I read with great interest the comments on running into Margo Carter, the Australian woman who moved to Tiger Leaping Gorge about ten years ago, ran a cafe at the start of the Gorge and became a life partner with Sean, a Tibetan who runs the Sean’s Guest House in the center of the gorge.

The comments that Margo was eccentric, or rude, seem so totally out of place with our experience, and thus I thought I should relate our tale. Mel and I met Margo in March 2009. I had heard about the great trek through the gorge and was very excited to do it. Mel (the more cautious half of our team) was a bit apprehensive because it was unclear from the maps and our reading, what we would do if we found the hike too hard and wanted to quit mid way (it actually is quite easy as you can always walk downhill to the road and hitch-hike back).

At any rate, when we arrived at the Gorge we ran into Margo…I told her of my desire to hike the entire gorge and sleep overnight on the trail… Mel on the other had mentioned his apprehension. She said "no problem" – I can help you both… and proceeded to offer to accompany us for two to three days (at an exceptionally modest fee) and be our guide. So the three of us took a taxi to Sean’s guest house, in the middle of the gorge, where we had a wonderful night in relatively luxury surroundings. We all ate at Sean’s by the campfire, and enjoyed meeting many other travelers and learning a bit about the gorge history. It was a delightful experience. The next day we took off on our trek. She was an interesting woman who had moved from Australia to explore China, and fell in love with the natural environment and decided to stay.

During our two days together we traded tales, and she was very accommodating to walk and talk at our pace. We stayed overnight at another guest house, enjoyed a fresh chicken stew (the chicken was killed in front of us) and continued on the next morning. Margo was opinionated… she did not like the commercialization of the gorge nor the fact that she saw many locals trying to take advantage of visitors. However our experience was that she eluded kindness, sensitivity, and had a keen intellect.

We continued to communicate when we returned home, and were shocked when a few months later we heard about the accident. The details were always very sketchy, and disturbing. I have a great picture of Margo, which I’d like to send you… so let me know how I can do it, and hopefully you will post it on your site. I’d like to promote in her memory the kindness she showed us during the few days we were together.

Diane Drey & Mel Winokur New Jersey, USA

Sean Xia (夏山泉), Diane Dey, Margo Carter, Mel Winokur – Tiger Leaping Gorge, Yunnan 2009.  Margo Carter & Diane Dey – Tiger Leaping Gorge, Yunnan 2009

I was just as surprised to receive an email from Ms. Dey (as well as Mr. Xia).

It was never my intention to offend, disrespect or instigate sadness among anyone.  I wrote largely based on my memories of  my brief time in the Gorge three years ago.  The above description is more fitting.

Technorati Tags: china, margo carter, tiger leaping gorge, travel, trekking, walnut grove, yunnan

Related posts:

1. Margo – Queen of Tiger Leaping Gorge
2. Triund – India – August 2009

I picked up Gavin Menzies second book 1434: The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance  for eight clams (hard-cover).  Mr. Menzies is most known for this highly controversial 2002 book 1421: The Year China Discovered the World.  I’ve always digged stories about exploration…and remain puzzled why I haven’t read 1421 (it’s always been a hefty price everywhere I’ve seen it…) 

Many of the criticisms are listed here, but generally I get the feel that the exclusive academic community got its knickers in a knot over an ‘outsider’ drafting up a theory that didn’t conform to their notion of proper history.  As John Ralston Saul writes in A Fair Country (which I also picked up for 10 big ones…great read too) "The higher your studies go, the more they are built around narrow exclusionary ideas of truth, tightly tied to a world of people footnoting one another” (Ralston Saul 2009; 36). 1421 also ties into A Fair Country in the sense that both books are advocating a version of history that distances itself from (without necessarily marginalizing) a European-influenced story of Canada (A Fair Country) and China (1434). 

That said though, after reading a few chapters, I can see where some controversy might lie.  Mr. Menzies is quite fond of the “If A, B, C, and D occurred, then E must have been the outcome” logic used to create conclusions about Admiral Zheng He’s naval expeditions.  It can be quite inferential at times, especially when one considers that something this logistically large escaped solid, undisputed documentation (on both the European and Chinese sides).  Still, the theory is tantalizing…even when one remains skeptical, there is some evidence to suggest that it might have happened.

Ralston Saul, J. (2008). A Fair Country: Telling Truths about Canada.            Toronto: Penguin.

Technorati Tags: books, canada, chapters-indigo, china, gavin menzies, john ralston saul

Related posts:

1. 2009
2. China, B.C.

Via In the Footsteps of Joseph Rock

His group were surprised – to say the least – to be passed by a lone western woman traveling at speed (alone, that is, except for her dog and a local guide with a horse, left trailing well to the rear) and they noted that she was only lightly clad for the trail. Not only that, but they were taken aback by how rude she was to the trekking group, refusing to talk with them at all during their brief encounter on the trail.

Things got stranger later in the day when they saw her again and she chose to camp alongside them, but again was uncommunicative. That was until she started saying that she would ‘turn them in’ to the local authorities and warning them that they would be turned back at local police checkpoints further up the Salween (Nujiang) valley and the local Tibetans would shun them. The group were un-nerved by her unfriendly and bizarre behaviour (she would only talk to them in Chinese at one point) and her apparent threats.

Margo left early the next day and they never saw her again. In fact, they were some of the last people to see her alive.

…Margo’s body was found several weeks later at a large tree near the Shuo-La pass, and the Yunnan PSB are now investigating the case. It appears likely that she simply underestimated the harsh conditions of the trek and the difficulty of the terrain that she would encounter.

I ran into this woman, Margo, when I trekked Tiger Leaping Gorge in the summer of 2007.  It was  about halfway to Walnut Grove, about 2/3 way through the gorge. She was leading this motley crue of travelers with a mixture of backpacks and suitcase on a Intrepid tour through the gorge.  Intrepid Travel is a company that organizes tours at the grass-roots level, largely utilizing public transit options and accommodations.  I’ve kind of viewed Intrepid tours as traveling for people who want the independent experience but are too afraid to do it themselves.

I recall thinking to myself…”Who the hell is this woman and how’d she end up here?”  She looked like she was in her 50’s, but was dressed like she was in her 20’s and blabbed away like she was the encyclopedia of all things China…in the loud, obnoxious way.  She also had a rather ‘in-your-face’ condescending approach when talking to locals and to travelers.  The kind of approach that makes one wince and think “I’m not with this person…” I attributed it too eating too many gorge mushrooms.

Exiting the gorge, one had three options…trek back the same way, take a taxi back (the road was washed out at the time) or trek out the backside, take a ferry across the river and hope that there is a bus/tax on the other side.  I opted for the ferry because I don’t like retracing my steps, however there was concern about transportation on the other side, so I cut a deal with the tour leader (a former American ESL teacher, I believe) to tag along on the bus they had arranged on the other side of the ferry that would take everyone back to Lijiang.  Margo was along for the whole ride. It’s been awhile since this trek, so I can’t remember too many details, other than the tour leader shaking her head and lamenting simultaneously about the many, many problems she was having with her tour group and how outrageously embarrassing this Margo woman was.

I remember after I did that trip and I would hear of other people traveling through Yunnan and up to Tiger Leaping I would always say “yeah, you’ll probably meet this weird Aussie woman when you trek the gorge…it makes the trip even more interesting!”.

Highly eccentric/weird people who choose this sort of life are in a way, sort of timeless and part of the cultural landscape of the region.  Cringe?  Yes…but they make life interesting.  Besides, if one wants to be a modern village/city/town in China these days, you’ll need your foreign loonies. 

I was thinking to myself, “oh yeah, I probably have a travel post archived somewhere about the time I met this incredibly odd foreigner in the middle of Tiger Leaping Gorge”. So I searched around…and searched again…and found out that not only do I not have a post about that interesting trek through Tiger Leaping Gorge, I can’t seem to find any record of any of that summer 2007 trip from Kunming to Kathmandu.  To be honest, I can’t remember if I even wrote anything.  I just assumed that I just did given that it was a trip that fulfilled many, many of my adolescent travel goals.  But, it seems I didn’t…and I’m kind of down about that.  I’ve got stuff from my time in Mongolia and Japan to Europe and India…but nothing about South East Asia either.  Bummer. 

I was traveling with my friend who maintained this beautiful written travel journal complete with doodles, glued-on business cards, flora/fauna and other tidbits of travel memorabilia.  Granted, she was an artist, and had a knack for the creative, but I’m quite jealous.

Technorati Tags: blog, china, margo, tiger leaping gorge, travel, trekking, walnut grove, yunnan

Related posts:

1. Margo Carter – Queen’s of Tiger Leaping Gorge II
2. Nepal Photography II

Welcome to www.google.hk

I had thought for awhile that Google might pull something like this and try to keep their presence by bouncing off their uncensored .hk domain.  I’m curious to see what happens next.  Will www.google.com be blocked outright on the Mainland? (it was intermittently blocked in the past) and what will that mean for the .hk domain?  Will internet controls be extended into Hong Kong because of a Google transfer?

* update – it’s official

So earlier today we stopped censoring our search services—Google Search, Google News, and Google Images—on Google.cn. Users visiting Google.cn are now being redirected to Google.com.hk, where we are offering uncensored search in simplified Chinese, specifically designed for users in mainland China and delivered via our servers in Hong Kong. Users in Hong Kong will continue to receive their existing uncensored, traditional Chinese service, also from Google.com.hk. Due to the increased load on our Hong Kong servers and the complicated nature of these changes, users may see some slowdown in service or find some products temporarily inaccessible as we switch everything over.

Google also has a real-time tool highlighting the status of all of their services in China.  As of 21 March 2010:

 
Probably worth another look in a week or two.

Like I’ve said before, I think that Google services an essential tool if one wants to be part of the global conversation.  Right now, it looks like .hk is maintaining that tool for the Mainland…but it could very well just suffer the same fate as .com or .cn.

At the risk of sounding sensationalist sensationalist to say, the Great Fire Wall is looking more like the 21st century equivalent of the Iron Curtain.  

Technorati Tags: censorship, china, google, hong kong, internet

Related posts:

1. Google Bomb – They’ve finally had it…
2. Google Bomb II

While the train and station scenes brilliantly visualize the annual railway struggle, the film is more about the shaky situation of the migrant worker family in 21st century China.  From the richest Shanghai families down to the poorest migrants, China is a country where society hasn’t caught up with and adjusted to the insane development. 

The film follows a real rural family from Sichuan province through a time frame of about three years.  Like many migrants, the parents are working textiles somewhere in Guangdong earning cash for their family, with their two children being raised by their grandmother on their family farm in Sichuan.  Family reunions are limited to a visit at New Years.  The eldest child, Qiu (18) is of the rural variety of the post-Tiananmen generation or after-eighty generation.   More materialistic and more individualistic regarding her situation, she harbors quite an dislike of her parents, whom she feels have abandoned her in favor of work in the city.  This culminates in a very, very intense family fight on New Year’s visit.  Qiu drops of out of school and works textiles in an atypical 3rd tier city, opting to naively live an existence similar to her parents.

Her family turns their hopes to the the 13 year old son, Yang, of whom they dream will enter university although his 5th place marks are not encouraging for his parents.

Probably the most disheartening item of the movie was the constant belief that this education would provide the route to better life.  As a general policy, I certainly believe this, however, I can’t help but look at the phenomenon of the Ant Tribe.  The hundreds of thousands of new university graduates that eek out an urban existence very similar to the factory workers profiled in the film.  It is as if there is no way out.  Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle came to mind a few times during the film in the sense of the never-ending optimism expressed by the characters in spite of their situation.  If anyone has a right to blame a system, it is surely these people…yet the blame is often directed at themselves, usually for not “working hard enough”. 

Mr. Fan’s CCTV background became quite apparent when he referred to to China’s migrant/farmer population as ‘backward” in an interview with CBC’s Jian Ghomeshi a few weeks ago.  One may claim semantics, but that phrase is para-official (along the same lines as splittist and harmonious) among media elites on the Mainland…still, as someone who had recently heard Mr. Fan speak mentioned to me via FB, he appeared somewhat disconnected from the subject he was exploring.

That said though, it’s a great film and pulls out the often over-looked affects of rapid development on family structures in post-1979 China.  

The film was shot over a few years with the craziest rail station scenes having been shot during the 2008 ice storm that shut down most of southern China.  It’s probably important to keep that mind.   As chaotic a train station is during that time of year, it’s not usually that bad.  

I had learned my lesson regarding travel during New Year’s during trip to Xi’an in 2007 and opted to spend my 2008 holiday out of country, but I still managed to hit huge crowds in the airports and at a rail transfer in Shenzhen.

During that trip in 2007 I barely made it aboard the train and had to be pushed into the car (on account of my backpack).  Bizarrely enough, I actually managed to buy a ticket that had a seat, but it was impossible to access it given the sardine nature of the car…so I just told the conductor to give it to a kid. 

22 hours sitting on/near/under my backpack slammed up against the entrance door in the tiny section between train cars.  Luckily the door never opened.  I was near the washroom facilities which was somewhat of a Catch-22.  Odor-wise…not the greatest spot to be…from an convenience point of view…not bad.  I’ve heard that people will often wear diapers during such trips because they just can’t get to the washroom.

 Being used as a pillow (Xi’an – Nanjing February 2007)

Having some warm brews.  Most people told me they were just happy to get a ticket. (Xi’an – Nanjing February 2007)

My good ole’ pack is so useful (Xi’an – Nanjing February 2007)

Heading home – Shenzhen January 2008

Heading home – Shenzhen Train Station January 2008

Stuck in the airport – Nanjing Lukou International Airport 2008

Technorati Tags: china, chinese new year, guangdong, kingston canadian film festival, last train home, lixin fan, migrant workers, sichuan, train

Related posts:

1. Russian Train Bomb
2. Train 031 Vladivostok to Irkutsk July 22-25 2008

In some ways, this presentation could represent the end of my China adventures…and I’m quite sad about that.  Standing up in front of the dozen or so interested SURP students, I couldn’t help but think “Man, you folks have no idea how jealous and envious I am”.  Experiencing China for the first time, perhaps going abroad for the first time, or even just going abroad for another round.  I want to be you!

Obviously there is an element of never-say-never and the fog of life tends to cast an interesting shroud over the future,  but I’m not seeing too many opportunities for international adventures in the next coming years.  There are other things I’m looking forward to, and there are also important things I’ve been neglecting in Canada, but travelling, seeing new things, and strapping on the complete freedom of a backpack was such an important part of the past years and (I could smugly argue, myself) that it…well…sucks that it could be over.

There is just something about an international life…I don’t think it is a good good long-term choice…but man…they are unique and exciting.

Looking forward to debt, meaningless research filled with academic bureaucracy,  property payments, owning a car (ouch), general administration nonsense (fill out this, fill out that, ask permission here, ask permission there), cubicles, short-holidays, loss of mobility, 9-5, credit, discussing investments/RRSP’s while wanting to drive an ice axe into my head,  commutes, zoning by-laws…

Real life?

There are equally annoying things about life abroad too and a plethora of good reasons for being in Canada…but I don’t think I’ve ever been this nostalgic…I usually never get nostalgic.

Technorati Tags: career, china, fudan university, future, life, personal, presentation, rat race

Related posts:

1. Travel Plans – Summer 2008
2. Bridging the Split

They are like ants: clever, weak and living in groups

A new term (for me, at least) describing a sub-cohort of China’s massive migrant worker population.  From my understanding of the article, name is applied to the 22-29 year old, largely rural floating population in China’s major cities.  Rather than forming the minions of construction and labour workers, the ant tribe are recent university/college graduates a product of the China’s massive increase in post-secondary enrollments earlier in the decade.

Extremely poor salaries combined with the extremely high cost of living have forced many belonging to this social cohort to the outskirts of the cities into China’s latest migrant urban spaces.    

Technorati Tags: ant tribes, china, migrant workers, urban planning

Related posts:

1. The Side Alley
2. Nanjing I – May 2009

What I don’t think is being discussed enough in media is the simple notion that Google was hacked…apparently numerous times and that some of these attacks were directed toward their source code. Severs with Google’s secretive source code and other internet tech secrets based in the backyard of the world’s largest internet police and patriotic hacking community is not an ideal situation.

While Google’s main argument is very palatable to the Western community, I fear that it could be a really bad move in terms of drumming up support in China.  The CCP has shown again and again that they are the master of PR spin in their playground.

While Google does have it’s supports in China, it looks like a lot of netizens are not too pleased with the censorship dimension of Google’s argument.  From danwei.org (keep in mind that it is a net poll).

"Will Google’s exit from China affect your use of the Internet?" more than half of respondents, 55.6% (9,767), selected "no," while the remaining 45% (7,801) said "yes.’ In response to the second question, "Which search tool do you use most frequently," 73.2% (12,901) of respondents said Baidu and 23.6% (4,153) said Google, which may be the reason that over half of respondents said that Google’s exit will not affect their use of the Internet. The remaining 5% selected Tencent and four other search engines. In response to the third question, "Do you think that the Chinese government should accept Google’s conditions," 70.4% (1,449) selected "no, they shouldn’t," while 29.6% (610) selected "yes, they should."

The  CCP PR spin wizards haven’t even jumped into the fray yet either.

Personally, I think Google should be focusing on their depth and frequency of the hack attacks.  You can’t wind domestic Chinese support (which they need more than international support) by stroking human rights and censorship.  I’ve noticed that entities involved in cyber-crime such as Infowar Monitor (the fellows who uncovered GhostNet) are always wary of directly pointing the finger at the CCP/PLA which is widely believed to offer support (in some capacity) to numerous malicious activities directed at companies and governments around the world.  They choose instead to be rather ambiguous with claims that the attack originated ‘somewhere’ in China.   Google seems to have put it all on the line, and if this does turn into a nasty PR storm then it could be an opportune time for someone to make a full disclosure regarding the exact origins of such attacks.  You’ve come this far, and if the CCP PR machinery gets up too speed, you might as well go all the way.  Go big or go home.

Organ Grinder with monkey: “Ah Google, go for the face!”

I’m not sure the netizens in China are aware of the bad PR they receive abroad in regards to cyber-crime.  Substantiated or not, this reputation is beginning to stick and doesn’t bone to well for a country dreams of IT and tech glory.  I would imagine too that it is harder to defend cyber-crime that it is too defend local human rights and censorship laws.  If there is one thing that really irks China and creates a great PR opportunity, it is continual lecturing and scolding about human rights. 

Technorati Tags: censorship, china, cyber-crime, ghostnet, google, hacking, human rights, intellectual property

Related posts:

1. Google Bomb – They’ve finally had it…
2. Google Hong Kong

Google is annoyed…pissed is probably an more appropriate description.

Some of my thoughts.

While their human rights dimension is probably smoke-screen whipped up for Western fans, Google is making a move that all companies would balk at…standing up to the CCP. 

How I read it.

Google:  “Enough is enough.  Stop hacking our stuff”.

Regardless of the absence of altruism, I appreciate the back-bone, especially when the past few years have seen substantial increases (Green Dam, Olympic censorship, Facebook, Youtube, IMDB and Twitter) in the strength of government internet controls.  Some one big needed to thrown the gauntlet down.

Still, doubt remains whether Google will follow through and pull the plug.  However, they appear fairly adamant in their statement that the status quo is unacceptable.  If they do, it’s big…huge. 

Google Search, including all of their increasingly essential peripherals (Map, Scholar, Documents, Gmail, Calendar and anything else they have up their sleeve) will not be easily accessible in any form in a country with approximately 350 million internet users and growing.  I feel awful for my friends (both local and expat) on the Mainland.  The Mainland internet world is already incredibly restrictive and isolating sphere to live within and the absence of any form of Googling would create quite a incompatible internet experience. While there will always be ‘alternatives’ Google is becoming, or has already become (like it, or not) an essential cannot-do-without part of the internet.

If China wishes to continue on their road to global leadership, then it has to participate in the global conversation.  Unfortunately for China, that international conversation means using Google.  Without it,  one may see development of a parallel internet community, increasingly cut off from the rest of the world in both in terms of internal accessibility (what one can accesses and use while in China) and external accessibility (what one can access about China from outside the Mainland).    James Fallows calls it yet another move toward a Chinese version of a “Bush-Cheney” era.  It fits with a “you are either with us, or against us” mentality that seems to be brewing harder (especially with continued economic confidence in regards to that country’s performance during the recession).  I also wonder what this will do to China’s ambitions to become a world leader in IT. As an IT professional on shanghaiexpat.com forums lamented “Why do I continue working in this country?”    

Interesting story and I’m keen to see it unfold further.  

Photos from Google headquarters in Beijing.

Technorati Tags: censorship, china, google, hacking, intellectual property, internet

Related posts:

1. Google Bomb II
2. Google Hong Kong

From the CBC a few days back and while it is hardly an original comparison, I had to insert the images (just because I’m a Star Wars geek).

This is an eigenharp, created 2009 and not in a galaxy, far, far away.  It’s the instrument that does everything…really.

 
Warren Miller has a new movie, Dynasty which is apparently in celebration of 60 years of mountain filmmaking.  60 years!  Although, apparently WM isn’t narrating anymore.   I remember being in my first year of undergrad in ‘99 and watching Warren Miller’s Fifty, which was in…well, bet you can’t guess. I used to be a big fan of WM…but realized about a year or two after Fifty that one WM film is just like another.  Actually, one could probably make that assertion about any ski movie. 

Of note, a scene from the Dynasty trailer takes place in Xinjiang Province， from what I’m willing to bet my left leg is Tian Chi (a place I was at in 2004) and the trailer also makes a comment about taking horses up the mountain in order to ski down.  I did exactly that as well…although I don’t think the snow I found was nearly as good as what these guys had access to.  Damn unlimited budgets.

Still, at the end of the day – not much different that Fifty.

Technorati Tags: cantina band, china, dynasty, eigenharp, music, ski movies, skiing, strange music, tian chi, warren miller

Related posts:

1. Tuned Out
2. Green Tea