Striking at the Heart of Democracy? Well, Maybe...

Verne hitched himself a few inches across the desk, and stuck a large finger at Bunny's face. "Kiddo," he said, "get this straight: I can buy any officials, just the same as I can buy any politicians, or anybody else that a bunch of boobs can elect to office. And I know what you're thinking - here's an old cow-puncher, without any fine ideals, and he's got a barrel o' money and thinks he can do anything he pleases with it. But that ain't the point, my boy - it's because I had the brains to make the money, and I got the brains to use it. Money ain't power till it's used, and the reason I can buy power is because men know I can use it - or else, by Jees, they wouldn't sell it to me. You got that?"
- Oil!, by Upton Sinclair

By sheer coincidence, I happened to read this passage yesterday, just a few hours after the Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission hit the news. Oil! is the basis for P.T. Anderson's There Will Be Blood, but other than a few characters and the physical setting, there aren't many similarities between the book and the film. The main point of conflict in Sinclair's novel is between capitalism and labor. Standing in for capitalism is the massive Southern California oil industry, portrayed as an entity wealthy and powerful enough to essentially buy the American government and use it to advance industry interests abroad and at home, while running roughshod over anything standing in the way. The above excerpt is a diatribe delivered by an oil boss who has just engineered the election of Warren G. Harding, gloating over his ability to covertly keep the labor unions under control. It's a fairly bleak picture of the United States as capitalist dystopia.

The fact that Sinclair engaged in a fair bit of hyperbole and oversimplification doesn't greatly undermine his point, and I think that it remains a relevant one. Right now, the Obama administration is struggling to pass what ought to be common sense reforms in the wake of the financial crisis, and currently doesn't have anything much stronger than moral suasion to get the financial world to change its ways. In the face of intense populist anger and high unemployment, the big firms still feel secure enough to give out bonuses that strike many as obscene. All of this begs the question, who exactly is setting the agenda? I'm not sure I'd go as far as Sinclair did in venturing an answer, but in the midst of economic devastation and political confusion, Wall Street is still going strong, and Wall Street looks pretty confident that they're going to get off with little more than a congressional slap on the wrist for transgressions that call for significantly more than that. Cui bono?

Bottom line: with a capitalist system as robust as ours, the amount of money that can be amassed behind a particular agenda is staggering, and the court's ruling has only made it easier for monied interests to do what they've already been quite successful at doing. Frankly, I'm not sure that this is ultimately likely to significantly alter the status quo. Our elected officials in both parties have been getting hefty support from big business for decades, and in return they've gone to bat for those interests in Washington. Need examples? Look no further than Chuck Schumer and Wall Street, Joe Lieberman and insurance, Lisa Murkowski and oil, and Robert Byrd and coal (although to his credit, Byrd has recently changed his tune somewhat.) While The New York Times characterized the ruling as "strik[ing] at the heart of democracy," I question whether this decision truly reflects a change in substance, or merely a change in form. This is not to suggest that the court's ruling is really consistent with the ideals of democracy, but it doesn't appear to be wildly inconsistent with the way things have been getting done in the United States for some time.

As for the Supreme Court's reasoning, I'm not sure it's even worthwhile for me to have an opinion on it. If you want to know how I feel about the Supreme Court in general, check back in a couple of days.

We Might Not Win This One

Lately I've had this vague sense that future generations of historians will look back at this era and say that the United States had the misfortune to face a number of threats to its existence at the very moment that it was least equipped to deal with any of them. One party is trying to govern, the other is opposing nearly everything that party does, and independents apparently don't have enough faith in either one to give them more than a year or two to produce results.

In the electorate, the body that's been charged with the not insignificant task of choosing our leaders, it is almost impossible to make out anything meaningful in the cacophony of what passes for debate today. The media has transformed politics into a spectator sport, where you score points by kneecapping your opponent, not by governing. Yes, politics has always been, and always will be, a necessary feature of the process of governance. It's inescapable. But it has become an absolute monster, devouring time, energy, and money, and leaving our elected officials with time for little else.

Most of us alive today can't remember a time when the United States wasn't going strong. Even in our rough spots, we were better off than pretty much any other country on earth. Economic slumps came periodically, but the economy always bounced back, stronger than ever. Even our biggest foreign policy setback, the Vietnam War, bloodied our nose, but it didn't knock us down. To some extent, America is a victim of its own success. Our track record has given us a collective sense of invincibility. Indeed, there is a shocking degree of complacency among Americans today, a sense that it's all right to ignore the facts and vote with a gut full of misguided rage at the changes we're all living through, because we'll all muddle through in the end, because we're America.

But that's not how it works. We don't get to win just because we're America, and the American Century didn't happen by accident. History isn't some scripted drama, where the United States sails through various crises, always destined to emerge victorious and lead the world, no matter what else happens. In every major crisis we faced and emerged from, the outcome was in doubt, and without strong leaders, we might not have come out on top. We got to where we were at the end of the 20th century through sound policies and solid leadership, not by taking our cues from talk radio and Fox News.

But Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin are the symptoms, not the problems. Maybe it's a failure of education, or maybe the amount of information that we're saturated with on a daily basis has left us largely incapable of abstract thought. Or maybe the pace at which the world is changing scares people so much that they reject the uncertainty of meaningful inquiry and cling to political dogma and the comfort that it offers. Whatever it is, it is frightening and widespread.

Let's not kid ourselves. We're looking at a devastated economy, a strong and resilient Taliban, and an Al Qaeda that is still very much a threat. In short, we are facing a national crisis, and the United States has become borderline ungovernable. Yes, we're America, and yes, we tend to come out on top. But we might not win this one.

Reflections on the Congressional Train Wreck

I've been back in the US for a while now, and between work and law school I haven't had much of a chance to travel. So, I'm going to try my hand at making this a non-travel blog for a while.

These days, I find that reading the news is like watching a train wreck. I don't want to do it, because it's only going to leave me feeling unsettled and intensely aware of both my own mortality and the immensity of human folly for the rest of the day, but it's impossible to ignore. There's also the whole "as a voter in a democratic republic, I ought to be informed" argument. But there aren't any elections anytime soon, so maybe I could make a New Year's resolution not to read the news for a couple of weeks. As resolutions go, this one would be pretty self-indulgent, aimed more at obtaining a bit of peace of mind and not so much at improving myself as a person. It's hard to argue that being informed is a vice.

At any event, the train wreck that's on my mind today is Congress. Maybe if I write about it I can get it off my mind long enough to get some work done. That might be better than just not reading the news.

Right now, Congressional Republicans are pursuing a Taliban-esqe strategy. I certainly don't mean the comparison in any moral sense. While I'm not on board with the "conservative platform" I would never compare it to the morally abhorrent agenda that those lunatics in Afghanistan and Pakistan call an ideology. That type of hyperbole simply isn't constructive. Rather, I mean to say that the Taliban and Congressional Republicans are playing the same game. For each group, "winning" is a matter of denying victory to the other side. They don't have to actually bring anything constructive to the table, they don't have to offer any solutions to a problem. All they have to do is keep the people who actually are trying to accomplish something from doing so. The Taliban simply has to keep the US and NATO from accomplishing their military objectives, and the Republicans simply have to filibuster long enough to prevent the Democrats from actually governing.

Leaving aside the (admittedly debatable) merits of the healthcare bill for the moment, there is something incredibly screwed up about this. I've been trying to think it through. Let's ignore the massive deficits of the Reagan and George W. Bush administrations for the moment and accept, arguendo, the assertion that the Republican party is not simply trying to score a political victory against President Obama, and is in fact about fiscal responsibility and small government. Fair enough. I accept that. In fact, I really like the idea of small government. In an ideal world, Ron Paul would be my favorite politician. I would love it if, with the exception of minimal taxes that went to pay for basic national defense and infrastructure, the federal government left me entirely to my own devices and didn't ask me to pay for a whole raft of things that I didn't think we should have.

But we don't live in an ideal world. This sounds like a statement of the obvious, and it should be, but it also seems to be a point that's been lost on a great many American politicians. After the New Deal, there's just no getting around the fact that we have a huge, expensive federal government that is such a constant presence in all of our lives that we're not always aware that it's there. Whether you believe that it ought to be there or not is just as irrelevant as whether or not you believe in gravity. It's there, and it's not going away. Any kind of political solution that doesn't at least accept this fact as a given is just as impractical and dangerous as jumping off a roof and not accepting the fact that you're going to fall.

Thus, you would think that any political platform advocating small government and offering it as a viable solution would be limited to fringe candidates from third parties that will never win any significant election. But small government is the rallying cry of one of the two major American political parties, and the implications are troubling.

How do you manage a system using an ideology that is inherently opposed to the very system you are trying to run? It brings to mind a quote from The Onion in reference to Bush's nomination of John Bolton as Ambassador to the UN back in 2005: "Appointing Bolton to the UN is like appointing a fish to ride a bicycle that he hates and wishes to destroy." That puts it pretty succinctly. Reagan's famous quote that "government is the problem" is a self-fulfilling prophesy that creates a vicious cycle when adopted by people elected to govern. If you come into office believing that government is incapable of solving problems, then of course you're not going to try to appoint competent problem solvers to government positions (see Michael Brown, appointed as head of FEMA to George W. Bush). Then, when a crisis arises, and the government fails to address it adequately (see Hurricane Katrina), you can say "See? I told you so," and rest comfortably on your earlier assertion that government is incapable of solving problems. QED.

So where does this leave us? With a legislative process in which only one party seems interested in actually governing. Meanwhile, any Republican in the Senate who actually shows an interest in governing (i.e., actually doing their job) risks being branded a traitor to the cause (see Lindsey Graham on climate change). This is not good for democracy. Right now we have a single-party state with all of the disadvantages thereof (lack of vigorous and meaningful policy debate) but none of the advantages (actually getting something done).

So, this is what I want to see happen to the Republican Party: First, I want to see the party tear itself to shreds in internecine fighting. I want to see midterm elections in which the tea party extremists on the far right turn out in record numbers in the primaries to nominate whackos who will prove unelectable to national office rather than incumbents. Democrats who might have been crushed by electable Republican incumbent can then eke out wins over the teabaggers, go to Congress, and actually give the Democrats enough votes that they can govern America without having to pander to [EXPLETIVE DELETED] like Joe Lieberman. Maybe pass a few pieces of legislation on crucial issues before it's too late. Then, I want the Republican party to take a good, hard look at itself, get its shit together, and actually stand for something other than obstructionism again. Until they do that, the country is not going to be in great shape.

OK, writing that actually helped. Now I'm going to try and finish some papers so I don't have to take any work home for the holidays.

Hong Kong and Beijing

This post has been a long time in the works. I've been keeping my eyes open and noting the differences between Hong Kong and Beijing pretty much since my flight landed two and a half months ago. Hong Kong and Beijing are the two cities in China where I've actually lived, rather than just visiting, so I suppose the comparison is inevitable.

The differences are myriad, the similarities few. The single biggest difference would have to do with the relationship between each city as a physical space and its populace. Simply put, the physical space and layout of Hong Kong all seems to be a response to the needs of its populace; whereas the population of Beijing, by and large, has to base its existence around the physical space of the city.

Hong Kong is incredibly hilly, with steep, narrow, and winding roads. Looking at a map of Hong Kong, one sees a maze of streets, curving, crossing and recrossing one another at acute angles. A map of Beijing, by contrast, shows broad avenues, running north-south and east-west, intersecting at neat right angles almost without fail. Yet in Hong Kong, despite the appearance of chaos, people and goods move fluidly through the city by means of a hodgepodge but effective transportation network - buses, minibuses, trams, ferries, escalators, subway, and light rail. The Octopus, a stored-value, one-tap all-purpose commuter card, works on all of them. It takes me around 45 minutes and can cost as little as US $1 to get across the harbor to Kowloon all the way from my dorm.

Beijing is the opposite - the illusion of order that a map of the city presents evaporates quickly upon arrival. As broad as the streets are, they are regularly congested; it can take close to an hour to cover just over a mile at times. The city has attempted to address congestion by adding ring roads (a series of freeways arranged in concentric circles around the city), but each time a new ring road is completed, the congestion is alleviated just enough that more people decide to buy cars, and traffic quickly returns to its earlier gridlock. Beijing's wretched air quality makes walking a somewhat unattractive prospect, and most people resort to bicycles. However, that raises a new set of concerns - several of my friends had their bicycles stolen, one of them multiple times.

Clearly the two cities have strikingly different histories. Under British rule between 1841 and 1997, Hong Kong was spared the turmoil that characterized much of the past two centuries of Chinese history - the Taiping rebellion, the collapse of the Qing dynasty and the country's subsequent descent into warlordism, the Japanese invasion and the civil war, and the ravages of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. After 1949, when the Communists finally drove the Kuomintang from the Mainland, Beijing was largely closed off to the outside world. Today, a drive through the city gives the impression of Westernization: Starbucks, McDonalds, and KFC; Adidas and Ikea megastores; malls full of Rolex, Bulgari and Lacoste; bars advertising Carlsberg and Budweiser, and clubs playing (almost) current pop music. Scratching the surface, however, is as easy as getting out of the bus and walking down any of the side streets away from the main boulevards. Aside from the major foreign chains, few restaurants offer decent non-Chinese food. You'll see migrant workers from the provinces hawking and spitting left and right; parents holding their pantless children at arm's length, letting them defecate into the road; beggars and lepers sitting silently, hat in hand, staring silently at the ground. Giant piles of rotting fruit can be found just meters from expensive apartment complexes. The air quality is remarkably poor. You eventually get used to it, but initially spending less than a day in the city can leave you feeling as though you've been kicked in the face by a mule. The city is the beating heart of Communist China. Soldiers in Tiananmen square stand at strict attention, and Mao's Mausoleum still draws crowds of Chinese paying their respects. Squat toilets abound, even in fairly Westernized shopping districts. Many Chinese visiting Beijing from the provinces have never seen foreigners before, and will stare wide-eyed with undisguised interest; some will even ask you to pose with them for pictures. You'll be lucky to find anyone who speaks English once you venture beyond the hotels and major tourist destinations.

Hong Kong, by contrast, was a British colony for more than 150 years, and has remained an international finance and shipping hub even after the 1997 handover. As such, even in predominantly Chinese neighborhoods far from Central, Soho, and the Midlevels, foreigners attract little attention from local Chinese. Western restaurant chains are prevalent, but so are independently owned restaurants offering fare every bit as good as what you'd find in a pub in London, a shwarma stand in Amman, or a burger joint in Chicago. Most locals at least understand basic English, and often speak it well enough that basic communication typically poses no problems. I've yet to see anyone spit or go to the bathroom in public, and the city is strikingly clean compared to Beijing. The air quality is quite poor by international standards, but most visitors experience nothing worse than a mild sore throat and runny nose for a few days before they acclimate. One barely encounters reminders of Communist rule in Hong Kong. I've never seen a soldier in Hong Kong, and have seen perhaps two Chinese flags flying since I've been here. By contrast, the flag of Hong Kong - a five-petaled white flower on a red background - is ubiquitous.

Understandably, most visitors prefer Hong Kong to Beijing. As for myself, I'm still not sure. I went to Beijing last weekend to visit a few friends, and am still processing my impressions of the city as it was when I lived there, as it is now, and my overall experience there. That will be the subject of another post.

Three Days in Thailand

Having Monday off for Foundation Day, and never having class on Fridays, I decided to go to Thailand for a few days.

I spent most of my time in a small town called Kanchanaburi. It's about two hours west of Bangkok, on the River Kwai (made famous by David Lean in the classic Bridge On The River Kwai), and is a very pleasant place to spend a few days. The town itself only has two real attractions. The excellent Thai-Burma Railway Centre is a museum documenting the experience of the Allied POWs who built the railroad linking Thailand to Burma during World War II. Captured when the Japanese conquered most of Southeast Asia in 1941 and 1942, thousands of British, Dutch, and Australian soldiers (and some Americans) were slave labor for the Japanese military effort to build a railroad that would eventually connect Singapore to Burma and facilitate the Japanese advance towards British India. Malnourished and diseased, apparently some 38 POWs and Asian laborers died for every kilometer of track constructed. (It would be impossible to document, but I wonder how this ratio measures up to the ratio for the Great Wall of China). Some 6,000 of these POWs are buried in a cemetery near the museum, the second attraction of note.

Kanchanaburi's real draw is the natural scenery surrounding the town. Erawan National Park, about 65km away from the city, was definitely the highlight of my trip. There weren't many foreign tourists when I visited, mostly Thais out for a weekend excursion. The park contains a seven-tiered waterfall, with a number of natural pools that are perfect for swimming. It was an hour's trek to the seventh tier, at which point the path became a bit more tricky. Getting from the path to the falls themselves required some careful navigation across a series of extremely slippery rocks - I saw a European tourist take a very nasty spill on one particularly treacherous section. After making it safely to the top I cooled off with a half-hour swim in the various pools, watched by a family of monkeys that had come down from the trees for a drink of water. I spent my last few hours in Kanchanaburi seeing the current Bridge on the River Kwai (the original was destroyed by Allied bombers in the last years of the war), then took a minibus back to Bangkok.

Khao San Road, in Bangkok... never in my life have I wanted to leave a place so quickly. Every negative tourist stereotype is on display there: the freshly dreadlocked white guy covered in new tattoos, beer in hand and god knows what in his bloodstream; the florid, obese middle-aged man, sunburned and balding, sweating through his polo shirt and leering at the Thai girl on his arm, young enough to be his daughter; and, of course, the type who clearly thinks that being on vacation gives one an excuse to dress and act like a complete a**hole.

The street was crawling with them, and packed with every sort of business that would cater to their interests. T-shirt shops, hostels, tattoo parlors, salons advertising dreadlocks, beads, and extensions, bars blasting loud pop music, stalls selling cheap trinkets, and plenty of familiar Western restaurants (Burger King and McDonalds, among others).

Ordinarily I would have made every effort to avoid this place, but under the circumstances it made sense to be there, unfortunately. I was only staying in Bangkok for one night, and then planning to catch a minibus to the coast and then traveling on to the island of Ko Samet by ferry. The hostels in Khao San are very cheap, and the abundance of local travel agencies/tour companies make the neighborhood an easy place in which to arrange transport out of Bangkok. So, there I was.

While I was asking a hostel employee about Ko Samet, a sunburned Westerner (Austrian, as it turned out) approached, a beer in one hand and a Coke in the other. His teeth were yellow, broken and crooked, his hair was stringy, and his eyes seemed to have some difficulty focusing. He told me how Ko Samet was a wonderful island, and how he'd been going there for ten years. Then he gave me the name of the hostel that he stayed at, and told me to tell the owner (someone named Yud, apparently) that he had just come back from Lao and was about to return to Austria. He wrote all this down for me: "Koh Samet Puolsa Bangolouws Yud Greadings from Koert."

After meeting Koert, I decided to skip Ko Samet and leave the country a day early. I was quite certain that I did not want to spend my time and money in a place that appealed to Koert so much that he has apparently made annual pilgrimages for the past decade. Given its relative proximity to Bangkok, I could only imagine how many other Koerts there would be on that island.

There's a sad irony in the fact that Thailand, the only Southeast Asian nation to avoid European rule during the colonial period, has been so transformed by the throngs of hedonistic Westerners that pour into the country on a daily basis that it's barely possible to discern what lies beneath the bars, tattoo parlors, sex shows, dreadlock shops and youth hostels. I was only in the country for a few days, but a number of my friends spent more time there, and in different places; almost without exception, they came away with the same impressions. They loved Thailand's natural beauty - the beaches, the rivers, the forests - but they were shocked and disgusted by everything that had sprung up around it. One of my friends summed it up very succinctly: "It's like there's not even a country, just a bunch of dirty backpackers."

So, if you're thinking of going to Thailand, spend as little time in Bangkok as possible, unless you are a) a complete degenerate, b) unspeakably perverted, c) an unwashed hippie in search of like-minded persons, or d) not particularly picky about where you spend your free time, as long as they sell t-shirts and beer. If you're reading this blog, I sincerely hope that you are none of these things.

Shark Fin Soup, Chicken Feet and Duck's Blood

It's been a fairly uneventful few weeks for me since coming back from Taiwan. Going to classes, reading for classes, studying Chinese. I'll be traveling later this month, April, and May, so I've been laying low a bit to save money. In lieu of final exams, I'm writing papers for two courses - one is a comparison of the cannabis laws of Singapore and the Netherlands (pretty much polar opposites); the other one is about "cultural" exceptions to the international whaling ban.

This post is not so much about Hong Kong specifically, but just some reflections on food and drink that I've tried in "Greater China" - Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the Mainland. The more time I spend over here, the easier it is to let go of the idea that some animals, or some parts of animals, are more "normal" to eat than others. It's all more or less meat, after all.

Jellyfish: I first tried this at a nice restaurant in Shanghai a few years ago, mostly because I wanted to say that I had eaten jellyfish. As it turned out, I liked it - the texture is a bit like calamari, but is a bit crunchy as well as chewy. I still order this in Boston. There used to be a good place on Brighton Avenue, but it has unfortunately closed. To make matters worse, my good friend Connie stole my to-go box of jellyfish the last time we went there.

Shark fin soup: First off, I should say that I do not condone the consumption of shark fin soup. The way that the chief ingredient is obtained is fairly gruesome. Fishermen don't actually kill the shark, but simply hack off the fins and toss it back into the ocean to die. I would never order it. The only time I've eaten it was at a very posh, set-course dinner in Beijing. Thus, the shark was already dead, the dish was already made, and my refusal to eat the soup would have had no effect whatsoever on the market for shark fins - under the circumstances, it would also have been very rude. All that being said, I enjoyed the soup. The texture is a bit hard to describe - the fin is mostly cartilage, but it was fairly soft, not very rubbery. Served with a bowl of rice, and was a very hearty course. But while the soup was good, it was really nothing special. Had it been something less controversial, it would be nothing worth writing about. So, I continue to oppose this dish in principle. The demand for shark fins apparently remains high, though. I've seen many hanging in the windows of Chinese medicine shops and restaurants in Hong Kong and Macau.

Duck's blood: Absolutely delicious. I tried this at a hot pot restaurant in Kaohsiung, Taiwan last month. The duck's blood is congealed to a tofu-like consistency and cut into cubes. After simmering in a spicy Sichuan-style broth for ten minutes or so it picked up a wonderful flavor, both spicy and savory at the same time.

Baijiu: Even if you're a serious, open-minded drinker, I do not recommend this stuff. It's not like soju, and it's not like sake. It's like rubbing alcohol. For those of you who claim vodka tastes like rubbing alcohol, trust me - it tastes like water compared to baijiu. It is generally distilled from sorghum (sometimes from rice) and tends to be very strong, around 120 proof or so. The worst, cheapest stuff comes in small green bottles with white and red labels. In some places you can buy little plastic, one-shot bags of it for the equivalent of around 50 cents. I went camping on an old ruined section of the Great Wall a few hours away from Beijing a couple of years ago, and one of my friends brought along a bottle of baijiu for the night. When one of our group gashed his leg open on a rock on a treacherous portion of the trail, we used the baijiu as antiseptic - it bubbled like hydrogen peroxide when we poured it in his cut. We also used it to help get the campfire going. I never drink baijiu if I can avoid it. However, I make an exception for moutai. It's a type of baijiu from Guizhou province, somewhere around 110 proof. It's got an interesting, almost spicy flavor to it, and served warm in a small glass it's pretty good.

Chicken feet: The first time a plate was set in front of me a few years ago I wouldn't touch it. However, I overcame my reluctance and tried them as part of a dim sum brunch in Hong Kong a few weeks ago. Not bad. The basic idea isn't all that different from eating a chicken wing - you nibble around a bone to get at a relatively small portion of meat. So, once I quit thinking about what part of the chicken it was, I had no trouble eating these. There's not as much meat, though, so for that reason I would order wings, if given the choice; but as a dim sum course it's fine.

Yak butter tea: It's basically a thick, hot tea in which the principle ingredient is Yak butter. Sounds disgusting, but it is actually a great drink for a cold day. Hot and thick, it really warms you up. Given Tibet's altitude and how unbelievably cold the winters are, it's not surprising that this is such a popular drink there. I spent the coldest night of my life in an unheated hostel in Lhasa in mid-winter, and the first thing I did when I woke up in the morning was down a giant mug of this stuff. I felt better immediately.

Stinky tofu: Pretty much like it sounds. I'm not quite sure how it is prepared, but these chunks of tofu smell distinctly like unwashed feet. If you're passing a restaurant that serves it, you can typically smell it from the street. This one took some getting used to. The first few times I ate it, I only did so to be polite; however, by the third time I realized I had acquired a taste for it. Part of the trick is to just ignore the smell, or convince yourself that the smell is not coming from the tofu - honestly, it does not taste like it smells. If you live in Boston, try it at Taiwan Cafe in Chinatown.

Taiwan

I'm not sure how long I was on fire before I realized it, but it must have only been a few seconds. It was hard to tell at first. Firecrackers were exploding all around my feet, bottle rockets were whizzing past my head, and my motorcycle helmet was filling with smoke. So, I was a bit distracted. When I noticed that my shirt was burning, I quickly smothered it with my gloves, and immediately turned my attention back to jumping around in the hopes that no firecrackers would go off under my feet. When the smoke cleared I took a look at my shirt. The fire had left three mid-sized ragged holes in it. Fortunately it was only the outermost of my five layers, and it didn't actually belong to me; so, I didn't get burned, and I didn't lose a good shirt.

This was the Yanshui Lantern Festival. It will turn up on several top ten lists if you google "dangerous festivals." Once a year the streets of this ordinarily peaceful Taiwanese town fill with crowds of people decked out in several layers of heavy clothes, gloves, and motorcycle helmets. They follow a procession of statues as they're carried through the streets, periodically stopping in front of a shop with a red lantern hanging outside. The doors of the shop open, and a "beehive," basically an iron and wooden frame holding thousands of bottle rockets, is wheeled out. When lit, the rockets go flying off in all directions, most of them straight into the crowd. The idea is to frighten off evil spirits. When the barrage ends and the smoke has cleared, and all the fires have been put out, the procession continues on to the next shop, another beehive comes out, and another barrage ensues. As it turns out, getting hit with a bottle rocket when properly attired doesn't really hurt. However, even though you know you're protected, watching fireworks fly at your head is still pretty scary. My camera batteries died early on in the evening, but a quick YouTube search yielded a video that gives a pretty good idea of what it was like.

I took advantage of my three-day weekend and went to visit my friend John in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. I confess that over the past few years I had developed a somewhat China-centric view of Taiwan - living in Beijing, you hear people talk about Taiwan as though it's some wayward province of China, and that peaceful reunification is inevitable. One person expressed their thoughts as such: "We waited for Hong Kong, we'll wait for Taiwan." After a while you sort of stop questioning it. So, I was expecting Taiwan to feel more or less like any other province of China.

This was not at all the case. The point was underscored dramatically literally as soon as I landed in Kaohsiung. A military transport, American-built, with a Taiwanese flag emblazoned on its tail was taking off on an adjacent runway as my flight was taxiing to the gate. The rest of the weekend was full of near constant, if less dramatic reminders that Taiwan really is not part of the People's Republic of China.

Kaohsiung is a fairly laid-back city in the south of Taiwan. It's big, but not overwhelming - traffic is manageable, the buildings aren't tall, and there are plenty of trees and parks. The weather was beautiful the entire time I was there - warm, sunny, and not too humid. It's hard to articulate, but there was something very different about being in Taiwan rather than the PRC. The people seemed friendlier and less guarded, and more willing to bend rules or go briefly beyond their job description if they felt like it. The Taiwanese security guard at John's apartment complex, Pepe, had taken it upon himself to beautify the courtyard with flowers and other potted plants, and had even added a fish and turtle pond to one of the flower beds. I never met anyone in his position in China who I could have envisioned doing something similar. Incidentally, Pepe seemed to have learned English from watching Scarface, and went on a lengthy, profanity-laced tirade, peppered with random words in Spanish, about the cats he suspected of eating his turtles and what he would do to them if he ever caught them.

The Yanshui Lantern Festival was the main point of the trip. Other than that, I mostly spent my few days there catching up with John, exploring the city, enjoying good cheap food at day markets and night markets, and basically relaxing. Hong Kong is many things - dynamic, stimulating, cosmopolitan, and engaging - but it is far from relaxing. The change of scenery was welcome. All the same, it's good to be back in Hong Kong.