I’m a happy camper today, because I’m in one of my favorite cities (Qingdao), doing one of my favorite things (wandering aimlessly), because Qingdao is made for wandering, as I’ll explain in a minute.
The students have arrived in America, and I’m sure their consciousness will join them soon; it takes a while to recover from jet lag (about l day for each hour of change, and it’s about 11 hours difference here), but our last day in Korea was quite structured.
As I mentioned, we went to the DMZ, which is a somber reminder that the cold war is not quite over, and that North Korea can be a threat to peace in this area. On the way up (it’s probably less than 30 miles from Seoul to the border), there are increasing reminders that the area is on alert. There are reminders of the war monuments, trains that stopped in June 1950 with the invasion, tunnels marking efforts of the North Koreans to sabotage the peace, etc. Our goal was to visit Panmunjom, where neutral UN countries help the U.S. and South Koreans keep the peace with the North Koreans. We were given our instructions to be somber, not provoke the North Koreans, don’t point or wave, don’t take pictures in certain areas, and the atmosphere is such that you don’t dare do so.
We stopped at one tunnel, which was kind of a propaganda against the North (you can see the northern aggressors did it because the dynamite holes are placed from the north, etc. My thought was that when Korea unifies, the propaganda line may well be that the tunnel was dug by the CIA to prevent the Koreas from being unified), and North Korea, particularly under Kim Il-Song, did present several threats to South Korea, including sending assassins who were caught in the Blue House, Korea’s presidential capital, trying to kill the Korean president.
It is sobering to think that that war, which cost around 34,000 Americans and 1-4 million South Koreans, still has not been resolved, over 50 years later. The peace was an uneasy truce (the fighting up and down the peninsula took about a year; the stalemate over the peace talks took almost two years, with bitter battles for a few yards to move the front line and ultimately the demilitarized zone). The war has never formally ended.
Still, when I was there over a decade ago, the North had built a fake village with signs and loudspeakers talking about how great the North was and that’s no longer operating. There have been a few efforts to allow North and South Koreans to visit each other. There is a tour to Caesong, about 12 miles from the border, that Hyundai helps operate. Our guide took it and said before she got off the bus in South Korea, North Korean police examined every one of her pictures and deleted ones they thought were derogatory and fined her $100. That tour is about the only way Americans can visit North Korea, which remains one of the last of the real dictatorships of my youth. There’s been interesting rumors that Kim Jong-il is dead, vehemently denied, but his death will throw leadership up for grabs, as it usually does in a dictatorship.
By contrast, Qingdao is a laid-back city with wide streets, a relatively small population (3 million), a salubrious seashore (I’m a block from Seaside Beach Number 1), and mountains that come down to the sea just outside the town, one of them, Laoshan, famous as one of the jungles in Daoism.
I love wandering because of the city’s history and my location. Though I recall when I was here once before I went to the museum and saw evidence that there was settlement under the Wei Dynasty (long before MY time), Qingdaos modern history begins in the 1890s, with efforts of the Qing dynasty to establish bases here in a futile effort to block the foreign (especially Japanese) attempts to partition China. In 1897, in retaliation for the murder of a German missionary, Germany landed troops and wrested a concession in Kiautschou Bay, that included Qingdao and an area around the city. The Germans settled, recreating Bavaria, until in 1914, when Japan declared war on Germany, it attacked and besieged Qingdao, which then became a Japanese possession. Japan’s efforts to keep it, in turn, were very important in Chinese history because, when Chinese patriots learned that the West had caved in and acquiesced in the transfer of land from Germany to Japan, they protested, beginning the May 4th movement that led to the formation of the communist party in China.
While Japan surrendered Qingdao to the Chinese in 1922, the city still has a German feel to it; the architecture remains as silent testimony to the German patrimony here, especially in the reasonably compact old city (which is why I like wandering around). Since I was here last (probably about ten years), in fact, new museums have opened to highlight the German background (and the Japanese conquest in 1914 and again as part of World War II)
I was able to visit (part of my day has been planned programs) some old sites. My favorite is called the guest house, which is where Mike Seeborg and I stayed on my first visit to Qingdao. It’s the residence of the German Governor General, and for all the world looked like something from Bavaria. When we were there, we learned that Chairman Mao had stayed there for three months in 1957; a plaque marked his bedroom, and nothing had changed since his departure. I had to return to what is now a museum to see whether there was an additional plaque that Mike and Fred had stayed there, too. Unfortunately, there was none, but one new touch had been added–the bathroom had been rated a two star (I’ve got my own private rating system for toilets in China, and the one in the guest house rates higher in my book!)
Another new museum is housed in Qingdao’s most famous brands historical building (and my main reason for including Qingdao) and that’s the Tsingtao Brewery. Started in 1903 as a joint venture between Germans and Brits, it was the first beer-producing company in China (beer is an acquired taste for Chinese, and their increasing consumption makes it one of the great hopes for world brewers, including Budweiser, which has a stake in the Qingdao brand). Our guide solemnly told me that German soldiers could not fight without their beer, which is why the company got started. For whatever reason, it’s become Chinese best-known brand. The museum features many of the commercials, which is what I came to see; after all, here is a brand which was German until 1914, then captured and bought by the Japanese in 1914, and they owned it until 1945 (learning to brew Sapporo and Kirin beers themselves), when it became a Nationalist possession; then in 1949, with the liberation (i.e., the communist conquest), it became a state-owned enterprise, primarily for export (even to Taiwan!) The company’s international reputation has grown to the point where it stages an Augustfest, ala Bavaria, making the comparisons with Munich even more striking.
I also visited the German prison museum, which housed non-Chinese prisoners during the German days (not many of them said the signage; the Germans were prosperous and relatively well behaved), but political prisoners during the Koumintang and Japanese periods, including one torture room that my guide excused herself from seeing.
Yesterday evening, I had another treat in more ways than one. I’d been in touch with a stamp collector who specializes in Kiautschou, and published a book here on his collection that I have been trying unsuccessfully to find in the States. He met me and took me to Book City, a huge bookstore that brought to mind how different China is today from what it was in 1990 when I first came here. Clinton and Obama books are best sellers, as are business books. Anyway, the man, Mr. Lu, took me out for dinner (Qingdao has excellent seafood, especially clams), and invited some other collectors to join us. He also took me to his house (he has three–one in L.A., one in Vancouver, and the one in Qingdao, which he said, at $400,000 is more expensive than his other two!) His house was a bookstore of stamp literature–room after room of catalogues and monographs–and he says he has as many in L.A. One of his friends, a teacher of German, brought some of his collection of 1,300 postcards (and I thought I had a large collection of Kiautschou cards and stamps!), with picture albums from German families and other assorted associated items I’d never considered. Not bad for a teacher who told me he teaches 6 hours and makes about $200 a month, but makes more money ($100 a day) translating for German businessmen.
The evening ended with their insisting I go with them to a club for Karaoke. Pricey evening.
When I got up this morning (and later this afternoon), I wandered around the city. In the morning, I ran and did yoga along the beach, then discovered a number of former German buildings; around 2000 the local government seems to have discovered its history (and perhaps the importance of history in tourism), and marked a number of buildings with the historical data. When my guide picked me up at 9, we went to Laoshan, which I mentioned was one of the jungles that spawned Daoism, which is a uniquely Chinese religion that deals with the relationship between man and nature. The 8 immortals are supplemented by various historical figures from China’s past including the god of loyalty and wealth, the Guang Gong (my favorite), the King with a Crystal Belly, who ate everything and told the Chinese what’s safe to eat (I thought it was if it has four legs and isn’t a table, flies and isn’t an airplane) who live in palaces, not temples.
When we got back, it was an ideal time of day to wander some more, to the home of the Chinese reformer Kang You-wei, which is behind my hotel, and a wonderful look at a German-Chinese bourgeois home of the turn of the century; then by bus (l yuan or roughly 15 cents) to the old shopping street looking for the Catholic Church and the post office and the Michigan Avenue brand shops that are everywhere in China.
Qingdao will host the sailing events for the Olympics and has one of the countdown clocks (70 days three hours 6 minutes, etc.) that we’ve seen elsewhere. It’s also built an Olympic village that will become Qingdao’s first 6-star hotel, which will fit nicely in what I think of as a 6-star city.
One more note on the Olympics/earthquake reporting here. As I was walking the streets, I was seeing more and more “I love China” tee shirts. The opposition to the Olympics and the pro-Tibet rallies in the West really brought out the never-far-from-the-surface Chinese nationalism–to the point where there was a massive switch from the French Carrefour to the American Wal-Mart (did I tell you Wal-Mart foods sells durian fruit?) The editorial in the China Daily yesterday summed the results of the earthquake well (it’s the official paper): Instead of being negative and uninformed about China (by applauding the Tibet protesters), CNN had earned praise for its even-handed and even sympathetic coverage of the earthquake. Perhaps, said the paper, the West will learn about the real China. Chinoy, the reporter from CNN, said something similar: praising the coverage by the Chinese press and the TV (it’s not a political issue, though), he thought the Chinese had learned about Western-type journalism. Too bad a tragedy of this nature had to help bring humanity together.
I know you have exams coming up. Study and do well. The Koreans spend 4X as much as any other nation on after-school classes to bone up on exams. To quote Friedman again, Children in Asia are starving for your jobs.
Speaking of which, its time for dinner and my 5 a.m. wakeup call to get me to Yunnan. Zaijian. See you next weekend.