Cultural Divide: Why Whitey Doesn't Understand South Asia

I have about 15 posts I want to write swimming around in my head, but just haven't had the time to write them. The restaurant is still not open, but each day we are moving a bit closer. Something I touched on very briefly in a previous post was how the cultural divide between Westerners and people here in Nepal is both not as wide as they first think, but at the same time very vast in areas that we at first do not really comprehend. Mostly this is due to some very fundamental assumptions made by westerners that just don't get Asia.

Back in one of my first posts I listed a couple of things I thought would take a long time to get use to (link HERE), and one of them was skin whitening creams and their kind of creepy commercials. These are found in most of Asia, be it India, Nepal, Cambodia, Thailand, China, etc. For us the idea that beauty is dependent on skin color is a bit too close to racism for comfort, and thus we in the west have a hard time often relating to it. But it goes a lot deeper than that. This isn't just a status thing here, many Asians look at dark skinned people the same way we in the west view obese people, just fundamentally unattractive not something that is a slight preference. Most Asians are convinced that westerners have just absolutely terrible taste in woman, mostly because we don't get too distracted by skin tone, for us it's often much more about body shape and facial features. I had a successful friend of mine who was starting to see a guy who was from southern India and somewhat dark, and all her local friends were almost aghast- "he's kind of dark isn't he?". As if surely she could find a more attractive guy with fairer skin, didn't matter that the guy was rather athletic and tall- things most western woman are more interested in. I think they find this equally unsettling as we are so white ourselves.

The Myth of Money

One of my favorite posts this year was The Fictions Which Bind Us written back in April of this year. In it I discussed how essentially we play a lot of games of make believe within our lives and yield power to some rather absurd things that do not in fact exist in any true form. In that post I mentioned that the two leading contenders in this were countries & governments along with our financial systems. The last post was on governments and countries and this one will be on the financials- why our misunderstanding of what money is and where it comes from has allowed us to make it a completely fictional system that has created two classes of people on this planet- those who work for "money" and those who can create it.

Occupy Wall Street Protester 

To most of us it seems perfectly normal that pieces of paper, or increasingly plastic cards and computer digits somewhere in a bank computer, are money. For all of our lives this has been the case, and so we never really think about it too much. But what is money? Like all human inventions it came about as a matter of convenience. Farmer A had lots of barley and trader B had brought salt from over the mountains and both needed what the other had. Initially there could be direct trade of X amount of salt to Y amount of barley. This bartering system is still alive and well in large parts of the world where subsistence farming takes place, and to a lesser extent forms a portion of the underground economy in developed nations. But what if the salt trader didn't want barley? Maybe he wanted to bring back silk. so the barley farmer goes to trade for silk, and then gets silk to trade for salt. To avoid the hassle of intermediate trading a commodity took the place as the intermediary store of value, it was something that would be easy to carry, non-perishable, rare enough that it had value in small quantities but common enough that people all over had access to it, and ideally would be recyclable. Independently around the earth most societies moved to using precious metals such as gold, silver, and copper as this form of intermediate barter good- and thus the first "money" of human culture came about.

Guangzhou- Where shopping is literally a way of life

I often wonder if Mao is spinning in his grave with such velocity that the Chinese could harness it as a power source. There seems to be no country that has become more driven by consumer markets than China...well aside from the US, which supplies much of the demand, but still it's a far cry from some communist utopia. Now this isn't to say that China is some market driven utopia either, their construction policies are clearly centrally planned, and market demands would never create a city like what I just saw in Guangzhou, as I think occupancy rates are under 40% in most of these buildings. Despite this you can't help but be impressed with the engineering and the layout of this modern city in China.

View from outside my hotel 

Mr Smith Goes to China?

As the horribly slow process of registering a company and getting a visa here continues, I'm scheduled to fly out to Guangzhou China on Monday to pick up the majority of the kitchen equipment, furnishings and dishware for the restaurant. For those that don't know Guangzhou is a large provincial capital that sits just on the mainland side of Hong Kong. If it means anything to you it was known (and still often is) as Canton in the west.

I've never been to mainland China with the exception of Tibet, but then Tibet is Tibet and China proper is something else entirely really. I really don't know what to expect. From the pictures that I've seen it looks very much like a well to do modern city. In fact quite a bit should look familiar there as much of what I've purchased over the years back in the US was shipped out of this area. With everything in Nepal also imported from China, it just seemed to make more sense to go to the source to get everything. That and the selection here in KTM is really abysmal. Often types of glasses or dishware you are looking for can't be found, and if they can be found there is only one or two options available to select from. Asian dishware is often made to fit Asian eating styles, so finding bowls that are better fit to salads and not rice, curries or soups is often tough. Plates are also either too small, and those made for Indian audiences often have these horribly gaudy patterns. I'm hoping to find stuff that is ready to be shipped across the ocean to western clientele as those products will obviously better accommodate the food I'm planning on serving.

Other items I hope to find are kitchen appliances. Some items that we need,like fryers, griddles on a gas range, char broilers, and cheese melters would have to be custom made in KTM or possibly imported from India if even available there. We're hoping that we can also hunt down cooking equipment that is made for western forms of cooking. We will also be looking for refrigerators and freezers, though these are items I know we can get in KTM, it's simply a matter if it will be cheaper to get it in China.

All of this though hinges on whether or not the Chinese decide to grant me a visa  to go or not. Hopefully I'll find out tomorrow. If you are from most countries the cost for a single entry visa costs 29$, but for Americans we have to pay 150$. While I'm use to paying more for a visa as an American, the scale of the difference is kind of crazy. Anyway crossing my fingers that I walk out of the Chinese consulate with a visa tomorrow and get to fly out on Monday.

The China Bubble

So in the past I've oft voiced my opinion on the faults and positive aspects of the economies here in Nepal and back Home in America. Today I'm going to discuss what I think might be one of the worlds biggest economic bubbles, and that is Nepal's neighbor to the north- China's growing economy. Now there is no doubt that there has been some real progress in China, and real wealth has also actually increased, but there is another side of this growth that people aren't paying attention to, and that is the side that central economic planning plays and how it distorts the Chinese market.

Now there is a lot to admire about the Chinese, they are shrewed and in many ways better capitalists than Americans are these days. They have acquired access to near monopolies on rare earth metals, and they have manipulated their currency in a way to send trillions of dollars to their country via exports. They have hired out Western firms to learn how to do high end engineering projects and instead of becoming dependent on them they have trained their own staff in their techniques and then pursued those same projects with only domestic talent going forward. People in the West, and elsewhere, are rightly impressed, but this admiration often goes too far and with little understanding of what is driving the Chinese economy.

Seinfeld: "A Good-Hearted Tween Comedy" Or Why Engrish is Funny

One of the joys of living in Kathmandu is the abundant supply of pirated DVDs and CDs. I don't even think it's possible to buy legitimate versions as everything is either a burned copy or produced in China almost certainly without permission. Aside from being able to get the complete seasons of most shows for less than $10, which is nice, the packaging alone is worth the money. The amount of spelling errors, made up lines and English to Chinese to English Google translations can make for some very funny reading. This Seinfeld box set I picked up for Kim yesterday is one of my favorites yet.

"A Good Hearted Tween Comedy" -San Francisco Chronich

At first it's easy to miss the absurdity that lurks on these covers as the graphics and fonts look correct, it's not until a close inspection of the actual words that you start really laughing. Seinfeld was a lot of things, but a tween comedy it was not, and I wonder if there really is a paper called the San Francisco Chronich. 

Emmy? Award Winning Season!

The top paragraph in black is only slightly awkward. While the second paragraph in red can only be the unfortunate result of a bad Google translate. it reads as follows;

"The story of four of Manhattan's old youth: a Seinfeld his own speech, is a less successful comic dialogue actor; one of his former girlfriend, now common friends, and the third was his high school classmates, Start a bald head, but Yan Fu is not shallow, and the forth was his door neighbor, God Tao Tao, there are a lot of quirks. There is a quarter of the program is to sell to television stations say that they did after the play been called the most funny scene in the play, at least proved one truth: the story behind the film and television industry more exciting than the foreground, more winding paths the plot ... ..."

Special Features- Higher Definition:OneLestThing... Episode

And always worth a chuckle are the warnings in fine print, often warning about copyright infringement if you copy these discs. This one also warns against allowing minors to watch this show and its use of punctuation is kind of funny. Also this DVD set can't be hired.

"WARNING: This article contains material. which may offend and may not be distributed, circulated. sold, hired, lent, shown, played or projected to a perso under the age of 18 years The copyright propeter has licensed the film (including its soundtrack)comprised in this video disc (including laser disc and video cassette tape)for home use only All other rights are reserved. The definition of home use excludes the use of this video disc at locations such as clubs coaches, hospitals, hotels, motels, oil rigs, prisons and schools. Any unauthorized copying duplication, editing, renting, exchanging, hiring, selling, lending or any other kind of trading, public performance or transmission by air, cable diffusion, and/r broadcasting of this video or anrt part thereof is strictly prohibited and any such action eslablishes, is an infringement and may result in legal liability."

"The Show About Nothing Turns Out What May Be The Best Dvd Release Yet."

The Fictions Which Bind Us

There are, in our lives, far too many things which seem to me arbitrary and slightly absurd that we have all seemed to agree upon to be true. We have created in our minds this vast game of make believe, and it all seems true because we all play along. In fact to make the statement that many of these things are but figments of our imagination will bring howls of descent from the greater portion of the population, but on close observation it is quite clear that they exist in no true form. Two of the biggest fictions are the existence of countries and governments (the subject of this post) followed closely by our financial systems (possibly the topic of a future post).

It should be clear, on any reasonable inspection that countries don't exist in anything more than a loose reference to a geographical area and the people who occupy it. The lines that divide it from other countries are arbitrary mythology. For instance there is nothing more Chinese about one side of Mt. Everest or Nepali about the other. There is nothing American about one side of the Rio Grande, and Mexican about the other. These lines exist only in our minds, and they can be enforced because people with guns are convinced they're real. Increasingly I'm starting to think that this is an outdated bunch of garbage that humanity would do better without. For what purpose does these lines serve, aside from dividing us? One answer may be the appropriation of resources through our governments with a sense of shared values.

If our history has shown us anything it is that our concepts of government have brought forth more suffering and disaster than any fiction with which we cling to. There are many definitions of government one could use, but the one I like is as follows;

Government: (Noun) A fictional entity used to describe a group of people who have been granted, by consent of the population, a monopoly on the use of force in a specific geographic area.

Asian Opportunity

After my last post there was a short exchange in the comments about how where you live has an effect on how you live and what you can do. While I am the first to recognize that much of what shapes your outlook on life comes with you as mental traits that can be changed in one location just as easy as in any other, I also feel very strongly that opportunities and life style can be strongly shaped by where you choose to live. My thesis is that what I am currently doing, or have been doing could not have been done if I had stayed in the States. I figured I'd make this into a full post because I realized I've never really fully explained much of the differences clearly and have only alluded to them in ways that someone who has never been to Asia might miss. So my response in this way also isn't fully aimed at Rob, who will undoubtedly already be familiar with some of the things I go over, but instead I'm turning it over to a more general accounting to readers in the west who have only some or little experience in the east.

Below are the relevant parts of the previous discussion;


Robert Hartman: Great post, but I tend to think circumstances are a lot like zip codes... I've had a lot of friends move to lots of different places over the past few years, pursuing a lot of different dreams and most seem to be discovering that, "Wherever you go, there you are."

Brian Smith: No doubt that you take yourself with you wherever you go, but to ignore the difference in opportunities that exist in some places over others is to turn a blind eye to the reality of vastly different terrain, economic, cultural, and weather differences. I simply couldn't do the things I'm currently doing in the US, I wouldn't have the time that I have, and the costs are much higher. Ultimately different environments allow for different living habits. Now had I not made a drastic move and just went to some other spot in the US, then I would agree, not enough of a difference to really change the circumstances of what your doing.


Robert Hartman: I don't claim that changing your circumstances can't positively or negatively impact your life. We should all exert all our effort to live the life we want to live... but ultimately if you are satisfied with whatever life you end up with that is a product of how you approach it, regardless of circumstance. In my limited understanding of buddhism, that seems to be a central theme.


One man's exotic locale is just someone else's backyard. I'm glad you are happy where you are, I really am, I'm just saying that if you are willing to put up with a stale fridge and lack of hot water for extra time in the day, you can pretty much do that anywhere.


I work all day with people who made the opposite migration and they see the opportunities in exactly the opposite way. I think there is a grass is always greener element here. Knowing you can always return home and be living in the world's upper middle class within 6 months is very different than having that door permanently closed to you.


Again, I'm not criticizing you personally, I'm just saying that opportunity looks very different depending on where you come from.


Ok, so where to start. First I want to be clear that I agree with almost everything Rob said in the last post, well at least in the first and the last paragraph and I essentially take issue with the two in the center. The issues I want to cover here are costs, opportunities, and finally the education/learning/social aspects of living abroad and how these vary widely from just migrating within the first world and varies considerably from staying within your home country.

The Danger of the "People's" Revolution

Spending all of your time in Kathmandu it is easy to forget that the rest of Nepal is very different, and what seems normal here is not what the typical Nepali considers typical. It is this bubble that kept the middle and business class as well as the politicians at large from understanding the real threat that the maoists poised back in the late 90's and why even after the slaying of the King and the up tick in the violence of the civil war in the early part of this decade that to many in Kathmandu the moaists were an enigmatic group. When I first arrived here I had to put up with many of their so called bandhs, political strikes enforced by thugs on the streets that bring all commerce and transportation to a halt, but those stopped after the spectacular failure that was the May 1st protests. Since then the Maosists have been quiet, and one can easily forget that this is a country where the largest political party are communists who regularly depict mass murders (of their own people I might add) like Stalin and Mao on posters and reference them in speeches. For all of Asia's complaining over colonial oppression  in the past, no western influence has killed more Asians than the communist ideals that well to do Asians brought back with them from studying in Europe.

Today the Maoists are back in the news as they have had a big political get together, and party leaders released several papers defining where the party should be headed. Republica put out an overview of some of the chairmans piece, choosing to focus on his confrontational stance with India (read the article HERE). The ideas that are expressed in the majority of it is no shock to me, but I am slightly taken aback with how honest they are about their goals and implementation. They basically admit to what I've always suspected that the war has never ended and they basically won't stop until there is a communist republic in Nepal. The language is littered with the normal socialist diatribe, using words like proletariat, comrade, cadre, and throwing around the phrase domestic feudalism in every other sentence. One part of the story that stuck out to me was "Dahal was of the view that India will intervene militarily in Nepal when the party launches a people´s revolt to seize state power; so the party should be ready to resist Indian intervention." It's not a matter of "if" but "when" the party launches the "people's" revolt.

The danger these kind of serious revolts cause are clear in history, and it's highlighted for me by my upcoming trip to Cambodia in December. Nepal is in less danger of becoming another Cambodia due to the fact that it is bordered by two very ambitious emerging powers, India and China. What Nepal risks if it falls into a deep civil war is being completely co-opted by one of those powers or becoming the center stage of a proxy war between them. Most people don't seem to realize how tense relations are between China and India, and it was extremely interesting to me that one of the first things to happen when North Korea flirted with starting a war the other day was that India ordered 30,000 troops to its border with China. Both sides of the Nepali government playing these two nations against each other is a very dangerous game and Nepal is in a delicate situation where drastic moves that destabilize the country could very easily lead to a complete loss of sovereignty, let alone the human tole that a drastic revolution like those of Pol Pot and Mao would inflict on the citizenry of this country.

Lost in Translation- Lhasa Edition

If Lhasa is any indication of how bad the English translations are in China, then I need to visit Beijing in the not too distant future. There were shirts that were literally making us laugh out loud as we passed them. I've captured two of them here, but it seemed like the cool thing to wear here was a shirt with random English words on it. I regretfully did not get any images of menus that depicted such elegantly described dishes as Yak Tongue with Edible Fungus. Mushrooms works just fine folks, edible fungus doesn't do the same job. Without further ado, here are some of the more comical translations of Lhasa.

Goldfish Rickshaw?

10 Days in Tibet: Shigatse to Lhasa

The second part of this trip was even a little better than the first. From Shigatse we headed for Gyangze which was the suprise location of the trip, in a good way. Gyangze is in my opinion one of the best kind of places when you are traveling, you don't expect anything, and you find things that rival some of the best tourist spots in the world.

Picturesque fields on the way to Gyangze.

10 Days in Tibet: Kathmandu to Shigatse

So we had a great trip in Tibet. The price tag was a bit higher than I would have wished, but there is only one flight that goes between Lhasa and KTM so not a lot of competition to bring the price down. Due to Chinese restrictions on travel in Tibet (at least from Nepal) you also have to use a travel agency and be in a group (even if that group is just two people). We ended up going through Borderlands, who have their main office in Thamel, and they were very professional and handled things well. I was impressed enough that I'd use them again. On the Tibet side we had Tashi Delek tours, who I was also happy with, and our Tibettan guide "Jim" was excellent in my opinion and though his English wasn't the best he was very willing to help people out when the need would arise. That came in very handy for us at the end of the trip. 

A landslide about half an hour south of the border crossing.

This was the road we would have to drive on.

So we left Kathmandu early with transportation to the Tibetan border provided by borderlands. Kim and I were accompanied by a friend of ours Donnie, who is in Kathmandu as a research student studying the atmospheric conditions of different areas of Nepal and the effect of pollution and climate change. Anyway we stopped briefly for breakfast and then had a mostly uneventful ride up the Arnaco Highway. It's only about three to four hours to the border with Tibet at Kodari, but roads in Nepal can be unpredictable. Just south of the border crossing we came to a stop behind a long line of cars. In Nepal this can mean many things.

Lost in Translation- Tibet Edition

Until I get my GPS data in order and I have any idea where I was I'm going to put off any serious discussion of Tibet. Until that time I'm going to have some fun with what is some of the worst English I have ever come across. While Nepal may get some English wrong, the Chinese elevate horrible English to an art form. Shirts we came across in Lhasa and other places were literally a mash of random words that made no sense together. There were so many signs, shirts and other labels that made us laugh that I have to split my pictures between Lhasa and the rest of Tibet. This section will cover the stuff we ran into outside of Lhasa.

  

"Becarful!!! Please dont urine here

100 RNB Charg

BECARFUL!!!

These are the kind of signs we don't usually need back in the states, unless you have the misfortune to live next to college kids. In Asia on the other hand, signs like this are needed, especially when your town is over run with Hindu pilgrims from India on their way to Mt. Kailash. 

Apparently I'm going to Tibet

So we have been planning been planning on going to Tibet some time in July for a while. A friend of ours & her boyfriend, were going to bein China & Tibet some time this coming month. Turns out that it was early July, and since the summer is by most accounts the best time to go, we thought it would make sense. We had planned on flying in so that we wouldn't have to rush, but we found we could get a better price if we drove in and flew back. In order to get there on  the day that would coincide with Kim's friend however we have to leave on Tuesday. This Tuesday. 

Tamang Heritage Trail: Part II

So I left off talking about our arrival in Tatopani, where there were numerous lodges and best of all some very nice hot springs. The water was that brackish rust color, but it was warm and wet, very similar to the stuff you see in Iceland. The water coming out of the large spout felt awesome on the back of my neck and getting the last couple days of grime and salt off of me was well worth the foray into the public bath.

After that night we got to an early start and made for the Rhododendron forests that clung to the side of the mountain at this elevation (roughly 8,000'). The trees here are covered in moss and vines as this is the elevation where clouds regularly form from the rising hot air that comes up from the valleys providing thick moist air for the trees and whatever grows on them.

After a mile or so out of Tatopani we came across a large troop of Nepal Gray Langur Monkeys. At first I just caught a glance of a few running across the trail, but after standing still for a moment and looking around it became evident that the forest was full of them. My guess would be that the troop consisted of at least twenty five, though there may have been more that we didn't see. As my camera is useless at taking pictures of anything that isn't right in front of you, I had to rely on Kim and her large lens to get all the shots, which I think she did a good job of considering she had no tripod.
Onward we went, through the very picturesque village of Brimdang, and then up the side of what was the highest and steepest part of the trail. Every ridge promised better and better views with the Ganesh Himal on the West side and the Mountains of Langtang in the East. I'm not afraid of heights, but there were several parts here on the trail where if you jumped you would have several long tens of seconds to consider your mistake. The trail would bend and it was like being at the edge of the world, something I haven't experienced before at only 10,000' of elevation. Anyway when we got to the top, we were rewarded with an almost complete 360 degree view of the surrounding mountains and a little monastery at the top of the place called Nagthali Ghyang. Here though the fields were covered in a good amount of snow, and the trail was anything but clear. Lucky for us a pair of Buddhhist monks were on their way to the same village as us. Although they couldn't wait for us, as they had to be there to assist with a ritual, they very kindly showed us where to go, gave Kim a walking stick and left a trail of arrows in the dirt for us every once in a while.
Now this is the part of the trail that shortened the whole expedition. Kim did very well going up, despite the precipices and steep trails, but going down the same kind of steep trails in the snow and fresh mud was not on her happy list. As the above picture shows, I occasionally got the look of death. Watching someone come down a mountain that is convinced that at any moment they just might die is not something you want to watch or put anyone through. We agreed after a short while, that the trek would be adjusted to avoid any other steep downhills with snow and ice.
After what seemed like an eternity we did finally reach the village of Thuman, which was fairly good sized and had a monastery that was preforming some special rights, I think for Losar (Tibetan New Year). We shared a guest lodge with a pair of French chicks (mother and daughter) and also got some really great pictures in this village. This village also sat facing the peak of Langtang Lirung, giving another set of gorgeous mountain views. The above picture shows monks blowing horns as part of the ceremony that they were preforming during our stay.

The next morning we made our way north across the ridge, neither gaining or really descending until after we passed the small village of Dahal Phedi. From there the trail descended steeply again, and Kim reminded me that she hates hiking again. We finally got to the bottom crossed a suspension bridge and made our way along a new "road" to the village of Timure. From here Kim rested and I took a stroll up to the Chinese/Tibet border.
The above picture is taken from the ruins of a stone fort on the Nepal side. On the Chinese side you can see they are building a very large bridge. In fact the whole road that was being built was being built by Chinese workers, with Chinese equipment, and it looks like the Chinese are serious about getting roads down to India through Nepal. I've read they are doing the same in Lo Mantang, and in one other place, giving them four routes through Nepal.

On the last day we followed the road south back to Syrabru, only problem was that just North of LingLing we ran into a Chinese dynamite team. The road aint quite done. So we had to turn around find the old trail, take it several hundred feet above the dynamite team, and then descend back down after LingLing. It was a little scary walking within a foot or so of very long drops knowing dynamite could be going off under you at any time. Some did go off a little bit before arriving in LingLing and scared the bejeezus out of me. After that and a slight worng turn we found that the trail suddenly terminated about 80' above the new road, and the very steep dirt made it so sliding down was not an option. After a little backtracking we followed a path through some nomads camp and found our way down to the road. From their it was mostly smooth sailing to Syrabru.

Lucky for us the bus ride home was much more comfortable, and a little quicker than the one up there. The suspension on the bus was much nicer and the seats more comfortable. Any bus ride in Nepal can be a little scary though with the second rate roads, sharp switchbacks, and very very long drops that are very evident right out your window. We made it back in one piece though and over all had a great time.