Everybody loves to think they are an original and unique thinker, so imagine my chagrin when I discovered this website. The colour scheme is different but in all other respects it's unnaturally close to my own. Weird.
Even worse, this Angus McIntyre guy is a better writer and photographer than I am, which is doubly annoying. Wish I could contact him, but no details on the site that I can see. Oh - here it is - angus (at) pobox (dot) com
Check it out here: http://www.disoriented.net
Up and running as of now right here! Please take a look.
Two notes to bear in mind:
1. Scan quality is abysmal: it's a symptom of using a $100 scanner to scan slides taken with equipment worth well over $1000. So take them with a pinch of salt. The originals look much better.
Many of my total of 300 photos actually didn't come out so well due to my occasionally ignorant use of the cameras plus my befuddled state from altitude sickness. But what you see are the pick of the bunch, and some of them are still pretty neat.
2. Politics. From a liberal Western perspective Tibet is an independent country invaded by China and colonised and governed against the will of its people and their leader-in-exile, the 14th Dalai Lama. From a Chinese perspective, Tibet is and has always been a part of China, and is now a self-autonomous region.
The photos are apolitical - they're just nice pictures - so I've included them in both the China pages and the general gallery.
Meanwhile, I'm working on the Nepal photos and getting a new website - postcampus.com - up and running. (Don't click the link until June 2004, it's not ready yet!) Watch this space...
Clearly the powers that be think highly of me since an entire article I wrote for That's Shanghai has been cut, pasted and reprinted in CCP English-language organ China Daily.
See the evidence here:
Original article
Reprinted article
I spoke to the editor of That's Shanghai, for whom I wrote the original, and he confirmed that as far as he knew there was no agreement between his magazine and China Daily.
In the UK there's a word for what's happened. It's called plagiarism and it's illegal. Breach of copyright is a civil offence in my country. While not technically criminal, it is breaking the law.
I'm not the only one: I've heard stories from journalism students asked to plagiarise items during work experience placements; and fellow journalist and blogger Dan Washburn has had a similar issue with Beijing Youth Daily.
I've been trying to drum this Western idea of the rights of the writer into my students' heads for months now. As many other teachers know, cheating and copying is so endemic here it's not even considered abnormal to take something from the Internet and pass it off as your own work.
But do I have a leg to stand on now even the official boredom rag is doing it? What the hell, I'll put it on my CV anyway...
...the first two words of this Guardian report on China's economic reforms and the alleviation of poverty.
There are two sides to every story, and nowhere is this more obvious than in Shanghai. A visit to the railway station will generally reveal dozens of countryside immigrants with hessian bundles, sometimes carried hobo-style on a stick. Passing them will be well-off businesspeople in suits and free-and-easy youths with coloured hair, an altogether different China.
A visit to the suburbs shows you that there is poverty and urban decay in the cities; dilapidated buildings and the occasional beggar. But downtown it's all shiny new syscrapers, Buicks and Benetton. Huai Hai and Nanjing Roads are illustrations of the new neon consumerism.
China has certainly made a lot of progress since Mao died, and Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin have a lot to be praised for despite other shortcomings (such as massacres of students, imprisonment of political opponents etc.). For a cynic like myself, it can be hard to accentuate the positive, but evidence of success is... evident.
Like a friend once said to me, "this is one of the only cultures that has had continous civilisation for 5,000 years. They must be doing something right." Agreed, though I still haven't found the answer.
My biggest fear is that it can't last. I'm no economist, but I think that there's a few unforeseen factors that will kick in at the end of the next decade which may spell the end. And this comes as the result of teaching at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, the raison d'etre of which is presumably to churn out the next generation of business leaders.
What concerns me is the effect of the economic boom, the education system and the one-child policy not as separate things but as a combination.
The education system does not appear to educate; changes are afoot but too slow for the current batch of rote-learners. I often feel that some of the students here are not unable but unwilling to learn and take interest in things.
Whether they're interested or not, it's galling to ask a basic question about what you taught them last week to find that not one out of 30 can give and answer.
The system is all about memorising information for exams and in real life this is not going to help in a complex fast-moving market-economy business environment. Yet in 15 years times these kids are going to be in charge.
Add to this the economic boom and the gulf between the rich and poor. The bourgeoisie want to stay rich, and one way to ensure this is to keep the proletariat stay relatively poor. (I must do more research and find out how the poverty problem is being solved as per the report. Surely there can only be 'x' amount of money to go around?)
China never was and still is not a meritocracy, and I'm concerned that the best people are not necessarily the ones rising to the top in businesses. Sometimes it's the best connected or even the best corruputed, though I concede that it takes a certain amount of brains and social skill to get away with it.
Then, finally, the generation of only children. The one child policy is essential; the population has to be controlled. But it's never been done before. There's a generation of little emperors out there, and it's the spoilt, rich ones who've rarely had to make an effort for anything that may well be running the economic powerhouses in 2020.
These three things together - a lack of problem-solving abilities, the corruption culture, and the 'masters of the universe' ethic - could spell economic trouble in 15 years time.
Any reassurances, please let me know. But for now, if the Guardian report is correct, well done China.
In my admittedly cackhanded efforts to comprehend Chinese culture - since, after all, that is what I am here to do - I've been criticised for numerous reasons. Not least is the simple but common 'you are a foreigner' jibe.
However, I think I've cracked something here.
It's something that applies to a large proportion of the human race, but I think is particularly applicable in China, at least in Shanghai. Acknowledgments to academically-orientated colleague Steven Sorensen who dubbed it 'the preservation of pretended authority'.
Everyone's at it, but in few places is it in more evidence than the corner of Chifeng Lu metro station.
Where Chifeng Lu meets Zhongshan Bei Lu resides a man known to us as 'traffic Hitler'. Dressed in a tasteful brown uniform, it it this guy's lot to direct the operation of the crossroads. A thankless and even dangerous task, given the torrential rain, insidious pollution and a driving mentality more akin to flying a Tie-Fighter around the Death Star than anything related to even self-preservation (let alone the preservation of others).
But despite his lowly position this chap goes into his job with tremendous gusto. He has the energy of a neurotic puppy on steroids. If he's not piercing the air with whistle blows he's flapping his arms and yelling at people and cars to bend to his will. All day, every day, rain or shine.
Nothing can move at the crossroads - not cars, not bikes, not people - unless permission is obtained from Traffic Hitler. The funny thing, for somone with such manic drive is he's completely ineffective.
I'm nearly 30 years old. Evolution has kindly provided me with binocular 3-D vision and a reasonable intellect. My forward-facing eyes allow me to judge distances and estimate speeds. I thus consider myself capable of crossing even a busy and dangerous road.
But step off the pavement at the wrong moment for him and he'll actually push you into incoming traffic to put you back in your place. Meanwhile, cars are merrily zipping through the traffic lights behind his back.
I must get some photos one day.
It's the same it seems in other strata of society. At the university, we have a person whose specific job appears to be to leave unhelpful memos on our desks, whisper incoherently and suspiciously and generally make life difficult. We foreigners thus disregard everything she does, even sometimes when it's stuff that's actually useful or right.
Same goes for the government. Block Google? It's because it can. Not going to stop me using the search engines, or for that matter seeking out the BBC Website etc.. It does it to show that it's in charge even if what it does is ultimately ineffective.
So is this a matter of simple incompetence or a hierarchical awareness, a general cultural thing? Holding on to one's little corner, Canute-like trying to hold back the tide? Or have I completely misunderstood again. Go on, do your stuff ironophobes.
It's been said of climbing mountains that you should do it "because it is there". Not so Huang Shan, Anhui province's Yellow Mountain. I spent my weekend here because it was free.
It's also been said there's no such thing as a free lunch, and so it proved. But when your employers offer to take you on a 'jolly', some kind of special treat for the animals, you take it. After 15 hours on a train and another hour with a minibus driver who seemed to shift up the gears around hairpin bends we were there.
Where was it?
In the midst of heavy fog, the mountain was obliterated. Clad in plastic cycling macs we dutifully ascended the cable car to find that even at the top of the mountain it still wasn't there.
And so it remained for the next 24 hours. Washout. Perhaps for about an hour we caught a glimpse over the karst formations, but on the whole it might have been better to stay at home and stand under a cold shower for 60 minutes.
Can't even say that there were compensations. The food was atrocious. The overpriced (glad it was free) hotel was substandard. And on top of a mountain what is there to do but look at the mountain?
Having arrived in Shanghai on Monday morning just in time for work, our luggage finally arrived today. Great.
Simona had seen them in of all things an Enigma video, and had been talking about them for months. Today we finally saw them.
The eyes.
The eyes of truth. The compassionate eyes of the Buddha. They adorn the top of the Bouddhanath, at 36m one of the largest stupas in Asia, and therefore the world since Asia is the only place they build stupas. The Nepal tourism website tells you it's said to "entomb the remains of a Kasyap sage venerable both to Buddhists and Hindus."
The eyes peer at you with a creepy ambience from each side of the monument, whether sunlit or shaded; the question mark between the eyes (the thing that looks like a nose in the picture) invites you to question yourself.
As in the Barkhor at Lhasa, the devoted clap, mutter and prostrate themselves. Prayer flags cut across the sky like the washing lines of nirvana.
Unfortunately the Bouddhanath is also surrounded by souvenir shops which took up a lot more of our (Simona's) time. Arriving at the hotel to find a message from the tour company, we phoned immediately.
They said they'd booked us on indirect flights to Shanghai via Bangkok. Could we pay $300 each please?
What?
A few angry calls between Kathmandu and the tour company in Shanghai sorted out the situation, but the fact that they even dared to suggest that we pay for the tickets that they themselves had failed to book a fortnight ago when we paid the fee was beyond comprehension.
Kathmandu's primitive airport received us shortly afterwards, and despite a near scuffle with the zealous security personnel who confiscated my clearly Maoist-terrorism linked Duracell batteries, we boarded the plane.
Business class to Bangkok (the only tickets they could get). The pilot thoughtfully elected to tell us during the approach that he had offloaded some of the baggage because he was worried that he wouldn't be able to take off.
And just as the plane touched down for my sixth visit to BKK International Aiport, my bowels exploded. Faintly embarrassing as I ran through business class and dived into the toilet.
Fact: women like shopping.
The day was meant to be a cultural visit to Bhaktapur, the ancient city nestling beside Kathmandu. And I do have to admit that I invested in a set of khukris (Gurka knives) for myself and others.
But the tour around the old town turned into more of a chaotic shopping spree for some of the party, which was exaperating for others.
Nevertheless, having spent so much time and money visiting ruined ancient cities it was refershing change to see the way they may have looked 500 years ago, with a living population worshipping, working, shopping, chatting and just generally getting on with it..
Just a bit of a shame that I couldn't pull off the 'my dad's a Hindu' act to gain permission to enter a certain part of a temple housing a unique sculpture. Never mind.
You can take a look at the photos on the Nepal page when they're ready, but I'd better admit that I have no clue what any of the buildings are.
At lunchtime, it was eventually broken to us. The tour guides had been holding onto our passports for 24 hours, the reason being that no ticket had been booked for us to get back to Shanghai and they were having great trouble finding one.
Would we mind staying in Kathmandu a bit longer? Why not. Nothing we can do anyway.
Off round the tourist market for more shopping and to the tourist restaurant for more eating and rather bland traditional dance. Then to the Shangri La hotel (no second night in the Hyatt allowed).
Perhaps the most surreal moment of the trip: guided to the Orwellian room 101 the door was opened to reveal... nothing. The room hadn't yet been installed with a bed.
They say that to live in China you need to get out once in a while. So we did.
But for a possible misunderstanding involving our Malysian friend Dilph - who may have been mistaken for an escaping Chinese dissident and was nearly impounded - the border crossing was relatively smooth.
If only this could be said for the road, which was in an unadvanced stage of reconstruction. The landcruisers were called on to do their 4WD drive thing once again, and for the last 500 metres our bags were carried by an army of youths.
Welcoming us literally with open arms was the new guide, Shree, whose bubbling enthusiasm was at first a welcome change but eventually began to grate.
Some examples from the bus journey to Kathmandu...
Me: "Can you explain some differences between Hinduism and Buddhism?"
Shree: "Yes, please. In Hinduism there is Brahma, the creator, Vishnu the preserver and Shiva the destroyer..."
Me: "What's that river?"
Shree: "Yes, please. It is a very holy river. In Hinduism there is Brahma, the creator, Vishnu the preserver and Shiva the destroyer..."
Shree: "Observe! On your right there is a temple. In Hinduism there is Brahma, the creator, Vishnu the preserver and Shiva the destroyer..."
Me: "What time will we get to Kathmandu?"
Shree: "Yes, please. In Hinduism there is Brahma, the creator, Vishnu the preserver and Shiva the destroyer... So you must not worry about these earthly things."
Get the drift?
I mock, but the journey was an exquisite treat. In stark contrast to barren Tibet we drove through lush, emerald valleys, past a bungee jump, a wedding party and countless farms and farmers.
Kathmandu was the riot of the traffic, dust, malingering cows, sounds and smells that I'm used to from my experiences in India as a boy. It felt like I was there again, coming full circle from where I started in November 2002 - the Khmer civilisation of Cambodia - and on to the temples of Borobodur and Prambaram in Java, the Cham cultures of Laos and Vietnam, the conflict of old and new in China and the cradle of Buddhist culture in Tibet.
It was an ephiphany of sorts. I must get back to India soon.
Another epipahny was the Hyatt Hotel. Fantastic. Especially after a week of characterless food and accomodation in Tibet. In my enthusiasm I watched BBC for three hours (bizarrely seeing old acquaintance David Mulholland from Jane's and former Oxford college Master Sir Roger Bannister at Pembroke among other things).
There was even a disco and a cover band.
The Prime Minister of Nepal had resigned just as we had arrived; another factor in the mix of an eventful trip.
Illness aside, we had been remarkably lucky. The peak of Everest is generally only visible for three weeks every year. Today was the third in a row we had had the privilege of looking at the highest point on Earth, 8848m above sea level. Perhaps there is such a thing as karma, or the dao, after all.
The day's ride from Base Camp to the border took us across almost every environment imaginable. Bouldered desert valleys, punctuated by sparse grey tufts of vegetation. Snowy plains, fording shallow streams in four-wheel-drive mode; one mistake and game over. Past the peaks of the Himalayas, Everest fading into the background, Sheshi Bangma taking its place. Then finally into Balkanesque forested valleys plummetting steeply to the green-blue-white of the foaming rivers at the trough.
From nothing, conifers appeared, and made way for deciduous trees within the space of a couple of hours. The vehicles paused under a waterfall for an impromptu carwash and continued to Zhengmu, the final call in Tibet.
The border town improbably clings to the side of the near-vertical hill, winding its way around hairpin bends. Different ethnic groups, languages and cultures mingle together; Tibetan, Han Chinese and Nepali all together in the illicit bustle and confusion of the final outpost.
We pushed past the trucks, already too wide for the narrow streets for a last night in Tibet. And as the altititude decreased so the sickness lifted only to be replaced with the most familiar travel ailment of all...
From Shegar, the journey to Base Camp is another ride of endurance rather than enjoyment. The state of the road shakes your dried-up brain around your cranium like a pae in a whistle. Not what you need when the altitude is already encouraging a pounding headache.
Approaching Quomolangma, Everest, the mountain itself looms almost too close. Having had enough of the low pressure, a cigarette lighter exploded in my pocket. Then the vehicle stops at the point of no return (step any further and you cough up the $10,000 fee for climbing the peak).
Set on a cold, rocky, windswept plain, Base Camp North is an unassuming huddle of tents, portacabins and a lone stupa. Though you can sit in the warm and drink tea in an overpriced refreshment stall, it's no holiday resort. People have died here and people have died on their return.
That night I woke up reciting the text of a virulent article designed to bring down the CCP. The secret police rapped on the door, entered without invitation and began to interrogate. There was no way out. I was in big trouble.
Some of the above may not have been entirely true but in my by then delirious state I was in no position to question the feverish hallucination. Hardly able to walk, I had to be helped up the steps twice by the long-suffering Simona only to find I couldn't even pee.
Altitude sickness is no joke. That was the nadir.
Another rough drive took us past remains of monastaries sacked during the Cultural Revolution rising like broken teeth from the jaws of the landscape, and then to the highest pass in the world.
At 5200 metres, the Tongla pass is a bleak place to stand. The wind scars your eyes and face with red dust and another jumble of worn prayer flags strains against the fastenings.
We took lunch in a sheltered valley greened with the rare sight of grass. The site of a bunch of foreigners scoffing chips out of polystyrene boxes soon attracted the attention of a band of goatherd boys and their animals.
As the children nervously extended their hands to receive proffered sausages and bananas, you could see their skin chapped and crackled like the mud of a dried up river. It's a harsh place to live.
Then, rising above the horizon, the first real glimpse of the snowy caps of the Himalayas, Everest itself assertively pointing out its presence, a grey shard among the jagged slates on the roof of the world.
Surrounded by hilltop fortifications, a small wall of China, Gyantse's Kumbum stupa is perhaps the largest of its kind in Tibet. Stationed beside is a monk employed to wash vistors hands with yellow water (?) from a large teapot. Explanations in the comments section, please.
In the temple by the stupa are more and more Avalokitesvaras and Tibetan thankas, cloth murals hung in a building for good luck. As in the Potala, the walls of each of the sub-shrines are lined with hundreds of boxed sanskrit scrolls pigeonholed into the wall.
Devotees stoop and creep along the low passageway beneath the scrolls; to walk under such learning bestows further qualities of the mind.
A short and painless drive from Gyantse is Shigatse, and perhaps the foremost remaining highlight of the Buddhism trail.
Along the way, the usually soporised Guide Mk.2 told a perhaps aprocryphal story of Tibet's killer yaks. "The normal wild yak, the domardic," he explained, "just eats grass. But in the mountians there is the wild duong. It's been known to eat meat. If you see one coming you lie down and look small. It's the only way to avoid it."
At Shigatse, the Tashilhunpo monastry is the sprawling domain of the Panchen Lama. Despite the inevitable droves of other tourists, it is here that that you finally feel you are in Tibet.
Yellow hat monks adorned with the oversized plumes of their order go about their business in a labyrinthine complex of mediaeval alleys and passageways. Circles of them sit in the courtyard oblivious to the foreign presence while they prepare tomorrow's offering of yak-butter candles, representing the eternal cycle sun and moon. The smell, not unlike rancid cooking oil pervades every corner.
Besides the thrones and stupas of the Panchen Lamas, the monastry also boasts the world's largest Maitreya, or 'Future' Buddha, a golden effigy smiling enigmatically over the onlookers below.
Despite the nagging altitude headache, I felt I was here.
This picture sums it up. Simona having a marvellous time, me stricken with headache, fatigue, dizziness and a malaise removed from altitude sickness itself, a sense of foreboding.
Lacking appetite for breakfast, a restoratory packet of M&Ms was sufficient to perk me up enough to board the Toyota Land Cruisers for the next leg of the journey to Gyantse.
Packed into the vehicle with Frederick the tall Swede, his tall wife Yongyan and a surly driver it was on to the highway. Minutes out of Lhasa we were subjected to two checkpoints: first by the army; second by the police just a kilometre down the road. The military presence in Tibet is subdued but hard to miss; you can't forget what kind of state you're in, at least near the major cities.
The tarmac petered out soon enough dirt track winding past the squat and square Tibetan dwellings dotted around the barren countryside. A few months ago, there was a smattering of press reports concerning missions to Mars. They could have saved their money. It's here.
Tibet is a Mars-scape, elevated thousands of metres above and thousands of kilometres from the rest of the world. It's difficult to see how anything can survive in this ferrous red wasteland, but evidently it does.
All but a Toyota Land Cruiser, which conked out after two hours of juddering road. No walkie talkies, medical kits or mechanical spares in sight. We were on our own.
Fortunately the other vehicles in the convoy picked us up, though after a misunderstanding I had to tramp two hundred metres in the deoxygenated air to retreive my cameras from the breakdown. Felt like two thousand. Simona's careless mishandling of my Pentax further blackened my mood, hence the photo.
At least I felt better than Frederick, also going down with the altitude. Halfway through the juddering, bone-shaking, brain rattling journey he was heard to cry: "Just get me out of this place, I don't want to die here." Some holiday.
But no pain no gain. Far from urban influence we were visiting one of the least visited places on Earth. Beside us ebbed the crystalline Yamdroktso Lake, crystalline and spiritual in its purity; before us rose the first snowy hint of the Himalayas. Tibetans regard this as a holy place; let hope it is spared the damnation of the planned dam.
At the Semola pass, a glacial patch on one of the mountains glittered in the sunlight while a spider-like edifice of prayerflags whipped and cracked in the wind. Meanwhile, women demanded payment for photographing their yaks; the scenery changes but some things never will.
Gyantse, an unremarkable hole of a town. Feeling in need of a haircut I ventured into the hotel barbers for a crop and found myself having to give instructions on how to use scissors and clippers. Clearly the staff had never done it before; "what do you think this is, a barbers' shop or something?"
Everewhere in the world, 1 May, Labour Day, is a time for celebration or protest. In Tibet it was the day the government and army take over the tourist attractions for jollies.
The situation was exacerbated further by the fact that our erstwhile guide, Samuel, discovered that his license had expired in April. Without this we were not allowed inside the Potala Palace.
While this was being sorted out, we diverted to the Jokhang temple. Inside, the low-ceilinged candlelit darkness offered a taste of what we were to see for the rest of the trip. Bundles of monk's garments were strewn carefully on the floor, guarded by a variety of Buddhas and Avalokitesvaras.
Outside fulfilled expectation of unchanged theocratic Tibet. The devout prostrated full-flat on the ground, theor hands protected by wooden clapper boards which they struck before they fell. Some, evidenced by the grimy bruises on their foreheads, may have been doing this for miles.
Others, mainly walnut-faced women clad in the reddish-brown hues of the Tibetan soil shuffled clockwise around the Barkhor square surrounding the temple, murmuring mantras as they span their hand-held prayer wheels.
Between two columns of prayer flags was an unassuming underground cellar; a glimpse inside revealed a thousand candles flickering in the gloom. By the entrances cleaners clinked and fussed as they wiped the black, smoky film from brass candleholders.
It was a scene that could have been placed at any point in the last millenium. There wasn't even a McDonalds.
Due to some crafty negotiation by Sinophone Swede Frederick, we were able to gain access to the Potala Palace. We passed the scuttling crowds and spinning the thousands of prayer wheels occupying the walls around the building and ascended the hill upon which the white and brown palace is set.
Led by the anonymous backup guide no.2, we were shown the unoccupied throne of the Dalai Lama, plus stupas containing the remains of his predecessors all surrounded by thousands upon thousands of the boxed and sealed scriptures that lined the walls.
The way was lit by pungent candles, not the stick-like kind but trays filled with yak butter and interspersed with wicks for the flames. These, we were told, were to guide the way of souls visiting the halls.
Aside from the spiritual essence of of the living Buddha, the Palace was also populated by rat-catching cats and trainee kitten tied to the window frames with string.
They in turn were watched over by steely-eyed Han Chinese guards, determined to assert their presence in this most symbolic of places. None of them had removed their hats as a sign of respect as visitors wre instructed to do; it was as if they were making a statement of ownership.
When in Tibet, do as the Tibetans do. Against the advice of the guides we opted for a Tibetan dinner and were duly driven an hour out of the city to a dusty village. Here we were treated to yak butter tea of both the sweet and palatable kind and the salty and wince-and-spit variety.
The yak meat was predictably inedible and altitude sickness was beginning to take its toll. My appetite was waning and my head was pounding.
Another hour of hellish bumping and shuddering on the uneven road back and I'd had it. I was not the only one to be suffering; Alida, the Swedish lady had not emerged from her room for two days and Frederick had also had a hospital visit.
Escorted to a clinic, I was jabbed in the arse with glucose and then attached to a drip and oxygen cylinder for an hour. "Wrap up warmer," clucked the admonishing nurse. Yeah right, as if being 3700m above sea level isn't the reason. So far so good.
(Mum - looks much worse than it really was.)