Let Saigons be Saigons

January 10

Hello from Hanoi, where we arrived earlier today. It’s quite temperate in this city, which is nearing it’s 1,000th birthday (that’s 1,000) unlike Saigon, which is a mere 300 years old (youngster!), and the political city as Beijing does toward Shanghai. The weather is in the 60s during the day, and the upper 40s or so at night, and that’s Fahrenheit. The locals, though, are in their woolens and down clothing – and it’s not a fashion statement. They think it’s cold, and given their warm summers, they may be right. It doesn’t snow here, and I suspect it’s in the tropics (I’ll check my GPS tomorrow)

As I was out and about this morning (which was free to us), I got up early and walked to the market (the Ben Than market has its counterpart in most Asian cities) – it’s an opportunity to buy almost anything you want – from clothing to groceries, under one roof – including a restaurant and one of my favorite places‚ the wet market (wet because the sellers feature live fish and recently killed chickens, cows, etc.) After 15 minutes of this mayhem, I hired a cyclo (the local type of rickshaw, where you enter kind of a basket and are pedaled around town. The persistent Mr. Tom promised me a guided tour for the remaining hour and a half, and took me to places I’d never been before. For around 90 cents, he helped me navigate the purchase of a baguette sandwich (I think it had pork sausage and various other meats) that I’d seen others eating on the street, but not in the hotel. Should be required eating! Only the Vietnamese rival the French for breads! One of the places we visited was an “Army market,” which, near as I could translate from Mr. Tom’s English, had been an Army market under the U.S. days (it was hidden away) and offered the opportunity to buy various Army/Navy surplus items. We also stopped at a pagoda which he said was 150 years old, and it might well have been, before he deposited me back to my hotel so I could pack for the 706-mile ride to Hanoi.

As I was pondering deep questions in the cyclo, partly to avoid thinking about the traffic that immersed and swirled around me, I thought about one of the questions I raise in class – about the social responsibilities and the awesome power of multinationals, and I thought I might share my observations of two businesses in Vietnam and what they’ve done to help make the world different/better. This, in the context of an economic downturn in the developed world that has ripple effects in the developing world (the Vietnam Times stories are about – among other things – layoffs in manufacturing and in tourism because of declining demand).

I’ve made the point with some of the Liberal Arts faculty that business support and initiative will be at least as important as individual and volunteer initiative in resolving many social problems. After all, the Bill Gates Foundation gave enough money to inoculate all the children of Vietnam against a few specific diseases.

Here, we went to a grade school outside Bien Hoa, about 2 hours from the Louis Vitton store in Saigon. The school had been built by Cargill because the government had been too poor to build the school for the children who would stay too poor without education. It was one of 29 the Cargill Corporation had built, all in the poor rural areas. The company matches the contributions of its employees, suppliers, etc., but has a full time Cargill Activities person, who seeks new opportunities and monitors existing ones.

The second example was from AA furniture. The CEO, of whom I’d spoken admiringly, told us that he was converting to the use of “green” wood – and I don’t mean the wood my Scouts use to make fires. There’ s apparently some independent organization that certifies the greenness of wood; he’s been lining up suppliers who meet these approved standards. While he admitted European customers are much more sensitive to the certification than Americans, he stated that he charges no premium for products made from the “green” wood – which is good business and, to me, good conscience.

Hello From 8,762.4 Miles Away

January 8

We had a wonderfully informative day today, with two great site visits. The first one was to the largest hospital in Saigon (which I learned today is still the official name of HCMC –Ho Chi Minh City), at least the largest state hospital, and not only in the city but in the southern part of Vietnam.

The hospital is at the top of a four tier system of state care, and has about 120 operations a day. It accommodates 2,800 patients a day, with 1,700 beds, which somehow or another doesn’t compute. There’re huge “ward rooms,” and no private rooms. About 35% of the patients are trauma results – i.e. automobile accidents, or more likely motorcycle crashes. Last year, the government made wearing helmets mandatory, which has reduced the number of deaths, but our guide (who’s not a state employee) made the point that drivers on the open road get crazy, and we’ve seen enough of the traffic to make me glad someone else is doing the driving. As I said, there are a lot more vehicles than there were the last time I was here (2001), but the infrastructure leaves much to be desired. Not just in HCMC, but elsewhere. We were on Highway 1, the NS connector – I think it goes from the Mekong Delta to the border with China – roughly 1,500 miles. There are .62 doctors for every thousand people, and while I don’t know what comparable figures are in the United States, I would suspect over 100X more (at least), and certainly would be better in the countryside in the U.S.! What said “stay healthy” to me more than anything else was the revelation that the doctors have no national certification – any medical school can decide its own curriculum.

If you can’t stay healthy, it also helps here (as elsewhere) to be wealthy to get good health care. There are private hospitals, but the average income in Vietnam is $862, which means some folks are very rich and some are very poor; it’s the kind of contrasts I’ve described elsewhere in the developing world. We’re in the Gucci district, but elsewhere in HCMC are shacks. I’ve got the pictures to prove it.

Our afternoon visit was to a fascinating furniture factory. The only foreigner working there is an American, graduate of Carleton and the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, who’s the Chief Operating Officer, and in his mid 30s. I enjoyed his presentation so much I asked him if he’d host my students when we come back to Saigon in May. His company is a real niche player – he does upscale hotels, stores (Louis Vuitton, etc.) He noted that the contraction of credit on the part of the Hong Kong and Shanghai bank for all furniture companies forced his company to seek bonding from Vietnamese banks (which scared some of his customers), and has caused some of his suppliers to fold also. It was a graphic illustration of the hazards of the flat world. One item that might explain why the furniture industry has come from the Carolinas to Vietnam was that he was making a piece of furniture (the woodworker was from a woodworking village near Hanoi, working from a drawing of the desired piece) and would take 200 hours to gouge the wood – for a product to be sold for $1,200 (if priced just on labor, that would be $6 an hour!) The ride there took us to the fringes of HCMC, on a two-lane road, with traffic that would have resembled what we saw in India last year – had there been animals on the road! In the factory lot itself, there were no cars – only bikes and motorcycles.

My day started with a nice walk around 6 a.m., and I think it’s time to get to sleep. But not without a lesson on the currency. Vietnam’s currency is the dong. One dollar is worth 17,000 dong. The largest bill is I think 100,000 dong, so you cash $100 U.S. and have a large pile of “folding money.” When I got back from my walk, though, someone in our group asked how I was responding to jet lag. “I feel like a million dong.” I hope you’re all feeling well, too.

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

Ovid statue

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.

Bullets from 1956

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!