travel fears

I travel a fair amount. I've visited East Asia, Southeast Asia, South America, Australia and New Zealand, the Middle East, and many parts of Europe. When choosing travel destinations, I like to pick places that are different from the places that I've already been. I find a lot of people rule out destinations because they're afraid of terrorists or pickpockets, but I figure the first is a very low probability occurrence, and the second can be minimized by wearing money belts and not carrying valuables.

One place that I am wary of is China. I went once in 2002, and we had a good time. We spent half the week in Shanghai, attended a friend's wedding there, and then spent the rest of the week hiking at Huangshan. The scenery was gorgeous, we had lots of yummy food, and we enjoyed travelling as a group. We also found what appeared to be a tape recorder in our hotel room.

Many years later, a friend who is a US citizen but was born in Taiwan was denied a visa because her US passport lists "Taiwan" as her country of birth. They insisted that she change it, so she decided not to go after all. D's US passport also lists Taiwan as his country of birth. This was not a problem in 2002, but I would not be surprised if it was a problem now. I would be very irritated if we paid $150 only to be denied a visa.

In addition, the food safety and pollution issues seem to get worse and worse. The WHO has reported that 750,000 people die prematurely every year because of air and water pollution-related diseases including respiratory illness, lung cancer, heart disease, making pollution the leading cause of death in China. Acid rain falls over 30% of the country, and has spread to Seoul and Tokyo. Some of China's food safety incidents have gotten international attention (melamine in baby food and egg products, pesticides in the powdered ginger imported by Whole Foods). Other incidents were widely reported only in Asia, but still sound quite serious. For instance, there were reports of sewage in stinky tofu, plastic in tapioca pearls (to improve texture), and pesticides and sulphur in mantou (to increase the chewiness and whiteness of the steamed buns).

In my mind, if I travel to the Middle East, there is a very small chance that I will be killed. If I travel to China, there is 100% chance that I will have to breathe the air and eat the food, thus ingesting and/or inhaling potentially dangerous chemicals and carcinogens. I'm trying to figure out if I just have a mental block because of all the anti-Taiwan sentiment in China, or whether it's reasonable for me to fear visiting China?

(This topic came up because I was looking at some amazing photos posted by a Shanghai-born friend who recently returned to China.)

how much are *your* principles worth?

Yani Tseng won the Kraft Nabisco Championship (one of four LGPA majors) last month. That win, combined with Lorena Ochoa's retirement, has made her the second-ranked woman golfer in the world. She was recently offered a $25 million sponsorship by a Chinese group, and was widely expected to accept it.

My dad was saying yesterday that according to her father, she has rejected the offer. One of the conditions of sponsorship was that she would have to play under the Chinese (PRC) flag, rather than the Taiwanese (ROC) one. Apparently that was a deal-breaker.

I have much respect. That's a lot of money to turn down.

no comment

hmm

This morning, I read this article about a new Taiwanese movie called "Cape No. 7", which has a lot of Japanese influence.

My first reaction was to try to find the movie on Netflix, but it's not available, at least not yet.

My second reaction was to be disgusted that the Chinese government is again practicing censorship, this time using fears of "nationalistic backlash" as justification.

Then, I tried to consider whether perhaps there was some kernel of truth in their justification. Is there a topic which is so sensitive for Americans that if a movie was made addressing it, its very release would cause mass riots? I'm having a hard time thinking of one.

In any case, there's no good excuse for censorship, so I guess I'm just pondering different degrees of badness anyway.

oh dear

In my news feed this morning: Pro-independence protesters in Taiwan have attacked a visiting Chinese envoy. There's video and everything.

On the one hand, I understand there is a lot of frustration right now in Taiwan. Ma Ying-Jeou has been pandering to China at every opportunity, and on top of that, people are afraid to eat anything, due to the Chinese milk scandal. Part of me definitely feels like cheering on the protesters. But, in the larger scheme of things, I don't think this incident is going to help Taiwan's standing in the international community.

Then again, the international community pretty much spits on Taiwan, so maybe we shouldn't care what they think.

unforeseen consequences

I just had a really interesting lunchtime conversation with a friend. The topic du jour was the recent Olympic torch protests.

I've been mildly in favor of the protests, just because I think that it's good to get some visibility for the issues that are being raised (Tibet, human rights, Darfur). A Taiwanese friend even raised the possibility of going up there today with a "Taiwanese-Americans support Tibet" sign, and although I didn't go, it was mostly because of a busy work schedule, combined with laziness, rather than any objection to the idea.

However, my friend, who is from China, pointed out that one of the side effects of the protests has been to push the average Chinese person towards greater nationalism. She herself is definitely not a rabid nationalist (I'll vouch for that, having had multiple rational conversations with her about Taiwan) and she said that upon reading about the protests, she felt herself becoming defensive, wondering why the Western media was determined to make China look bad.

I think this is a really unfortunate consequence. The protesters' goal is to give the Chinese people greater human rights, but instead they are being perceived as attacking the Chinese people. One could argue that the protests are aimed at the Chinese government, not the people, but that's a pretty tricky distinction to make, especially through the media lens. If we're not careful, we could wind up with a billion nationalistic Chinese people who are angry at the West, and I'm pretty sure that's not what we (the global community) want.

When I travel, I hear lots of anti-American sentiment, and I don't typically react defensively (especially as I myself often criticize our government), but on occasion I'll be annoyed by some derogatory comment about how "America" has done yet another stupid thing. Chinese culture places a much greater emphasis on not "losing face" and the Chinese people have really been looking forward to hosting these Olympics, so I can understand why they would feel hurt, to some degree.

I guess the moral of the story is to think really hard about the consequences of your actions, because things may not turn out at all like you had expected or wanted.

consequences

Looks like the Chinese government is caught between a rock and a hard place.

On the one hand, they have civil unrest in Tibet, and of course they want to crush any demonstrations as quickly as possible, per their normal operating procedure.

On the other hand, aggressive use of police force against the Tibetans appears to have significantly swayed Taiwanese voters, who go to the polls in two days to choose their next president.

For me, it's win-win. Either the Tibetans raise a major ruckus and draw international attention to China's total disregard for free speech, or maybe Taiwan elects a president who doesn't want to sell the country to China. Worst case, Taiwan still ends up with a pro-China president, but at least he doesn't have a huge mandate.

government power

Just now I heard about yet another Taiwanese flag controversy. Nothing new, really; the Chinese government issued threats, the Chinese participants hurled insults at the Taiwanese winner, and in the end, the organizing body will probably apologize profusely, groveling in fear of China's economic might. In short, a Taiwanese person was again ridiculed and/or punished for having a small scrap of national pride.

What caught my eye was this astute reader comment, submitted by an American living in Taiwan:
The rabid and irrational reaction of young people in the PRC to the concept of “Taiwan” is getting dangerous... for all of us. The manner in which the PRC govt. indoctrinates youth with anti-Taiwan venom reminds me of a pit bull owner who is training it to fight; the dog itself is not inherently bad, but the owner, for its own goals, encourages rabid aggression. No better way to encourage rabid aggression by telling some die hard gamers that if they allow the R.O.C. flag to be seen they will not be allowed to participate in future competitions. Come on, that’s just twisted and manipulative! The 23 million people that live here in Taiwan, living an independent life from the PRC for over 50 years developing democratic institutions and a free press, are living with the threat that one of these days, those kids in the PRC are going to be unleashed on them.

Indoctrination, brainwashing, propaganda; whatever you want to call it, it's scary stuff. I worry about the Chinese government brainwashing its citizens about Taiwan, of course, but I also worry that the US government is trying to tell Americans what to think. Who is it that's been pushing the idea that anyone who opposes the war in Iraq is supporting the terrorists?

Olympic politics

I've refrained from commenting on the Taiwan Olympic torch controversy until now, but I thought this map was pretty revealing (then again, I'm heavily biased):


China claims that it's not trying to be political about the torch route, but if so, just looking at the map, wouldn't it make more sense geographically for the torch to pass from North Korea to Taiwan to Vietnam, and then to Hong Kong, rather than going to Vietnam first, and then backtracking to Taiwan?

hero, again

Someone sent me an article about Zhang Yimou's Hero, which does a better job than I did of examining the message of the movie:

Nameless chooses loyalty, and his own death, after a long conversation with the King of Qin. The king asserts that Nameless’s quest is only negative, he acts out of hatred and revenge. He reveals that he himself is misunderstood, that the king’s strength is used for the sake of unifying a great Chinese nation, a nation that will comprise “everything under heaven” (this crucial phrase was translated in english as "our land"). And the king asserts that the truest understanding of Nameless’s martial art is to choose peace, which the king asserts is also the end of what he does. Attaining universal empire will finally bring peace to China.

The king’s speech in effect asserts there are no claims the individual might make that the state must honor. A powerful, unified China, which finds its strength in his kingship, should be the object of everyone’s devotion.

It's a bit too creepy for me. Too bad, because otherwise it's a beautiful movie.

hero

Some people from work are going to Shoreline to see Zhang Yimou's "Hero" today. I decided not to go, since I've seen it twice already, first in Taiwan a couple years ago, and then last year at a friend's house on DVD. (Imported? Yes. Pirated? Not sure.)

I did like many aspects of the movie: the gorgeous cinematography, the casting (it's nice to see Jet Li keeping his dignity), the unhurried pace, and of course, the fight scenes.

However, I was disturbed by the "moral of the story", which seemed to imply that rebelling against authority was bad, and individuals should sacrifice to the "greater good"; in this case, a unified China under the rule of a tyrannical emperor who believed in ethnic cleansing and trapping people inside of the Great Wall.

For me, it's way too easy to draw a parallel between that ruler and the current totalitarian Communist regime, and from there, it's not difficult to see the movie as pro-China propaganda. Of course, I'm biased.

Even so, it's a little surprising to see a movie like this from Zhang Yimou, who has historically had difficulties with the Chinese government regarding the content of his movies.