Not your normal Asian adventure vacation

by Tom Johansmeyer on

We travel for many reasons. Maybe it’s to relax, learn something new or see friends and family. And then there are the so-called “adventure travelers” – sorry guys, you just don’t know the meaning of the expression. Keep your kayaks and your climbing gear in the garage, and trade them for a pencil so you can take some notes. Robert Park is redefining “adventure.”

Park, 28 years old, announced that he was leaving South Korea with other human rights activists (who asked Reuters not to reveal their names) to bring “God’s love” to the citizens on the northern side of the border. North Korea has the unfortunate habit of arresting foreigners who do not enter the country legally, which can be difficult to do because of visa constraints and limitations on how travelers from some countries are permitted to cross into the most reclusive nation in the world.

Park, who is an American citizen, and his crew were reported to have crossed from China into North Korea on Saturday. The entry point was Hoeryong, in the northeast part of the country. The border up there isn’t heavily patrolled.



The motivation for Park’s excursion is religious – as a Christian, he believes, it is his duty to make the trip. And, he’s made it clear that he isn’t looking for a rescue effort from the feds if something goes wrong. Park said, “I don’t want President Obama to come and pay to get me out. But I want the North Korean people to be free.” He continued, “Until the concentration camps are liberated, I do not want to come out. If I have to die with them, I will.”

Last spring, former U.S. President Bill Clinton was dispatched to North Korea to arrange the release of two reporters from Current TV: Laura Ling and Euna Lee. They were detained on charges of having crossed the China/North Korea border illegally. They claimed that they had crossed into North Korea by accident and were seized in China by North Korean border guards who chased after them.

Why has there been all this interest in North Korea? Obviously, it’s among the most difficult places for outsiders to enter, a problem which is compounded for human rights activists and the media. Also, there is a human rights record which has attracted considerable attention everywhere else in the world (except maybe Somalia). A U.S. State Department report published earlier this year lists the following abuses:

• The prohibition of freedom of speech and association
• The use of arbitrary killings to cause fear in the population
• An absence of due process
• “Severe torture and abuse,” which can include forced abortions and sexual abuse
• Political imprisonment (up to 200,000 inmates)
• Monitored correspondence
• Imprisonment of entire families based on the deeds of one member

The State Department also claims that North Korea maintains “control over all artistic and academic products,” though the notion that the government keeps an iron grip on the arts doesn’t fit completely with a North Korean art show I saw in New York a year ago or what is on display in Australia.

China unveils world’s fastest high-speed train

by Sean McLachlan on

The Chinese government opened a new high-speed railway yesterday that is the fastest in the world. The Wuguang Passenger Railway links Wuhan, the provincial capital of Hubei, with the port of Guangzhou. The train runs an average of 350 kilometers per hour (217mph) and makes the journey in less than three hours. The old train took ten.

In test runs the train has made 394 kph (245mph).

As you can see in this video, the train looks like other high-speed trains but improved engineering gives it a superior speed.

The government plans to expand the existing network with 40 more lines and 13,000km (8078 miles) more track. The capital Beijing will get many of the links as it strives to improve connections with regional production centers.

More evidence that this will be China’s century? Yep. Perhaps instead of learning Globish we should all be taking Mandarin.%Gallery-73525%

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Far West in the Far East: Twenty-four hours in Xiding

by Catherine Bodry on

On my trip to Xishuangbanna a couple of weeks ago, I was able to time a trip to Xiding with its weekly Thursday market. A vibrant, colorful affair filled with photogenic Hani women, various animal parts, string tobacco, and pretty much everything else under the bright morning sun, the market was an obvious draw to the town. But Xiding is also a great place to hike around the rolling hills, as there are many minority villages in the area.

On the map, Xiding is very close to Menghze, where we stayed the night before. We caught an early-morning bus, bumping along a dusty, flat road in the midst of dormant rice paddies. After a completely straight thirty minutes, our bus hit the mountains and started climbing. I had no idea Xiding was in the mountains, so it was a pleasant surprise to measure our progress by the views we were gaining. The bus twisted up hillsides for another 30 minutes, finally reaching a sunny, thin-aired Xiding.

We saw only one hotel, which cost my friend and me each about $2.50 for a shared room. The bathroom was in a back courtyard, next to the smokehouse. We weren’t to have electricity until much later that night, so using the windowless bathroom was an exercise in bravery.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I was traveling with a friend who was researching the relationship between tourism and minority crafts. We decided to follow the dirt road that continued out of Xiding in the hopes that we would come across a minority village, and after two hours of walking along the cultivated hillsides, we found what we were looking for. Shaded by thick growth, a small village full of wood homes with thatched roofs sat quietly, looking at the same view as Xiding.

%Gallery-80168%Within minutes, a man invited us to rest in his home with a cup of tea. He chatted with my friend, while his wife and grandchild looked in, sunlight illuminating them in the doorway. From there, we followed a path between homes and came across an old woman weaving on a giant bamboo loom, a good fifteen feet of thread stretched out in front of her. A young man probably in his early twenties and dressed in a suit was the only person who spoke Mandarin. He translated for my friend, who asked about the the woman’s weaving: Did she spin her thread? Yes. Did she dye it? Yes. Who did she sell it to? Other Hani people. He opined that the older Hani were stubborn and backwards, because they refused to wear modern clothing and were very poor. He was on a visit from Shanghai, where he had been working for a year, and his feeling of superiority was obvious in his clothing choice.

After taking photos and watching a giant pig snuff around the dirt yard where the woman stood weaving, we set back to Xiding and arrived starving, just before dark. No electricity, so dinner was a candlelit affair, and afterward we wandered around the dark village trying to spot constellations. My friend is from the East Coast and has only seen the Milky Way twice in her life; I live in Alaska and am used to star-filled winter skies, but on this night I saw more stars than I’d ever seen in China.

We got up early the next morning to experience the market, which was filled with photogenic Dai and Hani women. The typical produce, meats and baskets of bean curd filled the sidewalks, but there was also a street-side dentist, hill tribe clothing (I bought legwarmers, which caused a bit of a stir when the women insisted on tying them on for me), angel-haired tobacco, and cheap knock-off clothing. The Thursday market was obviously the place where villagers came to do their one-stop shopping.

Since there was only one bus out of town, we bought our tickets early, boarding at noon, and then headed back down the way we came, the bus threading through steep hillsides covered in rubber trees.

To read more about my life in China, click here.

Far West in the Far East: Christmas in Kunming

by Catherine Bodry on
It’s Christmas day here in China, but only Christmas Eve back home. I know the rhythms my friends and family are settling into in the States: the quiet streets, busy homes, smells of spices and baking, and the building anticipation of opening piles of colorful presents. Just writing that makes me feel a bit homesick, but thankfully Christmas is not a big deal in China so I don’t feel as lonely as I might if I were alone in a country that celebrates the holiday as fiercely as America does.

In Kunming, I’ve seen some half-hearted attempts at decorations, with lonely strips of tinsel tossed over a counter, or a cardboard Santa taped to a window, or restaurant employees wearing Santa hats, but in general today is just another weekday. I don’t have class, but that’s really only because my school caters to Westerners. The universities are open, though the Western instructors and students I know seem personally affronted by that. However, I think the Chinese are probably baffled by what a big deal we make out of Christmas.

With no religious connection to the holiday, I am actually a bit relieved at escaping the consumer hype of it. I think I’ll celebrate today with a walk in the sunshine, a hot white Russian, and dinner with my Jewish friend.

Far West in the Far East: On learning Chinese characters

by Catherine Bodry on
Ostensibly, I’m in China to learn the language. There are many other reasons for being here, but learning Mandarin gives me both a focus and a distraction, and I’ve found the most mental stimulation and solace in learning the characters.
Right now, I know about 150 of them. In order to read a newspaper, I’ll need to know between two and three thousand, so I’ve a ways to go. However, I’m learning between eight and ten new ones per day, and slowly the gibberish around me is taking on form and meaning.
The repetition of writing the same characters over and over into thin-papered books with large squares meant for third-graders to practice in is oddly satisfying and meditative. Often when I close my eyes at night, characters scratch themselves onto the insides of my eyelids. I feel like they are a code that I need to crack, and indeed as I learn more of the basics I’m able to understand other characters more rapidly. .

There are many brilliant compounds that I delight in: the character for crisis, for example, is a combination of the characters for “danger” and “opportunity.” Star is a combination of “sun” and “birth.” Man, “strength” plus “field.” Of course, for every thought-provoking compound there is an equally puzzling one: the symbol for sea is simply the character for “constant” with a water radical added on. I like to think of something poetic-sounding such as “the constant sea” to help me remember it, but how it evolved I don’t know.

For now, occasionally when I walk down the street I feel like a series of lights pop on – each light a new character I understand. Pop! “Day.” Pop! “Hot.” Pop! “Milk” (the character for cow, plus a combo character than includes the symbol for female). It’s like a scene in some grammar nerd’s personal musical. Of course, there are other times when I look at the seemingly endless variety of unintelligible characters, and I feel very, very tired.