Fred Hoyt – Page 21 – Fred Hoyt's Travels

Islands of Excellence in a Sea of Chaos

One of today’s speakers described India as “islands of excellence in a sea of chaos,” and that certainly applies to our site visits on Thursday. We went to two IT companies, which is I think what the world pictures when you mention Bangalore, the “Silicon Valley” of India.

The first was Infosys, one of the largest of the IT providers. It sits in a “campus” (which is euphemism for a service ‘factory’). Service factories rather resemble campuses, and in the IT environment, which I saw 2 years ago in Hangzhou, China, at Alibaba, are frequently populated with employees scarcely removed from the college campuses. The average age is probably 24, with a standard deviation of +1. The staffing of these companies keeps the average low—and the costs accordingly down. Even hiring 38,000 people a year, Infosys loses about 20% of its staff due to attrition. The entry salary for a college graduate (mostly engineer and business students—the quantitative skills are a requisite) is $500 a month. Compare that with starting salaries in the U.S., and you’ll understand why much of the Business Processing operations (customer service, computer operations, systems) has gravitated to these companies.

The company is a classic case in successful entrepreneurship. Seven young college grads pooled $250 each in the late 70s to start it up; revenues this year were over $6 billion. Two of the founders didn’t like the business model and left before the company started; I wonder what they are doing. Part of the reason the company is so well known is that one of the founders, who was president of the company for a long time, was friends with Tom Friedman of the NY Times. In the CEO’s office, he and Friedman discussed the idea of The World is Flat, a story documented in the first chapter of the book—as an “Aha!” moment. I can well understand it. The campus is modern, with 50 acres, lakes, a gym, seven restaurants (we had lunch at one, and Sodexo might well study the model), great classrooms (President Wilson might have the IWU architects visit), an island in a sea of chaos. To get to this island of excellence, we had to travel on a road system that makes most American cities look progressive (and explains some of the problems of the Indian economy—especially distribution. Half of the crops never make it to market; they rot first).

Infosys is big on training. One of its strengths is a “foundations” course, that gives six months of training in Mysore to 10,000 recruits at a time; ironically, Infosys probably hires a big chunk of the graduates from the best Indian universities (and the top ones are really good; the Indian Institute of Technology–I think there are several campuses–takes the top 2,000 of the 200,000 students who sit for the college boards); as I understand it, the colleges take students based either on their scores on the one day exam—with no reference to Eagle Scout, football captain (though they might make an exception for cricket)—or a certain number based on a reverse discrimination. To combat the effects of the caste system, which rendered people permanently in a caste, the government requires hiring the former untouchables in the civil service and reserves a number of seats at the universities. It’s not at all uncommon in the Asian societies to emphasize education as the ticket out of poverty and/or caste, not unlike the United States, but someone told us that Indians spend up to 60% of their income on education. Where this paragraph was going, though, was to note the irony of spending 6 months on training the graduates of those good schools in the skills they need to do the job Infosys hired them to do!

Like most businesses, the Indian IT industry is mature, which is to say, the companies have a hard time differentiating themselves since they provide pretty much the same service. Infosys gave us one indication of the direction it is moving—consulting. One of the leaders of the consulting group gave us an example of the kind of workshop he will lead with a company (Infosys customers are mainly but not entirely Fortune 500 companies). It rather resembled the professional bureaucracy I talk about in my strategy classes—the application of 21 dimensions (for the 21st Century), such as the digital customer, whose demands include self service, meeting one’s own needs, and the cocreation of value. We discussed what the application of these 21 dimensions might mean to a university.

We then drove across town to a second IT company, Mphasis, which gave a nice case study of a small business (only 1b$, but up triple from when it was purchased by EDS and then Hewlett Packard three or four years ago; HP has a majority share, but the Indian government would not let a foreign country buy 100% of an Indian company until recently). It started in California as the dream of Jerry Rao, who then moved it back to India. His return is symbolic of something that is happening more frequently, as the Indian government and many companies looking for talent have encouraged Non Resident Indians (NRI) to return home to work and live.

We had one speaker, in charge of the mergers and acquisitions of a cash- rich company (which he said was rather typical of the IT firms), who was an NRI who told us about the Mphasis effort to put emphasis (had to say that) on developing niches (I thought it was interesting that the company, which does consulting, itself used an American consulting firm McKinsey and Company to help identify the strategy). Mphasis went geographical—India, western Europe, and the United States—and narrowed its industries to primarily Banking and Insurance (probably does something with State Farm, though I didn’t ask). Like every business, especially service businesses, they told us, “The race for talent is becoming bloodier.” They hired 15,000 new employees last year, some to man divisions in the United States, because for Indians, a posting in the United States is no longer as desirable as it once was; our speaker said that his son was acclimated in 2 weeks, having joined the football (i.e., soccer) and cricket teams (sponsors are paying more than superbowl rates for advertising during the match going on between India and Australia). In addition, the Economic Times today featured an article reporting a decline in the issuing of work visas for Indian nationals hoping to emigrate to the United States.

One of the most interesting features of the talk was from the Corporate Responsibility Officer, who indicated that there is a real gap between the islands and the sea of chaos. Like Infosys, and, indeed, most companies today, Mphasis has social goals as part of its culture. It has chosen to put money into education, start up entrepreneurship, and the disadvantaged. For example, after serious flooding last year, the company decided to support the building of toilets in three villages that had no toilets. It paid for fifty of them, and that prodded the government to put up money for another hundred.

No more than a hundred miles from our “Islands of Excellence” are villages which until now, never had bathrooms. The officer also told us about the campaigns necessary to change behavior so that the villagers would USE the toilets, which included a pledge to do so.

I was reminded of my visit years ago to Korea. When I met with a Scout group, they asked me what my troop did for a good turn. I replied proudly that we had just assisted the Methodist women in their big fundraiser—an attic sale. I was startled when they told me they worked at a leper colony.

I’m thankful that we don’t need to do a good turn for lepers or to build toilets for villages that never had them in the sea of chaos.

Have a Namaste

More from Bangalore

The Professional Development in International Business, hosted in Bangalore and Bombay by Florida International University, formally began this morning as the faculty participants—from around the world (most from the US, but there is a management professor from Budapest here, and two faculty from the University of the Virgin Islands)—arrived yesterday. I knew two of them from previous FDIB trips, so it wasn’t like everyone in Bangalore was a foreigner to me!

A few months ago, the Wall Street Journal ran a series on India under the heading “Flawed Miracle.” The theme it explored—the contrast between the highly developed, highly literate, and wealthy Indians, and the persistence of poverty and illiteracy– became graphically clear in our two site visits today.

The first was with the VP for Human Resources at IBM India, a very articulate Ph.D. in Economics (I think, continuing the British connection I mentioned yesterday, from a school in the UK). He was quite learned, and confessed to us that he would probably have enjoyed teaching had the pay even remotely resembled the remuneration in the business world. He talked about his own business background, which began before 1990, the period of the license raj, when the Indian government, bereft of most resources, including its ability to feed the then 600 million Indians, regulated most of the economy to husband its development, employing a socialism in the economy to complement its democracy in the hope as well of providing a “third way” between communism and capitalism that almost outlasted the Cold War that gave it birth—not to mention its usefulness!

At IBM India he manages to hire, train, and retain a world-class engineering group despite the challenges of the Indian market. He described the high attrition because of a shortage of educated folks (not college graduates, but college graduates with marketable skills; he estimates only about 25% of the engineers who graduated college know enough to use those skills, complaining that too many know only theory). The challenges he outlined—attrition is 15% in manufacturing, 25% in IT, and 50% in back room operations. In hiring, he says the younger generation is interested in 4 things—compensation (for a few hundred rupees, he said, people will change jobs—though the Economic Times warned yesterday that Business School graduates were being warned to downsize their expectations, especially at second-tier institutions), career growth and opportunities, and “care”–the social dimension, which he says is more important in India than in most other countries because of the close family ties. Parenthetically, he mentioned that his daughter called her mom—from LA, to get recipe information as she was cooking!

Two elements he thought distinctive to India were that employees are frequently “no shows”—that is, they don’t show up to begin work despite a commitment to join a company, and sometimes just “abscond,” leave without notice, sometimes taking computers as a souvenir. He said the big companies are now requiring letters from a previous employer (though in critically short areas, they poach talent from one another). In a company like IBM, which values uniformity in procedures, he says that he will emphasize career growth and opportunity and compensation at the expense of “care” (no group cricket matches, for example). We’re going to Infosys tomorrow and he suggested we’d see quite a different approach, but Infosys is an information company that is locally-based, not a western multinational.

He spoke as well about Indian labor in general, and in particular the 2% of the population that has benefited from the miracle—especially the IT sector.

Our second business visit highlighted that “other” India, a nongovernment operation that was providing the social services government can’t entirely afford to do. It was an organization set up by a Hari Krishna Hindu (yes, the Krishna movement survived the 1960s in San Francisco) who sought to do the good works that will earn him Nirvana. He started a business, partnering with business sponsors and government, to provide hot meals to many of India’s needy school children. In the miracle city of Bangalore, the company feeds over 200,000 Bangalore children—of the nearly 800,000 who would go to school or have a meal without the program (variable government programs supply the rest). The organization feeds 1.5 million students around the country and would like to have enough money to feed nearly 5 million. We saw the cauldrons which are big enough to make enough rice to feed 1,000 or make 10,000 chapati, to go on the trucks that deliver lunches….one can only wonder what about the families of the children getting the meals….Quite a distribution operation.

Speaking about food, we were hard pressed to squeeze in a lunch, so we sandwiched (ha) in a lunch visit to McDonalds, which despite its emphasis on operational efficiency and standardization, is a great case study in globalocalization; the Oakbrook chain, which has centralized its manual into an 800 page “thou shalt”, faced a situation in India where the Hindu majority (60 percent or more) eats no beef, and the Muslim minority eats no pork. That being the case, I had to eat at a McDonalds to see what the company would serve. Not surprisingly, the choices were either fish or chicken—with a few Indian dishes. I chose an interesting (to me, anyway) spicy paneer wrap, not available in the U.S., with a Thumbs Up cola (a local brand Coke purchased). The wrap was tasty, consisting of chicken, cheese, tomatoes, lettuce, and a crunchy batter—nothing moved, so I think it was ok—every ingredient was wholesome, which makes me wonder what the nutritional information was…. I atoned for my food gaffe by our welcome visit to a north Indian restaurant that featured naan—the bread– and tandoor dishes.

As I’ve mentioned many times in my blog, food is indeed cultural, and I really ought to have an international food fair for my international business class. I wonder who else would welcome chicken feet?

I have a yoga mat in my room

Associate Professor of Business Administration Fred Hoyt traveled to India for a Faculty Development in International Business program.

Mysore in Bangalore

I am pretty sure I am in India because:

a) My GPS says I’m 8000 miles from home, at 12 degrees north, 70 some degrees west, or something like that.

b) My body feels like it’s been in the air for about 26 hours. I know it will get here sometime to join me. Hopefully soon.

c) It’s 32 degrees outside, but that’s Celsius, not Fahrenheit.

d) The main crops are coconuts and sugar cane, with evidence of rice fields.

e) Traffic is developing-country level—I spent 4 hours getting from Mysore to Bangalore (about 100 miles), and that wasn’t entirely due to the presence of 4 legged animals—no elephants or camels, though a few goats, water buffalo, Brahmins (the cow kind)—and a 4 lane road that despite reminders that people should “follow traffic discipline” expanded to 6 to 8 lanes to accommodate taxis, overloaded trucks and busses, motorcycles, bicycles, and the occasional hiker.

f) I had masala dosa for breakfast (spicy potatoes in a rice pancake), eschewing roasted and baked beans—the hallmarks of a former British colony (and I’ve always suspected one of the reasons the British sought an empire—for the food).

g) There’s a yoga mat in the closet, and two do-it-yourself yoga channels on the TV.

h) I am having a hard time reading any of the official 14 languages except for English. The local one is Kanada, or something like that, but I’ve not heard anyone say “ya betcha.”

I was thinking back to my first impressions of India, formed 15 years ago, when my family and I arrived on January 1, 1997, and I wanted to know the football scores. I rushed for the Times of India (there’s that London connection again!) and found the football scores—Manchester United 1, Arsenal 0—at that time, pre internet, it took 2 weeks to find out who won the NFL playoff games (I think it was the Packers with that quarterback Aaron Favre), but it was a reminder that for the better part of two centuries, India was part of the British empire.

Today’s visits reinforced that heritage for me. For one thing, I visited the Mysore Palace. Mysore stayed under the thumb of the British resident, who assisted the Maharajah (a Hindu ruler is a Maharajah) until Indian independence in 1947, when the new state forced all the principalities to unify—I think it was the first time in Indian history that the subcontinent was under one ruler. The Maharajah, whom the British restored in 1799, built a splendid palace on the grounds of the original one that the dynasty’s founder had erected around 1400. When that burned down after 1900, he commissioned the same architect who built the Indo-Saracen buildings in Kuala Lumpur and Bombay to spare no expense in building him something similar in Mysore. Anyone who has seen those other trappings of the raj (me, in other words) would recognize the paternity—with Bohemia crystal, Venetian cut glass, and Italian marble. It owes a lot to the Moghul influence on regal architecture, but in this part of the world—the Indian subcontinent—that was the gold standard, even though the Moghuls never came this far south.

A few years ago, I read a fascinating history of the East India company, which is how the British originally became involved with India. The company had its own army (in the 1790s, the governor was Lord Cornwallis, fresh from his starring role at Yorktown), and its own government until after the Sepoy mutiny (the Indians call it the first war for independence), when it became part of the British realm and Victoria added Empress of India to her titles.

Part of the company history occurred in this area when the Maharajah of Mysore brought in a warrior named Hyder Ali, who helped the Maharajah defeat the Company; Ali’s son, in fact, deposed the Maharajah and became Tipu Sultan (sultan being one title the Muslim rulers took). The British, led by the man who later became the Duke of Wellington, aided by one of Tipu’s assistants, captured Tipu and killed him. We saw his tomb and the summer palace he built, where, surprising to me, the British kept intact his paintings depicting his victories over them. They did destroy his palace, however, and restore the ruling dynasty—who had the guidance of a British resident.

I guess I didn’t think about it, but India was the target of a number of European empires at the time the Company was making its moves. The Portuguese were early in the game, and got ousted from Goa long after Independence. The Dutch were in the area, and before the Napoleonic Wars, had Sri Lanka. And of course, the French were here as well, and French troops helped Hyder Ali defeat the English in the 1760s as part of what the Europeans called the 7 years war, but Americans—even not knowing of the battles in India between the French and British—call the French and Indian War. Now you know why!

Note: this last paragraph history lesson is inspired by the Grimm’s fractured fairy tales on Bullwinkle! Goodnite.

Roamin in Rome

August 8, 2011

You know I like to see as much as possible when I am somewhere, so I think you can understand my challenge here in Rome when I describe it for you: it’s as though every Chinese capital I’ve been to was all in one place—Beijing, Xian, Soochow, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Anyang (actually haven’t been there yet), Kaifeng, Luoyang, etc., and that most of what was there remained (sometimes recycled, as in a Buddhist temple becoming a church, or a small palace becoming a temple). That’s my impression of Rome—overwhelming. For about 500 years, it dominated Western Europe, borrowing a lot of Greek ideas, including religion and architecture; and for about 2000 years it has been the center of Christianity (since the Reformation of Catholicism). It’s the center of Empire I thought I’d see in Athens, but didn’t.

Here’s how I tried to master—or perhaps experience is a better word—as much as I could.

Tours. Carolyn and I did four tours with guides. When we got in Saturday, we took the on-off bus tour, which we’ve found the ideal introduction to a new city. Turns out, the ancient walls (circa 3^rd century A.D) enclose a small city—around 16 kilometers, and most of the sites are in that area. As you’ll see though, most streets were too narrow for buses, but the trip did hit the highlights—the major plazas and palaces, skirting ancient Rome and the Vatican City.

Two of our tours were of the ancient world. One was of the Appian Way, which got us out of the ancient city into the early Christian catacombs. The other was a walking tour I did of the three major areas of the Palatine Hill, one of the seven hills on which Rome was built. It was the center of the religion and politics, including what’s left of the palaces (the marble is mostly gone—much of it adorning churches, some of them in the ancient city of Rome; Constantine’s conversion around 325 ensured the churches would start taking precedence over the temples), including the ones of the first emperor, Augustus, and the remnants of the huge additions Nero did; the Forum, where in the republic senators debated issues of the day (bailout anyone?); the supposed home of Romulus and Remus, the founders of ancient Rome, the pyre on which was burned Julius Cesar, ending the Republic; and above all, the Coliseum (which got its name from the Colossus of Nero, a huge statue that stood on top of the arena, a name it has given to other sports arenas over the years). To the cheers of 60000 Romans (including Victor Mature in my youth) gladiators fought each other, animals (they’ve been excavating the area under the stage which made possible a flow of activity), in the “sports” of the day. My favorite, though, has to be the arches of victory the legions marched through during the reigns of Constantine and Trajan; the 50’s movies featured lots of the Romans tromping and triumphing, as they in fact did for centuries.

The other tour was of the Vatican City, the smallest independent enclave in the world. The visit there almost required a tour to “jump the queue” since August is THE tourist month (Europe essentially closes) and Rome is a popular destination. I heard something like 3 million tourists, but that may have been just the crowd at the Vatican today. Three hours barely scratched the surface. We did a quick tour of some of the rooms of the Vatican museum, which as befits the history of the Papacy, has some of the greatest art in Western Civilization, including Michelangelo’s Pieta (would I love to wander in the entire museum!), the Sistine Chapel, where Michelangelo spent nine years painting the ceiling (and designing the uniforms of the Swiss Guard which protects the Pope) and the ‘last judgment” behind the altar, and Botticelli and other famous Renaissance artists covered the sides of the walls (no pictures allowed inside what is a private chapel of the Pope, built by Pope Sixtus, hence Sistine), and St. Peter’s Church, which is the largest Catholic church in the world (none are allowed to be bigger). Constructed over 300 years on the site of the burial of St Paul, it’s lavishly decorated, as you might imagine. The Popes can determine where they want to be buried (and many of the 200 plus are in St. Paul’s; the papacy was not always located in the Vatican City; for a time, the Popes were kept semi prisoners in Avignon France); some had lavish monuments, others were mummified, etc. At one time, the Pope had political as well as religious power—as late as the 17^th century, for example, he was one of the instigators of a war after the Turkish siege of Vienna in 1683 that ended in 1699 with a treaty that began the slow decline of the Ottoman Empire (tying together parts of my trip!).

A personal highlight though was a function of the art deco boutique we are staying at—the Hotel Locarno. It’s famous for being the centerpiece of the movie, Hotel Locarno, which I do not know anyone has seen, but it’s charming for its 6 person cage elevator, rooftop restaurant—and the fact that it lends bicycles. In other words, it’s helped me see this manageable city by bicycle. The best time to see was Sunday morning; I was on the road at 7—and had the city essentially to myself (most Romans vanish during August; most tourists vanish in the morning), when it was almost cool enough to enjoy. I was especially interested in finding the Baroque masterpieces (can you imagine, the Romans brought back many obelisks from Egypt; one Baroque master put one on an elephant), but the small streets, many of them pedestrian malls, went all the places that the bus could not reach. I went two other times, including tonight, when I took most of the Baroque tour from Fodor’s; I hadn’t realized Rome was the ringleader in the Baroque, which was part of the counter reformation, the Catholic Church’s response to the rise of Protestantism in northern Europe—an over the top ostentatious glorification of God. I had to go back to the main Jesuit Church for a second look tonight. Though it’s a lot busier at 7 pm than 7 am, Rome is still a fascinating city to wander around, on foot or on bicycle.

In 36 hours, our journey will be over, around 1200 digital pictures and 15 guidebooks richer. My favorite business story occurred in Istanbul, in the Grand Bazaar. The Bazaar, built in the 16^th century, houses around 5000 shops, some selling the same trinkets (and knockoffs) you find in the Silk market in Beijing, some selling the high class merchandise you can find in the Pearl market in Beijing—and everything in between.

I tried bargaining using my Chinese skills. “How much for an Old Friend?” I asked. “We’re not old friends,” the grizzled shopkeeper replied, “ but if you buy this, we’ll be better friends in the future.” We’re now better friends.

Talking Turkey

Talking Turkey:

Our tour next took us to Istanbul, which was on my bucket list, and it still is because even one fully-packed day is not enough to more than sample the at least 2000 year old city of 16 million, the capital of not one Empire, but two—the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantine) and the Ottoman Empire

(after 1453). Approaching it from the sea, we clearly saw the three parts of the city—the Golden Horn (old city), Galata (the older commercial district), and the new city which is on the Asian side of the Bosphorus. Istanbul sits astride one of the major maritime arteries in the world—the straits between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. That strategic location has been important in its history, since the grain from Black Sea countries (Russia and the Balkans) was important in feeding Europe, and could provide revenue to support an empire (which it did). It also got the Ottoman Empire involved in the politics of Europe and the Middle East.

What we saw was mostly the Turkish delights (a local candy; pardon the pun), the splendors of the Ottoman Empire—including the Blue Mosque, a magnificent dome, the Topkapi Palace of the sultans, and the now-museum Church of Divine Wisdom, probably better known as the Hagia Sophia. The latter dates from the early Byzantine period, a wondrous Orthodox Church that became a mosque after the conquest; when Turkey became a secular republic, the government turned Hagia Sophia into a museum, and stripped the walls back to when it was probably the largest Church in Christendom, revealing the mosaics that are, and deserve to be, world renown. It was the only Byzantine art we saw in Istanbul, so I was glad to have spent an hour in the Byzantine/Christian museum in Athens.

Topkapi Palace was quite impressive. The seat of government for the “sublime porte” as it was known, its only rival for me might have been some of the Mughal palaces in India, which have some of the same architecture—the eaves, arches, open areas, tile-art decorations (floral or calligraphic; Islamic art doesn’t permit paintings of people). One of the areas that surprised me (though it shouldn’t have) was the religious display. The Ottoman Empire early conquered Mecca/Medina, and thus became the protector of the Holy Relics of the Prophet Mohammed. There were relics (the beard of the prophet, his sword, a footstep), as well as the rod of Abraham and something from Moses (the Ottomans also controlled Jerusalem). I read somewhere that periodically the Sultan would trade Christian relics to the West.

The trip to Istanbul tied for me several of my trips together—from Mongolia (where the Turks supposedly originated) to the trip in Eastern Europe last year, which was the battleground between East and West—the sieges of Vienna (which at least twice beat back Turkish incursions). The early Sultans saw themselves as the inheritors of the Roman mantle as universal rulers, just as did many of their Western European contemporaries, with incursions into northern Poland, not to mention the occupation of the Balkans, and the incessant Russian-Turkish wars, as Russia crept to the Black Sea (conquering the Khanate of Crimea and depriving the Turks of the cavalry it provided).

As we cruised along the coast of Anatolia (Asia Minor in Turkey), we stopped at Izmir, a city once known as Smyrna, and for a long time settled by Greeks. As a result of the division of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, and the resistance to it by Turks led by Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey, Greeks were pressured to leave; about the same time a fire and an earthquake caused major damage in the city. When we landed, we had a choice of a city tour, or a visit to “another pile of rocks.” Those who took the city tour told us that it consisted of “here there used to be…”

Carolyn and I took the tour to “another pile of rocks,” which happened to be at Pergamon, one of the most striking of the 4000 ruins in Turkey. We got to see the Acropolis, and the medical spa; the Acropolis sits about 1000 feet above the town, our visit facilitated by a cable car. The medical spa was in pretty good repair, but the Pergamon was another of those ancient ruins excavated to Western Europe—in this case, to Berlin. Happily, when I was in Berlin in 2002, our guide insisted in taking us to the Pergamon museum, not realizing how useful to me that would be a decade later. We also stopped at Ephesus, another impressive “pile of rocks”.

Greece is the Word

August 1, 2011

Greece is the word

We’re back in Greece again, having wandered in and out of Turkey—where we’ll wander back again and here’s some impressions:

Athens looks less like the capital of an empire (which it wasn’t) than the spiritual and cultural leader of the Western world, a position it owes as much to the Romans, who adopted the architecture and the gods (whom they renamed—Zeus became Jupiter, for example) and the Byzantines, who were the curators of classical wisdom and channeled it back to the west in time for the Renaissance—as to the political power of Greece.

Athens did save Europe from one Asian Scourge (the Persian Empire, but that was in the 5^th century B.C.) as the leader of a Greek confederation, and Greek city-states left ruins of settlement throughout the region, but the highlights of the city—the Parthenon and the Acropolis—date from the end of the Persian wars. The grateful citizens of the other cities gave Athens protection money, and Athenians spent it on the fortress (Acropolis) housing temples that celebrated the city’s patron, Athena, in what is now a world heritage site looming above the city. It helps to imagine what it might have been like that I’ve been to the British Museum, which houses the “Elgin marbles” that once graced the temple of Athena—Lord Elgin took the temple decorations home, but was forced to sell them to the British Museum (which can fend off Greek requests for their return by claiming to have “purchased” the marbles, not stolen them).

As I said, the Romans took the architecture and expanded on it, both in Athens and elsewhere. In the city, there’s a Temple of Zeus, built by Emperor Hadrian, who had a soft spot for the Greeks, who had reciprocated, building a triumphal arch for the Emperor’s visit to dedicate the Temple. Alexander the Great, a Macedonian barely mentioned in Greece, helped popularize Hellenistic Civilization as far as India, but it was the Roman legions who made it the European standard.

Greece’s esteem in Western civilization also comes from its being a democracy (of a select few), who voted to use the money to build the Acropolis. Thus, Greece has earned a sentimental spot in curricula and emotions, which led, among other things, to my taking Western Civilization, and the EU voting to bail out the notoriously corrupt economy, not to mention Lord Byron, who joined the fight that brought Greece independent of the Ottoman Empire in the 1820s (and cost Lord Byron his life).

From the modern period, there’s the parliament (formerly the palace of the first Greek king, one of the princes of Bavaria; when he did not work out, the European powers placed a Danish prince on the throne, and his dynasty lasted till the mid 1970s). One interesting statue is to Melina Mercouri, actress and politician, but another is of Harry Truman, whose Truman Doctrine and Marshall Plan helped save Greece for the west after World War II; a bitter civil war against the communists resulted in an anti-communist victory and a pretty ruined city!

Greek Islands

Reflections 2024

As I have said, if you want to savor Greek civilization, you have to sample the settlements the Greeks had in the Eastern Mediterranean and on the coast of Turkey. That was one of the purposes of this trip–to Crete and Naxos and Delos and above all, the photogenic Santorini. That island, blown up in a massive volcanic eruption, has the familiar white and blue buildings that identify it immediately. Many of the islands have, by contrast, ruins that demonstrated their importance in the ancient Greek world. Not so much today, however, but the ruins themselves are extensive and impressive. Perched atop the hill, Santorini is accessible by funicular–or donkey!

Some of the other islands included Patmos (where the Book or Revelation was written in a cave), and surprising island of Crete. There, we toured the palace of King Knossos of Minoan fame, a wonderful museum, and the Venetian fort, a reminder of the Serene Republic’s grandeur .

And the wonderful windmills at Mykonos. Easy to remember, but hard to keep straight.

Last Day (really)

What I did this morning really summarized at least the China part of the month-long journey. I got up in the morning and stood in line (for an hour) waiting for the National Museum to open. The tickets are free, but limited, so getting there early was a priority. I think I was number 20 in line. I had time to see three exhibits (not necessarily in this order):

The first one was Ancient China to 1911. While I took some pictures of the artifacts, I was more fascinated by the explanations of the dynasties and what they brought to Chinese history. The coverage included descriptions of the Chinese periphery (the other than Han peoples) and some information on foreign relations. I paid special attention to the 80-year Yuan Dynasty (founded by Genghis Khan). Most museums have wondrous collections of Chinese materials; Scouts who went to New Hampshire last year with me saw one in the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. What was surprising to me was that the last time I was here (the museum seemed to be always closed), which was probably around 2000, the exhibits stopped at the Ming Dynasty, and the explanations could have been lifted directly from Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Mao—and probably were. Feudal was the most common word (or to put it one way, it was like the museums in Vietnam). I remember asking my colleague Dr. Jin why history stopped around 1400. Based on his experience as a mainlander whose family was persecuted during the Cultural Revolution, he suggested that any closer to the present incurred the risk of a revision in the party line—and dire consequences for the historian. 1400 was safe.

The new exhibit, much more spritely displayed, demonstrated why China’s cultural supremacy was so pronounced in Vietnam and East Asia.

The original flag of the New China in 1949

The second exhibit I found quite by mistake. It had some weird title like, “the Rejuvenation of the Chinese People.” It was also in a difficult-to-get-to part of the immense building, which is a twin to the Great Hall of the People, where 1000 delegates meet in the Chinese Parliament. I suspected it was the party view of history since 1840, since I knew that the new Museum had merged with the Museum of the Revolution. When I got into the exhibit, I realized that yes, it was about the freeing of the Chinese people from the century of humiliation, and I was the only foreigner there. The captions were mostly in Chinese, but it’s the Chinese I could read (sort of) from learning my Chinese during the Cultural Revolution. There was the otherwise missing rhetoric on feudal society and the imperialists who made war on China and whose businessmen and missionaries drove a militarist policy that reduced China to poverty and oppression. This was the “remember history, save the nation” that I saw in several places, culminating with a party history of the period through the end of the 1990s and the wisdom of following Deng Xiaoping’s version of Communism—the creation of the New China.

The third exhibit was the one I knew I had to see more than I wanted to see. It was the “New New China,” the global player of global economic integration (and political influence), as emphasized by Louis Vuitton and some of the art he inspired. The first room was dominated by octagonal mirrors featuring a video of an explosion of a rock, called “the beginning.” One of the highlights was a variety of trunks that LV had created over the near-century of its existence. This was the “New New China” I’ve been talking about (and if there’d been a few copy-LV bags, it would have been perfect).

And then it was time to go home. Here’s what I’ll miss (and some of the items on it may surprise you).

1) Fresh pineapple in Thailand, and fresh fruit in Southeast Asia

2) Murtabak in Malaysia, and the ambience of Penang

3) Order in Singapore, but the chance to bicycle in a jungle

4) Crossing the street or walking on the sidewalks in Vietnam. Good exercise. Adrenaline rises.

5) Vietnamese food

6) Vietnamese prices

7) Old and new friends in all of Asia

8 ) Hong Kong scenery

9) Macau’s resemblance to Lisbon, and vice versa

10) Imperial sights in Beijing

11) Traveling with students, sharing experience and enthusiasm and knowledge. Hopefully, some will be infected.

12) Traveling alone, which I enjoy partly because of #11. Better restaurants as a result, and am responsible for one irresponsible person.

13) Crowds, because there must be something worthwhile at the end

14) Solitude, because crowds make you appreciate it when you can get it

15) Realizing nothing’s in English and no one speaks English and it’s obvious I’m from out of town

16) Learning new things, and remembering old. Putting things together to make sense.

17) Learning from guides. And sometimes teaching them.

18) Asian toilets. I like a challenge.

19) Long train rides. Did you ever find where I left those cobras on the train in Vietnam?

20) Beijing duck someplace atmospheric

21) Working on my Chinese to the point where Chinese answer back in Chinese—and I understand what they’re saying

22) Long flights are great if you can sleep—or if you read

23) Mindlessly wandering through markets or parks

24) Asia

25) Adventure. Give me a few days and I’ll be ready for my next one!

The “New New China” — Last Day in Asia

Mao proclaimed the “New China” in 1949 from the gate of Tiananmen, a China free of imperialism and one that would reclaim its role as a great power and a leader in promoting peace and stability. They’re still the themes of the current regime.

It occurred to me when I returned to Beijing that I’m witnessing, as well, the “New New China,” in the big cities anyway, prosperous, modern, integrated into the world economy—and full of a middle class that understands consumerism!

I saw both in Dalian. As I identified yesterday, the city was born of the ambitions of the Russians and the Japanese, who fought a major war on Chinese territory for Chinese territory—without resistance from the Chinese, who’d lost the right when they lost the war against Japan in 1895. Japan wanted the resources Manchuria held; Russia wanted to compensate for a “mistake” it made when it reached the Pacific. Unlike the U.S., which found San Diego, L.A., San Francisco, and Seattle had harbors, Russia had Vladivostok, which froze in the winter. In addition, by its borders with China, Russian contact with its Far East had to go around the long Amur—I prefer the Chinese name, Black Dragon River—bend. Hence, Russia cut straight across with the trans Siberian/Chinese Eastern Railroad, then dropped a railroad to Dalian from Harbin, a city still with some marvelous Russian buildings. In fact, Stalin tried to get the Chinese to cede Russia the use and possession of Dalian into the 1950s (Sino Soviet friendship indeed!). The Japanese, who took the Liaodong Peninsula, which included Dalian, from the Russians, with the consent of the United States (Roosevelt won a Peace Prize!) made it the headquarters of the Kwantung Leased Territory, run by those generals who gave us World War II in the Pacific. It was the location of the railway headquarters too, that helped drain the resources—coal and iron—that helped make Japan one of the great powers. As I recall, Japan kept the Kwantung Leased Territory as a possession into World War II. I know I have Japanese stamps used in Dalian through at least the 1930s.

The “new new” China was also on display. June 1 is celebrated in China as International Children’s Day. Given the One Child Policy, there were a lot of “little emperors” yesterday, in their finest clothes, usually with their grandparents, everywhere. In the morning, my guide took me to Ocean Park, a seaside park/aquarium that features several shows. In line with the new Russian theme (the languages are Japanese, Russian, and Chinese—much less English than elsewhere; I was easy to spot as the guy from out of town in the park), during the busy months there are Russian dancers, “beautiful blonde ladies with long legs,” my female(!) guide intoned. There’s a Russian street which has some old Russian buildings (one, an “Arbat” restaurant, reminded me of a similar street in Moscow, where similar goods are sold—the matryoshka dolls, Soviet-military things, binoculars, etc.) I had a guide once in Beijing who took us to the Russian market, where mafiosa-looking people came and loaded suitcases with goods to sell in Russia. “Is this a good place to shop, ” I asked her. “Not good enough for Chinese,” she

sniffed. And there is a Japanese street too, and more Japanese buildings left (the police station is now a Citibank), but the Japanese rule lasted from 1905 through 1945. And Dalian has a street I call Michigan Avenue, like so many of the big Chinese cities, with world-class brands (the real ones; the copies are a block away)

When I got back to Beijing, I headed for Dashalar, a street I remembered fondly for its small shops, in front of the Arrow Gate to the Forbidden City. It was close enough to walk. I remembered vaguely construction the last time I was there, and what had happened is that the area had gotten a complete makeover, made to look old and traditional—kind of forced, I thought. Next to the shops with the traditional brands (many of them from the vilified 19th century Qing Dynasty) from Beijing and elsewhere (a silk shop from the 1700s, sauces since 1871, etc.) in made-to-look traditional shops, were the Starbucks and the Armanis. The toilets were real (only the handicapped stalls or senior stalls have western sit-downers; and in any case bring your own papers), and so were the restaurants. The choice of a “last supper” was easy: Roast Duck at a place that had the fewest foreigners!

I walked down the back streets until I reached an area where the old shops were not “olde shoppes” to remind me that I was in China.

I leave the hotel in 7 hours, and I am hoping to get some last sightseeing in. My goal is the National Museum; I’ve not been there for years (it was often closed), and I understand a 2008 renovation tripled the size. The number of tickets is limited so I’ll probably stand in line after breakfast until the place opens in hopes of getting one. In line with the New New China, a special exhibit is on Louis Vuitton! I like my irony delicious.

Fred, the First Emperor, and the Russo Japanese War

The first emperor, Qin Shi huang, came to the city I visited north of Beijing over two centuries ago in search of an elixir that would guarantee him immortality. Needless to say, the fountain of youth eluded him (as it did Ponce de Leon and others), but the grateful (or frightened—emperors could be quite capricious) citizens renamed the city in his honor, which is how Qinhuangdao (Emperor Qin’s Island) got its name—and two thousand years later, it’s still the only city named for him.

My goal was much more modest; I wanted to see somewhere I’d not been that might be interesting. That’s what I was doing there, in a city of about 3 million containing the best harbor in North China.

Qinhuangdao is the hub for two nearby cities, Shanhaiguan and Beidahe, that it turned out were more interesting to me.

Shanhaiguan was located in what the Romans would have called the “limne.” Thus, it became a garrison town early, based on being where land and water meet—and where the Great Wall comes down to the sea. Beginning in the late 14th century, “old dragon head,” the encampment at the pass, assumed importance in barring the Manchurians and Mongolians from invading China; in 1644, however, an officer opened the gates for the Manchu invaders, who proceeded to Beijing and swept the Ming Dynasty into history. In 1900, as part of the suppression of the Boxers, the 8 Allied armies ransacked old dragon head; it was not rebuilt until the 1980s, and has become a tourist attraction (5 stars, no less). It had a maze within the walls for training troops! Qianlong visited here (he was emperor for over 60 years) and inscribed a thought on a rock (he did that everywhere), which was defaced by the Allied armies and restored along with the fort. His statue is there, and for a fee you can have your picture taken with him.

Shanhaiguan is also a walled city, and we visited part of the encircling wall (and part of the Great Wall), the “first pass under heaven.” Within the rebuilt wall, the city has traditional buildings—one story, with eaves, a museum—the home of the wealthy Wang family, providing a stark contrast to the grim cinder-block high rises outside the city walls.

We then drove to Beidahe, a salubrious seaside resort for the rich to escape Beijing, both then and now. At one time, the area was the summer home of the foreign diplomats (there were barracks for the troops, and the German and Japanese maintained foreign post offices); then it was the summer home of the party elites—Mao and Lin Biao, his successor, had villas there.

Today, ironically, the area welcomes a lot of foreign visitors—from Russia! The three languages for most signs? Chinese, English, and Russian. My guide said during July/August she doesn’t know whether it’s a Chinese city or a Russian city.

Well, that was yesterday. Today I’m writing from Dalian, a city of 7 million that is important in the histories of Russia, Japan, and China. On a peninsula extending into the Yellow Sea, it had the warm water harbor that Russia craved in the Orient. So much so that the Russians bullied the Japanese (who had defeated the Chinese in 1894-1895) into surrendering the spoils of war (the Liaotung Peninsula)—to them. Dalian officially celebrates its birthday from 1899, when it became a Russian city called Port Arthur. Five years later, the Japanese fleet appeared before the harbor, sank the Russian navy, then declared war. The war here was brutal, with about 60,000 dead Japanese and 20,000 Russians, but the Russians lost another fleet (the one from the Baltic sailed halfway around the world to get defeated at Tsushima Straits). In a peace brokered by Theodore Roosevelt (who won a Nobel Prize for it), the Russians surrendered Liaotung to the Japanese. For the Russians, the defeat hastened the demise of the Romanovs (see the movie about the Battleship Potemkin). For the Japanese, the defeat was the first by an Asian over a Western power (at least since Genghis Khan), and hastened the end of empires that went on till the end of the century. Japan controlled Dalian until its defeat in World War II, and used the base to dominate Manchuria economically (the region has resources, such as coal and iron, that Japan did not) through special rights granted to the Japanese-owned South Manchurian Railroad Company, and eventually separated it from China under “The Last Emperor,” Puyi.

We went to the main battlefield, a hill overlooking the harbor which took 66 days for the Japanese to conquer. The Chinese have kept the battlefield, and the monument the Japanese crafted from bullets (to their arrogance and militarism, says the signs), but have turned the park into a reminder—roughly, don’t forget the past. If one needed another symbol of why China considered the 19th and early 20th centuries a century of shame, or humiliation, it certainly could be here. Russia and Japan fought on Chinese soil while a weak Qing government let it happen.

Quite a history lesson these past two days!