RUSSIA & CHINA: China: Russia’s Land of Opportunity

Photo by Joshua Kucera

DECEMBER 30, 2009

BY JOSHUA KUCERA

Where Russia Meets China: The final part of a 5-part series in cooperation with Slate.

SUIFENHE, China -- In 1989, the opening of the border between Russia and China raised Russian fears of a "yellow peril": millions of Chinese citizens flooding north into relatively unpopulated, but richly endowed, Siberia. Some contrarian publications even went so far as to suggest that Russia should just accept the inevitable and sell the whole territory to China.

Demographically, it makes sense that Chinese people would flock to Russia. Look at it in economic terms, though: China's economy is booming, and its prospects seem limitless. Meanwhile, Russia is highly dependent on uncertain oil and natural gas reserves. Professionals already make more money in China than they do in Russia, and as China's economy grows, blue-collar wages will likely outpace Russian pay. So, rather than Chinese people moving to Russia, isn't it more likely that Russians would move to China?

---

Part 1: Meet the Siberian Liberation Army

Part 2: Don't Call Them Twin Cities

Part 3: “China is the destiny of Siberia.”

Part 4: Vladivostok's Used-Car Dealers Are Mad As Hell

I asked this question of many Russians in the Far East, and I usually got the same answer: It's already happening. Thus far, the Russian migration to China seems to be only a trickle. But it's not hard to imagine that this is just the start.

The energy in Suifenhe, a relative backwater, is so much greater than in Vladivostok-a city three times the size-that taking the four-hour bus trip across the border is like switching from black-and-white to color.

The road from Vladivostok becomes progressively worse the closer you get to the border, and the land is almost empty of people. As soon as you cross the border into China, there is a massive shopping mall with red cupolas, an apparent nod to Russian architecture, and an international-standard Holiday Inn.

The mall is part of what was supposed to be a joint Chinese-Russian free-trade zone, where people would be able to come to shop and tour visa-free. But all Russia has built on its side of the border is a church, which Chinese tourists photograph through the chain-link fence.

The day I arrived was one of the biggest celebrations in recent Chinese history: the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the People's Republic of China. Still, at the many construction projects around the city's center, workers were on the job until after dark. I thought back to Vladivostok, where a huge suspension bridge is under construction. It is supposed to be ready by 2012, when the city plays host to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.

Ostensibly, this is a priority project overseen from Moscow, but when I mentioned to my translator that I hadn't seen anyone working on it, she smiled. "Yes," she said. "We notice that all the time."

Suifenhe's economy is driven by Russian shoppers on package tours, and the shops in the city center all have signs in the Cyrillic alphabet. One sporting goods store was called CSKA, after Moscow's legendary soccer team. I flipped through the T-shirts on sale at another boutique and saw shirts advertising the 2014 Sochi Olympics and United Russia, Vladimir Putin's political party.

But in addition to the many Russian tourists, there is a growing population of Russian expatriates living in Suifenhe. One, a journalist named Stanislav Bystritski, is a former reporter for a Vladivostok TV station. He moved here five years ago and produces two Russian-language shows on local Suifenhe TV, one oriented toward Russian tourists and one for Chinese people who want to learn about Russia and the Russian language.

As he showed me around town, an elderly Chinese man greeted us with a smile and said "Horosho," which means good in Russian. It seemed a strange thing to say, but Bystritski told me it was a common greeting by Chinese people here, because it sounds like it could be a Chinese word and is easy for Mandarin speakers to pronounce.

He echoed what I had heard in Blagoveshchensk and Vladivostok-Russians come to China because it is easier to get a good job and easier to do business.

"So many Russian businessmen say it's easier to work here, there is so much less corruption and bureaucracy," he said.

Suifenhe's government once had plans to build a Russian quarter, reportedly with the expectation that up to 50,000 Russians might relocate here, though those plans appear to have been abandoned. Bystritski said that the rules on apartment ownership by foreigners have been loosened, so the government may have decided that there is no longer a need for a special Russian district. (We couldn't find out for sure. Bystritski set up a meeting with a member of Suifenhe's local government to talk about that and other issues involving Russian migrants. The official apparently assumed I would be Russian, and when Bystritski introduced me as an American, the official's eyes widened somewhat cartoonishly. He probably wasn't the best person, he said, and in the end I couldn't get anyone from the local government to talk to me.)

Still, I was able to meet several Russians who had moved here. Petr is building a small complex of apartment buildings for Russians. The Suifenhe government is so enthusiastic about the project that it is bulldozing the homes of the Chinese people who currently live in the area.

Viktor, a Russian engineer who moved here at the beginning of 2008, is working on a pollution-control technology that has excited more interest in China than it did in Russia.

"The Chinese are more interested in innovative projects, so there are more opportunities here," he said.

His wife, Natasha, works as a technician with Suifenhe's pioneering (and, to a civil libertarian, rather ominous) "electronic security" system, in which surveillance cameras all over town are controlled from a spotless control room in a glass-fronted building called the Suifenhe Cyberport. She says she wants her 4-year-old son to be raised "in Chinese traditions," and she is making sure he learns Chinese.

"People are so friendly here, I feel so comfortable," she said. "This is my new home."

Joshua Kucera is a freelance journalist based in Washington, D.C. This series also appears on Slate.com.

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RUSSIA & CHINA: “China is the destiny of Siberia.”

Photo by Joshua Kucera

DECEMBER 29, 2009

BY JOSHUA KUCERA

Where Russia Meets China: Part 3 of a 5-part series in cooperation with Slate.

BLAGOVESHCHENSK, Russia -- I originally came to the Russian Far East with the idea that the Russian-Chinese border was roughly analogous to the U.S.-Mexican border: poor, darker-skinned people sneaking north across a river for better job opportunities, freaking out the white people.

Poor Chinese do cross over, and they do work for less than Russians. And some of the overheated immigration rhetoric you hear in the United States exists in Russia, too, about the "zheltaya ugroza," or "yellow peril." That paranoia is much more prevalent in Moscow than in the Russian Far East, however. Here, everyone seems to have their favorite example of how other Russians exaggerate the Chinese presence. There are reports in the Moscow press that half the population of Blagoveshchensk is Chinese or that there are dozens of Chinese villages in Russia that don't appear on any map. "I've heard that the streets in Blagoveshchensk are named after Chinese generals or that there are Chinese people on the city council here," Mikhail Kukharenko, the head of the Chinese-government-run Confucius Institute, told me.

---

Part 1: Meet the Siberian Liberation Army

Part 2: Don't Call Them Twin Cities

Part 4: Vladivostok’s Used-Car Dealers Are Mad as Hell

Part 5: China As Russia's Land of Opportunity

In part because the government has placed tight restriction on Chinese visitors to Russia, there is little visible Chinese presence in Blagoveshchensk-and there's more here than anywhere else in Russia. There are a couple of so-called "Chinese markets," where Chinese vendors sell cheap clothes and electronics, but you can find these all over Russia and the former Eastern bloc. There are also a good number of Chinese restaurants catering to Russian tastes: It was here that I had stir-fried potatoes for the first time.

But you see very few Chinese people on the streets, other than a few tourists snapping photos of the statue of Lenin or of the reconstructed arch originally built for Czarevich Nicholas' visit through the Far East in 1891.

What is remarkable here, though, is the enthusiasm that Russian people-in contrast to the Russian government-display about China. While some poor Chinese citizens come to Russia for work, educated, middle-class Russians are increasingly going in the other direction. Among the group of young, English-speaking Russians I fell in with in Blagoveshchensk, nearly all of them worked in some capacity with China. Many of them had lived there. One, Sergey, was home from his job in Shanghai, and he raved about how much friendlier, more open, and optimistic Chinese people were compared with Russians.

One feature of the Russian-Chinese relationship seemed especially telling: Cross-border marriages are overwhelmingly between Chinese men and Russian women. Much of this has to do with demographics-Russia has a surplus of women, while China has too many men.

But as one Russian woman told me, "Chinese men are kinder and more attentive to their wives. And they usually have more money."

In the international relations department of Amur State University in Blagoveshchensk, the number of students studying Chinese increases every year, and more Russian students now learn Chinese as their first foreign language than English. The department is closing its European studies track and shutting down German and French. Soon, it will offer only Chinese and English.

"China is the destiny of Siberia, our present and future depends in every respect on what happens in China," Victor Dyatlov, a professor at Irkutsk State University and a top authority on Russian-Chinese relations, told me. "The only direction we can move in is integration and cooperation between Russia and China. But we don't know what form that integration will take."

But this local integration with China doesn't mean much to the larger picture, Dyatlov said. "The future of Siberia and its people is defined not by the people here but in Moscow," he said. "What people in Siberia think isn't that important. Siberia is the national treasure, and the people here are just meant to help the government exploit these resources."

Indeed, many people complain that Moscow treats the Russian Far East like a cash cow to be exploited for export income to China and cares little about how people here live. In February 2009, Russia and China signed a 20-year, $25 billion oil deal, and by the end of that term China could be getting one-quarter of its imported oil from Russia and Central Asia. Most of that oil will come from eastern Siberia, through a pipeline whose original route veered dangerously close to famously pristine Lake Baikal, prompting protests from Siberians.

Russia also recently started selling electricity to China from the Bureya Dam, on a tributary of the Amur, at a price cheaper than Russians pay for electricity in Blagoveshchensk.

"We don't like it," said Svetlana Kosikhina, the dean of the international relations department at Amur State. "Electricity is expensive here, and if we sell it to China, it's going to be even more expensive."

Even locals admit to a significant amount of skepticism about China's intentions toward the Russian Far East. Kukhalenko-as director of the Confucius Institute here, he's an employee of the Chinese government-said he assumes that "a lot" of the Chinese students in Blagoveshchensk are spies, "especially the ones who are older and who speak good Russian already." There are also rumors of a secret museum in Heihe-shown only to Chinese tourists-that displays maps showing Chinese control over the Russian Far East.

"We're not afraid, but we're wary. We just don't understand what they're going to do. It's a system that could rise up at any moment and attack us," Kosikhina said. "We have a saying here: 'Pessimists study Chinese.'"

Joshua Kucera is a freelance journalist based in Washington, D.C. This series also appears on Slate.com.

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RUSSIA & CHINA: Blagoveshchensk & Heihe: Don't Call Them Twin Cities

Photo by Joshua Kucera

DECEMBER 28, 2009

BY JOSHUA KUCERA

Where Russia Meets China: Part 2 of a 5-part series in cooperation with Slate.

BLAGOVESHCHENSK, Russia -- Across the Amur River, which forms the border between Russia and China, the city of Heihe gleams. The brand-new Yuan Dun shopping center juts into the water, its name written in Cyrillic letters large enough to be seen the half-mile across the river. At night, the Vegas-like lights of Heihe's downtown reflect in the river, and a spotlight makes circles in the sky, like a car dealership trying to draw customers.

Among Russians in Blagoveshchensk, a two-day train ride east of Irkutsk, the sight of Heihe across the water is a source of both admiration and defensiveness. During my time here I was told over and over that although Heihe looks impressive from a distance, up close the city can be dirty and chaotic. Others mentioned that that the central government in Beijing lavishes extra attention on Heihe -- other cities of its size don't have those bright lights -- because it's on the border. Russians have seen this sort of thing before: "It's a Potemkin village," said Mikhail Kukharenko, the Russian head of the Chinese-government-run Confucius Institute in Blagoveshchensk.

At the same time, Russians love Heihe. Several ferries a day carry over tourists and shoppers looking for cheap Chinese electronics and clothes, and so many people made their livelihood in the "suitcase trade" -- buying cheap things in China to sell for a profit in Russia-that Blagoveshchensk's downtown has a monument to the traders, complete with an inscription that reads, "For the hard work and optimism of the entrepreneurs of the Amur," referring to the region that includes Blagoveshchensk.

---

Part 1: Meet the Siberian Liberation Army

Part 3: "China is the destiny of Siberia."

Part 4: Vladivostok’s Used-Car Dealers Are Mad as Hell

Part 5: China As Russia's Land of Opportunity

For most of the last century, this border was closed. In 1969, the Soviet Union and China even fought a battle over a disputed island farther downstream. Hundreds of soldiers died.

But it reopened in 1989, and the fact that ordinary Russians and Chinese could cross the border freely added a new wrinkle to the already complex relationship between the two powers. In particular, Russians were forced to confront an uncomfortable demographic fact: This part of their country was strategically important, badly underpopulated, and right next to a China bursting at the seams.

The Russian Far East, the eastern edge of Siberia that borders China and the Pacific Ocean, has only 6 million people, and that number is dropping fast. Just across the border, though, the three provinces of northeastern China have about 110 million people. Meanwhile, the Russian Far East has substantial reserves of oil, natural gas, and coal, which China needs to run its supercharged economy.

All that has led many Russians to fear that China will eventually exert control over the region. "[I]f we do not step up the level of activity of our work [in the Russian Far East], then in the final analysis we can lose everything," Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said last year. Kukharenko of the Confucius Institute spelled it out for me: "It's a law of physics, a vacuum has to be filled," he said. "If there are no Russian people here, there will be Chinese people."

That's why Russia has serious misgivings about its neighbors to the south, as a trip along the border makes plain. While Beijing has moved aggressively to court Russian visitors and business, Russia's central government has largely neglected the areas that act as the gateway to China. The few new buildings in Blagoveshchensk -- some shopping centers and a high-rise hotel -- were built by a Chinese company.

While Blagoveshchensk is relatively prosperous, at least by the standards of Russian cities of its size, Heihe has positively boomed. It was just a village in 1989, and now it has 200,000 people, about the same as Blagoveshchensk. And in contrast to Heihe's glitzy, welcoming facade, Blagoveshchensk's barely lighted waterfront promenade features a Soviet-era World War II memorial that consists of a gunship with its barrels aimed across the river, toward China.

In one telling episode, in 2007, in an apparent attempt to play up its Russian connection and appeal to tourists, Heihe placed garbage cans that were designed to look like Russian matryoshka dolls around the city. Some excessively sensitive Russians saw this as an insult-Russian culture was trash. The mini-scandal made national TV news in Russia, and the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs protested. So Heihe's government painted the trash cans over. (I later saw panda-shaped trash cans in another Chinese city, which suggests that the matryoshkas were, in fact, a friendly gesture.) In Blagoveshchensk, meanwhile, a new government-run cultural center was originally named Albazin, after the fort built by early Russian settlers to defend the territory from China, until local historians petitioned the government to change it, saying the name was unnecessarily provocative.

In several small ways, the Russian government has made it difficult for Russians and Chinese to interact. Heihe has street signs in Russian, but there is almost no Chinese to be seen in Blagoveshchensk. While Russians can cross into Heihe visa-free for a short visit, Chinese can't do the same to Blagoveshchensk. The local government gave the license to operate ferries that cross the river to a politically connected local monopoly, which charges more than $40 for the 10-minute ride. (Chinese visiting Russia use a different company, which charges much less.)

China has offered to pay for a bridge between the two cities, but the Russian side has dragged its feet for years, said Yevgeny Kuzmin, a local journalist. "It's always the Chinese side that takes the initiative," he said.

The Russian government recently made the suitcase trade much more difficult by reducing the amount of clothes, electronics, and other consumer goods that Russians can bring back into the country duty-free and the frequency with which they can take such trips. One city official, who spoke to me on condition of anonymity, said that while Heihe's government is promoting the idea of Heihe and Blagoveshchensk as "twin cities," Blagoveshchensk's government is balking. "Heihe is always pushing this relationship more," she said. "They get a lot of money from the central government, so they have lots of proposals and ideas for programs, but we don't have the money for that."

The central government has given Blagoveshchensk funds for one thing, though: a new waterfront. Moscow has committed about $200 million for a five-year program to create a completely new waterfront facade for the city, a spokeswoman for the city told me. The plan will entail dumping sand into the river to add nearly 100 acres of prime riverfront real estate and then building brand-new high-rises along the new shore.

I asked if the new plan called for lights as impressive as Heihe's. "We'll do our best," she said with a smile. But the World War II memorial, with the gun pointed at China? It's staying.

Joshua Kucera is a freelance journalist based in Washington, D.C. This series also appears on Slate.com.

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RUSSIA: Meet the Siberian Liberation Army

Photo by Joshua Kucera

DECEMBER 28, 2009

BY JOSHUA KUCERA

Where Russia Meets China: Part 1 of a 5-part series in cooperation with Slate.

IRKUTSK, Russia -- When you're the leader of a fringe political group, a cafe called "I'm Waiting for a UFO" may not be the best place to take a visiting journalist. But it's possible that alien abduction is more likely than what Mikheil Kulekhov is working for: Siberian independence.

Kulekhov was the head of the Siberian Liberation Army until officers from the FSB (the successor to the KGB) contacted him. "They asked me: 'Why are you calling yourselves an army? Are you going to take up arms?'" Assured that wasn't the case, the officers asked Kulekhov to change the organization's name. He did, and it is now the National Alternative of Siberia. (The two names share the same acronym in Russian, OAS, he points out.)

That Russian security let these would-be secessionists off with nothing more than a gentle scolding is probably a reflection of the group's modest size: Kulekhov counts about 30 members in the OAS. So, Siberia is not Chechnya.

---

Part 2: Don't Call Them Twin Cities

Part 3: “China is the destiny of Siberia.”

Part 4: Vladivostok’s Used-Car Dealers Are Mad as Hell

Part 5: China As Russia's Land of Opportunity

Siberian independence is unlikely. But this region's long-term political and economic future is uncertain. Much of the oil and natural gas that has fueled Russia's booming economy over the last decade is found in eastern Siberia, and the area is also rich in timber, minerals, and other natural resources. But it doesn't have very many people. This was the last part of Russia to be settled, and the Russian history of much of eastern Siberia stretches back barely 100 years.

Contrary to Siberia's reputation, most of the cities I visited were pleasant -- Irkutsk, in particular, has gracious architecture and a bookish college-town feel. Siberians boast that they tend to be smarter and better-looking than their compatriots, because so much of Russia's elite was shipped out here when Siberia was used as a penal colony. But life here has always been difficult; it's remote and, in the winter, bitterly cold. The Soviets encouraged Russians to settle here, but after the collapse of the Soviet Union, people started heading west: The population of Russia east of Irkutsk decreased from 8 million to 6 million between 1998 and 2002 (the date of the last census). What would this mass exodus mean for Russia?

Perhaps Russia's greatest claim to being a great power is its immense size, and a shrinking population in its farthest reaches could call its claim on Siberia -- and by extension its authority on the world stage -- into question.

I was traveling through this region, heading east from Irkutsk, to see how Russia is holding on to its Far East.

Kulekhov bases his argument for independence on three pillars: the geographic, economic, and cultural uniqueness of Siberia. Irkutsk, he notes, is farther from Moscow than New York is from London, and Russian involvement in Siberia is analogous to the British colonization of the New World.

"We're so far away, it's easy to see that we're a different country," he said.

Economically, he argues, Siberia has more trade with Asia than it does with the European part of Russia, and too much of the income from this region's vast natural resources ends up in Moscow.

What's more, Siberians have unique "national characteristics. We are very skeptical, don't trust anyone, we're difficult to negotiate with, and we do things the way we want them to be done. We're individualists."

While ethnic Russians everywhere are Orthodox Christian, in Siberia they have a syncretic bent, incorporating some elements of the Buddhist and shamanistic traditions of the indigenous peoples of Siberia. (The green-and-white OAS logo nods to that ecumenism, incorporating a cross as well as a circular form that refers to Buddhist chakras.)

The OAS is claiming its place in the long history of Siberian political independence movements, from 19th-century intellectuals who first posited the existence of a Siberian identity distinct from Russianness to a short-lived anti-Bolshevik Provisional Government of Autonomous Siberia in the chaotic days after the Russian Civil War. Every year, OAS members make a pilgrimage to the grave of one of the early heroes of Siberian independence, and during my visit, the group's newspaper ran a front-page feature on the police force of the post-civil war autonomous government.

Kulekhov claims solidarity with other secessionist movements, which, he says, are everywhere in Russia. But at least for now, Russia is heading in the opposite direction. Regional governors used to be elected by local voters, but in 2004, then-President Vladimir Putin changed the law and decided to appoint the governors directly, greatly increasing the Kremlin's authority over Russia's far-flung regions. This would become a running theme throughout my trip: how distant Moscow rules Siberia imperiously, with little regard for the wishes of the people here. The word colony came up again and again in conversation.

Mikhail Rozhansky, a political analyst in Irkutsk, said there is no hope for Siberian independence. But its appeal is obvious. "It's understandable why people here have this dream-they don't want to feel like they're on the edge of the world," he said.

"Everything is centralized; everything is a colony of Moscow. Even regions close to Moscow still feel like they're living on the edge of Russia," Rozhansky said. Although that centralization creates resentment, it also makes it hard for strong regionalism to develop: "Ties between Irkutsk and Moscow are closer than the ties between Irkutsk and Krasnoyarsk," another Siberian city.

A key component of the Siberian character is rootlessness, Rozhansky added. The first Russian settlers came here not because it was a pleasant place to live but because they were chasing the valuable natural resources of the time: furs. And that hasn't changed, even if today the goal is work in the timber or petroleum industries.

"Even if people came four centuries ago, they feel like life here is temporary," he said. "People have always come here because of the natural resources, not because they wanted to. And there's no tradition of compromise-people will just leave, find a new place to live."

Joshua Kucera is a freelance journalist based in Washington, D.C. This series also appears on Slate.com.

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ASIA: Cathay Pacific's 2010 All Asia Pass... now with more cities to choose from!

Cathay Pacific Airways is including 18 cities in China among the basic destination choices available through its 2010 All Asia Pass.

The 18 Chinese cities include China’s capital city Beijing, spectacular Shanghai, Chengdu – home to the Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, Guangzhou – home to Cantonese cooking and Dalian and its inviting beaches. These new offerings complement the traditionally popular options of Bali, Bangkok, Cebu, Hanoi, Penang, Phnom Penh and Phuket plus 17 other Asian destinations.

Cathay Pacific’s All Asia Pass is a perennial favorite among everyone from globetrotters extraordinaire to novice adventurers. The All Asia Pass provides roundtrip economy class airfare from Los Angeles, New York JFK, or San Francisco to Hong Kong onboard Skytrax’s 2009 Airline of the Year, Cathay Pacific, plus 21 days of consecutive travel to up to four Asian cities. Prices start at just US$1,599. Taxes, fees, and international departure taxes of up to US$180 must be added to the base price.

Travel from other cities in the United States is available for an additional charge as is an extension of the consecutive travel period up to 90 days. Eight cities in India and the Middle East – including Cathay Pacific’s newest destination, Jeddah – are available as add-on cities at a cost of US$300 each.

The US$1,599 All Asia Pass price applies to the basic two-destination plus Hong Kong packages departing the United States on Mondays, Tuesdays or Wednesdays from Feb. 2 to May 17 or from Aug. 17 to Dec. 1. All travel must be completed by Dec. 7, 2010. Additional terms and conditions may apply.

ABOUT CATHAY PACIFIC AIRWAYS

Headquartered in Hong Kong, Cathay Pacific Airways was named "Airline of the Year 2009" by the Skytrax World Airline Awards. From North America, Cathay Pacific offers daily nonstop service to Hong Kong from LAX, JFK, SFO, Toronto and Vancouver. The airline is a member of the oneworld™ alliance.

CHINA: Best 10 Books On China

Commentary By Daniel P. Harris, 12.22.09, 6:00 AM ET

Because I write the China Law Blog and my legal practice focuses on China, I am always being asked to recommend books on China. So the other day, I thought I would pose the proverbial China book question to the members of the China Law Blog Group on LinkedIn. Thirty-eight responses later (and counting), my views on China books have crystallized a bit.

The following is my list of 10 must-read books for people planning their first business trip to China. I believe if you read them in the order below, they will provide the background needed to conquer China's business world there. The order of this list is intended to take the reader from the general to the more specific.

1. Lost on Planet China: The Strange and True Story of One Man's Attempt to Understand the World's Most Mystifying Nation or How He Became Comfortable Eating Live Squid, by J. Maarten Troost (2008, Broadway Books, $7.33).

This book is a fun read, and it quickly brings to light how China is nothing like Kansas. If you still want to go to China after reading this book, you are ready to move on to the next book on the list.

2. Chinese Lessons: Five Classmates and the Story of the New China, by John Pomfret (2006, Henry Holt & Company, $3.79).

This book profiles Chinese students who began their university studies immediately after the Cultural Revolution. Since these people run most of China today, it is important to understand their roots.

3. River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze (2001, HarperCollins, $14.40), or Oracle Bones: A Journey Between China's Past and Present (2006, HarperCollins, $17.79), both by Peter Hessler.

Very well-written, enjoyable books that increase understanding of both China's past and present.

4. Out of Mao's Shadow: The Struggle for the Soul of a New China, by Phillip P. Pan (2008, Simon & Schuster, $18.48).

This book is on the Cultural Revolution and its lingering impact on modern-day China. It is well articulated, and it provides a great feel for those running China today and for those who oppose how it is being run.

5. Postcards from Tomorrow Square: Reports from China, by James Fallows (2009, Vintage Books USA, $10.17).

Think Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America.

6. China Shakes The World: A Titan's Rise and Troubled Future and the Challenge for America, by James Kynge (2006, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $20.00).

Explains China's economic miracle clearly and, dare I say it, enjoyably.

7. The China Price: The True Cost of Chinese Competitive Advantage, by Alexandra Harney (2008, The Penguin Press, $17.78).

Learn about China's factories and how they can get their prices shockingly low. But is it worth it?

8. Mr. China: A Memoir, by Tim Clissold (2005, HarperCollins, $15).

A true classic and a fascinating read on what it takes to do business in China. Everyone will assume you have read it, so read it.

9. One Billion Customers: Lessons from the Front Lines of Doing Business in China, by James McGregor (2005, Free Press, $2).

How big business gets it done in China.

10. China CEO: Voices of Experience from 20 International Business Leaders, by Juan Antonio Fernandez and Laurie Underwood (2006, John Wiley & Sons, $14.96); and/or Where East Eats West: The Street-Smarts Guide to Business in China, by Sam Goodman (2008, BookSurge Publishing, $18.99).

China CEO is a technical collection of interviews with CEOs on how to conduct business in China. Where East Eats West is a collection of China business snippets from a street fighting, "been there, done that," entrepreneur.

SOUTH KOREA: Ambitious South Korean Parents See Tall as All

December 23, 2009

By CHOE SANG-HUN

SEOUL, South Korea — With acupuncture needles trembling from the corners of her mouth like cat’s whiskers, Moon Bo-in, 5, whined with fear. But the doctor, wearing a yellow gown patterned with cartoon characters, poked more needles into her wrists and scalp.

“It’s O.K., dear,” said her mother, Seo Hye-kyong. “It will help make you pretty and tall. It will make you Cinderella.”

A growing conviction that tallness is crucial to success has prompted South Korean parents to try all manner of approaches to increase their children’s height, spawning hundreds of “growth clinics” that offer growth hormone shots, Eastern herbal medicine and special exercises to ensure that young clients will be the ones looking down, not the ones looked down upon.

“In our society, it’s all about looks,” said Ms. Seo, 35. “I’m afraid my daughter is shorter than her peers. I don’t want her to be ridiculed and lose self-confidence because of her height.”

Ms. Seo spends $770 a month on treatments for her daughter and her 4-year-old son at one such clinic, Hamsoa, which has 50 branches across the country, where the protocol includes acupuncture, aromatherapy and a twice-a-day tonic that contains deer antler, ginseng and other medicinal herbs.

“Parents would rather add 10 centimeters to their children’s stature than bequeath them one billion won,” said Dr. Shin Dong-gil, a Hamsoa doctor. “If you think of a child as a tree, what we try to do here is to provide it with the right soil, the right wind, the right sunshine to help it grow. We help kids regain their appetite, sleep well and stay fit so they can grow better.”

Koreans used to value what was perceived as a grittiness on the part of shorter people, reflected in the saying, “A smaller pepper is hotter, ” and in honors to the late South Korean strongman Park Chung-hee and, further afield, Napoleon. In North Korea, the feared and revered leader Kim Jong-il is just 5-foot-5 (or less — he adds inches with elevator shoes and bouffant hairstyle).

But shortness is most definitely out now, in part thanks to the media inundation of Western models of beauty and success. “Nowadays, children scoff if you mention Napoleon and Park Chung-hee,” said Park Ki-won, head of the Seojung growth clinic. “On TV, all young pop idols are tall. Given our society’s strong tendency to fit into the group and follow the trend, being short is a problem. Short kids are ostracized.”

Vitamins billed as growth enhancers have become big sellers, and newspapers and shops near schools advertise shoes with hidden lifts that give the wearer an extra inch or two.

Concerns about the trend are growing too, with some groups warning that growth clinics, while operating within the limits of the law, promise far more than the evidence supports.

Yoon Myoung, a top researcher at Consumers Korea, a civic group that, with the help of scientists, has been investigating the spread of the clinics and their marketing methods said parents should be more skeptical.

“There is no clinical proof or other evidence that these treatments really work,” Ms. Yoon. “They use exaggerated and deceptive ads to lure parents. But Korean families often have only one child and want to do whatever they can for that child. “

Even some of the clinics express concern over the level of expectation parents can have. Dr. Park Seung-man, the head of a growth clinic called Highki, said, “There is a gap between how tall children can grow and how tall their mothers want them to become.”

Last month, the simmering discomfort over the new trend exploded after a college student put the new feeling into words on a television talk show.

“Being tall means being competitive,” said a so-called “campus queen, ”Lee Do-kyong of Hongik University in Seoul . “I think short guys are losers.”

She added: “President Sarkozy of France is constantly mocked for being shorter than first lady Carla Bruni. It seems universal that short men are made fun of.”

Bloggers vilified her and lawmakers denounced the station, KBS-TV, for not editing out her comments. Some viewers filed lawsuits for defamation. Ms. Lee was forced to apologize, and the government’s Communications Standards Commission ordered the station to reprimand the show’s producers for “violating human rights” and “stoking the ‘looks-are-everything’ phenomenon.”

“She simply said what everyone thinks but doesn’t dare say in public,” said Dr. Kim Yang-soo, head of a growth clinic called Kiness. “Here, if you change your height, you can change your fate.”

At Kiness, Kim Se-hyun, a fifth-grader, walked on a treadmill with her torso encased in a harness suspended from an overhead steel bar. The contraption, the clinic maintains, will stretch her spine and let her exercise with less pressure on her legs.

Nearby, sweat rolling off Lee Dong-hyun, 13, as he pedaled a recumbent bicycle while reading a comic book. Behind him, his sister, Chae-won, the shortest girl in her first-grade class, stretched to touch her toes on a blue yoga mat, squealing as an instructor pushed down against her back.

Two years ago, their mother, Yoon Ji-young, had tried something more radical. She gave Dong-hyun growth hormone shots six days a week, at a cost of $850 a month.

She stopped after eight months, fearing side effects. Now she drives her children to Kiness three times a week and monitors their exercise for two hours. .“Both my husband and I are short,” said Ms. Yoon, 31, who is about 5 feet tall. “I don’t want my children to blame us for being short when they grow up.”

Chang Young-hee, 54 and 4-foot-10, was waiting for her son to finish a session at Kiness. She said her children had already experienced height discrimination. Both her daughters are college graduates and have good jobs, but when they reached marrying age, matchmakers regarded their short stature as a defect. (Both eventually did marry.)

“It felt like a blow to the head,” Ms. Chang said. “I learned a lesson. If you fall behind in your studies, you can catch up later. But if you miss the time to grow, you miss it forever.”

So for four years, she has been taking her youngest child, Seo Dong-joon, to Kiness. The boy, now 15, knows his goal.

“If I’m tall, I’ll have an advantage selecting my future wife,” he said, holding an English vocabulary book, which he studies while exercising. “Short guys are teased at school.”

South Koreans have been growing taller anyway, thanks to changes in diet. Over the past 30 years the average height of male high school seniors in South Korea has increased 3.5 inches, to 5-feet-8, according to government data. The average for their female counterparts grew 2 inches, to 5-feet-3.

Doctors at the growth clinics say that most children simply aspire to the new average height, but with more tall teenagers, those who are not as tall seem even shorter . “The gap between tall and short has become more pronounced,” said Dr. Park of Seojung, who recently opened 36 joint-venture growth clinics in China and says the quest to become taller is regionwide.

If so, one country that has been left behind is North Korea. Food shortages there have left children stunted, according to the United Nations and private relief agencies Dr. Park cited the case of a 16-year-old who fled North Korea last July to join his mother, who had arrived in the South three years earlier. The boy was 5 feet tall, almost 4 inches below the South Korean average.

“His height wasn’t unusual for the North,” Dr. Park said. “But when his mother saw him again, she cried because the boy hadn’t grown at all and because she knew the disadvantages he’d face here.”

“My dream is to open growth clinics in North Korea,” Dr. Park said, “so that, once we unify, children from both sides will be able to stand shoulder to shoulder, not with one side a head taller than the other.”

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Rough Ride for Hatoyama After Landslide Election

December 23, 2009

By HIROKO TABUCHI

TOKYO — A growing deficit, a spat with Washington, a campaign finance investigation and broken promises: Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s first 100 days in office in Japan have been anything but smooth.

Four months after a landslide election swept aside a half-century of virtual one-party rule, Mr. Hatoyama’s agenda for a new Japan is under threat amid policy missteps and the harsh realities facing Japan, which has the world’s second-largest economy. Further complicating his work is a vocal fringe party in his coalition that is at odds with Mr. Hatoyama over government spending plans and debt levels.

“Mr. Hatoyama needs to regain control. He is letting the tail wag the dog,” said Noriko Hama, professor of economics at the Doshisha Graduate School of Business in Kyoto. “Japan’s economy could backslide.”

Mr. Hatoyama’s Democratic Party rode to power on a promise to end pork-barrel spending on public works projects championed by the long-ruling Liberal Democrats and divert the money to tax cuts and handouts that would bolster household incomes.

In recent weeks, a government task force has staged a public review of proposed government spending for the next fiscal year, cutting budgets and demanding that projects that are not urgent be postponed or abolished.

But those cuts came to less than a fourth of the government’s target of $32.8 billion — too little to make a dent in a burgeoning budget packed with stimulus measures to drive spending and bolster employment after the country’s worst recession since World War II.

The lack of progress on budget-cutting has fed jitters over the sustainability of Japan’s public debt, which is approaching twice its gross domestic product. Analysts say the government is likely to go well beyond a limit of $480 billion, it has set for next year.

Finance Minister Hirohisa Fujii reiterated Tuesday that the government would stick to that target. “The ¥44 trillion is a promise Prime Minister Hatoyama made to the public,” he said.

But tight finances forced Mr. Hatoyama to renege this week on a pledge to abolish a tax on gasoline. The government has also backtracked on a promise to eliminate highway tolls, though it vows to keep other parts of its campaign manifesto, like offering cash handouts to families raising children.

“The public understands that finances are tight,” Mr. Hatoyama told reporters Tuesday, after apologizing for going back on his word. “I am sure the public wishes for the money to be put to work to help stimulate the economy.”

Though the public has been largely patient with Mr. Hatoyama, his popularity has started to slide. Approval ratings for his government skidded to 48 percent from a post-election high of 71 percent in a weekend survey by the Asahi Shimbun newspaper.

Mr. Hatoyama’s approval ratings began to drop after he waffled on whether to renegotiate a 2006 deal to relocate a United States air base on the island of Okinawa.

The leader has also become embroiled in a campaign finance scandal involving $4 million in donations that prosecutors say were improperly reported. He told prosecutors this week in a written statement that he had no knowledge of the money, which Japanese newspapers said may have been contributions from his wealthy family disguised as donations.

At the heart of Mr. Hatoyama’s troubles, however, is Japan’s faltering economy. Although the country technically emerged from recession earlier this year, it remains mired in a deflationary cycle of falling prices, profits, wages and spending. A sustained rise in the value of the yen has also hurt the export-dependent economy. The government has pressed Japan’s central bank to flood financial markets with money to to spur the economy, but with limited results.

As the economy has floundered, tax revenue has dried up. Mr. Fujii has said he expected tax receipts for the year ending in March to come to a 25-year low of just over $400 billion, or $100 billion less than an initial estimate. That is also less than the government’s deficit for the current fiscal year — almost $590 billion.

The shortfall is sending the government scrambling to secure resources any way it can to keep from adding to its debt. Keeping the gasoline surcharge will bring in about $27 billion, economists say. The Hatoyama administration also decided Tuesday to raise Japan’s tobacco tax by a few cents per cigarette beginning Oct. 1, Bloomberg News reported.

In the meantime, an uneasy alliance with a fringe party is threatening to send budgets even higher. At the heart of the matter is Shizuka Kamei, banking minister and head of the tiny but strategically important People’s New Party.

Last month, Mr. Kamei fought successfully for a much-larger-than-planned $78 billion supplementary budget for the current fiscal year.

A former Liberal Democrat with strong ties to the construction industry, Mr. Kamei has been vocal in calling for a return to public works, raising fears in some circles that Japan could unleash projects on a country already chock-full of dams and roads.

“Coalition governments are prone to running up budget deficits,” Ryutaro Kono, a Tokyo-based economist at BNP Paribas, warned in a recent note. “There is an incentive for each coalition member to get their pet programs approved to highlight their profile.”

Moreover, Mr. Kamei has led the charge to freeze the privatization of the state-run postal savings bank, which has long been accused of squandering domestic savings. That would undo years of reforms introduced by the Liberal Democrats themselves to resuscitate Japan’s long-stagnant economy.

Mr. Hatoyama’s government is eager to show progress on Japan’s economy as his government faces its first test at the polls in mid-2010, when voters will choose members of the upper house of Parliament.

“Mr. Hatoyama is trying to bring about change, yet he faces resistance from within his own camp,” Professor Hama of Doshisha said. “If Mr. Hatoyama isn’t careful, Japan will find itself back in the dark old days.”

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Restaurant Review: Star Bar Ginza in Tokyo

December 20, 2009

By PAT RYAN

Service at the calm and cozy hideaway Star Bar Ginza, which opened in 2000, is friendly, but don’t be deceived: there are few bars that take their craft more seriously. You might call Hisashi Kishi, the owner (below), the Einstein of bartenders; he is the director of technical research for the Nippon Bartenders Association (he writes recipes for their official cocktail book), a former International Bar Association world champion and the youngest-ever winner of the national Scotch cocktail competition. (A former Star Bar bartender, Hidetsugu Ueno, is the international director of the bartenders association and has opened Bar High Five nearby, at 4F No. 26 Polestar Building, 7-2-14 Ginza.)

Take Mr. Kishi’s signature cocktail, the Sidecar. His method is simple yet scientific: he froths the Cognac and triple sec together to blend and soften the ingredients and elicit the aromas. Next, as Mr. Ueno described it, comes “Kishi’s own style of hard shake,” a series of short, vigorous figure-eight movements. And if you ask for ice in your cocktail, expect one large, perfectly hand-carved ice cube, crystal-clear and glossy; it chills the drink without melting too fast. (At the end of the bar, near a dry-cured leg of ham, is a magazine, published by Junpyo, the Japanese Icemakers Union, which features a photo of Mr. Kishi.)

But Mr. Kishi doesn’t just refine the classics. He will happily concoct an extempore cocktail that fits your mood — a sweet-tart drink built on fresh passion fruit perhaps? Something with a honey pomelo or a mango peach? (When translation is needed, the assistant bartender, Ito Daisuke, is quick to interpret.)

The same divine attention to detail is at the core of the edibles at Star Bar. Snacks vary nightly, but they might include swirled florets of cheese, salmon mousse on featherweight crackers or tiny salted soy nuts. A favored sliced cheese is the cow’s milk brand from Yoshida Farm in Okayama Prefecture.

Star Bar, Sankosha Building B1F, 1-5-13 Ginza, Chuo-ku, Tokyo; 81-3-3535-8005; starbar.jp. Open Monday to Friday, 6 p.m. to 2 a.m.; Saturday, 6 p.m. to midnight. Cocktails are around 1,500 yen, or $17 at 88 yen to the dollar; food prices range from around 500 to 2,200 yen; and the cover charge is 1,000 yen a person. No reservations, and the place is seating-only.

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Baby Boom of Mixed Children Tests South Korea

November 29, 2009

By MARTIN FACKLER

YEONGGWANG, South Korea — Just a few years ago, the number of pregnant women in this city had declined so much that the sparsely equipped two-room maternity ward at Yeonggwang General Hospital was close to shutting down. But these days it is busy again.

More surprising than the fact of this miniature baby-boom is its composition: children of mixed ethnic backgrounds, the offspring of Korean fathers and mothers from China, Vietnam and other parts of Asia. These families have suddenly become so numerous that the nurses say they have had to learn how to say “push” in four languages.

It is a similar story across South Korea, where hundreds of thousands of foreign women have been immigrating in recent years, often in marriages arranged by brokers. They have been making up for a shortage of eligible Korean women, particularly in underdeveloped rural areas like this one in the nation’s southwest.

Now, these unions are bearing large numbers of mixed children, confronting this proudly homogeneous nation with the difficult challenge of smoothly absorbing them.

South Korea is generally more open to ethnic diversity than other Asian nations with relatively small minority populations, like neighboring Japan. Nevertheless, it is far from welcoming to these children, who are widely known here pejoratively as Kosians, a compound of Korean and Asian.

“We bring these children into the world, but sometimes I worry,” said Kwak Ock-ja, 48, head maternity nurse at Yeonggwang General, where a third of the 132 births so far this year have been of children of mixed background, up from almost none a decade ago. “Prejudice against these families is something society must resolve.”

The surge in births of mixed children is the product of the similarly explosive growth here in marriages to foreigners, as a surplus of bachelors and the movement of eligible women to big cities like Seoul have increasingly driven Korean men in rural areas to seek brides in poorer parts of Asia. In addition, a preference for male babies has helped skew the population so there are fewer native-born women to marry. The Ministry of Public Security says the total number of children from what are called multicultural families in South Korea rose to 107,689 in May of this year from 58,007 last December, though the ministry said it might have slightly undercounted last year.

That is only about 1 percent of the approximately 12 million children in South Korea under the age of 19. But if marriages to foreigners continue to increase at their current rate — they accounted for 11 percent of all marriages here last year — more than one in nine children could be of mixed background by 2020, demographic researchers say.

The trend is even more pronounced in rural areas, where most of these marriages take place. Among farming households, 49 percent of all children will be multicultural by 2020, according to the Agricultural Ministry.

This increase is coming as South Korea’s overall birthrate has fallen to about 1.22 children per woman of child-bearing age, one of the world’s lowest rates. While many Koreans say they hope that the rising number of mixed children will help rejuvenate their rapidly graying society, they also say they fear that a failure to assimilate them could create the sort of poor, alienated underclass of ethnic minorities they see in the United States and Europe.

The increase has also begun to prompt a national soul-searching here about what it means to be Korean. While most of these children have Korean fathers and Korean citizenship, their dual ethnicity still gives them an uncertain status in a society where membership was long seen as being based on blood.

“The hard reality of our low birthrate is forcing us to realize that we can’t be homogeneous anymore,” said Park Hwa-seo, a professor of migration studies at Myongji University in Seoul. “It isn’t easy, but there is no turning back but to embrace these more diverse families.”

The increase of mixed-background children is so recent that relatively few have even reached elementary-school age. Still, signs of strain are already appearing.

According to the Education Ministry, the dropout rate of mixed-background children from elementary school is 15.4 percent, 22 times the national average. Part of the problem, social experts say, is the mothers’ lack of Korean-language skills, which prevents them from filling the expected social role of guiding children through the nation’s high-pressure education system.

Compounding the risk is the fact that most of the foreign women marry older farmers or manual laborers. Some 53 percent of mixed families live on earnings at or below the national minimum hourly wage of 4,000 won, or less than $3.50, according to the Welfare Ministry.

However, social experts say the biggest threat to the mixed children is that they will be ostracized in a society that began grappling with ethnic diversity only when labor shortages forced South Korea to accept foreign workers in the 1990s. The risk has been underscored by recent studies showing that the children of mixed marriages are more likely to be the victims of domestic abuse or bullying in school.

“I’m afraid we are already too late in responding,” said Suh Hae-jung, a researcher on gender equality at the government-financed Gyeonggido Family and Women’s Research Institute in Suwon. “On top of getting slighted for their color, their learning is also falling behind.”

Such concerns are quietly felt by Vicky Merano, 29, who came here from the Philippines six years ago to marry a Korean rice farmer 18 years her elder. Their 5-year-old daughter, Kim Da-som, does well in a local kindergarten, and on a recent evening she proudly showed off her ability to read the Korean language’s script and several Chinese characters.

Her father, Kim Hee-jong, beamed with pride and said that his relatives accepted the girl, including his parents, who share their 80-year-old tile-roofed farmhouse. Ms. Merano agreed but said she worried about what might happen as Da-som advanced beyond elementary school.

“Maybe if they don’t see me, they’ll just think my daughter is Korean,” Ms. Merano said.

The South Korean government says it has tried to respond quickly, opening 119 multicultural family support centers across the country in the past three years to offer help in education and vocational training.

The one in Yeonggwang, a small provincial city of 57,000 residents, opened in January. On a recent afternoon, its four small rooms were filled with Chinese, Thai and Filipino women learning to use computers and sewing machines while staff members watched their young children. Teachers also offered Korean-language classes to the mothers and children.

One woman, Edna Dela Cruz, said she preferred raising a family here because South Korea had better schools and a higher standard of living than the Philippines, where she was born. But she also worries about her 6-year-old son, who wants her to speak to him only in Korean so his classmates will not treat him as a pariah.

“Koreans tell me my child will be insulted because of me,” said Ms. Dela Cruz, 33, who married a local farmer.

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Doubts Grow in Japan About Premier Amid Money Scandal

December 19, 2009

By MARTIN FACKLER

TOKYO — Japan’s prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, will soon offer written testimony to prosecutors saying that he had no direct role in a campaign finance scandal that has dogged his fledgling government, according to Japanese newspapers. But while he is widely expected to survive the scandal, analysts say it has helped feed doubts among some voters about his leadership.

There is now talk in Tokyo that voters may be showing signs of cooling toward Mr. Hatoyama’s government, which swept into power three months ago with pledges for fundamental change in Japan’s postwar order. While Mr. Hatoyama’s approval ratings remain high, they are starting to slip amid growing questions about his leadership and his ability to manage this long-stagnant nation, analysts said.

“Every day, he seems to say and do something different,” said Minoru Morita, a political commentator who runs an independent research organization in Tokyo. “This is starting to shake the people’s confidence in him.”

Most voters still appeared to be willing to give Mr. Hatoyama and his Democratic Party more time to deliver on their promises to rein in the powerful bureaucracy and build a more consumer-focused economy. But political experts warned that a failure to show results in crucial areas like reviving Japan’s moribund job market could lead to a rapid erosion of support.

At first, voters seemed not to be much bothered by the financial scandal because much of the money came from Mr. Hatoyama or his mother, a wealthy heiress. But now, analysts say, it is precisely that explanation that is starting to cool public opinion of the prime minister. By highlighting the considerable wealth of his family, the scandal is starting to raise doubts about how in touch he is with the worsening economic plight of average Japanese.

According to reports in Japanese newspapers, Mr. Hatoyama will soon deliver a written statement to Tokyo prosecutors in which he will deny knowledge of some $4 million in donations that prosecutors say were improperly reported, sometimes in the names of dead people. The reports say he will also tell prosecutors that he did not know of millions of dollars more that his group received from his mother. Mr. Hatoyama’s office said it had no knowledge of the statement.

The reports said that prosecutors were considering whether to charge one of Mr. Hatoyama’s former political secretaries for misreporting the funds, but that they would not charge the prime minister with a crime.

Still, just the fact that Mr. Hatoyama could get mired in such a campaign finance scandal has already hurt his credibility as a reformer, analysts say.

Polls show that Mr. Hatoyama’s approval ratings are slipping from their highs of more than 70 percent after he took office in September. A poll released Monday by Japan’s national public broadcasting corporation, NHK, found that 56 percent of 1,111 voters questioned by telephone from Dec. 11 to 13 said they approved of him, with 34 percent saying they did not approve. The poll gave no margin of error, as is customary here.

The credibility of Mr. Hatoyama’s government suffered another blow this week when members of his Democratic Party decided to shelve plans to eliminate an unpopular tax on gasoline. The party said the money was needed to help offset Japan’s soaring national debt.

In recent weeks, major newspapers and magazines have pilloried Mr. Hatoyama for inconsistent comments on whether to renegotiate a 2006 deal to relocate an American air base on Okinawa. Criticisms reached a new pitch after Mr. Hatoyama decided Tuesday to postpone indefinitely a decision on the base.

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Japan Delays Decision on Moving U.S. Marine Base

December 16, 2009

By MARTIN FACKLER

TOKYO — Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s postponement of a decision on relocating an American military base on Okinawa may be the product of domestic political considerations as much as deeply held foreign policy principles, analysts here said on Tuesday. But it promises to put new pressures on Japan’s already strained ties with the United States, its closest ally.

The Obama administration had pressed Mr. Hatoyama’s government to make a quick decision on whether to carry out a 2006 agreement between Washington and Tokyo to relocate the base, Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, to a less populated part of Okinawa. On Tuesday, however, he announced that he would put off that decision until sometime next year, saying that members of his governing coalition would set up a working group to discuss the current plan and other possible sites for the base.

On Tuesday evening, Mr. Hatoyama seemed to suggest that he wanted a new site for the base, something that the Obama administration has resisted.

“I want to make a situation where we can search for a place other than Henoko, and if possible select it,” Mr. Hatoyama told reporters, referring to the site of another base on Okinawa, Camp Schwab.

The row over the base has underscored the Obama administration’s difficulties in finding common ground with Mr. Hatoyama’s slightly left-leaning Democratic Party government, which ended a half-century of governing by the pro-American Liberal Democrats when it came to power in September. Mr. Hatoyama has also seemed to pull away from Washington by allowing the Japanese Navy’s mission of refueling American warships in the Indian Ocean to end and telling Asian leaders that Japan has been overly reliant on the United States.

Another challenge for Washington, analysts say, has been a lack of clarity in Mr. Hatoyama’s stance. While he has called for ending Japan’s junior status, he has also stressed that the alliance with Washington remains the cornerstone of Japan’s security. Key members of his cabinet, like Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada, are seen as centrists who favor solid ties with the United States.

The inconsistencies to some extent reflect internal political pressures, analysts say, as two small leftist parties in Mr. Hatoyama’s coalition — whose votes he needs to pass bills in Parliament’s upper house — press him to honor campaign promises to move the Futenma base off Okinawa or out of Japan.

In this line of thinking, the postponement was probably meant to buy time as Mr. Hatoyama looks for some middle ground or prepares to make a tough choice between Washington and his domestic allies. But the analysts warned that the delay could further irritate American officials, who have sought a quick decision on the base’s relocation.

Some of that irritation was evident in remarks by Gen. James T. Conway, the Marine Corps commandant, who told reporters in Washington on Tuesday that the delay could complicate plans to move the base.

“If that is their decision, then I think it’s unfortunate in terms of what we’re attempting to plan on our end,” General Conway said, according to Reuters.

Policy experts here said the United States had little choice but to put up with the delay. “It is up to the Obama administration now to decide whether it can endure for a few more months,” said Hiroshi Nakanishi, a professor of international relations at Kyoto University. “Otherwise, United States-Japan relations could get to their worst point in the postwar alliance.”

On Tuesday, Mr. Hatoyama did not say when he would make a final decision, but suggested that he wanted to do so as quickly as possible. He also said he wanted to reconvene a bilateral working group to discuss the base relocation issue. Tokyo suspended the discussions last week.

Mr. Hatoyama left open the possibility that Tokyo would still honor the 2006 agreement, which calls for relocating the Futenma air base from its current site in the city of Ginowan to Camp Schwab, a Marine base in the island’s north. Japanese news reports said the government was still including the costs of relocating the base to Camp Schwab in next year’s budget as it considered other locations.

Mr. Nakanishi and other analysts said the delay also risked alienating Japanese voters by raising doubts about Mr. Hatoyama’s leadership, as well as his ability to handle the crucial relationship with the United States. They say Japanese political opinion opposes significant changes in the Washington alliance as Japan faces a rising China and a nuclear-armed North Korea.

Some analysts have warned that the delay will only make a difficult political decision even harder for Mr. Hatoyama. In January, the city of Nago, where Camp Schwab is located, will hold a mayoral election. The leading candidate has vowed to reverse the city’s decision to accept the air base, making it harder to go back to the 2006 agreement.

Mr. Hatoyama has sought to answer calls from Okinawans to lighten the burden of American forces on their island, where many of the 50,000 American military personnel in Japan are based. But the Obama administration has asked that the 2006 deal not be changed, because doing so could fray a larger, more complex agreement to relocate 8,000 Marines from Okinawa to Guam by 2014.

Political analysts say Mr. Hatoyama has few realistic options for locating the base besides Camp Schwab. That has led some analysts to wonder whether he may ultimately agree to the original location, but only after first making a show of resisting Washington.

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

At Japanese Cliffs, a Campaign to Combat Suicide

December 18, 2009

By MARTIN FACKLER

SAKAI, Japan — The towering cliffs of Tojimbo, with their sheer drops into the raging, green Sea of Japan, are a top tourist destination, but Yukio Shige had no interest in the rugged scenery. Instead, he walked along the rocky crags searching for something else: a lone human figure, usually sitting hunched at the edge of the precipice.

That is one of the telltale signs in people drawn here by Tojimbo’s other, less glorious, distinction as one of the best known places to kill oneself in Japan, one of the world’s most suicide-prone nations. Mr. Shige, a 65-year-old former policeman, has spent his five years since retirement on a mission to stop those who come here from jumping.

His efforts have helped draw attention to the grim fact that Japan’s suicide rate is again on the rise. Police figures show that the number of suicides this year could approach the country’s record high of 34,427, reached in 2003, almost 95 suicides a day. The World Health Organization says that people in Japan are now almost three times as likely to kill themselves as are Americans.

Mr. Shige and a group of volunteers he put together have saved 222 people so far, a tally that has made Mr. Shige a national figure in a country that often seems apathetic about its high rate of self-destruction. But he has also met with criticism from a conformist society that can look dimly on people who draw attention by engaging in activism, even of the most humanitarian kind.

“In Japan, we say the nail that sticks up gets hammered down,” said Mr. Shige, who says he started the patrols after he grew angry at inaction by local authorities. “But I’ll keep sticking up. I tell them, hit me if you can!”

In part, public health experts blame Japan’s romanticized image of suicide as an honorable escape, going back to ritual self-disembowelment by medieval samurai, for the high suicide rate. But the main cause, they say, is the nation’s long economic decline. Suicides first surged to their recent high levels in 1998, when traditional lifetime employment guarantees began to vanish, and they have remained high as salaries and job security continued to erode.

The situation has worsened during the recent global financial crisis, which is driving this year’s increase, experts say. While Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, in his first policy speech in October, referred to Japan’s suicide rate in calling for “mutual support” among Japanese, experts say the government’s limited steps to deal with suicide have made little difference.

While preventing suicides is a universally difficult task, it is particularly challenging in Japan. Depression remains a taboo topic here, making it hard for those most at risk to seek the help of family and friends. Many Japanese view suicide as an issue of private choice rather than public health, and there are few efforts to highlight the problem.

“Americans raise awareness with grass-roots action, but Japanese just wait for the government to take care of them,” said Yoshitomo Takahashi, a professor of behavioral science who researches suicide at the National Defense Medical College in Tokorozawa, Japan.

Officials in Sakai, the small city in Fukui Prefecture, where Tojimbo is located, have installed outdoor lighting at the cliffs along with two pay phones and plenty of the 10-yen coins needed to dial up the national suicide hot line.

Nevertheless, city officials call this the grimmest year on record, with the police saying they know of more than 140 people who came here intending to commit suicide, twice the average in recent years. Most of them were stopped by the police or nearby tourists, or decided not to jump for other reasons, the police say.

The police figure does not include the 54 people this year whom Mr. Shige says he and his group have stopped. City officials credit Mr. Shige with helping keep the number of deaths here down to 13 so far this year, about the same as the 15 suicides last year.

Mr. Shige says his approach to stopping suicides is quite simple: when he finds a likely person, he walks up and gently begins a conversation. The person, usually a man, quickly breaks down in tears, happy to find someone to listen to his problems.

“They are just sitting there, alone, hoping someone will talk to them,” Mr. Shige said.

As an officer stationed at Tojimbo at the end of his 42-year career, he said he was appalled by all the bodies he had to pluck out of the sea. He said he once stopped an elderly couple from Tokyo from jumping and turned them over to city officials who he said gave them money and told them to buy a ticket to the next town. Days later he received a letter from the couple, mailed just before they committed suicide in a neighboring prefecture.

“The authorities’ coldness outraged me,” said Mr. Shige, whose cellphone rings to the tune of “Amazing Grace,” though he is not religious. He now has 77 volunteers patrolling the cliffs and providing food, lodging and assistance in finding work to those it helps. He said they tried to patrol two or three times a day.

On a recent afternoon, Mr. Shige checked three of the most popular sites for jumpers — all with drops of at least 70 feet. He said the loners were easy to spot because most visitors moved in groups behind flag-waving guides. Speaking through bullhorns, the guides loudly describe the morbid fame of the cliffs, which were named for an evil Buddhist monk who was said to have fallen to his death there.

One of those whom Mr. Shige stopped was Yutaka Yamaoka, 29, a factory worker who tried to commit suicide last year after being laid off. Mr. Yamaoka visited Mr. Shige’s tiny office by the cliffs on a recent day to thank him and tell him that he had found a job.

When Mr. Shige found him last year, Mr. Yamaoka said, he was sitting silently near the cliffs clutching his knees. He said Mr. Shige spoke with him for two hours, then allowed him to stay in an apartment rent free for a month until he felt better.

“I felt saved. I felt I could live,” recalled Mr. Yamaoka, who spoke haltingly in a barely audible voice. “My feelings of panic and unease just built up. I had no one to talk with.”

Mr. Shige’s efforts have stirred local resentment, particularly from a local tourist association that says his activities are bad for business. But Mr. Shige is not easily deterred.

“I will continue until the government finally gets its act together and takes over,” he said. “I can’t let their inaction cost another precious life.”

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Chinese Author Pens 'A Good Fall'

December 21, 2009

Guest host Jacki Lyden speaks with author Ha Jin, who writes about the Chinese experience in his new book of short stories A Good Fall. Ha Jin sets his stories in Flushing, New York. The area is home to one of New York's largest Chinese immigrant communities.

TRANSCRIPT

LYDEN: This is TELL ME MORE from NPR News. Michel Martin is away. I'm Jacki Lyden.

Coming up, renowned poet Nikki Giovanni tells us what music she's been listening to lately in our occasional series In Your Ear.

But first, an author who focuses his attention on the Chinese immigrant experience. Ha Jin knows a few things about immigrating to America. In 1985, he left his native China to attend Brandeis University. As a writer, Ha Jin has kept a literary eye trained on China. He's taken the Chinese experience and rendered it for American readers.

Ha Jin's new book of short stories, "A Good Fall," is set in one of the most American of cities, New York. Flushing, Queens, is home to one of New York's largest Chinese immigrant communities. In painting the portrait of this slice of society, Jin considers many generational perspectives in characters who are trying to discover their place in America. Ha Jin joins us from our member station WBUR in Boston. Thank you so much for being a part of our show today.

Mr. HA JIN (Author, �A Good Fall�): Thank you, very happy to be here.

LYDEN: You know, I have been your fan for years, and I spoke with you a couple of years ago about your book, "A Free Life." And this was a novel about a young man who flees communist China in the 1980s, and he comes to the United States to study political science. And Nan Wu(ph), the protagonist of this book, has been dreaming of this freedom. He reads poems, and it was lovely to learn that these were poems that you actually wrote in this really lengthy, over-600-page book. So might I just go back to a lesson, to that classic immigrant dream of freedom that these poems embody?

Mr. JIN: (Reading) You must go to a country without borders, where you can build your home out of garlands of words, where broad leaves shade familiar faces that no longer change in wind and the rain. There's no morning or evening, no cries of joy or pain. Every canyon is drenched in the light of serenity. You must go there quietly, leave behind what you still cherish.

LYDEN: So what I love about this is the whole notion of building your home out of gallons of words. And that's kind of what you have tried to do for these characters because there's so much tension between cultures in this collection of stories, between each other, between their dreams and expectations, between the desire to assimilate and the really hard task of forgoing heritage, which is in a way impossible, isn't it?

Mr. JIN: Yes, big struggle for everyone. I think, in essence, main character in this book is in the struggle of looking for home, the first generation of immigrants. That's why it's very hard for them to feel at home. So that is very difficult. Even if they have a place to stay, but they don't have the feeling of being home.

LYDEN: Right, and of course, the way that the new world collides with the old can be as slight and yet somehow tethered as the Internet. The collection begins with a story that takes place between two sisters over the Internet and then goes into what happens when people really move in to the immigrant's home. Tell me about the characters in �The Crossfire.�

Mr. JIN: Oh, sure. The mother in that story can be somebody, a messenger from the native land. So the values are different and so, in that case, I think the clashes between the two places, the old land and the new place, become intensified. There was no way to reconcile.

LYDEN: This is the story in which the character - am I pronouncing it right, Tian Tzu(ph)?

Mr. JIN: Yes.

LYDEN: His mother has decided to come for an extended stay from China, and has decided that his wife, Connie, is completely wrong for him because she won't cook.

Mr. JIN: Yeah. It's an old story. I think I have a lot of Jewish friends that will say the same thing and the mother-in-law will say no woman is good enough for her son. That's an old story. But in this situation like this, it becomes more manifested.

LYDEN: This all comes to a head in this family at this really tense dinner. The husband, the moment he got home he went into the kitchen. He was going to cook a spinach soup, steam the eggplant and fry the flounder. As he was gouging out the gill of the fish, his mother stepped in. Could you pick it up from there?

Mr. JIN: Let me give you a hand, she said. I can manage. This is easy, he smiled, cutting the fish's fins and tail with a large scissor. You never cook back home. She starred at him, her eyes glinting. What's the good of standing six feet tall if you can't handle a small woman like Connie, she often said. In fact, he was 5 foot 10.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. JIN: He nudge each side of (unintelligible) with his knuckle. Mom, the American husband and wife both cook, whoever has the time. Connie is swamped with school work these days, so I do more household chores. This is natural. No, it's not. You were never like this before. Why did you marry her in the first place if she wouldn't take care of you?

LYDEN: You know, who wouldn't just love having a relative visit like that?

Mr. JIN: That I think, again is a normal - a lot of the details, in fact, I read them in newspapers, Internet. And most of them, the complaints always came from women. I never heard a man speak about these things, that's why I got idea of what if the story was told by a man?

LYDEN: And he becomes desperate to restore tranquility in the house. And without completely giving it away, can you talk about the measures to which he's willing to go.

Mr. JIN: He has to surprise or shock his mother with wrong piece of information that he have no job anymore. So as the result, she believe that he was totally bankrupt. So I think that's, again, there is based upon misconception, a misunderstanding because most people in the native lands would believe that the new immigrants could pick up cash right and left, and everybody would be rich, and it was nothing like that at all.

LYDEN: What is it about Flushing, Queens that made it the natural setting for this collection of stories?

Mr. JIN: Flushing is the second biggest Chinatown in New York City. It also is inhabited by most recent arrivals. Not only Chinese, they are lot of Koreans and European immigrants as well, so it is a vibrant place. And, in fact, in the beginning of 2005, I was invited to a conference out in the center of Flushing. I was very touched by the scenes on the streets, so that's why I decided to set all the stories in that place.

LYDEN: If you're just joining us, I'm Jacki Lyden and this is TELL ME MORE from NPR News. I'm talking with the author Ha Jin about his new short story collection "A Good Fall."

Mr. Ha Jin, I'd liked to ask, I have read very lengthy books of yours that cover a lot of geography...

Mr. JIN: Mm-hmm.

LYDEN: �War Trash,� of course, �Waiting� and �A Free Life.� This is a compressed piece. This is like, instead of a big canvas painting, a really compressed small mosaic. Why did you decide you wanted to do short stories?

Mr. JIN: I do feel that in fact I'm a better short story writer.

LYDEN: You feel that way?

Mr. JIN: Yeah, I feel that way. Before this, I'd written three volumes of short stories. Each book was set in one place, basically. They are all, not linked stories but they are unified stories for a book. So this book, in a way, follow the same thing I had been doing. Short stories are closer to poetry, so very often one has to compress the stories in order to make it more concise and more poetic in that sense.

LYDEN: It's always fun to - when one reads your work to wonder how much of, in your case I do this perhaps more than with other authors, how much of your own biographical experience is in it. I mean, you set a lot of these stories in the 1980s. You wrote your first novel or short story in English I believe in the mid-1980s, right?

Mr. JIN: Yes.

LYDEN: And then there was the story that we have in here which you call "Shame," again, the generational divide between the old and young. A young man is working in between terms - young Chinese man, just getting some money in Manhattan. He's going to school out in Wisconsin and a professor from China, his old professor comes to visit and asks him, how much money are you making?

Mr. JIN: Mm-hmm.

LYDEN: And he's so impressed. This guy's just a garment industry worker.

Mr. JIN: Yes. That again, a common story. But it was not autobiographical. I never worked in New York at all. Really it was different. But again, lot of the details were factual. That was also common when two people met, one of them from the native land would ask how much you make. That was very common. One thing in that episode, in that story was very true, a teacher of mine went to -came to visit the United States and stayed in the Chinese consulate. I went to visit him. I was not allowed to enter the consulate.

LYDEN: Really?

Mr. JIN: I was - yes, that was true. From there on I had never set my foot in that building again.

LYDEN: Oh, you haven't? Have they invited you back at all?

Mr. JIN: They invited me but I haven't. I haven't gone to that place.

LYDEN: Why did they tell you that you weren't welcome the last time you tried to go there?

Mr. JIN: Not because of me, all the visitors.

LYDEN: Okay.

Mr. JIN: All the Chinese visitors were just denied access to that building.

LYDEN: In this short story, the professor believes, you know, we're just trying to get at some of how difficult it is to make your way in a new world and bring what you think is important. And there's just one little moment that sort of talks about the divide, in this case not between old and new generations of Chinese people, but the visiting scholar and his American counterpart. The American professor gives the Chinese professor this beautiful book and collection she's written.

Mr. JIN: Yes.

LYDEN: And he gives her something kind of a little I would say, mass-produced?

Mr. JIN: Mah Jong(ph). Yes.

LYDEN: The Mah Jong box.

Mr. JIN: Yeah. Yeah. In fact, that's a shameful moment for the student but the professor couldn't see it.

LYDEN: But the final shame, I think we can say it here in this one, is that the professor doesn't go home. He defects, stays in this guy's apartment and leaves behind him work that was his best work on Hemingway. He was going to call it "Hemingway in China."

Mr. JIN: Yeah. It's a secret project the professor aspired to do. But again, but it was another bigger shame in a way, yes.

LYDEN: Because it really was shoddy.

Mr. JIN: Yes. Again, that was based on a fact. I know of people who did the similar thing. Not exact the same but similar thing.

LYDEN: When people emigrate or come to America, whether they decide to just go to school here and try and stay on or possibly just choose not to return home, what is the hardest jump? Is it letting go of the past or not being able to understand the present?

Mr. JIN: You know, all those are hard. The hardest things are really to face your own life and be able to take that road. That's the hardest part because it's a lonely road very often. Freedom also means uncertainty and a lot of people who grew up in a different kind of a social environment very often can be frightened, intimidated by freedom.

LYDEN: Ha Jin, it has been a real pleasure having you with us.

Mr. JIN: Thank you.

LYDEN: Ha Jin is the author of the new short story collection, "A Good Fall." He joined us from member station WBUR in Boston.

Copyright ©2009 National Public Radio®. All rights reserved.

WTO Says China Unfairly Restricting U.S. Music, Films

December 21, 2009

by The Associated Press

The World Trade Organization's top arbitrators upheld a ruling that China is illegally restricting imports of U.S. music, films and books, and Washington pushed forward with a new case accusing China of manipulating the prices for key ingredients in steel and aluminum production.

Monday's verdict by the WTO's appellate body knocked down China's objections to an August decision that came down decisively against Beijing's policy of forcing American media producers to route their business through state-owned companies.

If China fails over the next year to bring its practices in line with international trade law, the U.S. can ask the WTO to authorize commercial sanctions against Chinese goods.

"Today America got a big win," U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk said in a statement. "U.S. companies and workers are at the cutting edge of these industries, and they deserve a full chance to compete under agreed WTO rules. We expect China to respond promptly to these findings and bring its measures into compliance."

The Asian country's import restrictions have been a key gripe of Western exporters, who complain that China's rapid rise as a trade juggernaut has been aided by unfair policies that boost sales of Chinese goods abroad while limiting the amount of foreign products entering the Chinese market.

The probe initiated Monday by the WTO — at the request of the U.S., Mexico and the 27-nation European Union — focuses on the other half of the equation by examining China's treatment of domestic and foreign manufacturers with regards to its vast wealth of raw materials.

Washington and Brussels claim that China unfairly favors domestic industry by setting export quotas on materials such as coke, bauxite, magnesium and silicon metal. Export quotas are contentious under trade rules because they can cause a glut on the domestic market, driving down prices for local producers, while leading to scarcity and higher prices for competitors abroad.

Beijing, however, claims that the curbs are an effort to protect the environment, and says they comply with WTO rules. For its part, China is challenging U.S. trade rules on a number of issues such as poultry, and asked the WTO at the dispute body meeting Monday for a new investigation into American import taxes on Chinese tires.

Washington delayed the tire probe for another month, but the global trade referee will likely rule in all these disputes over the course of the next year.

Analysts and observers believe these Sino-American trade fights are only the beginning as President Barack Obama's administration will likely file more cases against China. Obama made campaign pledges to take a tougher approach with U.S. trading partners in the face of soaring job losses and the longest U.S. recession since World War II.

Last week, the two countries settled a dispute initiated by the Bush administration in December over subsidies that China allegedly provides to exporters of famous Chinese merchandise. Beijing agreed out-of-court to eliminate the subsidies, according to the office of the U.S. Trade Representative, which will boost the prospects of U.S. exporters of household appliances, textiles, chemicals, medicines and food products.

The media dispute with China focused on a number of complaints raised by the trade associations representing record labels such as EMI and Sony Music Entertainment; publishers including McGraw Hill and Simon & Schuster; and, to a lesser extent, the major Hollywood studios of Warner Bros., Disney, Paramount, Universal and 20th Century Fox.

The WTO made no finding that implies it is illegal for Beijing to review foreign goods for objectionable content. But it said China cannot limit the distribution of U.S. goods to Chinese state-owned companies, and said the Asian country's burdensome restrictions were not "necessary" to protect public morals.

TRAVEL: A holiday gift list for the frequent air traveler

Blankets with sleeves, reading glasses with a built-in light and a convenient scale to weigh luggage are among the ideas that make flying more enjoyable.

December 20, 2009

By Terry Gardner

Until short security lines and turbulence-free skies come gift-wrapped, here are some holiday gifts and a few stocking stuffers that can lessen the stress of your frequent flier. Most cost less than $35.

For help with this list, I consulted Anne Banas, executive editor of SmarterTravel.com, Joe Brancatelli, who produces the JoeSentMe newsletter for business travelers, product developer Phil Baker, consumer writer Christopher Elliott, Matt Daimler of SeatGuru and George Hobica of Airfarewatchdog.

Balanzza Digital Luggage Scale

• What it is: A scale small enough to pack and strong enough to weigh up to 100 pounds. A new ergonomic version moves the digital scale into the grip and is positioned horizontally rather than vertically.
• Benefits: This topped most lists. Even carriers that check a bag or two for free charge you for overweight bags, and once you're at the airport, you can be slapped with hundreds of dollars in excess-weight fees. The Balanzza's flexibility in measuring in pounds or kilograms makes it ideal for the international traveler.
• Cost: $17.75
• Where to buy:Amazon

Joby Gorillapod or Gorillamobile

• What it is: A compact, lightweight tripod with flexible, wrapable legs to secure a camera or mini video camera to almost any surface for self-portraits and other creative shots
• Benefits: "I've tested other mini-tripods, and this one just does the job without getting in the way of your art," Elliott says. Daimler likes Gorillamobile because a flier can "attach your device to the seat back in front of you and avoid a stiff neck while watching your favorite movie or TV show."
• Costs: $21.95 to $29.95 (SLR and iPhone models cost $39.95)
• Where to buy:Joby

The Travel Slanket

• What it is: A blanket with sleeves (58 inches by 66 inches for travel)
• Benefits: Most airline blankets are too short to cover you. Banas says the Slanket offers greater comfort, letting travelers "sleep, work, watch movies, wander the cabin, and eat your in-flight meal, all without leaving your Slanket."
• Cost: $24.99
• Where to buy:Theslanket.com

Eurosocks TravelSox compression socks

• What they do: The socks' patented design is said to help stimulate blood flow and reduce swelling while you're sitting in cramped quarters for extended periods. Coolmax helps wick away perspiration.
• Benefits: Banas recommends this comfortable defense against deep vein thrombosis.
• Cost: $29.85
• Where to buy:Magellans, Eurosocks and Amazon
  

Brookstone's lighted eyeglasses

• What they do: Reading eyeglasses that shine a light exactly where you look. Magnification available.
• Benefits: A great solution for reading in the low light of an airplane cabin.
• Cost: $29.95
• Where to buy:Brookstone
  

Lights Out Sleep Mask

• What it does: This form-fitting sleep mask is designed to encourage Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep by allowing complete eye movement while blocking out even peripheral light.
• Benefits: Banas recommends this for getting some shut eye on a red-eye or long international flights.
• Cost: $10.85
• Where to buy:Magellans
  

The Clear Bag System

• What it is: This toiletry system for men and women is Transportation Security Administration compliant that contains pump bottles for liquids.
• Benefits: Brancatelli says it's the "best toiletries kit I know given the snoopy nature of the TSA. And much sturdier than a Ziploc bag."
• Cost: $24.50 to $32.19
• Where to buy: ClearBagSystem

The 150 Country Travel Adapter

• What it does: This pocket-size adapter has a built-in surge protector, an AC outlet and two USB ports.
• Benefits: Brancatelli says it "works on every electrical system/wall plug I've seen anywhere in the world." You can power or charge three devices simultaneously in more than 150 countries.
• Cost: $34.95
• Where to buy:Hammacher Schlemmer

Skooba Design's Netbook Neo-Sleeve

• What it is: A 6.4-ounce form-fitting, cushy neoprene sleeve protects a netbook with a screen up to 10.1 inches. It includes a front pocket for the power cord, a thumb drive pocket and a removable shoulder strap.
• Benefits: Good quality and stylish design.
• Cost: $19.95
• Where to buy:Skoobadesign
  

TravelTow Rotating Luggage Handle

• What it does: The handle attaches to any roll-aboard and can rotate 360 degrees to position your hand naturally, whether you're strolling or dashing to your flight's departure gate.
• Benefits: Daimler says it prevents rolling luggage from falling over as you pull it behind you.
• Cost: $9.95
• Where to buy:Tamperseal.com
  

Suggested traveler stocking stuffers:

LaCie key USB drive for storage in a key-shaped device, $21.99 to $34.99

 

 

Kensington Portable Power Outlet lets you power up to five devices, $24.99

 

 

Tide stain remover sticks, Amazon or grocery stores, about $4 each

 

 

Vapur, eco-friendly, PBA-free, "fold-and-go" water bottle, $8.95

 

 

 

Silk Underwear top ($23.95 from WinterSilks).  Hobica says this layering item is "indispensable -- washes and dries fast on the road and takes up little space in the suitcase."

 

 

MagicJack, $39.95, for free international calls. Your digital or analog telephone plugs into one end of magicJack while its USB plug connects to your computer for voice-over-Internet protocol (VOIP) calls.

 

View Article in the Los Angeles Times