZvAOWFSBIm6sAKS10rjc091fqRM9eu8_PHCqUl-2WvpndYZqRTYjHtxSohAfxbJ0f93R7f1UmqbYXiDGpsgaaiaBpm7QhDE02A57EqvsVQmP2sqt_u0a69UYNs3_EMzzNyj8LT8fQteQ9d34Ulu9WMQO/s320/WechatIMG1218.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The view from the top of the Yellow Crane Tower</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div>The following day strong winds arrived and blew away the pollution, but the weather suddenly turned very cold, almost as cold as Beijing. Luckily our hotel room was well heated, but central heating isn't common in southern Chinese cities like Wuhan, and restaurants and other indoor environments could often be quite chilly.</div><div><br /></div><div>After having lunch we decided to cross the 武汉长江大桥, the city's largest bridge over the Yangtze, on foot. The Yangtze is an enormous river, and it took about fifteen minutes to cross the bridge, which turned out to be quite painful in the Arctic winds. Wuhan's skyline seen from the middle of the Yangtze could rival Manhattan's, with skyscraper after skyscraper jostling for space. </div><div><br /></div><div>Once across the river we walked on to the Yellow Crane Tower, one of Wuhan's landmarks, made famous by being immortalised in the verses of various poets, including the celebrated Li Bai. The tower has existed since the second century CE in one form or another but, typically for China, the current tower was rebuilt recently, in 1981. It had plenty of visitors, and the view of the city from the top was quite impressive.</div><div><br /></div><div>That evening it snowed, and the following morning the city was covered in snow. We decided to visit the museum of the Wuchang Uprising. The uprising, which as the name suggests started in Wuchang, one of the three cities that went on to make up Wuhan, marked the beginning of the Xinhai Revolution of 1911, which overthrew the Qing Dynasty and established the Republic of China. </div><div><br /></div><div>The museum is housed in a big modernist building, in front of a large square with a monument to the revolution. Between the snowy weather, the "socialist realist" style of the building and the huge empty square with the revolutionary monument, for a moment I felt like I was in Russia. </div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7hejVxo1sNlmtYowZEF1iI8if8xpM1ODDFe5WKqXozMAXr4QtbnCbJj4GwRUQH6pHLQhX_pIkpI1GdPB_YoHM8cRfQXOugiLeDCsQSv5cJEts6iurduCul4sw4uWCbVD41LEG0cVRYfg0y8unI9BzKHV_k45NyD3bY_SdfsJflHr0T-e3DeBZ3sNG/s1706/WechatIMG1201.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1706" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7hejVxo1sNlmtYowZEF1iI8if8xpM1ODDFe5WKqXozMAXr4QtbnCbJj4GwRUQH6pHLQhX_pIkpI1GdPB_YoHM8cRfQXOugiLeDCsQSv5cJEts6iurduCul4sw4uWCbVD41LEG0cVRYfg0y8unI9BzKHV_k45NyD3bY_SdfsJflHr0T-e3DeBZ3sNG/s320/WechatIMG1201.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbCpXJaASwLv-Rv0vHNoHJZSnJoLFttgAUYFqvp4oDb6AlhWD1NGoIZb4aQg4BYSeFl482rQeiewSE8u8KSidn1xpQxxRCOeZabtWATwYHcnFNf3wD8fuWZVbIbZQuax2qQGtdxS1wwOJfolC-nwwx8Im-GAvMjxKfrdbUPvCV1FqmA9agQugFi6t8/s1706/WechatIMG1199.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1706" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbCpXJaASwLv-Rv0vHNoHJZSnJoLFttgAUYFqvp4oDb6AlhWD1NGoIZb4aQg4BYSeFl482rQeiewSE8u8KSidn1xpQxxRCOeZabtWATwYHcnFNf3wD8fuWZVbIbZQuax2qQGtdxS1wwOJfolC-nwwx8Im-GAvMjxKfrdbUPvCV1FqmA9agQugFi6t8/s320/WechatIMG1199.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div>On the other side of the square there is an old, European-style building built in 1909 to house Hubei's provincial assembly. After the revolution, the new government used it as its headquarters. It's now been turned into a sort of second museum, with displays on the revolution and what Wuhan was like at the time. Entry to both the building and the museum was free. </div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRcjTh1cdNuIjlVynsywOFwCR6peP7s0imOjCfNdAwQ-bC0C7slYi4VsPM-6JohlV6z8ZwQviYRCwRdH8nU1-HsrcGm50j7QR9NmyJLUy-W45UXvAgADdjWbqm54l15gwPgQPNVSBT37ZdQlaa8F5IW9JG5W3NovEWH2z-5p9ygXTnmF2rBermMIB4/s1706/WechatIMG1202.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1706" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRcjTh1cdNuIjlVynsywOFwCR6peP7s0imOjCfNdAwQ-bC0C7slYi4VsPM-6JohlV6z8ZwQviYRCwRdH8nU1-HsrcGm50j7QR9NmyJLUy-W45UXvAgADdjWbqm54l15gwPgQPNVSBT37ZdQlaa8F5IW9JG5W3NovEWH2z-5p9ygXTnmF2rBermMIB4/s320/WechatIMG1202.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The building that housed the revolutionary government, built in 1909</td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /></div><div>Some of the exhibits were quite interesting, and gave you a good picture of Wuhan in the dying days of the Qing Dynasty and the early days of the Republic. Political propaganda was never completely absent, of course, with the revolution often described as being a milestone on the path towards the "great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation", a slogan used a lot in recent years.</div><div><br /></div><div>The Communist Party's official historiography considers the Xinhai Revolution to have been a positive event, the first step towards the real Revolution of 1949, even though it was led by its arch-rival KMT. Sun Yat-Sen, who led the revolution and founded the KMT, is still lionised in official propaganda, and in fact there was a statue of him outside the museum. This is in contrast to Chiang Kai-Shek, his successor as KMT leader who fought against Mao and then fled to Taiwan, who is reviled. </div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-_tI5jqC0GE8ZWFAv2Ukwm2yO4v7C3mO0teCLtZnruz5u8QbSMp1I2iSZp_kQTokGoejkzXiNrHPExcdYRHm2ZUR5A7t6An6MDdz7DkRxeQrxTnB_wWRz_a5cxz1-nb0xgHrgOK27YoJFFLHU_MkIWd8hB2XsPvYm5UJXCvltAOX3hKVNSWHzsSNf/s1706/WechatIMG1205.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1706" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-_tI5jqC0GE8ZWFAv2Ukwm2yO4v7C3mO0teCLtZnruz5u8QbSMp1I2iSZp_kQTokGoejkzXiNrHPExcdYRHm2ZUR5A7t6An6MDdz7DkRxeQrxTnB_wWRz_a5cxz1-nb0xgHrgOK27YoJFFLHU_MkIWd8hB2XsPvYm5UJXCvltAOX3hKVNSWHzsSNf/s320/WechatIMG1205.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The flag on the left was the official flag of the Wuchang Uprising. The 18 yellow dots symbolised China's 18 provinces, and the red and black symbolised blood and steel. The flag on the right, much better known, was the first national flag of the Republic of China. The five colours symbolised the country's five peoples (Han, Manchu, Tibetans, Hui and Mongols) </td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /></div><div>The following morning, the weather had gotten warmer and sunnier. We were in Wuhan for four days, and the weather was quite different on each of them. I guess this proves the truth in the city's slogan (武汉,每天不一样, or "every day is different in Wuhan").</div><div><br /></div><div>We still had a few hours to kill before taking the train back to Beijing, so we decided to go and take a look at the Huanan Seafood Market, the one where the Covid pandemic may have begun. We took a taxi to the neighbourhood, which is actually quite central and only took 20 minutes to reach from our hotel. </div><div><br /></div><div>The market turned out to be a nondescript two-storey building next to an intersection, dwarfed by the high-rises around it. Until January 2020, the ground floor of the building contained the seafood and wildlife market which was the epicentre of the world's first Covid outbreak; the second floor housed an eyeglasses market.</div><div><br /></div><div>It turned out, unsurprisingly, that the seafood and wildlife market on the ground floor is now closed, probably for good. A blue metal barrier has been erected around it, so you can't see inside. There is, of course, no sign or reminder of any kind that this is the place where a pandemic that changed the world forever may have begun. The market is now just an anonymous building in an anonymous suburb with a metal barrier around it. </div><div><br /></div><div>On the second floor of the building, however, the eyeglasses market is still open and running. The building has a side entrance sitting next to a row of little shopts, through which you can reach the second floor. We decided to go in. There was a security guard at the entrance, but he didn't stop us. The second floor looked just like any cheap market anywhere in China, with dozens of little shops and stalls selling eyeglasses and competing for customers. It wasn't particularly busy. We walked around a bit, but at some point two security guards started following us. I became rather concerned at this point, and we decided to walk straight back out. </div><div><br /></div><div>I am certain that, in spite of the appearance of normality, the site is still considered sensitive, and the security guards have been warned to follow any foreigners who walk in. After all we might have been foreign journalists, there to report from "the place where Covid started". I was concerned enough that I insisted we walk away from the market and round a corner before calling a taxi, rather than hanging around in front of it.</div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiW_FX2E1vOSWkO92s1BYZ8Cn_U9FydqiE-4JDqtyx5Z0_K5gy9bLOU9E4nV1S9G0CEa9i_TDTiUa2nwFzvhIwC9qc4K0A6QjTDswcWLfCN9MMGnWtMgzUAU0UbYGJB_pnKtbYtGZvTd29iuNOwTStR0BsdPBwcQ2z2YX1KHBD347bUwwDU-lw4KQjz/s1976/Screenshot%202023-01-23%20at%2021.24.52.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1484" data-original-width="1976" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiW_FX2E1vOSWkO92s1BYZ8Cn_U9FydqiE-4JDqtyx5Z0_K5gy9bLOU9E4nV1S9G0CEa9i_TDTiUa2nwFzvhIwC9qc4K0A6QjTDswcWLfCN9MMGnWtMgzUAU0UbYGJB_pnKtbYtGZvTd29iuNOwTStR0BsdPBwcQ2z2YX1KHBD347bUwwDU-lw4KQjz/s320/Screenshot%202023-01-23%20at%2021.24.52.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Huanan Seafood Market is the two-storey building in the centre of the photo</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div>The Chinese authorities indicated the Huanan Seafood Market as the origin of the first cluster of Covid cases in January 2020. A few months later, however, they decided that no one knew where the Covid pandemic had begun, and actually it probably didn't even start in China. Unsurprisingly, the idea that the virus might have arisen at that market is no longer heard much in China today.</div><div><br /></div><div>The <a href="https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E6%AD%A6%E6%B1%89%E5%8D%8E%E5%8D%97%E6%B5%B7%E9%B2%9C%E6%89%B9%E5%8F%91%E5%B8%82%E5%9C%BA/24281475?fr=aladdin">entry on the Huanan Seafood Market in 百度百科</a>, an attempt by Baidu to produce a Chinese Wikipedia, claims that researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences found in February 2020 that Covid did not originate at the market, but was brought there from elsewhere. It then claims that in March 2021, the WHO's report on the origins of Covid found that the market was not the point of origin of the virus, and that it is unclear how the virus got there. The entry then goes on to repeat the theory, often heard in China but not generally taken seriously anywhere else, that the virus could have first been brought to Wuhan from abroad on the packaging of a frozen product, and it reminds us that the Huanan market's supply chain included frozen and animal products from 20 countries.</div><div><br /></div><div>The truth is that, regardless of what Baidu may claim, the WHO report never said that the market was definitely not Covid's point of origin. In fact, the report (which can easily be <a href="https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/who-convened-global-study-of-origins-of-sars-cov-2-china-part">downloaded</a>) states in its introduction that it is impossible to say: "<span style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 11pt;"><i>No firm conclusion therefore about the role of the Huanan market in the origin of the outbreak,
or how the infection was introduced into the market, can currently be drawn". </i></span>The report, it bears mentioning, was based partly on a visit to Wuhan by a team of WHO experts who were not allowed to go anywhere on their own.</div><div><br /></div><div>In reality, outside of China the theory that Covid originated in the Huanan Seafood Market remains the most popular one with serious researchers. In July last year, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-62307383">two peer-reviewed papers</a> by an international team of scientists offered strong evidence suggesting that the virus was, indeed, first transmitted to humans from one of the wild animals at the market.</div><div><br /></div><div>This theory should be far less politically controversial than the most popular alternative, in other words that Covid originated from a lab leak. Even so, the Chinese authorities do not want to hear of it. That's why it wasn't surprising to see that the Huanan Seafood Market remains standing, with nothing to suggest anything particular ever took place there; the seafood and wildlife market shut down as an embarrassment, but the eyeglasses market on the second floor still functioning as normal. </div><div><br /></div><div>After leaving the market we went back to our hotel, picked up our stuff and headed to the train station to take the high-speed train back to Beijing. Wuhan had definitely been worth the visit. </div>Ji Xianghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03406727999722525339noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8533171043031843199.post-15008325186257154882022-12-28T02:59:00.004-08:002022-12-28T05:34:08.648-08:00The end of an era<p>I remember the exact moment when I realised it was over. It was the 6th of December 2022. After four days stuck at home due to a flu (which I now think may well have been Covid), I left my flat and walked to the shopping mall near my home in Beijing's Chaoyang district. I wanted to get some fresh air, and also buy some supplies at the mall's supermarket. </p><p>When I entered the mall I had to scan a QR code with my Beijing Health Kit app, just like every other time for the past three years. My last PCR test had been taken 5 days ago, as my app clearly displayed, and I was by no means certain they would let me in. In fact, I pretty much expected to be turned away. The last time I had been out of my home, public places all required a negative result from a test taken within the last 48 hours.</p><p>To my surprise, the security guard happily waved me through. Once I got in, I saw that there were customers sitting down in some of the restaurants. The last time I had been out, restaurants were only doing deliveries and dining in was forbidden. I had heard that some places had started reopening in outlying districts of Beijing, but I barely believed it, and I thought that in my area everything was still closed. </p><p>According to the official statistics (which, as I now know, were already becoming unreliable), there had been thousands of Covid cases in Beijing over the previous day, of which hundreds had been found "in society" (among people not subjected to any form of preventive quarantine). </p><p>The fact itself that restaurants might reopen wasn't strange. They have been open for most of the past three years, after all. But the idea that the government might allow them to open up again while the city was clearly in the midsts of an uncontrolled Covid outbreak would have seemed outlandish just a few days earlier. </p><p>At that moment, I knew that the Chinese government's attitude towards Covid had changed, drastically and probably for good. When you live in China you develop a feel for what way the political wind is blowing (and Covid-control policies are inherently political). Official government announcements are opaque and ambiguous, but you learn to read the room. Beijing, as the capital, is always particularly well protected, and if they were ready to let Covid spread in Beijing, this meant they were determined to transition towards "living with Covid" all over China.</p><p>So that was it. The three year-long gargantuan effort to prevent an infectious aerial-born disease from spreading in China was being abandoned. All of the measures that had defined the rhythm of our lives over the past three years, and especially the past year (mass PCR tests, sudden lockdowns, closed borders), were all going to be consigned to the dustbin in no time. Also, we were all going to get Covid. </p><p>The next day, China's national health authority <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-allows-covid-cases-with-no-or-mild-symptoms-quarantine-home-2022-12-07/">officially announced</a> that people with Covid would be allowed to quarantine at home, something that would have been unthinkable just a week earlier. Following that, public places stopped asking people to scan QR codes with their tracing apps, and it became possible to travel anywhere in China without taking a PCR test or getting quarantined. Then they retired the 行程吗, the app that shows all the cities and counties where you've been over the last 7 days. In a matter of days, China felt like a different country.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQb8t5YEWi-B3A9bd7LDZmAbuTgYeAQEW3eFRpXNERzDZ6kja4uI0y6yGEdGPbwXQETkAksXZxyyzcZI2N-qX9oRuTUfviTy5rC5aiLje8lEwGm_jxk-30dxCnvyV-BecHu3bAGFIQJpoznD-Z2pSGJrAw0fWUCoTwvKBllfXBKrdKGlIb7rDRcvAr/s1280/WechatIMG1156.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="960" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQb8t5YEWi-B3A9bd7LDZmAbuTgYeAQEW3eFRpXNERzDZ6kja4uI0y6yGEdGPbwXQETkAksXZxyyzcZI2N-qX9oRuTUfviTy5rC5aiLje8lEwGm_jxk-30dxCnvyV-BecHu3bAGFIQJpoznD-Z2pSGJrAw0fWUCoTwvKBllfXBKrdKGlIb7rDRcvAr/s320/WechatIMG1156.jpeg" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">An empty shopping mall in Beijing, December 14</td></tr></tbody></table><p>I had been saying China should open up since at least March this year, when Omicron started to spread and Shanghai and other cities were put under brutal lockdowns. And yet when it happened it felt disconcerting. Deep down I had never really believed the Chinese government was going to give up on containing Covid. I don't think most Chinese did either. </p><p>And then, from one day to the next, it happened. Official government WeChat accounts, which for years had been keeping people updated on the latest quarantine policies and lockdowns, were suddenly publishing articles with titles like "what to do if you are at home with Covid" and "how long after getting Covid is it ok to go back to work".</p><p>Somewhat naively, I had imagined that if Zero Covid ended everyone would be rushing to travel, go out and have fun. The reality has of course been somewhat different. The moment China abandoned its total elimination approach, Covid spread like wildfire throughout the country. In Beijing it happened particularly fast, since the virus was already spreading significantly before they lifted all the restrictions (in fact, as I mentioned earlier, I may have caught it just before the containment measures ended). </p><p>The Covid pandemic didn't stop being a source of worry, but the things people had to worry about changed suddenly. Instead of worrying about waking up and finding your building had been locked down, or getting a phone call telling you that you had been in the same place as someone positive and had to be taken to a quarantine centre, suddenly everyone was worrying about where to get hold of home testing kits, ibuprofen and cough medicine, or how to protect elderly relatives from infection. </p><p>The first time I heard of a friend getting Covid in Beijing was on the 5th of December. He had tested positive with a home antigen test. At the time people still assumed they might get sent to a quarantine camp, so he decided to stay home and not tell anyone. By the 10th of December, only five days later, it felt like half the city had been infected, and people were openly sharing news of their infections on social media.</p><p>Over the following week or two, most of my friends came down with the virus. Restaurants that had just opened up had to close again because all of their staff was sick. I know Omicron spreads quickly, but the speed of the contagion still shocked me. We've probably never seen the virus encounter such an immunologically naive population before, since just a month ago almost no one in China had contracted Covid.</p><p>Within days of the restrictions ending, the streets of Beijing became emptier than they had been during the peak of the lockdowns. Everyone was either infected, or afraid of becoming infected. The few people you saw were wearing an N95 mask, rather than the blue surgical masks that used to be the norm. Government messaging may have changed all of a sudden, but you don't go telling people that Covid is the plague for three years, and then turn around and tell them it's no worse than a flu and expect them to lose their fear.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAFv2p3xyTgLRwTKFmtW4GZbpjxtbsQlTY35wRwxex6KXWBdhTYlSVddfCgpQg3R5fCo0sadNTj-jEK5Y6O1gYEb34qmvnNtOSwT67jBuiDtxcvSwstvo_pKpWP33dz5tCRqHbLN_QbfphiNLzoM5R-xc7HmMgn6jqHKLwuYtRNdBhU7o8Yh_6OQtT/s1706/WechatIMG1151.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1706" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAFv2p3xyTgLRwTKFmtW4GZbpjxtbsQlTY35wRwxex6KXWBdhTYlSVddfCgpQg3R5fCo0sadNTj-jEK5Y6O1gYEb34qmvnNtOSwT67jBuiDtxcvSwstvo_pKpWP33dz5tCRqHbLN_QbfphiNLzoM5R-xc7HmMgn6jqHKLwuYtRNdBhU7o8Yh_6OQtT/s320/WechatIMG1151.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Crowds in central Beijing on Christmas Eve</td></tr></tbody></table><p>It's now been about three weeks since China opened up, and in Beijing people are starting to go out again. Restaurants and gyms are filling up. Most people have either had Covid, or are fed up with being careful. The public will only be cautious for so long, as much of the world found out in 2020. On Christmas Eve there were large crowds in Sanlitun's shopping and bar district, although almost everyone was still wearing a mask.</p><p>Of course things may be back to normal on the streets, but they aren't in the hospitals. Official statistics on the number of Covid deaths are so low as to be meaningless, but there is no question that people are dying and that hospitals in Beijing are overwhelmed by all the serious cases. And one can only imagine what it's like in the poorer parts of China. </p><p>Essentially China is now going through what most other countries experienced in 2020, except with a milder but more contagious Covid variant and with vaccines (although quite a few Chinese aren't vaccinated, in what can only be described as a serious policy failure). The young and healthy are learning to live with the risk of Covid, while the elderly and frail continue being careful or risk ending up in hospital. Soon it will come to seem normal here too. </p>Ji Xianghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03406727999722525339noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8533171043031843199.post-8786861934086927592022-11-08T23:55:00.026-08:002022-12-28T05:34:56.144-08:00"We only take guests from the Mainland"The Covid pandemic (or rather, the government response to the pandemic) has changed life in China in all sorts of ways, and travelling within the country has become far more difficult. One thing on which not many have commented, probably because it only affects the few foreigners still left here, is how hard it has become to find hotels that will accept foreign guests.<div><br /></div><div>To be clear, it has long been the case that not all hotels in China accept foreigners. This did not start with the pandemic. In fact, it has probably been true since Maoist times. In his classic memoir <i>River Town</i>, Peter Hessler recounts being rejected by hotels in Western China for being a foreigner back in the late nineties. </div><div><div><br /></div><div>Personally, I have experienced hotels turn me away for as long as I've been in China. For instance, in 2013 I once travelled to Shijiazhuang, the capital of Hebei province, 300 kms south of Beijing. Before going I booked a room in a 如家酒店 (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Inn">Home Inn</a>), a chain of hotels with branches all over the country. I arrived at 11 pm, only for a smiling young clerk to tell me apologetically that unfortunately they could not accept foreign guests. Never mind that when I called the chain's national service line to book, I had specified that I was a foreign citizen. After making some phone calls, a (more expensive) hotel that could take foreigners was located nearby, and a taxi was called to take me there (at my own expense of course). </div></div><div><br /></div><div>This sort of annoyance isn't limited to remote parts of the country. It happens in cities like Beijing and Shanghai as well. On one occasion in 2017 I booked a room in a cheap hotel in Shanghai, only to arrive late at night and be told that they were unable to take foreigners. I had booked with an app on my phone, and it did specify somewhere amongst the reams of writing (in Chinese) that the hotel does not accept foreign guests, but I hadn't even thought to check. Luckily another chain hotel down the road was able to take me. </div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHyrAFgn2gnDSadgGhCIy7V6BmxQTfi95dIo9ovA8rHH8GRsA9DDGvoHCgTyDtrFP7yjMqU3kuwXBat8wUYTG201e_IeevHPls_sutqy-NFJKvFD-AMNWaJaZ4MxlTKf-gEYeYRXbrxTHPjysMcCRfzpEsVASJtXdeSD2DR61oJtw16qlyP2a4Ezg7/s1271/HomeInnShanghainearZhongshanPark.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1271" data-original-width="953" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHyrAFgn2gnDSadgGhCIy7V6BmxQTfi95dIo9ovA8rHH8GRsA9DDGvoHCgTyDtrFP7yjMqU3kuwXBat8wUYTG201e_IeevHPls_sutqy-NFJKvFD-AMNWaJaZ4MxlTKf-gEYeYRXbrxTHPjysMcCRfzpEsVASJtXdeSD2DR61oJtw16qlyP2a4Ezg7/s320/HomeInnShanghainearZhongshanPark.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div>In my experience, finding Chinese hotels that welcomed foreigners had been getting harder for years even before the Covid pandemic struck. I don't think the regulations changed; quite simply, enforcement got stricter. In the past, some hotels were happy enough to bend the rules. If a foreigner travelled alongside locals, they would simply register the Chinese guests with their ID and ignore the foreigner. If they travelled alone, the hotel might let them stay without registering them and take their cash. </div><div><br /></div><div>After the change in China's leadership in 2012, laws and regulations started to be enforced more strictly in all fields of life, including this one, and finding hotels that would acquiesce to foreigners staying illegally became harder. In 2019, I once spent hours wondering around the centre of Kunming late at night, trying to find a hotel that would take me in. Place after place rejected me, saying they could not accept foreign citizens. In desperation I looked in an app and found a 5-star hotel in the suburbs that purported to take foreigners. After calling to make sure, I took a taxi there and checked in. I ended up spending far more money than I had intended. </div><div><br /></div><div>It is true that the hotels that reject foreigners tend to be the cheaper ones. But it is not true, as people sometimes claim, that foreigners are only prevented from staying in grotty places that are unhygienic or unsafe, and that these rules are there to "protect" foreigners or to make sure they come away with a good impression of China. During my time in China I have been rejected by numerous hotels that were perfectly decent, and accepted by others that were horrible.</div><div><br /></div><div>Unlike many believe, it does not in fact appear to be true that hotels in China need a special permit to accept foreigners. At least, there is no national regulation that states this. There used to be, but it was abolished in 2003. Quite simply, article 39 of the <i>Foreigners Entry and Exit Management Law</i> states that hotels must register foreign guests according to "applied regulations" and report the registration to the local police authority. </div><div><br /></div><div>Foreign citizens in China are supposed to register with the police within 24 hours of arriving in a locality. If you are staying in a hotel, they are responsible for registering you. While the hotels should be able to register foreigners automatically in their computer system, some of them may have to go to the police station to do this in person because their system does not accept foreign passport numbers (or it does, but they are unaware of how to use it).</div><div><br /></div><div>It's always hard to get to the bottom of these things, but it seems that many of the hotels that refuse foreigners would be legally able to accept them, but want to avoid the hassle (or perhaps the scrutiny) that comes with registering them. It is also entirely possible that local authorities in various parts of China formally or informally prohibit or discourage hotels from taking foreigners, especially ones that are cheaper or not part of an international chain. Apart from anything else, this ensures the foreign guests spend more money.</div><div><br /></div><div>Much probably depends on the attitude of local authorities and the police, which may explain the seemingly random way in which hotels in some areas are much more relaxed about having foreign guests than in other areas. When I travelled in western Hunan in 2018 pretty much every hotel seemed to accept foreigners, even in quite remote places, while in a relatively cosmopolitan city like Kunming finding a place to stay was a struggle. </div><div><br /></div><div>It is even possible to argue that the widespread practice of hotels rejecting foreign guests is actually illegal under China's Consumer Protection Law. <a href="https://www.thebeijinger.com/blog/2022/10/17/use-expat-run-service-if-hotel-tells-you-no-foreigners-allowed">Some claim that if you call the hotel and threaten legal action</a>, they will take you in. I've never tried this, but I find it unlikely it would work in all cases, especially when local authorities have exerted pressure in the other direction. In any case, this is hardly how you want to spend your time when you travel. </div><div><br /></div><div>It must also be added that it is not only foreign citizens who get rejected in Chinese hotels. Certain Chinese minorities, particularly the ones native to the two regions that the government considers "restive", are also regularly (and shockingly) refused accommodation. The motivation is quite possibly the same: too much hassle from the police and local authorities, which puts hotels off from accepting them. </div><div><br /></div><div>Essentially, the issue appears to be that if you belong to a group seen as a potential national security issue, or more recently a public health threat in the case of foreigners, your movements need to be monitored and controlled. This makes you a source of hassle and potential trouble. It may be nothing personal, but hotels don't want you (or have been told not to take you). Perhaps uniquely in the world, hotels rejecting guests has become one of the most overt forms of discrimination in China. </div><div><br /></div><div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTow4GqmIswCwgXIOc88ia7CG0AnAeVMQ0JUU1WtJYF-czCSWeonAbrKvzK1eLgdqqDwQyXQOj_mtGH7rax5BtBtFCCGgMEcVah9b7Jrfetb_H77Ifhqo7PlmTylykey3-DK0yYmkZ_yeY11SFyU5jUKlU5Db9u1KSEBDuyfDa-N3C9Xkpt-Bz2-T5/s1734/%E5%BE%AE%E4%BF%A1%E5%9B%BE%E7%89%87_20221108085216.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1734" data-original-width="1075" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTow4GqmIswCwgXIOc88ia7CG0AnAeVMQ0JUU1WtJYF-czCSWeonAbrKvzK1eLgdqqDwQyXQOj_mtGH7rax5BtBtFCCGgMEcVah9b7Jrfetb_H77Ifhqo7PlmTylykey3-DK0yYmkZ_yeY11SFyU5jUKlU5Db9u1KSEBDuyfDa-N3C9Xkpt-Bz2-T5/s320/%E5%BE%AE%E4%BF%A1%E5%9B%BE%E7%89%87_20221108085216.png" width="198" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The booking page for a hotel in Sanya on a phone app. The encircled line says "<i>we only accept guests from Mainland China</i>".</td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /></div>Since the pandemic hit, finding hotels that will let foreigners stay has become much, much harder than it used to be, probably due to the general paranoia about us bringing Covid in from the virus-infested outside world. It used to be pretty much guaranteed that, no matter where you went in China, you would still find plenty of hotels that would accept foreigners too. This is no longer true today. </div><div><br /></div><div>In vast swathes of China, especially in the North and West, upwards of 90% of hotels no longer give rooms to "international friends" at all. The few that do are often the most high-end ones (4 stars and above), making travel within the country much more expensive and inconvenient. </div><div><br /></div><div>When I travel in China, I usually book hotels through the Tongcheng Travel (同程旅行) mini-program which I access through WeChat. I have learnt to always read carefully through the hotel's "policies" to see if I can spot the little phrase 仅接待大陆客人 (we only take guests from Mainland China), which appears depressingly often. In some instances they will say 仅接待大陆及港澳台客人 (we only take guests from Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan), which is slightly more generous but still of no use to me (also take a second to reflect on how crazy it is that, 25 years after the handover, plenty of hotels in the Mainland won't even take Hong Kongers). Some of the places that carry this warning may turn out to take foreigners anyway, and some that don't still won't take you. It's all quite unpredictable.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div>It must be said that the situation still varies by the province. Last year I found it much easier to find accommodation in Hainan and Guangdong, both provinces that tend to be much more open to the outside world. A couple of hotels in Hainan did cancel my booking once they realised I was a foreigner, one of them a fancy resort in Sanya, but the second place I tried was always happy to take me.</div><div><br /></div><div>Once you get away from touristy areas in the South, however, finding accommodation as a foreigner has become a struggle. Even in the outskirts of Beijing only 4/5-star hotels seem to accept foreign citizens at the moment, at prices that start from 6-700 Yuan a night. It used to be possible for foreigners to stay in 农家院 (rural homestays) in the mountains around Beijing with no questions asked. But on a recent trip of mine to such an area the local homestays (which double as restaurants) were wary of even letting me eat there, because they'd been told to report any foreigners they received.</div><div><br /></div><div>If you travel somewhere and the handful of places that take foreigners are fully booked, then you're out of luck. Last year when I travelled <a href="http://thecapitalinthenorth.blogspot.com/2021/09/a-journey-to-yushu-qinghai.html">to Yushu</a>, I found that out of the dozens of hotels in the prefectural capital only three accepted foreigners. All three hotels were already sold out for the dates of an annual horse-riding fair, when people pour in from the rest of the county. I was going back to Beijing around that time anyway, but I ended up leaving a day early because of this. </div><div><div><br /></div></div><div>The fact that more and more hotels around China won't let foreigners stay is an unwelcome development but not a surprising one, at least for me. It's part of a general trend towards closing off which started well before the pandemic, but has been heavily intensified because of it. There is much speculation about when China will give up on its policy of "dynamic clearance" of Covid and move towards some sort of coexistence with the virus. I have no idea when this might happen, but when and if the policy is abandoned it may take years before some of its unfortunate side-effects are rolled back, including this one. </div><div><br /></div><div>Even if one day China's borders open up again, I think foreign travellers who come here are going to find a country vastly less easy to travel in than the one they remember.</div>Ji Xianghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03406727999722525339noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8533171043031843199.post-56083937152366488302022-06-26T07:20:00.006-07:002022-12-28T05:33:41.492-08:00Antisemitism with Chinese characteristics<p>Many bad ideas have made their way from the West to China since the two civilisations collided in the 19th century, but until recently antisemitism wasn't one of them. </p><p>Unfortunately, it looks like this may be changing. The number of Chinese academics and media personalities recently espousing antisemitic rhetoric has become impossible to ignore. The latest example is professor Zhang Wenmu, from the prestigious Center for Strategic Studies of Beihang University, Beijing. He is a well-known political scientist and naval strategist, and also a "leftist" in the Chinese sense, in other words a conservative nationalist and statist.</p><p>In a weird bit of <a href="https://www.kunlunce.com/e/wap/show2022.php?classid=176&id=159413&bclassid=1">online commentary</a>, translated by the excellent Israeli analyst Tuvia Gering, Prof. Zhang offered this astonishing take on events in Ukraine: "<span color="inherit" style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit; white-space: inherit;"><i>Why has Ukraine become Judaised, and why has Israel put up with it? It's because Wall Street wanted to plant a quasi-Israel in this problematic European region. Israel, like the US and UK, is a tool of Wall Street or, to put it another way, a moneymaking subsidiary of a corporation masquerading as a state. So what is the reason for Ukraine's Nazification? It was designed to sow the seeds of a world war in Europe. In the previous one, the Jews did not anticipate Hitler, whom they had helped to power, to turn on them. However Jews as people, as well as the great bulk of humanity, are merely tools for Wall Street's profits.</i></span><span color="inherit" style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit; white-space: inherit;">"</span></p><p>Zhang Wenmu is clearly no stranger to antisemitism: in August last year he wrote a <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20210810064740/https:/www.guancha.cn/ZhangWenMu/2021_08_10_602324_s.shtml">rambling article</a> which mixed conspiracies about George Soros, Covid-19 as an American biological weapon, and the Jews as a "people of usurers" who dominate the US. He even managed to throw in a few quotes from Marx's tract "on the Jewish Question", which many consider highly antisemitic.</p><p>If this sort of rhetoric were limited to Professor Zhang alone, it could be ignored as the work of a lone crank. Unfortunately, it is not. Examples abound. What is most concerning is that some of China's infamous nationalist influencers have decided to jump on the antisemitic bandwagon. The most striking example is Lu Kewen, a former factory worker whose rants have over the last few years amassed millions of followers across various Chinese social media platforms. </p><p>In May last year, Lu Kewen published an article on his WeChat account entitled "<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210622174538/https:/mp.weixin.qq.com/s/CRemOpfC_0ZHgSsxtHV1Ew"><i>What should we make of the Jews?</i></a>". The "we" in question is of course the Chinese nation. The article is pretty much a rehashing of all the world's worst antisemitic conspiracy theories, but it also claims the Jews are "enemies of China". Predictably the Jews are charged with controlling the US and its "anti-China media", but they are also held responsible for the Opium Wars, with Kewen peddling the idea that most of the opium was actually sold by Jewish merchants. It is hard to imagine a more inflammatory charge in China, and misinformation like this could do real damage if it spreads. The article, which ends with an exhortation to guard against "Jewish infiltration" of Chinese media and finance, got dozens of thousands of likes, and at least a hundred thousand clicks, possibly far more (WeChat does not allow you to see figures over a hundred thousand).</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDKF9IMv8CnzTuaNqmh_xwxRki9HUCK1caNMZmHHHYFR4k3DMpGM_1f49QNFMWkZ8VumybYhdciupicAihtLQq0dPizo5xr6gmQr7LkmyCKwrRlSVCMRutaHz53Vj7zG8VuByieIrtv6deTX0cLjDH2mcPxkHqzXDiwadFN4iZGOMbH_6P6bORoPAT/s1024/Cina-_Wang_Qishan-Jerusalem.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="682" data-original-width="1024" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDKF9IMv8CnzTuaNqmh_xwxRki9HUCK1caNMZmHHHYFR4k3DMpGM_1f49QNFMWkZ8VumybYhdciupicAihtLQq0dPizo5xr6gmQr7LkmyCKwrRlSVCMRutaHz53Vj7zG8VuByieIrtv6deTX0cLjDH2mcPxkHqzXDiwadFN4iZGOMbH_6P6bORoPAT/s320/Cina-_Wang_Qishan-Jerusalem.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Chinese vice-premier Wang Qishan on a visit to the Wailing Wall</td></tr></tbody></table><p>Until very recently, this kind of anti-Jewish rhetoric was virtually unheard of in China. What seems to have marked a turning point is the latest conflict between Israel and Hamas, which took place in May last year. During previous rounds of fighting in the Middle East, Chinese diplomats and spokespeople stuck to bland and neutral-sounding statements, deploring the violence and urging restraint on both sides. This is hardly surprising when you consider that the Chinese leadership walks a fine line in the region, trying to remain friends with everyone, from Iran to Saudi Arabia, from Israel to Qatar, usually with remarkable success. In fact Israel and China enjoy blooming commercial ties, much to the annoyance of several US administrations.</p><p>Last year, however, China's "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_warrior_diplomacy">wolf-warrior</a>" diplomats took Israel's bombing of Gaza as another opportunity to publicly blast the US. The main public faces of Chinese diplomacy turned to Twitter, now the world's primary arena for this sort of "undiplomatic" diplomacy, with Hua Chunying <a href="https://twitter.com/MFA_China/status/1393413296825327617?s=20">tweeting</a> about how America "turns a blind eye to the suffering of the Palestinians" even though it "claims to care" about the "human rights of Muslims", while Zhao Lijian <a href="https://twitter.com/zlj517/status/1395038357130907652?s=20">tweeted</a> a picture of an American eagle dropping a bomb on Gaza.</p><p>This shift in tone seems to have little to do with Israel or the Palestinians themselves, and everything to do with a wish to get back at the US for daring to complain about China's treatment of its Muslim citizens in Xinjiang, with American criticism now painted as hypocrisy. Attacking the US for its one-sided support of Israel is an easy card to play, and will win you a lot of sympathy in much of the world. The temptation must have been too much to resist for the champions of China's new assertive diplomacy, in spite of the risk of throwing relations with Israel under a bus.</p><p>China's English-language state-media duly followed suit, with the Global Times publishing one of its infamous <a href="https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202105/1223731.shtml">editorials</a> on how the US held "undeniable responsibility" for the Israel-Hamas conflict. The rhetoric was mainly directed at America, rather than Israel, but at one point the editorial quotes a Chinese analyst as saying that US policy in the Middle East has "<i>long been kidnapped by its Jewish community that serves the interests of Israel</i>".</p><p>CGTN, China's main outward-facing propaganda channel, then published a short video entitled "<i><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfRg6yByMgc">Why does the US act as a diplomatic shield for Israel?</a></i>" During the video, the presenter says "<i>some believe that US pro-Israel policy is traceable to the influence of wealthy Jews and the Jewish lobby</i>". He goes on to explain, in a pedagogical fashion, that there are, indeed, many rich Jews in the US, and that "<i>Jews dominate finance, media and internet sectors</i>". He adds "<i>So do they have powerful lobbies like some say? Possible.</i>" But he then explains that the real reason for US support of Israel is not the power of American Jewry, but rather the fact that Israel serves the US's geopolitical interests as its main "beachhead" in the Middle East.</p><p>In spite of this conclusion, the video presents American Jews' control of the economy as a fact. It is likely that the people who made it simply did not realise how inflammatory it can be to talk about Jews "dominating finance". After the Israeli embassy in Beijing issued a strong complaint, the video was removed from CGTN's website.</p><p>The antisemitic tone of this sort of commentary may be unintentional, but it probably helped deliver the message to nationalist academics and bloggers like Lu and Zhang that the Jews are now fair game for their vitriol. It is no coincidence that Lu Kewen's rant came out in late May 2021, just after Israel's war with Hamas was over. </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMYYKVTEayW-Qi9qSXdz1ZkfKWc5l2vD2BqAFDExVyBcyfyVj4IQ-Lb2wQQ93WWwnBcS9vRPoag7G59w3Pk-U0OtXSPW7Rj6Nz1rCyENJbKvpuo7YtacOLtGNwvqucLg_CdtHaCL58MOvvOHNsK-uWnseWCC8fDTY6wCxaSNUxDq3zmQJbe5K24Y4b/s1280/6a00d8341c464853ef025d9b4a9362200c.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="933" data-original-width="1280" height="233" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMYYKVTEayW-Qi9qSXdz1ZkfKWc5l2vD2BqAFDExVyBcyfyVj4IQ-Lb2wQQ93WWwnBcS9vRPoag7G59w3Pk-U0OtXSPW7Rj6Nz1rCyENJbKvpuo7YtacOLtGNwvqucLg_CdtHaCL58MOvvOHNsK-uWnseWCC8fDTY6wCxaSNUxDq3zmQJbe5K24Y4b/s320/6a00d8341c464853ef025d9b4a9362200c.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">What the synagogue in Kaifeng used to look like before it was destroyed in the 19th century.</td></tr></tbody></table><p>All of this is all particularly unfortunate because China often used to seem strangely impervious to antisemitism, especially when compared to other forms of racist discourse from abroad. </p><p>There is no native Chinese tradition of antisemitism, unsurprisingly for a culture so far removed from the monotheistic world-view. China's one and only <a href="https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/the-jews-of-kaifeng-chinas-only-native-jewish-community/">"native" Jewish community</a>, based in Kaifeng, was historically left alone until it assimilated of its own accord. European Jews who found refuge in Shanghai in the 1930s are said to have got along well with the locals, and Republic of China diplomat <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ho_Feng-Shan">Ho Feng-Shan</a> was later recognised for saving thousands of Austrian Jews from the Holocaust by issuing them humanitarian visas for Shanghai. Jews have never seen China as a hostile country, and with good reason.</p><p>In fact, over the past century China has developed an odd kind of "philosemitism". Many of the reformers and intellectuals of the early twentieth century, for instance <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liang_Qichao">Liang Qichao</a>, admired the Jews as a resourceful people who had done well for themselves in spite of lacking a homeland and being persecuted. Many of them seemed to have believed exaggerated tales of Jewish wealth and influence that they heard from Europeans, but this did not cause them to resent the Jews. Instead, they wondered what the Chinese might learn from them. Sun Yatsen himself admired the Jews and <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/2013-03-01/ty-article/.premium/zionism-had-a-friend-in-the-far-east/0000017f-f56e-d5bd-a17f-f77eff3d0000">sympathised with the Zionist movement</a>.</p><p>This Chinese philosemitism is still alive today. On the (rare) occasions when I have brought up my Jewish roots in conversation with local people in China, I have often been told something along the lines that Jews are known to be "very intelligent". The Jews' presumed superior intelligence and education seems, in fact, to be the single most well-known "fact" about them in China. The stereotype of Jews being good at business also survives, but it is not seen as something negative, just as further proof of their smartness. These attitudes have given rise to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/business/2007/02/07/sold-on-a-stereotype-span-classbankheadin-china-a-genre-of-self-help-books-purports-to-tell-the-secrets-of-making-money-the-jewish-wayspan/da06370a-5c28-4220-8d4c-cdb03edbc449/">an entire cottage industry of cheesy self-help books</a> purporting to uncover the secrets of how Jews do business or how they educate their children to be so successful.</p><p>In spite of the Mao-era support for the Arabs, Israel has also sometimes attracted admiration in China. The Israelis are seen as a tough bunch who take no nonsense from anyone, look after their own and create first-rate technology, qualities highly prized by Chinese nationalists. There is no tradition of opposition to Zionism, a term that is not particularly well-known in China, either in English or in its Chinese translation (犹太复国主义, or "ideology of recreating the Jewish nation"). </p><p>Of course, a philosemitism which is not based on any genuine understanding can easily turn into something darker, especially once you throw in the eternal stereotype of the Jew as a shrewd businessman. One only needs to see the CGTN video linked above, or the way that Fudan University historian Wen Yang, another egregious nationalist, <a href="https://asiatimes.com/2019/12/david-goldman-sees-huawei-china-as-yellow-peril/">responded</a> to David P. Goldman's arguments on China's potential global economic hegemony: apparently Goldman (who is a secular American Jew) was "<i>revealing his Jewish mindset that everything is commercial</i>", and projecting the Jews' "<i>parasitic business model</i>" onto China.</p><p>The bottom line is that relations between China and the US are at their lowest ebb since the death of Mao, and the Chinese leadership has abandoned its long-held attitude of being guarded and non-confrontational in international affairs. Israel is obviously a strong US ally (although it manages to maintain decent ties with Russia and China), and sooner or later this was bound to be reflected in Chinese attitudes towards it and towards Jews in general, especially when it comes to the anti-Western nationalists who have the upper hand in public discourse. Unless there is a general improvement in China's relationship with the US and with the West, we may well see more of this "antisemitism with Chinese characteristics" in the future. </p>Ji Xianghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03406727999722525339noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8533171043031843199.post-73063031152173484292022-04-24T07:21:00.020-07:002022-04-29T18:59:18.824-07:00Shanghai's lockdown: the beginning of the end, or the end of the beginning?<p>Over the last couple of years, I have got used to a sense of the surreal permeating my daily life. All kind of things have happened which I would have dismissed as impossible back in 2019, and I have mostly adapted. </p><p>I can now add another surreal experience to the collection: the feeling of living my normal life in Beijing, going to the office, eating out and taking yoga classes by the Liangma River, while people I know down in Shanghai are imprisoned in their flats and literally going hungry. </p><p>A couple of weeks ago a German analyst I have worked with in the past, who resides in Shanghai with his wife and small child, wrote the following message in a WeChat group of which I am part: "<i>People are seriously short of basic food, not having been able to order anything for days (same for us, my colleagues and friends). </i>When asked what you do if you don't have basic food, he replied: "<i>At this time it depends on your neighbourhood - and there are stories of people starving (already for weeks, as some districts have been on full lockdown for four weeks). There are stories of poisoning where people tried to eat old food, or even tried to eat non-food items. Water is another basic problem.</i>" </p><p>If I happened to be living in Shanghai, instead of Beijing, this could have been me. Never in a million years would I have imagined I would see China's most prosperous and orderly city suffer widespread hunger as a result of government policies to stamp out a virus, and yet here we are. </p><p>Here in Beijing, life is still relatively normal. People have been hoarding food after seeing the events unfolding in Shanghai, but for now there seems to be no real need. Offices are open, <span face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: small;">cafés </span>are full and streets are bustling. The odd new Covid case leads to a building or a neighbourhood getting locked down, but this has been happening on and off for two years, and everyone's used to it. As long as it isn't your own neighbourhood that's affected, you don't even think about it. I have not personally been required to do a PCR test since the last time I left Beijing in January (but this very much depends on your job and where you live).</p><p>Of course, travel into Beijing from other provinces has been seriously curtailed. If you leave the city, you run a serious risk of not being allowed back in for a while. Even people who commute every day from Yanjiao, just across the border in Hebei, have been forced to work from home. During the recent national holidays for Tomb Sweeping Day, the furthest you could go was basically the mountains north and west of the city that still fall within the municipal boundaries. Crossing into a different province spells trouble. No one knows when this will change.</p><p>But more than that, it is the events in Shanghai that seem to have shaken many people around me out of their complacency. It is looking more and more like China's Zero-Covid policy has no endgame. This could mean more years ahead of never knowing when you or your city might suddenly be placed in lockdown, not to mention travel within China being restricted and international travel almost impossible. These measures don't impact everyone equally, but in one way or another they affect most of society. </p><p>For foreign residents like me, the big question is whether to remain in China or not. Many of the foreigners still here are definitely considering packing up and leaving. This may not matter much to Chinese society, but it certainly matters to me. In Shanghai some of the foreign residents have already left the country if they could, with no plans to return. I have heard stories of foreigners walking or cycling for hours through empty streets to get to Pudong airport and take a flight out, since taxis and public transport are suspended. There will probably be quite an exodus once the lockdown is lifted.</p><p>The mood amongst foreigners in Beijing is also rather sombre. In many ways the last two years have not been a bad time to be in China, since you were safe from the virus and daily life was mostly normal. But now there is a general feeling that a turning point has been reached, with China doubling down on its anti-Covid crusade while the rest of the world moves on.</p><p>Even more than the prospect of Shanghai-style lockdowns, it is the near-impossibility of going back home and seeing their families that is pushing foreigners here to call it quits, especially since there really seems to be no prospect of this situation changing. Foreigners still in China are probably the ones most committed to their lives and careers here, but even they are starting to falter. I have heard more than one person say they are now making exit plans. </p><p>When the dust finally settles, the air of cosmopolitanism that parts of Shanghai and Beijing had acquired will be all but gone, with just a few diplomats, journalists, shills and people with Chinese family still hanging around. Probably just a side-show in a drama affecting 1.4 billion people, but still one worth commenting on, with ramifications that go beyond the disruption to individual lives.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihYvFlLPvMLXIAbY1R6i282dzmVDoPldQhMWm7dJupgakuamfYhzy-6zzI-KW6KkSp6ldvJL1u5G3iu7VBiItMe3nRzNfaDni4HO6lJfFTornB-k3BRCvo5dm6vyOjl0CUonwGCEYguI0ZhnnEk9rmJOaa2FEIMM-yzUiJUMD24blchASdHVAAFL_F/s682/WechatIMG845.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="526" data-original-width="682" height="247" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihYvFlLPvMLXIAbY1R6i282dzmVDoPldQhMWm7dJupgakuamfYhzy-6zzI-KW6KkSp6ldvJL1u5G3iu7VBiItMe3nRzNfaDni4HO6lJfFTornB-k3BRCvo5dm6vyOjl0CUonwGCEYguI0ZhnnEk9rmJOaa2FEIMM-yzUiJUMD24blchASdHVAAFL_F/s320/WechatIMG845.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><p>Witnessing the mess going on in Shanghai has been particularly shocking to many, because it is a city that often feels like a bubble of internationalism and good governance, worlds apart from the rest of China. In fact, over the past year, Shanghai had often been upheld as an example of a more humane approach to achieving "Zero Covid": the city avoided the most extreme excesses of other regions, quarantining those infected and their close contacts but not entire neighbourhoods, and doing its best not to disrupt people's lives with unnecessary measures taken "just to be on the safe side". </p><p>And yet, over the last month all the most inflexible and inhumane of China's "pandemic-control" measures have been on full display in China's showcase metropolis. Covid-infected toddlers have been quarantined without their parents in dubious conditions (after a huge public outcry, they announced this would change). More and more people with medical conditions other than Covid are finding they can't receive treatment, and in <a href="https://storiesfromthestateofexception.wordpress.com/2022/04/14/the-silenced-deaths-of-the-shanghai-2022-lockdown/">some cases</a> are dying (it seems nothing has been learnt from January's <a href="https://www.insider.com/anger-erupts-over-hospital-system-failures-locked-down-xian-2022-1">sad events in Xi'an</a>). The pets of the infected have been <a href="https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/trending-china/article/3173467/shanghai-coronavirus-lockdown-corgi-beaten-death">brutally killed</a>, or left to starve in empty flats. Outsiders unlucky enough to get stuck in the city have had to <a href="https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1010162/he-was-visiting-shanghai.-then-his-health-code-turned-red.-">sleep in the open</a>.</p><p>Those infected have been carted off to empty factories and hangars re-purposed as quarantine centres, where they are given nothing but a bed with a thin mattress and a blanket in a room shared with hundreds of others. Showering is impossible, getting some sleep amid the noise is a challenge and the food is unappetising. In extreme cases, those quarantined <a href="https://twitter.com/manyapan/status/1511037822064635912">have been filmed</a> fighting over food.</p><p>The real shocker is the system's inability to deliver enough food to the population, especially since this was never an issue in Wuhan or anywhere else. <a href="https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1010045/lockdown-tests-shanghais-food-delivery-services?source=chanel_rising">Reports claim</a> the problem is not a lack of food, just that many of the workers who would normally deliver it are in lockdown, and suppliers outside the city have trouble getting permits for drivers to enter and leave Shanghai. Things are now getting better, but securing enough food remains a struggle. I would have assumed that the authorities would rather end the lockdown than let people go hungry, but it seems that as long as actual mass starvation can be avoided, fighting the pandemic comes first. </p><p>It is clear that in Shanghai there is real anger about what's going on. People placed in unsanitary and crowded quarantine centres have been on the verge of rioting. Plenty of videos show crowds protesting the lockdown of their neighbourhoods, <a href="https://twitter.com/CameronWEF/status/1517859030953508864">breaking through quarantine barriers in mass</a> and fighting with the police and <a href="https://twitter.com/manyapan/status/1511975104313442308">health workers</a>. Rappers stuck in their homes record <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_cB06sWqSM">songs where they rail against the system</a>. The faceless "health workers" with their bodies covered in white are often on the receiving end of people's fury, although they may just be poor migrants going from city to city looking for jobs in this booming new sector.</p><p>People have been dragged kicking and screaming into quarantine, and arrested for refusing to get tested. Other videos show individuals <a href="https://twitter.com/serpentza/status/1511936214323982341">going on rants</a> against the government or flatly refusing to wear a mask and stay home. Such videos get censored quickly on WeChat and Weibo, but not before someone has uploaded them to Twitter, preserving them for posterity.</p><p>The <a href="https://twitter.com/aliceysu/status/1511558828802068481?s=20&t=nktYKJigD_i-XRjO-PeuEQ">most surreal video of all</a> has to be the one of people chanting from their balconies to protest the lack of supplies. A drone then comes down from the sky, and intones in a robotic voice "<i>Please comply with</i> <i>Covid restrictions. Control your soul's desire for freedom.</i>" The word "dystopian" gets used a lot in relation to China, not always fairly, but sometimes they really are asking for it.</p><p>The discontent isn't limited to Shanghai either. All over the country, cities and neighbourhoods in lockdown have been the scene of protests, unrest and arguments between ordinary people and the health workers in white suits. People like <a href="https://twitter.com/GundamNorthrop/status/1511828703281516548">this guy</a> are at the end of their tether. The poor can no longer stand the impact on their earnings: in <a href="https://twitter.com/xie_wanjun/status/1511449069297844236">this video</a> of a protest last month in Langfang, Hebei Province, people can be heard yelling 解封!老百姓活不了!(End the lockdown! We <i>laobaixing </i>can't survive!) </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQTJFNr_dD8tjmeYvgiRqByWAy9h-f9p4pCELlYdMO1xwR-fzbmDYQa5dH35MSBXfnJkx_TiorWAOvQVP-gaZ9H6Ek-U5_RqZW-pHXMM9WwCmbYYHqPyVv8aJUjJhfZLksFMu1VXq9t63OJXlyHYAw4IRabJ5Pbb_yohZ3hQNuO2K0L87Wp023sgAE/s862/c266bab53e44a8dfb83f157951077045.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="485" data-original-width="862" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQTJFNr_dD8tjmeYvgiRqByWAy9h-f9p4pCELlYdMO1xwR-fzbmDYQa5dH35MSBXfnJkx_TiorWAOvQVP-gaZ9H6Ek-U5_RqZW-pHXMM9WwCmbYYHqPyVv8aJUjJhfZLksFMu1VXq9t63OJXlyHYAw4IRabJ5Pbb_yohZ3hQNuO2K0L87Wp023sgAE/s320/c266bab53e44a8dfb83f157951077045.webp" width="320" /></a></div><p>So what's the big picture? China's "Dynamic Zero Covid" policy has clearly reached a turning point. There are at least three cities (Shanghai, Changchun and Jilin) where the virus has spread widely in the community, leading to dozens of thousands of cases. This hadn't happened since February 2020 in Wuhan. The infectious nature of Omicron makes it far harder to nip every new outbreak in the bud and carry on as normal, as China has been doing for two years. </p><p>When cases started sky-rocketing, many thought the authorities would finally have to abandon their commitment to a Covid-free China. I was sceptical they would, and I am being proven right. The reality is that, while there are Omicron outbreaks all over China, they have been or are being put down almost everywhere. Cases in Changchun and Jilin have already decreased sharply. It is only Shanghai that is still recording massive numbers, and even there we seem to be past the peak. </p><p>We know that Omicron outbreaks spread fast and peak within a month or two, even without the sort of draconian measures China takes, and the authorities clearly intend to keep Shanghai insulated from the rest of China until the outbreak has died out or been stamped out. As long as they can deliver enough food to prevent actual starvation, I don't see a general anti-lockdown rebellion taking place, just isolated acts of disobedience and unrest. The fact that even respected scientists who advocate for a different approach <a href="https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3174751/coronavirus-chinas-top-expert-writes-eventual-return-normal">get censored</a> doesn't bode well for those hoping for change.</p><p>The real question is, why are the men who run China still so hell-bent on stopping Covid from spreading? The virus just isn't as dangerous as it used to be, and most of those infected have mild or no symptoms. Officially nearly a hundred people have died in the current outbreak in Shanghai (most were unvaccinated or had other serious conditions). There are <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/45f4b975-443f-44b7-92b8-5d2417491015">good reasons</a> to assume the true death toll is higher, given how deaths from Covid are recorded in China, but we are not talking about massive numbers. In Shanghai people seem to be more worried about getting stuck in a horrible quarantine facility than about the actual virus.</p><p>I happen to think that the "Zero Covid" approach was justified in 2020 and most of 2021, when the virus was more virulent and people weren't vaccinated. Implementation was unnecessarily draconian and could leave you feeling trapped in a Kafkaesque bureaucratic dystopia, but there's no denying that a few million lives were saved. This approach was also genuinely popular with the public, and in fact it provided China's authoritarian one-party system with added legitimacy in the eyes of its people. Now it feels like part of that legitimacy is being squandered, because the guys in charge just don't know when it's time to change course.</p><p>There is a popular take going around internationally, according to which China's real problem is that they vaccinated their population with "ineffective" Chinese vaccines, and that if they only used the Western MRNA vaccines they could then open up. The thing is, though, that it's just not true the local vaccines are no use. <a href="https://twitter.com/kjoules/status/1506114862816309249/photo/1">Data from Hong Kong</a> suggests they are almost equally effective as Pfeizer after a booster, while a <a href="https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/health/severe-covid-19-symptoms-5-times-more-likely-in-those-infected-who-got-sinovac-vaccine-than-pfizer-one-study">study from Singapore</a> found a bigger gap, but it seems clear that they also offer decent protection against severe symptoms and death. The reality is that China would probably be following the same policies even if they had been using the Pfizer vaccine all along.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjouMm-oXRVlcnAGAP0CIRvISly-gqr1_I6yBFiV0GXXxO8LqmSvk5BeuJlGZGUQ0ytliVuk-TlY8vi7_bVo1PUu8ZNZDUwijS_lW-vkDJJSXQrsnw2on85kKQEMUe60rWHDmMf6Tbce8-BVAiYZNL4HXesAY2u8ZpXOuTrZTJKjTETXTr2LSI3l25K/s840/164901414107236.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="560" data-original-width="840" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjouMm-oXRVlcnAGAP0CIRvISly-gqr1_I6yBFiV0GXXxO8LqmSvk5BeuJlGZGUQ0ytliVuk-TlY8vi7_bVo1PUu8ZNZDUwijS_lW-vkDJJSXQrsnw2on85kKQEMUe60rWHDmMf6Tbce8-BVAiYZNL4HXesAY2u8ZpXOuTrZTJKjTETXTr2LSI3l25K/s320/164901414107236.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><p>Behind the continuing lockdowns there seems to be a conviction that if the virus is allowed to spread there will be countless deaths and hospitals will be overwhelmed. It is interesting to read <a href="https://gingerriver.substack.com/p/why-shanghai-sticks-with-zero-covid?s=r">this article</a> by "Chairman Rabbit", a well-known nationalist blogger who is also the grandson of an important Communist Party politician. He is not a government official himself, but his post is a good example of the kind of thinking that lies behind the continued support for Zero-Covid in China. </p><p>The article engages in some questionable maths to claim that, based on Hong Kong's experience, hundreds of thousands, millions "or even more" deaths could occur throughout China if restrictions are lifted. It claims that "<i style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, "system-ui", "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol";">It is politically and culturally impossible for the Chinese government and civil society to allow lifting restrictions at the cost of massive human lives". </i></p><p>In the end, it manages to wax lyrical about China's approach to the pandemic, claiming: "<i><span face="Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"" style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a;">China's ultimate goal is to become the only country in human society that truly avoids massive loss of human lives due to COVID-19. </span><strong style="--tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol";">The digital governance, grid-based grassroots governance, and a community-wide public health model</strong><span face="Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"" style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a;"> that China is exploring, will not only be used to deal with COVID-19, but also with the more horrific viruses and superbugs that humanity may encounter in the future. If China can blaze such a path, it will be a success for the country as well as a contribution to human civilization".</span></i></p><p><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="background-color: white;">I find the argument that it is "culturally" impossible for China to lift the restrictions to be quite disingenuous, in a culture that often takes pride in sacrificing the individual for the needs of the collective. At this point, it feels like the collective is being asked to make sacrifices for the sake of the minority of individuals who would die or be left disabled by Covid. The part that's probably true, however, is that lifting the restrictions is politically impossible. </span></span></p><p>The simple truth is that the ruling party has staked too much credibility on its ability to stop China being overwhelmed by this virus, and it cannot easily change course. Especially after telling everyone who would listen about how much better China's response was than America's, and how this proves the superiority of the Chinese system, they can't allow ugly scenes of death and overwhelmed hospitals to play out all over the country. Also, they come from a political culture where sacrificing the comfort, dignity, and even life of individual citizens in pursuit of greater national goals is the right and proper thing to do.</p><p>It may well be true, of course, that China would see a lot of deaths if Covid were allowed to run rampant. After all, even major European countries are still seeing a few hundred deaths a day due to the pandemic, something which the public has become inured to. One of China's major issues is that the elderly have low vaccination rates. The authorities are now trying to push them to get their shots, but apparently don't feel comfortable mandating vaccinations (on the other hand, they do feel comfortable forcing 25 million people to stay at home for weeks without enough food). </p><p>Ironically, and maddeningly, there is much less pressure on people to get vaccinated in China than in most of the world. Proof of vaccination is not required for most work or travel within the country, and getting inoculated remains a personal choice. Vaccines don't do the heavy lifting in China, lockdowns and PCR tests do. </p><p>Personally, I see no justification for the continuation of the Zero-Covid approach. At this point, avoiding the potential deaths Covid might cause just cannot justify the disruption to millions of lives, or the damage to people's physical and mental health and, yes, to the economy (in the imperfect world we live in, real people suffer when the economy tanks). </p><p>Of course, it's not surprising that I might feel this way. After all I come from a Western country, so I must be "overly attached to personal freedom", as I have sometimes been told here in China over the past two years. The real question is how many Chinese are starting to agree with me.</p><p>No doubt there is serious public discontent about what is going on in Shanghai. People in other cities are not thrilled at the idea that something similar might happen to them next. I personally know many Chinese, mostly young and well-educated, who understand that Covid is not the threat it used to be and think that it is time to move towards living with the virus. I often hear people around me express exasperation about the strictness of the anti-pandemic measures, in a way they didn't a year or six months ago. </p><p>Yesterday's <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/22/sound-of-april-chinese-netizens-get-creative-to-keep-censored-film-in-circulation">sudden wave of subversion on WeChat</a> is a signal of the frustration and anger felt by parts of the population. The only other times I remember seeing such a lot of subversive sentiment openly expressed on my WeChat feed by normally apolitical people was in early February 2020, after Dr. Li Wenliang died in Wuhan, and in February 2018, after the <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/3/11/china-parliament-scraps-presidential-term-limits">presidential term limits were abolished</a>.</p><p>All this doesn't alter the fact that there is still a large base of public support for keeping China Covid-free. There are plenty of people who are happy for extreme measures to be taken to keep Covid out, at least as long as they themselves don't get hit with the consequences. The idea that Covid is highly dangerous and should not be accepted as a normal part of life has been deeply implanted in people's minds. It is also not clear if older and less online members of the public realise how bad things have got in Shanghai, since the Chinese media don't really report on the food shortages, the horrible quarantine centres and the widespread anger. </p><p>Conveniently and predictably, much of the blame for the problems in Shanghai is being placed on the local government, in the same way that much of the initial anger about the cover ups in Wuhan was directed at the local authorities. When it can't be denied that things have gone awry, blaming incompetence and corruption at the local level is always the easiest safety-valve. </p><p>What's more, Shanghai's government is being blamed not only for mishandling the distribution of food, but also for being too lax about "pandemic-control" in the beginning, allowing the number of cases to spiral out of control. The only lesson the authorities may learn from all this is that Shanghai's more relaxed and less arbitrary measures (what they call "precise" prevention and control) were the problem, because they simply could not contain Omicron. From their point of view, they are right. If you want to contain a virus this infectious you have to use a sledgehammer, not a chisel. Quarantine entire neighbourhoods indefinitely for a single case, lock away anyone who's been anywhere near a positive case, don't even care if their pets are left to die, and then you might actually succeed.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiEt5YPk_3F3uGj7-rSsmxDxSULyvWXJ-9-mYlscjyeWGri5hGtSjO2Cg3cXKAKwNAM8QfDJQDGzaQQsfGGWyx5hOJWKYvmB8vpXQdwLreoCXR4zc6XvFnpcQfgyyntEZgdZjnBpUFB1K3LwQGJK4rqeq1j9Mv6xKUGP9Uo0sfXVcDiPZ9L234cyqw/s1200/385765868.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="667" data-original-width="1200" height="178" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiEt5YPk_3F3uGj7-rSsmxDxSULyvWXJ-9-mYlscjyeWGri5hGtSjO2Cg3cXKAKwNAM8QfDJQDGzaQQsfGGWyx5hOJWKYvmB8vpXQdwLreoCXR4zc6XvFnpcQfgyyntEZgdZjnBpUFB1K3LwQGJK4rqeq1j9Mv6xKUGP9Uo0sfXVcDiPZ9L234cyqw/s320/385765868.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><p>Right now, it looks like what the future holds for China is ever stricter measures to make sure Omicron doesn't spread to begin with. Shanghai will be locked down for as long as it takes for the outbreak to end. A few lives will be lost, either to hunger or lack of medical care, but apparently this is considered a price worth paying. More cities will be locked down when new cases appear. Travel between provinces will become much harder than it was even in 2020-21. Most importantly to me personally, travelling to China from abroad will get even more difficult, or in any case no easier. It may not go back to normal for years.</p><p>There are those who predict things may loosen up after the big <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/20th_National_Congress_of_the_Chinese_Communist_Party">Party Congress</a> to be held in the Autumn, when Xi will be reconfirmed for his third term in power. Now others are starting to say that they'll wait until the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Sessions">Two Sessions</a> in March 2023. I've been hearing such predictions for a long time. A year ago, people were saying that China would have to open up before the Winter Olympics. Then it became after the Olympics. The reality is that this guessing game is futile, because no one knows. It is probably true that once Xi has been reconfirmed in power, the government will start to study a way out of this impasse, but even then it will not be a quick transition. </p><p>Meanwhile, the rest of us can do nothing but sit back and watch the spectacle of the largest battle ever fought between human beings and a virus play out in real time. If nothing else we will find out what it really takes to contain this virus, and also what happens when a modern country seals its borders almost entirely for a number of years. There might be some lessons in there for the rest of us. </p>Ji Xianghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03406727999722525339noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8533171043031843199.post-88377419899343460452022-02-09T02:38:00.007-08:002022-02-10T20:03:58.581-08:00HainanThis winter I visited Hainan, one of the few provinces of the PRC that I had yet to set foot in (the ones I still haven't been to are now Heilongjiang, Jilin, Anhui, Jiangxi, Hubei and the Tibetan Autonomous Region). <div><br /></div><div>As China's only tropical island, Hainan is known as the country's prime destination for sun-and-sand holidays. Before the pandemic I was never too interested in going there, preferring to fly to places like Malaysia or Thailand if I wanted a winter getaway in the tropics. But China's pandemic-era border policies have suddenly made Hainan seem like a much more attractive destination. As December rolled around and the mercury dipped below freezing in Beijing, with rumours of the Winter Olympics precipitating further city-wide lockdowns, I decided to buy a cheap ticket to Hainan (tickets from Beijing really are extremely cheap this winter, costing less than 1000 Yuan for a four-hour flight).</div><div><br /></div><div>I spent most of my time in Hainan on the coast, near the cities of Wanning and Sanya, where most tourists go. In Wanning I stayed in Riyuewan (the "Sun and Moon Bay"), a little coastal town which has become a Mecca for China's surfing community. Surfing has exploded in China over the past few years, and Riyuewan has exploded with it. It used to be a quiet little fishing community, but the seafront now has a long strip of hotels, cafes and restaurants, most of which didn't exist a year ago. More are being built all the time. </div><div><br /></div><div>I arrived on December 23rd, and the town was bustling. Expats from Beijing and Shanghai who had flown down for their Christmas breaks mixed with young Chinese surfers and provincial Chinese sightseers. I was impressed, I have to say, by the sophistication of the food and dining options on offer. The town had a number of good-quality cafes and Western and Thai restaurants which would not have felt out of place in Shanghai (they also had Shanghai prices, unfortunately). Ten or even five years ago it was hard to find such places in Chinese tourist spots, but people's tastes are obviously getting more cosmopolitan.</div><div><br /></div><div>While there is clearly a community of hard-core surfers in Wanning, many of them dressed in baggy trousers or sporting dreadlocks, they seemed to be outnumbered by visitors attempting to surf for the first time. As with many new fads in China, there's a lot of enthusiasm and willingness to try, but not many people with experience. The stretch of sea where the surfing instructors take their students was packed during the day, and it's a wonder that I didn't see any amateur surfers crash into each other. I actually tried a class myself, for the steep sum of 500 Yuan. It was fun to try, but water sports aren't really my thing, and I found it exceedingly hard to stand up on the surf board without immediately falling over again. </div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiJsZQnFb3k2PqhR4exRgY18gAL2DW5OcPudlWWA7afP867JdvTR8K1lqCQYsbIjW9R9l0Y0zCU_PJD6oRVPMNQ-bHKiYyuCKqbDYFfTiYSEllvjuRrMgPXaC-0rQfCDpt-BvNKSTfWSymcj-UqfKg6sK95KdPfu6ALt3efT9ZNxVDggPlihvBGRHhu=s2725" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1279" data-original-width="2725" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiJsZQnFb3k2PqhR4exRgY18gAL2DW5OcPudlWWA7afP867JdvTR8K1lqCQYsbIjW9R9l0Y0zCU_PJD6oRVPMNQ-bHKiYyuCKqbDYFfTiYSEllvjuRrMgPXaC-0rQfCDpt-BvNKSTfWSymcj-UqfKg6sK95KdPfu6ALt3efT9ZNxVDggPlihvBGRHhu=s320" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Riyuewan's beach promenade</td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /></div><div>In Sanya I spent time in two places, Houhai and Yalong Bay, both of which are well-known tourist hotspots. Houhai is Hainan's party town, a little village on the sea which almost feels like Thailand. The village is small and you can walk everywhere, and once you are there you generally don't leave (the city of Sanya is at least an hour away by taxi). The atmosphere is as laid-back as it gets in China, with people walking around in swimwear and taking sips from coconuts on the pavements. A number of bars spill out onto the beach, where there are parties with DJs every night. </div><div><br /></div><div>Once again I was impressed by the quality of the restaurants and cafes, although less so by the hotels. I ended up staying for a couple of nights in a pretty awful budget hotel, as bad as any you might find near a bus station in a provincial Chinese city. Later I moved somewhere nicer, but prices were generally expensive for what was on offer. The constant noise from the streets and the bars made it hard to sleep, too.</div><div><br /></div><div>I arrived in Houhai a few days before the New Year, and the town was packed with holidaymakers, including seemingly about half the foreigners still left in China. Unable to go to Thailand or fly home for Christmas, lots of expats decided to make their way to this town at the very southern tip of China's territory (it is at the same latitude as Central Vietnam) to celebrate the New Year. I am no longer used to seeing this many non-Chinese people in one place in China, and the effect was rather surreal. Between that and the laid-back atmosphere, it almost felt like I was no longer in the same country. The party on the beach on New Year's Eve went on way into the night, with plenty of fireworks, something that is no longer allowed in Beijing. </div><div><br /></div><div>The sea in Houhai was full of people surfing, mostly first-timers, just like in Riyuewan. The waters are actually rather dangerous, with plenty of treacherous undercurrents, and accidents do happen. The beach had a large notice on it clearly stating that swimming and surfing are forbidden, but it was widely ignored. I found this same easy-going attitude towards rules and regulations on display everywhere in Hainan, in contrast with much of China, which over the last decade has become a country of rules that actually have to be followed (by us common mortals, at least). I guess the famous "the mountains are high and the emperor is far away" saying still means something on this island province.</div><div><br /></div><div>The local authorities also seem to be quite relaxed about anti-pandemic regulations, and much more welcoming towards foreigners than in many other provinces. Although a hotel in Baoting and one in Sanya did cancel my booking after they realised I was a foreign citizen, most hotels seem to have no restrictions on hosting foreigners. Most hotels didn't ask to see a Health Code, and no one ever asked me how long it is since I have last entered China. I also encountered no police checkpoints between cities even in the "autonomous" ethnic minority county I visited, in sharp contrast with many areas of China. </div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhywZFWpuylwPVL5Zflit0eL-9gjLD54UPrhT2tuqibKtBJyALoTYjzKlAkmI-TPma0qsnbbmQDA24IIFJudk4HRV2zv5T8ntykjCEikc60UalZmblfFKkMd9CQ9scB_1FR4PMNyeUi4qh3O5r5HayUaPVnjYKjggx_txzazPDjgZua5-gCSbzJVI1b=s2727" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1279" data-original-width="2727" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhywZFWpuylwPVL5Zflit0eL-9gjLD54UPrhT2tuqibKtBJyALoTYjzKlAkmI-TPma0qsnbbmQDA24IIFJudk4HRV2zv5T8ntykjCEikc60UalZmblfFKkMd9CQ9scB_1FR4PMNyeUi4qh3O5r5HayUaPVnjYKjggx_txzazPDjgZua5-gCSbzJVI1b=s320" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Couple shooting wedding photo, Yalong Bay</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhyfzueluU-nvdX14Els_SPPYy7peS2ISuoqcjpWCJAjoAF_KhsyiDsbiAq7xfM-8NZ0bZGsdyiBXaFKS2a4HpmYPhb_i5ImMYnUArBg5QTyyxX9EVITn-EmRdHYDhPYpN3ulJtlql4Xiczmi09kAXr3Y8MoAa5ii_WnLDm8tTTY60RvCmXBam-RYKz=s2725" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1279" data-original-width="2725" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhyfzueluU-nvdX14Els_SPPYy7peS2ISuoqcjpWCJAjoAF_KhsyiDsbiAq7xfM-8NZ0bZGsdyiBXaFKS2a4HpmYPhb_i5ImMYnUArBg5QTyyxX9EVITn-EmRdHYDhPYpN3ulJtlql4Xiczmi09kAXr3Y8MoAa5ii_WnLDm8tTTY60RvCmXBam-RYKz=s320" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Yoga class on the beach, Houhai</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div><br /></div><div>After Houhai I moved to Yalong Bay, a bit further down the coast, which had a completely different vibe. It felt more like Florida, an area of fancy resorts, shopping malls and boulevards lined with palm trees. The beach was full of families on vacation and Chinese couples taking their wedding photos. I also hopped over to Dadong Hai, the area of the city of Sanya closest to the sea, where people go for the bars and nightlife. The signs in Russian in the bar street attest to the fact that before the pandemic a lot of Russians used to visit Sanya. </div><div><br /></div><div>Although I went to Hainan mainly to relax and get away from the winter cold, I did want to leave the coast and do a little bit of exploring, so I went to up Baoting for a couple of nights. Baoting is a town in the interior, north of Sanya, which serves as the capital of the Baoting Li and Miao Autonomous County. Hainan, although known in the rest of China mainly as a resort island, is actually quite ethnically diverse. As large as Taiwan, and with ten million inhabitants, it has an interior mostly untouched by mass tourism. The original inhabitants are the Li people, who speak a language related to Thai and have lived on the island for thousands of years.</div><div><br /></div><div>Although the Han Chinese have been residing in Hainan for over a thousand years, they only really started moving there en masse in the 16th and 17th centuries, when they took over all the areas capable of intense cultivation and the Li people were pushed into the mountains. To this day there are over a million Li in Hainan, living mostly in the mountains in the south of the island. A lot of them fought as communist guerrillas during the Second World War and were massacred by the Guomindang and the Japanese, something which has placed them in good stead with the Communist Party. There are also quite a few Miao people in the island, the descendants of soldiers who were brought over centuries ago to put down a rebellion by the Li and ended up staying and settling in the mountains beside them.</div><div><br /></div><div>In Baoting I saw little obvious sign of this ethnic diversity, except for a a few elderly women in traditional clothing, but the provincial town did feel a world away from flashy Sanya. I had to take a long-distance bus to get there, since train lines in Hainan don't extend beyond the coast. I climbed the nearby Qixianling mountain, well known for the seven ridges at the top which give it its name (the seven-fairy mountain), while I took in the tropical vegetation. The area nearby is famed for its hot springs, and a number of resorts have been built for tourists.</div><div><br /></div><div>I got a better taste of Hainan's diversity in Wanning, when I rented an electric scooter and took a day trip to the nearby "Bali village". The village is located inland, next to the town of Xinglong. The town was created by Chinese-Indonesians who "returned" to China in the 50s, escaping from anti-Chinese violence in Indonesia. The Party settled them in this corner of Hainan, where the tropical climate was similar to Indonesia and they would be able to plant the same crops. </div><div><br /></div><div>The "Bali village" was mostly a collection of exhibits and buildings built in a Balinese style in the middle of the rainforest. The place was staffed by local women dressed in traditional Balinese costumes, in a display of what would now be called "cultural appropriation" in the West. There were also some partisan but interesting explanations on the history of the Chinese-Indonesians in the area. While it was all slightly kitsch, the tropical forest all around gave me the illusion that I was actually in Bali. </div><div><br /></div><div>After visiting the Bali village, I got back on my scooter and drove to Xinglong. While it looks like any Southern Chinese town, I ate in a local restaurant where much of the food was clearly Indonesian-influenced, including the little cakes. Between the tropical scenery, the food and the fact that I was getting around by scooter, it almost felt like I was in fact back in Indonesia. You can find a surprisingly frank description of the area's history by China Daily <a href="http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/2012-03/16/content_14845500.htm">here</a>. </div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhWvuiKTH7H5LXfxuKO1rpjINQMS_z0j3KhtVk2BKymXst60LCCxi96ICCplft05Ch0ejvXlGQ0zuRdd5_gdq4OZqyEuJIpmzKxI5U6Pqg7JUrkJXeu43rcvjQvVsHXCoBCMaNXJlLF72nni3OEaJ75AqhYdGMluik5Qd5vioYo3l0K1aV3iW-E7odi=s2725" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2725" data-original-width="1279" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhWvuiKTH7H5LXfxuKO1rpjINQMS_z0j3KhtVk2BKymXst60LCCxi96ICCplft05Ch0ejvXlGQ0zuRdd5_gdq4OZqyEuJIpmzKxI5U6Pqg7JUrkJXeu43rcvjQvVsHXCoBCMaNXJlLF72nni3OEaJ75AqhYdGMluik5Qd5vioYo3l0K1aV3iW-E7odi=s320" width="150" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The entrance to the Bali Village</td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgxZzYzBJnfVWsyGJHluQTQFPjlaPbxgIZN1kFLRKOR0IcZ3DqPjzHhchLIXT65dCSsy6M63Na9UveynLSjz12NCidipr-e7ZL1qUYqsfVqj5Suc9HcEGjepsNTyDgj8qtAEuKbKM3-4QxlG4sWjhfPymOybLlV2PPoqeoHik1ueAhYn_gZwHVaUaZb=s2725" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1279" data-original-width="2725" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgxZzYzBJnfVWsyGJHluQTQFPjlaPbxgIZN1kFLRKOR0IcZ3DqPjzHhchLIXT65dCSsy6M63Na9UveynLSjz12NCidipr-e7ZL1qUYqsfVqj5Suc9HcEGjepsNTyDgj8qtAEuKbKM3-4QxlG4sWjhfPymOybLlV2PPoqeoHik1ueAhYn_gZwHVaUaZb=s320" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Replica Balinese pavilion</td></tr></tbody></table></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #0000ee;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjOW2PHhoUZoKY4WBrd2XZVqfGtvmIXxM49LRcpdNjRdienYBjmKhavud2f3WjktmOFvc2U3z7o6uj7WBTt9Nre4jiywhqRqUYotBCWm7sBilgnW-4ufpxYiV0dGwDQurpAK4r-kRTnWErIF0DQW0eZbxFCCP_QqFTP7O7LP5bDC8abhMynCjUIooF3=s2725" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1279" data-original-width="2725" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjOW2PHhoUZoKY4WBrd2XZVqfGtvmIXxM49LRcpdNjRdienYBjmKhavud2f3WjktmOFvc2U3z7o6uj7WBTt9Nre4jiywhqRqUYotBCWm7sBilgnW-4ufpxYiV0dGwDQurpAK4r-kRTnWErIF0DQW0eZbxFCCP_QqFTP7O7LP5bDC8abhMynCjUIooF3=s320" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Local women dressed in Balinese costume</td></tr></tbody></table></span></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgvQl7-Qxzkov6J8jcAfTsYLZLns4rhyBjjuCXnG_NsMV-MqGpacdBCEIBEhO9R5x9xpMA6kNNS1MTuViYKsH9oJNgqCCleZMlwy9YbeEyyNdyWJi5GkYqSfuDcYgkPFipEofU-WzF7MM7HIUjqYU5IV11dSmP3Qc_dCQAc_eaBI_2uEdurtJYoADc1=s2725" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1279" data-original-width="2725" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgvQl7-Qxzkov6J8jcAfTsYLZLns4rhyBjjuCXnG_NsMV-MqGpacdBCEIBEhO9R5x9xpMA6kNNS1MTuViYKsH9oJNgqCCleZMlwy9YbeEyyNdyWJi5GkYqSfuDcYgkPFipEofU-WzF7MM7HIUjqYU5IV11dSmP3Qc_dCQAc_eaBI_2uEdurtJYoADc1=s320" width="320" /></a></div><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg3LeuKcfNbV1H_HgM_-xfSciW9hApFAZoxNLrKwTidf0RBrUWlJVk7xt7Y7uIJTHOeRUWSXKQHOB-dl9qH2RXBbZI7qR5ZHOSQFjtK1IjP-BFDpACZM4kvCHQpj-My1khxwpAESX5L_vBTrWuAM6PcoszT_I6v60NTeMDz2CsF5qF0fhjMtpFLVCz_=s2727" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1279" data-original-width="2727" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg3LeuKcfNbV1H_HgM_-xfSciW9hApFAZoxNLrKwTidf0RBrUWlJVk7xt7Y7uIJTHOeRUWSXKQHOB-dl9qH2RXBbZI7qR5ZHOSQFjtK1IjP-BFDpACZM4kvCHQpj-My1khxwpAESX5L_vBTrWuAM6PcoszT_I6v60NTeMDz2CsF5qF0fhjMtpFLVCz_=s320" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The seven peaks of Qixianling</td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /></div><div>Hainan has many other interesting pockets of ethnic diversity, for instance a small community of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utsul">Utsul</a> who fled there from Vietnam centuries ago, and are classified as Hui by the state because they are Muslims (it seems they have not escaped the general crackdown on Islamic practice going on all over the country). There are also small communities of what used to be called "Sea Gypsies", a Chinese-speaking ethnic group who traditionally live on boats. It would be interesting, one day, to visit all of these areas. </div><div><br /></div><div>All in all, I was quite impressed with Hainan. I was, to be honest, expecting the resort towns to be garish and overcrowded, but they were, for the most part, nice places to relax. The mountainous interior of the island, at least in the less populous South, seemed lush and not too commercialised. The fact that public transport is rather underdeveloped by Chinese standards, with train lines only connecting the main cities on the coast, probably helps to keep things that way. The local people seemed remarkably friendly and easy-going, helping to make the island feel more like South-East Asia than China. </div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjgWg1AqehF1uJ4UnBp9ETO1Uj-PsRX_l8CuOTLYXHtTpQbj51gI3A5IWs0G0xUCL5xqQk0cGxlt_BVZOTYACwd5tfE4oP8SKQWpCwlDzR-BgzQa72pD5LXILyvYE8KOh-p6SHkN1WJ5FhGedNLScqyaO73Se4Ukf0j8yOJAc9PMPkfenY9dTqb63aw=s2725" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1279" data-original-width="2725" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjgWg1AqehF1uJ4UnBp9ETO1Uj-PsRX_l8CuOTLYXHtTpQbj51gI3A5IWs0G0xUCL5xqQk0cGxlt_BVZOTYACwd5tfE4oP8SKQWpCwlDzR-BgzQa72pD5LXILyvYE8KOh-p6SHkN1WJ5FhGedNLScqyaO73Se4Ukf0j8yOJAc9PMPkfenY9dTqb63aw=s320" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiWsuSVxSHNCOCbjk6UCDOrozqlMU9VLHdykHuaUFoNewZDUMlXAWucC9wRFLkXI6UKSUNQqxd5AS4OmmP0yDcjFdfRA12e5YoRlLJlhybRgodiVVgKHLNL1gkbllSx6xa6oTVabZQpRPwsliei78WTrtvsDQU_nPOrcdSxzrqTaVNTU30ZA88OsbM0=s2725" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1279" data-original-width="2725" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiWsuSVxSHNCOCbjk6UCDOrozqlMU9VLHdykHuaUFoNewZDUMlXAWucC9wRFLkXI6UKSUNQqxd5AS4OmmP0yDcjFdfRA12e5YoRlLJlhybRgodiVVgKHLNL1gkbllSx6xa6oTVabZQpRPwsliei78WTrtvsDQU_nPOrcdSxzrqTaVNTU30ZA88OsbM0=s320" width="320" /></a></div><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgSsGpIWpPs3hXtYtT5m56ae9Cz6kb4E_a5OJNg6AKSs-t7uNPFdpZK83IabDPZ6G0V24aur-H65zJyycjpDfgrJKgkEOD0FJ1sKN90M2BQT2a_OayCje1xZFUDjsEMfy2zjjrxJkERB4bx_-V_KHSet9oKgKul2ivgqjaffBXEYJhny8vPxlwFbDTE=s2725" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1279" data-original-width="2725" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgSsGpIWpPs3hXtYtT5m56ae9Cz6kb4E_a5OJNg6AKSs-t7uNPFdpZK83IabDPZ6G0V24aur-H65zJyycjpDfgrJKgkEOD0FJ1sKN90M2BQT2a_OayCje1xZFUDjsEMfy2zjjrxJkERB4bx_-V_KHSet9oKgKul2ivgqjaffBXEYJhny8vPxlwFbDTE=s320" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The view behind my guesthouse, near Riyuewan</td></tr></tbody></table><br />Ji Xianghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03406727999722525339noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8533171043031843199.post-47329300124976663742022-01-09T06:08:00.005-08:002022-01-15T17:58:06.854-08:00China books of the year in review: Red Roulette and Invisible China<p>I read a lot of books in 2021, a handful of which were on China. There were two China-related books that really stood out for me: <i>Red Roulette</i> by Desmond Shum, and <i>Invisible China</i> by Scott Rozelle. </p><p>If you take an interest in Chinese affairs, you've probably heard of the first book. It's a memoir by a man who reached the top echelons of China's business world thanks to his marriage to a woman, Whitney Duang, who had cultivated deep connections within the Communist Party's leadership. The couple were central to a number of important deals, including a project to expand Beijing's Capital Airport. Mr. Shum later fell out of favour and left China, while his former wife and business partner was disappeared by the Chinese state. </p><p>The book is a very readable and revealing depiction of how things work at the top of the Chinese system. Shum is from Shanghai, but grew up mostly in colonial Hong Kong and studied in the US, so he possesses both an outsider's and an insider's perspective on China. Others have already analysed Shum's revelations concerning the country's top leaders and their shady deals, and the general conclusion is that he is telling the truth, if perhaps not all of it. </p><p>What I found particularly interesting, though, is the insight the memoir provides regarding the political and psychological factors that motivated Shum and his wife. Billionaires like to think they are moved by more than just greed, and these two were no exception. Once the couple had made it to the top, they convinced themselves that they could use their position to push for broader positive change in China as a whole. </p><p>Shum felt political change would be beneficial to him personally, and thinks other entrepreneurs shared his ideals: "<i>those of us who identified as capitalists wanted a voice. We wanted protection for our property, our investments, and other rights. We wanted, if not an independent judiciary, at least a fair one where judgments were made on the basis of law, and not on the whims of the local party boss. We craved predictability in government policies, because only then could we invest with confidence</i>."</p><p>He got involved in philanthropy, creating a scholarship for students from poor regions studying in Tsinghua. He also joined the Beijing branch of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_People%27s_Political_Consultative_Conference">Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference</a> (CPPCC), officially China's "second parliament", which as he says himself was more of a networking platform. "<i>Membership was a sign that the Party saw you as a potentially useful agent of the party's influence.</i>" He noticed that bolder members of the body were starting to advocate for democracy within the Party, and he wondered if the CPPCC could become more relevant, like a real second chamber of parliament.</p><p>Shums' wife Whitney, who had grown up in anonymity in Shandong, was a Christian, and wished for more religious freedom, or at least a recognition that you could "love god and love China at the same time". Shum and Whitney worked with foreign think tanks to educate Chinese scholars about how democracies work, and around 2010 they funded a European delegation led by Romano Prodi to come to China and have a private chat on foreign policy with Chinese officials. As he puts it, "<i>we tried not to cross any redlines. We truly believed in the promise of China. We were all in.</i>" </p><p>Around the turn of the decade, Shum noticed with concern that things had started to change. In 2013 he was summoned to a meeting of the Beijing CPPCC, where a senior official gave a hard-line speech that put to rest any fantasies of democratic reform. Then in 2014, Shum and other CPPCC members from the Hong Kong SARS (the place where he grew up and of which he is a citizen) were directed to go to Hong Kong and take part in an organised counter-protest against the Umbrella Movement. Shum made sure he was seen at the march, even though he didn't really believe in what he was marching for. Quite simply, he was deeply embedded in the system and could not afford to break ranks.</p><p>In the end the couple paid the price for having got to the top through the support of prime minister Wen Jiabao's wife. After Xi took office, and Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao's allies were purged one by one, this turned into a liability. Meanwhile the couple grew estranged and divorced, after which Shum had to threaten his wife in order to ensure that she gave him a fair amount of the funds from their joint business, since she controlled all their money and the local courts could not be relied upon to protect his interests. Disillusioned with China, he left and made a life for himself in Britain with his son, while his wife met the unfortunate fate of disappearing into detention.</p><p>In the end, it is hard to argue with Shum's conclusion that modern China is a harsh, unforgiving place. It must also be said, though, that he comes across as an opportunist who is now spilling the beans because he has nothing left to lose. It is true that it was easier to believe in democratic change back in the 2000s, and I have no doubt that he was genuinely convinced he was helping to steer the country in the right direction. At the same time, I would advance a guess that Shum would never have left China and rejected the system if he had been given a chance to hold on to his billions and his privileged position.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgrqpzcpZA1B7RgtE9TNxWDIO89IM_YAzD1yJKANGW-i3kPPpWWoXFkgMzHZ6fhj4ukht2ueNvQblYuz0alB2ZTOR79dL8mf94qPehz0KS-lkcHZyJOjcULGjLO-igT-_DkHmYfa4EKvD7X7zHISIDX4pGJFqk87fPtEmq9HgSZshN0QiOWXh4zWwPC=s500" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="332" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgrqpzcpZA1B7RgtE9TNxWDIO89IM_YAzD1yJKANGW-i3kPPpWWoXFkgMzHZ6fhj4ukht2ueNvQblYuz0alB2ZTOR79dL8mf94qPehz0KS-lkcHZyJOjcULGjLO-igT-_DkHmYfa4EKvD7X7zHISIDX4pGJFqk87fPtEmq9HgSZshN0QiOWXh4zWwPC=s320" width="212" /></a></div><br /><p>The other book, <i>Invisible China: how the Urban-Rural Divide Threatens China's Rise, </i>focuses on a problem that tends to be overlooked: the dismal educational and cognitive level of a big chunk of China's population, particularly in the countryside, and how this affects the country's prospects. The book makes a very convincing case that much of the Chinese population is simply not skilled enough to take up the kind of jobs in services that will open up once the manufacturing jobs move to cheaper countries, and this could keep China stuck in the so-called "middle-income trap" that bedevils countries like Mexico, Brazil and South Africa.</p><p>The book is co-authored by Scott Rozelle and Natalie Hell, two Stanford scholars. The most well known of the two is Rozelle, an American economist who has spent 30 years researching poverty and education in rural China. Over the years he has drawn <a href="https://chinadevelopmentbrief.org/reports/stanford-professor-scott-rozelles-talk-on-rural-education-causes-a-stir-in-china/">some criticism</a> for his positions, but he clearly knows what he is talking about. The book uncovers a reality that is not easy to see for those who only experience middle-class urban China. </p><p>First of all, it may be a revelation for some to realise that China's masses are in fact under-educated relative to other countries that are similarly or less developed. In 2015, 70% of working-age adults in China had not completed high-school, compared to 58% in South Africa and 42% in the Philippines. Even among Chinese 25 to 34 year olds, the figure was 60%.</p><p>Rozelle and Hell place part of the blame for this on the fact that, during the first decades of the "reform and opening up", public education was not really made a priority by Chinese administrations. School attendance was not mandatory or free of charge, and tuition fees often kept poorer children from going past primary school. Things have changed since then, with the first nine years of schooling made mandatory and free in 2006, and attendance in junior high school becoming almost universal. Even attendance in senior high school is increasing, with 80% of 15 to 17 year olds in school in 2015, up from 53% in 2005.</p><p>But these gains are probably insufficient. Educational levels remain worrying low among rural youth. This is hardly a small issue, when you consider that in 2015, 75% of Chinese children under three had a rural <i>hukou, </i>meaning that regardless of where they actually lived, they can be counted as "rural" in terms of their access to education. </p><p>Rozelle and Hell claim that rural schools in China have improved a lot over the last decades. They now have qualified teachers, good facilities, and the same curriculums as everywhere else in the country. Senior high school is still not free, however, and the cost remains considerable for rural families. But there is an even more basic problem: most rural youth in China suffer from cognitive deficiencies and learning difficulties because of problems that begin at home.</p><p>First of all, the health of rural children is dismal. Millions of them suffer from iron-deficiency anemia, which is strongly correlated with worse educational outcomes, and intestinal worms. Millions more are short-sighted and are not given the glasses they need, which obviously impacts their schooling. These problems could easily be solved with cheap medication, food supplements and glasses, but they are not addressed because no on understands their importance. Millions of "left-behind children" have parents who work in the cities, and are brought up by grandparents who are usually barely literate, and do not realise that these health issues exist, or believe destructive myths about them (you need intestinal worms to digest your food; if a child wears glasses, their vision will deteriorate further).</p><p>What's more, most of these children suffer from a lifelong cognitive deficiency compared to urban children because of they way they are brought up as toddlers. In rural areas caregivers, even if loving, do not talk to their babies and stimulate them in the way that parents naturally do in urban China and in richer countries. Babies may spend hours strapped to their grandmother's back, without any stimulation whatsoever. By the time they are three, they already score worse on cognitive tests compared to urban children, and they will probably carry this disadvantaged throughout their lives. These problems ensure that, no matter how good Chinese rural schools become, or how many children go to them, educational and cognitive levels will remain low. </p><p>The book's arguments are compelling. The countries that made it out of the "middle-income trap" in recent decades, like South Korea and Ireland, all invested heavily in education, and a much higher proportion of the workforce had completed high school by that point compared to China today. If this issue gets so little attention, it may be because most foreign analysts, and the Chinese they talk with, spend so little time in rural China. It is very hard to remember, when you visit the campuses of globally competitive and well-funded universities like Tsinghua, that average educational levels across the country are so low. It is also hard to remember, when you only travel in high-speed trains and only stay in the nicer parts of China's huge and well-run cities, that there is another China, one of unheated rural homes, poverty and left-behind children.</p><p>What I find less convincing are the book's general predictions about China. It may well be that, due to the problems it describes and other factors, China will indeed remain stuck in a middle-income state. I find it hard to imagine, as Rozelle and Hell predict, that this could lead to a collapse in law and order, as unemployed and aimless young men turn to crime. Their point of comparison seem to be Mexico and Brazil, societies which have indeed been beset by gang violence and appalling crime rates for decades. This does not mean, however, that things would have to go the same way in China. Countries in Asia that some might describe as falling into the "middle-income trap", like Malaysia, hardly seem to be mired in criminality. China is also far better organised and more regimented than most countries, and it seems unlikely that a massive wave of crime could really take off under the Party's watch. </p><p>It is also a fact that today's "middle-income" China is already an economic and military superpower simply as a function of its size, in spite of its poor rural interior. This was never true of Mexico, Brazil or South Africa. Even if it remains more or less stuck at its current level of development, I see no reason to believe that China cannot continue to be an internally stable and externally assertive power, or that its rulers will stop wanting to remodel the international order in a way that is more congenial to them.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhwW785q4fYj58ggXHjY_z6nt60fSlvLeKw3gbHrIFAhXi4FVRVgegJzu9cHOL-qwtwfayiy7hAPzI66lc6l00uC_CWSiW0YZUWnkscHblJBAY-KqyXBFeQo_Yvv7Zq_vF8A-73Lrg0mnPeZ8LyKlgmMNSW9en5aG5Gr-FNvNiFo6PU0yEp8HkAkWkl=s1290" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1290" data-original-width="860" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhwW785q4fYj58ggXHjY_z6nt60fSlvLeKw3gbHrIFAhXi4FVRVgegJzu9cHOL-qwtwfayiy7hAPzI66lc6l00uC_CWSiW0YZUWnkscHblJBAY-KqyXBFeQo_Yvv7Zq_vF8A-73Lrg0mnPeZ8LyKlgmMNSW9en5aG5Gr-FNvNiFo6PU0yEp8HkAkWkl=s320" width="213" /></a></div>Ji Xianghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03406727999722525339noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8533171043031843199.post-30215681249449018782021-11-19T18:25:00.011-08:002021-11-21T19:58:24.375-08:00Quarantined at home: how "Zero Covid" caught up with me.Just over a year since my <a href="https://thecapitalinthenorth.blogspot.com/2020/10/from-indonesia-to-china-pandemic-travel.html">return to China</a>, the country's strict "<a href="https://www.science.org/content/article/zero-covid-getting-harder-china-sticking-it">Zero Covid</a>" policy finally caught up with me. <div><br /></div><div>It all started on a Friday morning about three weeks ago, when I got a call on my mobile from what turned out to be Beijing's CDC (Centre for Disease Control and Prevention). The lady on the other end asked me if I had visited a specific five-star hotel in central Beijing over the previous few days. At first I didn't know what she was talking about, but then I realised that I had, indeed, been to that hotel on Tuesday afternoon. I had literally walked into the lobby, asked a question at the front desk, and then left. I was wearing a mask, as was everyone else. I wanted to attend a meeting which was originally scheduled to be held there, although, unbeknown to me, it had been moved elsewhere. </div><div><br /></div><div>I had spent no more than five minutes on the hotel's premises, but it didn't matter. Before going in I had scanned the QR code at the entrance with my Health Kit app, as directed by the security guards. This meant that my presence in the hotel had been recorded. The lady on the phone said that the hotel had recently hosted someone who later tested positive for Covid-19 (this much I had already guessed). I explained that I had only asked a question at the front desk, and hadn't stuck around. The lady was friendly, complimenting me on my good Chinese, and asked me another couple of questions before hanging up.</div><div><br /></div><div>At this point I knew that I was potentially in trouble, because the CDC had identified me as a person of interest, and this could mean nothing good. This might be surprising to those who don't live in China, but my concern wasn't in the least bit about the possibility of being infected. I knew there was virtually no chance of that. What I was concerned about was the measures the authorities might decide to take before they convinced themselves I posed no threat to public health. There was a new outbreak going on in Beijing (meaning a few dozen new cases in total), and entire neighbourhoods had been locked down that week in the northern district of Changping and declared "high-risk areas". A colleague of mine had already been placed in centralised quarantine for two weeks, just because she went to visit her parents in what was later designated a high-risk area.</div><div><br /></div><div>I tried to go about my day with nonchalance, convincing myself that all would be fine. Then a few hours later, when I was in the office, someone from my 社区 (usually translated as "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Residential_community#China">community</a>", but essentially a sort of para-governmental body that manages things at the neighbourhood level) added me on WeChat. He said that, since I had been somewhere risky, I was required to go to the community testing centre and take a PCR test within the next couple of hours, after which I should go to the community office and sign a declaration. I would then have to go home and self-isolate until the results were out the following morning.</div><div><br /></div><div>All this didn't sound too bad. The big fear is always getting put into quarantine for 14 days, but a night at home seemed manageable. I went to the community centre and got tested, after waiting in a queue of other people who had similarly been sent there by their 社区. After getting the test (a very quick and non-invasive mouth swab), I went to the community office. The man who had added me on WeChat greeted me, and asked me to sign a declaration. The declaration stated that I had never been in close contact with a positive case. I was also asked to write some lines by hand, stating precisely what means of transport I had used to get to the hotel and go home. I asked him if he could write them for me, but he insisted I was supposed to do it myself. I don't often write by hand in Chinese, so I had to look up most of the characters and it took ages.</div><div><br /></div><div>The man explained that on the previous weekend a photographer who later tested positive had attended a wedding reception at the hotel I had entered. He said that I should now go home and stay there until the results of the PCR test showed up in my app. If I needed to get 外卖 (deliveries) I should ask the delivery guy to leave the goods outside my door, and then only open after he had left. </div><div><br /></div><div>I agreed to do that, and left to go home. A few minutes later, as I was still walking home, I got a call. It was the same guy I had just spoken to. He said he was really sorry, but he had just checked the policy carefully, and it turned out that anyone who had been to that hotel from Saturday until Tuesday (the day I went) would have to be placed in centralised quarantine for 14 days. He said he would send me the address of the quarantine centre, after which I should pack a bag and go there on my own. </div><div><br /></div><div>I was horrified, and made this very clear. From what I had heard "centralised quarantine" (集中隔离, or literally "concentrated quarantine") could mean being stuck in a depressing little hotel room for two weeks, and forced to eat bad hotel food for every meal. I wasn't even sure if it would be at my own expense or not. The guy from the 社区 was sympathetic, especially since he could see perfectly well that I had only been in the danger spot for a few minutes, on a different day from the infected person, and the chances of me being infected were infinitesimal.</div><div><br /></div><div>He said he would see what he could do for me, and that I should go home and wait for his call. As soon as I'd got home he called me back, and said that given that I live alone, he had successfully applied for me to quarantine at home. It would still have to be 14 days, but they would be counted from the day I went to the hotel, so it would actually be 11 days of quarantine. My health code would go yellow, and I would be strictly forbidden from leaving my flat. A sensor would be placed on my door that would warn them every time it was opened. He said they realised I had to get food delivered, so in practice they wouldn't bother me every time I opened my door. </div><div><br /></div><div>Within half an hour a lady came and installed the sensor on my door, as promised. I was greatly relieved that I would be able to stay in my own home, and this overcame my annoyance at being put under effective house arrest for two weeks. It was almost November, the air was polluted and cold outside, and I had not planned to go anywhere particular over the next two weeks, all of which made things seem more bearable. </div><div><br /></div><div>I was nervous that the next day they'd change their mind and put me in centralised quarantine after all, but Saturday morning came and went and nobody bothered me. Once I knew that I would definitely be allowed to stay in my own home, I developed a routine to help me use the time productively. I read, wrote, exercised, watched a few films and of course worked remotely, and 11 days flew by. As it happened, the air outside was badly polluted for much of the time I was in quarantine, which very much reduced any yearnings I might have had to go outside "for some fresh air". I would wake up in the morning, look out of the window, and think that another day at home with my air purifier didn't sound so bad after all. </div><div><br /></div><div>I survived on Meituan deliveries, and I always did make sure I avoided direct contact with the delivery guy, although in practice no one was checking. Every few days I would place my garbage bags in the hallway at a set time, inform my "minder" on WeChat, and someone from the 社区 would come and dispose of them. I was nervous about my elderly neighbours realising I was in quarantine, either because of the garbage bags in the hallway or because of the sensor on my door, and calling the 社区 to demand I be taken away because I was a danger to them, so I tried to take out the garbage as little as possible. I don't think my fear was completely unjustified, but in this case it was groundless. My neighbours gave me no trouble, and I don't think they even realised I was self-isolating.</div><div><br /></div><div>Two times, on the third and on the last day of the quarantine, a couple of people in full PPE suits came to my house to give me a PCR test. They also took samples from my floor and walls, to test them for Covid-19. On the first visit I was given a rather long and unpleasant nose swab. On the second one I was given a much gentler nose and throat swab, after asking them not to be too rough. </div><div><br /></div><div>On the morning of the 15th day since I had paid that accursed visit to the hotel, the negative results of my last PCR test appeared on my health kit, and my code went from yellow to green. I was officially a free man again. Thankfully it had snowed over the weekend, washing away the pall of smog that had settled over Beijing, and I went out for a well-deserved walk in the (actual) fresh air. A few days later, someone came and took down the sensor from my door. For seven days after the end of the quarantine I was still under "health monitoring", meaning that I was required to report my temperature twice a day in a WeChat group set up for this purpose by the 社区.</div><div><br /></div><div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjadT-zSHNg9_Y5UUDGcaoOdBpNxX-bylZUOOucoQrSCGfscJJG1iwaHkXSKJ-U4gcvoUlx-GqV5Qid5yHjA7er5SAd87vmhqStp-bw7BzjSMv4BXSVbGBiluO-Ffl8mzufyRqlSwkxh8/s2588/WechatIMG582.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2588" data-original-width="1215" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjadT-zSHNg9_Y5UUDGcaoOdBpNxX-bylZUOOucoQrSCGfscJJG1iwaHkXSKJ-U4gcvoUlx-GqV5Qid5yHjA7er5SAd87vmhqStp-bw7BzjSMv4BXSVbGBiluO-Ffl8mzufyRqlSwkxh8/s320/WechatIMG582.jpeg" width="150" /></a></div><div><br /></div>And so it is that I became one of the millions of people to be locked-down during China's latest round of pandemic control. I always knew that I could get quarantined just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but of course I hoped it wouldn't happen to me. And compared to many others, I was lucky. I was able to avoid getting placed in a quarantine centre, and I could easily work online. For people like waiters and delivery drivers, getting put in quarantine can mean losing weeks of income.</div><div><br /></div><div>I also had plenty of company. Another colleague of mine, who went to a conference at the same hotel where I had the misfortune of setting foot (they host a lot of conferences in my field), also ended up in quarantine. She was allowed to stay home too, but she was told it was because there were no beds left in the quarantine centres. This gives you an idea of how many people must have been quarantined in Beijing alone.</div></div><div><br /></div><div>Looking back on the whole experience, a few points spring to my mind:</div><div><br /></div><div>The 社区 never asked me whether I was vaccinated, and it would have made no difference anyway. China's strategy is to stamp out Covid, not just contain it, and being jabbed doesn't stop you from catching and spreading the virus, so in these situations it affords you no special privileges. That might be why the state actually puts very little pressure on people to get inoculated here.</div><div><br /></div><div>It was only sheer luck that the guy in charge of my case sympathised with me, and applied for me to quarantine from home. He may have taken a liking to me because I was able to write my declaration in Chinese by hand, or because I gave him the impression of being someone reliable who would follow the rules and not cause him any trouble. It is quite possible that if I had been unable to speak Chinese, or been from a different country, he would not have wanted the trouble of dealing with me or would not have trusted me to stay home. </div><div><br /></div><div><div>It was also crucial that I was not identified as a "close contact" of an infected person, or I am sure I would have been dealt with far more strictly. Instead, I was identified as a person who had been to a "high-risk area", which is less serious. This is part of the reason I was allowed to self-isolate at home, which in China is a very lax measure, rather than being dragged off by people in hazmat suits. Even if I had been placed in a quarantine centre I would have been asked to get there on my own, supposedly by taxi, which would have rather defeated the point. If I <i>had</i> turned out to be infected, I'm sure the driver would have then been quarantined too. That other colleague of mine who really was put in a quarantine centre did in fact get there by taxi, so clearly this is common.</div><div><br /></div><div>"High-risk areas" can be entire buildings, like the hotel I entered, or entire neighbourhoods. The rule is that anyone who has been to one has to be put in some sort of quarantine, regardless of the actual risk that they are infected. The neighbourhood bureaucrat in charge of my quarantine clearly knew there was no real risk of me being infected, or he wouldn't have stood near me and spoken to me in his office, armed only with a mask. At the same time he couldn't just let me go, because the rules are the rules, and those rules stated very clearly that I had to be quarantined. This is how the pandemic has been put down in China, with extremely strict rules applied across the board by local officials, themselves under huge pressure.</div></div><div><br /></div><div>Could I have broken my quarantine and slipped out of my home? I think I probably could have done, but apart from any moral considerations, it would have been risky. There was the sensor on my door of course, but I was clearly expected to open my door a few times a day, and there is no camera in my corridor as far I know. If I had gone out for a walk, I don't think anyone would have stopped me. My compound usually doesn't have guards checking health codes at the gate.</div><div><br /></div><div>Still, the state has plenty of high-tech and low-tech means of surveillance at its disposal, and getting caught could have meant being placed in a quarantine centre, at the very least. My health code was yellow, meaning that getting into any shop or restaurant would have been impossible. Security guards might be fooled by an old screenshot of a green code, but then again they might not be. Also, I am not sure if my movements were being tracked by GPS through my phone, but I wouldn't rule it out. </div><div><br /></div><div>Perhaps I could have just slipped out for an evening stroll without my phone, but I cannot exclude that the elderly "community officers" with red armbands who sit around outside my building might have been informed that I was supposed to stay home. My neighbours may also have known I was not supposed to leave, and could have reported me. Although I was pretty certain I was not infected or a danger to anyone, in the unlikely case I had broken quarantine and then actually tested positive, I could have ended up in jail. The risk of breaking the rules was simply not worth it, so I wisely stayed home.</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjvBjg2CeKsPSBJbUA4xLOqMI3Mfpu49PBn7maYvmfNgWLXF0VtMtPO4XHtwpDIQ-2FspTwCDys-mjhjJA96NjFKIVZWwQbUrppR-f9w-Q4rWRtk_6EglvjvNfkCvkXNPceFjMO_OXOg0/s1600/gettyimages-1236273210_custom-eddad2cb29f015f4c312f3e9c959c03d6c22d63b-s1600-c85.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1065" data-original-width="1600" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjvBjg2CeKsPSBJbUA4xLOqMI3Mfpu49PBn7maYvmfNgWLXF0VtMtPO4XHtwpDIQ-2FspTwCDys-mjhjJA96NjFKIVZWwQbUrppR-f9w-Q4rWRtk_6EglvjvNfkCvkXNPceFjMO_OXOg0/s320/gettyimages-1236273210_custom-eddad2cb29f015f4c312f3e9c959c03d6c22d63b-s1600-c85.webp" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div><br /></div><div>It's now over a week since my quarantine ended, and the outbreak in Beijing seems to have been put down. No new cases have been found in days and people are relaxing a bit, although there are fewer public events than usual and everyone expects things to remain tense until the Olympics are done with. In the rest of the country the situation is also effectively under control. No matter how many misguided people who don't live here continue claiming that China is hiding large numbers of cases and deaths, there is no question that these crude methods of pandemic-control are effective. </div><div><br /></div><div>It seems to me that China has the capability to keep playing this game of whack-a-mole with Covid-19 for a long, long time, even as the rest of the world learns to "live with Covid". The question, I suppose, is when the game will become too costly, too unpopular, or too obviously unnecessary to keep up. That day will come, but it may not be too soon. For those of us who live in China, this is a reality that must be accepted. </div>Ji Xianghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03406727999722525339noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8533171043031843199.post-4192463025717371322021-09-05T07:01:00.012-07:002022-02-09T02:49:08.973-08:00A journey to Yushu, Qinghai<div><span style="font-family: arial;">I recently spent a very interesting couple of weeks travelling in the Yushu Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, in China's Qinghai Province. I consider this to have been my first trip to Tibet. The area, known as Yushul in Tibetan and part of the traditional Tibetan province of Kham, lies deep inside the Tibetan plateau.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Tibet is one of those places whose reputation precedes it. Many people have strong opinions or romantic ideas about the place, but few have been there, and fewer still have any real understanding of what it's like to live there. The idea of seeing Tibet with my own eyes has long attracted me, but in spite of all the time I have spent in China, until last month I had never visited. On several occasions I travelled around the edges of the Tibetan world, visiting the East of Qinghai Province and the <a href="http://thecapitalinthenorth.blogspot.com/2017/03/travels-in-sichuans-ethnic-corridor.html">Aba region of Sichuan</a>. But those are ethnically mixed borderlands on the very edges of the Tibetan plateau, where Tibetans live alongside other peoples, including Mongolians, Qiang, Hui Muslims and, of course, plenty of Han Chinese. It still cannot count as "Tibet proper". </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">This year, making the most of the fact that the pandemic has me stuck in China, I decide to travel as far into the Tibetan heartland as I possibly could. The Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR), which covers the historic core of Tibet, has long been closed to foreigners who do not take a highly controlled official tour. There are, however, other areas of the Tibetan plateau that are not in the TAR, and are still accessible to independent foreign travellers. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">I choose the Yushu prefecture because it is as far inside the Tibetan plateau as you can get without entering the TAR, and because it is one of the areas of China where Tibetan culture is most vital. Until this day, 97% of the prefecture's population is counted by the state as being ethnically Tibetan. The scarcely-populated region only contains around 300,000 people, even though it covers an area as large as Syria or Belarus. The sources of the Yellow, Yangtze and Mekong rivers, three of Asia's great rivers, are all found in this remote area.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBpMObijIX5Wbh_A63aqWe_M_tCxOgEwwa0gH_OxDT13uJAwynirQT8NJ5WSEEbuSJc_Wh6YJb1hEdHBgfn1waZS-PNJBCWG03EhZu63tuzrDqznATe05EPhmjWOowT0eTR0D6WTq1WRs/s2301/WechatIMG193.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="2301" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBpMObijIX5Wbh_A63aqWe_M_tCxOgEwwa0gH_OxDT13uJAwynirQT8NJ5WSEEbuSJc_Wh6YJb1hEdHBgfn1waZS-PNJBCWG03EhZu63tuzrDqznATe05EPhmjWOowT0eTR0D6WTq1WRs/s320/WechatIMG193.jpeg" width="320" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">In spite of the fact that Yushu is theoretically open to foreigners, going there alone is still quite a gamble. The authorities view foreigners travelling independently in Tibetan areas as something suspicious and a potential source of trouble, and as most of you probably know, China is not exactly going through one of its most open and welcoming phases at the moment. I have heard several recent reports of foreign travellers in Tibetan areas of Sichuan who had the police station themselves outside their hotel or follow them around.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Then there is the pandemic, which in China has provoked an increased scrutiny of everyone's movements, and a heightened paranoia about foreigners in particular. Even fewer hotels now accept foreigners than used to be the case a couple of years ago, and one of my biggest concerns before going is whether I will find any hotels in the area that will take me in, especially outside of the prefectural capital. I decide to try going anyway and play it by ear. If it turns out to be impossible to go anywhere outside of the main town, either because of direct police intervention or because of a lack of places to stay, I will simply leave earlier than planned and find somewhere more accommodating for my holidays.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">I set off in mid-July. The first stop in my journey is Xining, the provincial capital of Qinghai, where I spend a couple of nights to acclimatise to its 2275 meter elevation before flying on to Yushu, which at a height of 3700 meters presents a real risk of altitude sickness. The lovely youth hostel where I stayed in my previous visit to Xining in 2013 no longer takes foreigners, so I stay in an overpriced and underwhelming hotel in a tower block. Xining is a big modern city where most of the population is Han, although there are significant Hui Muslim and Tibetan minorities. It has a relatively pleasant atmosphere, and the elevation means that in summer it is not as stiflingly hot as Beijing. On the other hand, it also feels somewhat ramshackle compared to the more prosperous Chinese cities further East. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">What I remember best from my previous visit is the impressive Great Mosque, and the atmospheric Muslim neighbourhood surrounding it. The mosque is still there, but it is under reconstruction. In the courtyard I find a picture of what the mosque is planned to look like in future, showing something more akin to a traditional Chinese temple, very far removed from its current Middle Eastern look with a dome and minarets. This is clearly part of the nationalistic campaign for the "Sinification of Islam" that is going on all over China, which has involved removing domes and minarets from mosques and replacing them with traditional Chinese motifs.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">After spending a couple of nights in Xining, I fly on to Yushu. When I enter the arrivals hall in Yushu's tiny airport, the local police notice my foreign features and insist I come with them to their little office to register my details (this doesn't happen to anyone else on the plane). They are ethnic Tibetans, and very polite and friendly. This will happen to me a lot: getting stopped by local police who are friendly and curious, but still feel the need to register my details at every turn. As I leave the airport and get into a bus, one of the policemen sees me and waves, crying out "Welcome to Yushu, Jixiang", using my Chinese name. </span><div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">The bus carries me through a majestic Tibetan landscape of vast, green, empty mountains and valleys, until we reach the prefectural capital, called Jiegu in Chinese or Gyegu in Tibetan, but generally just referred to as Yushu. The town is not particularly big, but it is still the biggest and most developed in the region, and has many of the trappings of any Chinese provincial town, including the inevitable <i>Dicos</i> fast food joints (it's too small to have an actual McDonalds). The town was flattened in the dreadful <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Yushu_earthquake">earthquake of 2010</a>, but it has been completely rebuilt with typical Chinese speed. Many of the new buildings have been given Tibetan architectural elements and are painted in the traditional colours of red and white, giving the town a distinct feel. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Tibetan culture is celebrated everywhere in Yushu, at least on the surface. The huge main square has a large statue of Tibet's mythical <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_of_King_Gesar">king Gesar</a> in its centre. On the sides of the mountains that overlook the town there are two large phrases written in huge white characters, clearly the work of the local government: one of them says "Long live the unity of the peoples (of China)" in Chinese and Tibetan. The phrase on the other mountain is only in Tibetan. I assume it to be more propaganda, but later on I am told it is actually the ancient Buddhist mantra "<i>Om Mani Padme Hum</i>", known throughout the Buddhist world. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjD9Fn3tZS2hG7C-DUHSucWKIdAUXHnCUyIsGzYxPLPKti6_4CmRo9E4aR1s4RaJZzNmxMKuqucbwXuv4Jh5L4b2uzAy9sAubl2Y_kB_Fe9iBb837L3C4aAiOwTD5xnryRXnWGNNptnFds/s1440/%25E5%25BE%25AE%25E4%25BF%25A1%25E5%259B%25BE%25E7%2589%2587_20210901180420.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1440" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjD9Fn3tZS2hG7C-DUHSucWKIdAUXHnCUyIsGzYxPLPKti6_4CmRo9E4aR1s4RaJZzNmxMKuqucbwXuv4Jh5L4b2uzAy9sAubl2Y_kB_Fe9iBb837L3C4aAiOwTD5xnryRXnWGNNptnFds/s320/%25E5%25BE%25AE%25E4%25BF%25A1%25E5%259B%25BE%25E7%2589%2587_20210901180420.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Statue of king Gesar, with "long live the unity of (China's) ethnic groups" written in the background</span></td></tr></tbody></table><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">I have to walk five minutes from the bus stop to my hotel, some of it uphill. When I get there I am panting and out of breath, as if I had just ran all the way. I realise this is the effect of the altitude. I have in fact never experienced such a high elevation in my life. The hotel, run by a monastery, is one of the few that can take foreigners in town. The staff, all Tibetan, are a bit suspicious and ask me all sorts of questions. They will have to report my stay to the local police, and want to know all about my past and future itinerary and what I am doing in Yushu. They want evidence of a PCR test, and the one registered in my Beijing health code app is already a few months old, but between that and the Beijing and Qinghai green health codes, I manage to convince them to check me in. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Once I am in my room, I get a phone call from reception with more questions: "Can you confirm you are only here on holiday?" "So what did you say your next destination would be?" Clearly the police have asked them to double-check. This is the kind of suspicion I was expecting to encounter. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">That evening I go out for a walk in town. Because of the altitude, the temperature is much cooler than Beijing, and it gets chilly after the sun sets. Most people look Tibetan, and many are wearing traditional clothing. Some are as curious about me as I am about them. I reach a square where 广场舞, or square dancing, is going on, as it does in every city in China. But while in most parts of China it is a pastime for elderly women alone, here it is engaged in by men and women of all ages, including children, and the style of dancing is Tibetan. I find myself thinking that in Beijing children of that age would be doing their homework at this time, not dancing in a square.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Out on the streets, the pandemic seems a world away. Few wear surgical masks, and nowhere requires you to scan a QR code to enter, in sharp contrast with Beijing. Qinghai barely had Covid-19 cases even at the start of the pandemic, and this remote corner of the province has probably not had a single case. That's how effective China's containment policies have been.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">After having dinner in a Muslim restaurant, I agree to meet up with a young Tibetan woman who I had got to know on the bus from the airport, when she started chatting with me in fluent English. At the time she was travelling with her grandmother, an old lady dressed in traditional Tibetan attire. She is a local from Yushu, and is enrolled in a master's degree in a Western country, but returned home due to the pandemic and is now taking classes online. Both her features and her accent when she speaks English are distinctly different from those of the Han Chinese. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">My new friend (I will call her Amala from now on) takes me for a walk around the town centre, and then to see a night market where traditional Tibetan goods and clothing are sold. It's all very interesting, with shops selling Buddhist religious objects, ornamental daggers like those many Tibetans carry, and Tibetan carpets made in Nepal. Men from the countryside with the long hair and red tassels typical of Khampa nomads sell traditional clothing and headgear. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Tibet is traditionally divided into three areas, U-Tsang, Kham and Amdo. Yushu belongs to the Kham area, which also covers what Chinese maps show as the Western part of Sichuan province. Kham means "frontier" in Tibetan, and in the past the area was long ruled by a patchwork of kingdoms independent from both Lhasa and Beijing. The men of Kham (known as the Khampa) have a reputation throughout the Tibetan world as fierce warriors, with imposing bulks, long flowing hair and red tassels known as "hero knots". This stereotype has even gained some notoriety among the Chinese public, with the expression 康巴汉子 (meaning something like the "Khampa stallion") entering Chinese and becoming a draw for Chinese tourists looking for exotic fantasies of dubious authenticity. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Most of the conversations on the streets of Yushu seem to take place in Tibetan, although I have no trouble communicating in Chinese. The Tibetan language is divided into regional varieties, and the local Khampa variety is more or less intelligible with the U-Tsang variety spoken in Lhasa, but much less so with the Amdo Tibetan spoken in the rest of Qinghai. Amdo Tibetan is more conservative, and closer to classical Tibetan. What is interesting, and little known, is that Amdo Tibetan doesn't have a tonal system, while the other varieties of Tibetan are tonal, the result of a later evolution. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgv4BbvEGbM4WXeUPOt6lh0Uj-N-p7i6cKowATDEATOdziXhktxGVSlka8-_jJtMM_0E_Tri-JeSNwoGkTK7IKh0V7uG2usRaupOhQ7-I9xlreCuLq8b-2T5_Rs7-N7C5hr55-D3Df4tco/s2301/WechatIMG266.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2301" data-original-width="1080" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgv4BbvEGbM4WXeUPOt6lh0Uj-N-p7i6cKowATDEATOdziXhktxGVSlka8-_jJtMM_0E_Tri-JeSNwoGkTK7IKh0V7uG2usRaupOhQ7-I9xlreCuLq8b-2T5_Rs7-N7C5hr55-D3Df4tco/s320/WechatIMG266.jpeg" width="150" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">A Khampa man selling ornaments</span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwo6uI00LrsPIb9ne_tLD_0I4CgqMlNG-2yL5v1x3aYKEH_E83WbzVEIDcIp4wHnWGXueEvr8hUhEbpMUsxVrzs-dbtiTOKl5ZFv64ks0oGuH6cOdKpCKElgEuBafs1TRS9rdEOdB1-TM/s2301/WechatIMG263.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2301" data-original-width="1080" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwo6uI00LrsPIb9ne_tLD_0I4CgqMlNG-2yL5v1x3aYKEH_E83WbzVEIDcIp4wHnWGXueEvr8hUhEbpMUsxVrzs-dbtiTOKl5ZFv64ks0oGuH6cOdKpCKElgEuBafs1TRS9rdEOdB1-TM/s320/WechatIMG263.jpeg" width="150" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">A lady at the market wearing Turquoise ornaments in her hair. Tibetans believe turquoise has spiritual properties.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">As we sit down for a glass of tea on the banks of the river that runs through the town centre, Amala tells me more about herself. She is a native of the area, but after the earthquake struck in 2010, she was offered a place in a high school in Beijing as part of a program to help local youths. Since the eighties, there have been many government programs to send high-performing students from Tibetan areas to high schools in <i>neidi</i>, "inland", as people in Tibet often call China proper. The idea is to help foster "human talent" in Tibet, but also, sceptics say, to make these kids more culturally aligned to the rest of China. Families are often happy to get their offspring into these programs, as they promise better opportunities for the future.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">In any case, Amala's time in <i>neidi</i> has only made her prouder of her Tibetan identity, and she is obviously delighted by my genuine interest in her culture. As we sit down for a glass of tea, she makes an unexpected proposal: would I like to join her and her family to visit a local monastery which is going to host a ceremony? They are leaving the next day, and plan to spend a few nights there.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">I find the idea very appealing, but my immediate concern is what the local authorities will make of a foreigner attending a Tibetan religious ceremony and staying in a monastery on the strength of a private invitation; I don't want to cause myself or my new friend any trouble. But she insists it will be fine: the lama who runs the monastery is her cousin, and her family are from the area and have good local connections. Perhaps on the day of the ceremony itself I might need to keep a low profile, but essentially there should be no problems.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">I am still slightly concerned, but I get the impression my new friend is smart and knows how things work, so I decide to take the risk. The following afternoon I check out of my hotel, one day early. I am worried they will ask me detailed questions about my plans, but they just ask me where I am headed, and I get away with a vague answer. After I leave my hotel, I am picked up by a car driven by Amala's father, with Amala in the back. We drive out of the town, and into the vast emptiness of Tibet. I feel a bit like an undercover agent, even though there is no law that forbids me from driving off with a Tibetan family. Then again, no law explicitly allows it either, and it feels almost subversive. As we drive through Yushu's suburbs I keep my mask on, hoping to conceal my foreign features as much as possible. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">As we drive out into the countryside, we see families from Yushu camping by the side of the road, enjoying the summer sunshine in a land that is freezing cold for most of the year. After about an hour we park by the side of the road and go and sit in the grassland ourselves, basking in the sunlight. My friend's father can't stop offering me cigarettes, as small-town men of a certain age tend to do in China. He is a local government official, which is nothing surprising, since most officials in areas like this are ethnically Tibetan (However the CCP secretary for the Yushu Prefecture, the real power-holder, is a Han Chinese outsider who has been assigned there. This is a typical arrangement). A jovial man with a round, weather-beaten face, Amala's dad talks to me about how much life has improved since he was young, and how well China has done at controlling the pandemic. He also tells me that I can count on Tibetans to be hospitable and friendly, and I agree that people here are indeed very hospitable.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">After the break we drive on. We pass through a few villages, but the landscape generally has far more yaks in it than people. At some point I see a big river snaking through the valley below, and I am told it is the Yangtze river. Then I see a large phrase engraved on the side of the mountain above the river, saying in typical Chinese style 万里长江第一湾 ("This is the first bend in the Yangtze River"). Clearly we must be close to the source of the great river, but it already looks very large.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">On occasion I see bundles of Tibetan prayer flags strung together around a pole. Prayer flags are pieces of colourful rectangular cloth inscribed with mantras in Tibetan, a common sight on mountains across Western China. Obviously influenced by Chinese religious practices, I had supposed the prayer flags might be a way of asking for wealth and good health from the gods, but my friend tells me that their real purpose is to protect the mountain. Tibetans believe the flags' prayers and mantras are spread by the wind, bringing compassion and good will to the surrounding space.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">After about four hours of driving we reach the county town of Qumarleb, where we stop to eat in a good Sichuanese restaurant. More of Amala's relatives join us, including her sister, who works in the local government in Yushu and is very friendly too. To my total lack of surprise, the county town is an unimpressive collection of one-storey buildings perched incongruously in the middle of the Tibetan plateau. Local culture is still celebrated, however, in the form of a statue of a yak and another one of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_harmonious_animals">four harmonious animals</a>, a common theme in Bhutanese and Tibetan Buddhist art.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh00x6kV4lfUUKZsWTmZ3OZTm7FEsQk8OGNSW6qOFu_r7qWciPq4J7Cyofzf3sE92I7S_B_ftu8-gFkOJXvIPtmzuTfKCIV7_ha_gbGcnsDc4wFIW1SJWM1ZS_BwsKChr4ad2fKNp4T0OY/s2301/WechatIMG173.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh00x6kV4lfUUKZsWTmZ3OZTm7FEsQk8OGNSW6qOFu_r7qWciPq4J7Cyofzf3sE92I7S_B_ftu8-gFkOJXvIPtmzuTfKCIV7_ha_gbGcnsDc4wFIW1SJWM1ZS_BwsKChr4ad2fKNp4T0OY/s2301/WechatIMG173.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUyMGY4XoSGECzCBeDKJCjhE_uBLsfMxDd7frgolHodheUxeERUVxcmSzGAeBIJPKUiiE1va8Zi9T4GuvP3tCtF_PqYe10Mwzy-HuxKck6RGC8YyEmp8qS3RGEsLBp0IIc2zrXXde7oic/s2301/WechatIMG192.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="2301" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUyMGY4XoSGECzCBeDKJCjhE_uBLsfMxDd7frgolHodheUxeERUVxcmSzGAeBIJPKUiiE1va8Zi9T4GuvP3tCtF_PqYe10Mwzy-HuxKck6RGC8YyEmp8qS3RGEsLBp0IIc2zrXXde7oic/s320/WechatIMG192.jpeg" width="320" /></a></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh00x6kV4lfUUKZsWTmZ3OZTm7FEsQk8OGNSW6qOFu_r7qWciPq4J7Cyofzf3sE92I7S_B_ftu8-gFkOJXvIPtmzuTfKCIV7_ha_gbGcnsDc4wFIW1SJWM1ZS_BwsKChr4ad2fKNp4T0OY/s2301/WechatIMG173.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh00x6kV4lfUUKZsWTmZ3OZTm7FEsQk8OGNSW6qOFu_r7qWciPq4J7Cyofzf3sE92I7S_B_ftu8-gFkOJXvIPtmzuTfKCIV7_ha_gbGcnsDc4wFIW1SJWM1ZS_BwsKChr4ad2fKNp4T0OY/s2301/WechatIMG173.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: arial;"> <img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="2301" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh00x6kV4lfUUKZsWTmZ3OZTm7FEsQk8OGNSW6qOFu_r7qWciPq4J7Cyofzf3sE92I7S_B_ftu8-gFkOJXvIPtmzuTfKCIV7_ha_gbGcnsDc4wFIW1SJWM1ZS_BwsKChr4ad2fKNp4T0OY/s320/WechatIMG173.jpeg" width="320" /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgd_PFjWMPXPxntjpp9SNaQlEDK-JkAE-dWzFI8tD-nKGcuL4BI8jESS5yCCQIZ1caSxYPrUNDjAtoE1DfSf8L0hdX-aAj6EQPW3bmzBEFu0us69MYXxX7AIstUGxx8LwjvoVyOrxifjGk/s2301/%25E5%25BE%25AE%25E4%25BF%25A1%25E5%259B%25BE%25E7%2589%2587_20210901181500.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="2301" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgd_PFjWMPXPxntjpp9SNaQlEDK-JkAE-dWzFI8tD-nKGcuL4BI8jESS5yCCQIZ1caSxYPrUNDjAtoE1DfSf8L0hdX-aAj6EQPW3bmzBEFu0us69MYXxX7AIstUGxx8LwjvoVyOrxifjGk/s320/%25E5%25BE%25AE%25E4%25BF%25A1%25E5%259B%25BE%25E7%2589%2587_20210901181500.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">A statue of the "four harmonious animals", Qumarleb</span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><div><span style="font-family: arial;">By the time we finish eating the sky is dark, and we leave the town and drive on into the wilderness. The road has no lights, and outside the window everything is pitch black. We drive for around two hours in unbroken darkness, until suddenly I see a light flickering in the distance. It's the monastery. After another half hour driving up winding paths, we reach it. It feels like we've reached the end of the world. I can make out little in the dark, but I get out of the car and am shown into the monastery's guesthouse. Conditions are not exactly luxurious. There are two large rooms, one for men and one for women, and beds with thin mattresses of the kind you still find in rural China. There is no chance to shower, and the only running water is provided by an outdoor tap. The toilets are also outside, quite a distance away and very spartan. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">That night I find it hard to sleep because of the altitude, which is over 4000 metres in this region. As soon as I start falling asleep, I have the uncomfortable feeling of not being able to breath and I wake up. This goes on for a while until exhaustion takes over and I finally sleep. The following morning I wake up early and go outside to take a look around. The monastery is perched on the side of a hill, overlooking a valley. The sky is a lovely blue you don't often see in Beijing, and the air is thin and clear. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhD0cD9FwzBsdwrBu3sn7aH4tv8jDlnvaaNlb2X6GHYcggk2n9btjvn3LlZsfrqcJcdGcG8_BqwP7R0r2NQH9btMb5Nuq1bkACXcZsCe_2NVAgmo5Sp-GPokX-AEXQ-wkT536gsyLYAcbw/s1440/%25E5%25BE%25AE%25E4%25BF%25A1%25E5%259B%25BE%25E7%2589%2587_20210901180936.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1440" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhD0cD9FwzBsdwrBu3sn7aH4tv8jDlnvaaNlb2X6GHYcggk2n9btjvn3LlZsfrqcJcdGcG8_BqwP7R0r2NQH9btMb5Nuq1bkACXcZsCe_2NVAgmo5Sp-GPokX-AEXQ-wkT536gsyLYAcbw/s320/%25E5%25BE%25AE%25E4%25BF%25A1%25E5%259B%25BE%25E7%2589%2587_20210901180936.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The monastery guesthouse where I stayed</span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgm-7PwpWBIT_75-x8kmzh8ghItbX90hgRSB4vB-p9Xs9FmNikn1t1X0c8ttz2VG5TDkLn0BOBqmya3rp8tBmwywPCwGgUEZTVbeGUwBHXaCp2qFmuaodJIyXkklmJjpRQciY7c36j60dw/s1440/%25E5%25BE%25AE%25E4%25BF%25A1%25E5%259B%25BE%25E7%2589%2587_20210901182449.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1440" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgm-7PwpWBIT_75-x8kmzh8ghItbX90hgRSB4vB-p9Xs9FmNikn1t1X0c8ttz2VG5TDkLn0BOBqmya3rp8tBmwywPCwGgUEZTVbeGUwBHXaCp2qFmuaodJIyXkklmJjpRQciY7c36j60dw/s320/%25E5%25BE%25AE%25E4%25BF%25A1%25E5%259B%25BE%25E7%2589%2587_20210901182449.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMByxxSnOvEQFhATjS8bSNI-x4YuwW55ZTANHXANcG7zzDvN7UmqG6ObAdeZhdk7FIw8GKRgb9Zhl3y3mWZYwziThp7AV-bgRtg6al9vQ21bDHQGgWs_avhV9x2lrQvqwZDgnoKQu828s/s1440/%25E5%25BE%25AE%25E4%25BF%25A1%25E5%259B%25BE%25E7%2589%2587_20210901182809.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1440" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMByxxSnOvEQFhATjS8bSNI-x4YuwW55ZTANHXANcG7zzDvN7UmqG6ObAdeZhdk7FIw8GKRgb9Zhl3y3mWZYwziThp7AV-bgRtg6al9vQ21bDHQGgWs_avhV9x2lrQvqwZDgnoKQu828s/s320/%25E5%25BE%25AE%25E4%25BF%25A1%25E5%259B%25BE%25E7%2589%2587_20210901182809.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6hkoSFZH7dCB9Njc_FHXNOKD6nUopU43Vcl02kY3Tm2LW2H05kIg0WF36K5hhMGwWZB_icLwI5w2q9fPFrjZl6snqg-oJk3FdfKDYlveuZYWaCzncbWG9ZiK8cYJJY1AxE1lbDT1YTMM/s1440/%25E5%25BE%25AE%25E4%25BF%25A1%25E5%259B%25BE%25E7%2589%2587_20210901182805.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1440" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6hkoSFZH7dCB9Njc_FHXNOKD6nUopU43Vcl02kY3Tm2LW2H05kIg0WF36K5hhMGwWZB_icLwI5w2q9fPFrjZl6snqg-oJk3FdfKDYlveuZYWaCzncbWG9ZiK8cYJJY1AxE1lbDT1YTMM/s320/%25E5%25BE%25AE%25E4%25BF%25A1%25E5%259B%25BE%25E7%2589%2587_20210901182805.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqlrh5UAUXtPKbCevc0i8jDhpgfIYNJ-uLDMvyTUj99Y1fxpqasm_28ldJFyA1gcWBxvEoMi4fp-2KOFp-r7I_z0MSsstLLLKCH8HJQSsU5JC0nzMp5K1m_lmnE35G82q3zso2yGH3Xwg/s1440/%25E5%25BE%25AE%25E4%25BF%25A1%25E5%259B%25BE%25E7%2589%2587_20210901182802.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1440" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqlrh5UAUXtPKbCevc0i8jDhpgfIYNJ-uLDMvyTUj99Y1fxpqasm_28ldJFyA1gcWBxvEoMi4fp-2KOFp-r7I_z0MSsstLLLKCH8HJQSsU5JC0nzMp5K1m_lmnE35G82q3zso2yGH3Xwg/s320/%25E5%25BE%25AE%25E4%25BF%25A1%25E5%259B%25BE%25E7%2589%2587_20210901182802.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">A view of the whole area, with the monastery up above and the temporary campsite in the valley below</span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">The area is so high up and remote that mobile phones often have no signal (a rare event in China). There is a building where the monks and the lama live, a row of white <i><a href="http://tibetpedia.com/lifestyle/chorten-stupa/">chorten</a></i>, and a new ceremonial hall whose official opening will be marked by the upcoming ceremony. There are also some Han Chinese labourers doing some building work for the monastery, and their living quarters. Down in the valley below, a few hundred metres away, is a big flat area where Tibetans who have come to attend the ceremony are sleeping in tents. Amala and her family have their own tent down in this area. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">I go back to the guesthouse and a monk gives me a glass of butter tea (made from yak butter) and a bowl of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsampa">tsampa</a></i> mixed with more butter tea for breakfast. This is the staple Tibetan breakfast, and at first the tsampa seems so alien that I have no idea how to eat it, but a Tibetan man shows me how it's done. I have to drink the liquid first, and then use my hands to knead the tsampa powder into a dumpling-like form that's ready to eat. It doesn't taste bad, and it certainly fills me up and makes me feel good, as if it were made to be consumed at these altitudes.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">After having breakfast, Amala takes me to meet the lama who heads the monastery. He is a man of around thirty who wears glasses, and projects an air of calm and intelligence which sets him apart from the somewhat rougher men around him. As far as I am given to understand, this man was identified as the reincarnation of a previous lama as a child, and trained in the Buddhist scriptures. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">The lama takes me to see the inside of the new hall, which looks impressive, with statues of the Buddha. I am told that this monastery belongs to the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism. There are four major schools of Tibetan Buddhism, with different lineages and doctrinal focuses, but the Gelug school is the largest and the one the Dalai Lama belongs to. The different schools have a history of mutual suspicion and animosity, but nowadays this has mostly subsided, and all the different schools worship the current Dalai Lama and are acknowledged by him.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgM4T9nIuP7oY-2kmLp9ut8Q8REJ-p-78bGay9CgK3-5fGvIkgT5BYHmuDQ59HYUCllIDhhwd3zjyeE6nJda8HVH6g90nqs8Mmb0LunjPhDX70RwyF8xUISb1bXHJKUZuN-GyciOgYd4Lc/s1440/%25E5%25BE%25AE%25E4%25BF%25A1%25E5%259B%25BE%25E7%2589%2587_20210901181728.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1440" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgM4T9nIuP7oY-2kmLp9ut8Q8REJ-p-78bGay9CgK3-5fGvIkgT5BYHmuDQ59HYUCllIDhhwd3zjyeE6nJda8HVH6g90nqs8Mmb0LunjPhDX70RwyF8xUISb1bXHJKUZuN-GyciOgYd4Lc/s320/%25E5%25BE%25AE%25E4%25BF%25A1%25E5%259B%25BE%25E7%2589%2587_20210901181728.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The monastery's new hall, about to be inaugurated</span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHphA2tTySV3DFHu-RtK94V8hsWp-9lnYqgn7m9-ZZ_zOhATWgrnSbpeweZSFUshYgt6OfGp8ya8c0rkB5Whh8si600OiYVduKj-uQpvzgsoOrDWtBHumobZwrKgk9A4_aUM9ATRr4IEQ/s1440/%25E5%25BE%25AE%25E4%25BF%25A1%25E5%259B%25BE%25E7%2589%2587_20210901182015.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1440" data-original-width="1080" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHphA2tTySV3DFHu-RtK94V8hsWp-9lnYqgn7m9-ZZ_zOhATWgrnSbpeweZSFUshYgt6OfGp8ya8c0rkB5Whh8si600OiYVduKj-uQpvzgsoOrDWtBHumobZwrKgk9A4_aUM9ATRr4IEQ/s320/%25E5%25BE%25AE%25E4%25BF%25A1%25E5%259B%25BE%25E7%2589%2587_20210901182015.jpg" width="240" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The biggest statue of the Buddha inside the hall</span></td></tr></tbody></table><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">After leaving the lama, I walk down a little path on the side of the mountain and go down to the area where the Tibetan visitors have pitched their tents. There are nomads and villagers from the surrounding areas in traditional clothes, as well as townsfolk in modern clothing. Many of them have driven to the area in SUVs, which are common in Tibet due to the difficult terrain. The atmosphere is like a village fair. There is even a basketball pitch where a bunch of youngsters, including apprentice monks in red robes, are honing their skills. I am taken into a large tent where a group of women are cooking lunch for everyone. The tent is made of handwoven yak wool, and the meal includes plenty of yak meat. Every part of the yak is made use of in Tibet, including yak dung, which is used as fuel.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">The consumption of yak meat may appear to be contradictory, since Tibetan Buddhists are generally loathe to take the life of any sentient being. This principle is still followed by ordinary Tibetans to a surprising extent. Fishing is unheard of, and many Tibetans will even refrain from swatting mosquitoes. I had always assumed that the scene in "Seven Years in Tibet" where the Tibetans drive the Austrian protagonist crazy by insisting that they cannot kill a single worm in the process of building a movie theatre was exaggerated, but Amala assures me that it is realistic.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">This is one Tibetan attitude that is nice to witness when you come from the monotheistic traditions of the West, which have never given much importance to the rights and feelings of other species. In Tibetan Buddhism, a sentient being is a sentient being. And yet Tibetans are mostly not vegetarian, and yak meat has always been a fundamental part of their diet, alongside yak butter and milk. The historical justification for this is that growing vegetables in the Tibetan Plateau is extremely difficult. Tibetans will also point out that slaughtering one yak can feed a family for weeks, while if you eat smaller animals like fish you may have to take several lives just to have a single meal. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Something else I find striking, probably because I live in China, is that everything is free. The meals are cooked by volunteers, and the hundreds of people who have come for the ceremony are offered free meals and a place to plant their tent for as many days as they wish. My friend explains that many of these people support the monastery through donations, and that even today poor rural families may donate 20-30% of their earnings to the monks. She talks of this admiringly, as evidence of Tibetans' lack of materialism and of their giving and spiritual tendencies. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">I am well aware that this is exactly the sort of thing that led Marxists to describe religion as the "opium of the people", and Chinese Maoists to depict Tibet as a feudal society where the monks exploited the gullible serfs. Outsiders have long tended to either romanticise or demonise Tibetan religion and society, but it strikes me that in the past this phenomenon may have been little different from farmers paying taxes to their local lord, except with a spiritual dimension. In any case, today such practices cannot be separated from the larger scenario of Tibetans being a small minority within a much larger country and struggling to retain their cultural identity, which like it or not is inseparable from their Buddhist faith.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">In the afternoon I have a lazy picnic with my host family, while the children play in a stream nearby. I spend too long in the unforgiving high-altitude sunlight, which leaves me quite sunburnt the next day, in spite of the sun lotion I smear on my skin in abundance. Among Amala's relatives is a boy of about ten who is studying to become a monk. He lives in the monastery and wears the red robes of a monk. There are also two teenage girls who go to school in Xining, the provincial capital, and look and speak just like any urban Chinese teenagers. They speak to each other in Chinese, and feel more comfortable speaking Chinese than Tibetan. Most of the family's children seem to talk to each other in a mixture of Chinese and Tibetan, and are clearly far more comfortable speaking Chinese than their parents' generation. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">My friend's family may not be typical, since they are clearly well-to-do and don't all live locally. Most of the chatter I hear throughout the campsite is in Tibetan. But it is clear that, just like everywhere in China where minorities reside, the Chinese language is gaining ground at the expense of the local tongue. People tell me that while there is still a choice between Tibetan-medium and Chinese-medium instruction for children at the primary level, it is made much more advantageous to learn in Chinese. Instruction at the higher levels of education has long been in Chinese.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Then again, Tibetans are a proud people, and their determination to make their culture survive has clearly never wavered. For instance, most young Tibetans in China use iPhones because they have a good function for writing in Tibetan, which Chinese-made phones generally lack. Tibetans also never adopt a separate Chinese name, as many people from ethnic minorities (and foreign residents) do in China. Their official Chinese name is almost always just a transliteration of their Tibetan one. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">It is also quite noticeable that the Han Chinese, as a people, remain unpopular among Tibetans. Relations between Tibetans and Han tend to be polite at a superficial level, but if you broach the subject with Tibetans in a private setting, they will often be quite open about their dislike of their "Han compatriots", who they see as overbearing, greedy, materialistic and unfriendly. These feelings feed into a resentment of the state that has never died. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">My experience is that the young are often most vocal about such "subversive" sentiments, and fluency in Chinese or time spent living in other parts of China does not change these perceptions. In fact, it often reinforces them. Experiences of casual discrimination, like arriving in a hotel or airbnb only to be denied a room because of having an ID that says "Tibetan" under ethnicity, serve to further alienate people. I will never forget sitting with a young Tibetan in her SUV under the driving rain, listening to her tell me how much she resents the government she works for, and how she is only telling me these things because so far up into the mountains our smartphones pick up no signal (so there is no chance we are being recorded). </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinAy2WR-4TQfrLep1Z43ER2H4saKoNwJTaWS1ra_rNSPy3DAgS_KvgY2-FzuHqFBMhAyrGiUS2n-ZLAB4yAsUxxVIR3W7-YYPPTmTwRTGdfz0yhU0qUmCo3HZ1WCX06kHIe6gQvOmlgCw/s2301/WechatIMG339.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="2301" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinAy2WR-4TQfrLep1Z43ER2H4saKoNwJTaWS1ra_rNSPy3DAgS_KvgY2-FzuHqFBMhAyrGiUS2n-ZLAB4yAsUxxVIR3W7-YYPPTmTwRTGdfz0yhU0qUmCo3HZ1WCX06kHIe6gQvOmlgCw/s320/WechatIMG339.jpeg" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Apprentice monks taking part in a basketball game</span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><div><span style="font-family: arial;">That evening I am invited into a big tent, where alcohol is being offered to some important guests in the traditional Tibetan way. A woman presents three small glasses on a tray to the guest, while behind her some men play traditional Tibetan music. When the glass of liquor is offered, the guest must dip their third finger in the alcohol and flip it in the air three times, which indicates toasting towards heaven, earth and their ancestors, before emptying out the glass. To my embarrassment I am also offered alcohol in this way, but I only drink a sip with the handy excuse that I am suffering from high-altitude sickness.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Later in the evening it suddenly starts pouring with rain, and the temperature drops significantly. The lama himself gives me a lift back up to the monastery in his car. The following morning I wake up to find the monastery has become a hive of activity. This is the big day of the ceremony, and more people from all over the region have come to attend. Almost everyone is wearing their most impressive traditional clothes, including Amala and her sister, who normally dress in Western clothing. I am obviously conspicuous, and I think that it might be best to stay out of sight for the time being, since I'm still not entirely certain whether my presence may cause problems. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">I retreat to my dorm in the guesthouse, but soon enough a group of people come into the dorm and sit in a circle on the beds (there are no chairs), including some of the local potentates/officials. I sit on my bed trying to look inconspicuous, but of course my presence attracts attention. Men chat with me in heavily accented Chinese, and offer me butter tea. At some point a group of police officers in uniform enter the room to pay their respects, and I get nervous and depart. I am still not sure whether I should try and keep out of the police's way, but later I understand that there is really no issue. The local police are Tibetans too, and Amala and her family know some of them personally, which makes everything easier. No one shows any sign of being bothered about my presence. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">As the morning progresses, new lamas start to arrive at the monastery. I am told that over 30 lamas will be present for the event. This is a big deal. A lama is not simply equivalent to a monk, but is a revered figure, and you don't often get that many in one place. The genuine reverence that ordinary Tibetans feel for the lamas is in full display. Some people bow deep whenever a lama passes and remain bowing until they depart, while others rush to receive their blessing. There is one elderly lama dressed in civilian clothes who survived persecution during the Cultural Revolution, and is particularly respected in the area. Another lama, with sunglasses and a ponytail, is also known to be a yoga teacher.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">It is clear that Amala and her family are in their element here. They are originally from this county, and they seem to know pretty much everyone. Her father, the official who speaks so glowingly of government policy, is also wearing traditional clothing on this day and is busy getting blessed by one lama after another. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwi5SSvlqDgyjTHguPQjdJQiJcXpO0qRs55nYwLrRwJGNivBqK8hg99moL2Cl7qchGjYpJNIEBsVr0NYCGxtj0J7Q7Q9mtUlWgbYUc7i58oStFj5iRY5vyGgia_4zhvy4CdsrdyxVH4ic/s2301/WechatIMG409.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="2301" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwi5SSvlqDgyjTHguPQjdJQiJcXpO0qRs55nYwLrRwJGNivBqK8hg99moL2Cl7qchGjYpJNIEBsVr0NYCGxtj0J7Q7Q9mtUlWgbYUc7i58oStFj5iRY5vyGgia_4zhvy4CdsrdyxVH4ic/s320/WechatIMG409.jpeg" width="320" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1mIOgF8ohzv3Ouz8LWBxrPaa4SZiP4K7MBehAokXb4xQ31uMwPZZQPzVa27zkttpVgP3JjrVmq68KbejgrXUFjxR75m0bKwO989mPsaw5R42FpXlymsYvXhNG6RnZ4UPjQ76nsj-kKng/s2301/WechatIMG404.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="2301" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1mIOgF8ohzv3Ouz8LWBxrPaa4SZiP4K7MBehAokXb4xQ31uMwPZZQPzVa27zkttpVgP3JjrVmq68KbejgrXUFjxR75m0bKwO989mPsaw5R42FpXlymsYvXhNG6RnZ4UPjQ76nsj-kKng/s320/WechatIMG404.jpeg" width="320" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLNBUzm6uZAHoId9VTC84H9PAmr2-3qSnyTbf5oRMEaHHgbiQBBoxFZBKuis8GudpkgS8MSbm2F4W6ql2DHdLBcjGYEv4aQ9-E4teYkIKBIbiXEzUHUaFhtT_7AubBviiEnot34CGP_ZE/s2301/WechatIMG393.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="2301" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLNBUzm6uZAHoId9VTC84H9PAmr2-3qSnyTbf5oRMEaHHgbiQBBoxFZBKuis8GudpkgS8MSbm2F4W6ql2DHdLBcjGYEv4aQ9-E4teYkIKBIbiXEzUHUaFhtT_7AubBviiEnot34CGP_ZE/s320/WechatIMG393.jpeg" width="320" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTqsFQdAyKnqsFOlsEOqWtCc5sCWbJFC2CSoRPHccj25IBfyg_L4LcxQFfVpAAhoI3soMXRN0VJi6XlyF1ZU_ap7-MwMXPrXXbhfvMIY8nEnm_cu9S9ElmReVz8O_vYNRqzNPqT5IU1iI/s2301/WechatIMG390.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="2301" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTqsFQdAyKnqsFOlsEOqWtCc5sCWbJFC2CSoRPHccj25IBfyg_L4LcxQFfVpAAhoI3soMXRN0VJi6XlyF1ZU_ap7-MwMXPrXXbhfvMIY8nEnm_cu9S9ElmReVz8O_vYNRqzNPqT5IU1iI/s320/WechatIMG390.jpeg" width="320" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhe0MH4LX8qrNfj30Wv0M3V4Cqzw7g0Fnve9g-wesWsiXYLF90EBPTWTcF8U3Y8qciXmP2Hn59nvfBtvI4pmMuqAanCvB-nsZAR32CF0JcQ-2oOlRBfoCtibYv-fCJgLCzMuSNTJTxILkM/s2301/WechatIMG389.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="2301" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhe0MH4LX8qrNfj30Wv0M3V4Cqzw7g0Fnve9g-wesWsiXYLF90EBPTWTcF8U3Y8qciXmP2Hn59nvfBtvI4pmMuqAanCvB-nsZAR32CF0JcQ-2oOlRBfoCtibYv-fCJgLCzMuSNTJTxILkM/s320/WechatIMG389.jpeg" width="320" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgp4MUtVhHh0w9rwvPfok3ZJY0tRFH55FX8qzs-qXf_xhJ85RkOwxDfppf6_Vcp5-2vkN07ou79N8jxcXQkWU5CQ2YwcYXyJHgTsDlUTyv7VS6BxUYWLBK9Ci3JYo-4LVDRseUNrh2XPMw/s2301/WechatIMG385.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="2301" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgp4MUtVhHh0w9rwvPfok3ZJY0tRFH55FX8qzs-qXf_xhJ85RkOwxDfppf6_Vcp5-2vkN07ou79N8jxcXQkWU5CQ2YwcYXyJHgTsDlUTyv7VS6BxUYWLBK9Ci3JYo-4LVDRseUNrh2XPMw/s320/WechatIMG385.jpeg" width="320" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjm3caD5BfOhluuqeSMeTJcJpTnxABEM0ZtGv-JPZyl9hD_tdZB__ZT9yi1V3Er25_tTyHNLRRThalzYpcSfVnnzTZQDaS95RU4lHpkhsf8XjZk_wPEyzI5wACB_9oUIo1zNwOThUZ5c1g/s2301/WechatIMG374.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="2301" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjm3caD5BfOhluuqeSMeTJcJpTnxABEM0ZtGv-JPZyl9hD_tdZB__ZT9yi1V3Er25_tTyHNLRRThalzYpcSfVnnzTZQDaS95RU4lHpkhsf8XjZk_wPEyzI5wACB_9oUIo1zNwOThUZ5c1g/s320/WechatIMG374.jpeg" width="320" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Between the lamas and the crowds in traditional clothing, the feeling of being in a different culture is strong. While I am the only foreigner present, I am not the only outsider. There is a handful of Han Chinese who have come for the ceremony, including a lady from Xining and her teenage daughter who were invited by one of Amala's relatives because they were classmates at university, and another small group who must have been invited by someone else. They are dressed like typical Chinese backpackers and are busy taking photos with professional cameras. There is little doubt that, in this setting, these urban Chinese feel as much like outsiders as I do.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">The ceremony for the opening of the new hall turns out to be more bureaucratic than religious in nature, and rather Chinese in style. There is a stage with two long tables where the lamas and local officials sit, with a large red banner behind it proclaiming the opening of the hall in Chinese and Tibetan. The crowd is all seated on little plastic stools of the kind you find at public events in rural China. A couple of the lamas take the stand and make speeches. As the elderly lama who survived the Cultural Revolution speaks, I catch a couple of Chinese words that he repeats several times during his speech in Tibetan: <i>zhongguo gongchandang</i>, or Chinese Communist Party, and <i>Deng Xiaoping</i>. At first I assume he is just repeating platitudes about the Party, but then I wonder why he would mention Deng rather than the current supreme leader. Later on, I learn that the lama was actually telling his people that they should thank Deng Xiaoping's reforms that they are now able to hold such ceremonies at all.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">As the lamas speak a handful of policemen stand around and look on, while the crowd ignores them. I am told that in the Tibetan Autonomous Region it would not be possible to hold a ceremony of this nature with so little interference and supervision. Here in Yushu, however, the authorities are ready to keep one eye closed about many things. It is not strictly legal, in fact, for the children in red robes that I see running around to live in the monastery and study as monks, and yet they do. The laissez-faire attitude with which the Chinese state dealt with minorities 20 or 30 years ago still seems to be alive here.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">This is not to say that the practice of Buddhism is conducted without interference. The impression I receive is one of monks and laypeople following their spiritual tradition in relative freedom, and this may well be true (although not every aspect of the situation is visible to an outsider), but there is an elephant in the room, and that is the old lama residing across the border in India. His name and image are banned. On the occasion when the topic comes up, Tibetans whisper the words "Dalai Lama" to me, since saying them out loud in public is best avoided. He is still the unquestioned leader of Tibetan Buddhism, and yet you will not see his photo in monasteries next to those of other important lamas. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">All the same, people assure me that Tibetans continue to revere him in private, and many would like nothing more than to take a trip across the border to see him speak. This is a matter of great chagrin for the authorities, and it is why going to India has long been forbidden in practice for Chinese citizens of Tibetan ethnicity. A few years ago Nepal also became forbidden, as the authorities realised many Tibetans were getting into India illegally from there. Those who manage to make their way to India via a third country have to be very careful that this is not discovered, or they will be in for trouble when they return, including, in one case I have heard of, having their passport ripped up in front of them.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">After about an hour of speeches, the ceremony ends. As the crowd disbands, a long line of people forms in front of the building where the monks and the lama live, carrying scriptures wrapped in red as a gift for the monastery's head lama. Amala takes me inside the building, into the lama's living quarters, where people are lining up to give him the gift and receive his blessing. There is no way I could intrude in this way without a respected member of the local community by my side. I can't help noticing that the building includes a modern bathroom, something that does not seem to exist anywhere else in the area.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Slowly everyone makes their way down to the campsite, where lunch is being served under a large tent. At some point a man who is clearly a powerful local official swaggers in. He is Tibetan, but looks just like such officials do all over China, with a large belly and a sense of self-importance about him. He makes his way to a table where a group of men are seated, and the men immediately stand up and toast him with great fanfare, offering him three cups of alcohol in the traditional way described earlier. The official then starts singing in Tibetan, and goes on for quite a long time. He sings ok, but he's no great tenor. The men all remain standing, and awkwardly clap along. I get the strong feeling that they are giving the man face because he is important, and that this is someone who no one dares to interrupt.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">After lunch all the lamas gather together one last time to chant scriptures, under the eyes of the crowd. I am napping in the shade, but I hear their hypnotic chants. I wake up to excited cries, as a bunch of men in traditional Khampa costume ride on horseback around a stone altar spewing out smoke, one of them carrying the multi-coloured flag of Buddhism that dates back to the 19th century. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">A rather more secular celebration takes place later in the afternoon. There is a show of traditional Tibetan dances, followed by local singers crooning in Tibetan. The show has two presenters, one speaking in Tibetan, and the other one repeating everything in Chinese. Three of the lamas are in the audience, and they are given the place of honour under a large umbrella, while everyone else stands or squats under the strong rays of the midday sun. The show goes on for hours. Just after it ends it starts pouring with rain again, and everyone repairs to their tents. I think how lucky it is that it didn't rain during the day, or the ceremony would have been ruined. Perhaps the gods were smiling on us. That evening we all drive back up to the monastery and sleep in the guesthouse, since the temperature has dropped and the tents don't offer as much warmth.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPVi4is5u89FgfpTDIHVGMhA70PymcfrWAPI6VZUrckd67vUnjkWFmAUu59omn_S84dOKzaV3vsbPiQrgDx4uHI9uyMoO4qKS0lgmpIo4D5BSElTpwZnsvbuv1AImKNTZlpXDGb_MCY6g/s2301/WechatIMG363.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="2301" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPVi4is5u89FgfpTDIHVGMhA70PymcfrWAPI6VZUrckd67vUnjkWFmAUu59omn_S84dOKzaV3vsbPiQrgDx4uHI9uyMoO4qKS0lgmpIo4D5BSElTpwZnsvbuv1AImKNTZlpXDGb_MCY6g/s320/WechatIMG363.jpeg" width="320" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">The next day, after breakfast, we leave the monastery. Just before we drive off, we see a monk blowing on a <a href="http://tibetanbuddhistencyclopedia.com/en/index.php?title=Conch">conch shell</a>, a holy symbol in Tibetan Buddhism. Amala and her relatives all crowd round the monk and bow down deeply while the sound lasts. After he finishes blowing on the shell, the monk taps each one of us on the head with it, giving us his blessing. After witnessing this last bit of religious tradition, I get into the car as we set off on the six hour drive back to Yushu. The prefectural capital seemed like a sleepy two-street town when I flew in from Xining. Coming back from rural Tibet it seems like a metropolis, with lights, restaurants, consumer goods and, most importantly, showers. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">The hotel I stayed in last time is full, so I book a room at another hotel that takes foreigners. This one is run by Han Chinese from outside the area, and when I check in they are suspicious. They want to know if I'm vaccinated against Covid-19, the first time I am asked this. Being vaccinated is not supposed to be a requirement to stay in hotels or travel. I tell them I am not, and after lecturing me about how I should get vaccinated the guy in charge lets me check in. This is a hotel that clearly tries to be fancy, and the room seems nice. I am really looking forward to my first hot shower in days, but am mightily disappointed when I find that the water in the shower is only lukewarm, not hot. For a 400 Yuan-a-night room this is not what I expected. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Over the rest of my time in Yushu I encounter exactly the same thing in all the other hotels I stay in: the showers don't really have hot water. In a cold climate like the Tibetan plateau this seems amazing, and these aren't cheap places either. Apparently the hot shower I had on my first night in town was a fluke. I have to say that I found the hotels in Yushu to be one of the worst aspects of travelling there. Usually in remote areas of China hotels are at least cheap if nothing else, but out here they are both overpriced and mediocre.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">The next day I remain in Yushu, and Amala's sister is kind enough to drive me around town and show me all the local sites. Most interestingly, she takes me to the site where the locals conduct the ancient Tibetan tradition of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sky_burial">sky burial</a>. It is located on a patch of flat ground next to a temple. There are a couple of stone platforms where the bodies are disposed of. We arrive a few hours after a funeral has been conducted. The remains have mostly been disposed of, but there are still crows chipping away at small bits of bone and flesh, and streaks of blood on the stone. The hammers used to break up the bones are also visible. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">It's all rather gory, but Amala's sister assures me that Tibetans do not see it that way. In fact they do not fear death, precisely because they witness such ceremonies. Next to the burial ground is a small red building, with little statues connected to Tibetan astrology. Tibetans believe in the same progression of years as the Chinese, with years of the rat, ox, tiger etc... Amala's sister ask a monk where she can find the statue connected with my astrological sign, and he tells her. As we leave the monk says something in Tibetan in a strange tone. She translates it into Chinese for me. It turns out he said "Good job your friend is a foreigner. If he were Han, I wouldn't show him these things". </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Later on I am taken to see the Song-ze Gyanak Mani wall, the biggest collection of <i>mani</i> stones in the world. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mani_stone">Mani stones</a> are rocks or stones of varying sizes with mantras inscribed or carved on their side in Tibetan. The most common mantra is always <i>om mani padme hum, </i>but there are other ones too. Creating and carving mani stones is a spiritual exercise, and they are placed along the roadside or rivers or stacked together to form mounds or walls. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">The mani wall outside Yushu is said to have been founded in 1715. It was destroyed in the earthquake of 2010, but it has now been completely rebuilt. I did not feel that the fact the site was rebuilt took anything away from the experience of going there, since the age of the mani stones themselves is clearly not the point; the point is rather the meaning behind the whole thing and the devotion of the pilgrims.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">The complex consists of two to three million mani stones, piled on top of each other across a square kilometre. There are always plenty of pilgrims, circumambulating the complex in a clockwise direction, as you should do in Tibetan Buddhism, because that is the direction in which the earth and the universe are believed to revolve. There is also an area where it is possible to buy a mani stone from a series of vendors, and then have it deposited onto the mound. This is what pilgrims generally do, and it is how the site keeps growing. The smaller stones sell for just a few dozen Yuan, while the larger ones can be quite expensive.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKUwNifGoTpXZaJgyruh_FqI-nUdAD5XDHJBtagP249cNnGk0QoHeNs90tcyZCOLdGj2AtOz_rVXEwPkwC0UiBBoxJP41Swty7BfHFmfwLLKYDkzHZ2dKrMZmsAjs1DE3ejY1bGtE7pG4/s2301/WechatIMG304.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="2301" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKUwNifGoTpXZaJgyruh_FqI-nUdAD5XDHJBtagP249cNnGk0QoHeNs90tcyZCOLdGj2AtOz_rVXEwPkwC0UiBBoxJP41Swty7BfHFmfwLLKYDkzHZ2dKrMZmsAjs1DE3ejY1bGtE7pG4/s320/WechatIMG304.jpeg" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The stone platforms where dead corpses are broken up and fed to the birds.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0p26EaA0yfPfADoHc7NQQJaiQoQRYMaos99JlOSHgKm-y6GWXjQ1L4WK3EegQPkD2OxxmC_qBkPOy6JuBMGEJOYxVQ6Xtjx_fUNlN34C3NdqJt_ohSb0A4KXk_mBfKJuR6DXRpoirzR0/s2301/WechatIMG276.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="2301" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0p26EaA0yfPfADoHc7NQQJaiQoQRYMaos99JlOSHgKm-y6GWXjQ1L4WK3EegQPkD2OxxmC_qBkPOy6JuBMGEJOYxVQ6Xtjx_fUNlN34C3NdqJt_ohSb0A4KXk_mBfKJuR6DXRpoirzR0/s320/WechatIMG276.jpeg" width="320" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_shO_Zy33635rrYaNfBJ602a80oLpptNWnW2wy5HGbR1NRizH1CE2Y_8Wl5w_qqH78c0djtD0BDElkWL64fQmcB1W8liFpptA14nokDZL0QogTWJ60zgcg1-_8TYBk5tK6Wxkggl_56s/s2301/WechatIMG270.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="2301" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_shO_Zy33635rrYaNfBJ602a80oLpptNWnW2wy5HGbR1NRizH1CE2Y_8Wl5w_qqH78c0djtD0BDElkWL64fQmcB1W8liFpptA14nokDZL0QogTWJ60zgcg1-_8TYBk5tK6Wxkggl_56s/s320/WechatIMG270.jpeg" width="320" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><br /></span><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7PT4eVpQd2wjQT8KXgfr96ERR3YLTde6nUlY22OfuIfL7yhPAoldni2MxZknk4KxIZDWe4lTzMEmWmZIDpIDViMn0JsvOe0BItqeEYa2a0TFg3540WxLj3WyaCHgftUbCRvFyXy5qrTs/s2301/WechatIMG271.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="2301" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7PT4eVpQd2wjQT8KXgfr96ERR3YLTde6nUlY22OfuIfL7yhPAoldni2MxZknk4KxIZDWe4lTzMEmWmZIDpIDViMn0JsvOe0BItqeEYa2a0TFg3540WxLj3WyaCHgftUbCRvFyXy5qrTs/s320/WechatIMG271.jpeg" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Pictures of the Song-ze Gyanak Mani Wall<br /><br /></span></td></tr></tbody></table><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgv6MLCxoz6zNQwsFB5GSAxLcpC2IzyQN-9mwT8w_ydTMCe9t-KSuakygGwrFDzQYiLpQ16Y6TebJ4KvLzNaKBN2RxiXQE_37E-BCgWm09VOt9IltRIPvMmulw1HYpES7G-eLH0wooU6c4/s2301/WechatIMG244.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2301" data-original-width="1080" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgv6MLCxoz6zNQwsFB5GSAxLcpC2IzyQN-9mwT8w_ydTMCe9t-KSuakygGwrFDzQYiLpQ16Y6TebJ4KvLzNaKBN2RxiXQE_37E-BCgWm09VOt9IltRIPvMmulw1HYpES7G-eLH0wooU6c4/s320/WechatIMG244.jpeg" width="150" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Pile of Mani stones on the side of the street in Nangchen</span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: arial;"><br />That afternoon, we drive to see a memorial to the Yushu earthquake on the outskirts of town. Next to the memorial, a collapsed building has been kept in the state it was in immediately after the quake, with metal beams holding it up. It's terrifying to think of people being trapped in there. This is very literally the only building still in this state that I see anywhere in the entire prefecture. Both Amala and her sister have terrible tales of the quake's aftermath, of walking through streets reduced to rubble and seeing death and destruction. They both insist the official death toll of 2698 people is vastly underestimated.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0b7MIiCGzCupc1I_eMvofkOdS0gJncCS0110rn4GtOTOtaCxxiOA_hSuBSTkt0EnI5JdCbrAWjzAs0ZoqB8L5uZ8nTUHUAAP9DiG57kX-4xnRDyBYd39aiNHObOQ9TQ-jZ6nrszrbA8M/s2301/WechatIMG254.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="2301" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0b7MIiCGzCupc1I_eMvofkOdS0gJncCS0110rn4GtOTOtaCxxiOA_hSuBSTkt0EnI5JdCbrAWjzAs0ZoqB8L5uZ8nTUHUAAP9DiG57kX-4xnRDyBYd39aiNHObOQ9TQ-jZ6nrszrbA8M/s320/WechatIMG254.jpeg" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">A building preserved the way it was after 2010 earthquake</span></td></tr></tbody></table><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">The next day I set off for Nangchen (Nangqian in Chinese), Yushu's last county to the south before you reach the "forbidden" lands of the Tibetan Autonomous Region. Nangchen's main draw is the scenic Gar temple, located on the side of a mountain, that earns it a trickle of visitors.<span face="-webkit-standard, serif"> I</span> go to Yushu's bus station to take a minibus to Nangchen, and there is drama when I try and board the bus. The guy at the ticket counter used his own name and ID number to buy me my ticket, because he did not know how to enter a foreign passport number into the system (nowadays you need ID just to buy inter-city bus tickets in China). When the minibus's driver sees a Chinese name on my ticket, he gets upset and says he will not take me, because that's clearly not my name and he doesn't want trouble with the police. He looks concerned, and adds "I don't dare take foreigners".</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">I have to go back out of the station to the ticket office, find the ticket seller, and ask him to re-print my ticket with my own name and passport number, and then come and speak to the driver and assure him it's all ok. The driver is still dubious, but after asking me whether I have been abroad recently (this would mark me out as a potential Covid-19 carrier), he relents. He is a Tibetan man, and not unfriendly, but he just doesn't want trouble. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">In the minivan there is another tourist, an older Chinese man who turns out to be from Beijing too. He tells me that he comes to the Tibetan plateau every year and loves it. He sympathizes with me regarding the trouble foreigners have to go through to travel in the area. He seems like a genuinely nice guy, with a sincere passion for Tibet and its culture. He says that Amdo and U-Tsang have even better views than Kham, and snow all the year round.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">We drive for about four hours, through more Tibetan scenery. I kill the time by listening to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIWAGa-7jzg">ANU</a>, a Tibetan pop band to which I have just been introduced in Yushu. They come from Nangchen, the place I am going to, and their songs have become hits throughout the Tibetan-speaking world. Since they live in China they have to avoid political topics, but I find their music quite refreshing.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">As our van approaches Nangchen's county capital, Sharda, we are stopped at a police checkpoint. The police ask everyone to get off, and unsurprisingly get very concerned when they notice me. They ask me all sorts of questions, and rummage through my backpack quite thoroughly. At first they say that after checking in to my hotel I should go to the local police station to register. This would be huge trouble, and invite further problems. It's especially unnecessary when you consider that my hotel will automatically register me with the PSB in any case. While remaining friendly, I give them a look that says "are you kidding me", and they relent. We agree they will call my hotel if they need any further information. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><div style="margin: 0cm; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">I take a taxi to my hotel, and the driver immediately starts haggling with me: I plan to go to Gar temple, don't I? He'll take me there and back for 500 yuan. He leaves me his number and dumps me at my hotel, which may well be the only one in the whole county currently accepting foreigners. It turns out to be a new, imposing building incongruously located in the middle of a wasteland in the town's unimpressive outskirts. As ever, the staff are suspicious and ask all sorts of questions. After I check in and go up to my room, a few members of staff come and knock on my door with yet more questions: where will I visit in Nangchen? When am I leaving? Where will I be heading?</span></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;">That evening I take a stroll into town to find something to eat. The town is a similar size to Yushu, but it looks far less developed and prosperous. The dusty streets, unfinished buildings and numerous cows meandering about remind me strongly of India. The town centre is a little more lively, but still looks quite impoverished, and unsurprisingly everyone stares at me. Yushu may get the odd foreigner, but here you get none, especially nowadays. I find what looks like a reasonably big and reputable restaurant with the sort of menu you might find anywhere in China, and I have a large dinner. On the way back, the driver offers to take me to Gar Temple for less than what the other guy offered. We agree on 400 Yuan.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwr148lRC66NNlNXnOj8x8CcprzECqt_O7MA35QAnCosoPnxgy3ZqqN1vvnUPdV6QPDIJ8PBQrcvkwzdhDvwrqX2AbnMKVKqXlF3WTIHrdJop61taywTu2PV47CPLVpdMJe8eM513uzvw/s2301/WechatIMG175.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="2301" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwr148lRC66NNlNXnOj8x8CcprzECqt_O7MA35QAnCosoPnxgy3ZqqN1vvnUPdV6QPDIJ8PBQrcvkwzdhDvwrqX2AbnMKVKqXlF3WTIHrdJop61taywTu2PV47CPLVpdMJe8eM513uzvw/s320/WechatIMG175.jpeg" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Flats in Nangchen, with the open-air balconies favoured by Tibetans</span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHPT7dULpLNWip3NUN4eu2hX37Z9rlIpsss_znceUi0zKX2eNsOp3KS_N3nCKm3IW3NCFzI5KvL1Ly74ZQ7RMZST_gQYbrbcMpMalvjQ4NnPn7Fbwx2MMhK2-lCV3l_lmwwYyghLcdzaw/s2301/WechatIMG176.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="2301" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHPT7dULpLNWip3NUN4eu2hX37Z9rlIpsss_znceUi0zKX2eNsOp3KS_N3nCKm3IW3NCFzI5KvL1Ly74ZQ7RMZST_gQYbrbcMpMalvjQ4NnPn7Fbwx2MMhK2-lCV3l_lmwwYyghLcdzaw/s320/WechatIMG176.jpeg" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The main square of Nangchen</span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyY6gIKgzGjNhRQ_3fJCeAn-Z5oOrJhjExHCnop7Ji69CRkagBA58fe4usesgM6kXpT8D7L2qzl0_ADbhbuN7tX62D0JFGQJMi7EH4JYcPzfrepGoo8jAPN7d_3fAU68qi4U2lUIr4NEk/s2301/WechatIMG183.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="2301" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyY6gIKgzGjNhRQ_3fJCeAn-Z5oOrJhjExHCnop7Ji69CRkagBA58fe4usesgM6kXpT8D7L2qzl0_ADbhbuN7tX62D0JFGQJMi7EH4JYcPzfrepGoo8jAPN7d_3fAU68qi4U2lUIr4NEk/s320/WechatIMG183.jpeg" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Village outside Nangchen</span></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The next morning, the same driver comes to pick me up and take me to the temple. Gar temple is a two hour drive south of the town, and the only way to visit it is to rent a taxi for the day. The driver and I try and chat, but he is Tibetan and his Chinese is so bad that going beyond the basics proves impossible. Half way to the temple, we stop at a checkpoint. As expected, I have to get out of the car and go inside the police station, where I have to register by filling in a form. I begin to realise how lucky I was that there were no police checkpoints when I went to the monastery with Amala's family. I have no idea how we would have explained what I was doing and where I was going to stay. I suppose checkpoints are more common when you travel towards Tibet proper, and here we are almost at the border.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;">After another hour we reach the temple. It is indeed very scenic, perched on the side of a mountain that reminds me of the Alps. There are <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bharal">blue sheep</a> milling about and Tibetan monks walking back and forth, and also a smattering of Han Chinese tourists taking photos. I walk up a staircase to the top of the temple for a better view, and my altitude sickness almost gets the better of me. Walking up 20 metres of stairs causes me to gasp for breath for a full minute. I wonder if my body could ever get used to living at these altitudes.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRPUnTtk_4zmW4sREVK25RUlJA9Px1hk_S4Pkpe6rHsWD9Gkmlb7rTIEuWVBH6erqSj3WuNyPgBPbXq5p1nOZ4rFeJpRHZDcuKD8OvQU8EQaBEpaJ2srZ6LNbTfhKIPjv02GIt2qlmBYo/s2301/WechatIMG235.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="2301" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRPUnTtk_4zmW4sREVK25RUlJA9Px1hk_S4Pkpe6rHsWD9Gkmlb7rTIEuWVBH6erqSj3WuNyPgBPbXq5p1nOZ4rFeJpRHZDcuKD8OvQU8EQaBEpaJ2srZ6LNbTfhKIPjv02GIt2qlmBYo/s320/WechatIMG235.jpeg" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Gar monastery, with two flags of Buddhism fluttering at the front</span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimAvvMb9XzpwjoglklhUIPglznBSw3E0GJLdbQdSq-9vD37SI1mwJxRZLov0uTdhijF-jznPko0JFKFKKrZiUsLjqk8ZeePQadefUjEbdHY9pnHISRGENZqV816nCuFLyUIwnCLuj87LI/s2301/WechatIMG196.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="2301" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimAvvMb9XzpwjoglklhUIPglznBSw3E0GJLdbQdSq-9vD37SI1mwJxRZLov0uTdhijF-jznPko0JFKFKKrZiUsLjqk8ZeePQadefUjEbdHY9pnHISRGENZqV816nCuFLyUIwnCLuj87LI/s320/WechatIMG196.jpeg" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The whole monastery seen from a distance</span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;">On the way back down to the valley below, we see three men sitting in a field picnicking. My driver stops and beckons me to get out. It turns out the men are his relatives, and we are going to join the picnic. They kindly offer me some of their food, and start chatting with me. One of the men speaks Chinese well enough to have a proper conversation. He asks me if I'm married, and when I say I am not, he says "You should marry one of our Tibetan girls. You'd have a great life. She would cook and wash your clothes for you, you could take things easy." </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span face="-webkit-standard, serif">I make an attempt to explain that where I come from we believe in equality of the genders. He says "oh, there's nothing unequal about it, because in Tibet the men go out to 干活 (work, make a living), while the women do the housework, so it's fair". </span>Amala had complained to me that Tibetan men tend to be sexist in this way, expecting their wives to do all of the housework for them. Later she tells me that men from Nangchen are well-known in the region for being particularly patriarchal.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></p></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">The next day, I return to Yushu. This time I take a private taxi, because the driver offers me a great rate. Once again, his Chinese is bad enough that we have trouble communicating (it may not just be because his mother tongue is Tibetan, but also because of the influence of the local dialect of Chinese, which fails to distinguish between H and F among other things). We drive a few hours, and as we approach Yushu, we are stopped at the inevitable checkpoint. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">This time the experience is especially drawn out. I am kept inside the police station at the side of the road for half an hour, and I begin to wonder if they are going to let me through at all. They ask me several times if I registered with the police when I was in Nangchen, and insist on calling the hotel I booked in Yushu to make sure it can take foreigners. To their credit, they are friendly and offer me tea. My driver has to wait inside with me, and he is understandably not pleased about wasting all this time. I wonder if he will be as ready to give a foreigner a lift in the future. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">After we are finally allowed to proceed, my driver drops me off at the hotel I have booked. The staff at this hotel are the most suspicious yet, and after checking in I am asked to go to a store across the street to take a passport-style photo. Once I am in my room, I get a phone call from the local Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, asking where I have been over the past 14 days, and when I entered China. The friendly woman on the other side of the line seems to realise I'm not a threat, but she says that I may have to take a PCR test. Great, I think. Within half an hour I get a knock at the door. A woman is standing there with the full PPE suit, ready to swab me. She has a nice manner, but the nasal swab is like the ones you are given in quarantine after entering the country, long and thorough. Luckily my nose doesn't seem to be too sensitive to swabs, but it's still unpleasant.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">The woman tells me that there is soon going to be a festival in town, and there are plenty of outsiders coming in, so they are requiring a negative PCR test from all arrivals. It is true that there is a horse-riding festival coming up in Yushu, and there is a new outbreak of the Delta variant in Nanjing which seems to be spreading to other parts of China, partly explaining the paranoia. I still think it is likely, however, that my foreignness is what caused them to spring into action so readily. In spite of the fact that no one can enter China without going through 14, and in most provinces 21, days of quarantine, and in spite of the fact that the vast majority of people entering the country from abroad (and in some cases bringing the virus with them) are themselves Chinese, the presence of a foreigner continues to inspire irrational fear in local authorities across China.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">In any case, now that I am done with the PCR test, I still have a couple of full days left in Yushu. The town definitely has more going for it than meets the eye. I spend much time on my laptop in a large Western-style cafe' (or rather, Chinese-style Western cafe') overlooking the main square, which attracts all the local hipsters. My local friends take me to Yushu's bar street and to the town's weekly English corner, which is run by a Tibetan man who spent years in India. At the English corner I meet what seems to be the only other foreigner passing through Yushu, a Serbian man who works as an English teacher in Beijing and is travelling in Qinghai. When I meet him, he is supposed to fly back to Beijing the following morning. He is staying in my same hotel, and the staff have been calling him all day to ask him to go to the hospital and get a PCR test. He already has gone to the hospital, but perhaps due to a miscommunication (his Chinese is only basic), he was unable to get tested. The hotel is still calling him, but he has decided not to answer.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">That evening, I later learn, the Serbian goes back to the hotel and finds that his room card has been deactivated. He goes to the reception, and is immediately dragged to the hospital. When he gets there, his temperature is taken and it is found to be over 37. He is promptly put in quarantine in an isolation unit until his PCR test's result comes out the following morning. He spends the night in pretty awful conditions, misses his flight and ends up extending his stay for another day and buying a new ticket. While this story is indicative of the authorities' unjustified paranoia, I think another lesson to draw from it is that not picking up the phone will not make a problem of this nature go away, and that travelling in such a remote area without speaking much Chinese is a foolhardy thing to do.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">I am lucky to be in Yushu at this time, because it coincides with the annual horse-riding festival mentioned above. The festival has existed for centuries, and it attracts Tibetans from all over Kham. But this year celebrations are especially big, because it is also the 70th anniversary of the establishment of the Yushu Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, in other words of Yushu's incorporation into the PRC, and a large show has been organized by the local government. A stage has been set up in the main square outside my hotel, and every evening Tibetan dancers rehearse until late. I will not be able to see the show itself, because tickets cannot be bought, only obtained through government channels; but I will be able to catch the full dress rehearsals, which will be open to the public and should be just as impressive.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">On my last day in Yushu I go and see the rehearsals, which are being held in an impromptu outdoor stadium in the grasslands outside the town. This being China, the stadium is huge and the show is impressively choreographed. It consists of an interesting mix of Tibetan culture and communist iconography. There is plenty of horse riding, with long-haired nomads rushing around the stadium on their stallions waving swords. There are yaks, mountain goats and Tibetan dances. But there is also a parade of local students dressed like soldiers, with a large picture of Chairman Mao, and a huge hammer and sickle on the inner face of the stadium. There is a massive re-enactment of the Yushu earthquake, with hundreds of actors falling to the ground in a spasm, and then hundreds more rushing in dressed like soldiers and firemen to save them, many waving Chinese flags. Amala, who is there with me, comments that those who did the best job of rescuing people after the earthquake were Buddhist monks, but they get no mention. Indeed, at no point in the show do I see any reference to Tibetan religion, although it is at the core of local identity.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAYoqu7XBRT3eSzCnmMywWj95kxs3WAFKqRTXFkS8zgJm3Kjnvii7a0_wrLa8MhnjxzLy1t3aZDR9Ft9d64wGhP494JxAgA7q8U0aLQjukel5dUz_PymLOAdrU-B2gu0mRHsyrW1-1uhw/s2301/WechatIMG155.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="2301" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAYoqu7XBRT3eSzCnmMywWj95kxs3WAFKqRTXFkS8zgJm3Kjnvii7a0_wrLa8MhnjxzLy1t3aZDR9Ft9d64wGhP494JxAgA7q8U0aLQjukel5dUz_PymLOAdrU-B2gu0mRHsyrW1-1uhw/s320/WechatIMG155.jpeg" width="320" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; 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margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="2301" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvtZhjyHpjnp4ZdyZYhO4oewmtW7N3TfRjCyxup1jSfLSVAxeDQ_fFjO8-2C2T9JASPXIiaSRXIjkHCred4UULcbbXQL5gCYEc8AJtBh-K-DoaH3nY4ol7IBMSNqp7ki4l0hUhjDEzBpc/s320/WechatIMG152.jpeg" width="320" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPc_Cf44yufEeYiGZev97UDxyNvFqR0sHkZXO3atwqCHxDWzBPoLY8ZMTCpngJSzJHuEHHB2xbSJLo-Yv5q5DnXrgzeQvRAJ00C9Dsm5v_CtO_bVfkcjMQG1BbCyCLdoBhFDizZIOYqr8/s2301/WechatIMG150.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="2301" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPc_Cf44yufEeYiGZev97UDxyNvFqR0sHkZXO3atwqCHxDWzBPoLY8ZMTCpngJSzJHuEHHB2xbSJLo-Yv5q5DnXrgzeQvRAJ00C9Dsm5v_CtO_bVfkcjMQG1BbCyCLdoBhFDizZIOYqr8/s320/WechatIMG150.jpeg" width="320" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; 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margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="2304" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEQkSUeDeSPYqDtQgXCS2XnRONTs1qyHY_JxXLqf5OYgEumhb2z_J21HHoEW8awvnzl1PIdFXTaGM_H0v-sxwoVk6SMIko7zvTnvIIitbaskCRmM7KXDAU6kyvUHEf_zr7ZIw6VAPKRAI/s320/WechatIMG130.jpeg" width="320" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFhr849leqLxEJHD1JfnYfmO57-pCuEh2tE6iB87lf0owsvimbsyjNbfwyWFQhszIXV9La96kZuGMy8SZicY33AIQd49F2y8AzIatwUPJqs0aH7GtSxEhUELIQJo8n9b7X1Dsl8ov4z4Y/s2301/WechatIMG124.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="2301" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFhr849leqLxEJHD1JfnYfmO57-pCuEh2tE6iB87lf0owsvimbsyjNbfwyWFQhszIXV9La96kZuGMy8SZicY33AIQd49F2y8AzIatwUPJqs0aH7GtSxEhUELIQJo8n9b7X1Dsl8ov4z4Y/s320/WechatIMG124.jpeg" width="320" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigPM45WgfUdI2rkWkwmtNyNVYJaJ9znWbS1g4_1XJGni62fbbbYu5o40yiU4XxLaaKN4YjCfw10nrmjcRtXTyBwtZqdLlYtJcx_XO-2q6h9WzjohInnCAtDVHGbcZBr9EZDNEMD8wx_Kw/s2301/WechatIMG120.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="2301" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigPM45WgfUdI2rkWkwmtNyNVYJaJ9znWbS1g4_1XJGni62fbbbYu5o40yiU4XxLaaKN4YjCfw10nrmjcRtXTyBwtZqdLlYtJcx_XO-2q6h9WzjohInnCAtDVHGbcZBr9EZDNEMD8wx_Kw/s320/WechatIMG120.jpeg" width="320" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">To be clear, the atmosphere is by no means one of coercion and fear. Half the town is here, and they are clearly excited and happy. People who are unable to enter the stands crowd around the entrance to catch a glimpse of the parade. The riders and dancers give every impression of being genuinely happy to show off their cherished culture. At the same time, I doubt all of them would accept that the events of 70 years ago are something to celebrate. From the 13th century, Yushu was the seat of a tribal confederation known as the Kingdom of Nangchen, essentially independent from both the Ming and Qing dinasties and the Tibetan government in Lhasa. In the 18th century the area nominally accepted the sovereignty of the Qing dynasty, as did most of Tibet, but this was only on paper. In 1951 the last king of Nangchen, Trashi Tsewang Dorje, accepted his kingdom's incorporation into the PRC. This is the anniversary that the parade is commemorating, although any open suggestion that Yushu was "not part of China" before 1951 would, of course, be completely taboo.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">After a while I go back into town, and take a look at the local museum. It contains some pretty good quality material on the local flora, fauna, history and culture, religion included, but when it comes to modern history it unsurprisingly delves into some dubious propaganda. A portrait of Xi surrounded by adoring crowds in Tibetan costume also cannot help but catch my eye. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">That evening I go to the night market for a bite to eat, and I am overwhelmed by the hospitality of the vendors. I buy some dumplings from a lady at one stall, and while I sit and wait for my food two other women working at different stalls separately bring me a glass of tea and some more dumplings for free, while they ask me where I am from and what brings me to their hometown. Tibetans really are a very hospitable people, no question about that. I don't normally get people throwing free food and drink at me like this when I travel. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">The following morning I go to the airport, and fly back to Beijing via Xining and Xi'an. I am a bit sorry to leave the quiet of the Tibetan plateau, but the real world beckons me back. China is busy stamping out the new Delta variant outbreak that began in Nanjing, and I am vaguely worried about transferring in a city with Covid-19 cases, lest the authorities give me trouble when I get home. In the end the new outbreak will be contained, as always, but in the airports the change in mood is palpable. Fortunately I fly to Beijing and return to my apartment without incident. My first journey to Tibet is over. I hope one day, if things change, it will become easier to explore the whole of this fascinating land. </span></div></div></div>Ji Xianghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03406727999722525339noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8533171043031843199.post-33861489366584642532021-06-17T20:44:00.011-07:002021-08-15T20:58:47.614-07:00If a low birth rate is China's problem, why isn't foreign immigration the solution?<p>So China's two-child policy is now officially a <a href="http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2021-06/01/c_139983098.htm">three-child policy</a>. This development will have come as no surprise to anyone who follows Chinese politics. It's been obvious for years that the Party-State now feels its people are having too few children, not too many. </p><p>One thing this decision makes clear is that the Chinese state simply cannot imagine giving up on its family planning policies altogether and legalising all births, including those outside of marriage. Children have to be born to a heterosexual married couple, and there has to be a limit on the number of children per couple, even when the limit is so high as to be academic in most cases. I suppose that, as well as promoting conventional lifestyles that are good for "social stability", this ensures the countless people who work for the family planning departments across the country will keep their jobs. </p><p>In any case, this new policy is going to mean very little in practice, because the average Chinese family simply isn't interested in having more than two children. In fact, in middle class environments, many couples don't want more than one. When asked why, they will usually claim that having a child is simply "too expensive". This is, in my view, mostly because of the kind of stresses and expectations that the system places on parents and that they place on themselves with regards to their children's education. </p><p>Policymakers are not unaware of this. The Politburo meeting in which the shift was announced also promised supportive measures to address the structural issues that are preventing couples from having more children, including "<i>improving prenatal and postnatal care services, developing a universal childcare service system, reducing family spending on education, strengthening tax and housing support, and safeguarding the lawful rights and interests of working women</i>", as the Xinhua report puts it. </p><p>This all sounds sensible, but most experts agree that it won't be easy to change the basic trends. China's fertility rate stood at just 1.3 children per woman in 2020, which is as low as countries like Japan and Italy. In previous years fertility rates weren't much higher. Few believe they will start growing again. </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjr2K8h6MNbpX0gSsaoVp2yfNUUzFOOz_DRe5bSZpu8Ck71enHUKnOmQpmcIkCCALTDfJIhq4hMRvx3XQ8-V_3sK9C5pNdDtbI1bBy2mqk9_wWtrnq5e2kiHctW5Q07M5Gxu8Jv_2GSeO4/s498/f96a2a2c228045a9af7166aed47d07f1.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="347" data-original-width="498" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjr2K8h6MNbpX0gSsaoVp2yfNUUzFOOz_DRe5bSZpu8Ck71enHUKnOmQpmcIkCCALTDfJIhq4hMRvx3XQ8-V_3sK9C5pNdDtbI1bBy2mqk9_wWtrnq5e2kiHctW5Q07M5Gxu8Jv_2GSeO4/s320/f96a2a2c228045a9af7166aed47d07f1.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>A Mao-era poster, saying more or less "if you want the countryside to prosper, have more children who can plant trees". </i></td></tr></tbody></table> <br /><p>I happen to think that in the long run lower fertility rates carry real advantages, particularly for an overcrowded country like China, where a lower population will put less pressure on the environment and allow for a better quality of life. But this does not cancel out the fact that an ageing society will lead to real economic and social problems for at least a generation, and doubtlessly cause the leadership to worry about China failing to overtake the US.</p><p>European countries with low birth rates have basically addressed the issue through immigration. This has allowed them to replenish their workforce by absorbing newcomers, rather than trying to drive up their own birth rates and contribute to environmentally-deleterious global population growth. Foreign immigrants currently make up 9.4% of the EU's population, and immigrants from outside the EU make up 6.3%. </p><p>Prosperous and ageing East Asian countries are also turning to the same solution, albeit it to a lesser degree. Japan may have a reputation for being monocultural and unwelcoming to outsiders, but it has in fact begun to open its doors to foreign immigration. The number of long-term foreign residents in Japan was 2.23 million, or 1.75% of the population, in 2015. Admittedly some of those are Japanese Brazilians, or <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koreans_in_Japan">Zainichi Koreans</a>, but most are recent immigrants from other Asian countries with no prior links to Japan.</p><p>South Korea has gone even further down this path than Japan, with between 2 and 5% of the population made up of foreign immigrants, depending on whose figures you believe. In Taiwan foreign residents make up around 3% of the population, mostly blue-collar workers from South-East Asia. Taiwan even offers immigrants a reasonable path towards naturalisation.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxVIMchN7plKxMaUzMJhdgOO5dSqNX9EON8ViJUwXY-CQkdM-NfnemBtS_n6EmQDWrUK5R9XMfCqaou3v8ZweFxST5cAFWc7JS6mOMwJhlUMW2cA77DhJ_M9dupWexouwQQO2kzPYXOGQ/s1262/iStock-537861920.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="831" data-original-width="1262" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxVIMchN7plKxMaUzMJhdgOO5dSqNX9EON8ViJUwXY-CQkdM-NfnemBtS_n6EmQDWrUK5R9XMfCqaou3v8ZweFxST5cAFWc7JS6mOMwJhlUMW2cA77DhJ_M9dupWexouwQQO2kzPYXOGQ/s320/iStock-537861920.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The entrance to Yokohama's Chinese neighbourhood, Japan.</td></tr></tbody></table><p><br />The logical solution for China would be to go down the same path. If it only allowed immigration, China today would not be an unattractive option for young people from countries like Bangladesh, Indonesia and Vietnam, or even places further afield like Nigeria or Egypt. Wages for unskilled labour in China are already significantly higher than in most of Asia and Africa, particularly in China's richest cities and provinces. There are many people around the world who would not be unhappy to work in a factory or a restaurant in places like Shanghai, Tianjin or Fujian province. There are also plenty of young people with degrees who would be happy to learn Chinese and boost their skills with an office job in one of China's big cities.</p><p>The reality, however, is that China is showing no signs of moving in this direction. None at all. Foreigners aren't allowed to take up unskilled jobs in China, with extremely rare exceptions. Only professional jobs are open to foreigners, and even those only to a very limited extent. For years the Chinese government was happy to court foreign students with scholarships (even those are now drying up), but the expectation was always that the students would go back home after finishing their degree. The tight rules around work visas for foreigners make it almost inevitable that they end up leaving.</p><p>The <a href="https://www.thebeijinger.com/blog/2021/05/12/census-beijings-foreign-population-dips">data from China's last national census</a>, released just last month, show that there were over 845,697 foreign citizens living in China in 2020. This is more than 2010, when the last census was taken, although both Beijing and Shanghai have actually seen a significant decrease in the number of foreigners. Much of the increase probably comes from a trickle of Vietnamese and Burmese citizens moving to South-Western China. There are also bound to be many ethnic Chinese counted among the foreign residents, some of them people who were born in China and later emigrated and changed citizenships.</p><p>For a country of China's size and level of development, these figures are nothing. They mean that foreigners account for about 0.05% of the population (and this is without mentioning that numbers are currently in free-fall, as foreigners in China are getting fed up with the Covid-19 border restrictions that make it impossibly hard to leave to see family and then come back). Even India, a country of similar size and much poorer, has around 5 million foreign residents (most of them coming from neighbouring countries like Bangladesh and Pakistan). The reality is that, in terms of openness to foreign immigration, China is an outlier in the modern world.</p><p>From a purely economic perspective, it would make sense for China to open up more to foreign immigration, both skilled and unskilled. The obstacles in the way of this are clearly political, not economic. Modern China's sense of identity has been constructed upon a nationalism that is frankly exclusionary. If it is hard for ordinary people in most countries to accept the concept of having to compete with foreign immigrants for jobs and resources, and there isn't a place in the world where it doesn't cause resentment, in China it would be particularly tough for the public to swallow the idea. </p><p>An episode from last year made it starkly clear how opposed the Chinese public is to even the most timid attempts to make it easier for foreigners to live in their country. In early March 2020, China's Ministry of Justice published the draft of a new regulation on the eligibility of foreign citizens to apply for permanent residency (PR). The draft was published in order to gather public feedback, as is customary in Chinese lawmaking (this might well be one of the most democratic features of Chinese governance, although it doesn't apply to all laws). Unfortunately, this move quickly ignited a storm of racist and xenophobic discourse.</p><p>The proposed new regulations would only have made it very slightly easier for foreigners to apply for China's permanent residency cards, which are some of the hardest in the world to obtain. It's hardly like they would have "opened up the floodgates" of mass immigration to China. Far from it. In spite of this, the publication of the draft regulation was met with a flood of truly nasty comments on Chinese social media. Most of those commenting were not reacting against the slightly more relaxed new rules, but against the concept itself of giving foreigners permanent residency in China, something that they probably did not even realise was possible.</p><p><a href="https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1005267/proposed-residency-changes-spark-racist-backlash-in-china">Sixth Tone</a> translated one egregious Weibo post that received 22,000 likes: "<i>In a hundred years' time, I don't want China to have become like the US, with all kinds of people mixed together. We Chinese people have a strong national sentiment. We have the same ancestors, we're all children of the Yellow Emperor, the same blood courses through our veins.</i>" Many said the presence of foreigners would make China less safe and diminish the country's sense of patriotism. There were also lots of outrageously racist comments about black people, condemning them as a pathologically lazy and degenerate race who should be kept out of China at any cost; others ranted against blacks and Muslims in language that seemed to be taken straight from Grayzone, and vowed to protect Chinese women from foreign men. </p><p>Of course social media is known for attracting horrid sentiments, and not just in China. But in this case the large number of upvotes received by the most racist comments, and the almost complete lack of pushback against this avalanche of xenophobic feeling, make it pretty clear where people's hearts lie. Or one can also look at other examples from recent years, for instance the xenophobic comments that flooded social media after a Pakistani student was <a href="https://www.thenanjinger.com/news/foreigners-in-the-news/nanjing-foreign-student-dies-following-street-fight/">stabbed to death</a> by a local citizen in Nanjing over a small argument in 2018, or the rap song in Chengdu dialect that came out in the same year entitled "<a href="https://shanghaiist.com/2017/08/14/stupid-laowai/">Stupid Laowai</a>", ending with the singer literally inciting violence against foreigners. And all this is in a country that barely even has any foreigners to begin with.</p><p>Another common complaint is that foreigners are already too privileged, a trope that is just as widely believed as the one about China's ethnic minorities enjoying special privileges, and equally based on a mix of truths, half-truths and misconceptions. Many of those protesting the new regulations compared the "ease" with which a foreigner can acquire permanent residency (in fact it isn't easy at all) with the difficulty for Chinese citizens to apply for a Beijing or Shanghai <i>hukou</i>, or asked whether foreign residents would also be subjected to restrictions on how many children they can have. </p><p>These complaints are best seen as a case of homegrown Chinese frustrations being shifted onto foreigners, who bear no particular responsibility for them. Such attitudes guarantee that any future easing of the rules on foreign immigration will be perceived by the broader Chinese public as one more unearned "privilege" which places foreigners above locals.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9NFdcMnYzlyEXHlwSVzRnX0pbKCmsUIaV-1nhKIlYYkykybYAf7SPsikynEmGTCDcXYL883jQjcC7VqGU9tbqf5Muyta3g1ee8Ra_eVsNqSODQd6oZ-zhXJRk0UFNqxt0tr6QhLKYFZY/s1098/55521f22-14b3-11e9-bd68-61a0d0b9ce58_image_hires_192009.webp" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="732" data-original-width="1098" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9NFdcMnYzlyEXHlwSVzRnX0pbKCmsUIaV-1nhKIlYYkykybYAf7SPsikynEmGTCDcXYL883jQjcC7VqGU9tbqf5Muyta3g1ee8Ra_eVsNqSODQd6oZ-zhXJRk0UFNqxt0tr6QhLKYFZY/s320/55521f22-14b3-11e9-bd68-61a0d0b9ce58_image_hires_192009.webp" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Elon Musk at the meeting with Li Keqiang in which he was offered Chinese permanent residency. He didn't take up the offer.</i></td></tr></tbody></table><p><br />Public opinion may be firmly opposed, but it is not like Chinese policymakers themselves are giving any signs of being interested in encouraging immigration. The continued difficulty of applying for ten-year permanent residency cards, the one thing that allows foreigners to settle stably in China for a reasonable amount of time, is a symbol of this. The current conditions for applying for permanent residency are skewed towards those with extremely high skills in certain sectors, mostly high-tech industries, and CEOs and other people with very high incomes. Such policies cater only to people who probably have no wish to settle in China anyway, while ignoring most of the foreigners who live there, speak the language and could make a real contribution. </p><p>Over the last few years it<i> has</i> been made slightly easier to apply for the PR permits, but it is still very difficult by international standards. The number of foreigners that has obtained one probably numbers in the thousands, and many who have lived in the country for years are still ineligible. The government did however <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2019/01/10/elon-musk-china-green-card-1074123">offer permanent residency to Elon Musk</a>, who must be the sort of immigrant they are looking for. Strangely, he chose not to trade his $37 million Bay Area estate for a fancy flat in Sanlitun or Pudong. The permits are also granted more readily to foreign citizens of Chinese ethnicity, both officially and in practice, reflecting the fact that overseas Chinese are still seen as somewhat more deserving of the right to live in China. </p><p>What is certain is that half-hearted efforts to attract top-end scientists, engineers and venture capitalists are not going to solve the country's demographic problems, even in the unlikely event that all the Nobel prize winners and Elon Musks of the world suddenly decide to pack their bags and move to China. </p><p>Of course, if one day the official attitude towards immigration becomes more positive, then public opposition does not have to be an insurmountable obstacle. The government/party has a way of doing what it feels is necessary, and getting the public to go along with it. It is possible to imagine that schemes might be implemented along the lines of those in the Gulf countries, with people brought in from poorer countries to work in factories or construction projects, placed in dormitories, and expected to leave once their contract is over. This might be better accepted by the public, although it could still cause resentment. </p><p>Another possibility is that the development of automation and robotics will make the importation of cheap labour less necessary in future. But even then falling birth rates will still be a reality, and the people who run China clearly feel this to be a problem, with or without automation. </p>Ji Xianghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03406727999722525339noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8533171043031843199.post-10187624348146280392021-03-12T07:06:00.007-08:002021-03-13T07:01:01.332-08:00Bitcoin won't liberate us<p>I've recently been trying to gain a deeper understanding of the cryptocurrency phenomenon, including but not limited to Bitcoin. What I find striking is the lack of reasonable, middle-of-the-road opinions, particularly on Bitcoin. It seems to be an extremely polarising topic: you either think it's the future of money, or you think it's nothing but a pyramid scheme. </p><p>One thing I can say for certain is that Bitcoin is not a *conscious* pyramid scheme. Most of its proponents and fans fervently believe in its value, and think that naysayers simply fail to understand it, or work for the banks and financial service providers that are about to be swept away by the crypto revolution. Personally, I can see the appeal of Bitcoin on a conceptual level; a completely decentralized currency that can be transferred across borders with just a click is an interesting concept; it theoretically offers advantages that are not meaningless, especially if transactions speed up and the interfaces become easier to use. For instance, international migrants would be able to send money back home without going through Western Union, or paying its fees: all it would take would be a smartphone on both ends, and it is worth noting that there are far more people with a smartphone than a bank account in the world today. </p><p>What is even more interesting is the idea that one day Bitcoin could turn into some sort of international reserve currency, in addition to or in replacement of the US dollar. The dollar's role as the global reserve currency causes all sorts of imbalances and problems, not least to the United States itself. For now Bitcoin is being bought entirely as a speculative asset, and it is hard to imagine it becoming a globally accepted store of value, but stranger things have happened. Currently its volatility makes it unsuitable for anything except speculation, but a large increase in its popularity and usage would probably stabilize its value compared to other currencies.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEpgA4wvpxwFVH6pbgMVp1_8Cuf74x8OBFU7MvzqdaCxTQinVYf-rISQEpDOqJNcNRBNREwqySjielWHam2dDNdoG3OHls3QnB73IygiFp4QWUB7h-S4_gpXsisakKhKEsFWkmrcrJfuA/s770/2020-11-24T133928Z_788862449_RC2P9K9XL48K_RTRMADP_3_CRYPTO-CURRENCIES.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="513" data-original-width="770" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEpgA4wvpxwFVH6pbgMVp1_8Cuf74x8OBFU7MvzqdaCxTQinVYf-rISQEpDOqJNcNRBNREwqySjielWHam2dDNdoG3OHls3QnB73IygiFp4QWUB7h-S4_gpXsisakKhKEsFWkmrcrJfuA/s320/2020-11-24T133928Z_788862449_RC2P9K9XL48K_RTRMADP_3_CRYPTO-CURRENCIES.webp" width="320" /></a></div><p>While I find Bitcoin an interesting concept, the anarcho-libertarian ideology many Bitcoin enthusiasts subscribe to leaves me a lot less convinced. At its basis lies a hatred of conventional currencies, identified as the root of our economic ills because they are controlled by central banks that can print new money and create inflation at will. And yet printing more money is a basic tool of monetary policy that can have effects both good and bad depending on how it is implemented, and governments won't just give up on it anyway. </p><p>The idea that national currencies (what Bitcoin devotees disdainfully call "fiat money") could just be replaced wholesale by Bitcoin, as some of its most extreme fans are hoping, seems highly unlikely. While it may be impossible to ban Bitcoin all together, it would not be too hard for governments to disallow its use for ordinary business transactions. And even if it somehow were possible for the whole world to adopt a single currency, the results are in fact unlikely to be advantageous for poor countries, which often benefit from having weaker currencies.</p><p>Proponents of Bitcoin like to hype up its liberating potential, as a decentralized, untraceable and un-censurable currency based only on a source code and a blockchain no one can alter. Some of this reminds me of the idealism that surrounded the internet in the early nineties: it was going to make borders meaningless and allow everyone in the world to access uncensored information. It was a peer-to-peer system that no corporation could control. We have seen how that's worked out: a handful of corporations control most of our online life, social media poisons our public discourse, and as for uncensored information flowing across borders, well, China offers a great example of a highly censored and yet flourishing internet.</p><p>In the same way, even if cryptocurrencies become the norm, I doubt they will have the kind of liberating effect these people hope. Bitcoin is not the only cryptocurrency, after all. When it comes to corporations, Facebook is already developing its own cryptocurrency, the Diem (formerly known as the Libra), which unlike Bitcoin will not be decentralized, but controlled by the Diem Association, established by Facebook in Geneva, as a "de facto central bank". </p><p>Many cryptocurrency advocates seem comfortable with the idea that in the future there will be a "free market of money", with scores of cryptocurrencies competing for popularity. If this results in us having to choose between Facebook and Google as our central bankers, it sounds to me like the beginning of a libertarian nightmare. And indeed, there are quite a few right-wing libertarians among cryptocurrency enthusiasts. The sort of people who want the state to play as small a role as possible in the economy. In fact it was Friederich Von Hayek, the Austrian economist remembered alongside Milton Friedman as the pioneer of ultra-libertarian free-market thought, who first argued in his book <i>Denationalisation of Money: the Argument Refined</i> for a complete free market in the production, distribution and management of money to end the monopoly of central banks.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiw6uji5OrOfUAZO9aUzHjqgK94TWmbvoktF4lZzq1jkpsxo8pg81MHdyNhGXxXZir4-MiykC3PE46hUd8Jg1I2AJCrOu1ynnkKhqJQUdZFA5scTqPfbze-_gPGW8WiaNvVDCQwUb2UqFg/s1440/Friedrich-Hayek-3-1440x810.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="810" data-original-width="1440" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiw6uji5OrOfUAZO9aUzHjqgK94TWmbvoktF4lZzq1jkpsxo8pg81MHdyNhGXxXZir4-MiykC3PE46hUd8Jg1I2AJCrOu1ynnkKhqJQUdZFA5scTqPfbze-_gPGW8WiaNvVDCQwUb2UqFg/s320/Friedrich-Hayek-3-1440x810.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Friederich Von Hayek</td></tr></tbody></table> <div>Of course, there is no reason to think governments are just going to take these threats to their monetary sovereignty lying down. France's finance minister has already stated that his country would not allow the use of Facebook's cryptocurrency, while the US House Committee on Financial Services has asked Facebook to cease its development.</div><div><p>The other thing is that many governments may soon be rolling out digital currencies of their own, which might offer some of the convenience of cryptocurrencies while still being linked to a national currency. As usual, China is moving faster than anyone. The new digital Yuan has already been rolled out in four cities across China, and will soon go national. It will not be based on blockchain and cannot be called a cryptocurrency, but it can be seen partly as a reaction to Bitcoin's popularity. </p><p>In practical terms, using a digital Yuan would not be much of a change for most Chinese, who have barely used cash for years and settle all transactions through WeChat and Alipay. This will however bring all digital transactions under the direct control of the state, rather than have them go through two private corporations whose size and dominance have started to bother the Party (look at Jack Ma's <a href="https://time.com/5931098/jack-ma-disappearance/#:~:text=Alibaba%20Founder%20Jack%20Ma%20Resurfaces%20Months%20After%20Vanishing%20From%20Public%20View,-Jack%20Ma%2C%20founder&text=Alibaba%20and%20Ant%20co,scrutiny%20over%20his%20internet%20empire.">recent travails</a>). Cash will probably go on existing, but become even less widely accepted than it currently is. Of course, all transactions made through the digital Yuan will be completely traceable by the People's Bank of China. But then again, no one in China is under the illusion that Tencent and Alibaba aren't sharing their data with the authorities, so protection of privacy is not really an expectation anyway. </p><p>While a digital Yuan might not change anything in the lifestyle of your average Chinese, it may hold various advantages for the government. For instance, it would theoretically allow them to set negative interest rates. Some are even predicting that it could offer a way to build a new international payment architecture to rival the SWIFT system, which would be centred on the Yuan and not vulnerable to US sanctions. This is an interesting thought, but the Yuan challenging the dollar as a leading international reserve currency continues to seem unlikely to me. The Chinese authorities are clearly not going to open up their financial markets or start running trade deficits, as they would have to do if they wanted their currency to go global. It is the US that currently runs the trade deficits, and this suits them fine. Still, a digital Yuan might help them to settle payments with Iran or North Korea, say, without going through SWIFT or other systems centred around the US.</p><p>In any case, China's digital Yuan may well presage the future of money much better than Bitcoin does. All advanced countries could follow suit, digitalizing their money while doing what they can to limit transactions in unauthorized cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin will continue to exist on the margins and find its uses, or perhaps even become a widespread and accepted way of storing value. But it won't save us from financial crises or revolutionize our basic relationship with money, any more than the internet has saved us from propaganda or from national borders. The truth is that no new technology can "liberate" us on its own, unless it is accompanied by deeper changes to the political and economic system.</p></div>Ji Xianghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03406727999722525339noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8533171043031843199.post-34336440465274066682021-02-18T23:40:00.010-08:002022-01-11T04:11:26.825-08:00Weekly dispatch: the Year of the Metal Rat in review<div>The memorable year of 2020 may have ended on the 1st of January for most of you, but in China it only really ended a week ago. The proximity of the Chinese new year to the Western one, and the fact that the Chinese calendar has no agreed starting point for counting the years, means that people in China often mix the two systems. That's why Beijing was full of people wishing each other a "Happy 2021" on the 11th of February this year.</div><div><br /></div><div>Funnily enough Chinese astrology had predicted that the last year in the Chinese calendar, roughly equivalent to 2020, might be a difficult one. If you want proof, just look at <a href="https://www.edgeprop.my/content/1634554/prepare-worst-metal-rat-year">this article</a> published in early January last year, before Covid-19 became a real concern. The reason is that 2020 was a year of the Metal Rat, meaning that its element was metal and its animal was the rat. Most people know that in the Chinese calendar every year has an associated animal, but not everyone knows that each year also has one of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuxing_(Chinese_philosophy)">five elements</a> attached to it. It is the combination of the animal and the element that determines how auspicious a year might be. Years of the Metal Rat are considered to be highly inauspicious, and recur every 60 years; many have pointed out that every one of these years seems to bring disasters in its wake for China: 1960 saw the terrible famine induced by the Great Leap Forward, 1900 the sack of Beijing by the Eight-Nation Alliance, and 1840 the beginning of the First Opium War. </div><div><br /></div><div>Personally I am not a believer in horoscopes, either Western or Chinese, and it strikes me that disasters have struck China on quite a few other years over the last two centuries; I also wonder whether these predictions are supposed to be valid for the rest of the world too, or whether Chinese horoscopes, like so much of Chinese culture, are only supposed to work for China. All the same, I can see that if I were an astrologer, the exceptional calamity of the Covid-19 pandemic sweeping through the world on such an inauspicious year would seem like an obvious confirmation of my beliefs (although the pandemic actually took off just before the Chinese New Year of 2020, when we were still in the year of the Earth Pig).</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEini3l5B-rwxfKjxP_zMtsKfv5JISmmtFWjEGOchnDy8R3INzjTlJxq0Ec5X877z4PbZmM6rB6PkjyUcO-8Waf9po2ykt-1uSRGlVboiUpPmjY0zrtW8DujzfxHL-537QqMvtspUEHAPnI/s800/Hong-Kong-New-year.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="800" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEini3l5B-rwxfKjxP_zMtsKfv5JISmmtFWjEGOchnDy8R3INzjTlJxq0Ec5X877z4PbZmM6rB6PkjyUcO-8Waf9po2ykt-1uSRGlVboiUpPmjY0zrtW8DujzfxHL-537QqMvtspUEHAPnI/w400-h225/Hong-Kong-New-year.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div>In any case, the year of the metal rat may have been an unmitigated calamity for the world, but in the run up to the spring festival the Chinese media have done their best to paint the year as a success story for China, a time when the nation came together and defeated a terrible plague thanks to its people's sense of sacrifice and discipline and its firm leadership taking wise and decisive action. There is little reason to think most ordinary Chinese reject this view; in fact, it is pretty clear to me they do not.</div><div><br /></div><div>It wasn't always obvious that things were going to go this way. Just over a year ago, on the day of the death of Dr. Li Wenliang in Wuhan, my WeChat Moments was swelling with open anger and rebelliousness of a kind that I had not seen in years. Chinese WeChat contacts who are normally apolitical or pro-government were suddenly venting their feelings of disgust and disappointment, posting openly subversive thoughts of a kind you don't often see expressed on Chinese social media. Of course my Chinese WeChat contacts are not necessarily representative of broader society, but it's clear that these feelings were widespread, at least among the middle class.</div><div><br /></div><div>One year on, those feelings of anger and dissatisfaction are gone, dead and buried. It is easy to see what changed people's minds: China's striking success at containing the pandemic, compared with the abject failure of much of the rest of the world to do so. The devastating toll the pandemic has taken on the United States, China's arch-nemesis, has been particularly impactful. The media has done its best to stress the contrast between China's successful handling of Covid-19 and the mess going on in other countries. The fact that China was the only major economy to record any growth in 2020 has never been missing from the triumphalist commentary of the past few weeks.</div><div><br /></div><div>While you can condemn that commentary as biased and one-sided, the basic point cannot be denied: China has contained this pandemic much more effectively than most countries have done. While the debate in the West revolves around the question of whether to sacrifice public health or the economy, in China there is no need for such a debate: the extreme measures taken to stop the pandemic from spreading have ended up protecting both public health and the economy. Ordinary Chinese are now less able to go abroad than at any point since the end of Maoism; but unlike then, they currently have little wish to do so, seeing China as an island of safety in a world of chaos and danger.</div><div><br /></div><div>The events of 2020 have probably ended up accelerating a shift that was already underway in Chinese perceptions of their country's relationship to the West and its place in the world. Many have identified the beginnings of that shift with the great financial crisis of 2008, which brought havoc to the US and Europe while largely sparing China. Western officials and diplomats recount how there was a distinct change in the tone of the Chinese officials they spoke to around this time. Suddenly they exhibited far more self-confidence, and refused to even pretend to take Western criticism of their system seriously anymore, believing that governments unable to avoid such a catastrophic meltdown of their own financial system had no business lecturing others. For years they had been preached at about the virtues of free and fair markets, but from what they could see it was free markets that had led to the financial crisis.</div><div><br /></div><div>This shift in attitudes trickled down to the common people as well. China's economic growth and its new world-class telecommunications and transport infrastructure, which in some ways put Western countries to shame, gave rise to a widespread attitude that the country had "nothing to envy" the West anymore. Living in China, I have observed this change first-hand. When I first came to China after the Olympics, local people would frequently ask me questions along the lines of "why did you move to China? Life in your country must be so much nicer", or "why would you want to move from a rich country to a developing one like China". It is now several years since anyone has asked me anything of the kind. </div><div><br /></div><div>Propaganda played its part in fuelling these attitudes, and don't let anyone tell you it didn't; but they have a grounding in fact. Chinese who travel or study abroad see little that would contradict these beliefs, and much that would confirm them. Experiences like changing flights in the crumbling airports of the US or constantly having no reception on their phones in Europe (this never happens in China) helps to convince them that their country is already ahead in many ways. The strengths of Chinese governance are real and getting stronger, even while the nasty sides, which most people here prefer to ignore, get nastier.</div><div><br /></div><div>And now this. The shambolic and ineffective response to Covid-19 of Europe and North America may well be the last nail in the coffin for the West's reputation in China. If they didn't already, most Chinese now see their system as more efficient and able to deliver better results. The fact that China is one of a small number of countries where there is virtually no risk of being infected by the virus is reinforcing the already widespread perception that China is an oasis of safety, order and progress amidst a world that is 乱, chaotic and dangerous.</div><div><br /></div><div>Of course, one could make plenty of good counter-arguments. Other Asian countries, some of them liberal democracies, have also done really well at containing the pandemic. There is the issue of the initial cover up in Wuhan, which seems to have been all but forgotten here in China. Pandemic aside, the view of China as a safe and orderly place as opposed to a messy and dangerous Western world is based as much on misconceptions and confirmation bias as it is on facts. While China's infrastructure is impressive, the fact remains that life is more comfortable and stable for most people in the West, average incomes much higher, and the justice systems far more likely to deliver actual justice. </div><div><br /></div><div>But while all these counter-arguments make sense to me, they are unlikely to convince the Chinese public even if they reach their ears. Like it or not, many Chinese see their country as engaged in a global competition with the West, and the events of 2020 have helped convince them they are on the right path and have nothing left to learn from their adversary. I would not see this as a problem, if what they were rejecting were things like privatized healthcare, unregulated financial markets and "neoliberal capitalism". Unfortunately, basic liberal ideals like freedom of expression, representative democracy and checks and balances on the power of the state are also seen as inextricably linked to the Western model. If that model is seen as failing to deliver prosperity and safety even for its own people, then liberal democracy loses its appeal and its relevance to most Chinese, which is what has in fact happened. While this trend has been years in the making, the events of 2020 have done a lot to seal it.</div><div><br /></div><div>This can only be seen as a huge problem, given that those liberal ideals remain as valid now as they ever did, and neither China nor any other country offers a real alternative to the world. If there is any meaning Western societies can draw from the rise of China, it should be an encouragement to do a better job at living up to their own lofty ideals.</div>Ji Xianghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03406727999722525339noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8533171043031843199.post-6082614520746069742021-02-09T15:33:00.003-08:002021-02-18T23:48:39.367-08:00Weekly dispatch: covid denialists and class in China<p>I recently got into an argument with an old acquaintance on Facebook. Nothing surprising there, it often seems Facebook was designed to make people argue. The reason, though, is that this person (who I have known for years) turned out to be a Covid-19 denialist of the most extreme kind. After I messaged him to ask how he was getting on, our conversation quickly turned to the pandemic. To my horror, he argued that Covid-19 is no more dangerous than an ordinary flu, that there is no evidence that hospitals become overwhelmed when the virus is allowed to spread, that the whole world is in the grip of a baseless hysteria, and that it's ridiculous to shut people in their homes and wreck people's livelihoods for what is just an ordinary virus. </p><p>I pointed out to this old acquaintance of mine (who is Italian) that during Italy's first Covid-19 outbreak, in Lombardy in March 2020, there were towns where a significant percentage of the elderly died, and the crematoriums could no longer take in all the dead. He claimed that in Bergamo (the worst-struck city in Italy and perhaps in Europe) it was actually the doctors who got the treatment wrong and somehow killed the patients by putting ventilators on them. This is how denialists argue: when the death toll is so bad they just can't deny the problem, they blame the doctors for killing the patients.</p><p>I knew by then that arguing with this person was a waste of time, but I just couldn't stop myself. I sent him a link to an interview with a Bergamo doctor from last March, in which the traumatized doctor describes having to choose which patients to save amid a shortage of ventilators. My acquaintance blasted the source (il Corriere della Sera, one of Italy's most serious and respected papers), and refused to engage with the article any further. He proudly claimed that he never wears a mask and goes out and meets people all the time. He said he was amazed that an intelligent person like me would believe this nonsense, and that I was part of the problem. People were losing their jobs and livelihoods because of this unjustified paranoia over nothing at all. Then he blocked me.</p><p>I certainly won't lose any sleep over this guy blocking me. I only met him in person years ago, and our subsequent interactions were all online. On the other hand, the level of disconnect from reality that he is displaying really is disturbing. I wouldn't consider this acquaintance of mine to be a great intellectual, but he also isn't a stupid person, by any means. He has lived abroad for years, and has seen the world. And yet he believes all the dead in Bergamo were killed by the doctors, not by Covid-19. And he's not the only one with such views, by any means. The Western world is clearly full of people who believe similar nonsense.</p><p>It is not hard, of course, to understand the psychological basis of these beliefs. There is a limit to how long people can be told to forego their ordinary daily pleasures. Everyone is tired, and wants to get back to living normally. But the virus is scary, and so people exorcise it by doing their best to convince themselves and others that it isn't really that dangerous to begin with. Of course, plenty of people are also losing their jobs or seeing their businesses go bust because of lockdown policies. There is crossover, probably, between those who oppose lockdowns because they threaten their livelihoods, and those who refuse to recognise the overwhelming evidence that Covid-19 is far more dangerous than an ordinary flu. I am lucky enough to have a safe job, in a country where I can more or less go about my business normally (although I can't go home). I realize that not everyone is so lucky. All the same, I like to believe that I would remain rational and not go around spreading lunatic conspiracy theories even if my circumstances were less fortunate.</p><p>In contrast with the West, here in China it is rare to hear people argue that Covid-19 isn't dangerous or doesn't deserve the measures used to contain it. That doesn't mean they can't be made to believe some highly dubious things; there is a not inconsiderable part of the Chinese public that believes, or claims to believe, that the pandemic actually originated in America, or in any case most definitely not in China. Still, whatever ridiculous beliefs people in China may hold, these don't get in the way of them exercising caution and staying safe, or accepting vaccinations when they are offered. If anything, the population seems to feel no resentment at all about following the government's anti-pandemic measures, even when they are clearly unnecessary and over the top. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-iijSaf3oeCEt6nAixj7ooYYexSgA9HVR38WsO2KO9wz63I9rh60ZDmRBuKqmX9W-AycPlWv1qTXHxpimlT76GEtZr9vzuPrrIZCAlKnUREjFwi19I-WrU8Q3GSzS_5ke0qAo99ta-Pc/s728/12166054-3x2-xlarge.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="485" data-original-width="728" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-iijSaf3oeCEt6nAixj7ooYYexSgA9HVR38WsO2KO9wz63I9rh60ZDmRBuKqmX9W-AycPlWv1qTXHxpimlT76GEtZr9vzuPrrIZCAlKnUREjFwi19I-WrU8Q3GSzS_5ke0qAo99ta-Pc/s320/12166054-3x2-xlarge.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span><a name='more'></a></span><p>On a different topic, I recently came across this <a href="https://www.chinafile.com/reporting-opinion/media/guide-social-class-modern-china">translation</a> of an interesting Chinese article from 2014, which purports to dissect China's current class structure. According to this reading, which strikes me as fairly accurate, the Chinese population is divided into nine tiers: the first three tiers make up the ruling class, the next three make up the middle class, and the last three make up the underclass. What is noticeable is that in this analysis the "ruling class", made up of top party officials, business magnates and chancellors of elite universities, consists of a few thousand people; the middle class, made up of everything from top managers and important officials to ordinary white-collar workers, civil servants and urban home owners, includes around 3-400 million people; and the "underclass", comprising factory workers, migrant workers doing menial labour, owners of mom and pop shops and peasants, covers the remaining one billion Chinese. </p><p>It is good to remember that the vast majority of the Chinese with whom foreigners in China work, make friends, date, hang out and discuss politics belong to that 3 to 400 million-strong middle class. There are another billion people further down the social scale with whom most foreigners living in China are unlikely to have much real contact, beyond perhaps the occasional chat with a taxi driver. And, due to the fact that social mobility has become much more limited than it used to be, it is becoming rarer to meet anyone in middle class circles who does not also come from a middle class background. This might be why it can sometimes feel to outsiders like everyone in China is flush with cash, when in fact GDP per capita remains far lower than in the so-called developed countries. It might also be why many of China's foreign residents receive the impression that support for the system is so widespread; quite simply, the people they talk to all belong to the luckiest 20-30% of the population.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSEQFB6kLEYe-8rDwGghkqBTWumDP0nQN9exi38DFJb0i4lb0K8RVjVWgN6UjY5A3AgCAEyC4_FLjmnKUo9wa-eKtiqy6weO5eCJDiOAOgzmbj4rzRWxrxr-S6XmhM4jgtOurRcFDd3q0/s799/MW-CD071_china__20140512005707_MP.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="534" data-original-width="799" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSEQFB6kLEYe-8rDwGghkqBTWumDP0nQN9exi38DFJb0i4lb0K8RVjVWgN6UjY5A3AgCAEyC4_FLjmnKUo9wa-eKtiqy6weO5eCJDiOAOgzmbj4rzRWxrxr-S6XmhM4jgtOurRcFDd3q0/s320/MW-CD071_china__20140512005707_MP.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Ji Xianghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03406727999722525339noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8533171043031843199.post-61517275990892553272021-01-30T01:42:00.006-08:002021-02-01T01:52:55.481-08:00Weekly dispatch: why is China vaccinating the young first?<p>So it's happening. The 物业 (property management) of my office building in central Beijing is collecting the names of all those working in the building who would like a shot of China's new Covid-19 vaccine. Although there is no fixed date yet, it seems that after the Spring Festival it should be possible for us all to get vaccinated. It is not yet clear if the shot will be free for foreign citizens, as it is for the Chinese, but in the meantime I have put my name on the list. All of my colleagues have done the same; there is no widespread scepticism about the vaccine's safety here. </p><p>Only a fraction of the Chinese population has currently been vaccinated, but at least in Beijing mass vaccinations are starting to be rolled out. Notices have also appeared in my 小区 (neighbourhood), announcing that vaccinations will be available next week for all long-term residents aged 18 - 59. Yes, here in China the vaccine is being given <a href="https://www.163.com/dy/article/FVMG8DRE0548HZK1.html">to the young first</a>. People over 60 are not being offered the vaccine for the time being, in stark contrast to much of the world.</p><p>The Sinovac vaccine has apparently only been tested on younger segments of the population, which would currently make it unsafe to administer to older people. This suggests that the Chinese strategy, from the beginning, was to focus on those of working age rather than the elderly. This strategy makes some sense for China, given the situation. The pandemic has been brought under control within the country, and it is unlikely to return with a vengeance, considering the gargantuan efforts made to isolate and contain new outbreaks. The elderly are not at serious risk of infection, so the idea is to focus on vaccinating people who need to go abroad for work or study, those who work in certain professions considered at risk (medical staff, airport staff, those who work in cold storage units, even taxi drivers) and eventually a large number of working-age people. </p><p>All this is understandable and also convenient for me, since it means I am being offered a vaccine far earlier than I would be almost anywhere else. On the other hand, it will be an issue for the many developing countries that are making use of the Chinese vaccine. China's large production capacity, and the fact that the Sinovac vaccine doesn't need to be stored at extremely low temperatures like the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines (-20 and -70 degrees, respectively), but can be stored in a normal refrigerator (as can the Oxford vaccine), makes it an attractive solution for the nations of the "global south". </p><p>At least some of the countries that have bought large quantities of Chinese vaccines, however, are imitating China's strategy of inoculating the young first. Most strikingly, Indonesia has already bought three million Sinovac vaccines, and it is only using them to inoculate people in the 18-59 age range, just like China is doing. This is a surprising choice for Indonesia, the country with one of the worst Covid-19 pandemics in Asia, where the official number of deaths just keeps rising and rising, probably matched by an even higher unofficial death toll. In many cities hospitals are close to collapse, while the government seems to have given up on enforcing strict lockdowns.</p><p><a href="https://fortune.com/2021/01/11/covid-vaccine-elderly-young-youth-indonesia-sinovac/">The Indonesian health minister has justified this choice</a> by saying that there is not enough data on the safety of the vaccine for older people. Indonesian officials have also pointed to the fact that vaccinating the young will help restart the economy and stop the spread of the virus, but it can be assumed that the lack of tests conducted on the elderly was part of the reason behind this decision. The Turkish government, which has bought millions of vaccines from China, has also <a href="https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/covid-19-vaccine-to-be-given-to-young-and-healthy-people-first-159601">announced</a> that people over 65 will not be vaccinated at first "to avoid risks". Turkey also has an ongoing pandemic, in which the elderly are most likely to become casualties. Regardless, countries like Turkey and Indonesia have little choice but to make do with the Chinese vaccine, at a time when the supply of the other vaccines is still so limited that even the EU and the UK are fighting to get their hands on as many of them as they can.</p><p>On a personal level, as a foreigner living in China, the strategy of vaccinating young people first makes me wonder when the country's borders will finally open up again. Unlike in Europe and North America, here in China the plan is clearly not to vaccinate those most at risk of dying or getting seriously ill, and then letting everyone else get on with their lives. On the contrary, as long as the elderly are not vaccinated it will be especially important to do everything possible to prevent the pandemic from spreading again. This will mean, among other things, keeping in place the incredibly tough quarantine measures and the restrictions on the entry of foreign citizens. </p><p>I doubt that even getting vaccinated will allow me to enter China from abroad without quarantine (which, from my perspective, would be one of the best reasons to get the shot); it is not certain, after all, that those vaccinated are unable to be infected and then spread the virus, and the Chinese government can accept nothing less than 100% certainty that not a single new case enters the country. This approach is leading to ever stricter measures. Most provinces now require 21 days of quarantine, not 14; Beijing and several other cities have also <a href="https://www.livemint.com/science/health/china-anal-swab-tests-the-latest-embarrassment-emerging-from-covid-19-crisis-11611835580797.html">started requiring</a> all those in quarantine to take anal swabs, because apparently they are more reliable than nose and throat swabs! As cases inevitably slip through the net, leading to new lockdowns of neighbourhoods and even entire cities, the measures taken to keep the virus out become ever more intrusive and grotesque. </p><p>I don't doubt that China will eventually get round to vaccinating most of its population, including its senior citizens. This process might, however, take a couple of years, especially since vaccines are also being exported abroad at the same time. In the meantime, China will continue to be cut off from the world for most intents and purposes.</p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOZ0ku2pDGVI9u4csV3jEx3UCd1QMWoqElpseYYSqkcl72I9zpMusmchZc8n2TrlEI9sCEzWHGChYljfhc7Knyge_UCwfVFZYkPEywrNO3XnYAeLO5Ch3geL-AvI-xwcZYKaVEjWMLpEc/s700/ma_1204_NF_ChinaVaccine_GettyImages-1210114338.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="488" data-original-width="700" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOZ0ku2pDGVI9u4csV3jEx3UCd1QMWoqElpseYYSqkcl72I9zpMusmchZc8n2TrlEI9sCEzWHGChYljfhc7Knyge_UCwfVFZYkPEywrNO3XnYAeLO5Ch3geL-AvI-xwcZYKaVEjWMLpEc/s320/ma_1204_NF_ChinaVaccine_GettyImages-1210114338.jpg" width="320" /></a></p>Ji Xianghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03406727999722525339noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8533171043031843199.post-19926092994881556742020-12-17T16:55:00.005-08:002021-06-03T19:47:15.409-07:00The sad decline of new atheismWhile I was <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomscrolling">doomscrolling</a> my way through Twitter one evening last month, the tweet below caught my attention: <div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQLPzfh4yM-PsHlnJENR6TLb1FqD1sVJeu643nYvbxefNjdTRaIdUEoAQQA5lTEVFtma4xNy88iWax6gIp1J_ohwvFLt4HHi_T9KDwR8owUBeiU1KjZ29qiq4qpv20R2zckzUhPd6rMWI/s753/Screen+Shot+2020-12-09+at+17.13.05.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="661" data-original-width="753" height="351" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQLPzfh4yM-PsHlnJENR6TLb1FqD1sVJeu643nYvbxefNjdTRaIdUEoAQQA5lTEVFtma4xNy88iWax6gIp1J_ohwvFLt4HHi_T9KDwR8owUBeiU1KjZ29qiq4qpv20R2zckzUhPd6rMWI/w400-h351/Screen+Shot+2020-12-09+at+17.13.05.png" width="400" /></a></div></div><div><br /></div><div>Whenever I see the name Richard Dawkins, I am taken back to the innocent days of the mid-2000s: the times before social media and fake news, financial crises and pandemics, when it seemed impossible that a man even more incoherent and ignorant than George W. Bush could one day sit in the White House; when China still seemed to be set on an inevitable course towards a more democratic and open future; when most Europeans were still excited about the Euro and European integration; and when "woke" was nothing but the past tense of "wake".</div><div><br /></div><div>One of the intellectual currents of the day was the rise of the "new atheists". The term was coined in 2006 by American journalist Gary Wolf, to describe a new breed of intellectuals who felt that organized religion and irrational beliefs had no justification in the modern world, and that they should be aggressively criticised and countered in the public sphere through rational argument. That same year saw the publication of two of the seminal texts of this intellectual trend, "<i>the God Delusion</i>" by Richard Dawkins and "<i>Letter to a Christian Nation</i>" by Sam Harris. Daniel Dennett's more measured "<i>Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon</i>" also came out in 2006. In 2007, Christopher Hitchens produced a polemic entitled "<i>God is not Great: why Religion Poisons Everything</i>". That same year, Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens and Dennett met up in Washington DC, for a two-hour chat that later earned the four participants the jokey moniker of the "four horsemen of the non-apocalypse". </div><div><br /></div><div>For a while, the issue of "atheism vs. religion" became one of the dominant themes of intellectual discourse in the Western, English-speaking world. High-profile debates were organised between the two sides; book after book debated the issue; even the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster">Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster</a> became a cultural phenomenon. Richard Dawkins became the improbable star of the atheist movement, as he found himself invited to talk show after talk show on both sides of the Atlantic so he could espouse his materialist, and very English, worldview. Dawkins was also the star of the Global Atheist Convention that was held twice in Melbourne in 2010 and 2012 and, tellingly, never again.</div><div><br /></div><div>Yes, because some time around the turn of the decade the whole question of atheism started to lose its urgency. This well-argued <a href="https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/10/30/new-atheism-the-godlessness-that-failed/">blog post</a> presents some compelling evidence: Google searches for terms like "atheism", "atheist", "agnostic" and "creationism" started to decline after 2012, in some cases quite dramatically, as did traffic to some of the major atheist websites. It is a tendency that is obvious to anyone who follows such trends. It's not that religion has disappeared, or is close to disappearing, in the Western world; it's more that most believers and atheists have simply gone back to blissfully ignoring the other side's existence.</div><div><br /></div><div>Why did this happen? One possibility is that the atheists, at some level, won the argument. The US has long been an outlier within the developed world because of the strength of popular religious feeling, with going to church the norm rather than the exception in many areas of the country. But over the last decade <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/17/americans-less-christian-religion-survey-pew">there has been a clear shift</a>: the percentage of adults defining themselves as Christian dropped by 12%, to around two thirds, while the percentage of people defining themselves as atheist, agnostic or "nothing in particular" rose by 17%, to around a quarter of the population (with other religions taking up the remainder). <a href="file:///C:/Users/gabri/Downloads/F00011058-Giving_Up_On_God.pdf">According to one study</a>, the shift toward secularism clearly began to take place in 2007, the year after <i>the God Delusion</i> and <i>Letter to a Christian Nation</i> came out, when Dawkins and his fellow atheists were at the peak of their popularity. It isn't unreasonable to assume that those books, and the debate surrounding them, made being atheist or agnostic much less of a taboo for parts of the population, especially those who called themselves Christian more out of habit than because of any strong conviction.</div><div><br /></div><div>If this is so then the "new atheist" intellectuals should be credited with a striking victory, something that generally gets lost in discussions about why their cause seems to have lost steam. But can this really be the only factor? Much of the American population is still religious after all, and the evangelicals are still a force to be reckoned with, so it's not like atheists have no one left to argue with. What's more Dawkins and Hitchens both came from Britain, a country where popular religiosity was not as strong as in the US to begin with, and where there has not been such an obvious move away from religion in recent years either.</div><div><br /></div><div>Perhaps it is necessary to look at the even bigger picture. The world today is certainly a more troubled place than it was 15 years ago, and that's even without the Covid-19 pandemic. Authoritarianism, nationalism, xenophobia and populist politics have been on a steady rise everywhere for at least a decade, while the financial crisis of 2008 seriously dented the Western middle class's sense of security. Geopolitically, people's focus has shifted somewhat from the Middle East to Russia and China. Religious issues don't really have anything to do with the West's constant state of tension with China, a country ruled by a party that still officially bars its members from following any religious faith at all. Perhaps, in today's world, the truth or non-truth of religious tenets is just too abstract of an issue for people to care about? </div><div><br /></div><div>This might be a good argument, if it wasn't for the fact that many of the issues around which our current "culture wars" are centred, for instance the rights of transsexual people, are equally abstract to most of us. The intelligent, if America-centred, <a href="https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/10/30/new-atheism-the-godlessness-that-failed/">blog post</a> to which I already linked above claims that the deciding factor was a shift in the progressive "hamartiology" (doctrine of sin). Over a decade ago, parts of liberal, Democrats-supporting America liked to define themselves as those who followed science and reason, and decided that society's problems were the result of people "blindly following three-thousand year old fairy tales". This was in keeping with the spirit of the times, since the evangelical vote had been instrumental in bringing G.W. Bush to power and things like Intelligent Design, radical Islam and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were all over the news. </div><div><br /></div><div>In 2008 Obama gained the presidency, and then in 2014 the Ferguson riots happened, and the focus started to shift towards race. Especially after Trump was elected, progressive America decided to define itself in opposition to racism and sexism. The adversary was no longer those blinded by irrational, magical thinking, but rather those blinded by their own privilege, or unwilling to let go of it. Many atheist bloggers and activists turned into "social justice" bloggers and activists, while others shifted towards the alternative right. All of a sudden, arguing over the existence of god or whether we descend from apes felt very yesteryear.</div><div><br /></div><div>It is certainly true that arguments over race, gender and sexuality seem to have superseded concerns over religion, not just in the US but all over the Western world. In the current climate it would certainly not pass unnoticed that the four stars of new atheism were all heterosexual white men; in fact, it seems incredible that this was hardly even remarked upon back in 2007. </div><div><br /></div><div>What is striking is that two of the main figureheads of the atheist movement, Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, have now become quite vocal adversaries of the new wave of left-wing identity politics. In the process, they have expressed support for some pretty unpleasant and reactionary causes and ideas. Over the last few years, Dawkins has gotten into all sorts of rows over his views on Islam, feminism and sexual harassment. Nowadays the Oxford biologist seems to spend more time rebutting accusations of racism and sexism than discussing religion or the origins of life. Most recently, the famous debating society of Trinity College Dublin rescinded an invitation for Richard Dawkins to speak because of "concerns" over his views on Islam and sexual assault.</div><div><br /></div><div>Some of the accusations would seem to be well grounded. Back in 2011, Dawkins wrote an infamous letter entitled "<a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Elevatorgate">Dear Muslima</a>", in which he attacked atheist and feminist blogger Rebecca Watson for complaining about being propositioned by an unknown man in an elevator at 4 AM during an atheist convention in Dublin. Apparently the fact that Muslim women have much worse stuff to complain about means that Western feminists like Watson are whining about nothing. In the end, all that happened was that "a man in a hotel elevator invited her back to his room for a coffee". Never mind that the man was another delegate with whom Watson had never spoken, who thought it quite normal to invite her to his hotel room for "a cup of coffee" at 4 AM. Women in Saudi Arabia have it far worse, so what's the problem?</div><div><br /></div><div>Dawkins later apologized for the letter, but in the meantime he has attracted more controversy with questionable tweets and remarks about how "<a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/richard-dawkins-says-date-rape-bad-stranger-rape-worse-twitter-9634572.html">date rape is bad; stranger rape at knifepoint is worse</a>", how <a href="https://twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/510656024169447424">rape victims shouldn't be considered reliable witnesses</a> if they were drinking at the time of the rape, and how <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/09/richard-dawkins-defends-mild-pedophilia-again-and-again/311230/">the "mild paedophilia" he encountered as a schoolboy</a> in the fifties cannot be judged by today's standards. Some of this could be blamed on the medium of communication: when you spend your days on Twitter, as Dawkins seems to do, you are likely to say a few idiotic things here and there. For a man in his seventies, getting the hang of the minefield that is social media must be tough. I also suspect that the sting of being called a misogynist has caused him to double down on these positions, rather than wisely steer clear of such topics. Still, while Dawkins did at one point <a href="https://twitter.com/humanism2014/status/498430255389212672">claim to be a feminist</a>, he has clearly decided that he has a strong antipathy towards "social justice" politics, "wokeism", "political correctness" or whatever else you decide to call it. </div><div><br /></div><div>Sam Harris has veered off into even darker directions. In 2017, Harris hosted the conservative writer Charles Murray on his podcast. Murray is famous (or infamous) for his view that different races display differences in average IQ that can only be explained by genetics, with blacks and Hispanics lower down the intelligence pole than whites and Asians. Murray was denied a platform and shouted down by students in Middlebury College, which convinced Harris that the writer was a victim of "liberal intolerance" and "political correctness gone mad" who deserved a platform. <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/3/27/15695060/sam-harris-charles-murray-race-iq-forbidden-knowledge-podcast-bell-curve">Most feel</a> that during his podcast Harris did very little to challenge Murray and his toxic arguments, and generally seemed sympathetic towards him. Since then, Harris has loudly and repeatedly taken position against Black Lives Matter and "woke culture".</div><div><br /></div><div>What of the other two champions of new atheism? Christopher Hitchens sadly died an untimely death from cancer in 2011, but one feels that if he were still around he would probably be as strong a critic of left-wing identity politics and "cancel culture" as anyone; as for Daniel Dennett, he was always the odd one out, being more of a scientist than a polemicist, and he usually avoids such topics.</div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMH_kqvVvG3pNUyTbn5_VJa0-n34D6qdpiMamnlLa8vmjz0LSdpkMIYbQ4gNBG2JihyphenhyphenO_ayEUWRd7S4UC0g1H0p3cLC3eq5k6BRaykaeW3st-afmqurtnNsSNGL7SRBt6tpeBaRJU-GaU/s762/Four_Horsemen.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="762" data-original-width="608" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMH_kqvVvG3pNUyTbn5_VJa0-n34D6qdpiMamnlLa8vmjz0LSdpkMIYbQ4gNBG2JihyphenhyphenO_ayEUWRd7S4UC0g1H0p3cLC3eq5k6BRaykaeW3st-afmqurtnNsSNGL7SRBt6tpeBaRJU-GaU/s320/Four_Horsemen.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Clockwise, from top right, Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett</td></tr></tbody></table> <div><br /></div><div>Perhaps it isn't surprising that there would eventually be a messy divorce between atheism and progressive politics. "New atheism" presented itself as a simple call to reject superstition and dogmatic faith in favour of rationality and evidence. But its proponents inevitably went beyond that, commenting on social and political issues in a way that was unsurprisingly affected by their personal origins and biases. Atheism's main public champions came from comfortable middle and upper-class backgrounds in the US and Britain, and they could be rather blind to the social and cultural dynamics which create religious feeling among the disenfranchised. What's more, while they were genuinely scathing of all monotheistic religions, their greatest scorn and condemnation was always reserved for Islam. </div><div><br /></div><div>Richard Dawkins was born into a family of the British landed gentry, and went to a renowned Church of England public school before moving on to Oxford University. While he abandoned Anglicanism as a teenager, he has never hidden a certain affection for the faith. He has called himself a "cultural Anglican", and praised the Church of England for its "gentle decency". He has also openly claimed that while Anglicanism may not be good, it's still better than Catholicism, Mormonism and Islam. He seems to have something of a blind spot regarding Anglicanism's own nasty history of discrimination and intolerance against Catholics, and, I suspect, the misdeeds of British imperialism as a whole.</div><div><br /></div><div>Dawkins believes that organised religion is at the root of much of what is wrong in the world. As he claims in "the God Delusion": <i>"Imagine, with John Lennon, a world with no religion. Imagine no suicide bombers, no 9/11, no 7/7, no Crusades, no witch-hunts, no Gunpower Plot, no Indian partition, no Israeli/Palestinian wars, no Serb/Croat/Muslim massacres, no persecution of Jews as<span style="color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;"> </span><span style="color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">‘</span>Christ-killers<span style="color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">’</span>, no Northern Ireland<span style="color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;"> </span><span style="color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">‘</span>troubles<span style="color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">’</span>, no<span style="color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;"> </span><span style="color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">‘</span>honour killings<span style="color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">’</span>, no shiny-suited bouffant-haired televangelists fleecing gullible people of their money (<span style="color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">‘</span>God wants you to give till it hurts<span style="color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">’</span>). Imagine no Taliban to blow up ancient statues, no public beheadings of blasphemers, no flogging of female skin for the crime of showing an inch of it."</i></div><div><br /></div><div>This is, of course, a highly simplistic worldview which dismisses all of the inequality, the historical injustice and the economic and social dynamics that lie at the basis of these problems. Dawkins also ignores the fact that in many parts of the world religious affiliation is basically a marker of your ethnic identity in the same way as your language or your surname, and has little to do with your actual beliefs. Still, one could argue that such simplifications are a necessary part of any sweeping argument about the world, and it is hard to deny that organised religion has been responsible for fanaticising and stultifying its followers, sowing division, promoting oppressive sexual and gender norms, and encouraging rejection of new scientific knowledge, including through the modern aberration of "creationism" that rightly outrages Dawkins. </div><div><br /></div><div>What many found troubling, right from the start, was Dawkins' very obvious aversion towards Islam. I happen to think Dawkins has a point when he says that you do not need to be a theologian to criticise religion or understand that religious beliefs are irrational and unproven, any more than you need to be a "fairyologist" to understand that fairies don't exist. For this reason I see no scandal in him condemning Islamic beliefs as irrational, in spite of not having read the Quran by his own admission. What I find more problematic, on the other hand, is when he veers off into geopolitics and blames the problems of the Muslim world entirely on religion, or talks about Muslim countries as if they were all no different from Saudi Arabia. His views on such issues are basically just the "common sense" of the Western establishment, and he has never had anything of particular insight to add to this debate.</div><div><br /></div><div>Over the years, Dawkins' rhetoric on Islam has become more and more extreme. In 2017 he wrote: "<span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202122;"><i>It's tempting to say all religions are bad, and I do say all religions are bad, but it's a worse temptation to say all religions are equally bad because they're not. If you look at the actual impact that different religions have on the world it's quite apparent that at present the most evil religion in the world has to be Islam.</i><span style="font-size: 14px;">" </span></span>In all fairness, he went on to say that he doesn't consider individual Muslims to be evil, and that he opposed Trump's Muslim travel ban. On another occasion he tweeted "<i>(Justifiable) Islamophobia is poles apart from (bigoted) Muslimophobia. Muslims are Islam's main victims.</i>" He has repeated the old chestnut that Islam is not a race, so being opposed to Islam cannot possibly make one bigoted.</div><div><br /></div><div>Sam Harris, the son of a Quaker actor and a Jewish screenwriter brought up by his secular Jewish mother in Los Angeles, also detests Islam. Even more than Dawkins, he has let his hatred of this religion lead him to take up some pretty questionable positions. In "Letter to a Christian Nation", Harris makes the reasonable point that most developed countries, and particularly Western European ones, are far less religious than the US and pretty much anywhere else on earth, and at the same time are among the healthiest, wealthiest, peaceful and most equal societies in the world. He then adds that "<i>insofar as there is a crime problem in Western Europe, it is largely the product of immigration. Seventy percent of the inmates of France's jails, for instance, are Muslims.</i>" Perhaps this might be because Muslim immigrants from France's former colonies in North Africa make up the bulk of the country's working poor and unemployed, rather than because being a Muslim or having a religion make one more likely to commit crimes, but such considerations don't enter the dangerously simplistic picture painted here.</div><div><br /></div><div>Later on, Harris claims in alarm that "<i>the birthrate among European Muslims is three times that of their non-Muslim neighbours. If current trends continue, France will be a majority-Muslim country in twenty-five years - and that is if immigration were to stop tomorrow.</i>" A quick look at some <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/11/29/5-facts-about-the-muslim-population-in-europe/">actual statistics</a> shows that this rhetoric has no basis in fact. In 2016, ten years after the book was published, Muslims in France were still only 8.8% of the population (the highest percentage anywhere in the EU), and projections on the share of Muslims in Europe in 2050 went from a low of 7% to a high of 14%, depending on levels of immigration. </div><div><br /></div><div>Finally, and most strikingly, Harris says that "<i>Political correctness and fear of racism have made many Europeans reluctant to oppose the terrifying religious commitments of the extremists in their midst. With a few exceptions, the only public figures who have had the courage to speak honestly about the threat that Islam now poses to European society seem to be fascists. This does not bode well for the future of civilization.</i>" The only thing left is for him to claim that Europe is about to turn into "Eurabia", a favourite term of far-right xenophobes.</div><div><br /></div><div>I am certainly not blind to the reactionary, misogynist and intolerant aspect of Islam as it is practiced today by Islamic communities, or to the dangers of Islamism as a political project. No one should feel they have to hold back from criticising Islamic tenets because people might find it offensive, or for fear of being called prejudiced. No one should feel forced to repeat platitudes about it being a "religion of peace" either. But when Sam Harris describes Muslim immigrants in Europe as a threatening alien body, bound to take over the continent unless something is done, he really does sound like the worst kind of right-wing extremist. These arguments can only be described as deeply problematic, and yet they raised few eyebrows at the time.</div><div><br /></div><div>Consider also that this was the time when the US army was bogged down in Afghanistan and Iraq. Harris expressed support for the invasion of Afghanistan, which he saw entirely as an issue of fighting Muslim fundamentalists who would understand no other argument. He opposed the war in Iraq, but without much conviction, calling it a "distraction" from the necessary war in Afghanistan. Richard Dawkins held exactly the same positions. Christopher Hitchens went further, strongly supporting the US invasions of both Iraq and of Afghanistan. His extremely strong antipathy towards Islam was certainly part of the reason he became such a fan of "liberal interventionism” in the last decade of his life. The sense of injustice that many people in the non-Western world, both Muslim and non-Muslim, feel over such military interventions was clearly lost on the prophets of atheism.</div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcjy5_V8bN-7lVskJ6I_xcGKN79pRWZI3DKlNrmaubnQR1l-LY4bceXPQzkAodBMJV1Q1bM-bjCcBmiu8KIlirlwuAEbAUt7xl19jv1xPNYDB87R4AUO1iOAGN9jNsRpir-LvsqxUIvbo/s1920/1920px-Ariane_Sherine_and_Richard_Dawkins_at_the_Atheist_Bus_Campaign_launch.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1082" data-original-width="1920" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcjy5_V8bN-7lVskJ6I_xcGKN79pRWZI3DKlNrmaubnQR1l-LY4bceXPQzkAodBMJV1Q1bM-bjCcBmiu8KIlirlwuAEbAUt7xl19jv1xPNYDB87R4AUO1iOAGN9jNsRpir-LvsqxUIvbo/s320/1920px-Ariane_Sherine_and_Richard_Dawkins_at_the_Atheist_Bus_Campaign_launch.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dawkins with Ariane Sherine, launching the "atheist bus campaign" in 2008</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div>In essence, new atheism was a product of its time, and it always had a conservative and Western-centric side to it. It has now lost the attention of the public, while some of its most famous faces are busy turning themselves into pariahs in progressive circles. And yet, while the contention that most of the world's problems derive from organised religion was clearly simplistic, the call to view the world through the lenses of rationality and scientific evidence hasn't lost any of its relevance. One need only look at the proliferation of idiotic and scientifically illiterate conspiracy theories about Covid-19 and vaccines, and the widespread distrust of medical science and faith in "alternative" treatments that laid the ground for them. Irrational beliefs continue to exist and thrive in the modern world, whether in the guise of holy books and revelations or of quantum healing and homeopathy. </div>Ji Xianghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03406727999722525339noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8533171043031843199.post-84337980177467317352020-11-05T06:38:00.007-08:002020-12-17T20:09:32.769-08:00Nothing normal under the sun: a few observations on China's new normal.<div>The word "surreal" may be overused nowadays, but it really is the only way to describe the experience of being back in China for the first time since before the pandemic. In most ways it feels like picking up my life where I left it, in a society where very little seems to have changed, and the fear of the virus is already a distant memory. I am, it must be said, glad to be in a place where you do not need to wash your hands all the time like a hypochondriac, or worry about getting too close to people on the street, or wonder whether your runny nose is just an ordinary cold or if you should go and get tested just to stay on the safe side. </div><div><br /></div><div>On the other hand, home has never felt so far away. It may only be an 11-hour flight back to where I'm from, but the pandemic makes Europe and China feel almost as far apart as they did when it took weeks of journey by ship to travel from one to the other. The world was already becoming more divided, but Covid-19 has created fissures that may take decades to heal. </div><div><br /></div>Now that I've been back in China for five weeks (of which the first two were spent in quarantine), I have a few observations to share on China's post-pandemic "new normal".<div><br /><div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b>1) Daily life in China feels normal</b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div>Life in China really does feel like it's back to its pre-Covid "normality". Between the initial lockdown, mass testing, the isolation of Hubei from China and then of China from the world (see below), the virus has been stamped out. Fear of infection has dissipated, and the general public trusts that the pandemic has been effectively controlled. People wear a mask on public transport because they have to, but many no longer wear one, or wear one pulled down, when they walk the streets. Even those who do wear a mask no longer seem to have any real fear of infection; it's more that putting on a face-covering before going out has become almost automatic, and you never know when a place may require it. It's also a way of signalling that you are doing your bit to stop the pandemic. The rather odd fashion of hanging your mask around your sleeve when you aren't wearing it has also taken shape. </div><div><br /></div><div>In Chinese cities all workplaces and commercial establishments are open again, with no particular restrictions in place. I have seen signs in public offices and gyms asking people to maintain a one-meter distance to avoid infection, but nobody seems to take them seriously anymore, even in police stations. Quite simply, getting infected is no longer a matter of concern.</div><div><br /></div><div>Travelling within Mainland China is also not a problem anymore, except if you happen to pass through a place exactly when one of the occasional new outbreaks occur. This is unlikely, but if it does happen you run a risk of being caught up in a new lockdown, or having restrictions placed on you when you go back home. The authorities will pull no stops to make sure that any new outbreaks of Covid-19 remain contained. I know a Beijinger who visited Qingdao (where an outbreak was put down a few weeks ago) during the national holidays. After returning to Beijing, she was required to take a PCR test by the government. </div><div><br /></div><div>Happily, the fear of foreigners as carriers of the virus and the <a href="http://thecapitalinthenorth.blogspot.com/2020/07/among-its-many-side-effects-coronavirus.html">resultant xenophobia</a> also seems to have died down. Since I have come back, I have not noticed anyone being scared of sitting next to me in the subway, avoiding me on the street, or showing me any particular hostility. No shops or bars have refused me entry, either. Last spring, all of these occurrences were common across China for foreign-looking people. Foreigners can still encounter problems when travelling, however. I have heard of recent cases of tourist sites rejecting foreigners outright, or demanding that only foreigners produce evidence of a PCR test, and it seems that hotels are also being more difficult than usual. But as long as you stay put, at least, being a foreigner no longer seems to be a problem. </div><div><br /></div><div>In general it feels like life in China, or at least in Beijing, has not changed too much since before the pandemic. Quite simply, after a brief interruption, the Chinese system has returned to what passes for normality here. A few restaurants have closed, and that's about it. While I realise that it is risky to make observations about the state of China's economy based on personal impressions of life in a major city, I will note that the Beijing subway seems to be as packed as it always was, suggesting that there has not been a large exodus of migrant workers who have lost their jobs. The traffic is also as bad as ever. Another unwelcome discovery is that Beijing's notorious air pollution hasn't improved one bit since before the pandemic. Good days continue to alternate with days when the AQI reaches 150-200. This might also suggest that economic activity is back to normal, although there are various different factors that contribute to Beijing's air pollution, so this inference is open to debate.</div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6aaCuyyxsww1UGf2AQG5kykynOx50G_JGmuCoB7VV6sv0uS0yUv6B9KeNlOeU6Zl3ec2MJehwIOtEVBjFQRKK_jDkGlIlfmx69N7cvSccG2hTDSyog1pE4HUu2DPfJg5rC0GCrvjhWpQ/s940/Screen+Shot+2020-11-05+at+22.06.34.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="515" data-original-width="940" height="219" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6aaCuyyxsww1UGf2AQG5kykynOx50G_JGmuCoB7VV6sv0uS0yUv6B9KeNlOeU6Zl3ec2MJehwIOtEVBjFQRKK_jDkGlIlfmx69N7cvSccG2hTDSyog1pE4HUu2DPfJg5rC0GCrvjhWpQ/w400-h219/Screen+Shot+2020-11-05+at+22.06.34.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /></div><div><b>2)</b> <b>China has basically cut itself off from the world </b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div>A lot has been said about the impressive way in which China has brought new transmissions of Covid-19 down to zero. Recently there have been a lot of takes <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/the-west-has-failed-us-and-europe-have-made-a-mess-of-handling-the-crisis-1.4395473">blaming European and American governments</a> for "arrogantly" failing to learn from the measures taken by China and other Asian countries. While there is truth to this, people often fail to mention one aspect of how China, and many of its neighbours in the Asia/Pacific, are keeping themselves pandemic-free: they have basically isolated themselves from the world, with extreme limitations on entries and flights and strict centralised quarantines which sometimes leave even their own citizens unable to come home. Quarantine alone is not enough, since imported cases can still pose a slight risk; as far as possible, entries from abroad need to be curtailed. The government is now ensuring China does not suffer a second wave of infections by cutting the country off from international travel to an extent unprecedented in modern history.</div><div><br /></div><div>I detailed the process I had to go through to enter China in my <a href="http://thecapitalinthenorth.blogspot.com/2020/10/from-indonesia-to-china-pandemic-travel.html">previous post</a>: it is so expensive, troublesome and unpleasant that only the truly determined would consider going through with it. The idea of doing it regularly is absurd. And the quarantine isn't even the only obstacle standing in the way of those who want to travel to China. A major issue is the way the government limits the number of inbound flights, which has driven ticket prices to crazy highs. It's particularly bad in the US, where the few direct flights to China can cost figures like 8,000 USD. Testing requirements have also been made more taxing. Currently, in most countries you are required to get a PCR test and an antibody test within 72 or even 48 hours of boarding a flight to China, and email the (negative) results to the Chinese embassy to get them certified before the flight. In many places these conditions are going to be very hard to fulfil. At the very least, there will be a serious risk of missing your flight. </div><div><br /></div><div>To cap it all, after a brief hiatus it seems like the authorities are once again banning entry to all foreign nationals, even if they have valid visas. Over the last two days, Chinese embassies in quite a few countries have published notices like <a href="http://www.chinese-embassy.org.uk/eng/visa/notice/t1829529.htm">this one</a>, and more are bound to follow. As always, they have provided absolutely no advanced warning, causing people to lose expensive tickets. This is clearly a reaction to the second wave currently underway in much of the Northern hemisphere. Even though the vast majority of "imported cases" have come from Chinese citizens, the first reaction to a situation of stress still seems to be a blanket ban on foreigners, which can only be seen as a political decision rather than a medical one.</div><div><br /></div><div>All this makes entering China from abroad excruciatingly difficult. A few foreign citizens like me continue to live in China, but we do so in the knowledge that for the time being we cannot leave, or if we do we can forget about coming back. No one who resides in China would dream of leaving the country for business, let alone on holiday, given how hard it would be to return. There is talk of a travel bubble being set up with Thailand, but I'll believe it when I see it, especially since the interest seems to come mostly from the Thai side.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b>3) You can't go anywhere without a green code </b></div><div><br /></div><div>There is one way, of course, in which life in China has indeed changed from when I left in January: you can't live without a green code proving you are not a potential carrier of Covid-19. Every province now has its own smartphone app that assigns you a "health code" with a specific colour based on your level of safety. A green code means you are safe, a yellow one means you should self-isolate, and a red code means that you should already have been dragged into quarantine. It has become hard to do much in China without using these apps. If I didn't have a green code, I would be unable to enter hospitals, banks, the office building where I work, most shopping malls and certain neighbourhoods of Beijing. It is hard to know when you might be required to scan a QR code and show your colour code. In Beijing you no longer need to do so to access public transport, but in some cities you still do.</div><div><br /></div><div>The colour codes are assigned to you by apps hosted by the WeChat and Alipay platforms. In order to sign up, you have to provide your ID or passport number, some other basic info about yourself, and answer some questions about your health status (I have a strong suspicion that reporting symptoms of any kind, even a runny nose, will lead to a green code not being assigned to you). If you have travelled to other provinces within the last 14 days, you will be asked to select the provinces, the cities and even the precise districts that you visited. The app doesn't only make use of the information the users report themselves, however. As a <a href="http://www.xinhuanet.com/2020-06/08/c_1126088493.htm">Xinhua report</a> from June states, "the health information reported by the users only constitutes a part of what is used to asses their health status (....) An individual's health information can come from different sources, and the data provided by district authorities, hospitals and their workplace can all be used for reference."</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCP9wfELIRwOHFBfDBA5TTJiGNqbHjKlbvBQp8ISx16OOgoTFWMQ7GauzHUjvrO9qyS3difEw61BFS_wFnsAi74TvRbqu1mqxqSxKi0oJQeTvAmoreRk1Cyn1g7OGDGHlDnbDGCUM8pak/s1260/im-190690.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="840" data-original-width="1260" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCP9wfELIRwOHFBfDBA5TTJiGNqbHjKlbvBQp8ISx16OOgoTFWMQ7GauzHUjvrO9qyS3difEw61BFS_wFnsAi74TvRbqu1mqxqSxKi0oJQeTvAmoreRk1Cyn1g7OGDGHlDnbDGCUM8pak/w400-h266/im-190690.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div>To be fair, over the last few months the requirement to show your health code has become rather less ubiquitous in Chinese cities, and most individual shops and restaurants no longer require it. All the same the system has become a basic feature of life in China, and its use can easily be scaled up again if there are new outbreaks. It is hard to imagine it being completely abandoned in the near future. While other countries in the region have established successful "track and trace" systems, I don't think there is anywhere else in the world where you are regularly asked to scan a QR code to enter public spaces. </div><div><br /></div><div>In China itself, the complete lack of privacy this system entails would have raised some serious eyebrows before the pandemic, but in the current environment most people haven't the slightest thing to say about it. Any steps the state takes to keep the pandemic at bay are accepted as necessary by the populace, which is only too grateful that their government is saving them from descending into the spiral of new lockdowns and overwhelmed hospitals which they see unfolding in much of the world. I myself have already got used to showing my green code all the time, and no longer give it much thought. Just like I no longer give much thought to passing through a metal detector every time I take the subway, having to show my passport just to buy a train or bus ticket out of town etc...</div></div></div><div><br /></div><div>Having said all this, back in May there was a <a href="https://radiichina.com/health-code-controversy/">public outcry</a> in Hangzhou after the local government proposed making the system pretty much permanent, assigning a colour to each citizen based on their medical records and lifestyle. This Black Mirror-esque proposal seems to have been dropped as a result of the barrage of negative comments it received on the internet, showing that there is still some concern left over people's privacy.</div><div><br /></div><div>Another thing about the health code apps is that they have made it even less possible to live in China without using a smartphone, and without installing WeChat (or Alipay). It has also brought the "digital divide" between the elderly and the rest of the population into stark relief, with reports of retirees being unable to board buses in some cities because they could not show a health code. Ad hoc solutions will probably be found for the elderly, but the basic situation will not change: unless you are very old, not owning a smartphone and not downloading Tencent and Alibaba's main apps is just not possible in urban China today. Not doing so doesn't only make you an eccentric; it makes you a literal outcast, and someone who is getting in the way of containing the pandemic.</div>Ji Xianghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03406727999722525339noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8533171043031843199.post-51339688987562312382020-10-25T07:59:00.019-07:002020-11-01T23:13:51.196-08:00From Indonesia to China: a pandemic travel odyssey <p>I am back in China! I had been out of the country since mid-January, just before the Covid-19 pandemic exploded in Wuhan. That was only nine months ago, but it feels like years. The time when I could just jump on a plane in any major city of the world and expect to be back in Beijing and free to roam within a few hours already seems like a distant dream. Entering China from abroad has become an ordeal that takes weeks and seriously drains your finances and patience.</p><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b>Indonesia</b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div>My odyssey started off in Yogyakarta, on the island of Java, the place where I spent a good chunk of this year. Back in March, the Chinese government took the completely exceptional decision of forbidding all foreign citizens from entering China, including ones with valid residence permits who normally live and work there. The only exceptions were made for diplomats and holders of the (very rarely granted) permanent residence certificate. In some cases this policy left families divided, and quite a few foreign citizens who normally live in China found themselves stuck outside the country with no idea when they might be able to return. Luckily I was able to continue working remotely from Indonesia.</div><div><br /></div><div>Slowly, over the summer, it started becoming possible for some foreign citizens to return to China if they could obtain an invitation letter from China's Foreign Affairs Office. These are however only granted to people working in important roles or for organisations that have particular clout with the government. Finally, in mid-August, the Chinese government announced that it was making it possible for the citizens of most European countries to enter China again, as long as their residence permits were still valid. It would not however be possible to just enter with the residence permit, as it normally would be. Instead it would be necessary to apply for a new visa, which would be granted for free to anyone in possession of a non-expired Chinese residence permit.</div><div><br /></div><div>This announcement meant that I was now able to return to China if I wanted, and I resolved to do so, spurred by the promise of a new job. But I suspected it would not prove a simple matter, and indeed it did not. I soon found out that getting a new visa for China would not be possible in Indonesia. I contacted the Chinese consulates in Jakarta and Bali, but they were adamant that they could not give me a visa unless I had an invitation letter. As a European this was actually no longer necessary for me, but apparently they had not received the memo. </div><div><br /></div><div>Simply because of this fact, I had no choice but to fly all the way back to Europe just to get my Chinese visa. Given that no other country in Indonesia's vicinity would let me in at the moment, that was the only option. I also had to keep in mind that after getting the visa and flying to China I would be quarantined in a hotel for two weeks, as are all incoming travellers. Getting back to China would be a major hassle and take weeks, this much was clear. </div><div><br /></div><div>The Chinese embassy in any EU country would be able to process my visa, so I decided to go to the Netherlands, which has a lot of direct flights from Indonesia due to its colonial history, and where I have a friend in whose home I could shelter while I waited for the visa. I had not been on a plane since before the pandemic, and even taking the flight from Yogyakarta to Jakarta felt surreal. I had to take a blood test the previous day, since proof of a negative antibody test is now required to fly within the country (it would be much more useful to require a PCR test, but those are just too expensive and their supply too limited in Indonesia). During the flight I wore both a mask and a face shield to be on the safe side, given how fast cases were rising in Indonesia.</div><div><br /></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b>The Netherlands</b></div><div><br /></div><div>The next day I flew from Jakarta to Amsterdam. In Jakarta's huge and mostly deserted airport, the staff at check-in were dubious that the Netherlands would let me in, since entry is currently suspended for most non-EU citizens who are not legal residents of the Netherlands. However they called their Dutch counterparts and thankfully received confirmation that I would be allowed to enter, in spite of the pandemic and of Brexit. After that, things were surprisingly lax. At no point was my temperature taken, either in Indonesia or in Holland. Mask-wearing was theoretically obligatory but not strictly enforced on the 13-hour flight. On arrival in the Netherlands all passengers were offered a free PCR test because we were arriving from a "risky" country, but it was not mandatory. By no means did everyone decide to take the test. Dutch customs let me in without a second glance. I was told that I should self-isolate for 10 days, but no one asked me where I would be staying and there was absolutely no enforcement whatsoever. </div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeDxColCE_Gg44WIfx2XzlhHyu4GcVMu48sd1Ht7lYJsxy3A2BTERRgYorGBfJVXXUAIsk5sXTcUUEPH-4PSgaoX1H82dtnQ-bUDqvhDpDF7k-CPUYRl5aH5VJovB4bB_yfUsmCR-Bq-g/s1440/WechatIMG2315.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1440" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeDxColCE_Gg44WIfx2XzlhHyu4GcVMu48sd1Ht7lYJsxy3A2BTERRgYorGBfJVXXUAIsk5sXTcUUEPH-4PSgaoX1H82dtnQ-bUDqvhDpDF7k-CPUYRl5aH5VJovB4bB_yfUsmCR-Bq-g/w400-h300/WechatIMG2315.jpeg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">People walking outside the Dutch parliament, the Hague (September 2020)</td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /></div><div>In spite of a second wave being well underway in Holland, virtually no one was wearing a mask on the streets. In the village near Amsterdam where I stayed, everyone seemed to be happily eating outdoors and enjoying the good weather. Restaurants and shops had limits on the number of people who could enter at once, but otherwise life seemed pretty normal. I went to the Chinese consulate in the Hague and received a new visa quickly and for free without too much hassle. A couple of days before I flew back to China it was announced that, starting the following Monday, foreign citizens with valid residence permits (except for students) would be able to enter China without needing a new visa at all! This means I could have flown back directly from Indonesia if I had waited a little longer, but there was no way I could have known this in advance. </div><div><br /></div><div>The number of flights into China is still heavily restricted by the Chinese government, so tickets are extortionately expensive. Until a few weeks ago no direct flights to Beijing from abroad were even allowed, and every country was still permitted only one direct route into China. The only flights from the Netherlands to China go to Xiamen, on the South coast, and are operated by Xiamen airlines. The ticket I got cost around 2000 euros one way, and it was the cheapest by far. Thank goodness my job will refund it.</div><div><br /></div><div>The Chinese authorities now require a negative PCR test taken no more than three days in advance for anyone boarding a flight to China. In many countries this can be quite hard to arrange. Luckily Amsterdam has places where tests can be taken specifically for the purpose of travel and results returned on the same day, but it is not cheap. The results also have to be authenticated by the Chinese embassy before the flight (this is done online). Three days is the very limit at which it is humanly possible to get this done on time.</div><div><br /></div><div>When I got to my gate in Amsterdam's airport, there was no mistaking things: this was the flight to China. About 90% of the passengers were Chinese, and about half of them were wearing full white hazmat suits, as were all the Chinese staff working at the gate. Literally no one else in the whole airport was going to this extreme. It looked a bit like a gathering of astronauts, and it attracted quite some stares from the people waiting at other gates. It was already clear that this was no ordinary country I was going to. They did things differently, and they weren't messing around when it came to this virus. Another striking thing was that public announcements at the gate were provided only in Chinese. No English or Dutch, even though we were still in Holland. </div><div><br /></div><div>The hostesses on the flight wore hazmat suits, N95 masks and goggles, as if they were nurses in an IC unit. The contrast with the prevention measures on the flight from Indonesia to Holland was stark. There the hostesses had only worn a surgical mask, and everything else operated like normal. But on this flight passengers were not even given meals, just a bag of snacks. Wearing a mask was obligatory at all times except when eating, and this was enforced. Passengers were also given surgical gloves before entering the toilets.</div><div><br /></div><div>During the flight special forms were handed out to the passengers, asking about our health and details about our employment and residence in China (which the authorities surely already know). What really surprised me was that the forms were only distributed in Chinese. There was no English version available, in spite of there being non-Chinese citizens on pretty much every one of these flights. I was sitting next to a couple of British girls who were flying back to jobs teaching in international schools. They knew no Chinese, and I had to translate the whole form for them. To be fair, the hostesses were friendly and would translate for passengers as much as their own English allowed. </div><div><br /></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b>Quarantine in Xiamen</b></div><div><br /></div><div>Once we landed, we had to wait an hour in the plane until they would let us out (this is standard nowadays). We were then taken by airport bus to the customs area. All of the airport's staff wore hazmat suits. Before going through customs, we were taken into little booths were a nose and throat swab where administered. The swabs were certainly done more thoroughly than I had experienced in Holland. I am lucky because I don't seem to find nose swabs especially painful, but the British girl who sat next to me on the plane told me she was in tears because of the pain. </div><div><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-lyazytof3HREl8xRpjfDfxnD4V_juJtzRgEyg7szrx-dFA3Ob50bNIU8MLRzPRttPqnbEre5nyWoZXt0wkQaVeBNdUHU0DtWI94snObHAfy9kbSHpjR99md2cBXX550_pKGFU8f2onc/s1440/WechatIMG2307.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1440" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-lyazytof3HREl8xRpjfDfxnD4V_juJtzRgEyg7szrx-dFA3Ob50bNIU8MLRzPRttPqnbEre5nyWoZXt0wkQaVeBNdUHU0DtWI94snObHAfy9kbSHpjR99md2cBXX550_pKGFU8f2onc/w400-h300/WechatIMG2307.jpeg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Staff at the sorting centre for arriving travellers, Xiamen.</td></tr></tbody></table></div><div><br /></div><div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFKtNonrhKBDCwmcyWO3RInrfpNdPGAU-xZ8aGtU1V_u63hgPcjZtWbVZbaV8n-MIKHYdZGKw2KfBEYM5RhODJqj-Vsb-hL6VW3efX0uT5jUZmQi542vTMv7xIhI_qU7F_kldokxE8EZo/s1440/WechatIMG2309.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1440" data-original-width="1080" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFKtNonrhKBDCwmcyWO3RInrfpNdPGAU-xZ8aGtU1V_u63hgPcjZtWbVZbaV8n-MIKHYdZGKw2KfBEYM5RhODJqj-Vsb-hL6VW3efX0uT5jUZmQi542vTMv7xIhI_qU7F_kldokxE8EZo/w300-h400/WechatIMG2309.jpeg" width="300" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Staff taking people's temperatures outside of the sorting centre for travellers about to be quarantined</td></tr></tbody></table><br /></div><div>After going through customs, we were put into buses and brought to a sorting centre where we were divided into groups and then taken to the hotels where we would spend our 14-day quarantine. There is a handful of different hotels where you might be taken, with different prices and levels of quality, but you do not get to choose which hotel you end up in.</div><div><br /></div><div>I was taken to a fancy hotel in the city centre. The hotel was being used entirely for quarantining people; there were no ordinary guests. The lobby had a spooky air, with piles of chairs stacked up in the deserted entrance and staff in hazmat suits and masks checking us in. I have to say that I was quite satisfied with my living conditions. The room I ended up in was pretty comfortable, and the price (4900 Yuan for 14 days) was reasonable. I know people who paid more than double that to quarantine in Beijing. The wifi wasn't amazingly strong, but it worked, and the hotel allowed outside deliveries, which really makes all the difference. Some hotels don't allow deliveries during quarantine, and eating the hotel food for 14 days can become a real drag.</div><div><br /></div><div>All the same, the whole experience was quite surreal. I could see normal life going on outside my ninth floor window, with a view of a swimming pool and a karaoke parlour, but I could not join in. Once you enter your room, you are not allowed out again for 14 days. You can open the door, but you are not even supposed to hang out in the corridor. Twice a day someone knocks on the door and takes your temperature on your doorstep. Staff never enter your room; you leave your rubbish outside for them to take away. There is no laundry service, but then why would you need it when you aren't going anywhere? Couples are sometimes allowed to quarantine together, but not always. Families have been divided, with the mother keeping one child and the father keeping the other. </div><div><br /></div><div>The number of tests you have to do varies by province, but in Xiamen it works like this: you do a nose and throat swab at the airport, a blood test on the second day, a nose swab on the seventh day and a final nose swab and blood test on the thirteenth day of quarantine. Once you are in the hotel the medical staff, who of course dress in full body armour, will also never enter your room. The tests are performed in the corridor, where there is a chair in front of your door for you to sit on. I'm not exactly sure what would happen if you simply refused to come out one day. </div><div><br /></div><div>Xiamen is said to be a good city to quarantine in, because the hotels are nice and the staff tend to be helpful and friendly, and I have to say that this was also my experience. The hotel staff tried to be reasonable and helpful with their "guests", and the medical staff performing the tests did their best to be gentle and reassure people who were nervous. Even so, what I found most unnerving about the whole situation was the lack of any control, the sense that I was not being given important information, and the dread that one of my tests might come back positive.</div><div><br /></div><div>While riding the bus to the hotel I had made friends with a young Beijinger who had come back to China from Germany, and I had added him on WeChat. On the second day of quarantine, he sent me a message. Apparently he had received a phone call informing him that there had been a positive case among the passengers on our plane, and that the following day he would receive an extra PCR test to be on the safe side. The next morning he did indeed receive an extra swab test, while I didn't, so I assumed he might have been sitting next to the infected person. On day 9 of my quarantine, however, I was also given a surprise extra nose swab. I asked the nurse why, and she said she honestly didn't know, but the doctor had said I was scheduled for an extra test.</div><div><br /></div><div>I was also in a WeChat group for people quarantining in Xiamen, comprised mostly of foreigners and English-speakers, which turned out to be a useful source of information. From the group I gathered that other people on my same flight had also received unscheduled extra tests on different days. Perhaps it just took them time to go through all of us. As for why my Chinese friend got a phone call and I didn't, I can only assume that they only phoned the Chinese passengers because they supposed that the foreigners spoke no Chinese. The lack of communication was unnerving however, and the thought of what might happen if I tested positive was even more so.</div><div><br /></div><div>If you test positive to any of the PCR tests you will be transferred to an isolation room in a hospital, where you will be kept until you test negative for three days in a row. This can take weeks or even months, during which you have to pay for your stay. Once you are finally declared negative, you will still have to go back to the hotel to finish your 14 day quarantine! An American who tested positive (with no symptoms) posted a description of being isolated in a hospital on Reddit, and it doesn't sound like a great situation to find yourself in. </div><div><br /></div><div>What's more, people who only test positive to the antibody test (the blood test) also get taken to hospital, where they are subjected to more PCR tests and a chest X-ray just to be completely sure they no longer have the virus. One lady in my WeChat group tested positive for antibodies. She suspects she had a mild case of Covid-19 in March/April. She was taken to hospital in an ambulance and had to spend the night there (and pay for it) while they waited for her results. Once everything came back negative, she was returned to the hotel. Then on day 13 she had to have her second blood test, as scheduled, and of course tested positive for antibodies again. She was taken to the hospital again, because those are the rules and common sense be damned, and this time spent two nights there and missed her flight back to Beijing. </div><div><br /></div><div>All this is why, when I heard of a positive case on my flight, my worry wasn't so much that if I had caught the virus I might get seriously ill, but that I would end up being isolated from the world for weeks or months on end. Thankfully all of my tests came back negative, as I could see on a special WeChat mini-program where your results are displayed. I only knew of this thanks to the WeChat group of course, no one thought of officially notifying me about it. It strikes me that if I found it so hard to figure anything out in spite of my knowledge of Chinese, it must be even worse if you don't speak the language. </div><div><br /></div><div>In any case, I soon found I had an awful lot of time on my hands, especially since my quarantine coincided with the Chinese national holidays, and I had to find ways to keep myself busy. I read, wrote, exercised and watched films, and the 14 days passed quickly. All in all the experience was not too uncomfortable, but then I was relatively lucky. I have heard of people in other cities finding themselves stuck in rooms that are far less nice, unable to get deliveries and getting served cold meals three times a day. Being quarantined with small children is also an entirely different ball game, and it can drive parents up the wall. </div><div><br /></div><div>While I was at least not trying to entertain a four-year old, I would still not want to go through the whole experience again. Between the cost, the time wasted, the sheer boredom, the nose swabs that some find painful and the nightmare scenario of testing positive, Covid-19 quarantine in China is not something you can put yourself through regularly. It is effectively almost cutting off travel between China and the rest of the world. It is good to keep in mind that the scenes of "normality" that you currently see on the streets of China are achieved in part thanks to this very abnormal level of international isolation.<br /></div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiadupAPaiLd5ZLaMHEu4sxNa_UFvj8H3ylziJsvI20qeIbIm5-_v_enq7CmeMLZvIzSDpVqeFlrNMJwbjrnQ1Bdvni1GnBbpTirKo9KFqSJyxs0CJr3ewL1uhN1Utup9FFLZPWeOMHCOQ/s1440/WechatIMG2306.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1440" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiadupAPaiLd5ZLaMHEu4sxNa_UFvj8H3ylziJsvI20qeIbIm5-_v_enq7CmeMLZvIzSDpVqeFlrNMJwbjrnQ1Bdvni1GnBbpTirKo9KFqSJyxs0CJr3ewL1uhN1Utup9FFLZPWeOMHCOQ/w400-h300/WechatIMG2306.jpeg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A view of the room where I spent every single moment of 14 days</td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b>Beijing</b></div><div><br /></div><div>On a Sunday morning, exactly two weeks after the day I had arrived, I went downstairs with my suitcase and "checked out", as if I were just an ordinary guest who had finished his holiday in Xiamen. I was given a certificate stating that I had been through quarantine and done 4 PCR tests. I had a flight for Beijing booked for that same morning, and I was driven to the airport in a van with a few others. One you finish your two-week quarantine, freedom is still not absolute. Local regulations are that those who live in Xiamen need to self-isolate at home for an extra 7 days, and those who don't are driven to the airport or train station and have to leave immediately. </div><div><br /></div><div>The Xiamen airport was packed with carefree crowds, many of them probably returning from internal travel for the national holidays. Once I had checked in and I was free to wander around the departures lounge on my own, I felt some sort of freedom for the first time in 14 days. It also struck me that for the first time in months I wasn't really worried about catching Covid-19 from other people, since in China this is no longer a serious concern. But I still couldn't completely relax, because I didn't know what might face me when I got back to Beijing.</div><div><br /></div><div>Quite a few returnees from abroad report being asked to self-isolate at home for a further week, or even two weeks, after finishing quarantine and going back to where they live in China. This is not a general regulation in Beijing, but it may be required by your neighbourhood committee. Foreign teachers living on campuses have also been asked to self-isolate at home by their employer. Fortunately I am not a teacher, but I did worry about the folks from my neighbourhood committee somehow getting wind of my return and showing up at my flat to bother me.</div><div><br /></div><div>I really did not want to have to spend any further time locked up at home, especially since it just isn't necessary. I understand the fact that people entering China from abroad are being subjected to a strict two-week quarantine. Now that the pandemic is under control it makes sense not to want to let the virus back in again. I also understand the fact that they want to test new arrivals, although personally I think that a single PCR test and then 14 days of quarantine would really be quite sufficient. But after two weeks of quarantine and a number of tests, asking people to stay home for any further length of time is simply unjustified. </div><div><br /></div><div>Such measures seem to be the result of an attitude of wanting to be completely on the safe side, but without taking common sense or the comfort of the people involved into any kind of consideration. This unreasonable level of caution is not limited to the authorities. Even my organization's HR manager asked me if I could continue working from home for 10 days after the end of quarantine, "for everyone's safety". I pointed out to my director that after two weeks of seclusion and four negative swab tests, I really posed no risk to anyone. He agreed with me, perhaps because he came back from abroad himself in May and knows what it's like. </div><div><br /></div><div>My flight to Beijing arrived at the city's new Daxing airport, which looked as fancy and shiny as I was expecting. I just picked up my luggage and took the train into town; no one asked me a thing. I had heard about how I would need a green "health code" once in Beijing, but nobody required to see it. I took the train, then the subway, and then got out at my stop and walked back to my old flat. At the entrance to my community there was no security and no one stopped me or questioned me, something I had been somewhat worried about. </div><div><br /></div><div>A few hours later, I began to realise that in fact there was a problem to solve: I still needed my health code. In China nowadays, every province has an app or mini-program that tracks your movements and assigns you a health code: green, yellow or red. A green code means you're considered safe, yellow means that you should self-isolate at home, and red means that you should be in quarantine. When you enter various public places and residential areas, you need to scan a QR code and show that you have a green code. Without one, your life will be pretty restricted.</div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1KYhGv-MFCEZU9S7_0VVbdLxr9Yf-sZBtTtYIpm1KCl8E76xZfdPUHWoDfzySFAE5azYkTiwY7Jt8QMrb9cwf8aUv00kt3F-zZdyHVxr6eEAjVYCjlLtzi_km9QUOZiHUp4bpda9hmYs/s2180/xlukXwyUP.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2180" data-original-width="1080" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1KYhGv-MFCEZU9S7_0VVbdLxr9Yf-sZBtTtYIpm1KCl8E76xZfdPUHWoDfzySFAE5azYkTiwY7Jt8QMrb9cwf8aUv00kt3F-zZdyHVxr6eEAjVYCjlLtzi_km9QUOZiHUp4bpda9hmYs/w199-h400/xlukXwyUP.jpg" width="199" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This is what the English version of the <i>Health Kit</i> app for Beijing looks like. "Query on me" and "Scan the QR Code" will produce your colour code. </td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div>I figured out which WeChat mini-program I had to use to get my Beijing health code (foreign citizens use a different one from the Chinese), and found that the app would not give me a code. I got a message saying that I had been outside of Beijing in the last 14 days, and I should contact my neighbourhood committee or the "relevant departments". I was loathe to contact them, as I suspected they would tell me to self-isolate at home. At the same time, I knew that without a green code I would not be able to enter shopping malls, hospitals, or the office building where I work, and I didn't know what other restrictions I might encounter.</div><div><br /></div><div>That evening I went out for a walk in my neighbourhood, which looked much the same as when I left in January. Some people still wear masks on the street, but not everyone. I found that I could enter most restaurants and shops without presenting a health code. Apparently a few months ago things were much stricter, and most restaurants wouldn't let you enter. All the same, it was clear that without a green code I was still a borderline outlaw, and that my mobility would be restricted until I had one. This system of health codes may be part of what is keeping new outbreaks at bay, but it has also introduced a level of control on people's movements that would have been hard to fathom only one year ago. What you are supposed to do if you don't have a smartphone or WeChat I really don't know. I assumed this situation might last for 14 days. I wasn't keen on continuing to work from home for another two weeks, but I thought I might not have a choice.</div><div><br /></div><div>Thankfully, the next morning I woke up and found that the WeChat mini-program had decided to assign me my green code. Why it took so long I don't know, but it seems like other people arriving in Beijing after quarantine are also finding that they need to wait until the following morning to get the code. This can cause a real problem if you don't have a place to stay. One person I know of was rejected by a number of hotels for not having the green code, until he found a place that would take him with only the "end of quarantine" certificate. </div><div><br /></div><div>In any case, with my green code I was now a fully functioning and legitimate member of Chinese society again, and could consider my quarantine to be well and truly over. A journey that had started over a month earlier and had taken me across three countries, back and forth between Europe and Asia, and involved the most surreal quarantine experience I could have imagined, had finally come to an end.</div>Ji Xianghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03406727999722525339noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8533171043031843199.post-37840152928341880252020-09-07T09:20:00.005-07:002020-09-08T08:15:50.364-07:00Peter Hessler’s coronavirus piece: privilege and self-censorship?<p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">The latest controversy to rattle the rather esoteric and increasingly acrimonious world of China-watchers has been <a href="http://chinaheritage.net/journal/the-good-caucasian-of-sichuan-kumbaya-china/">Geremie R. Barme's response</a> to Peter Hessler's latest essay for the New Yorker, "<i><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/08/17/how-china-controlled-the-coronavirus">How China Controlled the Coronavirus</a></i>". The Australian Sinologist's attack on the American author is pretty savage; Barme accuses Hessler of self-censoring, of writing from a position of privilege, and of essentially being an apologist for the Chinese state.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">I read Hessler's essay when it came out last month, and I have to say I was a bit disappointed. For one of the most perceptive Western writers on China<i> </i>it felt like a rather vacuous effort, if well-written as always. I learnt little new about China, or even about how the country brought the pandemic under control (in spite of not actually having been in China myself since January). The essay might be of more interest for people unfamiliar with China, but for those who know the country well it doesn't really say anything new.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">On the other hand, the gist of Barme's criticism seems to centre around Peter Hessler's failure to talk about the really sensitive issues in today's China: the human rights abuses, the stifling of any dissent within academia, the total control over public life and people's movements which the coronavirus crisis has only intensified, and the initial public anger at the way the government handled the pandemic.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">I happen to think that Barme's criticism is seriously over the top. Comparing Peter Hessler to Walter Duranty, the Moscow Bureau Chief of the New York Times from 1922 to 1936, is just unwarranted any way you look at it. Duranty was an apologist for Stalinism who infamously denied the dreadful Soviet famines of 1932-33, claiming that "any report of a famine in Russia is today an exaggeration or malignant propaganda", even as millions starved in Ukraine and elsewhere in the USSR. Even once he was back in America, he defended Stalin's show trials.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Apart from the fact that China today is not Stalin's USSR, Hessler is also no Duranty. You only need to read his books to see that. They are often intelligently critical of the country, and certainly don't whitewash its bad sides. In his most famous book, <i>River Town</i>, a description of his two years teaching English literature in a small town in Sichuan, Hessler doesn't hide his disdain for the propaganda in the school textbooks he had to use, nor does he shy away from describing the Chinese as "colonizers" while writing about a trip to Xinjiang. Same goes for his later books. This is no apologist for the CPC. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Hessler's latest essay cannot fairly be described in such terms either. He is not simply repeating the talking points of government propaganda, and in fact at one point he does touch upon some of the most delicate issues: </span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: helvetica; font-style: italic;"></span></p><blockquote style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="background-color: white;">"As the spring wore on, conversations often included a standard conclusion: the pandemic showed that Chinese value life over freedom, whereas Americans take the opposite approach. I disliked such simplifications, which failed to consider the initial Chines</span><span style="background-color: white;">e coverup of the virus, or the government’s policies in Xinjiang and Hong Kong, </span><span style="background-color: white;">or the fact that any number of democracies were handling the crisis much better than the Americans."</span></span></blockquote><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Barm<span style="color: #404040;"><span style="background-color: white;">e</span></span> notes that a translated version of the essay has been circulated on the Chinese internet "with official sanction", and that Hessler is now being described as a "Good American". He fails to point out however that <a href="http://www.uscnpm.com/model_item.html?action=view&table=article&id=22677">the translation is censored</a>: for instance, the last sentence in the quote above is left out. It is easy to turn a balanced piece into a propaganda coup when you censor the bits that don't fit your narrative. The problem here isn't so much Hessler's writing, as much as a censorship for which he bears no blame.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">A bit further down, Hessler also states that "<span style="background-color: white;"><i>many aspects of the Chinese strategy could never be adopted in America or in any other democracy</i>" (this was purposefully mistranslated in the Chinese version as "any other country"). All in all it is clear that this is hardly an article fit for China Daily, and Hessler's points aren't unreasonable. It isn't unreasonable to claim that China has been successful at controlling the pandemic, because it clearly has been. Yes, many neighbouring countries haven't done badly either, but given China's size and the fact that the pandemic started there, the system's success at bringing new infections down to virtually nil has been quite impressive. It also isn't unreasonable to ask whether some aspects of the Chinese approach might have something to teach the US, which has had 50 times more deaths.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="background-color: white;">And yet, I can see where some of the criticism is coming from. </span><span style="background-color: white;">At one point in </span><i style="background-color: white;">River Town </i><span style="background-color: white;">Hessler writes about the way that he and his fellow American Peace Corps volunteers always seemed to have the effect of encouraging their students in Fuling to be questioning and irreverent, perhaps too much for their own good. He puts the reason down to this: "we were </span><i style="background-color: white;">waiguoren </i><span style="background-color: white;">(foreigners),</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><span style="background-color: white;">and we didn’t have that voice in the back of our minds that warned us when certain lines were being crossed.” After spending so long in China, Hessler has clearly developed that voice in the back of his mind. </span><span style="background-color: white;">At some points it feels like he really is trying to describe some sort of "Kumbaya China", as Barme</span><span style="background-color: white;"> puts it. Take this quote:</span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: helvetica;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="background-color: white; font-family: helvetica;"><i>Serena’s response to her nonfiction experience—first rejected, then denied credit—was to ask politely if she could finish out the term’s work and then do it over again in the spring, this time on the books. That was one tradition that hadn’t changed: in China, a student always respects her teacher, even if the teacher is a moron.</i></span></blockquote><p></p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: helvetica;">It is interesting that Hessler should say this, because in December last year there were rumours that he had been reported by one of his own students at Sichuan University for teaching content that was "subversive" or "offensive to China". While it is unclear whether this actually happened, and Hessler still seems to be teaching there quite happily, plenty of other Chinese university professors have been reported by their own students in recent years, and there is no way Hessler isn't aware of this.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Or take this excerpt:</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box;"></p><blockquote><i><span style="font-family: helvetica;">But I worried about my daughters, who were the only Westerners at a school of some two thousand students. Our isolation increased throughout the spring: most of my American acquaintances had left, and it became rare to see a non-Chinese person on the street. At the end of May, the twins told my wife, Leslie, and me that a boy in their class had made some anti-American comments, but we didn’t say anything to the teacher. Virtually all of the girls’ classmates treated them warmly, and, with everything on the news, it seemed inevitable that there would be scattered instances of anti-American sentiment. That week, George Floyd had been killed, and the American death toll from the coronavirus was approaching a hundred thousand.</span></i></blockquote><p></p><div class="inline-recirc-wrapper inline-recirc-observer-target-8 viewport-monitor-anchor" data-attr-viewport-monitor="inline-recirc" data-event-boundary="click" data-event-click="{"pattern":"InlineRecirc"}" data-include-experiments="true" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box;"></div><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box;"></p><blockquote><i><span style="font-family: helvetica;">The teacher, though, responded quickly. The following Monday, she stood before the class and told a story that, in the Chinese way, emphasized science, education, and effort. She talked about Elon Musk, and she described how his California-based company had successfully launched a manned rocket into space the previous weekend. At the end of the story, she said, “Every country has its strong points and its weak points.”</span></i></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It's great that Hessler and his family didn't have any trouble, and that the teacher at his daughter's school was so enlightened. Being stuck in a campus in Chengdu probably helped. Out in China's big coastal cities, however, there were quite a few instances of discrimination against foreigners, and particularly against the African community in Guangzhou, who were targeted in an unacceptable fashion both by local people and local officials after a few of their number tested positive.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">The fact is that there has been plenty of nastiness in China's response to the pandemic that Hessler doesn't mention, or only mentions in a very oblique fashion. Hessler cannot have failed to notice the exceptional (and quickly forgotten) wave of public anger in early February after the death of a whistleblowing doctor, and yet he doesn't mention it at all. Perhaps he has forgotten it too, but more likely he just doesn't feel comfortable talking about it. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">The crux of the matter is that Peter Hessler currently lives and works in China, and just like all those who do he has to measure his words carefully. Officially accredited foreign reporters have far more leeway (although even they may find their visas revoked if they really cross the line), but Hessler is not one of those. In theory he could even be accused of breaking the law by engaging in unaccredited reporting, as Barme points out. He certainly knows that if he wants to carry on with his life in Chengdu he needs to tread carefully, and only mention sensitive issues in passing and obliquely, or not at all.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It wasn't like this ten or twenty years ago, when Hessler wrote his books. Censorship was far more lax in general, for certain, but also Westerners living in China seemed to enjoy a certain level of immunity: as long as you didn't write in Chinese or try and appeal directly to the Chinese public, you could say almost anything you wanted. This has changed, and nowadays any writer based in China will feel the presence of that invisible censor peering over their shoulder as soon as they stray into dangerous territory. I am pretty sure that even Hessler's decision to use the turn of phrase "China was the first country to experience the pandemic" was taken because it has become impossible to openly state that the virus originated in China.</span></p><p></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box;"></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Barme claims that Hessler has "unexamined Caucasian privilege", leading him to write the way he does, but if anything it may be the opposite: part of the reason Hessler is so cautious is the fact that being white or having a foreign passport no longer affords you much protection. The real question that should be asked is whether it is problematic for Hessler to continue explaining the country to the outside world, when he finds himself in a situation where he has to measure every word carefully and make sure he doesn't cross any "red lines". On the ground reporting is valuable of course, but then so is the chance to give the full picture without self-censoring.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOJmPNYSfJtGLlo8eOrF3Z_VSAJnyPfis4OVr1N8y3rNLkOO9xHL3GN1QXhOTNR5CJEpmYPid1wojD2b70bipsSxD5lLH8yfx4zQ8ARng-TZ0biweTY2AF8r3Qw8j9qE5F78em4ysNqIg/s242/Screen+Shot+2020-09-07+at+23.15.33.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="242" data-original-width="242" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOJmPNYSfJtGLlo8eOrF3Z_VSAJnyPfis4OVr1N8y3rNLkOO9xHL3GN1QXhOTNR5CJEpmYPid1wojD2b70bipsSxD5lLH8yfx4zQ8ARng-TZ0biweTY2AF8r3Qw8j9qE5F78em4ysNqIg/w400-h400/Screen+Shot+2020-09-07+at+23.15.33.png" width="400" /></a></div><p></p>Ji Xianghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03406727999722525339noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8533171043031843199.post-61419286415968075112020-08-14T08:09:00.010-07:002020-08-15T05:02:12.298-07:00On xenophobia and administrative overreach <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">The Covid-19 pandemic has brought to light and exacerbated tensions and inequalities that already existed all over the world. Among its many side-effects it has engendered fear and suspicion towards foreigners and minorities, or sometimes even people from elsewhere in a country, as possible carriers of a dangerous virus. Initially it was the Chinese, or those who looked like they might be Chinese, who found themselves under suspicion around the world, but later on many other groups started feeling the heat.<br />
<br />In China too, the possibility that foreigners might carry the virus with them from abroad has turned into a driving factor, and an excuse, for xenophobia. The EU Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai <a href="https://www.europeanchamber.com.cn/en/press-releases/3269/china_s_international_city_still_bars_many_of_its_foreign_residents_from_returning">recently surveyed</a> its member companies, and found that discrimination on the basis of foreign nationality or appearance had been experienced by 39% of respondents or their colleagues. And this is in Mainland China's most cosmopolitan city, known to be far more friendly to outsiders than the rest of the country. Over half of respondents felt that reports in the local media portraying the virus as "imported" are fuelling xenophobia.</div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br /></div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">The phenomenon began in earnest towards the middle of March, when it became clear that the pandemic was mostly under control within China and exploding in the rest of the world. At this point the big concern in China became new cases of Covid-19 imported from abroad. Very quickly, levels of fear and discrimination towards foreigners living in the country skyrocketed. </div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br /></div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">In cities across China, people who do not look Chinese started having unpleasant experiences: locals very obviously refusing to sit next to them on public transport; being refused entry into shops, restaurants and shopping malls based solely on their features and skin colour; being barred from entering <i>xiaoqu</i> (gated neighbourhoods) for being foreign, while Chinese people entered quite happily; taxi drivers refusing to pick them up; being monitored by their neighbourhood committees and local officials to a greater extent than their neighbours; and in the worst cases, being yelled at or berated on the streets, even in spite of wearing a mask. Hotels started rejecting foreign guests to an even greater extent than usual, very often citing directives from local officials. In most such situations, being able to show a green code on Alipay's <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-china-health-software-color-coded-how-it-works-2020-4?r=US&IR=T">Health App</a> made no difference: no foreigners meant no foreigners, green code or not.</div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br /></div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Never mind that the great majority of "imported cases" of Covid-19 actually belonged to Chinese citizens returning from abroad, of whom there was a much bigger number than there were foreigners entering the country. Never mind that the <a href="https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-03-18/woman-who-flew-from-u-s-to-china-for-coronavirus-test-faces-criminal-charges">only person</a> guilty of flying to China while purposefully concealing that she had coronavirus symptoms was a Chinese lady living in Massachusetts, who returned home because in the US she had been repeatedly denied both a test for the virus and hospitalisation (she got into serious trouble when the Chinese authorities understood what she had done). In spite of all this, foreigners suddenly became a prime target both of the people's anxiety and of official measures.<br />
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Of course, foreigners in China are not all equal. Wealthy foreign executives living in Shanghai may have felt almost no inconvenience at all. Others have been less fortunate. The worst of it, by far, has been experienced by Guangzhou's African community. The city has China's only real African enclave, an area where traders from all over the continent reside and do business. Although the community has been dwindling for years, partly due to greater strictness in the enforcement of visa regulations, it still exists. </div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br /></div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Towards the end of March, numerous personal reports emerged of Africans who had not travelled outside of China for months being locked into their flats by the authorities and tested repeatedly for the virus. Others were kicked out of their homes by their landlords, while the police refused to help. Those kicked out often spent days wandering the streets, unable to find hotels that would welcome them or even restaurants and shops that would let them in. Groups of volunteers, mostly Chinese, helped bring them food and find them places to stay.<br />
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This wave of xenophobia quickly gained attention in the international media. The <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/29/china-coronavirus-anti-foreigner-feeling-imported-cases">Guardian</a> and the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/16/world/asia/coronavirus-china-nationalism.html">New York Times</a> both ran features on the general animosity towards foreigners that was sweeping over the country, while numerous <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-52309414">outlets</a> <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/10/china/africans-guangzhou-china-coronavirus-hnk-intl/index.html">reported</a> on the plight of the Africans in Guangzhou. Coverage wasn't limited to English-language media either, as this Italian <a href="https://it.euronews.com/2020/04/20/coronavirus-ora-sono-gli-stranieri-in-cina-a-temere-episodi-di-xenofobia">report</a> can testify.<br />
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The mistreatment of Africans led to a real diplomatic crisis. The reports, corroborated by video evidence, sparked a wave of indignation across the continent, and led to Chinese ambassadors being read the riot act in Nigeria and various other countries. Photos of a <a href="https://indianexpress.com/article/world/mcdonalds-china-apologises-over-banning-black-people-in-guangzhou-6362403/">sign outside a McDonalds in Guangzhou</a> stating that the establishment could not accept black customers further inflamed the public. Unsurprisingly the Chinese authorities denied anything was wrong and blamed the foreign media for slandering their country, but it seems they also quietly took some action to rein in the discrimination. Perhaps they realised what an own-goal the whole thing has been for the country that is the biggest creditor and trading partner for the African continent as a whole.<br /></div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEir1Uu-xiAxNXxV5a9P9ETQx0hm0ILq9511fCyAAxNC1y_nBC4dm1HOYbPQZJ1cBSWmyLsnTf8tTxBgE0iDvUqjcIU6j5huUIauIBnW1o5NPn9_YJI65wwhHATmVOE8Y5oDGbTrMnBRwKo/s610/Screen+Shot+2020-08-14+at+10.06.49.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="408" data-original-width="610" height="268" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEir1Uu-xiAxNXxV5a9P9ETQx0hm0ILq9511fCyAAxNC1y_nBC4dm1HOYbPQZJ1cBSWmyLsnTf8tTxBgE0iDvUqjcIU6j5huUIauIBnW1o5NPn9_YJI65wwhHATmVOE8Y5oDGbTrMnBRwKo/w400-h268/Screen+Shot+2020-08-14+at+10.06.49.png" width="400" /></a></div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
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In any case, the worst of the paranoia about foreigners seems to be over for now, especially since foreign citizens have been unable to enter China for months except in special cases (not that most of the public is aware of this). Even the new outbreak of Covid-19 in Beijing in June does not seem to have led to a significant upturn in xenophobia, perhaps because the origin was clearly local (although they did their best to link it to <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-53089137">imported salmon</a>). In spite of this the problem still lingers, with occasional reports of foreigners being singled out for attention by the police and of bars not allowing foreigners in, particularly in Beijing. It is worth pointing out that in many of these cases "foreign" simply means non-Chinese looking, since it is features rather than nationality that cause people to be singled out. Many international students in China have also found themselves <a href="https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1005844/locked-in%2C-locked-out-the-foreign-students-stuck-in-limbo">locked in their campuses for months on end</a>, even as life outside goes back to normal.<br />
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For long-term foreign residents this turn of events will sadly not be too surprising (except for those who insist on remaining wilfully naive, of which there are many). Chinese society clearly has the potential to act like this, especially in times of crisis. Scapegoating of foreigners is a real problem, particularly for black people but also for other foreigners. The narrative that foreign citizens enjoy special privileges has long allowed the public to rationalise and justify any mistreatment they may face. </div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br /></div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Back in March cases of foreigners going out while they were supposed to be self-quarantining, behaving badly towards staff while under centralised quarantine, or picnicking in parks without masks (very often next to Chinese people doing exactly the same thing) were widely publicised by the media and pandered to the preconceived idea of "entitled" foreigners not respecting the rules, while cases of discrimination went unreported. There is no doubt that this media-driven sentiment helped to create the unfortunate situations described above, as well as an outpouring of online xenophobia (for an example, see <a href="https://twitter.com/paulmozur/status/1247025734146613249">this</a>). </div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br /></div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">There are those who have tried to minimise the issue, claiming that in the end anything suffered by foreigners in China is nothing compared to what Chinese and Asians have had to put up with in the rest of the world. And indeed, cases of verbal harassment and even violent assault against people of East Asian origin due to Covid-19 have been sadly numerous, particularly in Western countries. But then again, surely being kicked out of your flat and spending days on the street or being locked inside your home simply for being African should count as being subjected to a form of violence? </div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br /></div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Even if we take the less extreme forms of discrimination that have surfaced against other foreigners in China, we are still talking about things that would cause a riot in most of the world, including barring people from entering shopping malls and staying in hotels due to their foreign passports and/or appearance. It is true that this xenophobia has not, generally, descended into violence, but it has been institutionalised and accepted by society to an extent hardly seen elsewhere. </div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br /></div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Having said all of this, xenophobia and racism are probably not the only culprits here. It is undeniable that some foreigners, and especially Africans, have been subjected to real discrimination in China due to Covid-19. On the other hand, much of what they have been through is not different from what people from Hubei, and especially Wuhan, experienced at the start of the pandemic. After the Spring Festival, Chinese citizens with a Hubei ID living in other parts of China found themselves targeted by local officials and ostracised by the public. Hotels wouldn't let them stay. Neighbours shunned them, especially if they had got back from Hubei shortly before the province was sealed off. In some cases families literally had the doors to their flats chained shut by local officials, mirroring what would happen to Africans in Guangzhou a couple of months later. In another case, a county in Hebei <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-health-reward/china-county-offers-reward-for-identifying-people-from-virus-hit-wuhan-idUSKBN1ZQ1BN">offered a literal reward</a> to anyone who could report people from Wuhan.<br />
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It is clear that in both cases, much of what has been driving this behaviour is the huge pressure on local governments to stop the virus from spreading in the areas under their watch. It is made clear to local officials that this should be their one and only priority. In order to achieve it, they are quite ready to subject any group considered "at risk" to unreasonably harsh measures, whether it's people from Hubei, Africans or foreigners in general. Sometimes the measures are so broad as to be absurd, and target people regardless of their travel history, evidence of being tested etc... I am sure it would be equally effective to target people in a more focused way, rather than treating entire groups as if they literally have the plague. But why not be on the safe side? The rights and comfort of the people in question aren't believed to matter, and almost nobody will step up to defend them in the current climate. In fact, much of society seems happy to pile on, driven by fear and latent resentment. </div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />China's system of governance has been highly effective at containing the pandemic within its own borders (notwithstanding the mistakes made right at the start, which deserve their own debate). It would be wrong to deny this just because official statistics are unreliable, as some have tried to do. Covid-19 outbreaks cannot easily be covered up, and there is good evidence that outside of Hubei the virus never really took much hold. Masks alone cannot account for this success. Mass testing, tracing, centralised quarantine, strict lockdowns and neighbourhood committees enforcing the rules all played a part. On the other hand, before heaping praise on China's response it is important to understand the inevitable side effects of a system where the "good of the nation" is put above the rights of individuals and of entire groups. How effective different countries and political systems have been in their response to Covid-19 is going to be a major talking point for years to come. That is why it is important to see the full picture, lest we fall prey to easy rhetoric.<br /></div>
Ji Xianghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03406727999722525339noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8533171043031843199.post-51023437597294037842020-06-27T03:13:00.002-07:002020-06-27T07:10:20.698-07:00Black Lives Matter and the Cultural Revolution<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Conservatives in the West and Chinese internet users seem to have come to an agreement on one point: 43 years after it officially ended, China's Cultural Revolution has come back to life on the other side of the Pacific; the Black Lives Matter movement protesting police brutality and toppling statues is equal, in its irrational fury and ideological rigidity, to the Red Guard mobs unleashed by Chairman Mao in 1966. The Cultural Revolution analogy is being pushed by conservative and alt-right media outlets from <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/06/welcome-to-americas-cultural-revolution/">National Review</a> to <a href="https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/06/10/this-has-become-a-neo-maoist-war-on-the-past/">Spiked</a>; but it has also become extremely common on Chinese social media, the only space in China where people can discuss these topics relatively freely.<br />
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That this historical comparison is overblown shouldn't be hard to see: the first act of China's Cultural Revolution came when the students of a renowned all-girls high school in Beijing <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bian_Zhongyun">tortured and beat their own principal to death</a> (the high school is still a prestigious one today, and there is still no memorial or acknowledgment of what happened on site). This marked the start of Beijing's "Red August" of 1966, when a couple of thousand people were murdered by student Red Guards with the encouragement and explicit protection of Mao and of Xie Fuzhi, the Minister of Public Security. Over the next few years, countless innocent people would be killed or pushed to suicide, and countless more would have their lives overturned.<br />
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Not only are comparisons between the Cultural Revolution and the BLM movement completely hyperbolic, they also ignore the most fundamental point about China's "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution": it was a movement launched and promoted directly by a totalitarian leader, for reasons that are still debated today. While people were encouraged to lash out at figures of authority and traditions, the one figure of authority who could not be questioned was Mao himself. Even accidentally spilling ink on one of the characters that made up his name got one person into very serious trouble. It was impossible to oppose the movement or denounce its excesses without risking public humiliation, imprisonment or violent death. The whole of China spoke with one voice, and you could either play along or you could get persecuted.<br />
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In contrast, the BLM protests are a spontaneous bottom-up reaction against the brutal and unjustified murder of a black man by the police, the last in a long series. The protestors are very definitely acting against the will of government authority, at least in the US. One only needs to look at the harshness with which they have been met by the police, compared to the free hand that pro-Trump, anti-lockdown protestors carrying guns and assault rifles have been given. In fact, Trump has just threatened long prison terms against those who deface American monuments, memorials and statues - in a tweet, of course.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A statue of Confucius getting removed by the Red Guards</td></tr>
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In spite of how over-the-top it may appear, talk of a 美式文革 (American-style Cultural Revolution) remains popular in China. It is of course not meant as a compliment; if there is one thing that almost everyone in China agrees upon, including the ruling party, it's that the Cultural Revolution was an unnecessary disaster.<br />
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It doesn't surprise me that the BLM protests are not particularly popular in China. Chinese political culture decries any form of mass movement, particularly by young people, as naive, manipulable and bound to lead to nothing but trouble. Mass protests in Western countries, from the Yellow Vests to this latest one, are derided in the media as examples of the West's chaos and moral decline compared with harmonious, well-ordered China. Government propaganda is also using the current protests in the US to denounce America's supposed hypocrisy ("they" quash riots on their own soil, but support them when they happen in Hong Kong). That's when government representatives aren't <a href="https://twitter.com/spokespersonchn/status/1267417514335539201?lang=en">clumsily trying to express support</a> for their "African friends" in America - also on Twitter. The two superpowers' race to the bottom never seems to end.<br />
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But these feelings are obviously rooted in more than just government propaganda. The fact is that their historical experience has left many Chinese suspicious of any movement made up of radical, idealistic youngsters attempting to right the world's wrongs and rectify the arts or target historical symbols. It is not uncommon to hear people in China claim that the Cultural Revolution was an example of "democracy" (and indeed, Mao Zedong said that the movement should be accomplished through 大民主, "big democracy", helping to cement the link between democracy and chaos in people's minds). The fact that the BLM protesters are very much targeting their own national leader, rather than worshipping him like the Red Guards were, may not mean much to their Chinese critics. To those who take a cynical view of democracy, this may just mean that someone else is manipulating and stoking the protests rather than the president himself.<br />
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There is also an ideological divide within China, which in this case mirrors the one we see in the West. China certainly has a minority of liberal intellectuals, feminist and LGBT-rights activists who are inspired by their counterparts in the English-speaking world. Protesting about discrimination against local minorities is unthinkable, because it relates to "national unity", but other sorts of activism are possible: China has even seen a "MeToo" movement of sorts. The majority of the youth tends more towards illiberal nationalism, however, and it is their views that receive backing from the state. To this group, idealistic, naive Western liberals have become a figure of disdain. That's why 白左, which can be translated either as "white leftists" or "stupid/naive leftists", became a term of abuse on the Chinese internet a few years back. Add the underlying prejudice against black people that is unfortunately strong in China, as in most of Asia, and it is hardly surprising that the BLM movement isn't winning too much praise.<br />
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To some extent, it's understandable that images of young activists targeting the statues of 19th century men for being racist would remind the Chinese of the Red Guards destroying temples and statues of Confucius for being "feudal". News of old films and TV series being cancelled because they are deemed racist has compounded the feeling that this is an intolerant, censorious movement. Reports on the temporary removal of "Gone with the Wind" from HBO Max due to racial sensitivities were met with overwhelming scorn in Chinese social media, and more talk of the Cultural Revolution and of "political correctness gone mad". This is a country where most people have far more experience of censorship than of racism, of course, and government censorship does bother many Chinese: when screenshots of the "I can't breathe" tweet by the foreign ministry's spokesperson were posted on Weibo, <a href="https://www.inkstonenews.com/society/china-trends-death-coronavirus-doctor-and-chinese-officials-tweets/article/3087381">hundreds of users replied</a> with "I can't tweet".<br />
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These attitudes may have a lot to do with nationalism, distance and distorted reporting, but it is striking how much similarity they bear with a certain rhetoric coming from the Western right. This points to how alienated and indeed threatened many conservatives feel by the wave of left-wing identity politics that has arisen in the US and the rest of the English-speaking world over the last few years.<br />
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It would be easy to dismiss the constant complaints about the mortal threat that "safe spaces", "cancel culture" and "de-platforming" pose to our freedoms as the whining of people whose privileges and views are for once being challenged. And indeed, the reality is that in Western societies the debate on these issues remains vigorous and quite free on both sides, if acrimonious. Jordan Peterson is a successful university professor constantly appearing on TV, rather than a dissident languishing in jail, under house arrest or even just out of a job, as one might expect if there was anything approaching an actual Cultural Revolution by the "woke left" taking place. If you know what being silenced really means, the right-wing victim complex appears rather ridiculous. Those who claim that toppling old statues is a "neo-Maoist war on the past" might want to ask themselves whether they would have reacted the same way to the destruction of Lenin and Stalin's statues in Eastern Europe after 1989.<br />
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I would be the first to agree that the identitarian turn of left-wing politics over the past few years has a troublingly illiberal and regressive side to it, especially in its more radical fringes. Its focus on who is saying something (specifically their race and gender), rather than what is being said, is fundamentally anti-intellectual. Its view of privilege as determined almost entirely by race and gender, rather than by class and bank account, is out of step with the world today. Its overly broad interpretation of the concept of cultural appropriation would lead to hilariously regressive results if it were applied literally (basically we would have to give up on adopting, let-alone adapting, foreign religious traditions, clothing and food). Its post-modern focus on feelings and subjective points of view, rather than facts, makes its claims essentially unanswerable. Any human ideology can become dangerous when its core tenets can no longer be questioned in the public sphere, and it is important to ensure that debate remains free on all sides.<br />
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I would also claim, by the way, that the same political movement can be credited with positive outcomes like an increased public awareness of sexual harassment and an increased push for diversity in companies and organizations. But more important than all of this, the current BLM protests are reacting against the unquestionable fact that the US police kills unarmed civilians far more than any civilized country should accept, and black people <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01846-z">are disproportionately (although not exclusively) the victims of this</a>. The protestors are pitted against America's most openly racist president in over a century, and the statues of confederate generals and slave owners are a fair target of their fury. I see no reason why they should not receive the support of all those who call themselves progressives.<br />
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Ji Xianghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03406727999722525339noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8533171043031843199.post-23575196745761562542020-05-23T07:45:00.000-07:002020-06-16T22:27:48.842-07:00A snapshot of the plague: life in Yogyakarta, Indonesia<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I am currently staying in the city of Yogyakarta, in Indonesia. Just like everywhere else on the planet, life here has taken a rather surreal turn over the past few months.<br />
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Here in Indonesia ordinary life started to shut down around mid-March, when coronavirus cases started multiplying. By then I had already been in Yogyakarta for around a month, and had some experience of what normal, pre-pandemic life looked like in this corner of the world. </div>
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Indonesia has a reputation as an easygoing place, and its reaction to Covid-19 would seem to confirm it. The country's measures to contain the virus have generally been much less strict than those taken in neighbouring countries. People have not been ordered to stay home bar emergencies, as was the case in Malaysia, and cities have not been put under curfew like in Thailand. People are not being fined or jailed for failing to respect social distancing rules and encouraged to snoop on their neighbours, like in Singapore. Thankfully it also hasn't gone the way of the Philippines, where Duterte's police have been enforcing one of the world's strictest lockdowns with brutal methods.<br />
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Down over here, things have been a lot more relaxed. The strictest measures have been taken in Jakarta, the outbreak's epicentre, with businesses and restaurants being forced to close or only do home deliveries. But Indonesia is a huge archipelago made up of thousands of dispersed islands, with the fourth largest population in the world, and putting the whole country under lockdown was never going to be a straightforward process. </div>
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In practice, policies and approaches have varied widely from one province to another. While Indonesia is not officially a federal country, since the fall of Suharto it has moved towards a "quasi-federal" approach, with the provinces enjoying a lot of autonomy. Yogyakarta, where I am staying, occupies a very special position in this regard. While this city of 2 million is far from being Indonesia's biggest, it gets its own autonomous region, the Special Region of Yogyakarta, which is also the only officially recognised sultanate in the country.<br />
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Until this day, the Sultan of Yogyakarta is automatically also the governor of the region, and enjoys genuine power as a result. Although there used to be many sultans in what is now Indonesia, this particular sultanate was the only one to receive official acknowledgement after independence, due to its unwavering support for the liberation struggle against the Dutch. The current sultan, Hamengkubuwono X,<b style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"> </b>is genuinely popular with his people. His position as an unelected governor is an anomaly in modern Indonesia, where all other posts from villages heads to the president are now elected by popular vote. It must be added though that in 2010 a proposal by the central government to allow the governor of Yogyakarta to be elected by the people was met with angry protests by Yogyakartans, ready to fight to remain disenfranchised.<br />
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The sultan, who is a consummate politician, rejected the idea of enforcing a full lockdown in the city from the start, saying that it would have "very serious consequences", supposedly for people's livelihoods. At the end of March, he <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9g4GUCeDUE">gave a speech</a> inviting people to "calm down" since there was no "lockdown" (he used the English terms). At the same time, he invited people to stay home if they could, avoid crowds and wash their hands. At least he didn't call for achieving "herd immunity".<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">His majesty the Sultan of Yogyakarta announcing that there will not be a lockdown on the 23rd of March</td></tr>
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Perhaps as a result of this stance, the measures taken in this city have been relatively lax. While schools are closed and people are encouraged to work from home, shops and restaurants have not been forced to close. There certainly are a lot of shuttered shopfronts around the city, but a fair number of businesses are still open. Shopping malls take people's temperatures at the entrance, but they have remained open too. And while a lot of restaurants are only doing deliveries, there are still a fair number of places that allow customers to sit down and eat. The fancier restaurants try and implement social distancing measures, but there are plenty of roadside stalls that seem to be operating as they always do. </div>
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People are free to walk or drive anywhere within the city without restrictions. Masks are not mandatory, and while a lot of people wear them, there are plenty of others who don't bother. This is in contrast with many other Asian countries, where walking around without a mask has by now become taboo or even illegal. </div>
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This is not to say that life here has gone on as normal, by any means. Much of economic activity has ground to a halt. Being able to work from home is a luxury for the few. Just like everywhere else in the world, a lot of people have lost their livelihoods. In Indonesia, a middle-income country where millions still eke out a living in informal jobs with little savings, this spells disaster for many. While the rural masses can live off the land to some degree, the urban poor have little to fall back on. Here in Yogyakarta, various charities have sprung up to deliver food to vulnerable families who are having trouble putting food on the table. Petty theft is also on the increase.<br />
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Yogyakarta's thriving tourist industry has been completely gutted. The city usually receives a constant flow of tourists from within Indonesia and from other countries, because of its cultural importance and its proximity to the ruins of Borobudur. But now Malioboro, a major shopping street and nightlife centre that is usually teeming with visitors, looks like a ghost town.<br />
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Indonesia suspended "visa on arrival" schemes in March, essentially banning all foreign tourism. At the same time, the authorities have announced that any foreigners already in the country will be allowed to stay "until the pandemic is over", regardless of whether their visa has expired. This has been convenient for me, since I would not normally be allowed to stay here longer than two months at a time. At the end of March the British and US governments encouraged any of their citizens still in Indonesia to return home, although those two countries are hardly the ideal places to be waiting out this pandemic. Unwilling to go back to Europe, and for the time being unable to go back to China, I decided to stay put.<br />
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Two months later, I am still here. Some of the worst predictions have not come to pass. Indonesia has not seen hundreds of thousands of deaths, and the health services have not collapsed. The official figure is 1351 deaths, although no one believes that the government's statistics are accurate. Indonesia's rate of testing is very low, and only people who died after testing positive are counted as coronavirus casualties. Figures for "excess" funerals in Jakarta over the last few months point to thousands of victims, including unfortunately many doctors and nurses. This is tragic, but still better than the picture in most Western countries, especially when you consider that Indonesia has 267 million people. While there has been much criticism of the state's handling of the situation, I can see that it is extremely tough to balance the need to stop a dangerous virus from ripping through communities, and the need to allow people to make a living in a country where the poor have few savings. </div>
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Here in Yogyakarta there have officially been 225 confirmed cases and eight deaths. Even if the true figures are higher, there certainly doesn't seem to have been a huge wave of cases overwhelming the hospitals and filling up the morgues. Perhaps for this reason, or maybe because they are bored of being stuck indoors and need to make a living, people are starting to go out again. For much of April traffic was down to about 10 - 20% of its normal flow, and the streets were almost deserted. While things are certainly not back to where they were before the pandemic, over the last few weeks the streets have come alive again, and in some places you would struggle to believe anything out of the ordinary was going on. It is as if the people have unilaterally declared the end of a lockdown that was never really enforced in the first place.<br />
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On top of everything else, today is the start of Lebaran, the holiday that marks the end of Ramadan. As I write these words, the <i>takbir</i> (<i>Allahu Akbar</i>) is drifting in through my window from the loudspeakers of dozens of mosques, as is tradition on the first night of the holiday. In Indonesia this holiday is normally preceded by the <i>mudik,</i> a mass migration comparable to China's spring festival rush, if smaller in scale. In order to stop scores of migrant workers from going home to their villages and carrying the infection to every last corner of the country, at the end of April the government suspended all inter-provincial travel with only a day's notice (they have now allowed travel for work purposes). This measure has probably left millions of jobless and frustrated migrants stuck in Jakarta's massive urban sprawl. On the other hand it may have stopped the virus from spreading more widely around the nation, in a country which just cannot deal with massive rates of infection.</div>
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This whole situation has left a strange feel to life in Yogyakarta. It is currently quite hard to get in or out, but in many ways life in the city can feel almost normal. In the backstreets, neighbours huddle together and chat without bothering with masks or social distancing (but then you will see a family of three riding around on one scooter with no helmets, but wearing face masks just to be on the safe side). Peasants sell their vegetables on the side of the road, while buskers with guitars perform at traffic lights. Some bars are even open, but they limit the number of patrons and keep the tables far apart.<br />
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One thing that has struck me about the situation is the way that many suburban communities or <i>Kampung</i>, a term that refers to a village but also a kind of self-contained neighbourhood, have blocked off the entrances to their streets with barriers of various kinds, in an attempt to stop outsiders from entering and infecting people. Some of the barriers have an "official" look, but others are quite clearly set up by the residents. Some have banners with slogans scrawled across them, or with information on how to protect yourself from Covid-19. This mirrors the way that many Chinese villages unilaterally blocked themselves off from the outside world in February, when the pandemic was at its peak in China. Last week I walked around a bit in the northern outskirts of Yogyakarta and took photos of a few of these impromptu barricades, which you can see below.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Two men play chess on the pavement, with their face masks pulled down</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The staff at a jewellery store in a shopping mall, wearing masks and protective gear</td></tr>
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Ji Xianghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03406727999722525339noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8533171043031843199.post-19983755981675837642020-02-08T05:01:00.002-08:002020-08-12T18:03:39.921-07:00Whataboutism and viruses: the coronavirus and H1N1 outbreaks<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Over the last few days, an article entitled <i><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/somethings-right-here-folks-look-usa-2009-h1n1-virus-compared-cavolo/">"Something's Not Right Here Folks" | A look at USA 2009 H1N1 Virus Compared to China 2020 Corona Virus</a></i> has been widely shared and read on Chinese social media. The original article was published on LinkedIn, perhaps the only major Western social media site still unblocked in China, so English-speaking Chinese started off by sharing the original. But a <a href="https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/yVyCK8WOQ7v9ZfQFqm8ARg">Chinese translation</a> quickly appeared, and now it is being shared more widely on WeChat and Weibo. Unfortunately this fits in with a general pattern: articles written by outsiders that coincide with the worldview which the Chinese government wants to promote often get translated and spread widely within China, while foreign contents that does not fit in with this worldview quickly gets censored.<br />
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The article in question is based on a kind of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism">whataboutism</a> which has become widespread on the internet: the argument is that China's handling of the coronavirus outbreak has been much more responsible and effective than the US's handling of the 2009 outbreak of the H1N1 virus (ofter referred to as the "swine flu" at the time). It is also claimed that the international reaction to the coronavirus outbreak smacks of racism and double standards, since in 2009 Americans were not prevented from travelling to other countries or in any way quarantined or shunned, as is now happening to Chinese citizens in certain places. It may seem amazing that people are managing to engage in "whataboutism" regarding a virus, but such is the world.<br />
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The article's basic argument collapses when you take a brief look at the facts. First of all, the H1N1 outbreak started in the state of Veracruz, in Mexico, and not in the United States. From Mexico it quickly spread to the US, and then became a global pandemic. There was never a sense at any time that the virus was an "American" phenomenon, while the coronavirus cases are clearly concentrated in China for the time being (although this may well change). There was never any reason whatsoever to be wary of people coming from the United States, or to be scared of going there. The two situations are simply not comparable.<br />
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Of course, the author is right that other countries closing their borders with China or rejecting any visitors who have been there is overblown (but it is by no means only "Western" countries that are doing this. Russia and Mongolia closed their land borders with China quite fast). He is even more right when it comes to people refusing to eat in Chinese restaurants for fear of catching the virus, or shunning Chinese-looking people on the street. This is nothing but ignorance and racism, and unfortunately it is occurring all over Europe and elsewhere.<br />
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But when it comes to hypocrisy and double standards, it is instructive to take a look at how Mexicans were treated in China during the initial phases of the H1N1 outbreak, when the virus was still associated with Mexico. Jorge Guajardo, Mexico's ambassador to China at the time, has just written <a href="https://supchina.com/2020/02/07/mexicans-epidemics-and-the-extraordinary-hypocrisy-of-xinhua-news-agency/">a pretty believable account</a> according to which China suddenly stopped issuing visas to Mexicans, and Mexicans in China were quarantined regardless of whether they showed symptoms, not always in good conditions. It seems that when it comes to taking extreme measures against foreigners who might carry an infection, the Chinese authorities are second to none. And let's not even get started on the manhunt against people from Hubei which has been seen in some parts of China.<br />
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The article praises, predictably, China's "model response" to the viral outbreak, with its "broad and aggressive domestic response" combined with "the voluntary dutiful cooperation of its citizens". The delay in reporting the new illness is blamed entirely on "a few local government officials in Wuhan". It should be noted that authorities in Mexico, the country in which the H1N1 outbreak actually started, did respond by closing down public and private facilities in Mexico City, to no apparent effect. It may well be that in China such measures can be instituted more effectively and completely. The question is whether the extreme lockdown currently in place in much of China, which is taking a huge economic toll and threatening the livelihood of the poor, and which is even <a href="https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3048208/left-home-six-days-disabled-chinese-boy-dies-after-carer-dad-and">costing lives</a>, is really useful or worthwhile. This is a question that deserves some serious discussion. I am not an epidemiologist, and cannot judge how dangerous this virus could become, nor how effective these measures can really be at stopping its spread. It may even be true that China is taking a hit for the good of us all, but I wouldn't be so quick to make this judgement. And I am pretty sure the author of the piece has no more qualification than I do in this regard.<br />
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The author of the LinkedIn article turns out to be an American commentator who has lived in China for two decades. As he says towards the end, "I am truly blessed with my lovely Chinese wife and our family living here in Shenyang, in China's Northeast. You get my meaning?". He has written a couple of books. The subtitle to <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07H84HF2R/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i1">one of them</a> reads "Compared to divisive western societies, middle class life in China is like Disneyland; happy, stable & safe, better than ever for 600 million people." It would seem that he is a "China expert" along the lines of <a href="http://thecapitalinthenorth.blogspot.com/search/label/Martin%20Jacques">Martin Jacques</a> and John Ross, who is now having his moment in the spotlight thanks to this well-timed bit of sophistry. </div>
Ji Xianghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03406727999722525339noreply@blogger.com0