Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self. - Cyril Connolly
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
PSA: U.S. Immigration: How the System Works--And Doesn't and Possibilities for Reform
"U.S. Immigration: How the System Works--And Doesn't and Possibilities for Reform" is the topic for a Saturday Conversation sponsored by the League of Women Voters of Baltimore City.
Speakers are Fernando Nunez, Immigration Attorney and Clincial Law Instructor at the University of Maryland School of Law. Also Pat Hatch, Program Manager, Maryland Office for New Americans.
This event is free and open to all. It will be held Saturday, November 3, 10:15-noon in the Poe Room, Enoch Pratt Free Library.
I had been looking forward to this all year. My friend had to work for a couple of days, so I took advantage of her being occupied with other things and took a flight south some 600 miles to Xi'an to see one of the other great wonders of the world - the Terra Cotta Army of Emporer Qin Shi Huang.
Emporer Qin is credited with many things, among them, uniting China into the country we know today. He reigned from 247 BC to 210 BC, but he did it through tyranny, terror and autocratic rule. Regardless, he is not only known for the unification of China, but also for starting the Great Wall of China, building a system of national roads, establishing unified systems for law, weights and measures, and currency - and for the Terra Cotta Army which guards his as yet unopened tomb.
In 1974, three farmers were digging a well in Shanxi Province outside of Xi'an when they pulled up the head of one of the Terra Cotta warriors. Little did they know that they had stumbled on one of the great ancient treasures of our time. I was actually lucky enough to meet one of the three farmers, a man now well into his seventies, at the museum. He was kind enough to sign a book for me. Of the original three, only two of them survive, and they are regarded as national heroes.
It is believed that over 700,000 men were involved in creating Qin's tomb over a nearly 40 year period. Historical documents regarding the tomb itself say that Qin's body lies in a jeweled sarcophagus in a room where the ceiling has pearls for stars, and sits amid a scale model of his kingdom with seas and rivers of mercury. Ironically, it is believed that Qin died as a result of mercury poisoning. He was given tablets by his doctors who at the time, thought the metal contained valuable properties and could lead to immortality. Oooops.
Tests at the necropolis have indicated very high concentrations of mercury in the ground, but legend also has it that the tomb is rigged with "Indiana Jones" security systems and that arrows and other pitfalls await those who try to enter. The Chinese government is concerned about exposing the tomb to the elements, as sudden oxygenation after 2,200 years could cause many artifacts to disintegrate immediately upon contact with the air. They have considered covering the tomb in a large tent, but it would be like covering the pyramid at Giza, and no one makes one that big. After 2,200 years, another decade trying to get the technology in place to open the tomb properly is probably a wise move.
What the legends did not mention, was the magnificent Terra Cotta Army that Qin had buried up to a mile away from the tomb itself to guard it. Life size figures with individual faces and details that are simply amazing today, much less for being created more than 2 millenia ago before the birth of Christ.
The Army is currently housed in their original pits, where they were found. Three Pits have been partially excavated, and much debate remains as to exactly how many artifacts will be eventually found. They have excavated more than 8,000 figures and artifacts, and they've been digging for 40 years - as long as it took them to build the tomb in the first place. Active excavation is going on all the time, and it has become a life's work for more than a generation of Chinese archeologists. All the King's Horses and All the King's Men This is Pit 1 - larger than most airplane hangars, it houses the majority of the figures discovered so far.
A closer look:
The photo below is remarkable in that you can still see bright yellow paint on the soldier's collar. All of the figurines were painted is bright, vivid colors when they were buried. These figurines are 2,200 years old. The detail is amazing:
A charioteer and his steeds: What has been lost to time are the reigns and bridles for the horses. You can see that their mouths and his hands are posed to be holding them. Brass fittings remain, but the wooden chariots and leather have all disintegrated. Also remarkable is the level of technology used not only in creating the Warriors, but the brass plating and other metalurgical processes that the Chinese originated.
These guys have the unenviable task of trying to put Humpty Dumpty together again (and again, and again...)
Five years after Qin's death, it is believed that a warlord sacked the Terra Cotta Army and set it ablaze. You can see the charred timber remains in the walls, and the scorch marks on these two warriors:
As one of the four ancient capitals of China, Xi'an is a city of some 3 million people, and its pollution threatens to exceed that of Beijing. There are other things to see and do here however, and tomorrow, we'll visit a few.
Next: The Wild Goose Pagoda, the Mosque, the Muslim Quarter, a Las Vegas show, and a Drum Corps.
Because it stormed the night before, we were worried that our planned trip to the Great Wall might be a washout. It was precisely the opposite. Although it was grey and damp in the morning, by the time we boarded the bus and headed out, the rain had washed all the pollution out of the air, and a light breeze was blowing. Beijing looked like a Claritin commercial where the film is stripped away and all of a sudden there was color, and you could see into the distance.
The closest location of the Great Wall to Beijing, and also the most crowded, is Badaling. In fact, it's become such a tourist mecca that it rivals a theme park with hotels, restaurants, tourist traps and everything I didn't want to see. That was not the experience I had hoped for. Another popular spot is Mutianyu, about 70 km away.
But for unspoiled vistas, VERY few tourists, and superb location, you need to get the heck out of town, so we boarded a bus with about 20 others and headed 120 km northeast of Beijing to Jinshaling. This portion of the wall was built during the Ming Dynasty, and you can hike 10.5 km to the next section, known as Simatai. Simatai is widely considered the "best of the best" of the Great Wall because of its unique towers and location along the ridge of a very steep section.
The idea was to hike from Jinshaling to Simatai, and was described as "treacherous in spots, you will scramble on all fours, and not for the faint of heart". It was described as a very strenuous hike, so a few of us opted for an easier version where we took the cable car up to the mountain, hiked for a half dozen towers or so, and then came down and took the bus to Simatai and hiked either end of the Wall instead of the whole 10.5 km. It was a good idea based on the feedback from those strong enough to do the whole thing.
The cable car going up to Jinshaling:
The Great Wall of China. There's a reason this is one of the Seven Wonders of the World. It really takes your breath away to imagine 4,000+ miles of this construction, and the people it took to build it. Generations of people and hundreds of thousands of lives.
A watch tower:
I don't know where this guy came from. He literally popped up over the wall. He was one of the "Wall Catchers". They're kind of like sherpas. Local villagers who make their living by attaching themselves to you and guiding you through the riskier bits of the hike. They also try to sell you T-shirts, postcards, bottled water, etc... They were actually helpful, and the one that attached herself to me was not too pushy.
Here's a view of where we walked from. Mongolia is to your right (plus another couple hundred miles or so), China is to your left. This was the Great Wall of China I had come to see. We were the only people on it for large parts of the day.
Parts of this section are largely unrestored, so it does get a bit dicey in spots:
It does seem to go on forever...
Simatai was also spectacular, and a little more commercial.
We did see some things I wouldn't have expected to see however. Like this Mennonite girl coming off the cable car at Simatai.
Or, in contrast to her, the Chinese models that were gathering for a "Vogue" fashion shoot as the base of the wall. This was the tallest Chinese person I saw the entire trip.
But I'll leave you with some of the more endearing Engrish we encountered that day:
I think they were trying to say "Only YOU can prevent forest fires". Needs work.
The China Chronicles - Modern Art and the Dirt Market
OK, this will be a post of contrasts. I'm gonna start with fine art, discuss the wonders of dried Tiger Penis, and leave you with the world's largest LCD screen, so pay attention.
China has heavily been promoting its modern art in the last few years. With the Chinese having more disposable income, investing in art is suddenly an investment option that didn't previously exist. Recent art auctions in Honk Kong, Sotheby's in London, and NYC have seen Chinese artists fetching prices previously unheard of in China, and topping $1 million.
Nowhere is this movement more visible, than in the Area 798 art complex in the Dashanzi Art District of east Beijing in the Chaoyang District, just south of our apartment. The area is fairly recent. Artists were relocated and concentrated into Bauhaus architecture unwittingly provided by semi-defunct military-equipment factories which were designed by architects from East Germany in the 1950s.
Over the past three or four years, Dashanzi has emerged as the SoHo of Beijing's art scene.
To even conceive of an area like this after the Cultural Revolution suppressed all artists and intellectuals for so many years, is really amazing in itself.
Entrance to Area 798
Anybody Home?
Self Contemplation
We also went to a special Art Exhibition that they had that weekend for Artwalk. It was supposed to be a collection of the best that Beijing galleries had to offer, and it was held in the Agricultural Exhibit Hall north of where I was staying. It did not disappoint:
Here's Johnny!!
If I remember correctly, this piece was making a statement about the artist's parents who were killed in the Cultural Revolution. Either way, I'm guessing it's not complimentary to the government in general.
This was my favorite installation piece. It's a satire on the new CCTV Tower going up in downtown Beijing. An architectural marvel, it will rival the Sydney Opera House for an iconic symbol in years to come. I'll post pictures of the real thing later, but this piece is constructed entirely of eggshells, on a glass box, with hard stones underneath and broken eggshells all around.
Outside of the exhibit, I was stopped by a Chinese journalist and interviewed for an article on the exhibit. It was for a Chinese language newspaper, so I don't know if it ever made the light of day, and if it did, I can't read it. I was very complimentary to both the quality, variety and quantity of exhibits and galleries. I encouraged them to do it a lot more often - it was a really wonderful thing. There was a great gift shop where I was able to stock up on lots of mementos for the many artists in my family.
Earlier in the day, in fact most of the afternoon, we had spent perusing the notorious Panjiyuan, or "Dirt Market" of Beijing. The Dirt Market (so named after it's original location on a dirt lot) can only be described as most things in Beijing are - immense. It was easily the largest open air flea market I had ever been too. After four hours, I think we covered about a third of it - maybe half.
Open only on Saturdays and Sundays, you can literally find anything here if you look hard enough: Mao posters, porcelain, beads, trinkets, furniture, postcards, old cameras, you name it - it's here. I also saw enough parts of endangered species to occupy their own zoo.
Buyer beware however. If you don't know what you're doing, buying anything here is fraught with risk. Especially if you're buying "antiques". For that very reason, I stuck to things that were more straightforward and tried to steer clear of anything I didn't understand enough to appreciate (which was most everything).
It's big - I couldn't begin to get it all in one photo:
And yes, that large paw in the foreground below is a tiger paw. I saw a lot of these. They were mostly in the Tibetan stalls around the fringe of the Market. The Tibetans were largely "tolerated" by the other Chinese. There was a definite class/race thing going on with respect to their presence.
If you think the tiger paw is bad, the dried, leathery, ropey looking item in the front below is a dried Tiger penis. I saw plenty of them. They are considered the Viagra of the East when you grind it up and sprinkle it in your tea. No wonder they are endangered. On another note, you'll notice the head of the penis is barbed like a pine cone. Most male feline reproductive organs carry this feature to ensure that they are the only father involved- if you know what I mean. Reluctant female tigers could be another reason for the species being on the brink of extinction. Ouch.
The market is "organized" as much as possible, by the types of items sold, so....
Beautiful hair calligraphy and paint brushes:
Antique brass pots and incense burners.
We left the Dirt Market laden with our prizes and headed to the Art Walk. The weather began to turn, and we went to the apartment to drop off our treasures. It looked as if it was going to storm any minute, so we ended up going to a new, VERY modern pedestrian mall near the apartment called "The Palace" which has the largest LCD Screen in the world as a canopy over it. 6,000 square meters of video goodness. I didn't take my camera to dinner, but I don't think I could have adeqautely captured the awesomeness of this thing. Go to the link and watch the video and see the photos - it's a very cool thing.
We had dinner at an amazingly large buffet restaurant which had food stations from all over the world. I tempted fate by eating the largest raw oysters I had ever seen. I know, eating raw oysters at a buffet in China is just asking for food poisoning, but these things were amazing.
It was pouring rain when we left the restaurant, so we hired a rickshaw driver to take us home. Poor guy really struggled with two, tall Western women in the cab. Lucky for him we tipped well.
Tomorow: The one, the only, The Great Wall of China.
We got up early, packed a lunch, and headed off to the Starbucks at The Lido, a popular expat hotel / condo residence to meet other members of the Beijing Hikers Club for a day long hike outside of Beijing. There were about 20 people total on the hike: US, Swiss, German, Aussie, Isreali, Irish. All were expats living and working in Beijing - I was the lone tourist.
We were headed about 100 km northwest of Beijing, about an hour and a half outside the city to hike from one village, up over the crest of a mountain, and down into another village on a hillside in the shadow of the Great Wall of China. The hike included the bus, guides, and a late lunch after the hike for about $35.
First, a word about traffic in and around Beijing. It's unlike anything I've ever experienced. I spent most of my time in the back of taxis alternately holding my breath and closing my eyes. The sheer proliferation of cars and bikes is almost too much to comprehend. It's like jumping into the stream of a rip current and being flowed along. The taxi drivers are utterly fearless. All of them. You can't just rent a car in China, you have to have a Chinese license, and they are not for the faint of heart. Yet, more and more Chinese own cars and continue to clog the roads.
The flow of traffic is almost organic at times. It's like a living entity. It's as if cars were birds flocking or fish swimming in a large school, everyone instinctively twisting and turning, merging and emerging in an almost ballet like movement. It just moves at such a fast pace, it's hard to anticipate the direction, and if you aren't paying attention to everything - you're going to crash.
I wondered aloud a lot about how they planned to handle the traffic for the Olympics. I can't imagine any more vehicles being put into the mix. Given the utter gridlock we experienced the evening before, I could see a lot of people - and perhaps even athletes - missing events altogether because they were stuck hopelessly in traffic. There are plans to perhaps limit the cars that can drive on any given day by license plate numbers. Yeah - that should be interesting.
So, our bus driver went barreling on the Ring Roads out of town, and we quickly found ourselves on narrow, poplar lined, country roads passing through fields and villages. Not a tractor or harvester in sight - but plenty of people in the fields harvesting cotton, fruit and corn by hand. We wound our way around the Miyun Reservoir which supplies most of the drinking water to Beijing.
In each village we passed through, there was corn lying everywhere there was an open spot to dry. On top of roofs, in parking lots, even one stretch of road was closed for corn cobs to dry.
We finally arrived at the village. It was small, rural and very impoverished. The contrast between life in this rural village and what we just left in the metropolis of Beijing was pretty drastic:
Almost immediately upon leaving the village, we started climbing through thick, forested, terraced hillsides covered in chestnut, walnut, and hazelnut trees. Along the way, we passed lots of donkeys like this one, tied to trees along the trail waiting for their owners to load them up with bags of nuts to bring down the mountainside.
We also heard the farmers in the forest. They carry long, bamboo poles to knock the nuts off the trees, so as we hiked, there was a constant sound of "Whack, whack, whack" accompanying us along the way.
The nuts are bagged, and then loaded on to the donkeys to bring them down the hill.
I struggled on this hike. The "sweep" guy, a Chinese guy named Joe who spoke good English was pretty much my buddy on this trip. A little too steep and a little too hot for me, but I finished it, and was very happy to have had the opportunity. We hiked out through a larger village, which seemed a little more prosperous, but just as we were coming off the mountain, we unexpectedly passed four graves in the forest. I wish I could have read the tomb markers, but at this point, I was beat, so I just imagine that they are the tombs of the unknown hikers...
We headed down the road a bit to a restaurant in the shadow of the Great Wall of China at the edge of the reservoir. You can see the Great Wall running across the hill behind the restaurant. Lunch on the rooftop terrace was lovely: scrambled tofu with herbs, boiled peanuts in their shells with ginger, wonderful local fresh grilled fish with spice, cucumbers, and lots of nuts.
Before we left - a couple of people stopped to purchase bags of the nuts we saw being harvested on the hike.
The ride home was even more harrowing than the ride up. I fell asleep in the front of the bus, only to awaken to our driver careening around the corner of a blind mountain pass trying to pass a small truck. I think the entire bus took a collective deep breath on that one.
We got back to Beijing just before nightfall, and went with a girl that we met on the hike (from Baltimore no less!) and headed to the Modern Art Center called Area 798. I'll post some photos from there tomorrow. Had another absolutely fabulous meal in an unnamed basement dumpling house with just terrific dumplings, my favorite fried green beans with chilies, a hot salad of eggplant, pork, scallions, garlic and cilantro, and two beers. Cost? About $6. As my friend says "Cheap and cheerful".
After our wonderful late lunch, we continued up the shore of Ho Hai lake, and I had a ball just watching all the people.
The Chinese government has installed exercise equipment in every little park or community area. Even in the most remote villages, we saw the same, colorful exercise equipment installed, and almost always there was some elderly person working out.
Ho Hai Lake is a very pretty area. There were a lot of older men swimming in the lake, and then congregating along the shore in their swim trunks for a smoke.
Lots of people playing Chinese checkers.
See the guy holding his shirt up? I quickly realized that this is the way Chinese men cool off. No matter where they are or who they are with, they just whip up their shirts.
Ping pong is also a popular activity.
And so is just hanging out and talking to your friends.
We ended up at Madame Sun Yat-sen's Palace which is open as a museum. Actually, mausoleum may be a bit more accurate, because aside from the displays of her clothing and photos on the first floor, they sealed it up exactly as it was the day she died in 1981. It was very 1970's. You could almost imagine Nixon visiting. She is a very beloved figure in China. Kind of a cross between Eleanor Roosevelt and Coretta Scott King from what I could gather. She did lead a fascinating life - that's for sure.
The complete lack of curatorship of any kind in most of the Chinese museums I visited was compelling. They have no concept of setting up displays let alone dioramas, and most displays are simply objects in a dusty Plexiglas box with a small, often poorly translated (if at all) piece of typewritten paper to describe it. They also don't seem to have any notion of preservation for fragile objects like clothing or textiles. There were mannequins with Madam Sun Yat-sen's clothing on them hanging in full sunlight or without any protection at all. I saw this repeatedly in other museums. It's very strange.
We were kind of "walked out" after Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, and the Lake and headed back to the apartment on the subway. Later, we made an ill advised attempt to attend the Beijing Jazz Festival at a park all the way across town. We encountered the worst traffic Beijing has ever seen, I got hit with jet lag, and after fighting off sleep in the back of a cab for nearly an hour, and we were only halfway across town, we simply decided to get off the Ring Road and head to a restaurant.
Good choice, because we had an outstanding meal at a Muslim restaurant with a dish of cumin roasted lamb on coriander that was just amazing.
Besides, we were scheduled to get up early the next morning and meet some other hikers to go on a hike through two villages about an hour and a half north of Beijing in the shadow of the Great Wall.
Next: Chinese Hiking......
UPDATE: I forgot to post this photo of a worker taking a smoke break on a construction site near the lake. It was one of the better candid photos I got that day.
Welcome to the Middle Kingdom. First of all, it's massive. From the moment you enter through Tiananmen Tower you are awed by the sheer scope of the place.
And then, the sheer enormity of the history begins to sink in. Home to 24 emperors and their families over 500 years beginning in 1406. Home to murder, intrigue, secrecy, ritual, opulence, wealth, and a culture vastly different from that of anything outside its gates and towers.
With 800 distinct buildings and 9,000 rooms, it is the world's largest palace complex. Some records indicate it may have had 9,999 rooms - with the number 9 being very auspicious. The digit 9 was seen as a special, magic number, especially for emporers, because it is the highest value ordinal. Also,the word for nine in Chinese, 'jiu', is a homonym for 'long / lengthy'.The number of rooms has a further rationale: because the Forbidden City was on Earth, it was impossible to have 10,000 rooms, which would conflict with the number of rooms in the version found in Heaven because the number 10,000 symbolizes infinity.
Even the massive doorways into each courtyard have nine gold studs across and down to indicate luck and power:
The enormous detail on every temple and every surface is astounding:
And at the edge of every single roof detail in the complex, the imperial figures stand proudly. The number of statuettes designated the power of the person living within the building. The number 9 was reserved for the emperor. Only one building has 10 statuettes at each corner (not including the gargoyle guarding the rear and the phoenix in the front). This number symbolizes heaven and is the most holy building:
We got to the main courtyard relatively early, but the crowds were already starting to swell. I was amazed at the number of Chinese tourists. People from backwater regions headed to the "big city" to check things out. They were often retired or elderly, and traveled in groups wearing matching hats or vests so their handlers could keep track of them.
I had stopped in front of one of the more famous temple spots to let my friend get a picture of me, and I suddenly noticed this small Chinese woman standing right next to me, motioning to her friend to make sure I was included in the photo. This would not be the first time I was the subject of a Chinese photo op. Being this tall, with red hair, and a little more ample than most Chinese women - I stand out like a sore thumb.
I motioned to her to ask if she would like to have her photo taken with me, and her face lit up like Christmas and suddenly, she motioned to her whole tour group, and the next thing I knew, I was smothered from my boobs down with a horde of little old Chinese ladies. They were hugging me and pressing in on me like I was their giant child or something. It was hilarious. My friend was laughing so hard she could hardly get the photo. One Chinese lady in the front is beaming and showing the peace sign with her fingers.
Here's a shot of the temple recently known as Starbuck's. It is currently a pricey souvenir shop for museum replicas, but it is soon to be a coffee shop again - albeit run by the Chinese.
There is a wonderful interactive tour of the Forbidden City and the Imperial Palaces on line at the Palace Museum.
The Hall of Supreme Harmony and a few other larger temples were shrouded in scaffolding as Beijing tries to complete as much restoration as possible prior to the Olympics. Walking through the Forbidden City from one end to the other - and at a pretty brisk pace - takes the whole morning.
Afterwards, my friend and I walked north through a hutong neighborhood, and ended up along Ho Hai Lake where we settled lakeside at a Yunnan Restaurant called "South Silk Road". Yunnan food is known for its spiciness
The food was amazing. Ground pork with salted turnips and green chilies, ground pork with tomatoes and green chilies, Yunnan style noodles and chilies, and eggplant stuffed with beef and more chilies - you get the idea. Oh - and to wash it down? Beer. Served in 630 ml bottles, the local Tsing Tao will induce a nap after two. And the cost for all this? Less than about $12.
After our leisurely lunch, we continued walking along the lake....
Next: Ho Hai Lake and Madame Sun Yat Sen's palace.
