As I have observed in the past, one thing I as a student of history strongly detest is deliberate distortions of history. The most obvious guilty parties in the modern world are authoritarian states like China, but not all democratic nations are free of such problems either. One good example is Japan, where a lot of the country's more brutal acts during the WW II era are whitewashed in their schools' textbooks. But such things can even occur in the US, with the most recent attempt to rewrite the facts coming from the state I grew up in, Texas.
As the articles linked to above explain, the Texas school board, or rather certain of its most conservative members (though there are no liberals on the board at all), recently has attempted to force a new view of US history into the textbooks used in Texas, and thereby much of the rest of the country, as many publishers will sell textbooks conforming to Texas standards nationwide. This follows on an attempt by some of the same board members (with Don McLeroy, a self-professed believer in the appallingly ignorant "Young Earth Creationism", in the lead) to include the pseudoscience of intelligent design alongside evolution in biology textbooks or at least to include language designed to sow doubts about evolution itself, an attempt which fortunately failed. This year, in their efforts to indoctrinate Texas children with their beliefs, they shifted their focus to US history.
Now I will acknowledge that we are not talking here about the kind of blatant fabrications you might find in, say, a Chinese history textbook talking about Tibetan relations with China. I will also acknowledge that, as pointed out in the NY Times magazine article, the group commonly referred to as the "founders" were in fact Christian (at least in a broad sense), and Christianity did play an important role in the early history of the US. But as several experts also point out in the article, the founders did also clearly make an effort to avoid using explicitly Christian language (as opposed to language which would at least accommodate other monotheistic religions such as Judaism and Islam), and they did intend a separation of church and state, deliberately leaving God out of the Constitution.
Also, a number of the founders has views that today's Christian fundamentalists would strongly opposed to. Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence and one of the most important founders was a Deist who produced his own version of the gospels which deleted all references to miracles, the divinity of Jesus, and even the resurrection. Given this, one can only imagine what kind of reception Jefferson would get if he were to run for office in the modern US. Barack Obama gets accused of being a communist for doing things that even Republican presidents have advocated from time to time (such as health care reform); what would Jefferson be called? "Godless anti-Christian blasphemer" would probably be the least of it. But, as explained in the NY Times article, they are quite willing to use Jefferson's Declaration, with its reference to God, to compensate for the lack of reference to God in the Constitution itself.
The views of Benjamin Franklin, another of the more important founders, on religion varied over the course of his life; he became a Deist, stopped attending church, and attacked organized religion in his youth, but later concluded that organized religion was a positive force. However, even when he held this view, he was, according to historian David Morgan, a "champion of generic religion"; i.e., he did not exclusively advocate one type of Christianity or even Christianity over other religions, and he explicitly stated that he though a good religion should be able to survive on its own, without any help from civil authorities. And a month before he died, he wrote the following in a letter:
"As to Jesus of Nazareth, my Opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the System of Morals and his Religion, as he left them to us, the best the world ever saw or is likely to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupt changes, and I have, with most of the present Dissenters in England, some Doubts as to his divinity; tho' it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and I think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an Opportunity of knowing the Truth with less Trouble...." This (particularly the part about doubting Jesus' divinity) no doubt would not meet with approval from Don McLeroy and company.
Even the "father of the Constitution", James Madison, late in his life wrote an essay opposing the appointment of official chaplains for Congress and the armed forces, as it would amount to an establishment of a national religion and would exclude smaller religions and sects. In this essay he also refers to "the danger of a direct mixture of Religion & civil Government". George Washington apparently didn't take communion (though his reason for not doing so is unknown; he may have simply felt he was not sufficiently "in the will of God") and he is thought by many to have been a Deist. He certainly was an advocate of religious toleration, not only of Christians but of non-Christians as well; regarding the hiring of workers for Mt. Vernon, he wrote: "If they be good workmen, they may be from Asia, Africa, or Europe; they may be Mohammedans, Jews, or Christians of any sect, or they may be Atheists."
Then there are the Puritans commonly known as the Pilgrims, the group that first settled Massachusetts. Claims by people such as Texas school board member Cynthia Dunbar that the highly Christian language of the Mayflower Compact "clearly delineates us as a nation intended to be emphatically Christian" are obviously nonsensical, as the Pilgrims were simply a religious group who settled in America to practice their religion in peace; they were not, in their own minds, setting out to found a nation, so what they said about the reasons for their own journey can hardly be claimed as evidence that the United States (not established until over a century later) was created for the same reasons. The same might be said of the phrase of Puritan leader John Winthrop most beloved of those who want to claim the US as a Christian nation, namely his statement that "We must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill, the eyes of all people are upon us." Again, he was referring to the Pilgrims themselves as a religious colony, not a nation. In any case, the same conservatives who so love that quote from Winthrop seem to be unaware some other things he said, such as "The care of the public must oversway all private respects" and "We [should] be willing to abridge ourselves of superfluities for the supply of others' necessities." Oh no! The leader of the Pilgrims was as much a socialist as Barack Obama! (Regarding the latter, see: http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2010/0701/Is-Obama-really-a-socialist-Some-say-so-but-where-s-the-evidence)
Of course someone who is looking for "evidence" that the founders were Christian will find plenty of quotes, as references to the Bible and Christianity were pervasive in those days. But it is equally clear that any claim that they explicitly intend the US to be a Christian nation ignores a mountain of evidence to the contrary.
What's more, all this talk about what the founders intended also ignores the fact that the founders were far from perfect themselves, and they lived in a world that was very different from today's. There is no reason that their thoughts and ideas should be treated like some sort of religious scriptures that we cannot deviate from in any way. As Thomas Jefferson said in his forward to America (The Book) - A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction, "I was...looking forward to this opportunity to dispel some of the mythology surrounding myself and my fellow Founders.... We weren't gods. We were men. We had flaws.... We created a blueprint for a system that would endure, which means your lazy asses shouldn't be coasting on our accomplishments. We were imperfect. It was imperfect. And we expect our descendants to work as hard as we did on keeping what we think is a profoundly excellent form of government supple, evolving and relevant." Okay, Thomas Jefferson didn't really write that, but the point is valid nevertheless. People like these members of the Texas school board should stop trying to twist history to fit their agenda, and Americans in general should worry less about what the founders "intended" (as if they could even have imagined the world of today, much less anticipated it) and more about what sort of society we want for the future.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
My Travels: A Brief Overview (Part 1)
This week happens to be the 18th anniversary of my arrival in Asia, so as a form of commemoration, I'm posting a bare-bones account of my early travels (up to 1995) that I wrote a number of years ago.
I intend to eventually write down detailed accounts of all the various trips I've taken over the past decade, but for the time being I thought it might be a good idea to make a general summary (in case I never get around to finishing the detailed accounts). This is not intended to be particularly colorful, but rather a bare recitation of places visited and maybe a few notable sights and events.
Since my main concern here is with my foreign trips since adulthood, I don't intend to say much about trips I took as a child or even those I took as an adolescent or when in college. Briefly, together with various members of my family I have visited many parts of Texas, such as Galveston (where my maternal grandfather lived at one time), Huntsville (where my paternal grandparents lived), Hereford (where relatives of my father lived), San Antonio, Big Bend National Park (several times; once I believe we took a short boat ride across the Rio Grande to Mexico), Guadalupe Mountains National Park, and many other places. When I was going to college in Austin I also took two trips down to South Padre Island with various classmates during two successive spring breaks (on both trips we also made brief expeditions across the border to Mexico).
We also made trips to New Mexico, Colorado, and Oklahoma several times, and on one trip out west we also went to Arizona and Utah. I went on a number of trips with my mother and various younger brothers to visit her relatives in Michigan, usually going by train but at least once going by bus. On these trips we passed through various cities of the Midwest including Chicago and St. Louis, though my memories of these places are limited to a few mental images.
When I was very young we went to California once or twice to visit my grandparents (before they moved to Huntsville). They were then living in Palos Verdes in the L.A. area. When we went the last time I was about four or five. All I remember is a vague impression of their neighborhood and parts of a trip to Disneyland (a simulated rocket trip, a submarine ride, and a haunted house ride). I even lived in L.A. once but since I was about a toddler at the time I have no recollection of that, and it is no surprise that I also have no memory whatever of the trip Mom and I took to Hawai'i to meet Dad during his R&R from Vietnam when I was about 8 months old (which in fact was my first overseas, though not foreign, trip).
Between my junior and senior years in high school I took part in a week-long seminar for "talented" students with an interest in science and math (I think we were invited on the basis of our Practice SAT scores) at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. This was my first solo trip. We spent the vast majority of our time on campus taking classes, hearing interesting stories, and one night having a toga party (actually I was among those who didn't really join in, for better or for worse...; several of us spent most of our time listening to music in our dorm room and only occasionally wandered outside to watch other people reeling back and forth in various states of intoxication). We also took a day trip up nearby Pike's Peak.
The one major foreign trip I took as a child was a three-week vacation in Europe when I was ten years old. I went with my parents and the oldest of my younger brothers (my other two brothers stayed with my grandparents as my parents considered them too young for the trip; Mom was pregnant with my youngest brother at the time). On the way there we changed planes in New York, though we didn't leave the airport. We spent most of our time in southern Germany (Frankfurt, Darmstadt, Rotenburg, Munich, and a few small towns in the south) but we also spent a few days in Salzburg, Austria and Venice, Italy. I have clear memories of certain moments or places from this trip, but I have forgotten too much to put them into any clear sequence or context. In other words, I'll have to visit these places again someday!
My travels really began in late June 1992 when I left Dallas for Taiwan. I had a long stopover in L.A. which I spent sitting around in the airport. From L.A. I flew directly to Taipei (Taibei) across the date line, arriving on the evening of June 24, Taipei time. As I had gotten a job in advance with Hess Language School, they were supposed to have sent someone to meet me at the airport, but there was no one there. I called their head office but they didn't seem to have a clue (the girls who answered the phone spoke little English, and my Chinese was far too limited to help, as I'd only had a semester's worth of classes). However, they were able to tell me that there was another new Hess employee who had arrived on the same flight and like me had called their office asking about our missing transportation.
I was able to find my fellow new employee, a girl named Kim. She had come with her Taiwanese-American boyfriend. The latter's family came to pick him up, and since it was clear that our ride was not going to show up, they offered us a ride and a place to sleep. So on my first night in Taipei I ended up sleeping on the floor of an apartment in Neihu. The next day Kim and I were finally picked up by a Hess van and taken to the Taipei Hostel in the center of the city.
I won't describe my first year in Taiwan in detail here. For now, I'll stick to mentioning that I took my first major trip out of Taipei in early August when I went to Hualien (Hualian) and saw Taroko Gorge. I also took a day trip to Yehliu on the northeast coast in late July. In mid September I went to Meinung (Meinong) in Kaohsiung (Gaoxiong) County with a girl I knew (her family lived there). In late September I went on my first day trip with Dana and one of her friends to Tamsui (Danshui) to the northwest of Taipei, where we visited an old Spanish-built fort and Tamkang University, the school the girls were attending.
During the last week of August, I also took my first trip out of Taiwan to another part of Asia when I went to Hong Kong to pick up my resident visa for Taiwan. During this trip I went to the top of Victoria Peak, took a ferry to Lantau Island, the biggest island in the colony (larger than Hong Kong Island, though much more sparsely populated) and wandered about in the main tourist areas of Tsim Sha Tsui, at the southern end of Kowloon, and Central and neighboring districts on Hong Kong Island. I also took a one-day tour to Shenzhen, just across the Chinese border.
I took one more major trip within Taiwan at the end of October. It was in fact a company trip for the employees of Hess Language School where I taught English at the time. We went to the mountains of central Taiwan, visiting Puli, Hsitou (Xitou) and Shanlinhsi (Shanlinxi). Of course this trip differed from most others I've taken in that it involved huge numbers of people (Hess employees from all over the island) in tour buses, mass meals in cavernous restaurants, lots of group walking tours and so forth. The scenery was impressive in places, though, and I amused myself by spending a lot of time walking and talking with a few of the Taiwanese girls.
I took my first long trip to other parts of Asia in the spring of 1993, departing in mid March and returning to Taiwan three weeks later, in early April. My first stop was Thailand. After a few days in Bangkok visiting temples and other tourist sites, I took an overnight train all the way down to Malaysia. Getting off the train in Butterworth, I headed across to Georgetown on Penang Island where I spent a few days, hiking to the top of Penang Hill with an English fellow named Alan who staying in the same dorm room as me. I then went on to Kuala Lumpur by bus, visiting the Batu Caves during my brief stay there. From KL I took a bus to Singapore, where I spent a few days walking around, visiting Fort Canning among other places. I also spent some time in the local bookstores.
After a few days in Singapore, I took an overnight bus all the way through Malaysia to Hat Yai in Thailand. I met a Singaporean girl on the bus who was meeting her boyfriend in Hat Yai, so after arriving in Hat Yai, I joined them in catching a bus to Surat Thani, then an overpriced songthaew to the pier, a boat to Ko Samui, and then a second boat to Ko Pha-Ngan. After a couple of quiet days at a bungalow on the south side of the island, I took a ferry to Ko Samui, where I headed to Lamai beach. Here I ran into Alan, the guy I had met in Penang ten days earlier.
I spent several somewhat crazy days on Samui before heading to Surat Thani with Alan, where we caught an overnight train to Bangkok. Unfortunately there were no seats, so we had to sleep on the floor of the train (not a lot of fun). A couple of days after arriving in Bangkok, Alan and I took a trip to Kanchanaburi, where we visited the bridge over the River Kwai and Erawan Waterfalls. I returned to Bangkok and spent a few more days there before returning to Taiwan.
I didn't take any more trips out of Taiwan for the remainder of 1993, but I did take a few trips within Taiwan. The most important of these was in late June. My younger brother K. had come to Taiwan for a visit and we took a week-long trip around the island. First we we went down the east coast to Hualien, where of course we visited Taroko Gorge, on this occasion taking a bus up to Tienhsiang (Tianxiang) at the top of the gorge. From Hualien we went south to Taitung (Taidong). From Taidong we went west across the mountains to Fenggang (I think) then to Hengchun, and finally to Kenting (Kending), the national park at the tip of the island. Here we met Dana and some of her classmates. After a few days in Kenting we headed north, passing throung Kaohsiung and stopping in Taiwan's former capital and chief city, Tainan. From Tainan we returned to Taipei, stopping off on the way in Changhua (Zhanghua), which we toured with my friend Angela (Chen Yahui).
My first trip after K. left was to Alishan, the mountain resort in central Taiwan, with Dana. Aside from a couple of days in Alishan, we also stopped in Taichung (Taizhong). During this trip my relationship with Dana began to progress beyond ordinary friendship. It was as a couple that we took our next trip together, to Suao and Hualien in December of that year.
My first international trip in ten months was in February of 1994, when I took advantage of Chinese New Year to go to the Philippines. I spent several days in Manila where I hung out with a variety of people (two Filipinos, an English guy, the sister of one of my Hess co-workers, and a group of four Korean girls, one of whom developed something of a crush on me). After a few days checking out the sights of Manila, I took a boat to Cebu (my first overnight boat trip). I spent a few days in Cebu City, after which I took a boat back to Manila (abandoning more ambitious plans to do a loop through other islands). The day after my arrival in Manila I left again, taking a bus and boat to Puerto Galera, a beach on the island of Mindoro. I spent several days there, hanging out with an Australian guy I met. I then returned to Manila, where I hung out with the Filipino guys and my co-worker's sister. I flew back to Taiwan a couple of days later, having spent 16 days in the Philippines.
Less than three months later, in early May, I took another trip out of Taiwan, this time to South Korea. I spent a couple of days in Seoul, seeing some of the sights with one of the Korean girls I'd met in the Philippines. I then took a bus to Kyongju, the former capital of Silla, one of Korea's ancient kingdoms. I spent several days seeing the historical sights there with various fellow travelers I met in the yogwan (hostel) I was staying at. I then went back to Seoul and saw more of the sights there, and also hung out with three of the girls I'd met in the Philippines and several of the travelers living in the yogwan (we also got some unanticipated excitement in the form of a slightly unbalanced Korean girl who was staying there). I returned to Taiwan eight days after my departure.
In June, my youngest brother B. came to Taiwan for a visit. Dana joined the two of us for a trip to Tainan. We visited several sights in the city and one, the big temple at Luermen, outside. We then went by train to Touliu (Douliu) where Dana left us (she had to go back to Taipei) and B. and I caught a bus to Tsaoling (Caoling), a mountain resort. After a couple of days there we went to Changhua where we spent the night. We took a day trip to Lukang (Lugang) the next day, then went to Taichung, where we spent another night before returning to Taipei.
On the last day of August 1994, I set off on my first really long trip. I flew from Taiwan to Hong Kong, where I spent a few days getting a visa for China, opening a bank account and wandering about. On September 4 I took a train to Guangzhou. I spent a night and a fairly eventful day (talking to locals, nearly getting pickpocketed, and so forth) there before leaving the next evening on a train for Beijing. On the train I met a few other travelers. After a 36 hour ride we pulled into Beijing in the very early morning. I spent a week in Beijing seeing the major sites (the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, etc.) and otherwise wandering about.
I took a night train to Zhengzhou, where I saw traces of the ancient Shang dynasty walls and had dinner with a Chinese guy who was staying in the same four-person hotel room as I was (this was one of the few occasions where there were locals in a dorm room with me; most places segregate locals from foreigners). Next I took a bus to Kaifeng, which had been a capital city for a time about a millennium ago. I saw the sights there before taking another bus to Qufu (see my essay entitled One Day in China: A Traveler's Tale). After visiting all the Kongzi (Confucius)-related sites in his hometown, I proceeded on to Taian. Here the attraction was Taishan, one of Taiwan's holy mountains, climbed by dozens of emperors from Qinshihuang to Mao Zedong, most of whom left graffiti along the route up. I climbed up and down the 6000-some steps in one day, though I paid the price for a few days afterward. From Taian I took a train back to Beijing.
Back in Beijing, I mostly hung out with other travelers for the next few days. Two fellow travelers (an Australian guy and a Norwegian girl) and I decided to travel together to Xian (we met an English girl on the bus to the train station who also joined our group). In Xian we went to see the major sites (including, of course, the terracotta warriors guarding the tomb of Qinshihuang). On several occasions we were joined in our wanderings around the city by other travelers we'd met after arriving in Xian.
After a few days in Xian the Australian guy and English girl decided to travel on to Chengdu, while the Norwegian girl persuaded me to join her on a trip to Luoyang, which took a couple of days. Aside from seeing the place she wanted to see (Shaolin Temple) we also saw the Longmen cave sculptures. We then went back to Xian. The next day the two of us, joined by a Danish girl, took a train to Chengdu. In Chengdu we met up with the Australian guy we had been traveling with before and several other people, and spent several days hanging out and seeing the sites. I also took a short trip to nearby Leshan with the Danish girl.
Altogether I spent more than a week in Chengdu. During this period our little traveling group broke up as everyone went their separate ways. I took a train to Panzhihua in Yunnan on which I met some more travelers, including a Dutch couple traveling with their baby son and an American woman (who had lived in both China and Taiwan for long periods) and her younger brother. Upon arriving in Panzhihua we had planned to catch a bus to Lijiang, but we decided to eat lunch first and ended up missing it, so we had to stay overnight. The Dutch couple and I took a bus to Lijiang the next morning (the Americans had decided to go to Dali instead).
After a very scenic ride (but also at times a nerve-racking one, especially at first since I was sitting in the very front next to the driver -- later I changed seats), we arrived in Lijiang where I spent a few days. I joined the Dutch couple on a brief bike trip to the area just to the north, and the Dutch guy and I also joined a Belgian couple on a bus trip to Hu Tiao Xia (Tiger Leaping Gorge). From Lijiang I took a bus to Dali, where I spent a few more days, also running into a number of people I'd met elsewhere in China.
From Dali I traveled on to Kunming. I spent most of the last week of October there (the first couple of days I was sick, so I didn't see as much as I might have liked). Rather interestingly, the intersection the main travelers' hotel was on happened to be the area where the city's streetwalkers congregated, though the majority had no interest in foreigners. Getting a ticket out of Kunming was a bit of a hassle (though no more so than Chengdu), but finally I got a train to Chongqing, arriving on the last day of October.
I spent only a couple of days in Chongqing before getting a boat down the Yangtze river. On the second day we passed through the famous Three Gorges, which were fairly impressive, if not so much so as the Tiger Leaping Gorge or Taroko in Taiwan. On the third day the boat stopped at Wuhan (by this point the river was so wide that the river banks were quite far away), and on the evening of the fourth day we reached my destination, Nanjing.
After a couple of days in Nanjing visiting the sites I took a train to Shanghai. Here I spent a week, mostly just wandering around the city (I tried to take a trip to Suzhou, but because I couldn't find a bus to the train station in time, I missed my train). It was mid November when I left Shanghai, taking a train to Xiamen, a place which like Zhengzhou and Kaifeng had relatively few backpackers (at least I didn't meet any), though it seemed to have plenty of Taiwanese. After a few days there I took an overnight bus to Guangzhou. I didn't stay overnight but caught a boat upriver to Wuzhou. From here I took a bus to Yangshuo, which thanks to a series of tire problems and some engine trouble did not arrive until one in the morning.
I spent most of the last week of November in Yangshuo, relaxing and enjoying the scenery. I also took a couple of bike trips to the countryside (actually one involved a boat trip up the river to a village which was having its market day, and then riding back to Yangshuo from there). All in all it was a good way to spend my last week in China.
From Yangshuo I took an overnight bus back to Guangzhou where I spent one day before taking a train back to Hong Kong (Kowloon) on the last day of November. I spent a little under a week in Hong Kong (also taking a day trip to Macau) before returning to Taiwan.
My original intention was just to visit Taiwan for a few weeks and then continue my travels. The plan was for Dana and me to apply for graduate school and then for me to travel while she stayed in Taiwan and worked then in the fall we would go to the US together. With this in mind I bought a round trip ticket to Taiwan in Hong Kong with a flight on to Thailand. However on my return to Taiwan I decided I'd rather stay in Taiwan with Dana. Furthermore she wasn't ready to apply for grad school that year as she hadn't taken the necessary tests yet (and I was too lazy to start applying myself anyway). So I got a teaching job at ETLS and changed the dates on my tickets to Hong Kong and Thailand to late January.
By late January the paperwork for my resident visa was ready so I had the visa sent to Thailand so I could pick it up when I was there. I flew to Hong Kong where I spent two days before flying on to Bangkok. In Bangkok I bought a ticket back to Taiwan and picked up my resident visa. I also ran into Peter, an English guy who like me had lived at the Amigo and worked for Hess. We took a short trip to Khorat in the northeast, where we joined another traveler on a day trip to nearby Phimai which had a ruined temple from Khmer times. Back in Khorat we were followed around by a strange Thai girl as we wandered around the city. I returned to Bangkok the next day where I spent a couple more days before flying back to Taiwan.
My second major trip in 1995 was my first visit to the US since coming to Asia and my first overseas trip with Dana (it was also her first foreign trip). We flew to LA where we changed planes and flew on to Dallas. We took a trip down to Austin with my brother T. and visited with a couple of my old college friends. We also took a day trip to San Antonio. After returning to Dallas, Dana and I borrowed one of the family cars and drove to New Orleans where we spent a couple of days before going back to Dallas. We then took a trip down to Huntsville with most of the family to visit my grandfather and his new wife. After a final few days in Dallas we then flew to LA where we rented a car and checked out a few sites around the area before going back to the airport to catch our flight back to Taiwan. All in all it was a nice visit, though of course it seemed too short.
Dana and I took our second overseas trip together that October when we went to Japan for a week (actually seven days and eight nights). We flew to Tokyo where we stayed a day and then caught a night bus to Kyoto. We spent a few days seeing the sights in the former capital and also took a day trip to Himeiji to see the castle there. We took a night train back to Tokyo where we spent a few more days checking out the sights and the various districts of the city, before finally flying back to Taiwan.
The first part of this overview of my travels ends there. Unfortunately I've only written a tiny bit of part 2, which was intended to cover our lengthy 5-month trip through Southeast and South Asia. I did write a more detailed account of my impressions of Nepal, the first country we visited on that trip (other than Thailand, which served as a sort of base). However, it was originally handwritten and only part of it has been typed into the computer. If I can find the original I may finish it up and post it sometime. Or maybe I'll manage to find the time and sufficient motivation to write part 2 of this overview. We shall see.
I intend to eventually write down detailed accounts of all the various trips I've taken over the past decade, but for the time being I thought it might be a good idea to make a general summary (in case I never get around to finishing the detailed accounts). This is not intended to be particularly colorful, but rather a bare recitation of places visited and maybe a few notable sights and events.
Since my main concern here is with my foreign trips since adulthood, I don't intend to say much about trips I took as a child or even those I took as an adolescent or when in college. Briefly, together with various members of my family I have visited many parts of Texas, such as Galveston (where my maternal grandfather lived at one time), Huntsville (where my paternal grandparents lived), Hereford (where relatives of my father lived), San Antonio, Big Bend National Park (several times; once I believe we took a short boat ride across the Rio Grande to Mexico), Guadalupe Mountains National Park, and many other places. When I was going to college in Austin I also took two trips down to South Padre Island with various classmates during two successive spring breaks (on both trips we also made brief expeditions across the border to Mexico).
We also made trips to New Mexico, Colorado, and Oklahoma several times, and on one trip out west we also went to Arizona and Utah. I went on a number of trips with my mother and various younger brothers to visit her relatives in Michigan, usually going by train but at least once going by bus. On these trips we passed through various cities of the Midwest including Chicago and St. Louis, though my memories of these places are limited to a few mental images.
When I was very young we went to California once or twice to visit my grandparents (before they moved to Huntsville). They were then living in Palos Verdes in the L.A. area. When we went the last time I was about four or five. All I remember is a vague impression of their neighborhood and parts of a trip to Disneyland (a simulated rocket trip, a submarine ride, and a haunted house ride). I even lived in L.A. once but since I was about a toddler at the time I have no recollection of that, and it is no surprise that I also have no memory whatever of the trip Mom and I took to Hawai'i to meet Dad during his R&R from Vietnam when I was about 8 months old (which in fact was my first overseas, though not foreign, trip).
Between my junior and senior years in high school I took part in a week-long seminar for "talented" students with an interest in science and math (I think we were invited on the basis of our Practice SAT scores) at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. This was my first solo trip. We spent the vast majority of our time on campus taking classes, hearing interesting stories, and one night having a toga party (actually I was among those who didn't really join in, for better or for worse...; several of us spent most of our time listening to music in our dorm room and only occasionally wandered outside to watch other people reeling back and forth in various states of intoxication). We also took a day trip up nearby Pike's Peak.
The one major foreign trip I took as a child was a three-week vacation in Europe when I was ten years old. I went with my parents and the oldest of my younger brothers (my other two brothers stayed with my grandparents as my parents considered them too young for the trip; Mom was pregnant with my youngest brother at the time). On the way there we changed planes in New York, though we didn't leave the airport. We spent most of our time in southern Germany (Frankfurt, Darmstadt, Rotenburg, Munich, and a few small towns in the south) but we also spent a few days in Salzburg, Austria and Venice, Italy. I have clear memories of certain moments or places from this trip, but I have forgotten too much to put them into any clear sequence or context. In other words, I'll have to visit these places again someday!
My travels really began in late June 1992 when I left Dallas for Taiwan. I had a long stopover in L.A. which I spent sitting around in the airport. From L.A. I flew directly to Taipei (Taibei) across the date line, arriving on the evening of June 24, Taipei time. As I had gotten a job in advance with Hess Language School, they were supposed to have sent someone to meet me at the airport, but there was no one there. I called their head office but they didn't seem to have a clue (the girls who answered the phone spoke little English, and my Chinese was far too limited to help, as I'd only had a semester's worth of classes). However, they were able to tell me that there was another new Hess employee who had arrived on the same flight and like me had called their office asking about our missing transportation.
I was able to find my fellow new employee, a girl named Kim. She had come with her Taiwanese-American boyfriend. The latter's family came to pick him up, and since it was clear that our ride was not going to show up, they offered us a ride and a place to sleep. So on my first night in Taipei I ended up sleeping on the floor of an apartment in Neihu. The next day Kim and I were finally picked up by a Hess van and taken to the Taipei Hostel in the center of the city.
I won't describe my first year in Taiwan in detail here. For now, I'll stick to mentioning that I took my first major trip out of Taipei in early August when I went to Hualien (Hualian) and saw Taroko Gorge. I also took a day trip to Yehliu on the northeast coast in late July. In mid September I went to Meinung (Meinong) in Kaohsiung (Gaoxiong) County with a girl I knew (her family lived there). In late September I went on my first day trip with Dana and one of her friends to Tamsui (Danshui) to the northwest of Taipei, where we visited an old Spanish-built fort and Tamkang University, the school the girls were attending.
During the last week of August, I also took my first trip out of Taiwan to another part of Asia when I went to Hong Kong to pick up my resident visa for Taiwan. During this trip I went to the top of Victoria Peak, took a ferry to Lantau Island, the biggest island in the colony (larger than Hong Kong Island, though much more sparsely populated) and wandered about in the main tourist areas of Tsim Sha Tsui, at the southern end of Kowloon, and Central and neighboring districts on Hong Kong Island. I also took a one-day tour to Shenzhen, just across the Chinese border.
I took one more major trip within Taiwan at the end of October. It was in fact a company trip for the employees of Hess Language School where I taught English at the time. We went to the mountains of central Taiwan, visiting Puli, Hsitou (Xitou) and Shanlinhsi (Shanlinxi). Of course this trip differed from most others I've taken in that it involved huge numbers of people (Hess employees from all over the island) in tour buses, mass meals in cavernous restaurants, lots of group walking tours and so forth. The scenery was impressive in places, though, and I amused myself by spending a lot of time walking and talking with a few of the Taiwanese girls.
I took my first long trip to other parts of Asia in the spring of 1993, departing in mid March and returning to Taiwan three weeks later, in early April. My first stop was Thailand. After a few days in Bangkok visiting temples and other tourist sites, I took an overnight train all the way down to Malaysia. Getting off the train in Butterworth, I headed across to Georgetown on Penang Island where I spent a few days, hiking to the top of Penang Hill with an English fellow named Alan who staying in the same dorm room as me. I then went on to Kuala Lumpur by bus, visiting the Batu Caves during my brief stay there. From KL I took a bus to Singapore, where I spent a few days walking around, visiting Fort Canning among other places. I also spent some time in the local bookstores.
After a few days in Singapore, I took an overnight bus all the way through Malaysia to Hat Yai in Thailand. I met a Singaporean girl on the bus who was meeting her boyfriend in Hat Yai, so after arriving in Hat Yai, I joined them in catching a bus to Surat Thani, then an overpriced songthaew to the pier, a boat to Ko Samui, and then a second boat to Ko Pha-Ngan. After a couple of quiet days at a bungalow on the south side of the island, I took a ferry to Ko Samui, where I headed to Lamai beach. Here I ran into Alan, the guy I had met in Penang ten days earlier.
I spent several somewhat crazy days on Samui before heading to Surat Thani with Alan, where we caught an overnight train to Bangkok. Unfortunately there were no seats, so we had to sleep on the floor of the train (not a lot of fun). A couple of days after arriving in Bangkok, Alan and I took a trip to Kanchanaburi, where we visited the bridge over the River Kwai and Erawan Waterfalls. I returned to Bangkok and spent a few more days there before returning to Taiwan.
I didn't take any more trips out of Taiwan for the remainder of 1993, but I did take a few trips within Taiwan. The most important of these was in late June. My younger brother K. had come to Taiwan for a visit and we took a week-long trip around the island. First we we went down the east coast to Hualien, where of course we visited Taroko Gorge, on this occasion taking a bus up to Tienhsiang (Tianxiang) at the top of the gorge. From Hualien we went south to Taitung (Taidong). From Taidong we went west across the mountains to Fenggang (I think) then to Hengchun, and finally to Kenting (Kending), the national park at the tip of the island. Here we met Dana and some of her classmates. After a few days in Kenting we headed north, passing throung Kaohsiung and stopping in Taiwan's former capital and chief city, Tainan. From Tainan we returned to Taipei, stopping off on the way in Changhua (Zhanghua), which we toured with my friend Angela (Chen Yahui).
My first trip after K. left was to Alishan, the mountain resort in central Taiwan, with Dana. Aside from a couple of days in Alishan, we also stopped in Taichung (Taizhong). During this trip my relationship with Dana began to progress beyond ordinary friendship. It was as a couple that we took our next trip together, to Suao and Hualien in December of that year.
My first international trip in ten months was in February of 1994, when I took advantage of Chinese New Year to go to the Philippines. I spent several days in Manila where I hung out with a variety of people (two Filipinos, an English guy, the sister of one of my Hess co-workers, and a group of four Korean girls, one of whom developed something of a crush on me). After a few days checking out the sights of Manila, I took a boat to Cebu (my first overnight boat trip). I spent a few days in Cebu City, after which I took a boat back to Manila (abandoning more ambitious plans to do a loop through other islands). The day after my arrival in Manila I left again, taking a bus and boat to Puerto Galera, a beach on the island of Mindoro. I spent several days there, hanging out with an Australian guy I met. I then returned to Manila, where I hung out with the Filipino guys and my co-worker's sister. I flew back to Taiwan a couple of days later, having spent 16 days in the Philippines.
Less than three months later, in early May, I took another trip out of Taiwan, this time to South Korea. I spent a couple of days in Seoul, seeing some of the sights with one of the Korean girls I'd met in the Philippines. I then took a bus to Kyongju, the former capital of Silla, one of Korea's ancient kingdoms. I spent several days seeing the historical sights there with various fellow travelers I met in the yogwan (hostel) I was staying at. I then went back to Seoul and saw more of the sights there, and also hung out with three of the girls I'd met in the Philippines and several of the travelers living in the yogwan (we also got some unanticipated excitement in the form of a slightly unbalanced Korean girl who was staying there). I returned to Taiwan eight days after my departure.
In June, my youngest brother B. came to Taiwan for a visit. Dana joined the two of us for a trip to Tainan. We visited several sights in the city and one, the big temple at Luermen, outside. We then went by train to Touliu (Douliu) where Dana left us (she had to go back to Taipei) and B. and I caught a bus to Tsaoling (Caoling), a mountain resort. After a couple of days there we went to Changhua where we spent the night. We took a day trip to Lukang (Lugang) the next day, then went to Taichung, where we spent another night before returning to Taipei.
On the last day of August 1994, I set off on my first really long trip. I flew from Taiwan to Hong Kong, where I spent a few days getting a visa for China, opening a bank account and wandering about. On September 4 I took a train to Guangzhou. I spent a night and a fairly eventful day (talking to locals, nearly getting pickpocketed, and so forth) there before leaving the next evening on a train for Beijing. On the train I met a few other travelers. After a 36 hour ride we pulled into Beijing in the very early morning. I spent a week in Beijing seeing the major sites (the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, etc.) and otherwise wandering about.
I took a night train to Zhengzhou, where I saw traces of the ancient Shang dynasty walls and had dinner with a Chinese guy who was staying in the same four-person hotel room as I was (this was one of the few occasions where there were locals in a dorm room with me; most places segregate locals from foreigners). Next I took a bus to Kaifeng, which had been a capital city for a time about a millennium ago. I saw the sights there before taking another bus to Qufu (see my essay entitled One Day in China: A Traveler's Tale). After visiting all the Kongzi (Confucius)-related sites in his hometown, I proceeded on to Taian. Here the attraction was Taishan, one of Taiwan's holy mountains, climbed by dozens of emperors from Qinshihuang to Mao Zedong, most of whom left graffiti along the route up. I climbed up and down the 6000-some steps in one day, though I paid the price for a few days afterward. From Taian I took a train back to Beijing.
Back in Beijing, I mostly hung out with other travelers for the next few days. Two fellow travelers (an Australian guy and a Norwegian girl) and I decided to travel together to Xian (we met an English girl on the bus to the train station who also joined our group). In Xian we went to see the major sites (including, of course, the terracotta warriors guarding the tomb of Qinshihuang). On several occasions we were joined in our wanderings around the city by other travelers we'd met after arriving in Xian.
After a few days in Xian the Australian guy and English girl decided to travel on to Chengdu, while the Norwegian girl persuaded me to join her on a trip to Luoyang, which took a couple of days. Aside from seeing the place she wanted to see (Shaolin Temple) we also saw the Longmen cave sculptures. We then went back to Xian. The next day the two of us, joined by a Danish girl, took a train to Chengdu. In Chengdu we met up with the Australian guy we had been traveling with before and several other people, and spent several days hanging out and seeing the sites. I also took a short trip to nearby Leshan with the Danish girl.
Altogether I spent more than a week in Chengdu. During this period our little traveling group broke up as everyone went their separate ways. I took a train to Panzhihua in Yunnan on which I met some more travelers, including a Dutch couple traveling with their baby son and an American woman (who had lived in both China and Taiwan for long periods) and her younger brother. Upon arriving in Panzhihua we had planned to catch a bus to Lijiang, but we decided to eat lunch first and ended up missing it, so we had to stay overnight. The Dutch couple and I took a bus to Lijiang the next morning (the Americans had decided to go to Dali instead).
After a very scenic ride (but also at times a nerve-racking one, especially at first since I was sitting in the very front next to the driver -- later I changed seats), we arrived in Lijiang where I spent a few days. I joined the Dutch couple on a brief bike trip to the area just to the north, and the Dutch guy and I also joined a Belgian couple on a bus trip to Hu Tiao Xia (Tiger Leaping Gorge). From Lijiang I took a bus to Dali, where I spent a few more days, also running into a number of people I'd met elsewhere in China.
From Dali I traveled on to Kunming. I spent most of the last week of October there (the first couple of days I was sick, so I didn't see as much as I might have liked). Rather interestingly, the intersection the main travelers' hotel was on happened to be the area where the city's streetwalkers congregated, though the majority had no interest in foreigners. Getting a ticket out of Kunming was a bit of a hassle (though no more so than Chengdu), but finally I got a train to Chongqing, arriving on the last day of October.
I spent only a couple of days in Chongqing before getting a boat down the Yangtze river. On the second day we passed through the famous Three Gorges, which were fairly impressive, if not so much so as the Tiger Leaping Gorge or Taroko in Taiwan. On the third day the boat stopped at Wuhan (by this point the river was so wide that the river banks were quite far away), and on the evening of the fourth day we reached my destination, Nanjing.
After a couple of days in Nanjing visiting the sites I took a train to Shanghai. Here I spent a week, mostly just wandering around the city (I tried to take a trip to Suzhou, but because I couldn't find a bus to the train station in time, I missed my train). It was mid November when I left Shanghai, taking a train to Xiamen, a place which like Zhengzhou and Kaifeng had relatively few backpackers (at least I didn't meet any), though it seemed to have plenty of Taiwanese. After a few days there I took an overnight bus to Guangzhou. I didn't stay overnight but caught a boat upriver to Wuzhou. From here I took a bus to Yangshuo, which thanks to a series of tire problems and some engine trouble did not arrive until one in the morning.
I spent most of the last week of November in Yangshuo, relaxing and enjoying the scenery. I also took a couple of bike trips to the countryside (actually one involved a boat trip up the river to a village which was having its market day, and then riding back to Yangshuo from there). All in all it was a good way to spend my last week in China.
From Yangshuo I took an overnight bus back to Guangzhou where I spent one day before taking a train back to Hong Kong (Kowloon) on the last day of November. I spent a little under a week in Hong Kong (also taking a day trip to Macau) before returning to Taiwan.
My original intention was just to visit Taiwan for a few weeks and then continue my travels. The plan was for Dana and me to apply for graduate school and then for me to travel while she stayed in Taiwan and worked then in the fall we would go to the US together. With this in mind I bought a round trip ticket to Taiwan in Hong Kong with a flight on to Thailand. However on my return to Taiwan I decided I'd rather stay in Taiwan with Dana. Furthermore she wasn't ready to apply for grad school that year as she hadn't taken the necessary tests yet (and I was too lazy to start applying myself anyway). So I got a teaching job at ETLS and changed the dates on my tickets to Hong Kong and Thailand to late January.
By late January the paperwork for my resident visa was ready so I had the visa sent to Thailand so I could pick it up when I was there. I flew to Hong Kong where I spent two days before flying on to Bangkok. In Bangkok I bought a ticket back to Taiwan and picked up my resident visa. I also ran into Peter, an English guy who like me had lived at the Amigo and worked for Hess. We took a short trip to Khorat in the northeast, where we joined another traveler on a day trip to nearby Phimai which had a ruined temple from Khmer times. Back in Khorat we were followed around by a strange Thai girl as we wandered around the city. I returned to Bangkok the next day where I spent a couple more days before flying back to Taiwan.
My second major trip in 1995 was my first visit to the US since coming to Asia and my first overseas trip with Dana (it was also her first foreign trip). We flew to LA where we changed planes and flew on to Dallas. We took a trip down to Austin with my brother T. and visited with a couple of my old college friends. We also took a day trip to San Antonio. After returning to Dallas, Dana and I borrowed one of the family cars and drove to New Orleans where we spent a couple of days before going back to Dallas. We then took a trip down to Huntsville with most of the family to visit my grandfather and his new wife. After a final few days in Dallas we then flew to LA where we rented a car and checked out a few sites around the area before going back to the airport to catch our flight back to Taiwan. All in all it was a nice visit, though of course it seemed too short.
Dana and I took our second overseas trip together that October when we went to Japan for a week (actually seven days and eight nights). We flew to Tokyo where we stayed a day and then caught a night bus to Kyoto. We spent a few days seeing the sights in the former capital and also took a day trip to Himeiji to see the castle there. We took a night train back to Tokyo where we spent a few more days checking out the sights and the various districts of the city, before finally flying back to Taiwan.
The first part of this overview of my travels ends there. Unfortunately I've only written a tiny bit of part 2, which was intended to cover our lengthy 5-month trip through Southeast and South Asia. I did write a more detailed account of my impressions of Nepal, the first country we visited on that trip (other than Thailand, which served as a sort of base). However, it was originally handwritten and only part of it has been typed into the computer. If I can find the original I may finish it up and post it sometime. Or maybe I'll manage to find the time and sufficient motivation to write part 2 of this overview. We shall see.
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Some interesting articles
In place of a lengthy essay/exposition/diatribe/rant, today I'm just going to post a few links to interesting articles on various topics that I've come across in the last few months.
Just the other day, the NY Times published a series of articles about the effect daily use of computers is having on people under the title "Your Brian on Computers". Here is one of them: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/07/technology/07brain.html?ref=garden Thankfully I think I can say I'm not nearly as bad off as some people in this respect, since while I use the computer much of the time both at home and at work, I only use desktop computers (though that may change in the near future, as I have considered getting something portable) and so I don't use computers at all when I am commuting or really anywhere other than my study or my desk at work.
One interesting feature that this article links to is a pair of tests on your ability to filter out distractions and your ability to switch between tasks. The first of these was rather reassuring, as I've begun to wonder if my memory is not what it used to be when I was young and it seemed that I could remember almost everything. It probably really isn't what it was in certain respects, but at least judging by this test my short-term memory is doing okay, as I was able to get every test right, which is apparently much better than average (the main point as far as the article is concerned is that multitaskers did much more poorly on this test than non-multitaskers, but I did better than either).
The second test I didn't do as well on. I actually took this one twice, as I didn't think I was really concentrating the first time (it was late afternoon at the office, and I was a bit tired), but even the second time my answers were slower than average. I did get all of them right, and interestingly I showed no significant delay because of switching between tasks, so in this sense I did better than both groups the study focused on. In other words, I took extra time on each test, but I took the same amount even if I was switching between the two tasks. In a way, this result wasn't that surprising either. I am often accused of overthinking things, and while in most respects I might argue that you can't think too much, I wouldn't deny that there is some truth to it. And even when I was young and was outscoring nearly all of my classmates on standardized tests, my one weakness was that on tests that required computation I would sometimes take too much time thinking about my answers and run out of time to finish (though I'd still usually outscore most other people); I had the same problem with the GRE math tests, on which I scored quite well, but fell short of perfect scores because I was too slow. So at least frequent use of computers doesn't seem to have fried my brains yet.
For some articles on completely different topics, here are a few on politics from several months ago on Newsweek. "We the Problem" by Evan Thomas (http://www.newsweek.com/2010/02/25/we-the-problem.html) makes a lot of good points. At some point I may write something related on the illogical self-centered thinking of those who want the government to eliminate the deficit without raising taxes (especially their taxes), cutting benefits (or at least benefits they get or expect to get), or cutting anything they personally think is important (e.g., defense spending). Another one is on a topic I've commented on before, the current Supreme Court majority's efforts to make elections safe for corporate oligarchy (yes, I swiped that from the Onion's "historic" headline on Woodrow Wilson): http://www.newsweek.com/2010/01/22/high-court-hypocrisy.html. This one has been made even more relevant by the court's recent decision throwing out Arizona's state public funding system for elections. And then there's "Know Your Conspiracies", an overview of some of the loony things some people in the US (particularly on the right) believe: http://www.newsweek.com/2010/02/11/know-your-conspiracies.html
In addition to the above, there was also an excellent article on another topic that I've touched on before, namely the tendency for our views of history to get somewhat altered (or distorted) with time, and the difficulty of using historical analogies for current events. The article was entitled "The Mythology of Munich" and it reassesses the historical facts of the Munich agreement between Britain and France on one side and Hitler on the other, as well as explaining (as indeed should be obvious) that Hitler was a complete different order of threat to Europe and the world than Saddam Hussein, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, or most other later leaders who have inspired some to raise the specter of Munich in calling for forceful action. Unfortunately the article, while referenced all over, seems to have vanished from Newsweek's website.
Finally, there is an article critical of Barack Obama's penchant for compromise entitled "Obama and the Curse of Moderation" from Al-Jazeera: http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2010/05/2010518111649460720.html . While I don't agree with all the writer's points, as I think that some amount of compromise is often necessary, including in many of the areas Obama has had to deal with (particularly as in a few cases the radical solution has major flaws), I do agree that Obama has often gone too far toward the middle. On some issues, at least, I also think that Obama would be better off taking a firm, even radical, stance and sticking with it (in some ways, this harks back to the above-mentioned Newsweek article "We the Problem").
While there are one or two other articles I've seen recently that I may want to comment on later, the above will do for a start. Until next time....
Just the other day, the NY Times published a series of articles about the effect daily use of computers is having on people under the title "Your Brian on Computers". Here is one of them: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/07/technology/07brain.html?ref=garden Thankfully I think I can say I'm not nearly as bad off as some people in this respect, since while I use the computer much of the time both at home and at work, I only use desktop computers (though that may change in the near future, as I have considered getting something portable) and so I don't use computers at all when I am commuting or really anywhere other than my study or my desk at work.
One interesting feature that this article links to is a pair of tests on your ability to filter out distractions and your ability to switch between tasks. The first of these was rather reassuring, as I've begun to wonder if my memory is not what it used to be when I was young and it seemed that I could remember almost everything. It probably really isn't what it was in certain respects, but at least judging by this test my short-term memory is doing okay, as I was able to get every test right, which is apparently much better than average (the main point as far as the article is concerned is that multitaskers did much more poorly on this test than non-multitaskers, but I did better than either).
The second test I didn't do as well on. I actually took this one twice, as I didn't think I was really concentrating the first time (it was late afternoon at the office, and I was a bit tired), but even the second time my answers were slower than average. I did get all of them right, and interestingly I showed no significant delay because of switching between tasks, so in this sense I did better than both groups the study focused on. In other words, I took extra time on each test, but I took the same amount even if I was switching between the two tasks. In a way, this result wasn't that surprising either. I am often accused of overthinking things, and while in most respects I might argue that you can't think too much, I wouldn't deny that there is some truth to it. And even when I was young and was outscoring nearly all of my classmates on standardized tests, my one weakness was that on tests that required computation I would sometimes take too much time thinking about my answers and run out of time to finish (though I'd still usually outscore most other people); I had the same problem with the GRE math tests, on which I scored quite well, but fell short of perfect scores because I was too slow. So at least frequent use of computers doesn't seem to have fried my brains yet.
For some articles on completely different topics, here are a few on politics from several months ago on Newsweek. "We the Problem" by Evan Thomas (http://www.newsweek.com/2010/02/25/we-the-problem.html) makes a lot of good points. At some point I may write something related on the illogical self-centered thinking of those who want the government to eliminate the deficit without raising taxes (especially their taxes), cutting benefits (or at least benefits they get or expect to get), or cutting anything they personally think is important (e.g., defense spending). Another one is on a topic I've commented on before, the current Supreme Court majority's efforts to make elections safe for corporate oligarchy (yes, I swiped that from the Onion's "historic" headline on Woodrow Wilson): http://www.newsweek.com/2010/01/22/high-court-hypocrisy.html. This one has been made even more relevant by the court's recent decision throwing out Arizona's state public funding system for elections. And then there's "Know Your Conspiracies", an overview of some of the loony things some people in the US (particularly on the right) believe: http://www.newsweek.com/2010/02/11/know-your-conspiracies.html
In addition to the above, there was also an excellent article on another topic that I've touched on before, namely the tendency for our views of history to get somewhat altered (or distorted) with time, and the difficulty of using historical analogies for current events. The article was entitled "The Mythology of Munich" and it reassesses the historical facts of the Munich agreement between Britain and France on one side and Hitler on the other, as well as explaining (as indeed should be obvious) that Hitler was a complete different order of threat to Europe and the world than Saddam Hussein, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, or most other later leaders who have inspired some to raise the specter of Munich in calling for forceful action. Unfortunately the article, while referenced all over, seems to have vanished from Newsweek's website.
Finally, there is an article critical of Barack Obama's penchant for compromise entitled "Obama and the Curse of Moderation" from Al-Jazeera: http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2010/05/2010518111649460720.html . While I don't agree with all the writer's points, as I think that some amount of compromise is often necessary, including in many of the areas Obama has had to deal with (particularly as in a few cases the radical solution has major flaws), I do agree that Obama has often gone too far toward the middle. On some issues, at least, I also think that Obama would be better off taking a firm, even radical, stance and sticking with it (in some ways, this harks back to the above-mentioned Newsweek article "We the Problem").
While there are one or two other articles I've seen recently that I may want to comment on later, the above will do for a start. Until next time....
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
News Briefs - Thailand and Israel
Having written something on Thailand's political crisis several weeks ago, I'd like to comment briefly on the end of the Red Shirt protests. Not having seen enough of the real evidence (as opposed to secondhand reports and hearsay), I can't be sure whether the Thai government used disproportionate force in clearing out the protest area and arresting the Red Shirt leaders. Certainly indiscriminate firing (which there were some reports of) was unjustifiable, and it is questionable whether they should have been using live ammo at all, as for the most part the protesters were much more lightly armed (though we shouldn't underestimate the damage that even their makeshift weapons could cause).
However, it is clear that there were at least some well armed and violent people mixed in among the protesters. In the violence near Democracy Monument in April, there apparently was video showing grenades being shot into the ranks of soldiers. Then there was the incident were grenades landed among groups of anti-Red Shirt protesters around the top of Silom Road, across from Lumpini Park and near the edge of the Red Shirt area, causing a number of deaths and injuries. While both sides blamed the other, it is hardly credible that the military would have attacked the pro-government protesters. as there only possible motivation would have been to create an excuse to attack the Red Shirts -- and as they didn't launch any attack, this reason doesn't hold water. Then there was the invasion of Chulalongkorn Hospital by some Red Shirts which forced many patients to be evacuated (and which their leaders apologized for). So it seems clear that there was an armed and violent element among the Red Shirts, though they probably weren't representative of the protesters as a whole, and in any case, even their presence wouldn't justify excessive force.
As with the motivations and goals of the two sides in Thailand's political divide, there are no obvious heroes and villains in the violence accompanying the end of the protest. It is worth noting, however, that while in principle even one death is always too many, the number of deaths in the crackdown was not nearly as high as might have been expected. Certainly it can't compare to similar violence in Burma recently, or the Tiananmen Square massacre in China. So while the Thai government's actions should be scrutinized closely, their use of force was not so blatantly excessive as that of other governments in the past, and given the amount of coverage, including by Western journalists and residents in Bangkok, it would have been difficult for them to hide an overly brutal crackdown (unlike the situation in places like Burma and Tibet).
Regardless of who deserves most of the blame, for me the violence in Bangkok had more meaning to me personally than similar violence elsewhere, simply because much of it occurred in places I have been to many times. CentralWorld (formerly World Trade Center), a large shopping mall that we went to on numerous occasions (mostly music and book shopping, and for meals), had already been closed for weeks, since it was at the center of the Red Shirt protest area. But in the final violence, some of the rioters set it on fire, and judging from the few photos I've seen, it was pretty thoroughly gutted, with some parts collapsing. In Siam Square, one of Bangkok's last single-screen theaters, the Siam Theatre, was also burned. Though we never watched a film there, we often passed by it or waited for buses in front (the nearby Scala, where we once saw 12 Monkeys, survived and is now the last stand-alone cinema in Bangkok). Of course even without this destruction, Bangkok is constantly changing. But these two places have been there every time I've gone in the past, and it will be strange to see those locations without them (though I believe they intend to rebuild/renovate CentralWorld). Regardless of the legitimate complaints of the Red Shirts (and they did have some), those few who rioted and caused this destruction get little sympathy from me.
Another incident in which there seems to less black and white than shades of gray occurred just the other day in the Middle East. I'm referring to the Israeli attack on the flotilla of ships carrying supplies to Gaza, and the resulting deaths of 10 activists (or nine in some reports). I don't want to get into all the rights and wrongs of the whole Israeli-Palestinian struggle, but I will say that on the one hand I sympathize with the Israeli desire to protect themselves, while having no sympathy whatever for their building of settlements in the Palestinian territories (including Arab parts of Jerusalem). Regarding the latter, I think the US should be prepared to cut aid to Israel severely if the building doesn't stop completely. As for the blockade of Gaza, I am dubious about the need for such a rigorous blockade, though I don't really have enough information to have a definite view on the matter. Certainly Israel could do more to ensure humanitarian supplies get through in sufficient amounts.
But as for the activist flotilla and the Israeli attack on it, from what I've seen, things are not so black and white as some of those protesting against Israel are saying. To be sure, there are a lot of black marks against Israel in the affair. For one, the Israeli seizure of the ships appeared to have taken place in international waters, and so was of questionable legality. As some Israeli military experts pointed out (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100601/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_israel_palestinians), the Israeli military could have used non-lethal weapons such as tear gas, and a former general asked why they didn't just sabotage the boats' engines instead of sending commandos to board them. And in the final analysis, whatever the provocation, the Israeli soldiers killed people, and it's always hard to justify that.
However, it does seem that there was more than a little provocation. I've seen the video released by the Israeli military, and it clearly shows the activists on board the ship swarming the Israeli soldiers as soon as they landed and attacking them with clubs, and in one case throwing a soldier overboard. While it is possible that the soldiers somehow managed to attack first, perhaps by shooting as they landed, it doesn't look very likely. It certainly appears that the activists simply attacked them. It's also notable that all or at least nearly all the violence took place on one ship, with others simply surrendering. Unless it just happened that the soldiers landing on that one ship were unusually trigger happy, it seems probable that the activists on the ship started the fighting. This doesn't necessarily excuse killing them, but I have to admit that if a bunch of people attacked me or my friends with clubs and I was carrying a gun, I'd probably use it on them. Of course all the evidence has to be examined closely, and as I said Israel most likely deserves condemnation for launching the raid in the first place, and thus creating a confrontational situation (not to mention the question of the morality of the blockade itself). But it isn't absolutely clear to me that the activists themselves don't have to take at least a little of the blame.
However, it is clear that there were at least some well armed and violent people mixed in among the protesters. In the violence near Democracy Monument in April, there apparently was video showing grenades being shot into the ranks of soldiers. Then there was the incident were grenades landed among groups of anti-Red Shirt protesters around the top of Silom Road, across from Lumpini Park and near the edge of the Red Shirt area, causing a number of deaths and injuries. While both sides blamed the other, it is hardly credible that the military would have attacked the pro-government protesters. as there only possible motivation would have been to create an excuse to attack the Red Shirts -- and as they didn't launch any attack, this reason doesn't hold water. Then there was the invasion of Chulalongkorn Hospital by some Red Shirts which forced many patients to be evacuated (and which their leaders apologized for). So it seems clear that there was an armed and violent element among the Red Shirts, though they probably weren't representative of the protesters as a whole, and in any case, even their presence wouldn't justify excessive force.
As with the motivations and goals of the two sides in Thailand's political divide, there are no obvious heroes and villains in the violence accompanying the end of the protest. It is worth noting, however, that while in principle even one death is always too many, the number of deaths in the crackdown was not nearly as high as might have been expected. Certainly it can't compare to similar violence in Burma recently, or the Tiananmen Square massacre in China. So while the Thai government's actions should be scrutinized closely, their use of force was not so blatantly excessive as that of other governments in the past, and given the amount of coverage, including by Western journalists and residents in Bangkok, it would have been difficult for them to hide an overly brutal crackdown (unlike the situation in places like Burma and Tibet).
Regardless of who deserves most of the blame, for me the violence in Bangkok had more meaning to me personally than similar violence elsewhere, simply because much of it occurred in places I have been to many times. CentralWorld (formerly World Trade Center), a large shopping mall that we went to on numerous occasions (mostly music and book shopping, and for meals), had already been closed for weeks, since it was at the center of the Red Shirt protest area. But in the final violence, some of the rioters set it on fire, and judging from the few photos I've seen, it was pretty thoroughly gutted, with some parts collapsing. In Siam Square, one of Bangkok's last single-screen theaters, the Siam Theatre, was also burned. Though we never watched a film there, we often passed by it or waited for buses in front (the nearby Scala, where we once saw 12 Monkeys, survived and is now the last stand-alone cinema in Bangkok). Of course even without this destruction, Bangkok is constantly changing. But these two places have been there every time I've gone in the past, and it will be strange to see those locations without them (though I believe they intend to rebuild/renovate CentralWorld). Regardless of the legitimate complaints of the Red Shirts (and they did have some), those few who rioted and caused this destruction get little sympathy from me.
Another incident in which there seems to less black and white than shades of gray occurred just the other day in the Middle East. I'm referring to the Israeli attack on the flotilla of ships carrying supplies to Gaza, and the resulting deaths of 10 activists (or nine in some reports). I don't want to get into all the rights and wrongs of the whole Israeli-Palestinian struggle, but I will say that on the one hand I sympathize with the Israeli desire to protect themselves, while having no sympathy whatever for their building of settlements in the Palestinian territories (including Arab parts of Jerusalem). Regarding the latter, I think the US should be prepared to cut aid to Israel severely if the building doesn't stop completely. As for the blockade of Gaza, I am dubious about the need for such a rigorous blockade, though I don't really have enough information to have a definite view on the matter. Certainly Israel could do more to ensure humanitarian supplies get through in sufficient amounts.
But as for the activist flotilla and the Israeli attack on it, from what I've seen, things are not so black and white as some of those protesting against Israel are saying. To be sure, there are a lot of black marks against Israel in the affair. For one, the Israeli seizure of the ships appeared to have taken place in international waters, and so was of questionable legality. As some Israeli military experts pointed out (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100601/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_israel_palestinians), the Israeli military could have used non-lethal weapons such as tear gas, and a former general asked why they didn't just sabotage the boats' engines instead of sending commandos to board them. And in the final analysis, whatever the provocation, the Israeli soldiers killed people, and it's always hard to justify that.
However, it does seem that there was more than a little provocation. I've seen the video released by the Israeli military, and it clearly shows the activists on board the ship swarming the Israeli soldiers as soon as they landed and attacking them with clubs, and in one case throwing a soldier overboard. While it is possible that the soldiers somehow managed to attack first, perhaps by shooting as they landed, it doesn't look very likely. It certainly appears that the activists simply attacked them. It's also notable that all or at least nearly all the violence took place on one ship, with others simply surrendering. Unless it just happened that the soldiers landing on that one ship were unusually trigger happy, it seems probable that the activists on the ship started the fighting. This doesn't necessarily excuse killing them, but I have to admit that if a bunch of people attacked me or my friends with clubs and I was carrying a gun, I'd probably use it on them. Of course all the evidence has to be examined closely, and as I said Israel most likely deserves condemnation for launching the raid in the first place, and thus creating a confrontational situation (not to mention the question of the morality of the blockade itself). But it isn't absolutely clear to me that the activists themselves don't have to take at least a little of the blame.
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