BY FUKUKO TAKAHASHI
THE ASAHI SHIMBUN
2009/11/18
A record 972 students, from elementary school age through university level, took their lives in 2008, the highest number since the government began compiling data in 1978. The figure was an increase of 99 over the previous year.
According to an annual government white paper released Tuesday, student suicides rose 11.3 percent from 2007. The number of such suicides has been on the rise since 2003.
Only the pupil-student cohort recorded an increase in suicides in 2008, according to statistics broken down by occupation, such as salaried worker, self-employed or jobless.
Overall, there were 32,249 suicides in 2008, down 844 from the year before.
The figure topped 30,000 for the 11th consecutive year, with a peak of 34,427 suicides in 2003.
Among pupils and students whose motives were identified, 337 killed themselves over school-related problems, including poor academic performance and difficulties in career choice. Depression and other health-related issues were cited in 284 cases.
Eighty-one killed themselves because of family problems. In these cases, multiple causes were cited for a suicide.
According to the study, children victimized by bullies often committed suicide. One suicide sometimes triggered more suicides among their peers.
To address the issue, the report called for the creation of a framework which would give children easy access to someone with whom they could discuss their concerns.
Juvenile suicides accounted for 3 percent of the total.
By occupation, the jobless, at 18,279, accounted for 56.7 percent of the total.
They were followed by salaried workers at 8,997, or 27.9 percent, and self-employed people at 3,206, or 9.9 percent.
By age, people in their 50s made up the largest group, with 6,363 suicides, or 19.7 percent. They were followed by people in their 60s, with 5,735 suicides, or 17.8 percent, and those in their 40s, with 4,970, or 15.4 percent.
About four in 10 suicides committed by men aged between 40 and 59 were over economic and livelihood problems, according to the report.
(IHT/Asahi: November 18,2009)
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
There's less to U.S.-Japanese frictions than meets the eye
Tue, 11/17/2009 - 2:08pm
By Jun Okumura and Ross Schaap
The conventional wisdom in U.S.-Japanese relations is that things were largely fine until the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) upset the apple cart by winning control of Japan's government. Security policy observers appear to accept the idea that the DPJ has strained the close relationship that Japan's former ruling party, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) had developed with the United States over the past several decades. A show of bilateral solidarity during President Obama's one-night stand in Tokyo last week has done little to change these opinions. The conventional wisdom has it wrong.
The source of this mistaken belief centers on the DPJ's electoral promise to review the 2006 U.S.-Japanese agreement that would move the bulk of a US Marine base out of the center of Ginowan, a city of nearly 100,000 in Okinawa, to Guam. The remainder -- a large contingency of helicopters-would relocate to a more remote location near Nago, also within Okinawa. The DPJ's indecision on whether to move ahead with construction of a new airfield above a coral reef near Nago seems to have thrown a wrench in the works, but the real difference between the DPJ and the LDP is simply in the visibility of its reluctance to give Washington what it wants.
The disconnect here is in overestimation of cooperation from the LDP. The long history of this redeployment headache gets left out of most accounts of the current controversy. The initial U.S. force redeployment deal was agreed in 1996, and the new airfield and redeployment were supposed to be completed by 2004. Instead, after seven years without progress, both sides went back to the bargaining table, a process that eventually yielded the 2006 agreement. Yet, more than three years of LDP rule later, authorization of construction at the airfield still falls to the new DPJ government. In other words, the LDP agreed to give the United States what it wanted ... and then did virtually nothing to make it happen.
So what has changed? The DPJ, not to mention its coalition partner the Social Democratic Party of Japan, is much more openly antagonistic to the 2006 agreement. The visibility of that reluctance has moved the US to respond publicly on an issue that slid by without action on a much lower profile during the Bush years. Unusually blunt public statements from US Defense Secretary Robert Gates, insisting on quick implementation of the 2006 agreement, generated headlines -- and much chatter on bilateral strains. Though the Obama administration appears to have taken a step back, agreeing to set up a joint working group on the Ginowan issue, it continues to reject the one alternative that the Japanese Foreign Minister has been pursuing on his own -- moving the Marine helicopters to Kadena Air Base, an idea which the locals also reject.
That the United States started from a position of intransigence on renegotiation isn't remarkable. But this doesn't mean that's where the issue will end. The U.S. side has waited 13 years; it has no practical reasons to reject a technically and politically viable alternative even if it means a few more years of delay. In fact, further delay is the next likely course of action/inaction. The two sides have been stuck on the status quo conundrum for 13 years for reasons we can only guess at, but likely include operational requirements that leave little or no room for a non-Okinawa solution, while no other viable Okinawa alternative is in sight.
That said, the DPJ's political links to the anti-U.S. military presence in Okinawa, the SDP presence in the coalition, and the unfortunate political calendar, including a mayoral election in January in Nago and an Upper House election in the summer of 2010, are making it exceedingly difficult for the DPJ leadership to make up its mind to accept the lesser evil and give the go-ahead to construction work at Nago.
All this dictates the continuation of the status quo. But then, such a turn of events -- or the lack of one -- should not come as a surprise. In reality, history shows that for U.S.-Japanese relations, there's much less difference between the DPJ and LDP than meets the eye -- in principle or in practice.
Jun Okumura is a senior adviser to Eurasia Group and Ross Schaap is Director of Comparative Analytics.
By Jun Okumura and Ross Schaap
The conventional wisdom in U.S.-Japanese relations is that things were largely fine until the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) upset the apple cart by winning control of Japan's government. Security policy observers appear to accept the idea that the DPJ has strained the close relationship that Japan's former ruling party, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) had developed with the United States over the past several decades. A show of bilateral solidarity during President Obama's one-night stand in Tokyo last week has done little to change these opinions. The conventional wisdom has it wrong.
The source of this mistaken belief centers on the DPJ's electoral promise to review the 2006 U.S.-Japanese agreement that would move the bulk of a US Marine base out of the center of Ginowan, a city of nearly 100,000 in Okinawa, to Guam. The remainder -- a large contingency of helicopters-would relocate to a more remote location near Nago, also within Okinawa. The DPJ's indecision on whether to move ahead with construction of a new airfield above a coral reef near Nago seems to have thrown a wrench in the works, but the real difference between the DPJ and the LDP is simply in the visibility of its reluctance to give Washington what it wants.
The disconnect here is in overestimation of cooperation from the LDP. The long history of this redeployment headache gets left out of most accounts of the current controversy. The initial U.S. force redeployment deal was agreed in 1996, and the new airfield and redeployment were supposed to be completed by 2004. Instead, after seven years without progress, both sides went back to the bargaining table, a process that eventually yielded the 2006 agreement. Yet, more than three years of LDP rule later, authorization of construction at the airfield still falls to the new DPJ government. In other words, the LDP agreed to give the United States what it wanted ... and then did virtually nothing to make it happen.
So what has changed? The DPJ, not to mention its coalition partner the Social Democratic Party of Japan, is much more openly antagonistic to the 2006 agreement. The visibility of that reluctance has moved the US to respond publicly on an issue that slid by without action on a much lower profile during the Bush years. Unusually blunt public statements from US Defense Secretary Robert Gates, insisting on quick implementation of the 2006 agreement, generated headlines -- and much chatter on bilateral strains. Though the Obama administration appears to have taken a step back, agreeing to set up a joint working group on the Ginowan issue, it continues to reject the one alternative that the Japanese Foreign Minister has been pursuing on his own -- moving the Marine helicopters to Kadena Air Base, an idea which the locals also reject.
That the United States started from a position of intransigence on renegotiation isn't remarkable. But this doesn't mean that's where the issue will end. The U.S. side has waited 13 years; it has no practical reasons to reject a technically and politically viable alternative even if it means a few more years of delay. In fact, further delay is the next likely course of action/inaction. The two sides have been stuck on the status quo conundrum for 13 years for reasons we can only guess at, but likely include operational requirements that leave little or no room for a non-Okinawa solution, while no other viable Okinawa alternative is in sight.
That said, the DPJ's political links to the anti-U.S. military presence in Okinawa, the SDP presence in the coalition, and the unfortunate political calendar, including a mayoral election in January in Nago and an Upper House election in the summer of 2010, are making it exceedingly difficult for the DPJ leadership to make up its mind to accept the lesser evil and give the go-ahead to construction work at Nago.
All this dictates the continuation of the status quo. But then, such a turn of events -- or the lack of one -- should not come as a surprise. In reality, history shows that for U.S.-Japanese relations, there's much less difference between the DPJ and LDP than meets the eye -- in principle or in practice.
Jun Okumura is a senior adviser to Eurasia Group and Ross Schaap is Director of Comparative Analytics.
Nationalists Suspected in Russian Activist’s Death
November 18, 2009
Nationalists Suspected in Russian Activist’s Death
By MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ
MOSCOW — A young antiracist campaigner who frequently clashed with Russian nationalists has been killed in Moscow in what investigators and analysts suggest is probably part of an increasingly violent conflict between ultranationalists and groups that oppose them.
The 26-year-old victim, identified by antifascist groups and Russian news agencies as Ivan Khutorskoi, was shot in the head in front of his apartment building in eastern Moscow on Monday evening, the investigative wing of Russia’s Prosecutor General’s Office said in a statement on Tuesday. The statement, which did not identify the victim by name, said he was killed possibly because he was “an active participant in the antifascist movement.”
An unidentified police source was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying that investigators were checking several nationalist groups for possible links to the killing.
Mr. Khutorskoi’s violent death is reminiscent of several fatal attacks in recent years against people associated with Russia’s so-called antifascist movement, a loosely organized group of mostly young activists that evolved in response to rising xenophobic and racist violence in Russia.
Darker-skinned Russian citizens and migrant workers are frequently the targets of attacks, with dozens dying each year in racist and xenophobic murders. Violence against antifascist campaigners, however, is not uncommon.
This month a man with ties to violent nationalist groups confessed to the murder last January of Stanislav Markelov, a lawyer, and Anastasia Baburova, a journalist, both of whom had connections to antifascist circles. Nikita Tikhonov, who has been charged as the shooter, said he killed Mr. Markelov out of revenge.
He did not elaborate, but a man with the same name had been wanted for the 2006 killing of an antifascist campaigner whom Mr. Markelov had represented.
Mr. Khutorskoi had been a visible campaigner against neofascist groups and the victim of several attacks in recent years, including one in 2005 that left him hospitalized.
An acquaintance of Mr. Khutorskoi, who asked to be identified only as Masha, confirmed in a telephone interview that he had been killed. She said that Mr. Khutorskoi, who was a social worker by profession, was a popular and influential member of antifascist and anarchist circles in Moscow — a fact that made him a likely target of violent neofascists.
“Every person who calls himself an antifascist risks the possibility of being killed,” she said.
In response to the violence, antifascist groups have increasingly adopted the tactics of their enemies, carrying out attacks against known nationalists, said Aleksandr Verkhovsky, director of the Sova Center, which monitors nationalist violence. He said the movements were locked in a simmering street war that appeared to intensify of late.
“They are certainly using more serious weapons,” he said. “Several years ago there were just fights and maybe they used sticks. Now knives are common and pistols are used frequently.”
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company
Nationalists Suspected in Russian Activist’s Death
By MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ
MOSCOW — A young antiracist campaigner who frequently clashed with Russian nationalists has been killed in Moscow in what investigators and analysts suggest is probably part of an increasingly violent conflict between ultranationalists and groups that oppose them.
The 26-year-old victim, identified by antifascist groups and Russian news agencies as Ivan Khutorskoi, was shot in the head in front of his apartment building in eastern Moscow on Monday evening, the investigative wing of Russia’s Prosecutor General’s Office said in a statement on Tuesday. The statement, which did not identify the victim by name, said he was killed possibly because he was “an active participant in the antifascist movement.”
An unidentified police source was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying that investigators were checking several nationalist groups for possible links to the killing.
Mr. Khutorskoi’s violent death is reminiscent of several fatal attacks in recent years against people associated with Russia’s so-called antifascist movement, a loosely organized group of mostly young activists that evolved in response to rising xenophobic and racist violence in Russia.
Darker-skinned Russian citizens and migrant workers are frequently the targets of attacks, with dozens dying each year in racist and xenophobic murders. Violence against antifascist campaigners, however, is not uncommon.
This month a man with ties to violent nationalist groups confessed to the murder last January of Stanislav Markelov, a lawyer, and Anastasia Baburova, a journalist, both of whom had connections to antifascist circles. Nikita Tikhonov, who has been charged as the shooter, said he killed Mr. Markelov out of revenge.
He did not elaborate, but a man with the same name had been wanted for the 2006 killing of an antifascist campaigner whom Mr. Markelov had represented.
Mr. Khutorskoi had been a visible campaigner against neofascist groups and the victim of several attacks in recent years, including one in 2005 that left him hospitalized.
An acquaintance of Mr. Khutorskoi, who asked to be identified only as Masha, confirmed in a telephone interview that he had been killed. She said that Mr. Khutorskoi, who was a social worker by profession, was a popular and influential member of antifascist and anarchist circles in Moscow — a fact that made him a likely target of violent neofascists.
“Every person who calls himself an antifascist risks the possibility of being killed,” she said.
In response to the violence, antifascist groups have increasingly adopted the tactics of their enemies, carrying out attacks against known nationalists, said Aleksandr Verkhovsky, director of the Sova Center, which monitors nationalist violence. He said the movements were locked in a simmering street war that appeared to intensify of late.
“They are certainly using more serious weapons,” he said. “Several years ago there were just fights and maybe they used sticks. Now knives are common and pistols are used frequently.”
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company
Younger Buyers Challenge Luxury Retailers in Asia
November 18, 2009
Younger Buyers Challenge Luxury Retailers in Asia
By BETTINA WASSENER
HONG KONG — When Ermenegildo Zegna opened a 7,300 square-foot shop in Hong Kong last month, it did so with the elegant fanfare and glamour that befits the 99-year-old Italian luxury men’s wear company.
But the canapés and wine, the woollen suits and male mannequins were framed in a setting different from the more traditional, sedate, salon-like Zegna establishments in Milan, Paris or New York: The new 678-square-meter store boasts spacious rooms; a huge, shiny facade that is brilliantly lit at night; a sleek, modern design; and a highly visible location in Tsim Sha Tsui, one of Hong Kong’s main shopping districts.
It is, after all, pitched toward a luxury shopping crowd whose tastes and expectations, and even average age, are different from those in Europe or America.
“Asia has an incredible thirst for fashion and quality; the region is very important for us,” Gildo Zegna, the company’s chief executive and the grandson of its founder, said during an interview at what is one of a handful of the “global stores” that house all of Zegna’s brands — formal, casual and sportswear. “Greater China has been our fastest-growing market for the past three years.”
But the trick to succeeding here, Mr. Zegna said, is to know your local customers — and adapt to them.
A study published by the consulting firm Bain & Co. last month highlighted the importance of emerging Asian nations, with their fast growth and increasingly affluent populations, for luxury retailers who face falling revenue in other parts of the world.
The global luxury market is expected to shrink 8 percent this year, to €153 billion, or $229 billion, as sales in the Americas plummet 16 percent, in Europe 8 percent and in Japan 10 percent, according to the Bain report.
In China, by contrast, luxury sales are forecast to grow 12 percent, to €6.6 billion, this year, lifting the pace of growth in Asia over all to 10 percent.
But starting up or expanding in Asia is not merely a matter of replicating the tried-and-tested models used back home — not least because the sort of shopper who can afford top-of-the-market Zegna suits — or other luxury items — tends to be younger than elsewhere.
This is especially noticeable in mainland China.
The ranks of the wealthy there are mostly composed of first-generation entrepreneurs, said Rupert Hoogewerf of Hurun Report, a publishing house in Shanghai that compiles information on China’s millionaires and billionaires.
Typically, a Chinese individual worth $150 million or more is about 50 years old — about 15 years younger than someone in that category in Britain or the United States, Mr. Hoogewerf said.
The average age of someone with 100 million yuan, or about $15 million, is 43. The approximately 825,000 Chinese with personal wealth of 10 million yuan are on average as young as 39, according to Hurun’s data — again, about 15 years younger than their counterparts in America or Europe.
“Much of this wealth has only been created since the 1980s — in other words, a solid generation later than in Hong Kong or Taiwan. You’d have to look back to the late nineteenth century in the United States or to the industrial revolution in Britain, to find anything comparable to the wave of entrepreneurs who are now starting up in China,” Mr. Hoogewerf said.
“Many luxury brands are having quite a bit of trouble with that,” he added. “A lot of Western brands are trying to apply the same model in China as they have back home, and are thus potentially targeting too old a group, when really they need to be more youthful and dynamic to attract these sorts of people.”
In addition to the age issue, luxury retailers have to deal with regional cultural complexities, Claudia D’Arpizio, the author of the Bain study, said by telephone from Milan.
Even within China, for instance, there are differences between the cities on the coast and towns in the sprawling interior.
Those who shop for luxury apparel in coastal cities like Shanghai, for instance, prefer Western-style formal wear for business occasions. Those in the country’s interior tend to dress down and wear more casual clothes, according to Ms. D’Arpizio.
“Companies need to have a completely different merchandising plan for different parts of the country,” she said.
For Ermenegildo Zegna, China, or indeed the rest of Asia, is not uncharted waters. The company was among the first luxury retailers to open a shop in mainland China, in 1991 in Beijing.
Of the €870.6 million in revenue Zegna generated last year, 88 percent came from abroad and 36 percent of total revenue came from the Asia-Pacific region.
The company now has 73 outlets in the China region, including 10 in Hong Kong, and one in Macao, the former Portuguese colony that is now China’s gambling hub. (A second Macao outlet is to open in December.) Zegna has more than 550 outlets in 86 countries.
Last month also saw Zegna’s debut in Mongolia and two store openings in Singapore. Zegna has three shops in India and aims to open more in the next few years.
“You have to constantly fine-tune,” Mr. Zegna said. “We’ve become much more scientific and analytical. We seek constant feedback from the customer, and monitor how particular items are doing — we take that into account in our store planning, we adjust our marketing efforts accordingly, the look of each store, the product mix.”
In China, for instance, Mr. Zegna and his team learned that shoppers like stores to be “more glamorous, with bigger facades,” he said, with more space and very high service levels.
Taking account of the lower age of its customers, much of the space in the new Hong Kong store is devoted to the sports apparel and “upper casual” ranges that appeal to younger shoppers.
Introduced only three years ago, the upper casual range accounts for about 30 percent of revenue in Greater China — two to three times as much as in Zegna’s traditional markets.
Mr. Zegna’s appraisal: “Thank God we had that!”
Zegna’s marketing in Asia is less geared toward magazine advertising and more toward in-store educational events for customers.
Zegna realized that Asian shoppers like in-depth information about the craftsmanship that goes into its suits and top-quality textiles.
And so it arranges for its craftsmen to tour the region, giving talks about the processes of making ties or shoes. Store staff members also have to be more versed in such information and are trained accordingly.
The global economic turmoil has caused double-digit percentage drops in Ermenegildo Zegna’s sales in countries like Japan, Russia and the United States, leading it to reduce capital and media spending this year in all areas except Asia, which now has a larger portion of such expenditures than before. Sales in Greater China are booming — up about 30 percent this year.
“China can’t quite compensate for the double-digit drop-offs we’ve seen elsewhere,” Mr. Zegna said. “But at least it means that, over all, our revenue decline will be in the single digits, and not in double digits.”
Copyright 2009
Younger Buyers Challenge Luxury Retailers in Asia
By BETTINA WASSENER
HONG KONG — When Ermenegildo Zegna opened a 7,300 square-foot shop in Hong Kong last month, it did so with the elegant fanfare and glamour that befits the 99-year-old Italian luxury men’s wear company.
But the canapés and wine, the woollen suits and male mannequins were framed in a setting different from the more traditional, sedate, salon-like Zegna establishments in Milan, Paris or New York: The new 678-square-meter store boasts spacious rooms; a huge, shiny facade that is brilliantly lit at night; a sleek, modern design; and a highly visible location in Tsim Sha Tsui, one of Hong Kong’s main shopping districts.
It is, after all, pitched toward a luxury shopping crowd whose tastes and expectations, and even average age, are different from those in Europe or America.
“Asia has an incredible thirst for fashion and quality; the region is very important for us,” Gildo Zegna, the company’s chief executive and the grandson of its founder, said during an interview at what is one of a handful of the “global stores” that house all of Zegna’s brands — formal, casual and sportswear. “Greater China has been our fastest-growing market for the past three years.”
But the trick to succeeding here, Mr. Zegna said, is to know your local customers — and adapt to them.
A study published by the consulting firm Bain & Co. last month highlighted the importance of emerging Asian nations, with their fast growth and increasingly affluent populations, for luxury retailers who face falling revenue in other parts of the world.
The global luxury market is expected to shrink 8 percent this year, to €153 billion, or $229 billion, as sales in the Americas plummet 16 percent, in Europe 8 percent and in Japan 10 percent, according to the Bain report.
In China, by contrast, luxury sales are forecast to grow 12 percent, to €6.6 billion, this year, lifting the pace of growth in Asia over all to 10 percent.
But starting up or expanding in Asia is not merely a matter of replicating the tried-and-tested models used back home — not least because the sort of shopper who can afford top-of-the-market Zegna suits — or other luxury items — tends to be younger than elsewhere.
This is especially noticeable in mainland China.
The ranks of the wealthy there are mostly composed of first-generation entrepreneurs, said Rupert Hoogewerf of Hurun Report, a publishing house in Shanghai that compiles information on China’s millionaires and billionaires.
Typically, a Chinese individual worth $150 million or more is about 50 years old — about 15 years younger than someone in that category in Britain or the United States, Mr. Hoogewerf said.
The average age of someone with 100 million yuan, or about $15 million, is 43. The approximately 825,000 Chinese with personal wealth of 10 million yuan are on average as young as 39, according to Hurun’s data — again, about 15 years younger than their counterparts in America or Europe.
“Much of this wealth has only been created since the 1980s — in other words, a solid generation later than in Hong Kong or Taiwan. You’d have to look back to the late nineteenth century in the United States or to the industrial revolution in Britain, to find anything comparable to the wave of entrepreneurs who are now starting up in China,” Mr. Hoogewerf said.
“Many luxury brands are having quite a bit of trouble with that,” he added. “A lot of Western brands are trying to apply the same model in China as they have back home, and are thus potentially targeting too old a group, when really they need to be more youthful and dynamic to attract these sorts of people.”
In addition to the age issue, luxury retailers have to deal with regional cultural complexities, Claudia D’Arpizio, the author of the Bain study, said by telephone from Milan.
Even within China, for instance, there are differences between the cities on the coast and towns in the sprawling interior.
Those who shop for luxury apparel in coastal cities like Shanghai, for instance, prefer Western-style formal wear for business occasions. Those in the country’s interior tend to dress down and wear more casual clothes, according to Ms. D’Arpizio.
“Companies need to have a completely different merchandising plan for different parts of the country,” she said.
For Ermenegildo Zegna, China, or indeed the rest of Asia, is not uncharted waters. The company was among the first luxury retailers to open a shop in mainland China, in 1991 in Beijing.
Of the €870.6 million in revenue Zegna generated last year, 88 percent came from abroad and 36 percent of total revenue came from the Asia-Pacific region.
The company now has 73 outlets in the China region, including 10 in Hong Kong, and one in Macao, the former Portuguese colony that is now China’s gambling hub. (A second Macao outlet is to open in December.) Zegna has more than 550 outlets in 86 countries.
Last month also saw Zegna’s debut in Mongolia and two store openings in Singapore. Zegna has three shops in India and aims to open more in the next few years.
“You have to constantly fine-tune,” Mr. Zegna said. “We’ve become much more scientific and analytical. We seek constant feedback from the customer, and monitor how particular items are doing — we take that into account in our store planning, we adjust our marketing efforts accordingly, the look of each store, the product mix.”
In China, for instance, Mr. Zegna and his team learned that shoppers like stores to be “more glamorous, with bigger facades,” he said, with more space and very high service levels.
Taking account of the lower age of its customers, much of the space in the new Hong Kong store is devoted to the sports apparel and “upper casual” ranges that appeal to younger shoppers.
Introduced only three years ago, the upper casual range accounts for about 30 percent of revenue in Greater China — two to three times as much as in Zegna’s traditional markets.
Mr. Zegna’s appraisal: “Thank God we had that!”
Zegna’s marketing in Asia is less geared toward magazine advertising and more toward in-store educational events for customers.
Zegna realized that Asian shoppers like in-depth information about the craftsmanship that goes into its suits and top-quality textiles.
And so it arranges for its craftsmen to tour the region, giving talks about the processes of making ties or shoes. Store staff members also have to be more versed in such information and are trained accordingly.
The global economic turmoil has caused double-digit percentage drops in Ermenegildo Zegna’s sales in countries like Japan, Russia and the United States, leading it to reduce capital and media spending this year in all areas except Asia, which now has a larger portion of such expenditures than before. Sales in Greater China are booming — up about 30 percent this year.
“China can’t quite compensate for the double-digit drop-offs we’ve seen elsewhere,” Mr. Zegna said. “But at least it means that, over all, our revenue decline will be in the single digits, and not in double digits.”
Copyright 2009
CHINA & US: A Brief History of U.S. Presidents in China
From Nixon's historic 1972 visit to Obama's town hall meeting in Shanghai, TIME examines Presidential trips to China
SAUL LOEB / AFP / Getty
Barack Obama, 2009
President Obama embarked on his first trip to China on Nov. 15, making him one of only seven U.S. Presidents to visit the communist nation. Obama has several days of talks ahead of him on topics ranging from climate change to sanctions on Iran, but likely excluding the sensitive issues of human rights and freedom of speech. On that front, his stand-out moment has most likely already occurred. On Nov. 16, the man dubbed "America's first Pacific president" conducted a town hall meeting in Shanghai in front of a handpicked audience. The most controversial question of the night: "Should we be able to use Twitter freely?"
Read TIME's analysis of the town hall meeting here
OLLIE ATKINS
Richard Nixon, 1972
In 1972, President Nixon became the first U.S. President to visit the People's Republic of China and his seven-day trip marked a turning point in China-U.S. relations. Nixon traveled to several Chinese cities and met with both Chairman Mao Zedong and Premier Zhou Enlai. The leaders bridged the Cold War divide to sign the Shanghai Communiqué, in which they agreed to disagree over China's claim to Taiwan. The trip's significance went beyond formal agreements to symbolize a new era of cooperation. A Nixon-Mao handshake erased China's grudge over a 1954 embarrassment when then-U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles refused to shake Zhou's hand. Nixon not only shook hands, but he even practiced using chopsticks on the plane flight over.
Read TIME's 1972 cover story, "Richard Nixon's Long March to Shanghai"
David Hume Kennerly / Getty
Gerald Ford, 1975
President Ford's trip to China was surrounded by political uncertainty. The U.S. was still reeling from the Watergate scandal and Nixon's resignation while the People's Republic of China's 82-year-old founder, Mao Zedong, was in increasingly failing health. Although Ford met with Mao, his main point of contact was Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping (above), who as Mao's successor would later spearhead the opening up of China. The issues at hand: U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia, how to deal with the Soviet Union, and perennial disagreement over Taiwan.
Read TIME's 1975 article about Ford's visit to China
DIRCK HALSTEAD
Ronald Reagan, 1984
A "spirit of mutual respect and mutual benefit" characterized President Reagan's journey to China, which resulted in scientific and cultural exchanges, increased trade and a nuclear cooperate agreement. China even let Reagan use his own airplane — a first for a visiting U.S. politician. Previously, U.S. government aircraft had been barred from flying in Chinese airspace.
DIANA WALKER
George H.W. Bush, 1989
President George H.W. Bush traveled to China in February 1989 for a 40-hour "working visit." The recently elected President had served as Ford's chief China liaison officer before the countries had established formal diplomatic relations, and his trip was seen more as a gesture of goodwill than anything else. Bush's tone changed a few months later, however, when he halted all arms sales and imposed sanctions on China following the June 4 Tiananmen Square massacre.
See pictures of Tiananmen Square
PAUL J. RICHARDS / AFP / Getty
Bill Clinton, 1998
The Great Negotiator's trip to China marked the two countries' return to a stable, if occasionally strained, diplomatic relationship following the sanctions imposed during the previous Bush Administration. During his visit, Clinton reiterated U.S. support for the one-China policy and praised Chinese President Jiang Zemin's leadership. When asked whether he believed democracy was possible in China, Clinton responded positively by saying, "I believe there can be, and I believe there will be."
PAUL J. RICHARDS / AFP / Getty
George W. Bush, 2005
During a tour across Asia, George W. Bush made a one-day stop in Beijing to a cordial but tense reception. A few days earlier he had remarked that China's leaders would soon discover that "once the door to freedom is open even a crack, it cannot be closed." Bush used his time in China to meet with President Hu Jintao, after which he acquiesced to a press conference about his trip. The President answered just six questions — blaming jet leg for his "lack of enthusiasm" — then strode away from the lectern toward the door. After jiggling both handles, Bush discovered that it was locked. Apparently not everything in China was as open as it seemed.
See TIME's Top 10 George W. Bush Youtube Moments
Let Me Out!
Seconds after curtly telling a reporter that jet lag was to blame for being "off his game," President Bush tried to leave a November 2005 press conference in China only to be stymied by a set of locked doors. Turning sheepishly to the press corps, the flummoxed Bush said, "I was trying to escape. It didn't work." No. It did not.
Michelin awards Tokyo most 3-star restaurants in blow to Paris
Gallic gastronomic pride was dealt a blow on Monday when Paris lost out to Tokyo as the city with the most Michelin three-star restaurants in the world.
By Henry Samuel in Paris and Julian Ryall in Tokyo
Published: 6:53PM GMT 17 Nov 2009
"Tokyo remains by far the world capital of gastronomy and also has the most three-star restaurants," said Jean-Luc Naret, the director of the legendary French food guide.
Tokyo just pipped the City of Light to the post in the latest edition of the Michelin guide to the Japanese capital, with 11 eateries awarded the maximum three stars, compared to 10 in Paris. New York has four three-star restaurants and London was awarded just one in 2009.
Tokyo also retained its title as the city with the most stars in the world – some 261 étoiles in 197 restaurants - triple the number awarded to Paris eateries.
Not all Japanese chefs initially welcomed the idea of foreign food critics passing comment on dishes of which they knew relatively little.
"Who are they to judge my food and decide whether we are worthy of one, two or three stars? Or no stars at all?" said Toshiya Kadowaki, owner of Azabu Kadowaki, in Tokyo's Azabu-Juban district, who turned down the opportunity to feature in the inaugural 2008 Tokyo edition – which sold 300,000 copies.
Michelin's debut Tokyo edition was criticised by local critics who claimed that it had a foreign bias, so this year the guide employed entirely local judges with extensive experience of Japanese cuisine.
"We give stars where we find them and in Tokyo the culinary richness is extraordinary," said Mr Naret.
Some critics have said that part of Toky's success is due to the sheer number of restaurants in the city. While the French capital has around 40,000 eating establishments, Tokyo has four times that many.
The French are fiercely proud of their cuisine – President Nicolas Sarkozy has backed a bid to have it enshrined as a world Unesco treasure - but there were no sour grapes from Alain Passard, whose Parisian restaurant, L'Arpège has the maximum three Michelin stars.
"There is a real message there for everyone: we must work even harder to keep pace with Tokyo," he said.
He praised Japanese restaurants not only for their meticulously prepared food, but also for presentation and their unique hospitality. "They have a level of subtlety that we do not possess," he said.
However, Mr Naret insisted that French cuisine remains the most creative in the world – a claim bolstered by the fact that France, as a country, is still top of the Michelin triple-star stakes, with 25 restaurants compared with 18 in Japan.
François Simon, the Le Figaro newspaper's feared food critic, said: "I have always thought that Tokyo was the world's gastronomic capital.
"I was never convinced when people said the same of London, where restaurants have great atmospheres but don't have the gastronomic quality."
Japanese gastronomic supremacy was the result of three things, he said: wonderful quality of the food, an adventurous public, and incredible choice.
He praised the Japanese for their relative "intellectual openness" when it came to culinary matters, and criticised the French for being mistrustful of foreign cuisine.
"In Paris people are too self-satisfied, they think they have the perfect formula and forget the fundamentals," he said.
Mr Simon said: "Even the croissants are better [in Japan] than in France most of the time."
The Japanese have given global cuisine some unique dishes - from high-end sushi to traditional vegetarian "shoijin ryori" served in temples, lightly battered tempura, "wagyu" beef from Kobe and even simple "okonomiyaki" savoury pancakes - but Michelin's stamp of approval confirms that prowess for a global audience.
The Japanese guide will be out on 20 November and an English version in Europe in February.
By Henry Samuel in Paris and Julian Ryall in Tokyo
Published: 6:53PM GMT 17 Nov 2009
"Tokyo remains by far the world capital of gastronomy and also has the most three-star restaurants," said Jean-Luc Naret, the director of the legendary French food guide.
Tokyo just pipped the City of Light to the post in the latest edition of the Michelin guide to the Japanese capital, with 11 eateries awarded the maximum three stars, compared to 10 in Paris. New York has four three-star restaurants and London was awarded just one in 2009.
Tokyo also retained its title as the city with the most stars in the world – some 261 étoiles in 197 restaurants - triple the number awarded to Paris eateries.
Not all Japanese chefs initially welcomed the idea of foreign food critics passing comment on dishes of which they knew relatively little.
"Who are they to judge my food and decide whether we are worthy of one, two or three stars? Or no stars at all?" said Toshiya Kadowaki, owner of Azabu Kadowaki, in Tokyo's Azabu-Juban district, who turned down the opportunity to feature in the inaugural 2008 Tokyo edition – which sold 300,000 copies.
Michelin's debut Tokyo edition was criticised by local critics who claimed that it had a foreign bias, so this year the guide employed entirely local judges with extensive experience of Japanese cuisine.
"We give stars where we find them and in Tokyo the culinary richness is extraordinary," said Mr Naret.
Some critics have said that part of Toky's success is due to the sheer number of restaurants in the city. While the French capital has around 40,000 eating establishments, Tokyo has four times that many.
The French are fiercely proud of their cuisine – President Nicolas Sarkozy has backed a bid to have it enshrined as a world Unesco treasure - but there were no sour grapes from Alain Passard, whose Parisian restaurant, L'Arpège has the maximum three Michelin stars.
"There is a real message there for everyone: we must work even harder to keep pace with Tokyo," he said.
He praised Japanese restaurants not only for their meticulously prepared food, but also for presentation and their unique hospitality. "They have a level of subtlety that we do not possess," he said.
However, Mr Naret insisted that French cuisine remains the most creative in the world – a claim bolstered by the fact that France, as a country, is still top of the Michelin triple-star stakes, with 25 restaurants compared with 18 in Japan.
François Simon, the Le Figaro newspaper's feared food critic, said: "I have always thought that Tokyo was the world's gastronomic capital.
"I was never convinced when people said the same of London, where restaurants have great atmospheres but don't have the gastronomic quality."
Japanese gastronomic supremacy was the result of three things, he said: wonderful quality of the food, an adventurous public, and incredible choice.
He praised the Japanese for their relative "intellectual openness" when it came to culinary matters, and criticised the French for being mistrustful of foreign cuisine.
"In Paris people are too self-satisfied, they think they have the perfect formula and forget the fundamentals," he said.
Mr Simon said: "Even the croissants are better [in Japan] than in France most of the time."
The Japanese have given global cuisine some unique dishes - from high-end sushi to traditional vegetarian "shoijin ryori" served in temples, lightly battered tempura, "wagyu" beef from Kobe and even simple "okonomiyaki" savoury pancakes - but Michelin's stamp of approval confirms that prowess for a global audience.
The Japanese guide will be out on 20 November and an English version in Europe in February.
Questioning a Korean Wedding Tradition
November 18, 2009
Questioning a Korean Wedding Tradition
By CHOE SANG-HUN
When a daughter of Kim Jong-chang, South Korea’s top financial regulator, got married last June, Mr. Kim did something unusual: He eliminated the cashier and the cash-filled envelopes.
These are fixtures of a South Korean wedding, as much so as the wedding officiant. Before entering the wedding hall, guests line up in front of the cashier’s table to hand over an envelope stuffed with cash. The cashier opens the envelope and registers the guest’s name, and the amount given, in a velvet-covered ledger — often while the guest is still standing there.
“The problem with this tradition is that it can be abused for bribery,” said Mr. Kim, governor of the Financial Supervisory Service, which regulates the South Korean banking and securities industries. “In my case, many banking officials would have shown up with cash gifts. They would have wondered whether I was annoyed that they didn’t put enough in the envelope.”
Chipping in to help friends defray wedding or funeral expenses is an old custom here. But in recent months, it has been criticized as wasteful, and sometimes even as a conduit for vote-buying and bribery.
In May, after some critical news stories about extravagant weddings being held at five-star hotels during the economic downturn, President Lee Myung-bak exhorted South Korea’s rich and powerful to set an example in fighting the “vain and extravagant” wedding culture.
Mr. Kim is one of a small but growing number of people, from ordinary families to dignitaries, who are joining this campaign, refusing to accept cash gifts and keeping their guest lists relatively short. Ban Ki-moon, the South Korea-born secretary general of the United Nations, invited only a few close friends and relatives to the wedding of his son in May, as did Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan when his daughter married in April. In October, Chung Jung-kil, Mr. Lee’s chief of staff, followed suit.
Still, these low-key weddings were considered such oddities that they made the news.
In South Korea, where “face” is famously cherished, the measure of a family’s social standing is seen in the number of guests at weddings, as well as the amount of money given and the sumptuousness of the banquet. At funerals, the number of wreaths presented by friends, business associates and local politicians is a comparable social metric.
“Here, a wedding is less a celebration than an occasion for a family to show off,” said Lee Yoon-ji, who runs a wedding management agency and photo studio in Seoul’s upscale Kangnam district. “For instance, if the bride’s family finds its guests are much fewer than the groom’s, it’s humiliating.”
Some families send out thousands of wedding invitations. A bank account number is sometimes included so people who can’t attend can still send money.
Often, the decision of whether to attend is based on whether the couple, or their relatives, attended weddings or funerals in one’s own family — or might be expected to. Families keep records of how much they receive and from whom so that they can reciprocate. Failure to do so can ruin a friendship.
“Sometimes you even get invitations from people you don’t know very well,” Mr. Kim said. “They arrive like tax bills or I.O.U.’s.”
Every year, the roughly 330,000 South Korean couples who get married spend an average of 15 million to 20 million won, or $13,000 to $17,000, in wedding expenses, said Lee Woong-jin, head of Sunoo, a matchmaking company that conducts an annual survey on wedding expenses. The cost can exceed 50 million won for hotel weddings.
Much of that is covered by the cash gifts. Last year, South Koreans gave out 8 trillion won, or 524,500 won for each household, in cash gifts for weddings and funerals, according to the National Statistical Office.
“This is a ‘you-help-me, I-help-you’ tradition. I don’t see anything wrong with it. You chip in and you get help in return,” said Han Seung-ho, 33, a photographer whose wedding in October attracted 370 guests. “Without their cash gifts, my wedding would have been a serious financial burden for me.”
But these envelopes also reflect a culture in which giving cash is considered so natural that people sometimes call it a “greeting” — and, in some cases, use it as a cover for bribery. When South Korea’s election laws were revised in 2004, they banned politicians from giving cash envelopes, except at the weddings and funerals of close relatives.
Three candidates running for election at provincial farmers’ and fisheries’ cooperatives were indicted in September and October on charges of giving cash gifts at voters’ weddings. A provincial education chief was widely criticized in the media in April after he reportedly invited 2,000 people — including the principals of all 460 schools under his jurisdiction — to his son’s wedding.
Chung Woo-jin, 50, president of Q&Q Medi, a medical supplies company, said many wedding guests show up “reluctantly,” fearing they might lose out on business contracts or promotions if they don’t. “So they show up to prove that they were there, give the envelope and hurry off to have the meal, without even taking a look at the bride or groom,” he said.
Mr. Chung refused to accept cash envelopes at his mother’s funeral in June. But he said he still felt compelled to attend 40 to 50 weddings or funerals a year for friends, employees and business acquaintances, each time donating an average of 100,000 won.
Meanwhile, some younger couples are rebelling against what they call a “commercial” wedding culture controlled by parents. It is generally the parents who send out invitations, collect the cash and pay for the wedding, and by and large, more guests are there for the parents than for the couple getting married.
“Some of my friends feel frustrated, wondering if their wedding is for them or for their parents,” said Lee Eun-jeong, 35, who works at a publishing company in Seoul. She limited her wedding in June to 135 guests and did not accept envelopes. “We also hate it when a friend who hasn’t contacted us for years suddenly gets in touch with us before her wedding, obviously with our envelopes in mind,” she said.
South Korea has seen campaigns for wedding frugality before. In 1973, the late military strongman Park Chung-hee tried to ban written invitations, flowers and gifts from weddings and funerals, in the belief that such customs were wasteful and detracted from his campaign to build and modernize the economy.
But enforcement was sporadic at best, and experts say weddings grew more extravagant after 1999, when the restrictions were lifted and five-star hotels and wedding agencies entered the market.
Mr. Kim, the financial watchdog chief, predicted that it would be some time before the cash envelope tradition faded.
“Frankly, I found myself thinking, ‘I’ve given out all these envelopes over the years. Why shouldn’t I get them once for my daughter’s wedding?”’ he said. “It’s not always easy in our weddings to tell the difference between bribes and genuine gifts.”
Copyright 2009
Questioning a Korean Wedding Tradition
By CHOE SANG-HUN
When a daughter of Kim Jong-chang, South Korea’s top financial regulator, got married last June, Mr. Kim did something unusual: He eliminated the cashier and the cash-filled envelopes.
These are fixtures of a South Korean wedding, as much so as the wedding officiant. Before entering the wedding hall, guests line up in front of the cashier’s table to hand over an envelope stuffed with cash. The cashier opens the envelope and registers the guest’s name, and the amount given, in a velvet-covered ledger — often while the guest is still standing there.
“The problem with this tradition is that it can be abused for bribery,” said Mr. Kim, governor of the Financial Supervisory Service, which regulates the South Korean banking and securities industries. “In my case, many banking officials would have shown up with cash gifts. They would have wondered whether I was annoyed that they didn’t put enough in the envelope.”
Chipping in to help friends defray wedding or funeral expenses is an old custom here. But in recent months, it has been criticized as wasteful, and sometimes even as a conduit for vote-buying and bribery.
In May, after some critical news stories about extravagant weddings being held at five-star hotels during the economic downturn, President Lee Myung-bak exhorted South Korea’s rich and powerful to set an example in fighting the “vain and extravagant” wedding culture.
Mr. Kim is one of a small but growing number of people, from ordinary families to dignitaries, who are joining this campaign, refusing to accept cash gifts and keeping their guest lists relatively short. Ban Ki-moon, the South Korea-born secretary general of the United Nations, invited only a few close friends and relatives to the wedding of his son in May, as did Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan when his daughter married in April. In October, Chung Jung-kil, Mr. Lee’s chief of staff, followed suit.
Still, these low-key weddings were considered such oddities that they made the news.
In South Korea, where “face” is famously cherished, the measure of a family’s social standing is seen in the number of guests at weddings, as well as the amount of money given and the sumptuousness of the banquet. At funerals, the number of wreaths presented by friends, business associates and local politicians is a comparable social metric.
“Here, a wedding is less a celebration than an occasion for a family to show off,” said Lee Yoon-ji, who runs a wedding management agency and photo studio in Seoul’s upscale Kangnam district. “For instance, if the bride’s family finds its guests are much fewer than the groom’s, it’s humiliating.”
Some families send out thousands of wedding invitations. A bank account number is sometimes included so people who can’t attend can still send money.
Often, the decision of whether to attend is based on whether the couple, or their relatives, attended weddings or funerals in one’s own family — or might be expected to. Families keep records of how much they receive and from whom so that they can reciprocate. Failure to do so can ruin a friendship.
“Sometimes you even get invitations from people you don’t know very well,” Mr. Kim said. “They arrive like tax bills or I.O.U.’s.”
Every year, the roughly 330,000 South Korean couples who get married spend an average of 15 million to 20 million won, or $13,000 to $17,000, in wedding expenses, said Lee Woong-jin, head of Sunoo, a matchmaking company that conducts an annual survey on wedding expenses. The cost can exceed 50 million won for hotel weddings.
Much of that is covered by the cash gifts. Last year, South Koreans gave out 8 trillion won, or 524,500 won for each household, in cash gifts for weddings and funerals, according to the National Statistical Office.
“This is a ‘you-help-me, I-help-you’ tradition. I don’t see anything wrong with it. You chip in and you get help in return,” said Han Seung-ho, 33, a photographer whose wedding in October attracted 370 guests. “Without their cash gifts, my wedding would have been a serious financial burden for me.”
But these envelopes also reflect a culture in which giving cash is considered so natural that people sometimes call it a “greeting” — and, in some cases, use it as a cover for bribery. When South Korea’s election laws were revised in 2004, they banned politicians from giving cash envelopes, except at the weddings and funerals of close relatives.
Three candidates running for election at provincial farmers’ and fisheries’ cooperatives were indicted in September and October on charges of giving cash gifts at voters’ weddings. A provincial education chief was widely criticized in the media in April after he reportedly invited 2,000 people — including the principals of all 460 schools under his jurisdiction — to his son’s wedding.
Chung Woo-jin, 50, president of Q&Q Medi, a medical supplies company, said many wedding guests show up “reluctantly,” fearing they might lose out on business contracts or promotions if they don’t. “So they show up to prove that they were there, give the envelope and hurry off to have the meal, without even taking a look at the bride or groom,” he said.
Mr. Chung refused to accept cash envelopes at his mother’s funeral in June. But he said he still felt compelled to attend 40 to 50 weddings or funerals a year for friends, employees and business acquaintances, each time donating an average of 100,000 won.
Meanwhile, some younger couples are rebelling against what they call a “commercial” wedding culture controlled by parents. It is generally the parents who send out invitations, collect the cash and pay for the wedding, and by and large, more guests are there for the parents than for the couple getting married.
“Some of my friends feel frustrated, wondering if their wedding is for them or for their parents,” said Lee Eun-jeong, 35, who works at a publishing company in Seoul. She limited her wedding in June to 135 guests and did not accept envelopes. “We also hate it when a friend who hasn’t contacted us for years suddenly gets in touch with us before her wedding, obviously with our envelopes in mind,” she said.
South Korea has seen campaigns for wedding frugality before. In 1973, the late military strongman Park Chung-hee tried to ban written invitations, flowers and gifts from weddings and funerals, in the belief that such customs were wasteful and detracted from his campaign to build and modernize the economy.
But enforcement was sporadic at best, and experts say weddings grew more extravagant after 1999, when the restrictions were lifted and five-star hotels and wedding agencies entered the market.
Mr. Kim, the financial watchdog chief, predicted that it would be some time before the cash envelope tradition faded.
“Frankly, I found myself thinking, ‘I’ve given out all these envelopes over the years. Why shouldn’t I get them once for my daughter’s wedding?”’ he said. “It’s not always easy in our weddings to tell the difference between bribes and genuine gifts.”
Copyright 2009
During Visit, Obama Skirts Chinese Political Sensitivities
By MICHAEL WINES and SHARON LaFRANIERE
BEIJING — Whether by White House design or Chinese insistence, President Obama has steered clear of public meetings with Chinese liberals, free press advocates and even average Chinese during his first visit to China, showing a deference to the Chinese leadership’s aversions to such interactions that is unusual for a visiting American president.
Mr. Obama held a “town hall” meeting with students on Monday. But the students were carefully vetted and prepped for the event by the government, participants said. And the Chinese authorities, wielding a practiced mix of censorship and diplomatic pressure, succeeded in limiting Mr. Obama’s exposure to a point where a third of some 40 Beijing university students interviewed Tuesday were unaware that he had just met in Shanghai with their peers.
Some students who were aware cast him in terms rarely applied to American leaders, like “rather humble” and “bland.”
“Is America being capricious because their economic difficulties force them to be nicer to China and other countries, or is this a genuine change?” asked Liu Ziqi, 18, a freshman at the University of International Business and Economics. “I don’t know.”
This is no longer the United States-China relationship of old but an encounter between a weakened giant and a comer with a bit of its own swagger. Washington’s comparative advantage in past meetings is now diminished, a fact clearly not lost on the Chinese.
Human rights is the prime example. In 1998, President Bill Clinton staged a nationally broadcast discussion with the president at the time, Jiang Zemin, about human rights, the Dalai Lama and perhaps China’s most taboo topic, the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. In 2002, President George W. Bush stressed liberty, the rule of law and faith in a speech to university students broadcast across China.
When Mr. Obama visited Moscow in July, he met with opposition political activists and journalists, and he publicly questioned the prosecution of an anti-Kremlin businessman.
In China, by contrast, Mr. Obama, in nuanced references to human rights, has shied away from citing China’s spotty record, even when offered the chance. Asked Monday in Shanghai to discuss China’s censorship of the Internet, the president replied by talking about America’s robust political debates.
American scholars and activists, who requested anonymity for fear of damaging relations with the White House, said the administration rejected proposals for brief meetings in Beijing with Chinese political activists, and then with lawyers.
American officials did consider organizing meetings between Mr. Obama and Chinese lawyers, university students in Beijing and Hu Shuli, a well-known Chinese journalist who recently ceded control of Caijing, one of the nation’s most respected and independent magazines. But officials say time constraints, not political considerations, sidelined those options, although the sightseeing agenda remained intact.
One prominent defense lawyer, Mo Shaoping, said Tuesday that an American official called this month to ask if he would meet with Mr. Obama but never called back. “The U.S. should be the safeguard of universal values,” Mr. Mo said, but Mr. Obama “actually didn’t make it a very high priority.”
For its part, the Chinese government made sure Mr. Obama did not bump into protesters by placing well-known activists under tighter security. Chinese Human Rights Defenders, a local organization, said 20 people were detained, placed under house arrest or prohibited from traveling before Mr. Obama’s visit.
Zhang Zuhua, once a Communist Party official and now among China’s most influential civil rights activists, said that additional police officers were watching his apartment and that he had been warned to avoid political activity.
Mr. Zhang expressed concern over what he called America’s growing reluctance to criticize China on human rights, saying “the Communist Party can pay even less regard to it and tighten up.”
But an alternative explanation for Mr. Obama’s comparatively low profile here, curiously, is the very insecurity of China’s autocratic government.
In contrast to Mr. Jiang, who sparred openly with President Clinton over human rights, President Hu Jintao is a cautious politician whose tenure has been marked by an obsession with stability. In Mr. Obama’s case, for example, Chinese officials hamstrung negotiations over items like the national broadcast of Shanghai’s town hall meeting until they achieved most of their objectives to limit its exposure.
In China, Mr. Obama does not enjoy the matinee-idol status that has followed him elsewhere. But the Chinese are curious about the young president, and in some cases, they clearly find him a refreshing contrast to their own retirement-age, shoe-black-haired leadership.
A topic of awe on Chinese chat sites this week was the image of Mr. Obama descending from Air Force One into rainy Shanghai, holding his own umbrella, without an aide’s assistance.
In a Nov. 11 Internet poll, people were asked to say what was most memorable about Mr. Obama. A majority noted his Nobel Peace Prize. No. 2, improbable to foreigners, was a Chinese report that the president had insisted on paying for his own hamburger at a Washington restaurant.
In this basketball-crazy nation, Mr. Obama might single-handedly have remade America’s image by showing up on one of the city’s many outdoor courts for a few rounds of hoops. Instead, he tiptoed around fractious issues like human rights, as Chinese authorities took extra steps to ensure that the state media not project any hint of disharmony.
One state newspaper editor said his newsroom now was more tense even than in June, when China passed the 20th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown.
Late Monday, he said, a Foreign Ministry censor insisted that two articles scheduled for publication on Tuesday be scrapped, including one straightforward news article on the value of China’s currency.
Mr. Obama’s trip, journalists at the paper joked, “had driven the homeless from Beijing and brought more censorship to China.”
“It’s as if they think he’d read the paper and it would offend him and trigger an international uproar,” the editor said. “As it is now, it would only trigger a snore.”
Edward Wong, Jonathan Ansfield and Xiyun Yang contributed reporting, and Li Bibo and Zhang Jing contributed research.
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company
BEIJING — Whether by White House design or Chinese insistence, President Obama has steered clear of public meetings with Chinese liberals, free press advocates and even average Chinese during his first visit to China, showing a deference to the Chinese leadership’s aversions to such interactions that is unusual for a visiting American president.
Mr. Obama held a “town hall” meeting with students on Monday. But the students were carefully vetted and prepped for the event by the government, participants said. And the Chinese authorities, wielding a practiced mix of censorship and diplomatic pressure, succeeded in limiting Mr. Obama’s exposure to a point where a third of some 40 Beijing university students interviewed Tuesday were unaware that he had just met in Shanghai with their peers.
Some students who were aware cast him in terms rarely applied to American leaders, like “rather humble” and “bland.”
“Is America being capricious because their economic difficulties force them to be nicer to China and other countries, or is this a genuine change?” asked Liu Ziqi, 18, a freshman at the University of International Business and Economics. “I don’t know.”
This is no longer the United States-China relationship of old but an encounter between a weakened giant and a comer with a bit of its own swagger. Washington’s comparative advantage in past meetings is now diminished, a fact clearly not lost on the Chinese.
Human rights is the prime example. In 1998, President Bill Clinton staged a nationally broadcast discussion with the president at the time, Jiang Zemin, about human rights, the Dalai Lama and perhaps China’s most taboo topic, the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. In 2002, President George W. Bush stressed liberty, the rule of law and faith in a speech to university students broadcast across China.
When Mr. Obama visited Moscow in July, he met with opposition political activists and journalists, and he publicly questioned the prosecution of an anti-Kremlin businessman.
In China, by contrast, Mr. Obama, in nuanced references to human rights, has shied away from citing China’s spotty record, even when offered the chance. Asked Monday in Shanghai to discuss China’s censorship of the Internet, the president replied by talking about America’s robust political debates.
American scholars and activists, who requested anonymity for fear of damaging relations with the White House, said the administration rejected proposals for brief meetings in Beijing with Chinese political activists, and then with lawyers.
American officials did consider organizing meetings between Mr. Obama and Chinese lawyers, university students in Beijing and Hu Shuli, a well-known Chinese journalist who recently ceded control of Caijing, one of the nation’s most respected and independent magazines. But officials say time constraints, not political considerations, sidelined those options, although the sightseeing agenda remained intact.
One prominent defense lawyer, Mo Shaoping, said Tuesday that an American official called this month to ask if he would meet with Mr. Obama but never called back. “The U.S. should be the safeguard of universal values,” Mr. Mo said, but Mr. Obama “actually didn’t make it a very high priority.”
For its part, the Chinese government made sure Mr. Obama did not bump into protesters by placing well-known activists under tighter security. Chinese Human Rights Defenders, a local organization, said 20 people were detained, placed under house arrest or prohibited from traveling before Mr. Obama’s visit.
Zhang Zuhua, once a Communist Party official and now among China’s most influential civil rights activists, said that additional police officers were watching his apartment and that he had been warned to avoid political activity.
Mr. Zhang expressed concern over what he called America’s growing reluctance to criticize China on human rights, saying “the Communist Party can pay even less regard to it and tighten up.”
But an alternative explanation for Mr. Obama’s comparatively low profile here, curiously, is the very insecurity of China’s autocratic government.
In contrast to Mr. Jiang, who sparred openly with President Clinton over human rights, President Hu Jintao is a cautious politician whose tenure has been marked by an obsession with stability. In Mr. Obama’s case, for example, Chinese officials hamstrung negotiations over items like the national broadcast of Shanghai’s town hall meeting until they achieved most of their objectives to limit its exposure.
In China, Mr. Obama does not enjoy the matinee-idol status that has followed him elsewhere. But the Chinese are curious about the young president, and in some cases, they clearly find him a refreshing contrast to their own retirement-age, shoe-black-haired leadership.
A topic of awe on Chinese chat sites this week was the image of Mr. Obama descending from Air Force One into rainy Shanghai, holding his own umbrella, without an aide’s assistance.
In a Nov. 11 Internet poll, people were asked to say what was most memorable about Mr. Obama. A majority noted his Nobel Peace Prize. No. 2, improbable to foreigners, was a Chinese report that the president had insisted on paying for his own hamburger at a Washington restaurant.
In this basketball-crazy nation, Mr. Obama might single-handedly have remade America’s image by showing up on one of the city’s many outdoor courts for a few rounds of hoops. Instead, he tiptoed around fractious issues like human rights, as Chinese authorities took extra steps to ensure that the state media not project any hint of disharmony.
One state newspaper editor said his newsroom now was more tense even than in June, when China passed the 20th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown.
Late Monday, he said, a Foreign Ministry censor insisted that two articles scheduled for publication on Tuesday be scrapped, including one straightforward news article on the value of China’s currency.
Mr. Obama’s trip, journalists at the paper joked, “had driven the homeless from Beijing and brought more censorship to China.”
“It’s as if they think he’d read the paper and it would offend him and trigger an international uproar,” the editor said. “As it is now, it would only trigger a snore.”
Edward Wong, Jonathan Ansfield and Xiyun Yang contributed reporting, and Li Bibo and Zhang Jing contributed research.
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company
China faces reckoning over lead production
Lead poisoning has become an issue in a region where a cluster of factories produced lead for car batteries for years. With thousands sickened, mostly children, nearby villages are being evacuated.
By Barbara Demick
November 14, 2009
Reporting from Jiyuan, China
People in their 30s and 40s here complain of unpredictable senior moments: They go to the store and can't remember what they wanted to buy, or they forget the names of old friends.
The children lose so much weight that they look like they're shrinking instead of growing.
The leaves drop from the trees throughout the year -- not just autumn -- and the corn crop is stunted. Piglets are stillborn.
Now thousands of Chinese are trying to flee a landscape poisoned by decades of lead manufacturing. Within the next year, about 15,000 people will be evacuated from villages around a cluster of lead production facilities in the city of Jiyuan, in Henan province.
"What choice do we have?" said Han Haibo, a 51-year-old resident of Qingduo, a village of 1,000 that probably will cease to exist within months. "People don't want to leave, especially the old people who have spent their whole lives here, but the pollution is just too heavy."
Perhaps it is a sign of China's coming of age that people are waking up to the dangers of lead.
China is the world's largest producer and consumer of lead, but until recently its toxicity rarely entered the Chinese consciousness; in 2007, when millions of Chinese toys were recalled over lead in the paint, many people here grumbled that Americans were too fussy.
Now the Chinese are getting themselves and their children tested. And after finding shockingly high levels of lead in their blood, they are demanding action, in some cases rioting to get attention.
Since late summer, there has been a spate of lead poisoning cases in Hunan, Henan, Yunnan and Shanxi provinces. More than 3,200 cases have been confirmed, most of them in children.
The lead poisoning is so bad that at least 10 villages are being evacuated around Jiyuan, headquarters of the Henan Yuguang Gold and Lead Co., the largest lead producer in Asia.
"The Chinese people have had to learn that you shouldn't make a profit by destroying the environment," said Yuan Hong, a 56-year-old activist who is helping villagers.
Jiyuan lies 60 miles northwest of the provincial capital of Zhengzhou, along a highway lined by cornfields and factories -- power plants, metal works, chemical plants, textile mills. It still looks like countryside here, but the smell is more like the worst stretch of the New Jersey Turnpike.
Peering out at the landscape is like looking through a dirty windshield. Everything from the rosebushes to the withered squash drooping from vines in gardens is covered with a fine dust.
"When they let out the lead exhaust at night, there is this yellow smoke streaking the sky and a sick smell, kind of sweet," said Zhang Zunbing, 34, whose village, Diantou, is about half a mile from the lead factory.
His year-old son was tested last month for lead poisoning and was found to have a blood count of 355 micrograms per liter. (Any level over 100 is considered dangerous for children.) The boy, Chenpeng, suffers from chronic diarrhea, nausea and nosebleeds, and his weight has dropped from 25 to 22 pounds in the last month.
"It is like my son is shrinking," Zhang said.
Children are most susceptible to lead poisoning because the dust from the heavy metal gets into the ground where they play.
They also suffer more from the consequences, as lead can cause developmental delays. The vast majority of the children in villages near the plant have elevated levels of lead in their blood, as do many adults.
According to the Jiyuan city government, 203 children are currently hospitalized for lead poisoning, and 115 have been treated and released. The local government has provided funds for treatment as well as extra money for fresh milk, which is believed helpful in reducing lead levels.
For the time being, production is suspended in 32 of 35 facilities for making electrolytic lead, a key ingredient in car batteries.
"The company is facing the reality and not avoiding its responsibility," said Cai Liang, a spokesman for Yuguang, a 50-year-old company that trades on the Shanghai stock exchange.
The lead-poisoning story here doesn't strictly follow the template of so many other cases of industrial pollution in China, with stock villains like greedy industrialists and corrupt politicians. Yuguang had a good reputation in Jiyuan, funding public buildings and sports, underwriting a women's basketball team and providing jobs.
Lead was a boom industry in a rapidly industrializing country. As automobile use soared in China, so did demand for the electrolytic lead needed for batteries. The lead smelters in Jiyuan also imported ores to be refined into electrolytic lead and exported to the United States and Europe.
"We did the work that developed countries don't want to do, making huge profits from a product that damages the environment," said Li, a 41-year-old lead factory worker from Jiyuan who asked to be quoted only by his surname.
After he got out of the army in 1991, Li started working in the lead industry, first for Yuguang, later for another firm, Wanyang. He says he didn't have much choice because the land in his village had been expropriated for smelters.
"We sort of knew it was dangerous, but the lead factories were the only ones that paid on time and provided stable work," said Li, who made about $300 a month, almost double the wages at other factories.
He had a key job, separating lead from ore at the smelting stoves. Although factory workers were instructed to wear masks, they often removed them because it was difficult to breathe.
Li fell ill 16 months ago, spitting up blood and suffering from stomach problems. Standing 5-foot-10, he now weighs 130 pounds. He also complains of memory loss; he is constantly going out and then forgetting what he intended to do.
"It is like my brain doesn't work anymore," Li said.
But before it brought illness, the lead brought money. In the villages near the smelters, it is not uncommon to go down narrow dirt alleys and enter a home with nice tile floors, flat-screen TVs and leather sofas.
And despite their anger over their situation, many of the residents say they would leave the villages of their ancestors rather than force the factories to close.
"They will knock down our village and expand the factory and put us somewhere else," Li said. "Maybe the old people won't want to move, but the rest of us are happy to go.
"There is no reason to be sentimental about it. There is nothing on this land anymore -- even the grass doesn't grow."
barbara.demick@latimes.com
Tommy Yang and Nicole Liu of The Times' Beijing Bureau contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times
By Barbara Demick
November 14, 2009
Reporting from Jiyuan, China
People in their 30s and 40s here complain of unpredictable senior moments: They go to the store and can't remember what they wanted to buy, or they forget the names of old friends.
The children lose so much weight that they look like they're shrinking instead of growing.
The leaves drop from the trees throughout the year -- not just autumn -- and the corn crop is stunted. Piglets are stillborn.
Now thousands of Chinese are trying to flee a landscape poisoned by decades of lead manufacturing. Within the next year, about 15,000 people will be evacuated from villages around a cluster of lead production facilities in the city of Jiyuan, in Henan province.
"What choice do we have?" said Han Haibo, a 51-year-old resident of Qingduo, a village of 1,000 that probably will cease to exist within months. "People don't want to leave, especially the old people who have spent their whole lives here, but the pollution is just too heavy."
Perhaps it is a sign of China's coming of age that people are waking up to the dangers of lead.
China is the world's largest producer and consumer of lead, but until recently its toxicity rarely entered the Chinese consciousness; in 2007, when millions of Chinese toys were recalled over lead in the paint, many people here grumbled that Americans were too fussy.
Now the Chinese are getting themselves and their children tested. And after finding shockingly high levels of lead in their blood, they are demanding action, in some cases rioting to get attention.
Since late summer, there has been a spate of lead poisoning cases in Hunan, Henan, Yunnan and Shanxi provinces. More than 3,200 cases have been confirmed, most of them in children.
The lead poisoning is so bad that at least 10 villages are being evacuated around Jiyuan, headquarters of the Henan Yuguang Gold and Lead Co., the largest lead producer in Asia.
"The Chinese people have had to learn that you shouldn't make a profit by destroying the environment," said Yuan Hong, a 56-year-old activist who is helping villagers.
Jiyuan lies 60 miles northwest of the provincial capital of Zhengzhou, along a highway lined by cornfields and factories -- power plants, metal works, chemical plants, textile mills. It still looks like countryside here, but the smell is more like the worst stretch of the New Jersey Turnpike.
Peering out at the landscape is like looking through a dirty windshield. Everything from the rosebushes to the withered squash drooping from vines in gardens is covered with a fine dust.
"When they let out the lead exhaust at night, there is this yellow smoke streaking the sky and a sick smell, kind of sweet," said Zhang Zunbing, 34, whose village, Diantou, is about half a mile from the lead factory.
His year-old son was tested last month for lead poisoning and was found to have a blood count of 355 micrograms per liter. (Any level over 100 is considered dangerous for children.) The boy, Chenpeng, suffers from chronic diarrhea, nausea and nosebleeds, and his weight has dropped from 25 to 22 pounds in the last month.
"It is like my son is shrinking," Zhang said.
Children are most susceptible to lead poisoning because the dust from the heavy metal gets into the ground where they play.
They also suffer more from the consequences, as lead can cause developmental delays. The vast majority of the children in villages near the plant have elevated levels of lead in their blood, as do many adults.
According to the Jiyuan city government, 203 children are currently hospitalized for lead poisoning, and 115 have been treated and released. The local government has provided funds for treatment as well as extra money for fresh milk, which is believed helpful in reducing lead levels.
For the time being, production is suspended in 32 of 35 facilities for making electrolytic lead, a key ingredient in car batteries.
"The company is facing the reality and not avoiding its responsibility," said Cai Liang, a spokesman for Yuguang, a 50-year-old company that trades on the Shanghai stock exchange.
The lead-poisoning story here doesn't strictly follow the template of so many other cases of industrial pollution in China, with stock villains like greedy industrialists and corrupt politicians. Yuguang had a good reputation in Jiyuan, funding public buildings and sports, underwriting a women's basketball team and providing jobs.
Lead was a boom industry in a rapidly industrializing country. As automobile use soared in China, so did demand for the electrolytic lead needed for batteries. The lead smelters in Jiyuan also imported ores to be refined into electrolytic lead and exported to the United States and Europe.
"We did the work that developed countries don't want to do, making huge profits from a product that damages the environment," said Li, a 41-year-old lead factory worker from Jiyuan who asked to be quoted only by his surname.
After he got out of the army in 1991, Li started working in the lead industry, first for Yuguang, later for another firm, Wanyang. He says he didn't have much choice because the land in his village had been expropriated for smelters.
"We sort of knew it was dangerous, but the lead factories were the only ones that paid on time and provided stable work," said Li, who made about $300 a month, almost double the wages at other factories.
He had a key job, separating lead from ore at the smelting stoves. Although factory workers were instructed to wear masks, they often removed them because it was difficult to breathe.
Li fell ill 16 months ago, spitting up blood and suffering from stomach problems. Standing 5-foot-10, he now weighs 130 pounds. He also complains of memory loss; he is constantly going out and then forgetting what he intended to do.
"It is like my brain doesn't work anymore," Li said.
But before it brought illness, the lead brought money. In the villages near the smelters, it is not uncommon to go down narrow dirt alleys and enter a home with nice tile floors, flat-screen TVs and leather sofas.
And despite their anger over their situation, many of the residents say they would leave the villages of their ancestors rather than force the factories to close.
"They will knock down our village and expand the factory and put us somewhere else," Li said. "Maybe the old people won't want to move, but the rest of us are happy to go.
"There is no reason to be sentimental about it. There is nothing on this land anymore -- even the grass doesn't grow."
barbara.demick@latimes.com
Tommy Yang and Nicole Liu of The Times' Beijing Bureau contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times
The fascination is as much about curiosity as admiration. It is not just that he looks unlike any other U.S. president; everything about him is polar opposite to China's gray, staid Communist chiefs.
The golf course at Camp Bonifas, just on the South side of the DMZ, consists of a single hole, but myriad obstacles: a narrow fairway, dense trees, vicious winds -- and a nearby minefield. Good luck.
By John M. Glionna
November 14, 2009
Reporting from U.S. Army Camp Bonifas, South Korea
You stand atop an elevated tee box on the first and only hole of the world's most dangerous golf course.
And you consider your chances.
This deadly little par 3 measures 192 yards but plays more like 250 in the face of the vicious winds that often blow out of North Korea across an exclusive piece of real estate called the DMZ just a few yards away.
Underneath your feet and off to the right are bunkers. The military kind. To the left, over an 18-foot-high security fence topped by concertina wire, are hazards that make high rough, deep water and dense woods seem like child's play.
Try countless unexploded mines -- the very definition of out-of-bounds. One herky-jerky backswing, one snap hook yanked out of your bag at the wrong moment and . . . ba-boom!
A sign nearby drives the point home: "Danger. Do not retrieve balls from the rough. Live mine fields."
"Oh, dear Lord," moans one of your two playing partners, Army Sgt. Mikel Thurman. "You know what would make this play easier? Let's go get the keys and open the bar."
The course is called Camp Bonifas. It's named in honor of Capt. Arthur Bonifas, who was axed to death by North Korean soldiers in 1976 during a disagreement over a tree-pruning project along the DMZ, or demilitarized zone.
Built four years earlier, in 1972, the course provides a much-needed emotional outlet for the 50 U.S. soldiers stationed here at a lonely outpost without theaters or restaurants. There's no night life, unless you count listening to the taunts of the North Korean soldiers stationed just within earshot.
"It's like a Zen garden where we hit little white balls," says Thurman, 41, an Army brat who was born in Seoul.
When they built the course, commanders figured that if they couldn't fit in all 18 holes in the compact camp, they'd compensate by making it difficult. They'd match their skills against one tough little customer they wouldn't soon forget.
The result is a layout that slices through dense rows of trees, along a fairway that's a mere 40 yards wide. Forget about playing an iron here. This is all wood, baby. Give it your best shot.
"Most golf holes would get boring if you played them again and again," says Sgt. James Meisenheimer, a 23-year-old Kansas City native. "This one doesn't."
For years, when more than 700 Americans were stationed here, the course was kept in pristine condition, the fairway and green mowed almost daily. (On a U.S. Army base, labor is cheap.)
But as the number of men dwindled along with military budgets, the Camp Bonifas tract fell on hard times. The killer course became a cow pasture.
Not long ago, the hardy hackers here decided to do something about that. They gave their course a face-lift, brought in a construction crew to fix the fairway and clean up the two sand traps. They shipped in a riding lawn mower from the States and installed Astroturf on the tee box and green, giving each a greased-lightning tabletop-hard roll like Augusta on a Sunday afternoon.
The soldiers say they're not done yet.
"We're hoping Tiger Woods will come play here and we'll get the money to do a better job," says Command Sgt. Maj. Andres Ortiz.
Maybe he can do what no one else has done: hit a hole-in-one. Just hitting par is rare. And nobody goes looking for lost balls.
Over the years, the course has developed its own mystique. Play alone here and you'll see. Weird things happen.
"You see animals," Thurman says.
Like wild boars, Korean tigers and so-called vampire deer.
And even something weirder.
"Some guys say they've seen this thing, a man-bear-pig," Thurman says without smiling. "That's what they say."
You play two shots off the tee, just like your playing partners. You're without golf shoes, a glove, your own clubs. It's vagabond golf, but you don't feel out of place.
There's no attitude here at Camp Bonifas. Meisenheimer, a tough but polite kid who's spent 15 months in Afghanistan and will become a Green Beret in another year, plays his rounds U.S. Army-style: in combat boots and fatigues.
Some guys carry their military side arms, giving new meaning to playing a "round" of golf.
You hit your driver, spraying your first shot right into the trees. It's a lousy start, but safely away from the minefield. The second is spanked straight up the middle of the chute, coming to rest just short of the green in one of the traps.
Thurman is a golf beginner, inspired to take up the game after helping to give the course a face-lift. He whiffs, gets nervous, asks for advice and dribbles a shot off the tee.
Meisenheimer, who has played for 10 years, has a knack for the game. His shots fly straight and true.
All playing out of the same bag, you walk up the narrow fairway with your partners and play your shots, crunching over brittle pine needles, passing tables set up for paintball competitions
The ground is a brindle brown, contrasted by the cartoonish lime coloring of the tee box and green. None of it matters. This isn't pretty golf. It's Bonifas golf.
The green is a real piece of work. A recent monsoon flooded the ground underneath. Now the big sheet of Astroturf doesn't sit right and covers half the cup, which is made from an old piece of PVC pipe that sticks out of the ground, repelling balls.
Thurman whacks a putt. "That's not gonna stop," Meisenheimer says as the ball rolls off the green.
You're not paying attention. You're looking out past the concertina and wondering how many explosives are buried in that field.
When it's over, when the scores are tallied, you record a 3 and a 6 -- a par with one ball, and a triple bogey with the other.
"Good game," Meisenheimer says. "You did real well."
Here at the world's most dangerous golf course, you figure you did even better.
You took a good walk, unspoiled by penalty strokes and land mines.
john.glionna@latimes.com
Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times
By John M. Glionna
November 14, 2009
Reporting from U.S. Army Camp Bonifas, South Korea
You stand atop an elevated tee box on the first and only hole of the world's most dangerous golf course.
And you consider your chances.
This deadly little par 3 measures 192 yards but plays more like 250 in the face of the vicious winds that often blow out of North Korea across an exclusive piece of real estate called the DMZ just a few yards away.
Underneath your feet and off to the right are bunkers. The military kind. To the left, over an 18-foot-high security fence topped by concertina wire, are hazards that make high rough, deep water and dense woods seem like child's play.
Try countless unexploded mines -- the very definition of out-of-bounds. One herky-jerky backswing, one snap hook yanked out of your bag at the wrong moment and . . . ba-boom!
A sign nearby drives the point home: "Danger. Do not retrieve balls from the rough. Live mine fields."
"Oh, dear Lord," moans one of your two playing partners, Army Sgt. Mikel Thurman. "You know what would make this play easier? Let's go get the keys and open the bar."
The course is called Camp Bonifas. It's named in honor of Capt. Arthur Bonifas, who was axed to death by North Korean soldiers in 1976 during a disagreement over a tree-pruning project along the DMZ, or demilitarized zone.
Built four years earlier, in 1972, the course provides a much-needed emotional outlet for the 50 U.S. soldiers stationed here at a lonely outpost without theaters or restaurants. There's no night life, unless you count listening to the taunts of the North Korean soldiers stationed just within earshot.
"It's like a Zen garden where we hit little white balls," says Thurman, 41, an Army brat who was born in Seoul.
When they built the course, commanders figured that if they couldn't fit in all 18 holes in the compact camp, they'd compensate by making it difficult. They'd match their skills against one tough little customer they wouldn't soon forget.
The result is a layout that slices through dense rows of trees, along a fairway that's a mere 40 yards wide. Forget about playing an iron here. This is all wood, baby. Give it your best shot.
"Most golf holes would get boring if you played them again and again," says Sgt. James Meisenheimer, a 23-year-old Kansas City native. "This one doesn't."
For years, when more than 700 Americans were stationed here, the course was kept in pristine condition, the fairway and green mowed almost daily. (On a U.S. Army base, labor is cheap.)
But as the number of men dwindled along with military budgets, the Camp Bonifas tract fell on hard times. The killer course became a cow pasture.
Not long ago, the hardy hackers here decided to do something about that. They gave their course a face-lift, brought in a construction crew to fix the fairway and clean up the two sand traps. They shipped in a riding lawn mower from the States and installed Astroturf on the tee box and green, giving each a greased-lightning tabletop-hard roll like Augusta on a Sunday afternoon.
The soldiers say they're not done yet.
"We're hoping Tiger Woods will come play here and we'll get the money to do a better job," says Command Sgt. Maj. Andres Ortiz.
Maybe he can do what no one else has done: hit a hole-in-one. Just hitting par is rare. And nobody goes looking for lost balls.
Over the years, the course has developed its own mystique. Play alone here and you'll see. Weird things happen.
"You see animals," Thurman says.
Like wild boars, Korean tigers and so-called vampire deer.
And even something weirder.
"Some guys say they've seen this thing, a man-bear-pig," Thurman says without smiling. "That's what they say."
You play two shots off the tee, just like your playing partners. You're without golf shoes, a glove, your own clubs. It's vagabond golf, but you don't feel out of place.
There's no attitude here at Camp Bonifas. Meisenheimer, a tough but polite kid who's spent 15 months in Afghanistan and will become a Green Beret in another year, plays his rounds U.S. Army-style: in combat boots and fatigues.
Some guys carry their military side arms, giving new meaning to playing a "round" of golf.
You hit your driver, spraying your first shot right into the trees. It's a lousy start, but safely away from the minefield. The second is spanked straight up the middle of the chute, coming to rest just short of the green in one of the traps.
Thurman is a golf beginner, inspired to take up the game after helping to give the course a face-lift. He whiffs, gets nervous, asks for advice and dribbles a shot off the tee.
Meisenheimer, who has played for 10 years, has a knack for the game. His shots fly straight and true.
All playing out of the same bag, you walk up the narrow fairway with your partners and play your shots, crunching over brittle pine needles, passing tables set up for paintball competitions
The ground is a brindle brown, contrasted by the cartoonish lime coloring of the tee box and green. None of it matters. This isn't pretty golf. It's Bonifas golf.
The green is a real piece of work. A recent monsoon flooded the ground underneath. Now the big sheet of Astroturf doesn't sit right and covers half the cup, which is made from an old piece of PVC pipe that sticks out of the ground, repelling balls.
Thurman whacks a putt. "That's not gonna stop," Meisenheimer says as the ball rolls off the green.
You're not paying attention. You're looking out past the concertina and wondering how many explosives are buried in that field.
When it's over, when the scores are tallied, you record a 3 and a 6 -- a par with one ball, and a triple bogey with the other.
"Good game," Meisenheimer says. "You did real well."
Here at the world's most dangerous golf course, you figure you did even better.
You took a good walk, unspoiled by penalty strokes and land mines.
john.glionna@latimes.com
Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times
Chinese await an Obama so unlike their leaders
The fascination is as much about curiosity as admiration. It is not just that he looks unlike any other U.S. president; everything about him is polar opposite to China's gray, staid Communist chiefs.
By Barbara Demick
November 14, 2009
Reporting from Beijing
When Luo Xuanmin, a professor at Beijing's Tsinghua University, received a telephone call in March 2008 from a publisher asking him to translate the memoir of an up-and-coming U.S. politician, he had only the vaguest idea who the guy was. "Barack Obama?"
To the extent that people in China follow U.S. politics, most assumed that Hillary Rodham Clinton would win the Democratic nomination for president. Not only was Obama an unknown, the Chinese press hadn't even figured out yet what Chinese characters to use to spell his first name.
Now, as China prepares to welcome President Obama, who is scheduled to arrive Sunday, few educated Chinese do not recognize his name. The Chinese edition of "The Audacity of Hope," which Luo translated, has sold more than 130,000 copies, and also is widely available through pirated versions downloadable on the Internet, a sure sign of success here. "Dreams From My Father" was also a bestseller.
But people are still asking: Who is Barack Obama?
The fascination now is as much about curiosity as admiration. It is not just that he looks unlike any other American president. Everything about him -- his relative youth, his charisma, his background as a community organizer -- is the polar opposite of China's gray, staid Communist Party leaders.
"When [Chinese President] Hu Jintao meets Obama, I'm sure he will feel a little nervous to be with somebody who is such a great example of a new kind of leader who knows how to use the new media," said Bei Feng, a blogger in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou who has been pushing for the U.S. Embassy to report highlights of Obama's visit live on Twitter.
There is little doubt that the Chinese government had a higher comfort level with Obama's predecessor, despite ideological differences. George W. Bush and his father, George H.W. Bush, who was the U.S. envoy to Beijing in the mid-1970s, were known quantities for a government that puts a high premium on predictability and stability. The Chinese credited the Bush dynasty with cementing trade ties that brought about prosperity here.
In fact, China is one of the few places in the world where George W. Bush was popular. Albania is another.
"It wasn't that the Chinese government really loved the Republicans' administration, but they understood them. The Republicans were very clear about what were their interests," said Michael Anti, a Chinese blogger and social critic. "Obama is a man of ideas, and the Chinese government doesn't know how to deal with ideas, only with interests. There is too much guesswork with Obama."
Li Datong, retired editor of Freezing Point, a supplement of the China Youth Daily, concurs.
"I do think that the Chinese government prefers Republicans. They are more realistic. The Democrats are always very idealistic about human rights, and that creates a headache," he said.
Obama doesn't have quite the rock star following here that he commands in France and Germany, even among young intellectuals. U.S. tariffs on Chinese tires and steel pipes have spurred resentment among young nationalists.
"He is a fresh, new thing, but the young Chinese don't understand the political culture of democracy, so they don't react to him like in Europe," Anti said.
Nevertheless, the government appears jittery about giving the U.S. leader a chance to speak directly to the Chinese people. The White House has been trying to schedule a town hall-style meeting in Shanghai with students that would be broadcast live on Chinese television and the Internet. As of Friday afternoon, no agreement had been reached, according to the U.S. Embassy.
Similar requests during past visits by U.S. presidents have been denied.
Although the Chinese are reluctant to speak publicly about it, the issue of race lurks in the background.
A 20-year-old Shanghai woman with a Chinese mother and an African American father faced a torrent of racist invective after she appeared on an "American Idol"-type show in August. "In the same year that Americans welcome Obama to the White House, we can't even accept this girl with a different skin color," social critic Hung Huang said.
Even at high levels of the Chinese government, people often have difficulty grasping the complexities of American racial issues.
An example was a ham-handed comment during a briefing Thursday by a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman who was trying to explain why Obama should not meet with the exiled Tibetan leader, the Dalai Lama.
"China abolished the feudal serf system [in Tibet] just as President Lincoln freed the black slaves. So we hope President Obama, more than any other foreign state leader, can have a better understanding of China's position," Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang told reporters.
During the presidential primaries, Chinese tended to express a strong preference for Hillary Clinton, praising her husband, her looks and even her blond hair.
Obama was such an unknown that Han Manchun, an editor at the Law Press, a state-owned, Beijing-based publisher, managed to buy the Chinese rights to "The Audacity of Hope" in March 2008 for only $3,000.
No one else was interested. "They only wanted books about Hillary," Han said.
Translator Luo was inclined to turn down the book, but read a third of it, was captivated, and signed on. It turned out to be a daunting translation project, not only because of cultural references that included "The Dick Van Dyke Show" and "Father Knows Best," but because of the style of writing.
"The way that Obama writes about politics uses a strong rhetorical style," Luo said.
For example, Luo cites a section of "The Audacity of Hope" in which Obama writes of his reservations about globalization, which he says has brought both benefits to U.S. consumers and costs to American workers whose jobs disappear overseas. This is perhaps the same complexity that has made it difficult for the Chinese at times to figure out what Obama is all about.
Where does he really stand on free trade? What are his positions on human rights? What position will he take toward the issue of political rights for the Tibetans?
The Chinese translation of "The Audacity of Hope" faithfully followed the English original. According to Luo, Obama's agent was so concerned about censorship or slanting that the publishers were instructed to remove footnotes explaining terms like Iran-Contra and Whitewater to Chinese readers.
Nevertheless, Obama soon got his opportunity to be censored in China.
Just a few minutes into his presidency, Chinese television's live coverage of the inauguration address suddenly cut off when Obama made a disparaging reference to communism.
Chinese news media also deleted the following remark: "Those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent -- know that you are on the wrong side of history."
barbara.demick@latimes.com
Tommy Yang and Nicole Liu of The Times' Beijing Bureau contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times
By Barbara Demick
November 14, 2009
Reporting from Beijing
When Luo Xuanmin, a professor at Beijing's Tsinghua University, received a telephone call in March 2008 from a publisher asking him to translate the memoir of an up-and-coming U.S. politician, he had only the vaguest idea who the guy was. "Barack Obama?"
To the extent that people in China follow U.S. politics, most assumed that Hillary Rodham Clinton would win the Democratic nomination for president. Not only was Obama an unknown, the Chinese press hadn't even figured out yet what Chinese characters to use to spell his first name.
Now, as China prepares to welcome President Obama, who is scheduled to arrive Sunday, few educated Chinese do not recognize his name. The Chinese edition of "The Audacity of Hope," which Luo translated, has sold more than 130,000 copies, and also is widely available through pirated versions downloadable on the Internet, a sure sign of success here. "Dreams From My Father" was also a bestseller.
But people are still asking: Who is Barack Obama?
The fascination now is as much about curiosity as admiration. It is not just that he looks unlike any other American president. Everything about him -- his relative youth, his charisma, his background as a community organizer -- is the polar opposite of China's gray, staid Communist Party leaders.
"When [Chinese President] Hu Jintao meets Obama, I'm sure he will feel a little nervous to be with somebody who is such a great example of a new kind of leader who knows how to use the new media," said Bei Feng, a blogger in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou who has been pushing for the U.S. Embassy to report highlights of Obama's visit live on Twitter.
There is little doubt that the Chinese government had a higher comfort level with Obama's predecessor, despite ideological differences. George W. Bush and his father, George H.W. Bush, who was the U.S. envoy to Beijing in the mid-1970s, were known quantities for a government that puts a high premium on predictability and stability. The Chinese credited the Bush dynasty with cementing trade ties that brought about prosperity here.
In fact, China is one of the few places in the world where George W. Bush was popular. Albania is another.
"It wasn't that the Chinese government really loved the Republicans' administration, but they understood them. The Republicans were very clear about what were their interests," said Michael Anti, a Chinese blogger and social critic. "Obama is a man of ideas, and the Chinese government doesn't know how to deal with ideas, only with interests. There is too much guesswork with Obama."
Li Datong, retired editor of Freezing Point, a supplement of the China Youth Daily, concurs.
"I do think that the Chinese government prefers Republicans. They are more realistic. The Democrats are always very idealistic about human rights, and that creates a headache," he said.
Obama doesn't have quite the rock star following here that he commands in France and Germany, even among young intellectuals. U.S. tariffs on Chinese tires and steel pipes have spurred resentment among young nationalists.
"He is a fresh, new thing, but the young Chinese don't understand the political culture of democracy, so they don't react to him like in Europe," Anti said.
Nevertheless, the government appears jittery about giving the U.S. leader a chance to speak directly to the Chinese people. The White House has been trying to schedule a town hall-style meeting in Shanghai with students that would be broadcast live on Chinese television and the Internet. As of Friday afternoon, no agreement had been reached, according to the U.S. Embassy.
Similar requests during past visits by U.S. presidents have been denied.
Although the Chinese are reluctant to speak publicly about it, the issue of race lurks in the background.
A 20-year-old Shanghai woman with a Chinese mother and an African American father faced a torrent of racist invective after she appeared on an "American Idol"-type show in August. "In the same year that Americans welcome Obama to the White House, we can't even accept this girl with a different skin color," social critic Hung Huang said.
Even at high levels of the Chinese government, people often have difficulty grasping the complexities of American racial issues.
An example was a ham-handed comment during a briefing Thursday by a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman who was trying to explain why Obama should not meet with the exiled Tibetan leader, the Dalai Lama.
"China abolished the feudal serf system [in Tibet] just as President Lincoln freed the black slaves. So we hope President Obama, more than any other foreign state leader, can have a better understanding of China's position," Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang told reporters.
During the presidential primaries, Chinese tended to express a strong preference for Hillary Clinton, praising her husband, her looks and even her blond hair.
Obama was such an unknown that Han Manchun, an editor at the Law Press, a state-owned, Beijing-based publisher, managed to buy the Chinese rights to "The Audacity of Hope" in March 2008 for only $3,000.
No one else was interested. "They only wanted books about Hillary," Han said.
Translator Luo was inclined to turn down the book, but read a third of it, was captivated, and signed on. It turned out to be a daunting translation project, not only because of cultural references that included "The Dick Van Dyke Show" and "Father Knows Best," but because of the style of writing.
"The way that Obama writes about politics uses a strong rhetorical style," Luo said.
For example, Luo cites a section of "The Audacity of Hope" in which Obama writes of his reservations about globalization, which he says has brought both benefits to U.S. consumers and costs to American workers whose jobs disappear overseas. This is perhaps the same complexity that has made it difficult for the Chinese at times to figure out what Obama is all about.
Where does he really stand on free trade? What are his positions on human rights? What position will he take toward the issue of political rights for the Tibetans?
The Chinese translation of "The Audacity of Hope" faithfully followed the English original. According to Luo, Obama's agent was so concerned about censorship or slanting that the publishers were instructed to remove footnotes explaining terms like Iran-Contra and Whitewater to Chinese readers.
Nevertheless, Obama soon got his opportunity to be censored in China.
Just a few minutes into his presidency, Chinese television's live coverage of the inauguration address suddenly cut off when Obama made a disparaging reference to communism.
Chinese news media also deleted the following remark: "Those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent -- know that you are on the wrong side of history."
barbara.demick@latimes.com
Tommy Yang and Nicole Liu of The Times' Beijing Bureau contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times
A trip to North Korea offers curious sites
Seeing the captured USS Pueblo, monuments to father and son rulers, and scrubbing workers.
By Dean R. Owen
November 15, 2009
Reporting from Pyongyang, North Korea
Visiting North Korea is like peering in the window of a store that closed long ago but where old merchandise mysteriously remains. I walk through the aisles feeling privileged, fascinated and curious, a little nervous, but not scared.
It is unlike any other place in the world. Communications and information technology most of the rest of the world takes for granted -- the Internet, cellphones, GPS systems -- are unavailable to civilians. North Korean-sanctioned news about Western nations often is characterized by violence and aggressive government actions.
Business brought me here in June, making me one of a very few Americans who have seen close-up the world's most restricted nation. U.S. citizens are allowed to visit, but as tourists, they are limited to traveling between August and October, during the Arirang Festival, also known as the "mass games" (see sidebar).
In my four days here, all accompanied by government escorts, I will see perhaps the most curious tourist attraction in the world: Late on a Friday afternoon, I'm negotiating my way through the narrow passageways of an American spy ship.
The USS Pueblo, docked at the edge of the Taedong River in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang, is the government's proud trophy of its resistance against "the aggression of U.S. imperialists." A female military officer greets me and, in near-perfect English, beckons me across the gangplank.
Once on deck, I feel as though I'm prying open a Cold War time capsule.
First, I watch an 18-minute film on the capture of the crew and ship in January 1968, complete with patriotic music and grainy black-and-white footage of President Johnson denying that the Pueblo had been on an espionage mission. Jagged holes on the ship's hull, circled in red paint, provide a stark reminder that mortar and machine gun fire from four torpedo boats and a submarine chaser were necessary to secure the now 65-year-old vessel.
The radio room is a cramped collection of vintage communications technology, with steel-cased radios, their green displays long-faded and brown knobs chipped and worn. A manual typewriter collects dust in the corner. In glass display cases, there are boots worn by Capt. Lloyd Bucher and the crew's handwritten letter to Johnson urging him, despite his public statements, to concede that they really had been spying. The Americans' letter was coerced by their captors, according to one surviving officer.
Our 40-minute tour ends at the ship's stern with our guide, the petite military officer, answering questions in soft but precise tones alongside one of the Pueblo's machine guns. I'm feeling a bit rushed, but our government "escorts" are insistent: We cannot be late for the next attraction -- a gymnastics show with jump-roping bears.
Inside North Korea, all is orderly -- a "workers' paradise" for most of the 23 million residents, with no unemployment and little crime.
In this paradise, no one needs an alarm clock. Rather, each day at 5 a.m., in cities and rural areas, residents awake to patriotic music blaring through speakers, followed by a woman's haunting voice urging people to work hard, thereby enhancing the beauty and greatness of their society. And, of course, honoring "The Eternal President of the Republic," Kim Il Sung, and his son, Gen. Kim Jong Il, the current leader.
On arrival
A massive portrait of the elder Kim, "the Great Leader," greets arriving visitors from the roof of the Sunan International Airport. Once my luggage is scanned, visa inspected and cellphone impounded, I meet my assigned escorts, settle into a Toyota SUV and drive 15 miles into the capital city. The few vehicles on the road are owned either by the government or the military. Most people walk in groups of five or 10; others ride bicycles.
One of the first landmarks entering the city is the Arch of Triumph built in 1982 to commemorate Korea's resistance to the Japanese occupation from 1910 to 1945. The structure is modeled after the Arc de Triomphe in Paris but is a bit larger -- intentionally. I glance at my visa and realize a drawing of the arch is reflected in a holographic image on the document.
Streets are swept several times a day. One morning we drive by Kim Il Sung Square, one of many monuments honoring the nation's founder. The plaza, more than 800,000 square feet, is nearly 10 times the size of San Francisco's Union Square. But there are no panhandlers or even pigeon droppings. In contrast, we witness more than 200 people on their hands and knees scrubbing the plaza's concrete floor -- a sight I will never forget.
The work of my employer, World Vision, a Christian humanitarian organization, has brought me here, so we drive into the countryside to visit schools and hospitals benefiting from World Vision-funded programs. We pass roadside monuments, several feet tall, proclaiming the date Kim Il Sung stood there and provided local residents "on-the-spot guidance."
Outside Pyongyang, collective farms are ubiquitous. Large murals exhort the people to work diligently. Farmers use oxen to plow the land or perform tasks by hand with rakes and shovels. Tractors, combines and other modern agricultural machinery? Nowhere to be seen.
Before the Pueblo tour, our escorts allow a visit to the Tower of Juche Idea, a monument constructed to honor Kim Il Sung's 70th birthday. Built with precisely 25,550 concrete blocks (one for each day of his 70 years), the spire reigns high above the capital city. The tower was patterned after the Washington Monument but, like the Arch of Triumph, intentionally designed to be slightly taller. At night, the metal torch on top is illuminated, casting a 360-degree red light, a symbolic beacon of the nation's ideology.
One cannot begin to understand North Korea without a grasp of its ideology, "Juche." It is a combination of self-reliance, autonomy and independence. The individual and the nation are masters of their own destiny. Essentially, it is the state religion -- the cultural, social and political force designed to motivate and drive every thought, statement and action.
In fact, in North Korea, the year is not 2009; it is Juche 98, the 98th anniversary of Kim Il Sung's birth.
Once atop the 558-foot Tower of Juche, I have an expansive view of the capital. Immediately below, across the Taedong River, is Kim Il Sung Square. The people scrubbing six hours earlier have been replaced by hundreds of gymnasts practicing. Some of them likely will be starring in what one Western tour guidebook calls "the most incredible show on Earth": the Arirang Festival, commonly called "mass games." Nearly 100,000 dancers, gymnasts, acrobats and other performers celebrate events such as the nation's harvest season and its battle against the United States.
The festival is presented in the May Day Stadium. This skyline standout looks like something Frank Gehry might have designed early in his career. Its 16 sweeping, scalloped arches give the round building a space-age feel. The stadium holds 150,000 spectators and, for the annual festival, tourists reportedly spend upward of $450 for the best seats.
Traveling through Pyongyang late in the afternoon, one observes mini-orchestras on street corners. Groups of about 30 high school students perform patriotic songs, honoring workers as they walk or bicycle home from factories, government offices and rice fields outside the city.
Can you imagine a group of young musicians serenading drivers as they enter the Santa Monica Freeway?
The other striking presence on Pyongyang's streets is the uniformed women directing traffic. Wearing perfectly tailored military-like garb, the women are a study in discipline and precision. They wield their batons deliberately. I never see a driver disobey their directives.
Traffic policewomen work in four-hour shifts, and one day I witness a shift change, in which the off-duty officer slowly and deliberately approaches the on-duty officer in the road. The on-duty officer stops all traffic, turns to face her colleague, their eyes meet, then they exchange places.
My hotel, the Koryo, is an imposing 1985 building with twin towers of 43 stories, more than 500 rooms and an expansive, nonsmoking lobby. It is designed for tourists and foreigners on business, and offers guests saunas, a workout room and a karaoke bar. There are five restaurants, including a revolving one atop one of the towers. In the evening, that red beacon from the Juche Tower is unmistakable.
No computers are available for visitors, and there is no Internet access. I could have sent an e-mail or made an international phone call, but this would have expensive. One also can browse the Koryo's bookstore, where titles include "Kim Jong Il's Views on Juche Idea." The souvenir shop on the first floor, just off the reception desk, has handmade crafts, a foreboding bottle of some sort of liquor with a dead snake inside, and more.
My standard room has two firm full-size beds, a sitting area, a refrigerator stocked with sodas and beer and television with uncensored BBC News. The $100 rate includes breakfast Western style (an omelet, two slices of white bread and coffee or tea) or Korean (soup, noodles and kimchi).
Anyone visiting North Korea should bring cash -- U.S. dollars or euros. Credit cards are not accepted; there are no ATMs.
Thanks to the government guides, language is not an issue.
Priceless souvenir
On the last night in Pyongyang, we attend a banquet at the Arirang restaurant with our escorts and other government officials. The three gas grills at our table are busy for more than two hours roasting beef, pork, chicken and shrimp.
As with other formal dinners, the place settings include four glasses, one each for liquor, wine, beer and water. Waiters and waitresses bring large servings of rice, vegetables, noodles and varying types and flavors of the Korean staple, kimchi. The tab? About $200 for nine people.
The next morning, I arrive at the airport by 7:30 for the 9 a.m. Air Koryo flight to Beijing. Luggage is carefully inspected with scanners and by hand. Cellphones are returned, and, just as I'd been warned, my visa is removed from my passport.
Among the more than 500 photos on my 16-gigabyte flash card tucked away in my carry-on bag is an image of that visa, a priceless souvenir of this venture into the "workers' paradise."
travel@latimes.com
latimes.com/pyongyang
Go online for more photographs.
Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times
By Dean R. Owen
November 15, 2009
Reporting from Pyongyang, North Korea
Visiting North Korea is like peering in the window of a store that closed long ago but where old merchandise mysteriously remains. I walk through the aisles feeling privileged, fascinated and curious, a little nervous, but not scared.
It is unlike any other place in the world. Communications and information technology most of the rest of the world takes for granted -- the Internet, cellphones, GPS systems -- are unavailable to civilians. North Korean-sanctioned news about Western nations often is characterized by violence and aggressive government actions.
Business brought me here in June, making me one of a very few Americans who have seen close-up the world's most restricted nation. U.S. citizens are allowed to visit, but as tourists, they are limited to traveling between August and October, during the Arirang Festival, also known as the "mass games" (see sidebar).
In my four days here, all accompanied by government escorts, I will see perhaps the most curious tourist attraction in the world: Late on a Friday afternoon, I'm negotiating my way through the narrow passageways of an American spy ship.
The USS Pueblo, docked at the edge of the Taedong River in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang, is the government's proud trophy of its resistance against "the aggression of U.S. imperialists." A female military officer greets me and, in near-perfect English, beckons me across the gangplank.
Once on deck, I feel as though I'm prying open a Cold War time capsule.
First, I watch an 18-minute film on the capture of the crew and ship in January 1968, complete with patriotic music and grainy black-and-white footage of President Johnson denying that the Pueblo had been on an espionage mission. Jagged holes on the ship's hull, circled in red paint, provide a stark reminder that mortar and machine gun fire from four torpedo boats and a submarine chaser were necessary to secure the now 65-year-old vessel.
The radio room is a cramped collection of vintage communications technology, with steel-cased radios, their green displays long-faded and brown knobs chipped and worn. A manual typewriter collects dust in the corner. In glass display cases, there are boots worn by Capt. Lloyd Bucher and the crew's handwritten letter to Johnson urging him, despite his public statements, to concede that they really had been spying. The Americans' letter was coerced by their captors, according to one surviving officer.
Our 40-minute tour ends at the ship's stern with our guide, the petite military officer, answering questions in soft but precise tones alongside one of the Pueblo's machine guns. I'm feeling a bit rushed, but our government "escorts" are insistent: We cannot be late for the next attraction -- a gymnastics show with jump-roping bears.
Inside North Korea, all is orderly -- a "workers' paradise" for most of the 23 million residents, with no unemployment and little crime.
In this paradise, no one needs an alarm clock. Rather, each day at 5 a.m., in cities and rural areas, residents awake to patriotic music blaring through speakers, followed by a woman's haunting voice urging people to work hard, thereby enhancing the beauty and greatness of their society. And, of course, honoring "The Eternal President of the Republic," Kim Il Sung, and his son, Gen. Kim Jong Il, the current leader.
On arrival
A massive portrait of the elder Kim, "the Great Leader," greets arriving visitors from the roof of the Sunan International Airport. Once my luggage is scanned, visa inspected and cellphone impounded, I meet my assigned escorts, settle into a Toyota SUV and drive 15 miles into the capital city. The few vehicles on the road are owned either by the government or the military. Most people walk in groups of five or 10; others ride bicycles.
One of the first landmarks entering the city is the Arch of Triumph built in 1982 to commemorate Korea's resistance to the Japanese occupation from 1910 to 1945. The structure is modeled after the Arc de Triomphe in Paris but is a bit larger -- intentionally. I glance at my visa and realize a drawing of the arch is reflected in a holographic image on the document.
Streets are swept several times a day. One morning we drive by Kim Il Sung Square, one of many monuments honoring the nation's founder. The plaza, more than 800,000 square feet, is nearly 10 times the size of San Francisco's Union Square. But there are no panhandlers or even pigeon droppings. In contrast, we witness more than 200 people on their hands and knees scrubbing the plaza's concrete floor -- a sight I will never forget.
The work of my employer, World Vision, a Christian humanitarian organization, has brought me here, so we drive into the countryside to visit schools and hospitals benefiting from World Vision-funded programs. We pass roadside monuments, several feet tall, proclaiming the date Kim Il Sung stood there and provided local residents "on-the-spot guidance."
Outside Pyongyang, collective farms are ubiquitous. Large murals exhort the people to work diligently. Farmers use oxen to plow the land or perform tasks by hand with rakes and shovels. Tractors, combines and other modern agricultural machinery? Nowhere to be seen.
Before the Pueblo tour, our escorts allow a visit to the Tower of Juche Idea, a monument constructed to honor Kim Il Sung's 70th birthday. Built with precisely 25,550 concrete blocks (one for each day of his 70 years), the spire reigns high above the capital city. The tower was patterned after the Washington Monument but, like the Arch of Triumph, intentionally designed to be slightly taller. At night, the metal torch on top is illuminated, casting a 360-degree red light, a symbolic beacon of the nation's ideology.
One cannot begin to understand North Korea without a grasp of its ideology, "Juche." It is a combination of self-reliance, autonomy and independence. The individual and the nation are masters of their own destiny. Essentially, it is the state religion -- the cultural, social and political force designed to motivate and drive every thought, statement and action.
In fact, in North Korea, the year is not 2009; it is Juche 98, the 98th anniversary of Kim Il Sung's birth.
Once atop the 558-foot Tower of Juche, I have an expansive view of the capital. Immediately below, across the Taedong River, is Kim Il Sung Square. The people scrubbing six hours earlier have been replaced by hundreds of gymnasts practicing. Some of them likely will be starring in what one Western tour guidebook calls "the most incredible show on Earth": the Arirang Festival, commonly called "mass games." Nearly 100,000 dancers, gymnasts, acrobats and other performers celebrate events such as the nation's harvest season and its battle against the United States.
The festival is presented in the May Day Stadium. This skyline standout looks like something Frank Gehry might have designed early in his career. Its 16 sweeping, scalloped arches give the round building a space-age feel. The stadium holds 150,000 spectators and, for the annual festival, tourists reportedly spend upward of $450 for the best seats.
Traveling through Pyongyang late in the afternoon, one observes mini-orchestras on street corners. Groups of about 30 high school students perform patriotic songs, honoring workers as they walk or bicycle home from factories, government offices and rice fields outside the city.
Can you imagine a group of young musicians serenading drivers as they enter the Santa Monica Freeway?
The other striking presence on Pyongyang's streets is the uniformed women directing traffic. Wearing perfectly tailored military-like garb, the women are a study in discipline and precision. They wield their batons deliberately. I never see a driver disobey their directives.
Traffic policewomen work in four-hour shifts, and one day I witness a shift change, in which the off-duty officer slowly and deliberately approaches the on-duty officer in the road. The on-duty officer stops all traffic, turns to face her colleague, their eyes meet, then they exchange places.
My hotel, the Koryo, is an imposing 1985 building with twin towers of 43 stories, more than 500 rooms and an expansive, nonsmoking lobby. It is designed for tourists and foreigners on business, and offers guests saunas, a workout room and a karaoke bar. There are five restaurants, including a revolving one atop one of the towers. In the evening, that red beacon from the Juche Tower is unmistakable.
No computers are available for visitors, and there is no Internet access. I could have sent an e-mail or made an international phone call, but this would have expensive. One also can browse the Koryo's bookstore, where titles include "Kim Jong Il's Views on Juche Idea." The souvenir shop on the first floor, just off the reception desk, has handmade crafts, a foreboding bottle of some sort of liquor with a dead snake inside, and more.
My standard room has two firm full-size beds, a sitting area, a refrigerator stocked with sodas and beer and television with uncensored BBC News. The $100 rate includes breakfast Western style (an omelet, two slices of white bread and coffee or tea) or Korean (soup, noodles and kimchi).
Anyone visiting North Korea should bring cash -- U.S. dollars or euros. Credit cards are not accepted; there are no ATMs.
Thanks to the government guides, language is not an issue.
Priceless souvenir
On the last night in Pyongyang, we attend a banquet at the Arirang restaurant with our escorts and other government officials. The three gas grills at our table are busy for more than two hours roasting beef, pork, chicken and shrimp.
As with other formal dinners, the place settings include four glasses, one each for liquor, wine, beer and water. Waiters and waitresses bring large servings of rice, vegetables, noodles and varying types and flavors of the Korean staple, kimchi. The tab? About $200 for nine people.
The next morning, I arrive at the airport by 7:30 for the 9 a.m. Air Koryo flight to Beijing. Luggage is carefully inspected with scanners and by hand. Cellphones are returned, and, just as I'd been warned, my visa is removed from my passport.
Among the more than 500 photos on my 16-gigabyte flash card tucked away in my carry-on bag is an image of that visa, a priceless souvenir of this venture into the "workers' paradise."
travel@latimes.com
latimes.com/pyongyang
Go online for more photographs.
Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times
South Korea's Kim Yuna unrivaled in Skate America performance
The reigning world champion figure skater scores a record 76.28 in the women's short program. Evan Lysacek wins the men's event by a nearly 34-point margin.
By Philip Hersh
November 15, 2009
Lake Placid, N.Y.
There are probably 10 men in the hunt for the figure skating medals at the 2010 Winter Olympics.
And they all should be thankful South Korean woman Kim Yuna is not in their event.
That is why the engraver can start putting Kim's name on the women's gold medal at the upcoming Vancouver Winter Games.
The record score she racked up in her short program Saturday night at Skate America would have been second in the men's event.
If reigning world champion Kim matches her season-best overall score in Sunday's free skate final, it would put her second in the men's event that reigning men's world champion Evan Lysacek won by a nearly 34-point margin Saturday.
That statistic is all the more remarkable because the men's free skate is 30 seconds longer, giving more opportunity to score points.
"She's incredible," Lysacek said. "She is breaking the barriers for women's scoring as far as numbers are concerned, and that is a big accomplishment."
Lysacek won his first Skate America title in five tries, crushing a weak field with two solid performances, qualifying for the Grand Prix final next month and adding to his reputation as a consistently solid skater.
His free skate had a couple minor flaws, but it was more significant the judges found no errors in his triple flip and triple axel jumps. Both had drawn technical deductions this season.
"To be competitive at the Olympics, it's going to take perfection, so I have a lot of work to do," he said.
Kim already battles a personal standard of impeccability that can daunt her. She admitted to feeling "very, very nervous" before Saturday's short program after having done what she called a perfect short program in her previous event.
That was at the Paris Grand Prix a month ago, when she scored 76.08.
Kim topped both that and the world record she set at the 2009 championships (76.12) with 76.28 Saturday. She appears to be the most overwhelming Olympic women's figure skating favorite since Peggy Fleming in 1968.
"She knows she is the favorite, but you want to go out and skate well and show everybody you are what you are," said her coach, two-time Olympic silver medalist Brian Orser of Canada.
Kim beat short program runner-up Rachael Flatt of the United States by 17.48 points.
"The number of her attributes keeps increasing," Flatt said. "It is neat to be a competitor of her and neat to be in awe of her."
Both Kim and Orser do their best to tune out the accolades.
But that's getting harder, given the ever-increasing decibels from the raucous standing ovations Kim keeps getting with performances and scores no one else in the world can approach.
phersh@tribune.com
Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times
By Philip Hersh
November 15, 2009
Lake Placid, N.Y.
There are probably 10 men in the hunt for the figure skating medals at the 2010 Winter Olympics.
And they all should be thankful South Korean woman Kim Yuna is not in their event.
That is why the engraver can start putting Kim's name on the women's gold medal at the upcoming Vancouver Winter Games.
The record score she racked up in her short program Saturday night at Skate America would have been second in the men's event.
If reigning world champion Kim matches her season-best overall score in Sunday's free skate final, it would put her second in the men's event that reigning men's world champion Evan Lysacek won by a nearly 34-point margin Saturday.
That statistic is all the more remarkable because the men's free skate is 30 seconds longer, giving more opportunity to score points.
"She's incredible," Lysacek said. "She is breaking the barriers for women's scoring as far as numbers are concerned, and that is a big accomplishment."
Lysacek won his first Skate America title in five tries, crushing a weak field with two solid performances, qualifying for the Grand Prix final next month and adding to his reputation as a consistently solid skater.
His free skate had a couple minor flaws, but it was more significant the judges found no errors in his triple flip and triple axel jumps. Both had drawn technical deductions this season.
"To be competitive at the Olympics, it's going to take perfection, so I have a lot of work to do," he said.
Kim already battles a personal standard of impeccability that can daunt her. She admitted to feeling "very, very nervous" before Saturday's short program after having done what she called a perfect short program in her previous event.
That was at the Paris Grand Prix a month ago, when she scored 76.08.
Kim topped both that and the world record she set at the 2009 championships (76.12) with 76.28 Saturday. She appears to be the most overwhelming Olympic women's figure skating favorite since Peggy Fleming in 1968.
"She knows she is the favorite, but you want to go out and skate well and show everybody you are what you are," said her coach, two-time Olympic silver medalist Brian Orser of Canada.
Kim beat short program runner-up Rachael Flatt of the United States by 17.48 points.
"The number of her attributes keeps increasing," Flatt said. "It is neat to be a competitor of her and neat to be in awe of her."
Both Kim and Orser do their best to tune out the accolades.
But that's getting harder, given the ever-increasing decibels from the raucous standing ovations Kim keeps getting with performances and scores no one else in the world can approach.
phersh@tribune.com
Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times
Planning your trip to North Korea
By Dean R. Owen
November 15, 2009
About 300 U.S. tourists travel to North Korea annually between Aug. 1 and Oct. 31, the period coinciding with the Arirang Festival (commonly called "mass games") in the capital city of Pyongyang. This is the only time American tourists are allowed, according to Walter Keats, president of Asia-Pacific Travel in Kenilworth, Ill. Truly independent travel is not permitted; visitors are required to have government "escorts," who are with you whenever you leave your hotel.
EMBASSY LINKS
The United States does not have formal diplomatic relations with North Korea, so there is no U.S. Embassy in Pyongyang. The State Department suggests Americans register with the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, as well as at the Swedish Embassy in Pyongyang. (See: http://travel.state.gov/travel/ cis_pa_tw/cis/cis_988.html)
TOUR EXPENSES
For individuals traveling with a group of 10 or more, an eight-day visit, including visa, meals, travel within North Korea, all fees and at least one ticket to the Arirang Festival, along with two days in Beijing, starts at about $2,900. This does not include round-trip airfare to Beijing or Shenyang.
TOUR AGENCIES
Visitors typically use one of several travel agencies to avoid working directly with the North Korean government. These agencies include:
Asia-Pacific Travel, based in Kenilworth, Ill.; (800) 262-6420, www.northkorea1on1.com.
Koryo Tours, based in Beijing; 011-852-3175-0904, www.koryogroup.com, or e-mail inquiry@north-korea-travel.com.
Bestway Tours & Safaris, based in Burnaby, British Columbia; (800) 663-0844, www.bestway.com.
TO LEARN MORE
Brandt publishes a 230-page travel guide to North Korea ($24.99).
Lonely Planet's travel guide on Korea has a chapter on North Korea and is available as a 37-page pullout for $5.40.
Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times
November 15, 2009
About 300 U.S. tourists travel to North Korea annually between Aug. 1 and Oct. 31, the period coinciding with the Arirang Festival (commonly called "mass games") in the capital city of Pyongyang. This is the only time American tourists are allowed, according to Walter Keats, president of Asia-Pacific Travel in Kenilworth, Ill. Truly independent travel is not permitted; visitors are required to have government "escorts," who are with you whenever you leave your hotel.
EMBASSY LINKS
The United States does not have formal diplomatic relations with North Korea, so there is no U.S. Embassy in Pyongyang. The State Department suggests Americans register with the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, as well as at the Swedish Embassy in Pyongyang. (See: http://travel.state.gov/travel/ cis_pa_tw/cis/cis_988.html)
TOUR EXPENSES
For individuals traveling with a group of 10 or more, an eight-day visit, including visa, meals, travel within North Korea, all fees and at least one ticket to the Arirang Festival, along with two days in Beijing, starts at about $2,900. This does not include round-trip airfare to Beijing or Shenyang.
TOUR AGENCIES
Visitors typically use one of several travel agencies to avoid working directly with the North Korean government. These agencies include:
Asia-Pacific Travel, based in Kenilworth, Ill.; (800) 262-6420, www.northkorea1on1.com.
Koryo Tours, based in Beijing; 011-852-3175-0904, www.koryogroup.com, or e-mail inquiry@north-korea-travel.com.
Bestway Tours & Safaris, based in Burnaby, British Columbia; (800) 663-0844, www.bestway.com.
TO LEARN MORE
Brandt publishes a 230-page travel guide to North Korea ($24.99).
Lonely Planet's travel guide on Korea has a chapter on North Korea and is available as a 37-page pullout for $5.40.
Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times
Sneak peek: A scene-by-scene look at Hong Kong Disneyland’s Mystic Manor
Mystic Manor takes visitors on a circa-1908 tour of an ancient artifact collection belonging to a world-renowned adventurer and explorer. Inside the Victorian home on a remote jungle hilltop, Lord Henry Mystic’s museum comes alive when his mischievous monkey opens an enchanted music box.
Set to open as early as 2013, Mystic Manor is part of a nearly $500-million expansion at Hong Kong Disneyland that calls for the addition of three themed lands.
Mystic Manor will serve as the Chinese theme park’s ghost-less Haunted Mansion, with tributes to the classic Disney attractions Indiana Jones Adventure and Enchanted Tiki Room included throughout the ride.
Spoiler Alert: Join us as Disney Imagineer Dustin Schofield, who worked on Mystic Manor, takes us on a scene-by-scene tour of the new attraction:
Queue
Photos of Lord Mystic, posing with his ever-present pet monkey, Albert, line the waiting area.
Pre-show
A slide show narrated by Lord Mystic previews the rooms on the tour and highlights the latest addition to the collection — an enchanted music box with magical powers that must be opened very carefully.
Loading area
Visitors board turn-of-the-century horseless carriages in the artifact loading dock.
The catalog room
Albert the monkey opens the uncrated music box. The escaping magic dust enchants the artifacts in the room, bringing them to life.
The music room
The magic dust animates the musical instruments, which add to the overall score of the ride. Albert, who will pop up in every scene, watches with wonder and amazement.
The Greco Roman room
The paintings and audio-animatronic statues come to life. An amphora with Hercules battling a lion rocks and spins as the riders pass.
The conservatory
In a transition room, Albert tries to reach a bunch of bananas as a giant Venus flytrap nips at his tail.
The Nordic room
A Nordic god in a painting on the wall blows at the riders, filling the freezing cold room with special-effects smoke.
The armory
A cannon blast knocks the ride vehicle backward. Albert ducks to avoid decapitation by a sword-wielding samurai warrior.
The Egyptian room
A mummy and scarab beetles come to life. Suddenly, the lights go out and the bugs fly at the riders through the darkness.
The tribal room
A two-story-tall tiki statue spews lava from its mouth as flames warm the room. Tribal gods blow darts at the riders, nailing Albert to the wall.
The Chinese room
A golden statue of a monkey king twirls a staff to create a turbulent vortex, causing the ride vehicles to spin around the room.
Return to the catalog room
As chaos threatens to destroy the collection, Albert slams shut the enchanted music box and life returns to normal inside the manor.
Unloading area
Lord Mystic welcomes his visitors back, unaware of the bedlam that has just unfolded.
Find the latest amusement and theme park news at the Los Angeles Times Funland blog: www.latimes.com/funland. Follow Funland on Twitter and Facebook.
— Brady MacDonald, Los Angeles Times staff writer
Images: Disney
Set to open as early as 2013, Mystic Manor is part of a nearly $500-million expansion at Hong Kong Disneyland that calls for the addition of three themed lands.
Mystic Manor will serve as the Chinese theme park’s ghost-less Haunted Mansion, with tributes to the classic Disney attractions Indiana Jones Adventure and Enchanted Tiki Room included throughout the ride.
Spoiler Alert: Join us as Disney Imagineer Dustin Schofield, who worked on Mystic Manor, takes us on a scene-by-scene tour of the new attraction:
Queue
Photos of Lord Mystic, posing with his ever-present pet monkey, Albert, line the waiting area.
Pre-show
A slide show narrated by Lord Mystic previews the rooms on the tour and highlights the latest addition to the collection — an enchanted music box with magical powers that must be opened very carefully.
Loading area
Visitors board turn-of-the-century horseless carriages in the artifact loading dock.
The catalog room
Albert the monkey opens the uncrated music box. The escaping magic dust enchants the artifacts in the room, bringing them to life.
The music room
The magic dust animates the musical instruments, which add to the overall score of the ride. Albert, who will pop up in every scene, watches with wonder and amazement.
The Greco Roman room
The paintings and audio-animatronic statues come to life. An amphora with Hercules battling a lion rocks and spins as the riders pass.
The conservatory
In a transition room, Albert tries to reach a bunch of bananas as a giant Venus flytrap nips at his tail.
The Nordic room
A Nordic god in a painting on the wall blows at the riders, filling the freezing cold room with special-effects smoke.
The armory
A cannon blast knocks the ride vehicle backward. Albert ducks to avoid decapitation by a sword-wielding samurai warrior.
The Egyptian room
A mummy and scarab beetles come to life. Suddenly, the lights go out and the bugs fly at the riders through the darkness.
The tribal room
A two-story-tall tiki statue spews lava from its mouth as flames warm the room. Tribal gods blow darts at the riders, nailing Albert to the wall.
The Chinese room
A golden statue of a monkey king twirls a staff to create a turbulent vortex, causing the ride vehicles to spin around the room.
Return to the catalog room
As chaos threatens to destroy the collection, Albert slams shut the enchanted music box and life returns to normal inside the manor.
Unloading area
Lord Mystic welcomes his visitors back, unaware of the bedlam that has just unfolded.
Find the latest amusement and theme park news at the Los Angeles Times Funland blog: www.latimes.com/funland. Follow Funland on Twitter and Facebook.
— Brady MacDonald, Los Angeles Times staff writer
Images: Disney
'Obamao' artwork tests limits of free speech in China
November 16, 2009 | 2:00 pm
Anyone who has been following President Obama's visit to China this week has no doubt heard of "Obamao" -- the graphic superimposition of Obama's face on the body of Chairman Mao that has found its way onto T-shirts and other souvenir items around the country.
The phenomenon, which was first reported during the summer, has reached a cultural tipping point this week, as Obama makes his way through the country as part of his first tour of Asia as president. Everyone -- NBC as well as Gawker -- has weighed in on "Obamao." On Friday, the Christian Science Monitor reported that the Chinese government had gone so far as to ban the image by threatening to shut down vendors selling the popular T-shirts. Apparently, the government fears the image will offend the visiting president.
Culture Monster finds it is somewhat ironic that the Chinese government is cracking down on an image of Obama just as Obama himself publicly urged the country to embrace the freedom of speech. As reported this weekend in The Times, Obama spoke recently in Shanghai about "free expression, worship, political participation and access to information," which the president termed "universal rights."
"They should be available to all people, including ethnic and religious minorities, whether they are in the United States, China or any nation," he said.
Obama also stated that unrestricted access to the Internet "should be encouraged."
His words apparently have fallen on deaf ears -- at least within the thick walls of the Chinese Communist party. Various reports today confirm that a CNN reporter was detained by Chinese security guards for displaying the "Obamao" T-shirt on camera. Emily Chang, who is a Beijing-based reporter for CNN, said she and her crew were held for two hours, eventually meeting with Chinese police before being released.
So much for free speech in China. And so much for consistency too: The offending "Obamao" image already has been widely reported on in state-run media, including the English-language China Daily.
Unlike with the Obama-as-Joker poster in the U.S., the designer of "Obamao" is well-known. Liu Mingjie created the digital image during the summer and has sold T-shirts and other items bearing his creation at his store in Beijing.
Liu told China Daily in September that he's working on "Obamao" underwear for the holiday season. We'll see how far he gets.
-- David Ng
Anyone who has been following President Obama's visit to China this week has no doubt heard of "Obamao" -- the graphic superimposition of Obama's face on the body of Chairman Mao that has found its way onto T-shirts and other souvenir items around the country.
The phenomenon, which was first reported during the summer, has reached a cultural tipping point this week, as Obama makes his way through the country as part of his first tour of Asia as president. Everyone -- NBC as well as Gawker -- has weighed in on "Obamao." On Friday, the Christian Science Monitor reported that the Chinese government had gone so far as to ban the image by threatening to shut down vendors selling the popular T-shirts. Apparently, the government fears the image will offend the visiting president.
Culture Monster finds it is somewhat ironic that the Chinese government is cracking down on an image of Obama just as Obama himself publicly urged the country to embrace the freedom of speech. As reported this weekend in The Times, Obama spoke recently in Shanghai about "free expression, worship, political participation and access to information," which the president termed "universal rights."
"They should be available to all people, including ethnic and religious minorities, whether they are in the United States, China or any nation," he said.
Obama also stated that unrestricted access to the Internet "should be encouraged."
His words apparently have fallen on deaf ears -- at least within the thick walls of the Chinese Communist party. Various reports today confirm that a CNN reporter was detained by Chinese security guards for displaying the "Obamao" T-shirt on camera. Emily Chang, who is a Beijing-based reporter for CNN, said she and her crew were held for two hours, eventually meeting with Chinese police before being released.
So much for free speech in China. And so much for consistency too: The offending "Obamao" image already has been widely reported on in state-run media, including the English-language China Daily.
Unlike with the Obama-as-Joker poster in the U.S., the designer of "Obamao" is well-known. Liu Mingjie created the digital image during the summer and has sold T-shirts and other items bearing his creation at his store in Beijing.
Liu told China Daily in September that he's working on "Obamao" underwear for the holiday season. We'll see how far he gets.
-- David Ng
Okinawan Message to President Obama: Withdraw the Marines
Study Group on Okinawan External Affairs
(English and Japanese text)
On Friday 13 November, US President Obama flew in to Tokyo. The unresolved issue of “replacing” Futenma US Marine Air Station has been removed from the talks agenda, because the two sides cannot agree on how to resolve it. Festering for more than 13 years, the issue has risen gradually to a head since the Hatoyama Government too office at the beginning of September calling for a redefinition of US-Japan relations.
The one proposal that nobody in either Tokyo or Washington has considered is the one advanced below, by a representative group of prominent Okinawans: that the US simply close and withdraw from all its Okinawan bases. For 65 years, US forces have dominated Okinawa, beginning with the 1945 and continuing through protracted military occupation to the present. Until Okinawan views are taken into serious consideration, the problem cannot be settled.
The Okinawan “Open letter,” reproduced below in both English and Japanese, was released on 9 November.
November 9, 2009
President Barack Hussein Obama,
We are residents of Okinawa and we would like to express our views regarding the United States Marine Corps Futenma Air Station and the current agreement to build a new base in Nago City, Okinawa.
We urge you to withdraw all of USMC from Okinawa. The people of Okinawa have been and will continue to be firmly opposed to the current US plan to relocate the dangerous Futenma Air Station to another location within Okinawa. We demand that the Futenma Air Station be shut down and returned unconditionally. The USMC has been stationed in Okinawa since the mid 1950s. The only real solution to the Futenma problem is a total withdrawal of the USMC from Okinawa.
Here we respectfully state the reasons for our demand. First, the current agreement between the US and Japanese governments regarding the construction of a new USMC base in Nago City was reached without consultation with the government or the people of Okinawa in 2005 and 2006. As many recent election results and public opinion polls show, Okinawa's people have been calling for relocating Futenma out of Okinawa.
Second, the sea area of the new base, located off shore of USMC Camp Schwab in Nago City, is a habitat for various endangered species, including dugong, the Asian manatee. It is unacceptable to destroy the highly valuable ocean environment with the construction of a military base.
Third, the US and Japanese governments agreed to close the USMC Futenma Base and return its land to Okinawa in 1996, with the condition that a replacement facility be constructed in Okinawa. However, the new facility has not yet been built. The fourteen years since have proven that it is simply not possible to squeeze a new military base in Okinawa, which has long suffered an overburden of US military presence.
Finally, when the closure of Futenma Air Station was first discussed, it was assumed that the ground combat element and logistic combat element would remain in Okinawa. However, since there is virtually no possibility of building a new air station in Okinawa, the USMC should relocate both the ground combat element and aviation combat element out of Okinawa. Indeed, it would be more logical and beneficial for the USMC if all the elements of the Marine Air-Ground Task Force were relocated together. Our proposal of a total withdrawal of USMC from Okinawa would actually fit the necessity of the MAGTF's integration of elements most effectively. By withdrawing from Okinawa, the USMC could avoid the unreasonable arrangement of keeping some troops in Okinawa and stationing others in Guam or Hawaii. It would be more desirable for the USMC, while at the same time preserving the highly valuable ocean environment and satisfying the demands of the people of Okinawa.
In conclusion, we wish to urge the United States and Japanese governments to begin the process of planning for a total withdrawal of the USMC from Okinawa. Now is the time to act for “CHANGE" to create a better relationship between Japan and the United States. Both countries would benefit from a break with the status quo and a fresh perspective on the Futenma issue.
Sincerely yours,
Seigen Miyasato
Chairman
Study Group on Okinawa External Affairs
Co-signers:
Hirayuki Agarie, Professor Emeritus, University of the Ryukyus
Akira Arakawa, Journalist
Moriteru Arasaki, Professor Emeritus, Okinawa University
Masaie Ishihara, Professor, Okinawa International University
Tatsuhiro Oshiro, Novelist
Masaaki Gabe, Professor, University of the Ryukyus
Manabu Sato, Professor, Okinawa International University
Kunitoshi Sakurai, President, Okinawa University
Jun Shimabukuro, Professor, University of the Ryukyus
Suzuyo Takazato, Former Vice-speaker, Naha City Assembly
Tetsumi Takara, Professor, University of the Ryukyus
Hiroyuki Teruya, Professor, Okinawa International University
Hiroshi Nakachi, Professor, Okinawa University
Nozato Yo, Journalist
Eiichi Hoshino, Professor, University of the Ryukyus
Kakeshi Miki, Journalist
Akiya Miyazato, Journalist
Akiko Yui, Journalist
Filmmaker Linda Hoaglund's video of the November 8, 2009 Ginowan anti-base demonstration that preceded the Obama visit to Japan is here.
バラク・オバマ米大統領へ
―沖縄からの声―
オバマ大統領へ沖縄からの声を届けたく、この書を記しています。
わたしたちは、オバマ大統領の訪日の機会に、米海兵隊の沖縄からの全面撤退を検討するようを求めます。沖縄の人々は、一貫して、危険な普天間基地の沖縄県内での移設を中心とする米軍再編計画に反対し、無条件で普天間基地の閉鎖ないし返還を求め続けてきています。もともと米海兵隊は、1950年代半ばに日本本土から沖縄へ移駐してきたものです。この問題の根本的な解決は、米海兵隊の沖縄からの全面撤退しかありません。
第一に、2005年と2006年に合意された日米合意は、沖縄の人々への説明を一切行っておらず、理解を得ていません。沖縄の民意は、普天間基地の県外ないし国外への移設を要求しています。
第二に、この日米合意による普天間基地の移設先として埋め立てられる名護市にあるキャンプ・シュワブ水域は、多様で希少性の高い生物が生きる空間なのです。つまり、地球環境を守る上で死滅させてはならない海なのです。
第三に、日米両政府は、1996年4月、沖縄県内に代替施設を建設することを条件として普天間基地の返還に合意しましたが、その代替飛行場の建設は、今なお実現しておりません。14年近い時間が経過してもその移設が実現していないという事実は、誰もが認める過剰な負担にあえでいる沖縄の地には新たな基地を受け入れる余地がないことを物語っています。
第四に、普天間基地を代替する飛行場建設の場所を沖縄県内に探し出せる可能性がない以上、地上部隊とあわせて航空部隊を、沖縄県外ないし国外へ移設するのが最適な解決なのです。これまで普天間基地の返還を検討する際に、米海兵隊の地上部隊や支援部隊が沖縄に存続することを前提としてきました。今こそ、その前提を見直すときなのです。
私たちが要求する米海兵隊の沖縄からの全面撤退は、地上と航空の部隊を一体として作戦行動をとるという米海兵隊の論理に従っても、妥当な選択ではないでしょうか。そうすることにより、一部の部隊を沖縄に残し、他の部隊をグアムやハワイに配置する非合理性を排除できます。これは、同時に、地球にとって貴重な海を残し、沖縄の要望を満たすことができる選択なのです。
普天間基地の移設問題について早期に終止符を打つために、日米両政府は沖縄からの米海兵隊の全面的な撤退の検討へと移るべきです。より良い日米関係へと進化するために、チェンジに向かう挑戦が必要なのです。これまでの前提から自由となる発想こそ、日米両政府が学ぶべき沖縄での教訓なのです。
2009年11月9日
東江平之（琉球大学名誉教授）、新川明（ジャーナリスト）、新崎盛暉（沖縄大学名誉教授）、石原昌家（沖縄国際大学教授）、大城立裕（作家）、我部政明（琉球大学教授）、佐藤学（沖縄国際大学教授）、桜井国俊（沖縄大学学長）島袋純（琉球大学教授）、高里鈴代（元那覇市議会副議長）、高良鉄美（琉球大学教授）、照屋寛之（沖縄国際大学教授）、星野英一（琉球大学教授）、三木健（ジャーナリスト）、宮里政玄（沖縄対外問題研究会代表）、由井晶子（ジャーナリスト）
Recommended citation: Study Group on Okinawan External Affairs, "Okinawan Message to President Obama: Withdraw the Marines," The Asia-Pacific Journal, 46-3-09, November 16, 2009.
(English and Japanese text)
On Friday 13 November, US President Obama flew in to Tokyo. The unresolved issue of “replacing” Futenma US Marine Air Station has been removed from the talks agenda, because the two sides cannot agree on how to resolve it. Festering for more than 13 years, the issue has risen gradually to a head since the Hatoyama Government too office at the beginning of September calling for a redefinition of US-Japan relations.
The one proposal that nobody in either Tokyo or Washington has considered is the one advanced below, by a representative group of prominent Okinawans: that the US simply close and withdraw from all its Okinawan bases. For 65 years, US forces have dominated Okinawa, beginning with the 1945 and continuing through protracted military occupation to the present. Until Okinawan views are taken into serious consideration, the problem cannot be settled.
The Okinawan “Open letter,” reproduced below in both English and Japanese, was released on 9 November.
November 9, 2009
President Barack Hussein Obama,
We are residents of Okinawa and we would like to express our views regarding the United States Marine Corps Futenma Air Station and the current agreement to build a new base in Nago City, Okinawa.
We urge you to withdraw all of USMC from Okinawa. The people of Okinawa have been and will continue to be firmly opposed to the current US plan to relocate the dangerous Futenma Air Station to another location within Okinawa. We demand that the Futenma Air Station be shut down and returned unconditionally. The USMC has been stationed in Okinawa since the mid 1950s. The only real solution to the Futenma problem is a total withdrawal of the USMC from Okinawa.
Here we respectfully state the reasons for our demand. First, the current agreement between the US and Japanese governments regarding the construction of a new USMC base in Nago City was reached without consultation with the government or the people of Okinawa in 2005 and 2006. As many recent election results and public opinion polls show, Okinawa's people have been calling for relocating Futenma out of Okinawa.
Second, the sea area of the new base, located off shore of USMC Camp Schwab in Nago City, is a habitat for various endangered species, including dugong, the Asian manatee. It is unacceptable to destroy the highly valuable ocean environment with the construction of a military base.
Third, the US and Japanese governments agreed to close the USMC Futenma Base and return its land to Okinawa in 1996, with the condition that a replacement facility be constructed in Okinawa. However, the new facility has not yet been built. The fourteen years since have proven that it is simply not possible to squeeze a new military base in Okinawa, which has long suffered an overburden of US military presence.
Finally, when the closure of Futenma Air Station was first discussed, it was assumed that the ground combat element and logistic combat element would remain in Okinawa. However, since there is virtually no possibility of building a new air station in Okinawa, the USMC should relocate both the ground combat element and aviation combat element out of Okinawa. Indeed, it would be more logical and beneficial for the USMC if all the elements of the Marine Air-Ground Task Force were relocated together. Our proposal of a total withdrawal of USMC from Okinawa would actually fit the necessity of the MAGTF's integration of elements most effectively. By withdrawing from Okinawa, the USMC could avoid the unreasonable arrangement of keeping some troops in Okinawa and stationing others in Guam or Hawaii. It would be more desirable for the USMC, while at the same time preserving the highly valuable ocean environment and satisfying the demands of the people of Okinawa.
In conclusion, we wish to urge the United States and Japanese governments to begin the process of planning for a total withdrawal of the USMC from Okinawa. Now is the time to act for “CHANGE" to create a better relationship between Japan and the United States. Both countries would benefit from a break with the status quo and a fresh perspective on the Futenma issue.
Sincerely yours,
Seigen Miyasato
Chairman
Study Group on Okinawa External Affairs
Co-signers:
Hirayuki Agarie, Professor Emeritus, University of the Ryukyus
Akira Arakawa, Journalist
Moriteru Arasaki, Professor Emeritus, Okinawa University
Masaie Ishihara, Professor, Okinawa International University
Tatsuhiro Oshiro, Novelist
Masaaki Gabe, Professor, University of the Ryukyus
Manabu Sato, Professor, Okinawa International University
Kunitoshi Sakurai, President, Okinawa University
Jun Shimabukuro, Professor, University of the Ryukyus
Suzuyo Takazato, Former Vice-speaker, Naha City Assembly
Tetsumi Takara, Professor, University of the Ryukyus
Hiroyuki Teruya, Professor, Okinawa International University
Hiroshi Nakachi, Professor, Okinawa University
Nozato Yo, Journalist
Eiichi Hoshino, Professor, University of the Ryukyus
Kakeshi Miki, Journalist
Akiya Miyazato, Journalist
Akiko Yui, Journalist
Filmmaker Linda Hoaglund's video of the November 8, 2009 Ginowan anti-base demonstration that preceded the Obama visit to Japan is here.
バラク・オバマ米大統領へ
―沖縄からの声―
オバマ大統領へ沖縄からの声を届けたく、この書を記しています。
わたしたちは、オバマ大統領の訪日の機会に、米海兵隊の沖縄からの全面撤退を検討するようを求めます。沖縄の人々は、一貫して、危険な普天間基地の沖縄県内での移設を中心とする米軍再編計画に反対し、無条件で普天間基地の閉鎖ないし返還を求め続けてきています。もともと米海兵隊は、1950年代半ばに日本本土から沖縄へ移駐してきたものです。この問題の根本的な解決は、米海兵隊の沖縄からの全面撤退しかありません。
第一に、2005年と2006年に合意された日米合意は、沖縄の人々への説明を一切行っておらず、理解を得ていません。沖縄の民意は、普天間基地の県外ないし国外への移設を要求しています。
第二に、この日米合意による普天間基地の移設先として埋め立てられる名護市にあるキャンプ・シュワブ水域は、多様で希少性の高い生物が生きる空間なのです。つまり、地球環境を守る上で死滅させてはならない海なのです。
第三に、日米両政府は、1996年4月、沖縄県内に代替施設を建設することを条件として普天間基地の返還に合意しましたが、その代替飛行場の建設は、今なお実現しておりません。14年近い時間が経過してもその移設が実現していないという事実は、誰もが認める過剰な負担にあえでいる沖縄の地には新たな基地を受け入れる余地がないことを物語っています。
第四に、普天間基地を代替する飛行場建設の場所を沖縄県内に探し出せる可能性がない以上、地上部隊とあわせて航空部隊を、沖縄県外ないし国外へ移設するのが最適な解決なのです。これまで普天間基地の返還を検討する際に、米海兵隊の地上部隊や支援部隊が沖縄に存続することを前提としてきました。今こそ、その前提を見直すときなのです。
私たちが要求する米海兵隊の沖縄からの全面撤退は、地上と航空の部隊を一体として作戦行動をとるという米海兵隊の論理に従っても、妥当な選択ではないでしょうか。そうすることにより、一部の部隊を沖縄に残し、他の部隊をグアムやハワイに配置する非合理性を排除できます。これは、同時に、地球にとって貴重な海を残し、沖縄の要望を満たすことができる選択なのです。
普天間基地の移設問題について早期に終止符を打つために、日米両政府は沖縄からの米海兵隊の全面的な撤退の検討へと移るべきです。より良い日米関係へと進化するために、チェンジに向かう挑戦が必要なのです。これまでの前提から自由となる発想こそ、日米両政府が学ぶべき沖縄での教訓なのです。
2009年11月9日
東江平之（琉球大学名誉教授）、新川明（ジャーナリスト）、新崎盛暉（沖縄大学名誉教授）、石原昌家（沖縄国際大学教授）、大城立裕（作家）、我部政明（琉球大学教授）、佐藤学（沖縄国際大学教授）、桜井国俊（沖縄大学学長）島袋純（琉球大学教授）、高里鈴代（元那覇市議会副議長）、高良鉄美（琉球大学教授）、照屋寛之（沖縄国際大学教授）、星野英一（琉球大学教授）、三木健（ジャーナリスト）、宮里政玄（沖縄対外問題研究会代表）、由井晶子（ジャーナリスト）
Recommended citation: Study Group on Okinawan External Affairs, "Okinawan Message to President Obama: Withdraw the Marines," The Asia-Pacific Journal, 46-3-09, November 16, 2009.
U.S. warplane fell from the sky and into obscurity
COLUMN ONE
A B-29 Superfortress that crashed near a village in southern China in November 1950 was mostly forgotten until President Obama visited the nation. Efforts to recover the crew's remains prove futile.
By David Pierson
November 17, 2009
Reporting from Jiaoshuikeng, China
Lin Zhengping was 13 the evening he saw the hills above his home glow. He was too frightened to go up and investigate.
The following day, word came that villagers had discovered the wreckage of a plane. Lin and two friends set out, climbing the narrow dirt paths they had helped furrow with their families' oxen.
An hour later, after following the scent of burnt fuel, they arrived at the scene. The smoldering remains of a four-engine propeller plane was strewn across a ravine thick with brush and thorny trees. The glass canopy that fronted the bomber had snapped off the plane's silver fuselage; the wings were still intact on each side of its tubular body.
Lin and his fellow villagers, with no radio or telephones to communicate with the outside world, didn't know the Korean War had erupted and that the United States and China were fighting. They had no idea that the plane was American or that anybody would look for it.
"People were excited," Lin said. "They had never seen a plane before."
Most villagers had not spoken in decades about that day in November 1950. Then one humid day last summer, a bus and four cars arrived at the remote mountain village and unloaded dozens of soldiers carrying hoes and shovels. They said they had come to find the remains of a U.S. warplane.
The crash would have stayed largely forgotten if China hadn't reached an agreement with the U.S. last year to find missing U.S. service men and women. Chinese military historians digging through its archives then discovered old documents describing a crash of a U.S. bomber near Lin's village, Jiaoshuikeng.
The recent search itself would have remained in anonymity had China's state media not disclosed it last month, timed apparently to President Obama's first visit to China. What could be a better gesture of goodwill than to turn over the remains of long-lost U.S. soldiers?
According to Chinese military archives, the plane was a B-29 carrying a crew of 15, or at least that's what was assumed based on the number of bodies found near the wreckage. U.S. officials have been unable to identify the aircraft and said it was puzzling that a plane that ordinarily carried a crew of 11 would have so many people onboard.
The B-29 Superfortress helped turn the tide in World War II. B-29s carried and dropped the two atomic bombs on Japan in 1945. They were used for bombing early in the Korean War, which lasted from 1950 to 1953, but became obsolete toward the end of the conflict.
One of them went down in southern Guangdong province Nov. 5, 1950, about five months after the start of the Korean War and only days after the Chinese entered the fray in support of its communist ally North Korea. Although the crash site was about 1,000 miles from the Korean peninsula, it wasn't far from Taiwan, where the U.S. had airplanes based.
At the crash site, villagers found charred corpses, one of which appeared to be a woman, another so small it could have been a boy. One body had not burned. It was of a man in a khaki uniform. Lin and the other villagers examined the body's nose and red hair. He clearly was not Chinese.
The villagers hastily dug shallow graves and buried the bodies.
China, at the time, was in turmoil, and few paid much attention to the village, where people lived in rural poverty. A year earlier, Mao Tse-tung and his Communist army had taken control of the country after a bloody civil war and established the People's Republic of China. In Jiaoshuikeng, 1,500 miles south of Beijing, villagers used tools and utensils made of wood or clay. Metal was too expensive.
Within days, villagers were stripping the crash site of valuables. They came with saws to cut up the plane into sheets of metal to sell in nearby towns, Lin recalled. Some remembered finding a tube of toothpaste and a military badge. Another villager pocketed some Korean ginseng. Chinese government archives say the locals also found a parachute, firearms and a Parker pen.
Even after all the large pieces of the plane were taken, the search for valuables continued for years. Children leading their grazing oxen up the slopes would inspect the ground.
Villagers said they couldn't remember if anyone reported the incident but recalled that Chinese military officials came to the village in 1960 to inquire about the crash. But by then not much was left of the wreckage, they said.
Still, with each passing season, the crash cemented itself in village lore for those who had seen it. A fortuneteller declared that the angry spirit of one crew member had made a villager ill.
"We were scared to go cut firewood because we knew people had died there," said Yin Huixian, a 78-year-old woman whose father had scavenged enough metal from the plane to melt down and turn into a water basin.
Nearly 60 years later, soldiers stood in front of the village school asking whether anyone remembered the crash and could help find the wreckage.
Villagers immediately pointed to Lin. The 72-year-old father of six had learned enough Mandarin as a construction worker in the boomtowns of Guangzhou and Shenzhen to communicate with the visitors. Most of the elders spoke a regional dialect that was indecipherable even to people living just 100 miles away.
Lin was born and raised in the village, a community of 300 inside a national forest near China's southern coast, a region known for tea plantations and bamboo forests. Tall and wiry with a square jaw dotted with salt-and-pepper stubble, Lin can traverse the steep mountain above the village faster than men half his age. When he guided the soldiers, he wore simple plastic sandals and a straw hat. He used a sharp sickle to cut through the creeping grass that obscured parts of the path.
At the urging of village officials, he also carried offerings of chicken, fish and fruit to honor the dead. After they arrived at the rocky clearing where the redheaded airman might have been buried, Lin began the ritual of burning paper money and incense and setting off firecrackers.
The search team began spreading out, but the shoulder-high ferns and reeds, as well as gnarled branches that clung to clothes, proved too thick for the soldiers to systematically comb the area for evidence.
After four hours of searching, they were unable to find the graves and came back down the hill.
One of the lead archivists who dug up the B-29 documents and participated in the search, Song Chuanfu, told state media that any remains may have been washed away by floods. He called for donations of "special equipment" to continue the search.
The military tried another tack: A few months later, a few soldiers came back to the village and offered $1,500 to anyone who might have kept some of the debris. The only person to come forward was a middle-aged man who had a piece of metal no bigger than a dinner plate in his bedroom.
"My father got it," said the man, who declined to give his first name, but like many in Jiaoshuikeng, had the surname Lin. "I donated it to the PLA [the People's Libration Army]. I know they're doing this because China is trying to build good relations with the U.S."
With that, the soldiers left as suddenly as they came with what could have been the last remnant of a mystery the village had been living with for six decades. A U.S. search team is expected to arrive and scan the site in a few months.
Lin believes another search would be futile without first clearing the mountainside of vegetation. He's doubtful the Chinese government would go to such trouble. It all seems so strange, Lin said, that the plane so few villagers remember would cause such a stir again.
"For 60 years," he said, "no one cared."
david.pierson@latimes.com
Tommy Yang and Angelina Qu in The Times' Beijing bureau contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times
A B-29 Superfortress that crashed near a village in southern China in November 1950 was mostly forgotten until President Obama visited the nation. Efforts to recover the crew's remains prove futile.
By David Pierson
November 17, 2009
Reporting from Jiaoshuikeng, China
Lin Zhengping was 13 the evening he saw the hills above his home glow. He was too frightened to go up and investigate.
The following day, word came that villagers had discovered the wreckage of a plane. Lin and two friends set out, climbing the narrow dirt paths they had helped furrow with their families' oxen.
An hour later, after following the scent of burnt fuel, they arrived at the scene. The smoldering remains of a four-engine propeller plane was strewn across a ravine thick with brush and thorny trees. The glass canopy that fronted the bomber had snapped off the plane's silver fuselage; the wings were still intact on each side of its tubular body.
Lin and his fellow villagers, with no radio or telephones to communicate with the outside world, didn't know the Korean War had erupted and that the United States and China were fighting. They had no idea that the plane was American or that anybody would look for it.
"People were excited," Lin said. "They had never seen a plane before."
Most villagers had not spoken in decades about that day in November 1950. Then one humid day last summer, a bus and four cars arrived at the remote mountain village and unloaded dozens of soldiers carrying hoes and shovels. They said they had come to find the remains of a U.S. warplane.
The crash would have stayed largely forgotten if China hadn't reached an agreement with the U.S. last year to find missing U.S. service men and women. Chinese military historians digging through its archives then discovered old documents describing a crash of a U.S. bomber near Lin's village, Jiaoshuikeng.
The recent search itself would have remained in anonymity had China's state media not disclosed it last month, timed apparently to President Obama's first visit to China. What could be a better gesture of goodwill than to turn over the remains of long-lost U.S. soldiers?
According to Chinese military archives, the plane was a B-29 carrying a crew of 15, or at least that's what was assumed based on the number of bodies found near the wreckage. U.S. officials have been unable to identify the aircraft and said it was puzzling that a plane that ordinarily carried a crew of 11 would have so many people onboard.
The B-29 Superfortress helped turn the tide in World War II. B-29s carried and dropped the two atomic bombs on Japan in 1945. They were used for bombing early in the Korean War, which lasted from 1950 to 1953, but became obsolete toward the end of the conflict.
One of them went down in southern Guangdong province Nov. 5, 1950, about five months after the start of the Korean War and only days after the Chinese entered the fray in support of its communist ally North Korea. Although the crash site was about 1,000 miles from the Korean peninsula, it wasn't far from Taiwan, where the U.S. had airplanes based.
At the crash site, villagers found charred corpses, one of which appeared to be a woman, another so small it could have been a boy. One body had not burned. It was of a man in a khaki uniform. Lin and the other villagers examined the body's nose and red hair. He clearly was not Chinese.
The villagers hastily dug shallow graves and buried the bodies.
China, at the time, was in turmoil, and few paid much attention to the village, where people lived in rural poverty. A year earlier, Mao Tse-tung and his Communist army had taken control of the country after a bloody civil war and established the People's Republic of China. In Jiaoshuikeng, 1,500 miles south of Beijing, villagers used tools and utensils made of wood or clay. Metal was too expensive.
Within days, villagers were stripping the crash site of valuables. They came with saws to cut up the plane into sheets of metal to sell in nearby towns, Lin recalled. Some remembered finding a tube of toothpaste and a military badge. Another villager pocketed some Korean ginseng. Chinese government archives say the locals also found a parachute, firearms and a Parker pen.
Even after all the large pieces of the plane were taken, the search for valuables continued for years. Children leading their grazing oxen up the slopes would inspect the ground.
Villagers said they couldn't remember if anyone reported the incident but recalled that Chinese military officials came to the village in 1960 to inquire about the crash. But by then not much was left of the wreckage, they said.
Still, with each passing season, the crash cemented itself in village lore for those who had seen it. A fortuneteller declared that the angry spirit of one crew member had made a villager ill.
"We were scared to go cut firewood because we knew people had died there," said Yin Huixian, a 78-year-old woman whose father had scavenged enough metal from the plane to melt down and turn into a water basin.
Nearly 60 years later, soldiers stood in front of the village school asking whether anyone remembered the crash and could help find the wreckage.
Villagers immediately pointed to Lin. The 72-year-old father of six had learned enough Mandarin as a construction worker in the boomtowns of Guangzhou and Shenzhen to communicate with the visitors. Most of the elders spoke a regional dialect that was indecipherable even to people living just 100 miles away.
Lin was born and raised in the village, a community of 300 inside a national forest near China's southern coast, a region known for tea plantations and bamboo forests. Tall and wiry with a square jaw dotted with salt-and-pepper stubble, Lin can traverse the steep mountain above the village faster than men half his age. When he guided the soldiers, he wore simple plastic sandals and a straw hat. He used a sharp sickle to cut through the creeping grass that obscured parts of the path.
At the urging of village officials, he also carried offerings of chicken, fish and fruit to honor the dead. After they arrived at the rocky clearing where the redheaded airman might have been buried, Lin began the ritual of burning paper money and incense and setting off firecrackers.
The search team began spreading out, but the shoulder-high ferns and reeds, as well as gnarled branches that clung to clothes, proved too thick for the soldiers to systematically comb the area for evidence.
After four hours of searching, they were unable to find the graves and came back down the hill.
One of the lead archivists who dug up the B-29 documents and participated in the search, Song Chuanfu, told state media that any remains may have been washed away by floods. He called for donations of "special equipment" to continue the search.
The military tried another tack: A few months later, a few soldiers came back to the village and offered $1,500 to anyone who might have kept some of the debris. The only person to come forward was a middle-aged man who had a piece of metal no bigger than a dinner plate in his bedroom.
"My father got it," said the man, who declined to give his first name, but like many in Jiaoshuikeng, had the surname Lin. "I donated it to the PLA [the People's Libration Army]. I know they're doing this because China is trying to build good relations with the U.S."
With that, the soldiers left as suddenly as they came with what could have been the last remnant of a mystery the village had been living with for six decades. A U.S. search team is expected to arrive and scan the site in a few months.
Lin believes another search would be futile without first clearing the mountainside of vegetation. He's doubtful the Chinese government would go to such trouble. It all seems so strange, Lin said, that the plane so few villagers remember would cause such a stir again.
"For 60 years," he said, "no one cared."
david.pierson@latimes.com
Tommy Yang and Angelina Qu in The Times' Beijing bureau contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times
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