World Watching And Politics

Yekaterinburg

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Yekaterinburg is most famous, however, as the place where Tsar Nicholas II and his wife and five children were murdered by the Bolsheviks in July 1918. Having seen where the bodies were interred in the family vault in the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, we now traveled a few miles outside the city to view the site surrounded by a quiet forest of lodge pines and birches where the bodies were found and to see the beautiful Orthodox monastery and seven churches newly built in honor of each of the Romanoff “saints.”

We stop at the exact point where European Russia meets Asia and have our pictures taken wit one foot on each continent.

At Shirokorenchinskaya Cemetery we see monumental graves…one a life-size engraving in marble of a 35 year old gangster, with Mercedes keys dangling from his hand. I asked Shasha, our young English-speaking guide if the mafia was all gone in Russia today since these guys had finished each other off. “Yes,” he said, “now they are all in the government.” No fooling this young educated generation soon to take over the reins of this beleagued country where across the street you can see a vast memorial dedicated to the 20 million victims of Stalin’s Gulags many of which were in this Region. The bodies of 25,000 people from Yekanterinburg alone were found buried here.

Beslan…Russia’s 9/11

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St. Petersburg, Russia September 6, 2004:
We had been monitoring the hostage crisis in Beslan, North Ossetia, all through Europe…but was one day late to witness a demonstration in Palace Square on Monday where 40,000 people gathered to express outrage at the terrorists.

The English language St. Petersburg Times reported that “fear and horror were reflected on the faces of the people in the crowd” and many held signs reading “You Don’t Scare Us” “Ossetia, Beslan–We Are With You, and “Terrorists Are Not`People.” View image

The presidential envoy to the northwest region said “There are no words that can express our feelings about what the terrorists have done to the children and adults in Beslan. The terrorists are animals who should have no place in Russia or anywhere else in the world.” A famous St. Petersburg film director Alexei German called for ending the moratorium on the death penalty so that terrorists could be executed.

The respected editor of Izvestia, an important Russian newspaper resigned Monday for reporting that Kremlin authorities had covered up the number of hostages (over 1000) being held at the school.

Interesting Lithuania

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The Baltics…Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Are these in Central Europe or do we call this Eastern Europe…where is the line? We stop a few days in Vilnius Lithuania on the way to St. Petersburg Russia. It is an interesting country that has long identified itself as European (read–not Russian).

The political centre of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania from the 13th to the end of the 18th century, Vilnius has had a profound influence on the cultural and architectural development of much of eastern Europe. Despite invasions and partial destruction, it has preserved an impressive complex of Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque and classical buildings as well as its medieval layout and natural setting. It is an UNESCO World Heritage Site.
In 1989 an estimated 2,000,000 Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians literally joined hands in a human chain stretching the 650 kilometers between Vilnius and Tallinn to protest the 50th anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The following December 20 the Lithuanian Communist Party declares itself independent from the Communist Party of the USSR. In January 1990 Mikhail Gorbachev is heckled by 300,000 pro-independence demonstrators in Vilnius and in March the first free elections are held since 1940 but the following April Moscow imposes an economic blockade. The following January 1991 Soviet troops kill 14 unarmed civilians in an assault on Vilnius’ Television Tower. By August the Soviet putsch collapses, troops leave the buildings they’ve been occupying, and Lenin’s statue is removed from the city Center.

Lithuania is gaining status within the world community. The Dalai Lama visited Lithuania in 2001 and in 2002 George W. is the first ever US president to visit Vilnius. And of course, we NBA fans immediately think of the Trail Blazer’s own Arvydas Sabonis who put Lithuania’s basketball program on the map.

On the political front, according to the English language events magazine, “at present people are tired of populist politics, political infighting and they just want stability and peaceful life. Just this year they again voted in the conservative former President Valdad Adamkus (President 1998-2003) who everyone hopes will be a steady and successful person to “stand the test of power” as a partner in the Eu and Nato.

Who Would Have Thought…?

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Who would have thought that Poland in 1995 would have chosen the former communist bureaucrat, Aleksander Kwasniewski, over the former hero Lech Walesa, who, along with the Solidarity movement, led Central and Eastern Europe out of Communism?

Poland still has a post Communist president, as do most post communist European countries today, and our taxi driver, who has two university educated children, frowns when I mention this…”I don’t like!” he spats. He and his wife have a two-room apartment with a monthly rent of $200. Fewer tourists come to Poland in winter, so what he makes in the summer has to stretch year round. He has his old white Mercedes with 500,000 miles on it to maintain. (He didn’t laugh when Bob pointed to a bright orange car and suggested he paint his car the same color! “I don’t think so!” Urban dwellers in apartments pay very high taxes which rural people in their own homes do not pay and food is more expensive than in the country where people grow most of their own. But he is fortunate, he says, that in school, children are rewarded for good grades by not having to pay as much tuition…those with the highest grades are rewarded with full scholarships.

So even though it is more expensive to live in the city, where the communist government sponsored “milk bars” (with simple but wonderful home-cooked food) are now few and far between. The effects of economic growth are more visible there than in the country where Walesa surprisingly lost most of his support.

And for the young, communism and Solidarity are already ancient history…something they learn about from boring textbooks. In contrast to the uneducated electrician, who often appeared undignified and used ungramatical Polish, the smooth-talking yuppielike former communist appeared more modern and forward looking. And for some young voters, there was an element of conscious revolt, just because the parents identify so strongly with the post-Solidarity tradition, the children vote against it…a pattern we saw also in the former East Germany and the Czech Republic where, for example, the young waitress who went to school with her Prime Minister, says that it is popular now to study Russian as well as English in school. So Walesa lost 48% to Kwasniewski’s 51% with an amazing 68% voter turnout.
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Polish Ancestors

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I am looking forward to visiting my grandfather’s little village in the north. Seven generations of his ancestors were farmers and lived in the same little village of Szczepankowo. In 1893 my great grandfather sold his land and immigrated to Springfield Illinois with 10 of his 11 children…hell no we won’t speak German or join the German military! When they were in their teens, my grandfather and his older sister came over on the ship by themselves first to scope things out…their parents and the little ones following a year later.

My great grandfather moved the family to Illinois and built a big white house on the banks of the Illinois River and went to work with 4 of his sons in the mines until he could earn enough money to send the sons to Iowa to rent farm land where they farmed until they homesteaded among the rocks and sagebrush in SW Montana where many of their descendents remain. My mother fled the farm when she was 14 and worked as a nanny for a family in Miles City, MT.   Then at their suggestion, she worked as a telegrapher on the railroad for 10 years in Idaho until she married a Mormon farmer at age of 25.

Polish was my mother’s first language and I am finally in her homeland…

Young Czech Prime Minister

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The Prime Minister of the Czech Republic, Stanislav Gross, is 32 years old and looks 20! We are realizing how little information we have gotten in the US in the last 15 years about the dynamics in and among Europe and the former communist satellites! “Our new Czech Prime Minister is very clever,” the young waitress says. “He and I went to the same school and we all liked his ideas and his speaking ability.” But I made the catastaphic mistake of calling her country “Czechoslovakia!” “You have made a big mistake, she says,” because we have been the Czech Republic since 1992!”

I have to quote a description out of “History Of The Present” by Timothy Garton Ash…written in the 1994: “The sleeping beauty of Central Europe has not merely been awakened by a prince’s velvet kiss. She has put on black tights and gone off to the disco. While Budapest developed gradually into a modern consumer city starting in the 1970’s, Prague has emerged from its time warp suddenly and explosively. Instead of the magical museum, lovely but decaying, there is color, noise, action: street performers, traffic jams, building works, thousands of young Americans…would-be Hemingways or Scott Fitzgeralds…millions of German tourists, betting shops, reserved parking places for France Telecom and Mitsubishi Corporation, beggars, junkies, Skpenritter of all countries, car alarms, trendy bars, gangsteers, whores galore, Bierstuben, litter, graffiti, video shops and Franz Kafka T-shirts.” We didn’t notice any American kids in this year of 2004…maybe they have moved on to other frontiers…the son of a friend brought one back to the US to marry a few years ago.

Built between the 11th and 18th centuries, the Old Town, the Lesser Town and the New Town speak of the great architectural and cultural influence enjoyed by this city since the Middle Ages. The many magnificent monuments, such as Hradcani Castle, St Vitus Cathedral, Charles Bridge and numerous churches and palaces, built mostly in the 14th century under the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles IV. The historic center of Prague is an UNESCO World Heritage Site.

We took a city walking tour and when I commented to our leader that she knew a lot about the city’s architecture and architecture in general, she shared that yes, she was a civil engineer…but that it wasn’t her first choice because when the new government vetted the former communist members, of which her father was one, she said she was kept, by association, from choosing what she wanted to study in school. (It was common for people to belong to the communist party in order to get a good job, but not believe in it.) She said she would have preferred social science and psychology but she was told she had a choice of civil engineering. Bob thinks there is more to this story but it is a fact that the Czech parliament voted in a “lustration”law, that Vaclav Havel reluctantly signed, to vet all former Communist members. In any case, her husband is an artist and she showed us little noticed public art and memorials…like the small burial plot of a student shot by police in an early resistance demonstration and who is now honored as a hero on each anniversary. We get the feeling there are cautious watchers of this new democracy.
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Former East Berlin

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I am off to Starbucks to spend an hour over coffee while checking my email but their Hotspot internet service is down. It’s a good time to revisit the former eastern sector of the city. Berlin’s architecture is stunning…old and new. Cranes hang suspended everywhere over the city. The Wall fell in 1989 and Germany has not looked back.

The West German Bundestag moved the capital of Germany from Bonn to the eastern sector of Berlin located in the middle of former East Germany and from a former wasteland has sprung a new urban district…a symbol of Germany’s Unity and the country’s success. The Brandenberg Gate is fully visible now with only strips of stone inset into the streets and sidewalks to show a new generation (dressed in retro east German clothing to tweak their parents) where the Wall once stood.

Concrete grey Friedrichstrasse in the former east sector is now the new hip place to be…hardly remembered from my 1965 trip to Europe. I asked a young English speaking guy “(I am German American,” he says) in a music shop to suggest some popular Berliner music but came away with two interesting “out there” Norwegian jazz CD’s.

Checkpoint Charlie that in 1965 released me and a friend from the American sector into the grey colorless landscape of East Berlin is now a tourist site.
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Perspective On China

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China is big.

The population is staggering with a billion and a half people. It’s a matter of getting perspective. Our home state of Oregon only has about 1.5 million people. By comparison Hong Kong has 7 million. Westerners hear mainly about the Chinese cities of Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai, but Guangzhou, the first mainland city we visited two hours north of Hong Kong is a westernized city of commerce with nearly 7 million people…it’s province of Guangdong having 46 million. Kunming, which reminds us of Denver Colorado…a mile high, cold but sunny…has nearly 4 million people but its located in rural province of Yunnan that has nearly 44 million people.

Guilin has nearly 1.4 million people…it�s province of Guangxi having nearly 75 million. Yangshuo, an hour south of Guilin, felt like a small village in comparison with the bigger cities but the guidebook shows it with a population of 300,000…bigger than our home town of Salem, Oregon.

Chengdu has over 11 million people but it’s province, Sichuan, has 109 million. Chongqing, the city where we started our Chang Jiang (Yangze) River trip, is a sophisticated lively city that reminds us of San Francisco with 5.8 million people…it�s province having 32.5 million. You get the idea–lots of Chinese folks—and lots more on the way even with their one child policy. Ultimately a formidable group.

How is China Doing?
As near as we can tell, China’s cities and it�s citizens are doing well. The significant story is in the poorer rural areas where only 10% of China’s land mass is capable of agriculture…encouraging genetic engineering of food to force an increase in production and where unemployment and disastisfaction is high…and where China’s leadership will continue to be challenged by demonstrations that are never reported in the Chinese or Western press.

The arguments against the Yangze River dam pale in comparison to the country’s need for electricity…and in comparison to the economic power China will become because of it. Mao Tse Tung decreed nine categories of enemy: landlords, rich peasants, counterrevolutionaries, bad elements, rightists, traitors, foreign agents, capitalist-roaders and…The Stinking Ninth…intellectuals. The motto then was “Serve The People.” “To Be Rich Is Glorious” is the motto used now by a new practical generation…the first to grow up with no spirituality, no Confucius and no interest in politics…unhampered by religion and it’s dogmas-Taoism, Buddhism and even Christianity-unhampered by emperors, by chairmen, by gods.

China’s youth wants democracy and freedom. But the Chinese “never know when to stop,” says Paul Theroux who recounted his trip through China by train in the 80’s in his “Riding The Iron Rooster.” Where will the brakes come from when China is headed toward excess…in a China already plagued by corruption?

When I asked one of the teenagers in Ruili if he could go to Hong Kong if he wanted to answered “No Money…No Happy!” Another, Paul, a teenager who plays the guitar in his rock band, when asked what he thought about Hong Kong, answered: “Paradise!” You Western capitalist running dogs…look out for the younger generation in Communist China…the generation that is so excited that they are finally free to work hard…free to put money in their pocket…already making materialism in the West look ascetic.

I would love to have a conversation with Ma Jian, the poet, painter and writer who, being harassed by communist cadres, left Beijing in the early 80’s and traveled through China for three years. In his book “Red Dust” Ma foreshadowed the thinking of the next generation when he recounted his thoughts after getting lost and nearly dying in a desert: Walking through the wilds freed me from “worries and fears, but this is not real freedom. You need money to be free.”

When, after a student demonstration in the 80’s in Guangzhou, Paul Theroux asked Andrew, a university student, if he expected to become a capitalist-roader, Andrew answered “I think we have a lot to learn. We want to use the good features of capitalism but not the bad ones.” “Is that possible? Paul asked. “We can try” Andrew answered. Maybe it is only fair that now China gets it’s turn to try…

Conversations In Tiger Leaping Gorge

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Wednesday Dec 11
In Old Town Lijiang, Bob joined us for breakfast at our hotel at 9am; met Li at her hotel at 10:30 for minibus trip up the gorge. Bus had no shocks so was a very bumpy miserable ride; Bob uncomfortable on narrow road overlooking the gorge. Drove all the way to Walnut Grove, which is the beginning of the Gorge and had lunch there before the trip back…everyone else but the driver and I got out and walked a couple stretches. Caught the driver rummaging through our stuff couple times while waiting for the walkers. Later Bob said that Li had warned him not to leave money in the bus while they walked.

Talked to a young French walker on his way through to Walnut Grove…he had been working for six months in a L’Oreal factory near Shanghai in order to learn Chinese. I asked him about a working visa…said he thought he was on tourist visa…his supervisors obviously paying off the immigration officials to allow him with his engineering background to work in the factory. His Chinese was great though!

On the way back, Li told us a few things about the minority people…that for the Naxi the Snow mountain is God…that when couples divorce the woman is no longer desirable by other men but that if her husband dies she is desireable. Marriages are popular in the winter.

For the Yi people, the sun is God so they live on the top of the mountains near the Sun God…but they are lazy and when they get money they drink alcohol. There are 30,000 Naxi people in Lijiang.

She went on to say that the government is poor but the leaders get all the money from tourism. The sons of the leaders get to go to school in your country, she said. Almost all the businesses in Old Lijiang are run by the Han Chinese she said…the Naxi are able only to rent out a room or two in their homes. The Naxi also drive the taxis.

Thursday Dec 12
Sakura was trying to heat up the restaurant with a charcoal burner but it produced so much smoke we had breakfast across the canal while listening to Blues Music in the Delta Cafe.

Later, Jana and I went to Sakura’s Bar and…partnerless…watched “American Sweethearts.” A group of very loud Chinese tourists came upstairs where we were watching the movie…we had to turn up the TV to earsplitting volume in order to hear. Seems to be a trait…talking in movies, concerts…any public entertainment venues…

Friday Dec 13-14
Bob took a bus to Kunming and then flew to Chiang Mai Thailand.

China’s Secrets I Will Never Know

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Major Cities We Visited

“The opening up of China is a stirring idea,” Lonely Planet says. A foreigner traveling alone today is privileged to see more of China than almost any Chinese has seen in his or her lifetime. I wondered what we could learn-traveling alone. Our images and ideas of China have surely been contradictory and distorted over time.

In the years of the Cultural Revolution after 1966 tens of millions of Chinese had become the instruments of their own terror…a million were killed and some 30 million or more were brutally persecuted and displaced or starved to death. How could so many people be so led?

China has a billion and a half people now. And even now cruelty continues…in a book entitled “China’s New Rulers,” the authors recently published some secret Communist Party documents that admitted to 60,000 Chinese killed by police while fleeing between 1998 and 2001…or 15,000 a year. 97% of the world’s executions take place in China, the book says. It is a historic change that China’s people are becoming less and less afraid of the government than it is of them. For example, 54 year old Mrs. Ma wanted her name published when she told about how she was tortured recently in Zhongxiang, near Shanghai, while her son was tortured in the next cell because the Party wanted her to disclose the names of the people in her church or renounce her Christian faith.

China is a big country. In the two months we have left for travel in China, we have chosen to see Yunnan Province in the southwest…the most varied of China’s provinces ranging from tropical rainforest to snow-capped Tibetan peaks. It is home to nearly a third of all China’s ethnic minorities and nearly 50% of all its people are non-Han Chinese.

Historically, Yunnan, in southern China, was always one of the first regions to break with the northern government in Beijing. During China’s countless political purges, fallen officials often found themselves exiled here, which added to the province’s rebellious character…and probably why it has been so attractive to the countless foreign backpackers who blazed the original trails through it.

I wanted to see China for myself…and now that I am here I feel that every individual Chinese I see is harboring a secret I will never know…