Fred Hoyt – Page 30 – Fred Hoyt's Travels

Good Morning From Vietnam

Associate Professor of Business Administration Fred Hoyt was one of 24 business faculty from 18 universities selected to participate in the Vietnam Faculty Development in International Business (FDIB) program Jan. 3-15, hosted by the Centers for International Business Education and Research at the University of Wisconsin and the University of Hawaii. The 12-day program focuses on the unique aspects of doing business in Vietnam, comparing and contrasting the business environments of Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi.

January 5

I hope whoever said, “Getting there is half the fun,” was wrong. It’s now 9 a.m. your time Monday morning, and I didn’t get to Vietnam until 4 p.m. this afternoon (it’s 10 p.m. here), having left Bloomington at 6:10 a.m. on Saturday. When we got to Chicago, the plane for Narita loaded, and we sat for two hours until AA decided there was a problem with the plane – so we decamped and waited for a replacement, which meant a 4 hour delay, which meant I missed my connection in Tokyo. Fortunately, AA asked if I wanted to change seats with someone on the 13 hour flight across the Pacific. I said sure and wound up traveling in business class. That’s the first time I’ve ever flown the Pacific in comfort – the seats are huge (my neighbor was 6’4′) and the seats reclined to horizontal – it was better than most backpacks.

January 7

Good morning Vietnam. I’ve been here two days, and we’re staying in one of the old colonial hotels on the Saigon River, a hotel which is majestic in name and in decor. There’s lots of marble, hardwood floors, a wondrous rooftop garden, and 24 faculty from the U.S. for this workshop. Saigon retains some residues from its French occupation (about 150 years) – baguettes and pastries that are truly unusual for Asia; some people who can speak French, including the hostess here, Fleur is her name, which means flower, and the water faucets in this hotel, which are labeled “chaud” etc.

Vietnam has a long coastline – around 1,400 miles, and we’re in the South. It’s close to the equator (my GPS says 10 degrees) and hot and humid. It’s 30 degrees here, too, but that’s Celcius, and quite humid. My colleague, Bill Walsh, who was here during the “American War” (they name their wars by their opponents) describes the climate as three changes of clothing a day. I think it’s more. And it’s January!

If you’re the right (or wrong) age, you have pictures in your mind of Vietnam, and there are places here that are snapshots from the coverage in the 60s – the reunification palace, for example, where the last president of South Vietnam surrendered to the North Vietnamese, who promptly renamed the city Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), which only Northerners call it. Most of the locals call it Saigon, and have moved way beyond the wars (they kicked the Chinese in two weeks in ’79, which led a lot of Chinese here in Saigon to emigrate to China).

January 7

We’ve had some interesting lectures and site visits the last two days, and here are some of the things I’ve learned about this country of almost 90 million people:

“It’s not a ‘little’ China, said one of our speakers. He pointed out that it’s not centrally and hierarchically organized, the way China is. His example was ports – the U.S. has two main West Coast ports; Hanoi is building 20, because the Central Party needs to placate the provinces and keep everyone on board (there are major North-South differences) the economy has grown about 7-8% a year for the past decade, which is why I see more cars than I remembered (Saigon has around 7 million people and 8 million motor scooters). The economy is controlled by seven or eight major corporations which apparently have little market sense, and the other major corporations are export driven. Given the “l shaped” economy (the decline in purchasing by European and U.S. customers), what’ s keeping most of these companies afloat is foreign direct investment. What is happening, in other words, is roughly a “Ponzi” scam – credit inflation and growing unemployment. I read something in the paper about the big companies demanding a major government bailout, and private enterprise demanding more free reign. It will be interesting to see how the integration of the economy here into the World Trade Organization (approved in 2007) will change the interplay of this export driven economy (one of the schools we visited had no marketing classes, but did have classes on how to deal with the downturn, negotiating with the U.S., etc.)

The appeal of Vietnam to business was driven home to us by a visit to a Cargill plant here. The GM, the only non-Vietnamese employee, came from Taiwan; he was GM there, and produced about what he is producing at the five plants in Vietnam. However, in Taiwan, he had about 250 employees, while here he has 500 permanent employees and 400 contract employees. He was astonished to find he had 41 drivers. When he tried to do away with the drivers, he said his salesmen and distributors who used the cars rebelled; a company car, they told him, gave them importance in the eyes of others, who knew they were important because they had a company car. He did cut the number to 8. He also told us that studies have indicated Vietnamese workers are hard working and well trained (his plant runs 24/6, but has run 24/7) and we saw no one on cell phones or anything but working.

It doesn’t sound like the success owes much to the school system. There are 322 colleges and universities with 1.8 million students (entry is by examination); the Ministry of Education wants one or two to become world class (and Vietnamese students are quite good – we have a few at IWU). Here’s the disconnect: The total budget from the government is $18 million dollars. I had to ask, in disbelief, three times. Same answer.

One other quick observation: I had three hours free time yesterday, so I walked for a while to visit places I’d been (Saigon was really destroyed in the “American War,” so there’s not a lot of “old historic sites,” and the city is fairly new, for Asia – three hundred years – and was the capital only during the South Vietnam period (1954-1975), but there’s a lovely old cathedral and a post office which looks like a train station; I realized I wasn’t going to see what I wanted if I walked, so I hired a motor scooter to go to two museums – the museum of history and the fine arts museum, both of which had artifacts that proved there’s more to Vietnam than the “American War.” After all, this is the country that defeated the Mongol horde! The French liked museums, and built several in this country. I realized I’d been to the history museum before, but did so before I saw Angor Wat. There were some really nice statues in the museum here that had once been in Angkor, but that’s also true of the Guimet museum in Paris.

Time to close. Best wishes for the new year. They’re gearing up here for the new year, and the churches (this is the second largest Christian country in Asia, after the Philippines) are decorated for both Christmas and the Lunar New Year. Vietnam is not a “little China” economically, but I’ll probably get to write some about its borrowings from China later.

Romania without the Danube

Reminiscences 2024

At some point short of the Black Sea, we transferred to a bus to get to Constanta, the oldest city in Romania, a port on the Black Sea. The city has paid homage to Ovid, who apparently was exiled here; to Trajan, who conquered the area; to Neptune (beaches); and to Mammon, with gambling casinos. God gets his/her due with Orthodox Cathedrals (Romanian speaking), a great Synagogue from the early 20th century, and a mosque from the same period. While there seems to be a channel from the Danube to the Black Sea, most cruises, including Tauck’s, do not use it. Even so, the city boasts a lighthouse that dates from 1300, built by Genoese sailors. A town hall turned Museum of Archeology houses many other Roman ruins.

It was about 150 miles from Constanta to Bucharest, where we would spend the rest of our tour. Before being conquered by Trajan, the Dacians had hegemony for several hundred years. While keeping the ties with Rome (Romania and a romance language), Romanian was part of the pinball politics of the Balkans, emerging as a country in 1878 at the Treaty of Berlin, where it was midwifed from the Ottoman Empire. Choosing (naturally) a German prince as king, it was a kingdom until after World War II, when it joined the Nazis and was overrun by the Soviet Union. It’s not anomalous that one of the top places recommended in Trip Advisor is the parliament building, a product of the Ceausescu regime; known as the Palace of the Parliament, it is touted as the 3rd biggest administrative building and the heaviest building in the world. I have no idea who weighed it. Ceausescu peaked in 1968 when he spoke up in favor of the Czechs who sought out of the Soviet bloc, and bottom in 1989 when he was overthrown and executed as Romania threw off the Communist yoke. The city itself has some charming areas, including a museum with 250 “typical Romanian” buildings, including wooden churches typical of Timisoara and Baia Mare that made me consider strongly visiting northern Romania sometime.

The castles in Sinaia and Brasov merited a visit as well. Sinaia, centered around a 17th century monastery named for Mount Sinai, became the site of the Castle built for King Carol I, a German prince named king of Romania. Of course, the wealthy followed suit, joining him in the less steamy uplands. Vlad the impaler (better known as Dracula) also built a castle in Bucharest in 1459 that is being excavated.

One nice feature of these “ex post facto” blogs is that I know that I did take advantage of a trip to northern Romania, where I not only saw the original wooden churches in situ, but also got to Lvov.

Bulgaria and Romania on the Danube

Reminiscences 2024

Downstream from Osijek, there weren’t many stops at cities on the Danube.

Cruising the Danube meant going through the Iron Gates, an 83 mile stretch that includes four gorges, remembrances of Trajan’s efforts to subdue the barbarians along the river, and a modern carving of Decebalus, the king who fought the Domitian and Trajan in a vain effort to preserve Dacia. It was commissioned by a Romanian businessman in the 1990s and took ten years to complete the 180 statue. Ironically, across the river, on the Serbian side, there’s a plaque marking Trajan’s military road. The Romanian wanted to carve a Roman emperor on that side, but Serbia refused. The gorges, like their counterparts on the Yangtze, were tamed by a dam which smoothed rapids and made navigation easier.

Bulgaria included a trip to the capital of the Second Bulgar Empire (1180 until the early 1400s, though by that time it was a shadow of the landmass that stretched from the Baltic to the central Balkans). The entry in Wikipedia makes the history sound like almost constant warfare with and against the Byzantines until finally succumbing to the Ottomans.

Tarnovo aka Tarnovograd became Veliko Tarnovo in 1965–Great Tarnovo–to honor its historical importance in the first and second Bulgarian Empires. In 1879, delegates here voted to move the capital to Sofia, but in 1908 Tsar Ferdinand (born a German prince) formally declared Bulgaria independent.

There was a bizarre stop on the way back to the boat: it was the Buzludzha monument, a monstrosity opened in 1981 to celebrate socialism and communism in Bulgaria. It has not been maintained since the fall of the party, however. Looks like a spaceship!

Kingdom of the Serbs and Croats

Reminiscences 2024

One of the miracles to me of World War II was the creation of a south Slav kingdom in the Balkans, replacing one of the tinder boxes that had triggered wars before erupting in World War I. But that had blown up in the ethnic rivalries after the death of Tito, and the bitter fighting of 1991-1995 could be seen in several towns along the river. Our first stop in Croatia was Osijek, as in so many Danubian towns, a one-time Roman colony. The town began around the 12th century, and was occupied by the Turks for over 150 years. Austrian authorities built a fortress, Tvrda, that is still one of the landmarks of the town of about 100,000. Baroque churches, a town square, a monument of gratitude for ending the plague–checks all the boxes. Croatian Serbian tensions led to Croatia siding with the Nazis.

Belgrade, capital of Serbia, and one of the most continuously occupied cities in Europe was our next stop. The city of over one million changed hands between Rome, Byzantium, the Frankish kingdom, Bulgarian Kingdom, and the Ottomans. The Serbian Revolution led to independence by 1841. Because of Belgrade’s strategic location, the city has been in 115 wars, razed 44 times, bombed 5 times and besieged many times, according to Wikipedia. One of those five times was the 1999 “accident” when the Americans strafed the Chinese embassy. Amazing anything is left. The synagogue dates from the 1920s, and the major Serbian Orthodox Church, St. Stava, begun in the 1930s, was not completed until the 1980s. Still, I overlooked the Sava River where the guns of August (1914) began World War I.

Hungry for Hungary?

Reminiscences 2024

In 2008, we toured with Tauck from Budapest to the Black Sea. In trying to recreate that trip, I might have to include some things documented elsewhere (e.g., blog from 2009, which I reconstructed first). Budapest, like Vienna, was once the capital of a much larger country, especially after the creation of the dual Monarchy (Austria-Hungary) in 1867. Consequently, it has a disproportionate amount of imperial trappings: a huge Parliament building) and from previous periods, impressive churches, remnants of a large Jewish community that was active in Zionist causes from their 3000 seat Moorish style synagogue, and a castle that was mostly trashed in the World War II battles to reclaim the city from the Nazis.

Many of the additions were built around the time of the centennial of settlement by Arpad and his Magyars. One of the finest is the Opera House. It had a box for Emperor Franz Joseph. I’ve been there with Carolyn for Scheherazade, and with students for a Mahler. It was on our tour. The sphinx-like lions guard the entrants and keep riff raff out (sometimes).

There’s a cute subway (second in the world after London) that is cheap. However, you’re in real trouble if you don’t have your ticket handy. Undercover cops nailed someone on our time.

And some good Hungarian food. There was a big covered food court that we could not resist. Paprika rules.

As we went down the Danube, our next stop was at a showplace that featured Magyars–horses and riders who demonstrated why the Magyars came, saw, and conquered (but not why they lost much of the country to the Turks and had to throw in their lot with the Austrians. The place we stopped was probably Kalocsa, known for horses, and claiming to be the “Paprika Capital of the World.” The latter claim is interesting, because paprika originated in Mexico. And the Magyars originated in the Tarim Basin. They met in Hungary, on the Great Hungarian Plain.

When we got back on the boat, I learned that Tauck’s fees are really all inclusive. It was take any pictures of you from the table. And later it was all gratuities included, even washroom fees.

Budapest to the Black Sea 2008 Reminiscences

Reminiscences 2024 An overview

I thought I had documented this trip, too, but alas, I have little record of it, other than a note from Bratislava about poor connectivity. It was our initial Tauck tour, and I soon realized this was truly upscale: there was no tipping period. Everything was included in the price. Everything! That included the price of the toilets. We stopped, I remember, in Hungary to be treated to the skills of current Magyars, those Asian plainsmen who stormed into Europe in the 9th or 10th century and dominated the Hungarian plains. There was the usual photographer, and I ducked the pictures because in the past we’d get off a trip and the pictures would be available for sale. In this case, however, the pictures were on a table with a “help yourself note.”

We got to parts of Eastern Europe not otherwise easily accessible. Belgrade, for example, where World War I had its foreplay. One site was the grave of Tito, who helped liberate Yugoslavia from Nazi oppression, then tightroped his way between East and West. Still venerated for his magic in uniting the South Slavs, even if the breakup of the Kingdom of Serbs and Croats is ongoing and bitter. Some of the cities we visited still bore the marks of the wars that followed the splintering of the country. Another highlight were the remains of a Bulgarian city that marked the height of the Bulgar kingdom as a power in the Balkans. And finally, the Dobruja, where the Danube flowed into the Black Sea. Constanta, city of Ovid’s exile, with the other Roman ruins that signified Dacia, the Roman province that gave Romania its name (the “gates” on the Danube). I’ll share some pictures from that trip.

The Long March

The last day in China was typical: spectacular new things to do and see. An early morning wake-up took us in BanNa prefecture to Wild Elephant Valley, the home of one of the largest herd of elephants in China (the elephant and the peacock are venerated in the area, as they are in nearby Thailand, Laos and Cambodia. The park included other natural items–a butterfly zoo, a bird zoo, local minorities (have you ever eaten spicy wild sparrows?) and an elephant show in case you don’t see elephants. We were hiking one of the trails (with a sign that said, “Be off the trails from 6 p.m. until 8 a.m. because that’s when the elephants use them) when armed guards blocked us from going further because there was a herd of elephants on the prowl. Because they have poor eyesight and can become enraged, the park wants to keep people away from them. The best way to see the herd is from a funicular, which was not running. As I told the guide, if you want to be sure of seeing elephants, go to the zoo. He’s been to the park 100 times and seen them twice from the gondola. In the afternoon, before the plane ride, I asked to be taken to the biggest park in Jinhong, which had the distinction of having the oldest Buddhist temple in the area. The Lord Buddha was reputed to have visited the temple. As a bonus, the lake in the park had a zip line, which, for a fee, enabled me to get across quickly; there was a camera man at the other end, who, for a fee, provided me with a souvenir (for about $1.20, I have a 5×7 laminated with a Chinese inscription telling where and the date. I told you the infrastructure was quite well developed! They have the picture-taking services everywhere; at the bird exhibit in the wild elephant valley, a trained parrot swoops to you if you hold your hand out, and you can have a picture of that, too!). One of the most interesting business opportunities came from a man who in a 1995 movie played Chiang Kai-shek. For 30 Renminbi you could take a picture with him. I pondered it and decided that having a picture with him in front of the sign that touted the merits of the picture might be nice for my marketing class. I bargained one picture on my camera for ten renminbi. He agreed, put on his military uniform (he did look like the generalissimo), and my guide took a picture. The man then assumed another position when I handed him the bill, and suggested another picture (one with me bribing him?), for which he then demanded another 10 RMB. I think maybe he had studied the part too well. When the guide put me on the plane, I realized I was beginning the Long March home (the long march was the epic journey that took Mao’s forces in the mid-1930s from eastern China all the way to near LiJiang to cross the Yangtze (there called the river of Golden Sands), and back to Yanan, north of Xian in 1936. Two things about where BanNa rates in history. It wasn’t until 1961 that one of the major leaders made it down there. There’s a Zhou En-lai statue commemorating his attendance at the water splashing festival that year; and the memorial to the heroes (martyrs) of the revolution from the prefecture was erected in 1996. Almost 50 years after the creation of the new China. The 8,000-plus mile long march started Monday evening with a short jump to Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province. I’ve been there 3 times, and remember vividly my first visit in 1990: we were in a hotel that told us to shower between 6 and 7, that being the only time it had hot water! Today, of course, it has Michigan Avenue and elegant brand-name stores, and a world-class theater that provided a wondrous dance program, including a very famous peacock dance that I had seen in 1990. It seemed like a fitting way to pay homage to Chinese civilization, and the three weeks I’ve been able to spend in China. The Long March (or rather the long sit) began at 5 a.m. Tuesday Morning, or 4 p.m. Monday night your time. I went from Kunming to Beijing, about 3 hours, which demonstrates the breadth of China. I was wondering what I was going to do to kill the three hours between flights; that was resolved when the new airport (Shou Du, or capital airport used to be one of the shabbiest big city airports this side of Delhi; thanks to the Olympics it is now one of the largest and most confusing. The bus from one terminal to terminal three took about half an hour. When I called Carolyn to tell her I was on my way, she said, “You may have trouble getting to Chicago; there’s thunderstorms predicted.” There were thunderstorms, which kept us on the ground in Beijing for three hours, which made my transfer of airport terminals in Seoul a little scary. I got to the gate with 20 minutes to spare (time in a plane now up to 7 hours, with the Transpacific flight to go). The trip across the Pacific is about 1 hour shorter than the trip over. Making it 11 hours, rather than 13. I grabbed the Wall Street Journal and realized that I had been in a country that controls (or tries to control) the news, and especially potentially destabilizing dissent. The front page was a story about how the Chinese government has begun to control some of the news from the earthquake zone. Especially as parents question why so many schools collapsed; the inside contained a story about how Chinese students have become very patriotic and pragmatic, comparing the Tiananmen generation with the current students, who basically back the government’s desire for order and stability (and economic growth). The paper also pointed out something I saw, but didn’t read about in the news about the shortages of diesel fuel, creeping inflation, and a job crunch affecting college students. And of course, for the week I spent in Korea, the 20 percent popularity of the Korean president and the uprising that has delayed the negotiations with the United States for beef (popular pressure here is different)! Anyway, the plane got in early enough for me to catch the 7 p.m. shuttle to Bloomington, and I was home about 26 hours after I left Kunming. The long sit was over. Chairman Mao once pointed out that Americans were not Asians, and sooner or later they would have to go home. I don’t think he was talking about me in particular, but I’m glad it was later, rather than sooner. I hope you understand, as I’ve told our students, my passion for Asia, and the importance it will play in the future of the world.

When do I get to go back?

Am I in China?

The map says I’m in China, but this corner of the kingdom as much resembles its neighbors as it does the far-off Beijing.

As I mentioned, Yunnan borders Laos and Burma, and is increasingly being connected to the south–to Thailand and Viet Nam. When I was in Burma a few years ago, I had our driver stop to see what was available in a store–all Chinese goods. The road to Mandalay was clogged with trucks making the trek from Kunming, and hotels jammed with Chinese drivers.

While those ties are increasingly supplemented with infrastructure (new roads) the ties are historical. The Dai minority here use a script that is Thai-like. The souvenir stores feature Thailand tee-shirts, and Burmese jewelry. Even closer (and unusual for China) is the Buddhism, which is of the colorful Southeast Asian variety, rather than the grey/brown earthtones of Japan/Korea and elsewhere in China.

We went to a Dai village (increasingly rare, but preserved for historical and tourist purposes), to an old temple, where the guide said the Lord Buddha had come. The street names in town also have Chinese/English/Dai writing, in a frame that looks like it could have come from Thailand.

The village we stopped at had the two-story wooden homes that I’ve seen in Laos, Cambodia, and Burma. The first floor is reserved for animals and sundry (sundry today being pickup trucks), while the family lives on the second floor. I think this was like the lowland Lao homes we saw in Laos.

More and more, though, the Dai (and other minorities) are increasingly blended with the Han (modern?) culture. TV/Internet, and travel homogenize the world. If not for tourism, most of the world, I’m convinced, would look the same.

Change is coming here–in the far-flung reaches of the empire, and rather quickly. For example, Sunday was International Children’s Day (isn’t every day children’s day?). In the park in Lijiang, families picnicked with their children. Of the three generations, usually the grandparents were in the traditional garb, and maybe the young children. The parents and most of the young people looked like Memorial Day celebrants in the States.

As I said, the families are moving from the open two-story wooden houses into the cities, with modern, albeit functional housing (at least here in Jin hong).

Roads are improving and increasingly linking China together. It’s one of the advantages over India, an advantage that has made China the manufacturing hub of the world. When I came to Yunnan in 1990, we went from Kunming to Dali on the old Burma Road (a harrowing experience, but World War II opened Western China to the 20th century; Kunming was one of the hubs for flying equipment over the Hump–the Himalayas–and Chennault and the Flying Tigers was mentioned in one of the museums in Lijiang), the trip took 13 hours. Today it’s less than four, and there’s also an airport. The trip from Jin Hong to Kunming used to be 2 nights by bus. Today it is 7 hours, and when the new road is opened in a few months, it will be 4 hours (it’s about 45 minutes by plane).

Xishuangbanna’s claim to fame is the water splashing festival, held in April to honor the past; one version of the story is that a devil-king ruled here, and his daughters wanted to help the people, so they cut off his head. Fire came out of the severed head, so they poured water on it. To commemorate the victory, they have a splashing party, which sounds like a good reason to party. Last night (having been to a village and a rain forest museum) I went to a spectacular show (the provincial government spent over $1 million U.S. on it) where I got splashed!

It hasn’t dampened my enthusiasm to do something spectacular today that I’ve never done before, before embarking on my own long march back to Bloomington-Normal. I leave here at 6, for Kunming, spend overnight in Kunming, then travel for about 24 back to Chicago.

See you soon!

Hello from Yunnan

I’m two cities and 1,500 miles from where I last wrote–I’m in Yunnan, nicely named “South of the Clouds.”

If Qingdao (or as I prefer, Tsingtao) was fun to wander aimlessly because it was a German Colony, my last city, Naxi, was fun to wander around aimlessly because it was back in China–or rather, because it wasn’t “Chinese.”

Yunnan was the place you fled when the dominant Han Chinese came through, or where you were banished if the Emperor didn’t really like you, but did not want to kill you. That’s how the Naxi people, among others, wound up in Lijiang, a city also known as “Shangri La.” At nearly 8,000 feet, it had the cool evenings and splendid scenery that draws Americans (and others) to the Rockies. Because “the hills were high, the ocean vast, and the emperor far away,” it drew the Naxi nationality (one of some 40 or so that give Yunnan a unique flavor). The old city was pretty well devastated in an earthquake in 1996, but in rebuilding it, the Chinese created a world heritage sight, because the Naxi have a pictograph language that they still use, and a unique architectural style that has made Lijiang the mecca for trekkers and tourists that it once was when it was a trading post on the “old horse road.” The Naxi nationality (that’s how the Chinese refer to their minorities) number around 300,000, and seem to peacefully coexist with the Chinese. As my guide (a Naxi but also a member of the Communist Party put it), “we embraced many of the Han things and became civilized.”

One of the sights I insisted on seeing was a “red hat” monastery. Not just the Naxi nationality got driven out of central China, but apparently the Tibetan “losers” got driven out as well. The “yellow hats” predominate in Lhasa–and there are a number of “red hat” monasteries in Lijiang area. Hence, many of the buildings have a Tibetan influence, a Naxi influence, and a Han influence.

I stayed in a new building (old style) in the old city, which has a confusing maze of cobblestone streets (no cars, which is a blessing in China!), and got up early (the sun is at least an hour later here than in Beijing, but China is ALL one time zone), and wandered around taking pictures with no tourists in them. The hotel (and this may indicate the time warp) had a magazine touting its well-known visitors, including “Comrade Hu Jin-tao,” the first time in years I’ve heard anyone refer to anyone in China as comrade!

The centerpiece of the city is the home of the “local king,” the Mu family, which looks for all the world like a small version of the Forbidden C ity. Which means, I think, that it’s always glorious to be rich.

The Naxi also practice their own religion, the Dongba, which is based on wisdom and age (I could be a Dongba). There are 9 Dongba shamans, who are the most wonderfully photogenic people I’ve met in China.

From 8,000 feet, I flew an hour south, into the subtropics of Xishuangbanna, or Ban Na as it’s known. It’s nestled into the intersection of Thailand, Laos, and Burma–and contains rain forest, which is where I’m going today.

My guide, Chang Le, has the best English of any guide I’ve had on this trip. When I asked him about himself, he told me that he came here on vacation, and never wanted to go home.

I expect to enjoy the place, but not that much!!!!

Solo in Qingdao, or is it Bavaria?

I’m a happy camper today, because I’m in one of my favorite cities (Qingdao), doing one of my favorite things (wandering aimlessly), because Qingdao is made for wandering, as I’ll explain in a minute.

The students have arrived in America, and I’m sure their consciousness will join them soon; it takes a while to recover from jet lag (about l day for each hour of change, and it’s about 11 hours difference here), but our last day in Korea was quite structured.

As I mentioned, we went to the DMZ, which is a somber reminder that the cold war is not quite over, and that North Korea can be a threat to peace in this area. On the way up (it’s probably less than 30 miles from Seoul to the border), there are increasing reminders that the area is on alert. There are reminders of the war monuments, trains that stopped in June 1950 with the invasion, tunnels marking efforts of the North Koreans to sabotage the peace, etc. Our goal was to visit Panmunjom, where neutral UN countries help the U.S. and

South Koreans keep the peace with the North Koreans. We were given our instructions to be somber, not provoke the North Koreans, don’t point or wave, don’t take pictures in certain areas, and the atmosphere is such that you don’t dare do so.

We stopped at one tunnel, which was kind of a propaganda against the North (you can see the northern aggressors did it because the dynamite holes are placed from the north, etc. My thought was that when Korea unifies, the propaganda line may well be that the tunnel was dug by the CIA to prevent the Koreas from being unified), and North Korea, particularly under Kim Il-Song, did present several threats to South Korea, including sending assassins who were caught in the Blue House, Korea’s presidential capital, trying to kill the Korean president.

It is sobering to think that that war, which cost around 34,000 Americans and 1-4 million South Koreans, still has not been resolved, over 50 years later. The peace was an uneasy truce (the fighting up and down the peninsula took about a year; the stalemate over the peace talks took almost two years, with bitter battles for a few yards to move the front line and ultimately the demilitarized zone). The war has never formally ended.

Still, when I was there over a decade ago, the North had built a fake village with signs and loudspeakers talking about how great the North was and that’s no longer operating. There have been a few efforts to allow North and South Koreans to visit each other. There is a tour to Caesong, about 12 miles from the border, that Hyundai helps operate. Our guide took it and said before she got off the bus in South Korea, North Korean police examined every one of her pictures and deleted ones they thought were derogatory and fined her $100. That tour is about the only way Americans can visit North Korea, which remains one of the last of the real dictatorships of my youth. There’s been interesting rumors that Kim Jong-il is dead, vehemently denied, but his death will throw leadership up for grabs, as it usually does in a dictatorship.

By contrast, Qingdao is a laid-back city with wide streets, a relatively small population (3 million), a salubrious seashore (I’m a block from Seaside Beach Number 1), and mountains that come down to the sea just outside the town, one of them, Laoshan, famous as one of the sacred spots in Daoism.

I love wandering because of the city’s history and my location. Though I recall when I was here once before I went to the museum and saw evidence that there was settlement under the Wei Dynasty (long before MY time), Qingdao’s modern history begins in the 1890s, with efforts of the Qing dynasty to establish bases here in a futile effort to block the foreign (especially Japanese) attempts to partition China. In 1897, in retaliation for the murder of a German missionary, Germany landed troops and wrested a concession in Kiautschou Bay, that included Qingdao and an area around the city. The Germans settled, recreating Bavaria, until in 1914, when Japan declared war on Germany, it attacked and besieged Qingdao, which then became a Japanese possession. Japan’s efforts to keep it, in turn, were very important in Chinese history because, when Chinese patriots learned that the West had caved in and acquiesced in the transfer of land from Germany to Japan, they protested, beginning the May 4th movement that led to the formation of the communist party in China.

While Japan surrendered Qingdao to the Chinese in 1922, the city still has a German feel to it; the architecture remains as silent testimony to the German patrimony here, especially in the reasonably compact old city (which is why I like wandering around). Since I was here last (probably about ten years), in fact, new museums have opened to highlight the German background (and the Japanese conquest in 1914 and again as part of World War II)

I was able to visit (part of my day has been planned programs) some old sites. My favorite is called the guest house, which is where Mike Seeborg and I stayed on my first visit to Qingdao. It’s the residence of the German Governor General, and for all the world looked like something from Bavaria. When we were there, we learned that Chairman Mao had stayed there for three months in 1957; a plaque marked his bedroom, and nothing had changed since his departure. I had to return to what is now a museum to see whether there was an additional plaque that Mike and Fred had stayed there, too. Unfortunately, there was none, but one new touch had been added–the bathroom had been rated a two star (I’ve got my own private rating system for toilets in China, and the one in the guest house rates higher in my book!)

Another new museum is housed in Qingdao’s most famous brands historical building (and my main reason for including Qingdao) and that’s the Tsingtao Brewery. Started in 1903 as a joint venture between Germans and Brits, it was the first beer-producing company in China (beer is an acquired taste for Chinese, and their increasing consumption makes it one of the great hopes for world brewers, including Budweiser, which has a stake in the Qingdao brand). Our guide solemnly told me that German soldiers could not fight without their beer, which is why the company got started. For whatever reason, it’s become Chinese best-known brand. The museum features many of the commercials, which is what I came to see; after all, here is a brand which was German until 1914, then captured and bought by the Japanese in 1914, and they owned it until 1945 (learning to brew Sapporo and Kirin beers themselves), when it became a Nationalist possession; then in 1949, with the liberation (i.e., the communist conquest), it became a state-owned enterprise, primarily for export (even to Taiwan!) The company’s international reputation has grown to the point where it stages an Augustfest, ala Bavaria, making the comparisons with Munich even more striking.

I also visited the German prison museum, which housed non-Chinese prisoners during the German days (not many of them said the signage; the Germans were prosperous and relatively well behaved), but political prisoners during the Koumintang and Japanese periods, including one torture room that my guide excused herself from seeing.

Yesterday evening, I had another treat in more ways than one. I’d been in touch with a stamp collector who specializes in Kiautschou, and published a book here on his collection that I have been trying unsuccessfully to find in the States. He met me and took me to Book City, a huge bookstore that brought to mind how different China is today from what it was in 1990 when I first came here. Clinton and Obama books are best sellers, as are business books. Anyway, the man, Mr. Lu, took me out for dinner (Qingdao has excellent seafood, especially clams), and invited some other collectors to join us. He also took me to his house (he has three–one in L.A., one in Vancouver, and the one in Qingdao, which he said, at $400,000 is more expensive than his other two!) His house was a bookstore of stamp literature–room after room of catalogues and monographs–and he says he has as many in L.A. One of his friends, a teacher of German, brought some of his collection of 1,300 postcards (and I thought I had a large collection of Kiautschou cards and stamps!), with picture albums from German families and other assorted associated items I’d never considered. Not bad for a teacher who told me he teaches 6 hours and makes about $200 a month, but makes more money ($100 a day) translating for German businessmen.

The evening ended with their insisting I go with them to a club for Karaoke. Pricey evening.

When I got up this morning (and later this afternoon), I wandered around the city. In the morning, I ran and did yoga along the beach, then discovered a number of former German buildings; around 2000 the local government seems to have discovered its history (and perhaps the importance of history in tourism), and marked a number of buildings with the historical data. When my guide picked me up at 9, we went to Laoshan, which I mentioned was one of the spots that spawned Daoism, which is a uniquely Chinese religion that deals with the relationship between man and nature. The 8 immortals are supplemented by various historical figures from China’s past including the god of loyalty and wealth, the Guang Gong (my favorite), the King with a Crystal Belly, who ate everything and told the Chinese what’s safe to eat (I thought it was if it has four legs and isn’t a table, flies and isn’t an airplane) who live in palaces, not temples.

When we got back, it was an ideal time of day to wander some more, to the home of the Chinese reformer Kang You-wei, which is behind my hotel, and a wonderful look at a German-Chinese bourgeois home of the turn of the century; then by bus (l yuan or roughly 15 cents) to the old shopping street looking for the Catholic Church and the post office and the Michigan Avenue brand shops that are everywhere in China.

Qingdao will host the sailing events for the Olympics and has one of the countdown clocks (70 days three hours 6 minutes, etc.) that we’ve seen elsewhere. It’s also built an Olympic village that will become Qingdao’s first 6-star hotel, which will fit nicely in what I think of as a 6-star city.

One more note on the Olympics/earthquake reporting here. As I was walking the streets, I was seeing more and more “I love China” tee shirts. The opposition to the Olympics and the pro-Tibet rallies in the West really brought out the never-far-from-the-surface Chinese nationalism–to the point where there was a massive switch from the French Carrefour to the American Wal-Mart (did I tell you Wal-Mart foods sells durian fruit?) The editorial in the China Daily yesterday summed the results of the earthquake well (it’s the official paper): Instead of being negative and uninformed about China (by applauding the Tibet protesters), CNN had earned praise for its even-handed and even sympathetic coverage of the earthquake. Perhaps, said the paper, the West will learn about the real China. Chinoy, the reporter from CNN, said something similar: praising the coverage by the Chinese press and the TV (it’s not a political issue, though), he thought the Chinese had learned about Western-type journalism. Too bad a tragedy of this nature had to help bring humanity together.

I know you have exams coming up. Study and do well. The Koreans spend 4X as much as any other nation on after-school classes to bone up on exams. To quote Friedman again, Children in Asia are starving for your jobs.

Speaking of which, its time for dinner and my 5 a.m. wakeup call to get me to Yunnan. Zaijian. See you next weekend.