New Nations for the 2010s

Sept 25, 2012


The New York Times has published an interesting interactive page about potential new nations. I hadn’t heard, for instance, that “at least a half-dozen Tuareg rebellions in the past century predate the recent declaration of Azawad as an independent state in Mali’s vast northern Sahara territory.” 

But it’s been a while since I paid any attention to any TPLACs of that part of the continent, and of course the conflict seems to be fairly byzantine. The odd thing about modern African borders, which were colonial impositions anyway, is that they’ve (mostly) lasted this long.

The one about China biting off a chunk of Siberia (#10) seems far-fetched. Sure, Moscow is far away, and the Russian state isn’t quite what it used to be. But I’d guess that any formal territorial grabs – as opposed to the informal kinds – would awaken the bear pretty quickly, and the bear would be in a vodka-besotted fury.

Interesting to note that none of the posited new nations are in the Western Hemisphere, so maybe the NYT thinks that Quebec’s secession isn’t too likely. This doesn’t involve a new nation, but I learned the other day that Bolivia has finally regained its access to the ocean, sort of.

Item From the Past: Fortaleza do Monte

Sept 23, 2012

This from Reuters recently: “U.S. billionaire Sheldon Adelson opened his latest resort in Macau on Thursday, adding to a string of casinos in the world's largest gambling destination that has helped the high-profile donor to the U.S. Republican party earn most of his multi-billion dollar fortune.


“Adelson, chairman of Las Vegas Sands Corp and its Macau unit, Sands China Ltd, presided over the opening of his Polynesian-themed casino and Sheraton Macau hotel, adding to his Sands Cotai Central property, which opened in April.”

Ah, Macao. I wandered into the round Hotel Lisboa during my visit in September 1990 and watched a packed gaming room for a few minutes. Some tables were packed with people playing recognizable games, others playing unfamiliar Chinese games. It was one of the few casinos in Macao in those days, I think. Now there are many, catering to the many more Chinese who have disposable income in our time.

The Lisboa was only one stop during my peregrinations that long-ago day. I also visited the hilltop Fortaleza do Monte. Wiki tells us that the site’s official name is Fortaleza de Nossa Senhora do Monte de São Paulo. In English: Fortress of Our Lady of the Mount of St. Paul. In Chinese: 大炮台)

As you can see, it had a spot of topiary. Old cannons also pointed outward from the hilltop – maybe for protection against junk-borne pirates, or Dutch or British ships eager to claim the territory, once upon a time. The building in the picture has been converted into a museum, I’ve read. When I visited, it was mostly empty, and had only one function as Macao’s weather station.

Item From the Past: Mutianyu

Terrific thunderstorms late this morning and early in the afternoon, while we were out and after we got home. May has turned warmish and wet, to contrast with April's dry and cool, and March's summertime preview. Thunder continues to rumble off in the distance even now.

The Nixons went to the Great Wall of China at Badaling. We went to the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall in May 1994, mere weeks after Nixon died, though I'm certain that counts as a coincidence. I've forgotten why we made that choice, but it was an impressive pile of stones, about 50 miles from Beijing. Most of the pictures I've seen capture the arc of the wall as it makes its way atop a wooded ridge, and there's no arguing with fine vistas like that. But the wall has its charms closer up, too.

Little-mentioned in the tourist literature is this stone, not original to the 6th century structure or the Ming reconstruction. It says in German, Chinese and English, besides world peace boilerplate, "In gratitude for the help provided by the Henkel-Group, Düsseldorf, in restoring this section of the wall. Beijing, 1989." Solidarity among socialist nations is fine and dandy, but when you want help restoring a prized historic site and hard-currency earner, hire some West German engineers.

Chicago Chinatown '09

This song comes to mind when I visit a Chinatown. One of the many things that occurs to me, but I have to like a song that begins, "I saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand."

Lee Ho Fook is still around, according to ChinaWok.com. I remember in 1994 being startled in London's Chinatown to see that it was a real place. Maybe Warren Zevon had some good beef chow mein there once upon a time.

Chicago's Chinatown is larger than it used to be, even in the time since I first visited in the late 1980s. Chinatown Square, a residential and retail expansion, began in the 1990s, though the planning stretched back to when Harold Washington was mayor of Chicago. To reach the older core of Chicago Chinatown from Ping Tom Memorial Park, you walk through the newer development, first apartment (or condo) buildings, then the open-air mall.

"Framing each end of the square are imposing bronze gates depicting the 4 greatest Chinese inventions," says Chicagochinatown.org, but I wasn't able to check those out, since we were seeking out lunch after we arrived, and had a boat to catch when we were leaving. So I don't know what Chinatown Square considers the four greatest Chinese inventions. Gunpowder comes to mind right away, and it would be interesting to see that rendered in bronze somehow.

Wentworth Street is main street of the older Chinatown. We didn't eat at Won Kow, but I've always liked its marquee.

The other side of the street.

From there, the Pui Tak Center towers over the street, and the Sears Tower in the distance towers over it. "Built in the 1920s, the architecture showcases traditional Chinese design," notes Chicagochinatown.org, regarding the Pui Tak Center. "Imposing green and red pagoda towers topped with walls of terra-cotta flowers and mother lions truly represent the majestic traditions of China. Inside, the reception hall represented the one and only indigenous Chinese shrine in the Midwest. Originally constructed as the On Leong Association Building, this historical landmark became known as the Pui Tak Center (Pui tak means to cultivate and enhance virtues), which is a social service agency run by the Chinese Christian Union Church, a local Christian organization headquartered in Chinatown."

Item From the Past: Notes on Xiamen (Amoy), China

April 23, 1994

Our first day in Xiamen we visited a late Qing fortress (vintage 1890s) down the coast on a hill, as good fortresses tend to be. The star relic of its martial past is a German-made Krupp cannon, big and outward pointing, to intimidate barbarians. It probably wasn't particularly effective at that job, at least as far as the Qing were concerned. But in our time it makes a fine little park.

Nanputuo Temple, near Xiamen University [pictured below], was open and doing a lot of the business that Chinese temples do, such as purveying joss sticks and places to burn them, and offering to have some calligraphy done. Repairs to the temple were even under way. What would the Red Guard think?

Our favorite part of Xiamen was Gulangyu (yu = island). We went there on Wednesday just before dark, but the island's electricity was off that night, so we didn't stay for dinner, even though some of the seafood restaurants looked intriguing. It wasn't until yesterday that we better appreciated the island's charms, including the fact that no cars or motorcycles are allowed on its narrow streets.

We came over on the ferry at about 3 and took a stroll, discovering Gulangyu to be a treasure trove of Victorian architectural gems -- gems marked by stately decay, covered in soot, and strung with drying laundry. Subtropical greenery added to the effect. Mixed in with the residences were trading company headquarters and schools, sometimes occupying older buildings, but also in newer ones that somehow managed to blend in with the older building stock.

Along a main street we had an excellent four-course dinner for two for about ¥40, or about $5. We were the only ones in the place, so had the full attention of the two waitresses, two teenage girls who giggled sometimes. At other times they would stand off a little ways and watch us eat. Maybe they didn't see too many foreigners in their establishment, but I would think the residents of old Amoy would be blasé about that kind of thing.

Various idlers concentrated themselves around hotels, asking "Money?" or "Change money?" or even "Hello, change money?" I only changed money once outside of the Bank of China, when Yuriko and I were sitting on a bench and reminded me of the FECs that I had -- not much, only about ¥110. I took them out of my wallet to look at them, and a man next to me on the bench, who had previously expressed no interest in us, suddenly offered a 1-to-1 exchange for RMB. I accepted the deal. I don't know what profit he got from it, since FECs were being phased out, but he must have gotten something.

2009 Postscript: RMB, or Renminbi (人民币), "People's Money," is Chinese currency, of which the yuan is the main denomination. From 1979 to early 1994, just before we visited, foreigners in China were supposed to use foreign exchange certificates (FECs) instead of RMB, which the government sold to foreigners at a premium to RMB. But as usual with this kind of thing, I understand that rule wasn't rigidly enforced, especially by the early 1990s. We didn't have to worry about it in any case, and thinking back on it now, I'm not sure how I got the FECs.

Astronauts, Cosmonauts & Taikonauts

Been raining here much of the day, and I've been writing about the financial debacle all day, so I'm tired of it. But it will go on tomorrow and so will I.

Question for today: Did Chinese astronaut Zhai Zhigang sing a bit of "The East is Red" during his spacewalk last week, the first ever for the People's Republic? Maybe not. That's an oldies song, after all. Maybe the Chinese need to come up with something new, like "Tainted Exports are Glorious."

The Communist Party is like the Sun,
Wherever it shines, we make some dough.
Wherever there is a Communist Party,
Huzzah, sweatshops make the nation rich!

That doesn't rhyme because insisting that it rhyme would represent interference in the internal affairs of China.

Actually, I've read that Chinese astronauts are sometimes called taikonauts, a hybrid of Chinese and Greek, but does every country have to call its astronauts something different? "Astronaut" and "cosmonaut" were fine back when there were only two space programs, but now we're at risk of many competing terms for the same thing.

There's other space news, too. The Messenger probe will fly by Mercury on October 6, and come back to orbit that inhospitable little planet in 2011. It's always a good thing when such a spaceship passes near a relatively unexplored planet. Coincidentally, I just read the chapter on Mercury in a book called The Planets by Dava Sobel, a fine book (so far) by a woman who not only knows her planetary science, but also the planets' attendant mythologies and the history of their exploration.

A page or so of the Mercury chapter was devoted to the elusive planet Vulcan, postulated to orbit even closer to the Sun than Mercury. I'd read of it before, but only in passing. It was thought in the 19th century that the gravitational presence of Vulcan would explain some oddities in Mercury's motion. These oddities were in fact later explained by non-Newtonian physics, so astronomers looking for Vulcan looked in vain, but at least Star Trek had some use for the name.

Medal Map

One more posting about the Olympics; but it's really about interactive maps. Mostly I still prefer static maps over the interactive kind, maybe the same reason that reading from paper is more nourishing than off of a screen. Still -- this is a hell of an interactive map.

I hope the New York Times maintains it for a while. Under the "geographic view," run it backward from this year -- when the US and Chinese bubbles are vying for the honor of biggest-ness, and a nest of European bubbles sit next to a nest of Asian bubbles. For one thing, it's interest to compare the 2008 and 2004 maps. It looks like China's sucking medals not from its other big rivals such as the US and Russia, but smaller European and Asian competitors, though we'll have to wait until Sunday to get a full picture.

Run the map backwards in time and watch the Chinese bubble shrink across the decades to nothing; the Australian bubble peaks in 2000, then shrink, but then gets bigger in during and after the Melbourne Games in '56; the South African bubble disappears in 1988 and reappear in 1960 (all of the tiny African bubbles vanished in '76 -- I forget why they were boycotting); and the behemoth Soviet bubbles of yore, except for 1984. Then there's the case of the insanely large East German medal totals, well reflected in the bubbles during the '70s and '80s, except for '84. The golden age of undetected doping, it was.

Except for 1980, the US bubble has always been pretty large, but not always the largest. But check out the 1904 Games in St. Louis -- it's as if the US is the Sun, and everyone else are planets. Then again, transit was more difficult in those days, and the Olympics wasn't the big hairy deal it would become later, so most of the Europeans skipped it. If the Games come to Chicago in eight years, it won't be the same kind of US medal sweep.

Sure, the Games should be in Chicago in 2016: the Daley Olympics. But looking at the map, I can't help but think awarding them to Rio would encourage South American Olympians, who have won so few medals over the years.

More Olympic Folderol

Focus groups must have told NBC that some all-important consumer sub-psychographic wants to see gymnastics and more gymnastics, followed by another round of gymnastics. Not me. I'm glad the Olympic gymnastics are nearly over. It's a little too amazing watching people do motions in the air that should be physically impossible, or at least result in crippling injuries. Not only that, pondering the scoring methodology, which seems as arcane as calculating Nestorian Easter, causes headaches.

By contrast, swimming and running are refreshingly straightforward. Whoever gets there the fastest, wins. Not only that, most people can run, and many can swim, and what distinguishes an Olympian is a matter of degree -- it's still fundamental locomotion.

The network is using "Bugler's Dream," but only a few seconds at a time, and obscured by voiceovers. This is no good. It's a full-bodied theme, and deserves better. Even NBC ought to realize that. If I remember right, the network didn't use the theme at all in 1988, the first time it aired the Games, and probably millions of Americans reacted like I did: Where's the Olympic music? So it was back in '92. This is from '96, and a better treatment than the current one.

Much ado is being made about totting up the medals. China's running away with the golds, of course. Nothing like that home-team authoritarian-state advantage. But as usual, the Australians are really remarkable when it comes to gold medals, a fact probably stressed only by Oz media: 11 so far, out of a total of 33 medals. This by a free nation of about 21 million.

Baseball and softball are out next time around, I hear. Can't muster much indignation about that. A few other sports could be trimmed, too, such as "beach volleyball," without impairing the dignity of the Games. And here's one that should be revived: Tug of War, last played in the 1920 Games. Why was it discontinued? Anyway, it's perfect for the Games of the 21st century. Think of the fine television such matchups would make.

Carping About NBC

When the Olympics are on, I probably watch more sports than the entire rest of the year, or maybe the rest of the Olympic Cycle, though even so I'm a fairly casual watcher. But why bother with the Olympics at all? It really isn't that different than other pro sports. There's genuine competition and sometimes amazing physical feats, certainly, but at heart the event is about making money, with the added twist of stoking national pride.

That said, the Games are pretty much the only sporting event that captures my imagination. Maybe it's a function of growing up during certain decades. Ed Martin, a writer at JackMyers.com, says this about watching the Games in the olden days: "...the Olympics truly were something special that only came along every four years (the Winter and Summer Games weren't separated by two years back then). They offered sights and sounds that weren't commonly available on pre-cable (and especially pre-ESPN) television: Live programming from other countries; taped coverage of athletic competitions that were not compromised by advance spoilers; sports that were usually only available on ABC's Wide World of Sports on Saturday afternoons."

Some of the sentiment lingers on. But my fondness for the Games doesn't have anything to do with NBC's current coverage. Memory's a trickster, but I can't shake the feeling that ABC knew how to televise the Games much better than NBC, which of course is offering up its usual dopey coverage this time around.

"We at NBC have heard about a Jamaican who ran really fast not long ago in these Games. As many of you in the audience who've been there on vacation might know, Jamaica's an island south of the USA. We'll see if we can get a tape of that run, but right now we're going live with an interview of Michael Phelps' chiropractor, to get more insight on his god-like performance in these Beijing Games."

I will give NBC a small amount of credit -- a micro-amount of credit -- for admitting that another country, namely China, is an important competitor in the Games. As usual the network is doing its best to characterize the Games as a "Team USA" event, with some other people also competing to make it more interesting. China's too big to ignore, however, so this time around of "gosh, golly, look at those Chinese athletes. It's a new China!"

Naturally, I'm not the only one to complain about NBC's style of coverage. But it could be worse.

Go Togo!

The opening pageantry of the Beijing Games was one thing, but I preferred watching the Parade of Nations, which came right after. This time it was particularly interesting, since the teams appeared -- except for Greece first and host China last, per Olympic custom -- in order according to how many strokes it takes to write their names in Chinese, and then by stroke order. In effect, at random, as far as anyone unfamiliar with Chinese is concerned.

I insisted that Lilly watch some of the Parade too, as an impromptu geography lesson. I will raise no geographic illiterates if I can help it.

Later I wondered why subnational places like French Guyana and Greenland compete with the French and Danish teams respectively, but places like Puerto Rico, American Samoa, the Cayman Islands and Bermuda (for example) have their own teams. So I looked into it. Teams are fielded by National Olympic Committees, not nations, and those places have their own committees, for whatever historical reasons. But it's good to have some geographic oddities.

I also looked up the nations represented by one person in the Parade of Nations -- one-man or -woman teams in this year's Olympics. They are Grenada, Guinea, Haiti, Micronesia, Nauru, and Togo. Go Togo! I'm happy to report that as of August 14, Togo won a bronze. The event was Canoe/Kayak-Slalom, the winner Benjamin Boukpeti. According to the Olympic web site, he was born in France and lives in France, but paddles for Togo. Which is part of Francophone Africa, so I guess that's close enough. This post gives Mr. Boukpeti his due. Togo too. It's their first medal.

Speaking of Africa, I was much taken with the hats worn by the Lesotho team, among other colorful African garb that caught the eye during the Parade. Later I turned to Google, which knows all, and sure enough, they are called Basotho hats (after the main tribe of Lesotho), or Mokorotlo. Which are for sale on the Internet, if you really, really want one: $175. (And how much would it cost to buy one in Lesotho?).

This article's abstract claims that the Basotho hats were, in fact, relatively modern creations that have retroactively been attributed great cultural significance. This portrait of Moshoeshoe, everyone's favorite southern Africa king (or paramount chief) (except for fans of the Zulu Shaka), shows him wearing a top hat, though that image might have been for use by foreign newspapers. Hard to say.

Bird's Nest Soup

Like a lot of other people, I watched part of the elaborate opening ceremonies of the XXIX Olympiad, as it is called, or perhaps the Third Despotic Olympics, late last week. Take note, tyrants of Beijing: roughly a decade after the Nazi Olympics and the Soviet Olympics respectively, both of those totalitarian states were gone, though I have to add that the Russian Federation seems eager to return to authoritarianism and Soviet-style imperialism, if not the full trappings of the workers' state.

"An extraordinary 15,000 performers were included in the opening ceremony, and almost two-thirds were members of the armed police and the People's Liberation Army, according to reports in the Chinese media," noted the Globe and Mail a few days ago. That only seems appropriate. A police state is putting on a show; why wouldn't police be involved?

Early on, I saw most of the "let 2,008 drummers drum" extravaganza, but went outside to mow the lawn ahead of the part that was supposed to illustrate Chinese history. Were there going to be 888 gymnasts doing a Long March on balance beams? What about 88 dancing intellectuals in dunce caps, prodded along by 888 Red Guard dancers, to warmly recall those spirited days of the Cultural Revolution? I had a feeling I wasn't going to miss anything like that, so I attended to yard work ahead of sundown.

Afterwards, I returned in time to see the dancing on the huge luminous globe, a tribute to the '08 slogan, "One World, One Dream, No Interfering in China's Internal Affairs," and the lighting of the torch, both of which drew heavily on the "flying Chinese" motif established so well by martial arts movies. Despotism or not, I have to give the Chinese their due: it all seemed like a spectacle and a half. For all my disparaging remarks, if I could have teleported to the Bird's Nest to see it myself, I would have, instantly.

Still, the London Games would do well not to ape this show, but instead try for something simpler, more focused on individuals, rather than masses. China's got masses, that's for sure. Western Civilization is about something else.

Let 10,000 Hotel Rooms Bloom

Warm again after a period of fallish coolth. Mainly that means that mosquitoes are on the hunt again. After few mosquitoes most of this summer, they suddenly turned out in great numbers in late August, swooping in for blood.

Recently I've written an article about the Beijing hotel market, for the purposes of which I had to interview someone in Beijing and also a fellow in Singapore who knows that market. The upshot is that a lot of hotel rooms will open this year and next, to accommodate visitors to the 2008 Olympics. A lot means about 10,000 new rooms by the time the Games open.

Which happens to be on August 8 next year: 8/8/08 at 8:08:08 p.m. Eight happens to be a very auspicious number in Chinese superstition, to the point of Chinese angling for license plates with 8s on them as protection against the carnage on the roads of China. I have to wonder, though, if anyone has tabulated the number of traffic fatalities in cars with 8s on their plates compared with every other plate, or with the dreaded 4 -- the death number. No, I didn't think so.

The Japanese borrowed these number beliefs, too. Near when I used to live in Osaka was a parking lot with numbered spaces. None of the spaces included the numeral four. 1, 2, 3, 5... 11, 12, 13, 15 etc. No problems with 13, however, including 13th building floors. Yuriko still thinks it odd that anyone would consider 6 or 13 or 666 evil numbers.

Anyway, my suggested title for the article about the Beijing hotel market was "Let 10,000 Hotel Rooms Bloom." The editor didn't go for it.