Outsiders not welcome at Chinese spy museum

by Tom Johansmeyer on

Foreigners keep out!

Committed to preserving national secrets, the new Jiangsu National Security Education Museum in Nanjing is only open to Chinese citizens. So, if you want to see guns embedded in lipstick, maps hidden in decks of cards and other accoutrements of the spy trade (or, “tradecraft,” as spies over here call it), you have to have the right passport.

Most of the items on display are well past their “use by” dates. Guns disguised as fountain pens and pipes, a bugged calculator and instructions for wiretapping can be found … some of which date back to the communist fight against the nationalists in 1927.

Even though some of these tools and methods are dated, the government likes to keep a leash on its secrets, so the best you’ll get is a second-hand account from a loose-lipped local. A spokesman for the spy museum said to The Associated Press, “We don’t want such sensitive spy information to be exposed to foreigners, so they are not allowed to enter.” Most of the prospective guests turned away, though, understand the reasoning.

Desperate to get a look? You can usually get in if you have “Chinese features” and look “clean.”

Budget Travel: Butte, Montana

by Jamie Rhein on

Summary: Butte, a town in the southwestern part of Montana, began as a group of gold and silver mining camps in the 1870s. When copper mining boomed, it grew into one of the wealthiest spots in the United States. During WW I, Butte was called “The Richest Hill on Earth.” Never mind that Jon Stewart’s the “Daily Show” made fun of Butte a couple years ago. It’s one of those towns with a unique place in American history that is evident at every corner.

The reason for the Daily Show fun-poking is the Berkeley Pit, the now shut down open copper mine. When the mine closed, it resulted in a lake of toxic water that has since become a tourist attraction. Like I said, never mind that. Butte, unlike what the Daily Show reported, has much to offer the traveler who is looking for a wonderful time that is easy on the wallet. For that reason, Butte has been experiencing quite the tourist boom over the past few years. This is a town that blends hard scrabble and artsy–the old with the new.

As people have discovered Butte’s charm and splendor, some have moved here bringing their money with them. Historic brick and stone Victorian-style buildings have been lovingly restored, and Butte’s can-do spirit has thrived. Evel Knievel was born and raised here, for example. Still, this is a city where laid back might as well be its middle name. You can walk to most places of interest, although, hopefully, you’re fond of walking up long hills. Butte has a doozey.

Getting in: Although Butte itself is a budget-worthy destination, getting there can be pricey. Flights to Montana are generally expensive, although regional airlines offer cheaper options to certain destinations. Delta flies into Butte’s Burt Mooney Airport, but Frontier Airlines flies into Bozeman, 85 miles away. There’s an economy priced RT flight from Phoenix to Bozeman in May for $202, for example.

Also check out Horizon Airlines or flying into a city like Salt Lake City, Denver or Seattle where you can rent a car and drive the rest of the way. We’ve done the Seattle and Denver fly and drive ourselves. A friend of ours flew from New Jersey into Salt Lake City which is 5 1/2-hours away. Frommers recommends this option for the same reasons that I do. It gives you the chance to enjoy the vast landscape in between.

Butte is also on a Greyhound route, although having a car is so worth it for the off the beaten path destinations like Philipsburg. The scenery alone makes Philipsburg, located on the Pintler Scenic Highway not far from Georgetown Lake, worth the drive. If you arrive on a Greyhound, consider renting a car for the day so you can explore more easily.

Where to Stay: The range of places to slumber varies from national chain motels to family run establishments. Most are within walking distance of downtown, but some are closer than most. The Super 8 is one less expensive option. For a historic Butte experience, try the Finlen Inn located downtown. Camping is also possible, although if you’re tenting it, you’ll have RV company. For a comprehensive list of lodging options, check out Montana Big Sky Country, the official state travel information Website.

What to See: You can’t miss Butte’s mining history, no matter from which angle you explore its hills. The headframes where miners were lowered below the ground are a prominent part of the landscape. For a close look at what was once Butte’s glory days of copper mine prosperity, head to the Copper King Mansion. Once owned by William Andrews Clark, one of the three copper mine barons, the 34-room mansion is also a B&B and has been kept to look like it did when the Clark’s lived there. Tours for adults are $7. Children are $3.50. If you’re an overnight guest, tours are free.

On the other end of the mining life spectrum is what is left of Butte’s Chinatown. The first Chinese people came to Butte in 1868 to work in the mines, eventually starting businesses like laundries, restaurants and dry goods stores. Their numbers grew to more than 2,000 until discrimination laws pushed most of them out of Montana. Two attractions not to miss are the Wah Chong Tai Company and Mai Wah Noodle Parlor buildings. Now connected, they serve as the museum of the Mai Wah Society with a purpose to preserve and highlight Butte’s important Chinese-American history.

For a fun, interactive tour, head to the World of Mining Museum to don a mining hat complete with a head lamp for a trip underground into a once active mine. There are chances to operate the machinery. After wards, take time to wander among the buildings of “Hell Roarin’ Gulch,” a reproduction of an 1890s mining town.

Part of mining lore is the disaster stories. Butte’s biggest disaster was on June 8, 1917 when an accident in the Granite Mountain mine ignited a fire that killed 168 men. Toward the top end of Butte is the Granite Mountain Memorial, a tribute to the men and their families. The view from the memorial’s vantage point is stunning.

As with any mining towns, brothels were part of the scenery. Butte’s no different. The Dumas Brothel, in operation from 1890 to 1982, is now a museum.

Wandering among Butte’s downtown shops offers a variety of antique stores, gift shops and galleries. Check out Garden of Beadin, a bead store with EVERYTHING, Jail House Coffee (housed in the original jail), and the Butte Silver Bow Art Foundation for starters.

For entertainment value, there’s nothing better than the National Folk Festival and Evel Knievel Days. The National Folk Festival is a music lover’s dream. Last summer was the festival’s first year in Butte. There are two more summers before it moves to its next venue.

Evel Knievel Days happens every July. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen motorcycles ridden by daredevils fly around the Wall of Terror. Both festivals are FREE and downtown. A good friend of mine swears by the Ai Ri Rah Festival, the largest Irish festival in the Rockies. I haven’t been to it yet, but it sounds fabulous.

The Old Butte Historical Adventures walking or trolley tours is one way to dive into Butte’s intriguing past. Tour guides, who know the inside scoop of particular buildings and the stories of the people who made Butte happen, can point out details you’d otherwise miss.

Where to eat: For dining, and to keep with Butte’s historic past, head to Pekin Noodle Parlor. This Chinese restaurant opened in 1916. It’s been operated by the same family ever since. The curtained booths use to serve as brothel stalls. For Mexican food, try La Hacienda, and if you eat meat, you can’t go wrong with Pork Chop John’s. The pork chop sandwich is tasty and cheap.

Galley Gossip: Interview with a flight attendant – ME!

by Heather Poole on

Dear Heather,

I know this is really random and weird, but I’m a Jr in high school and we were given an assignment to write a research paper over a job that we would like to do once we graduate and I have become very interested in becoming a flight attendant. Anyway part of the assignment is to interview someone that does the job we would like to do. It’s been very hard trying to find someone that is a flight attendant. Well I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions…

  1. How long have you been working at your job
  2. What kind of training/education is required to do your job
  3. Is college or a vocational school needed to prepare for this job?
  4. How have the things learned in school helped when beginning this line of work?
  5. What do you like most about your job?
  6. What do you like least about your job?
  7. What advice would you give a student that is interested in doing what you do?
Thanks for your time,

Lacy

Dear Lacy,

I’d love to help you with your research paper and thank you for including me. When you’re finished, can I take a peek at what you wrote? Oh and if you, or anyone else, have any other questions please feel free to ask!

How long have you been working at your job: I’ve been working for a major US carrier for fourteen years. Before I began working for my current employer, I worked three months for a low cost carrier called Sun Jet International Airlines, an airline that is no longer in business. I’ve even done a little corporate flying on a GV (gulfstream) owned by Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team, which was actually purchased over the internet for $41 million, the largest internet purchase ever made. Talk about an amazing experience. My jumpseat alone was something to write home about.

What kind of training / education is required to do your job: It depends on the airline. However, I do not know many flight attendants who do not have a college education. Even with a 30% pay cut, longer duty days, and shorter layovers, all of which happened after 9/11, the job is still a highly competitive one to obtain. That means if you want to work for a major carrier your best bet is to go to college and get a degree.

Besides a college education, airlines are also looking for people who have good customer service skills. Remember, you will be dealing with people, all kinds of people and lots of them for up to 14 hours a day, and most of these people are not happy and want to tell you all about it. It’s important that you have the right kind of personality to handle this kind of job. Even people with the right personality can lose a little patience after a long duty day. Being flexible is also a must in the airline industry, as flights cancel and schedules change. And keep in mind, you probably won’t be based where you live now.

As for training the airline will provide, it was the longest seven and a half weeks of my life. It’s not that it was hard, because it’s really not, but there’s a lot of information to retain in a very short period of time. In training we learned everything from how to evacuate a smoke filled cabin to how to handle a “gassy” passenger without insulting them.

Trust me, it’s not all about doing a drink service. Things do happen in flight. Just a few months ago I walked out of the business class galley with a tray full of drinks and noticed the entire business class cabin had turned around in their seats, all eyes on me. That’s when I spotted the unconscious young lady lying on the floor. No one had moved a muscle. Immediately I went into action. Fortunately flight attendant training prepares you for anything and everything. Though I must admit I was completely unprepared once while working a Sun Jet flight when a passenger complained to me because she didn’t get a blueberry muffin inflight due to the fact that the flight diverted because of smoke in the cabin. Ya see, this is one of those times when customer service skills come in handy.

Is college or a vocational school needed to prepare for this job: I wouldn’t say it’s required, but as I mentioned above, the more educated you are the better your chances at getting hired, especially if you want to work for a major carrier. So if you have the opportunity to go to college, by all means go! If you are thinking about a vocational school, do it! I can’t tell you how many flight attendants I know who are trained in therapy and nursing. It’s just smart to have a backup plan in life, because even if you do get hired to work for an airline you never know what’s going to happen in the future. Airlines are struggling just to stay afloat in our weak economy and each month a different airline seems to be going out of business.

If for whatever reason college is not in the cards for you, don’t give up. Get experience! Customer service experience is what you’ll need, and you’ll need a lot of it! Try waiting tables (even if you are going to school), but not just at any restaurant, a nice restaurant. Years ago when I interviewed to work as a corporate flight attendant for a company called Million Air out of Dallas, I was asked about my experience with first class service. At the time I had none. Nada. Zero. Zilch. Oh sure I waited tables in college, but that was at a hole in the wall dive, so that didn’t quite count. Probably explains why I didn’t get hired. I’m sure the canary yellow suit I wore to interview in that day didn’t help matters, either.

Speaking other languages always helps, too. Airlines love to hire bilingual employees. Just the other day I saw that a major US carrier is currently hiring ONLY flight attendants that can speak Mandarin Chinese. Those who speak Mandarin Chinese do not need more than a high school education to apply.

How have the things learned in school helped when beginning this line of work: Honestly, I can’t think of one thing that I learned in school that did not somehow help me later on in life as a flight attendant, or any other job that I’ve held. Just going to school, for one thing, is an education in itself. You are multi-tasking, learning how to deal with different people, handling responsibility, while studying and learning new things every day. Trust me when I tell you that airline training is not easy. There’s a lot of information coming at you at once, so the better you are in school, the better off you’ll be in flight attendant training.

While most days you won’t be handling onboard emergencies, thank goodness, the majority of your time will be spent dealing with passengers, and that includes passengers who have problems. A flight attendant has to be able to communicate not only with the mother and child in coach, but also the CEO of a very large company sitting in first class. That means you have to be knowledgeable and up to date on current events, as well as what’s going on in the aviation industry.

What do you like most about your job? What I like most about my job changes every few years. In my early twenties all the days off seemed to be the best thing about my job. Back then I worked about 12 days a month. That’s it. As I began to make more money, it was traveling (for free!) that I began to love. There’s nothing like flying to Paris in first class on a whim. Now that I’m married (to a man who flies over 100,000 miles a year) and have a two-year old son at home, I have to say it’s the flexibility of the job that I love most. When my husband is out of town, I can stay home and take care of my son. If the husband has to go away on business to…let’s say…Japan, my son and I can go along with him. If I want to make a little extra cash for the holiday season, I can pick up extra trips from other flight attendants.

What do you like least about your job? Reserve. Because everything is based on company seniority, reserve flight attendants are the most junior flight attendants at each airline. When you’re on reserve you have no life. Except for a few known days off, you do not have a schedule, which means you’re at the beckon call of the airline – 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, until your official day off. Thank goodness I’m no longer on reserve. But that can always change. So now that I’m holding off reserve, I have to say that working holidays is what I like least about my job. Yes, I will be working Christmas day. Luckily I was able to drop my trip on Christmas eve.

What advice would you give a student that is interested in doing what you do? Finish your education and if you still want to be a flight attendant apply! Then, when you get called for an interview, make sure to read my blog so that you know exactly what you’re getting into, and talk a lot about customer service. Oh and whatever you do, do not wear a canary yellow suit. Think blue. Navy blue.

Hope that helps,

Heather Poole

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Photos courtesy of Heather Poole (yeah, that’s me!)

Why you’ll still be able to find the new Guns and Roses album in China

by Josh Lew on

Yes, I will put a shamed expression on my face and admit that I felt a bit of excitement when I heard that Guns and Roses was releasing a new album. Come on, I was an awkward, pimple-ridden junior high-schooler when Axl and Slash were still at the top of their game. I thought that they were the shit.

Well, the new album, which was actually made by Axl Rose and a bunch of session musicians, is less than mediocre. But when I heard that Chinese authorities were critisizing it because of its content and about to ban it, I had to laugh. Not because the government was taking a bunch of has-beens so seriously, but because I know that if I walked into a Shenzhen bootleg CD shop right now, I’d have a pretty good chance of finding a copy of the album. The same goes for pirated versions of controversial books and DVDs. I don’t have the official numbers, but I’d wager that over 85% of the music and movies sold in China are bootlegged. So your hip Shanghai record store might not have G&R, but the bootleggers probably will.

Xinjiang Journal: Sixteen hours in China’s Wild West

by Jerry Guo on

3:05 pm. The plane from Beijing has barely landed, and I’m already on my phone. The screen flashes 5:05 pm, and for a moment, I fear I’ve missed the ballgame, that I’ve flown 2,400 miles to the heart of China’s wild west-roughly the distance between New York and San Francisco-for empty bleachers and discarded foam fingers.

Then, I remember that there are two worlds here in Xinjiang, each with its own definition of time. The Han Chinese run this hardscrabble autonomous province on official Beijing time while the Uighurs, a Muslim ethnic minority, prefer unofficial Xinjiang time. Getting by on two different time zones is easier than you would think, for the Hans and Uighurs live in different neighborhoods, speak different languages, practice different religions, and attend different classes.

When these two worlds clash, violence often erupts. In August, 33 policemen and Uighur rebels were killed around Xinjiang, and with the end of the Olympics, many human rights activists fear an even greater crackdown on the Uighurs.

But there is one place where these two worlds still coexist peacefully: on the baseball field.
3:50 pm. I’ve made it to the skirmish (score one for Xinjiang time), but two problems arise. The first is that it’s raining. The second is more alarming. I’m standing on a soccer field, and the baseball players-college students from Xinjiang University-are not batting or catching or throwing: they’re kicking around a soccer ball.

Christopher Rufo, a 24-year-old Sacramento filmmaker who has been following this team for the past eight months, sees my confusion, and explains that the nearest baseball field lies 1,400 miles east of Urumqi, in Xian. “Baseball is an outlier here,” he says. “Few people play the game, and that’s why it’s considered so cool.”

Even though they must make do with a soccer field (with one corner as home plate), and their gear-worn gloves, stitch-frayed balls, rough bats-would not be fit for the Little League, these players have beaten the odds. On the field, they’ve transformed, in four years, from a skinny group of mostly freshmen (none of whom had ever seen a baseball game on television) into a cohesive team that has held their own against bigger, better equipped opponents from the coast. Off the field, their tale of overcoming bitter racial divides-there weren’t enough players to have separate Han and Uighur teams-begs to be baseball’s answer to Remember the Titans.

6:35 pm. It’s the fourth (and last) inning, and while I’d like to say it was a close game, no one was keeping score. Nonetheless, Akbar, a Uighur freshman and material physics major, dashes from second base in a full sprint, off a hard grounder into left field.

He rounds third and continues his mad dash to home, arriving in a tangle of legs and arms. I hear yells of “out-ta” (out). There’s no umpire, so the catcher, Zheng Siming, a Han junior and computer science major, makes the call. He had inadvertently dropped the catch, and rightfully declares, “Say-foo” (safe).

Their coach, Jai Kuk Rue, a stocky Korean who never fulfilled his dream of making the pros, watches approvingly from the sideline. “Baseball to us is not about points or winning,” he says. “Most important is our teamwork. The Uighur and Han players are always in close contact, so their relations have improved.”

He’s in the middle of retracing the team’s ascent in fortunes-the discovery of a cachet of gloves left by Japanese exchange students in the 1990s; his chance vacation to Xinjiang five years ago with his family, and the subsequent decision to stay and coach the team; the recent organization of a middle school and four elementary school training camps by team alums-when Akbar bounds over, all grins and still breathing hard.
Second part tomorrow.