Author: Fred Hoyt

As we hurtle from Hong Kong to Beijing (or another 20-plus-hour train ride)

It’s always difficult (for me anyway) to leave Hong Kong, and I think our students on this trip now know why; if you are going to have extra time anywhere, this is the place. We had a lot of time here partly because the train to Beijing doesn’t run every day; and I think it’s a great place to visit because of the comfort level most foreigners have here. Although the city is over 94% Chinese, and today over 80% of the visitors come from the mainland, Hong Kong was British long enough (1841-1997, with the exception of WWII) to have a veneer of Westernization.

Consider the need to get around. The Star Ferry may well be the best bargain in town, if not the world. Connecting Hong Kong Island and some of the over 400 smaller islands together, as well as the Kowloon Peninsula, the Ferry provides some of the most stunning views of the stunning harbor. The rapid transit lines move millions of people a day, and the double-decker busses and trams make sightseeing fun. Jim and I took the Star Ferry across last night to Central (the Financial District), then took the train back to Kowloon to find a place to eat, along the street my friend Eleanor had recommended near our hotel for dumplings.

Food is another reason to visit Hong Kong, as I mentioned before. Before we left today, Eleanor and her sister took me and Jim to the Little Sheep restaurant. That’s the English name. In Chinese, it’s the Little Fat Sheep restaurant. It’s on the 2nd floor (which is really the third floor), and I’ve found that above the second floor one sees few Guilo (foreigners). That’s not surprising since none of the menus were in English—but with our friends, we had one of the best dim sum meals here (and we’ve had several great dim sum meals). There’s an old saying in this area about Cantonese food, “if it flies and isn’t an airplane, we eat it; if it has four legs and isn’t a table, we eat it.” I would bet a good Cantonese chief could make a table or an airplane taste pretty good.

Yesterday’s group visits demonstrated to me what Mark Sheldon, IWU’s ambassador to East Asia, and I discussed: We have wonderful alumni and contacts through our alumni. Mark and Matt Drege, a 1999 alum, talked about the expatriate life. Both came temporarily—and have stayed, in Mark’s case, almost 30 years, and in Matt’s case, about 6 years. Mark has had a variety of academic roles, mostly in political science, and is familiar with not-for-profits and the politics of the area; Matt came out with PWC, an accounting firm, and did not want to go home. They did an excellent job in describing what it’s like to live in Hong Kong, and to work there. Mark has been active in the democracy movement—and has been in Hong Kong long enough to vote. He said that the presence of so many mainlanders (they can have 7-day visas; ours were for 90 days) sometimes creates tensions because of the cultural differences (Cantonese is the preferred dialect, not the Putonghua of the mainland). Matt changed jobs (and reinvented himself three or four times since leaving IWU; he stressed the importance of continually changing yourself to fit changing times) to work with AIA in corporate governance, and helped the company in its divorce from AIG. It sounds like he has done some interesting work. I met him at Starbucks where he was arranging his day, and his phone call referenced business in Thailand and the Philippines. His investment strategy includes major Asian enterprises, include having some savings in Renminbi.

Queenie Li, who was my advisee and a double major in business and music, helped her parents’ presentation to us on their company. Mr. Li is what Mark described as a typical “Cantonese” entrepreneur, having built a niche textile company—in cashmere—from scratch. The competitive nature of the business led to factories in China and Bangladesh to lower costs. He said that the Bangladeshi work force can be unpredictable. They like to strike, and one time struck for wages lower than what they were being paid! He contracts with major retailers in the United States and Europe, but also has several stores of his own, and his own brand. He stressed a lot of personal contacts (more important than the digital age), being honest, and understanding the complexities of cultures. He took us to one retail outlet, and several of our students will look a lot better next year (or their parents will).

It was obvious when we crossed the border (especially when we left Shenzhen, the town just north of Hong Kong; it was one of the first cities Deng Xiaoping opened to foreign trade in the early 1980s, and is now a booming city of about 4 million, which resembles Hong Kong a lot more than what we’ve seen since. As we’ve gone deeper into China, we’ve seen new infrastructure, especially roads, but cities that are not neon-dazzling.

One of several reasons for taking the train is to demonstrate to students that Asia is not just glittering cities with skyscrapers, and as we’ve gone through Guangdong province, the manufacturing capital of the world, they’ve certainly seen that.

On to Beijing—just under 20 hours more!

It’s morning now in North China, and some observations on the countryside we’re passing through: We’re in wheat country (the home of Chinese noodles); some of the agricultural implements are mechanical—looks like harvesters to this city boy; the houses are brick, very functional, which is to say, plain; the rust belt is alive and well here; and the infrastructure improvements are real, although in the countryside, much of the traffic is in trucks. Rural China, as our students will see, is quite different from Beijing. Someone told me that the move from the farm to the city has lessened because the government is now subsidizing farm products (and commodity prices are escalating, leading to inflation here and elsewhere, but to an improved standard of living in the countryside). Farm unrest has toppled many a dynasty, and the current one is well aware of that.

I have been to Macau almost every time I’ve been to Hong Kong; indeed, I’ve stayed overnight a few times in the former Portuguese possession. I liked the Mediterranean feel so much, in fact, that it was one of the reasons I had to go to Portugal, which I did last summer. What would it be like to return to Macau having been to Portugal, I wondered?

I had the chance to find out Sunday, and took two students with me on the hour-and-a-half ferry ride across the Pearl River Delta.

There were really excellent museums in Lisbon dealing with Portugal’s once extensive overseas empire, including one on what the Portuguese still consider their special relationship with the Far East. Vasco da Gama is a national hero for having reached India, while Columbus, a Portuguese who sailed for Spain, is barely mentioned. That small country on the fringe of Europe crept down the coast of Africa, reaching India in the early 1600s, acquiring a trading post at Goa that remained a part of Portugal until India seized it in the 1970s (I learned that one of the colonial buildings in Macau, the “Moorish barracks” housed an Indian regiment—from Goa). In 1513, the Portuguese cajoled the Chinese into permitting a shipwrecked crew to dry its goods at Macau, and the Portuguese stayed until 1999. Until Hong Kong supplanted it as the main entrepot in the China trade, after the first Opium War, Macau played the premier role for foreigners. All trade with China was through Canton, but the traders were not allowed to stay all year in Canton, so they lived in Macau. Their families could not reside in Canton, either, so they lived in Macau. The Protestant cemetery houses tombstones that list the vicissitudes of life on the China coast—died of malaria or typhus, in childbirth, at sea, storming the forts of the Boca Tigris (Canton), etc.

Although the city declined in importance after Britain acquired Hong Kong, it remained part of the Portuguese empire, and parts of it grew to resemble Lisbon. The pastel colored colonial buildings, especially the governor’s palace (the pink and white exterior resembles one of the imperial palaces in the mother country), seem more Mediterranean than South China sea. The Portuguese officer’s club would not be out of place in Lisbon, and is one of the more elegant places to eat in town. The McDonald’s, housed in a yellow building, may have the finest setting in the world for the Oakbrook-based company. The food remains—I had African Chicken, the students who came with me had Portuguese rice, and we all had a Portuguese egg tart (just like in Portugal). There are also some blue tile/murals, just like in the mother country. The city has a number of elegant Catholic churches, and the treasuries have the monstrances and other artifacts of Catholic churches, just like the Museum of the Orient in Lisbon. A huge fort remembers the presence of the Dutch, whose repulse in 1622 on St. John’s day gave the city its patron saint. And Portugal’s Homer, Luis Camoes, lived in Macau for a time, and there’s a park named for him (of course, I was the only one on our tour in Portugal who had ever heard of him, but it was nice to make the connection).

In 1999, Portugal returned Macau to China, as a special administrative region for 50 years. Thus, although the order of the signage is now reversed (Chinese then Portuguese), Portuguese is still an official language (though not widely spoken). While I came for the old (and the mystery; as a neutral in World War II, Portuguese Macau provided a place of refuge—almost 500,000 Chinese fled here, slightly less than today’s population, and spies abounded as well), most tourists flock to Macau to gamble. Hong Kong has race tracks (some of the students talked about going to a race), Macau has the casinos. Pre-1999, Stanley Ho (he of four wives) had the monopoly; today, it resembles Las Vegas, with a Sands, Wynn, etc., built mostly on reclaimed land in the last ten years. When we got to immigration, I was pleased because there was a line for senior citizens, while the tour groups clogged the others. The students took almost an hour to get through, that’s how many (mostly mainland Chinese) tour groups were there. The newer attractions are meant to keep tourists longer; a huge TV tower for observation and bungee jumping (we watched someone who had paid about $300 U.S. to plunge 1,500 feet), a Grand Prix museum (there’s a Grand Prix in September) and upscale shopping that can overshadow the traditional charm if one is not careful.

In all, another memorable day.

At over 1,300 feet, the “peak” in Hong Kong towers over the harbor and the island; it also provides the backdrop for one of the most engaging settings for any city in the world. Shanghai may have an equally impressive waterfront, but Hong Kong has mountains and water. When combined, the Chinese characters mean scenery, and that’s one word for Hong Kong. Walking along the promenade that fronts Victoria Harbor and the peak, at night with the buildings lit up, provides truly one of the most memorable sights on the trip. I remember the first time (in 1990) blurting out, “This is more western than New York,” and in some ways, it is.

There’s an energy here that is palpable, fitting for a city that since its birth has been a commercial funnel between China and the West. The Qing dynasty, having spurned a Western emissary in 1792, saying the West had nothing China wanted, had limited trade to South China, the city of Canton. Unfortunately for the Chinese, the British did find something in India that the Chinese wanted to buy, and they bought it like they were addicted to drugs—it was opium. The drain of money from the country prompted the Chinese to try to ban the opium, and they burned it and threw the foreigners out of Canton in the late 1830s. Thus started the first Opium War, out of which came a treaty that ceded Hong Kong Island to the British—in perpetuity. A second opium war from 1858-1860 led to the acquisition of the Kowloon Peninsula, across from the island (and where we’re at), again in perpetuity. In 1898, in yet a third round of Sino-foreign troubles, the Chinese ceded the “New Territories,” but for only 99 years. The end of that treaty resulted in negotiations that in 1997 led to the handover of Hong Kong from the British to the Chinese. I still have a T-shirt, worn only that one night, that said, “Good-Bye Great Britain, June 30, 1997,” on one side, and “Hello, China, July 1, 1997.”

I know there were people who feared that China would rule Hong Kong with a heavy hand, but the PRC seems to have kept its word in the “Special Administrative Region.” There’s a lot of new public activity here—especially construction. A high-speed train is being built (I saw protests against it on the University of HK campus on partly environmental grounds) to Beijing and Shanghai that will bind the country more tightly to the mainland. And Beijing still hopes to reunite the “renegade province” of Taiwan to the mainland peacefully, which makes it imperative to make it seem possible for “one country” to have “two systems.” Hong Kong is still a major player in the trade with south China—the main port for products from Guangdong, the province north of here, to connect with the rest of the world. As was the case from 1841 on.

What’s there to do besides walk the city all night marveling at what there is to do 24/7 (I’ve actually done that)?

We did have a sightseeing tour that took us to the convention center (one of several projects the last governor of HK built to leave a less-than-full treasury; the wondrous airport with the longest three-layered bridge to it is another) where the handover ceremony took place, and with appropriate pomp and ceremony, Prince Charles and Governor Patten sailed into history in 1997; Aberdeen, once home to “boat people,” today a typhoon refuge for the tycoons and their boats as well as a smattering of fishing boats; Repulse bay, the most expensive property on the island (with the best beach on the island on what they call here the “South China Sea,” that our guide in Hanoi said was the “Vietnam Sea”; the peak with its splendid views from 1385 feet looking down on the city/peninsula; the road up to it with houses famed in movies (“Love is a Many Splendored Thing,” “Suzy Wong,” and the eminently forgettable, “Soldier of Fortune,” in which Clark Gable becomes enamored with Mrs. Hoyt, played by Susan Hayward; lucky Mrs. Hoyt, and lucky Mr. Hoyt).

Then there’s eating. Dim sum is a south Chinese specialty, and we had lunch yesterday in a restaurant that had surprisingly few tourists, and not surprisingly outstanding food (tho, alas, the days of the carts coming by your table so you could see and select are numbered); a dinner last night accompanying one of my long time Hong Kong friends, a teacher at a university here I met in Vietnam in 1995, who specializes in finding restaurants without English menus, and food none of us would venture to eat—I love the duck web feet we had, and I’ve never had it before).

And (as is true in much of developed Asia) shopping in incredible blocks of shopping malls, stores, etc. Good tailors, reasonably priced. Cameras reasonably priced. Fashions. You name it. There’s an old Chinese saying (I made it up, I think), “You got money, no problems.” Several students will look more professional at work or school next year.

Finally, there’s culture for those interested. I went the other night to the Philharmonic, which debuted a work by a young Hong Kong composer (it had been played by the BBC before, but not in Asia), and one of my favorite pieces, Symphony Fantastique, Berlioz’ account of an opium-crazed jilted lover’s nightmares (as I learned from the notes), which at one time featured 4 timpanists! And the art museum had a great exhibit in the form of a “tourist guide” to the Pearl River delta in 1839-1860. One tidbit I learned was that the Chinese baker in Canton tried to poison the entire foreign community with arsenic, but gave so much that everyone vomited and everyone survived. I’ll watch what I eat!

Not bad for a city of “only” 7 million people, with the highest density in the world.

One of the ironies of a visit to Hanoi is the importance here of Ho Chi Minh, the founding father of the modern Vietnam. What’s ironic (at least to me) is that he is so strongly identified with Hanoi–yet his legacy is a city 1,000 miles from here (Saigon), where he was less well identified (and I suspect–though a lot of time has passed), less well revered.

We had about three hours between getting to the hotel, having a Pho breakfast (that was my choice, anyway), and departing for two of the Ho Chi Minh sites. One is the somber mausoleum. Born in 1890, Bac Ho (uncle Ho)’s career took him to Paris and the United States (as kitchen help) and back to Vietnam as an avid nationalist, which essentially meant anti-French. With the Communist Party legal in France, he became steeped in Lenin’s Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism, and founded the Communist Party in Vietnam. At the end of WWII, he declared the independence of Vietnam from France, which united the whole country–for about a month. The French effort to retain power lasted a decade; then the American effort to prop up South Vietnam as a Christian/Capitalist bastion lasted until we pulled out troops in 1972, and witnessed the North’s slicing through South Vietnam, ending in the unification of the country on April 30, 1975. By that point in time, Ho was dead, having expired in 1969. His body was flown to Moscow, to be embalmed by the (I think) Bulgarians who had done Lenin and would later embalm Mao, housed in a tomb in the old French government quarter. As I said, the chamber is somber, and unlike the similar one for Mao, there is no souvenir mall at the exit.

The queue then winds its way to the simple house that Bac Ho built, rather than occupying the palace of the former governor general of Indochina. It’s three rooms, on stilts, near to the mausoleum.

The other visits today emphasized the heritage of Vietnam as within the Chinese sphere of influence: the famous one-pillar pagoda, built a millennium ago (Hanoi celebrated 1,000 years as a city last year, having been founded as a dragon city in 1010 (supposedly on October 10); the equally ancient pagoda on one of the lakes (where Sen. McLain was shot down in 1969), erected by the first emperor to beat the “feudal Chinese aggressors,” and the lustrous National Museum (couldn’t believe I’d not been there before) with its excellent collection of Cham art, and some really nice items from the Nguyen dynasty (in the 18th-19th centuries). The highlight is the Temple of Literature–the Confucian temple in Hanoi, with its stone steles detailing the achievements of scholars (by definition, those who had mastered the Confucian classics, and topped their classes in the exams, which gave them the right to rule under the emperor). That the Chinese culture came so far from Xi’an, or even Beijing, and impacted imperial lives here, is a testimony to its power. As I mentioned, Chinese characters were used until Portuguese missionaries gave Vietnam an alphabet.

We had the afternoon to wander the city (or recover from a train ride; the best part of a 33-hour train ride is hour 34!), and Hanoi is a city made for wandering. Half the size of Saigon, the streets are half as wide in the old town; the jumble of guild streets and shops and motorbikes and cars and horns make it a colorful place to lose an afternoon, or get lost for an afternoon. Sidewalks are for parking bikes.

We had an IWU gathering in Hanoi tonight that I bet was the largest gathering of IWU-related people in the city’s 1001-year history. In addition to our 15 students, we invited parents of our students from Hanoi. Eight showed up, not including one sister who now knows more freshmen at IWU than possibly any other member of her class (she enters in the fall), and the younger brother (2nd eldest I think he described himself as) of one of my advisees. Jim and I sat with the parents (and the translator), while the young people conversed. I really hope we’ll be able to visit again when they come to graduation next spring. The dinner, incidentally, reminded me that Vietnamese food is among the best in the world. Among other treats (other than the superb rice-wrapped spring rolls), we had shredded chicken banana blossom salad with shrimp chip, and carmelized basa fish in clay pot. Yum.

Our 26-hour visit to Hanoi, crammed with interesting things, comes to an end tomorrow when we leave the hotel at 7:40 a.m. for the ride to the airport and then the nearly two-hour flight to Hong Kong.

Not sure I told you what’s the best thing about a 33-hour train ride, but it’s hour number 34!

The 120-mile Cu Chi tunnels that we visited today may well be epigrammatic for a history of Viet Nam; the tunnels show the determination of the Vietnamese people to persevere in the face of great odds against invaders. The tunnels, about 40 miles from Saigon, were dug in the hard clay soil beginning during the post-World War II war against the French. Twenty-five years later, the tunnels had been expanded to develop a city underground that at one time accommodated over 10,000 people. Some of the most bitter fighting of the American war was around Cu Chi. That included the dropping of 130 million tons of bombs; tunnel rats who went into the caves, which had three levels—as deep as 27 feet. Some of the bombs contained Agent Orange, which rearranged genes and the environment, denuding areas to this day, and deforming people permanently. The guide challenged us to find an opening, as our GIs tried to do—and we had no success; the entrances were camouflaged and small enough for its inhabitants. Maybe 8×10 at most.

The macabre “theme park” included an opportunity to fire machine guns or AK47s. It also included some grim displays of people traps—bamboo stakes and pits with maimers and killers that our guide cautioned me about. He said a lot of older American groups consider it propaganda; as I told our students, if they want to see the American equivalent, The Green Berets is “our” propaganda.

In the free time we had before leaving, I walked through the French Cathedral (1886)/Post office (1891) to the History Museum, housed in a lovely old French building, and probably begun under the French. It tells the story of successive waves of invaders beaten back—the “feudal” Chinese (Song, Ming, Qing, and Mao dynasties), the Cham (Indian-based, which left behind marvelous artifacts here and at Danang), and the numerous dynasties that at various times tried to unify the country—and the peasants who at various times said “enough,” and brought down the dynasty. The last emperor Bao Dai died in Paris in the 60s or thereabouts.

The exhibits reminded me of the indebtedness of Vietnam to Chinese culture (despite the millennium of warfare with the “aggressors,” as the museum described it). I know we’ll see more in Hanoi (Chinese for “in the middle of the river”). Even the language used Chinese characters until a Portuguese priest developed an alphabet. Given the numerous Chinese (especially in Saigon, which has a Chinese section called Cholon), you sometimes find Chinese characters as well. Buddhism came to Vietnam through China, which is why it’s similar to what we’ll find in East Asia. That was of especial interest because today was (at least here) the celebration of the Buddha’s birthday. I asked to stop at one temple to see how it is celebrated (I’ve washed the Buddha in Hong Kong, for example), and our guide noted that this temple had produced some of the monks who, in opposition to the Diem regime during the Vietnam war, had doused themselves in gasoline and immolated themselves (that black and white photo again). Much of the museum collection was from rich people whose idea of luxury was to have goods similar to those of the wealthy Chinese. It’s part of the model that helps define the Chinese cultural sphere (China, Vietnam, Korea, Japan, Malaysia, Taiwan, Thailand, Indonesia and the Chinese diaspora elsewhere.

We’re on our way to Hanoi—via a 33-hour train ride. Jim and I are sharing a compartment with a Vietnamese couple and their oh-so-cute 3-year-old daughter. We’re about to leave, and I’ll probably have time to observe the countryside of this long (over 1,000 miles to Hanoi), but thin country. It is 5 a.m. here, and we’ve just arrived in Hanoi. As I expected, it was a National Geographic trip. Some of it was in black and white, the imagery from the 1960s—the paddy fields, with cone hats on the farmers, water buffalo supplying cow power, the haystacks forming interesting shapes (more interesting than Monet) as the beasts ate away, graves in the middle of fields, even some corn to remind us of the Midwest.

The National Geographic-est (if I may coin a phrase) was probably the stretch from Danang over the mountains to Hue. Danang sits on the Vietnam Sea (that’s what the South China sea is called here); it’s where 50,000 American troops waded ashore in 1965, escalating the “adviser” stage to the war stage of the Vietnam War. The bay is beautiful, and to go up and over, the French built three tunnels and hugged the bay. You had to know what to look for in Hue—and I’d been here in 1995, so I had a pretty good idea. Hue was the capital of the Nguyen Dynasty (the last one, which ended after WWII), with what’s left of a forbidden city (I saw the walls from the train), three open imperial tombs (mimicking the Chinese Imperial tombs), and, when I saw it, the flagpole from the citadel. A huge flagpole, it’s another of the 1960s black and white TV memories—the hoisting of the VC flag over Hue during the Tet Offensive of 1968, which was the watershed in the war—the point at which ending it predominated over winning it.

But of course the highlight of the train ride was the “Hanoi Station,” because we knew what that meant—shower, brief nap, and more sightseeing in the capital of Vietnam.

I’ve been to Saigon as recently as two years ago, but the phrase that came to my mind two years ago—let Saigons be Saigons—has developed a new meaning for me: The end (especially for the Vietnamese) of what they call the American War. For the Vietnamese, the wars are in the past, partly because even the most recent of the long history of Vietnamese wars, against China or the Khmer Rouge, was over 3 decades ago. Of the 62 million Vietnamese, probably over three-fourths were born after the North Vietnamese tanks burst through the presidential palace gates in this city (renamed Ho Chi Minh City, though I’ve never heard a local call it that) in 1975. In addition, the Vietnamese have moved beyond the ideology of the U.S. war, and for the last 16 years have plowed ahead with reforms that have made this, like China, a communist country in terms of party control (which includes a ban on Facebook and Yahoo groups among others), but a rampant economy.

Saigon was apparently a major port for the Khmer, was conquered in the 17th century by the dynasty centered in mid-Vietnam at Hue, and given life as the “Paris of the East” (one of many claimants) following French occupation of Cochinchina in 1858. The city still bears the marks of French rule in its architecture—including a marvelous Hotel d’Ville, a soaring Catholic Cathedral (I think it is the second most Catholic country in Asia, after the Philippines), Post Office, and several buildings that house museums. And the food. I can hardly wait for tomorrow to have a baguette for breakfast—with pate, etc.

The city hasn’t entirely forgotten the American period. One of the highlights, or perhaps lowlights, is the War Memorial Museum, which documents the atrocities Americans committed during the years when we, like the Chinese, Khmer, French, Indians, etc., tried to conquer the country. As I told Professor Sikora, for Americans of a certain age, the city is best viewed in black-and-white, which was how we viewed it in the 1960s on TV. I remember when I came in 1995, having flashbacks that began at Than Sun Hut Airport, which was the main air base; the concrete hangers from newsreels (to protect against snipers)—they’re still there; the palace, where on April 30, 1975, the North Vietnamese put an end to the South Vietnamese government that had lasted around 3 years after we pulled out our troops; the Rex Hotel, once home to journalists, and transformed from a ratty but atmospheric hotel when I had students there in 2001 to a glowing 5 star building today, and so forth.

Today (as in the past), Saigon was the commercial and economic hub of Vietnam (again resembling China, where the southern cities—Shanghai and Guangzhou—reflect economic wealth and Beijing is the political center) while Hanoi is the political capital. Some of that is from the strong influence of Chinese in Saigon. The Saigonese (?) average income is, at around $3,000, triple the average of the country. I think what pumps up the income are remittances from overseas Vietnamese. Like most developing countries, there are extremes of wealth. Our guide said that houses in District One (like Paris, the arrondissements are numbered) cost over $3,000,000 U.S. There are 8 million or so inhabitants, and over 4 million motorcycles. There are sidewalks, but they’re only slightly less hazardous than the streets for pedestrians, who have to weave around parked motorcycles (Honda is preferred over the much cheaper Chinese model).

We’ll get to see a lot of the country because tomorrow night we’ll depart for a 30+ hour train ride from Saigon to Hanoi. It’s over 1000 miles from one city to another, but I will try to write before we leave.

As we say here, I feel like a million dong. That’s around 50$ U.S. The largest bill is 100,000, so being a millionaire is relatively easy—and relatively meaningless.

One of our students pointed out that the Singapore we’ve seen is a city designed for tourism. I had to counter that we arrived here on a late Friday and we were leaving early Monday morning; hence, what we would see were primarily tourist sites—and the tourists, whom Singapore, knowing tourism is the world’s largest business, has consciously (everything in Singapore is conscious) sought to attract. In recent years, the government has tried to shed the “boring” impression of Singapore as a “fine” city, where you get fined for spitting, chewing gum, etc., and built a number of facilities to attract foreigners. For example, gambling is legal; in good Singapore fashion, locals pay $100 Singapore to enter. The city fathers don’t want citizens addicted.

Singapore is home to many multinationals because it is a well-run city. In the past, we’ve visited the American Embassy, Caterpillar (which has a logistics facility here), Medtronic, and Cargill. It’s a regional hub for Cargill, we were told, because it’s close to anywhere in Asia, and it’s a civilized place to live. I saw two things that demonstrated good Confucian values, if not civility. On the bus, seats are reserved for the elderly, handicapped, and pregnant women. The driver stopped when a pregnant woman got on and scolded a man to put his daughter on his lap to free the seat for the woman so he could continue to drive. On the subway, three people shooed others away and insisted a foreign professor take the seat for the old guys. I accepted with some embarrassment, preferring to think it was respect for teachers rather than for age!

When we crossed the border from Malaysia, it was readily apparent. Housing developments and high rises, which accommodate nearly 90% of the 5.3 million Singaporeans, are incredibly clean. We were told they get fresh paint every five years, which helps prevent the heat/humidity/salt damage we’ve seen in so many other Asian cities. And, given that Singapore has nothing but human capital (it imports food and water, among other things), the Singapore story (the title of founding father Lee Kwan-yu’s biography) is indeed impressive. The government (it’s been one-party rule since it separated from Malaya in the mid ’60s) has focus on education, jobs, and housing—with the result that the standard of living is I believe higher than England.

We had a free day today, and I convinced three of our students to fulfill one of my bucket list goals—to bike on Pulau Ubin. The island, off Singapore, which is itself an island in charge of 60-some islands, is a jungle that supposedly resembles Singapore 50 years ago (I can only imagine what it was like before the opening of the Suez Canal in the 1860s put it on the map; it had been a British colony since 1819, when Raffles got the local Sultan to cede it to the British—the lion supposedly seen by the Indonesian ruler gave the area its name, Singha(lion) pura. We took the subway to the bus to Changi Village where we caught a boat to bike for about 3 hours in Singapore circa 1950; it was thick with trees, some wild animals (a boar burst from the woods), some Malay and Chinese homes and cemeteries, and a few new resorts. Most of the trails were paved, at least the 10 miles or so we traversed, but we did get off to walk along the ocean and through a mangrove swamp (with mangrove palms)—typically education plus!

Yesterday we saw tourist spots and tourists (few get to Pulau Ubin) that typify the shopping, eating, and sightseeing. Places included the Orchid museum (did you know that 10% of all flowers are orchids?), the colonial quarter (Little India, Chinatown, and the British buildings that now house government offices); the financial district (services and technology is how Singapore is trying to maintain its role as a supplier of human capital. It has the busiest container port, which I think is one of the most stunning sights in the city. Some 130 banks call it home; 11 are local/global powers), the Sands casino, and harbor, and the primarily resort island of Sentosa. I’ve been to the aquarium, so I separated off to the lone remaining fort on the island, which is part of Singapore’s World War II story—an important one, it turns out in the global picture. Churchill called the fall of Singapore the greatest disaster of the war, and in terms of the East/West balance, it was as important afterwards as the Japanese victory over Russia had been in 1905—proof that the West was not superior and could not protect its colonies. In Singapore’s case, its vulnerability by air (two battleships sent to protect the peninsula were sunk on December 10, 1941; the Japanese had 3 times the number of planes, and they were superior), and the quick advances down the peninsula (the Japanese were in Johore, across from Singapore by early February) overcame the fact that the British had over twice as many soldiers as the Japanese did. The Commander, Gen. Percival, wanted to fight on, but his staff argued for surrender; the terms were unconditional surrender.

On the way back from biking today, I realized we were passing a museum I’d not yet seen, one that would complete for me the WWII story—the prison at Changi was where the Japanese interned the Allied soldiers (Indian troops were the majority; then Brits, Australians, New Zealanders, and some Americans and Dutch. The Japanese occupation of Syanon was, like most WWII prisons, horrendous. Angered by support for the Chinese in China, the Japanese murdered around 6,000 (though estimates range up to 20,000), taking boatloads out and shoving them overboard. Many westerners (the Japanese generally held people who surrendered in contempt) got taken to build the famous (or infamous) railroad from Burma to Thailand that you may know from the Bridge over the River Kwai.

This is an historic time politically for the ruling People’s Action Party. In the election last week, Singaporeans voted for the opposition parties in record number. Six (of the 84) seats in Parliament went to the opposition, the most in Singapore’s history; the popular support fell to 60%, down 15% from ten years ago, and about nine percent from five years ago. This vote, despite Mentor Minister Lee’s urging, “Don’t rock this foundation. Remember, don’t risk your assets, property values, job opportunities.” Even more baldly, voters ignored Lee II (his son is prime minister), who warned that PAP favors PAP districts for improvements in housing. The papers attribute the vote to more open information partly via the internet, more well-educated opposition, and concerns about immigration which has led to housing and transportation pressures (about 2 million foreigners work in Singapore; if you have a skill, it’s relatively easy to get a work permit). In any case, the 87-year-old Minister Mentor and his immediate successor have announced their resignation in this morning’s newspaper. No doubt the Singapore story, notwithstanding the title of Lee’s biography, will have different chapters in the future.

We’re leaving for the airport at 4:30 am, so I’ll close now, but I’ll give you one more good reason to visit Singapore—near the equator (we’re 1 degree 18 minutes north) and close to sea level, gravity exerts an extra pull, which is why your scale lies here!

Maybe it’s true in Ho Chi Minh city, which used to be called Saigon, our next stop.

Salamat Pagi from Kuala Lumpur

The morning paper (a cross between the National Enquirer and USA Today) has been following a local controversy that tells a lot about Malaysia. On Saturday, a Malay paper had a headline that asked, “Can Malaysia become a Christian country, with a Christian Prime Minister.” The article outlined a cabal of Christian organizations that were purportedly plotting such an event. Today’s paper assures its readers that the possibility cannot happen, in part because the constitution guarantees that Malaysia will protect its Muslim majority, and the “constitution cannot be changed.”

That the occurrence can be feared is a measure of the multiethnic society that Malaysia has become, a product of its history, especially under the British, who brought in a variety of ethnic groups–especially the Chinese and Indians to milk the rich resources of the country. Today, that’s oil (which generates 40% of the revenue) and palm oil (which requires about 1 million imported workers, mostly from Indonesia), but historically meant tin mines and rubber. The 1Malaysia tagline is a direction the country has sought since independence, but the scars from the past (there were major race riots in the 60s) are still present. As the latest flap made clear. Essentially, the government is Malay dominated (UMNO, the United Malay political party celebrated its 65th anniversary yesterday, which meant 65 years of political domination, about a third of it under Mahathir Mohammed, a strong-willed, British-educated Prime Minister, who for a long time questioned the United States and really remade the country–Putrajaya, the new capital; the Petronas Towers, at the time the highest building in the world; Cyberjaya, a high-tech corridor, etc. The Chinese are dominant in the economy, and the Indians, as our guide Mr. Singh put it, are in between. The proportions are about 60% Malay, 30% Chinese, and 10% Indian. My understanding is that Bahasa is the official language (shared with Indonesia, whence came many of the original rulers of the country–the Sultanate of Malacca was a dominant regional power until the Portuguese ended its existence in 1511), but that Mandarin Chinese and Tamil are pretty much required in the schools, for those of Chinese descent (most of whom are probably Hakka or Hokkien speakers from South China) or Indian (Tamil is one of 14 official Indian languages).

I have sought to emphasize the Muslim nature of the country to our students, and it is more obvious here than in Penang (which, as one of the Straits Settlements, together with Malacca and Singapore) had its own British government, and even today have no Sultan and are administered separately. It was one of the reasons we visited the Islamic Art Museum of Malaysia, a stunning building with stunning artifacts, many of them from the Ottoman Empire that last May was one of our concerns in Eastern Europe; the borderlands/boundaries between East and West stretched from Vienna to China. It was one of the reasons we visited the Palace (originally a Chinese home, large enough to accommodate his seven wives), now occupied on a rotating basis by one of the Sultans, who is king of the country for five years. Even the Petronas tower is symbolic of Muslim dominance in its Islamic design. Muslims here operate under Sharia law (there is a civil law for non-Muslims), and as I recall, if you marry a Muslim, you convert. It seems to be a milder form than in the Middle East, but it still is a Muslim country, determined (ala Mahathir) to play an important role as a progressive Muslim force, a goal which is pretty impressive for a country of 29 million.

What we did Thursday confirmed much of the above. We took a morning trip to the new capital, Putrajaya, named for the first prime minister of Malaysia, which is an impressive city of up to half a million people. The parliament, the palace of the sultan of Selangor (who gave the land for the city), the Prime Minister’s offices, and the new mosque establish Putrajaya as a contender for the new caliphate or at least a contender for influence of the world stage as an avowedly Muslim country. When I compare it with the buildings in Kuala Lumpur, built a century earlier as examples of Turko-Moorish architecture designed by British architects, I’m more reminded of the splendor of the Moghul Empire in India.

The other visit was to an agricultural park in Putrajaya, that has a “live kitchen” (as the sign described the fresh food place), and the panoply of agricultural products that helps make Malaysia a gourmet’s paradise. If you love fresh fruit, you’ll be comfortable here, with everything from rambutan to durian. One highlight was a stand of rubber trees (Putrajaya had been a rubber plantation). Malaysia had, at one time, been the largest producer of rubber, but is now number 4.

The evening was capped by a cultural show featuring Malay food and Malay dancing. With the gamelan, I could have been in Indonesia, but that is where the Malays, especially the Sultan of Malacca, came from.

Tomorrow morning we leave Malaysia for Singapore, and I bet that by 5 p.m. tomorrow, the Republic of Singapore will become my favorite country in Asia.

I hope you have a pleasant day.

Another wonderful day that began with the “other” weather in Penang–we had a severe thunderstorm last night, providing us with hot, humid, and rainy weather, rather than the hot and humid that is the standard fare. That put an end to the original plan I had, which was to bike in the morning–that, and the sad fact that as we get closer to the equator, daylight gets shorter; it wasn’t light until around 7, and by then, traffic would make bicycling too much an adventure.

The rain stopped before we left, and the “regular” hot and humid weather returned–which, in turn, made our visit to the Dell factory a challenge, because the visitor guide said “long pants, real shoes, real shirt.” When we got to Dell, as it turned out, I recognized our three hosts from my last trip. Two were in HR, and they gave us an overview of the company. Dell is a Fortune 40 company, with headquarters in Austin, Texas (the mother church), somewhere in Europe, and Asia Pacific, in Singapore. The factory is under the Asia Pacific region, and now supplies Asia Pacific with servers and desktop computers. Last time I was there, the Penang factory was the major assembler of laptops for the American market; in fact (I checked when I got home), mine was made there–and I received it less than a week after I placed the order. I remembered that the plant managers last time had talked about an imminent change, because stockholder pressure was being exerted to outsource manufacturing. Dell was one of the few computer companies to manufacture its own machines.

Last year, the company switched the production to Xiamen, China, and relegated the Penang facility to Asia Pacific. One of the results was the reduction of the staff from almost 4,000 employees to around 600. When I asked about managing a multiethnic work force, they told me that by law they had to hire at least 30% Muslims, and had an extra long Friday lunch hour, which is one of the times of day Muslims pray (and Friday is the holy day). Starting workers get 600 ringits a month for a 6-day week (Monday is the off day), which is about 2,400 U.S. dollars. As I mentioned, the average income in the country is around 14,000. The visit once again confirmed my mantra over the past few years that “what was, isn’t, and what is, might not be.” Even in Asia.

We spent the rest of the day visiting and viewing in Penang, a city of around 1 million people that has made a special point of being an attractive free enterprise zone for multinationals–high tech companies such as Western Digital, Intel, Hewlett Packard, and Sony, which we saw on the way to the airport. The managers praised the well-disciplined work force, and the HR manager told me he was in charge of helping employees become better prepared for the future. That was the message of his presentation, and the vision/mission statement of the parent company.

They also told me that the plant was already doing some contract manufacturing for other brands, and had a plan to continue to seek ways to use its assembling skills, not to mention the space that once housed 4,000 employees.

The rest of the day was spent not in the present/future, but in the past–the 250-or-so-year-old history of the once-British colony. Mr. Light helped the sultan of Perak break free of his payments to the King of Siam in the 1780s in return for the Sultan’s giving the British East India Company the rights to the island of Penang. Thus began the gradual British establishment of Malaysia–Malacca came during the Napoleonic wars (to keep it out of the hands of the French, the British conquered it from the Dutch; after the wars, they exchanged it for Bencoolen), and later added Singapore. When the East India company could not protect Pinang, it called in the British army, which established a garrison at Fort Cornwallis.

The main visits demonstrated the Chinese impact (which still exists) on the city. One was the restored (for $7 million) house of the “capitan” of the Chinese community, sort of the political administrator who reported to the British (there was also a Muslim capitan and an Indian one, but the Chinese were the most numerous and the ones most responsible for the wealth of the colony). He married a Malay woman, and the house is now a museum to the Boba/Nonya culture that emerged. One thing I noticed was that in the shoe collection, there were no shoes for “bound feet.” Back in history, one of the Chinese emperors liked women with small feet, and thereafter, non-peasant women had their feet bones broken and bound to make “lily” feet, a practice that did not end until the 20th century, but the Malay wives had regular feet.

The second tour was of a “clan house” for the Khoo family. You might have seen it in The King and I, shot in Malaysia because the Thais refused to allow the film, which is still banned in Thailand, from being shot there. The clan, from Fujian (Hokkien in the Fujian dialect), established a welfare/education society for ancestor worship and fellowship. One fascinating feature (to me) was the hall of scholars, where the Khoos are listed by generations (now on the 43rd generation) together with their accomplishments, mostly academic. Schools included the Middle Temple in London for barristers, as well as commonwealth schools in England, Australia, and Malaysia–the emphasis on education is soooo Confucian.

I still marvel in driving around the heritage district at the old colonial bungalows. There are streets full of two-story buildings, with the second floor built over the street, shading against heat and rain. Happily for me, in the old district, residents cannot tear anything down, which means the clocktower to Victoria, the old government buildings, and the homes of the rich and famous remain.

It’s almost as good as going to a museum for me, and you know how much I love museums!

We are about to depart for Kuala Lumpur, so I hope we will have adventures there that I can share in the next few days. I’ve been to Penang maybe five times–not often enough, and as you can tell from the blog, never long enough.