"a battleground for bigger powers"

"Wang's analogy of us as human fertilizer revived thoughts I had been thinking for a long time.  True enough, as Chinese, we genuinely felt that our lives were misused here, but as I have observed earlier, no matter how abysmal our situation was there were always others who had it worse.  By now I understood why occasionally some Korean civilians were hostile to us.  To them we had come here only to protect China's interests -- by so doing, we couldn't help but ruin their homes, fields, and livelihoods.  From their standpoint, if the Chinse army hadn't crossed the Yalu, millions of lives, both civilian and military, would have been saved.  Of course, the United States would then have occupied all of Korea, forcing China to build defenses in Manchuria, which would have been much more costly than sending troops to fight in our neighboring country.  As it was, the Koreans had taken the brunt of the destruction of this war, whereas we Chinese were here mainly to keep its flames away from our border.  Or, as most of the POW's believed, perhaps rightly, we had served as cannon fodder for the Russians.  It was true that the Koreans had started the war themselves, but a small country like theirs could only end up being a battleground for bigger powers.  Whoever won this war, Korean would be a loser."

-- Ha Jin, War Trash

"the pain inflicted by the English pronunciation on their tongues and jaws"

"So I began to teach them English, just some phrases and short sentences, such as 'Hands up!,' 'Drop your weapon, we spare you!,' 'We don't kill prisoners,' 'Don't move!,' 'Surrender, you are safe!,' 'Don't die for American imperialism!'

There was no paper to write on, so I used a stick to inscribe on the ground the written characters representing the English sounds so that the literate ones among them could have some phonetic guidance.  I couldn't possibly make them pronounce the words accurately, since half of them didn't even speak Mandarin well.  But they were eager to learn, even if they did complain about the pain inflicted by the English pronunciation on their tongues and jaws.  A few claimed they had sore throats.  I was amazed that in just a few days they could rap out to one another what they had learned.  Most of them were smart men who would have gone far in their lives had they had the opportunity and the education.  I wondered why they would concentrate so much on learning a few foreign words that they might never use at all.  Heaven knew what would happen to us tomorrow; we might get captured or killed anytime.  The enemy was just two miles to the north.

I suspected that to them the act of learning must represent some kind of hope.  At least this meant there was still a future, on which they could fix their minds.  Their limited awareness of the larger world and their inert response to the menace of death endowed them with the strength needed for survival.  I was moved by the tenacity of life shown in their desire to learn."

-- Ha Jin, War Trash

Shots Fired!

It's a bit opaque, but apparently the Chinese agriculture ministry is making a play to "claim" kimchi, Korea's beloved national dish, as having a Chinese origin.  The Korean reaction has been, at the very least, expected:

"'Its total nonsense, what a thief stealing our culture!' a South Korean netizen wrote on Naver, a widely popular web portal.

Seoul resident Kim Seol-ha said: 'I read a media story that China now says kimchi is theirs, and that they are making international standard for it. It’s absurd.'

Some South Korean media said China’s brazen coveting of kimchi was akin to a 'bid for world domination.'

The kimchi contretemps is the latest online spat between social media users in China and South Korea. In October, the leader of the K-pop phenomenon BTS faced a barrage of criticism in China after he cited his country’s solidarity with the US stemming from the Korean war – a conflict in which China fought alongside North Korea."

These kinds of "soft power" disputes can be bullshit, but are also endlessly fascinating to me.  As China seems to be setting itself up as the world's lone remaining superpower, it's interesting to see to what extent the dictatorship in Beijing cares about something as nominally unimportant as cultural hegemony.

At the very least, somebody in the Chinese agriculture ministry is having a big laugh for "pwning the Koreans."

The Politics of Meat

As the coronavirus rages around the world and the debate over Asian "wet markets" (where animals are slaughtered on demand) continues, I was surprised to find out so many of them currently operate in America:

"Some so-called 'wet markets' in Asia, named for the common practice of hosing them down with water, stock exotic wildlife alongside live animals, providing a potential nexus for diseases to spread. This has led to growing calls around the world to ban them, even though the precise history of the coronavirus pandemic, widely thought to have originated at a seafood market in Wuhan, is still unclear.

But the term 'wet markets' has become confusing in the process, mixing up wildlife consumption with less exotic traditions, such as the poultry markets of New York. This has led to a situation where, in the rush to create a safer food system, culturally significant food practices, which pose comparatively minor public health risks, are coming under threat.

In New York, animal rights groups have begun campaigning vigorously on issues of food safety, including staging protests outside markets. A recent petition by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta) urges officials to shut down 'blood-soaked slaughterhouses' in New York, specifically referring to the facilities as 'wet markets' in an accompanying video. Peta has also urged the World Health Organization (WHO) to denounce live animal markets globally. The WHO has resisted these demands, saying that live markets provide food and jobs for millions of people.

There are a ton of things intersecting  here: animal rights, public health, and access to fresh food in poor neighborhoods.  And who's not to say a freshly killed chicken from one of these dingy markets isn't significantly healthier than the pre-packaged, steroid-laden chicken breasts from a "clean" meat packing facility?

"'discovered' by adventuresome white diners"

"Chinese restaurants changed or evolved over time.  Chinese immigrants from Guangdong province started 'chow chows' around the mid-1800s to serve familiar Cantonese dishes that fit the tastes of their countrymen.  These restaurants were located in 'Chinatowns' near large populations of Chinese, their primary source of customers.  They held limited appeal to most non-Chinese when they first appeared.

In the transition to the industrialized society of the last half of the 19th century, a restaurant industry grew rapidly as more people lived in cities than in rural areas.  However, most whites did not patronize Chinese cafes frequently, if at all.  They generally viewed foreign foods as strange and odd.  Few had any interest in eating dishes served by Chinese cafes and restaurants.

However, from the late 1890s to the early 1900s, a surprising reversal of fortune took place for Chinese restaurants. . . .  Even with little or no promotion by the Chinese, their cafes were 'discovered' by adventuresome white diners and the ensuing publicity widened their popularity among non-Chinese.  Prejudices against Chinese immigrants were still strong, but their cuisine was gaining favor.  Restaurants soon became one of the primary forms of self-employment among Chinese.  In Chinatowns, newer, larger, and more elegantly decorated dining facilities were built to attract and accommodate the growing demand.  Partnerships involving both active and silent investors raised capital for the expensive startup costs of remodeling and refurbishing existing facilities or building new ones and for the expenses of hiring numerous cooks, waiters, kitchen helpers, and other staff."

-- John Jung, Sweet and Sour: Life in Chinese Family Restaurants

As an American in South Korea I definitely get strong hunger pangs or cravings once in a while for things you might expect -- stinky cheeses (Korea only does sliced American singles), great pizza (you can find good pizza here, but never great), and purely local memory-foods like Maryland-style boiled blue crabs, served with drawn butter and cans of cold beer, never bottles or pitchers.  I miss American style barbecues as well, either Carolina or Texas versions.  (But if I could only eat Korean style barbecues the rest of my life I'd still die pretty happy.)

What's strange to me are my monthly or so craving for fake-ass, deeply inauthentic Chinese-American food.  I'm talking chicken wings atop greasy fried rice, beef over egg noodles, or oily egg rolls that have been sitting under a heat lamp for half-a-day too long, lathered in packets of hot mustard and duck sauce.

Brains and stomachs and human memories are curious things.

Oh, and on certain weekend mornings I'd probably murder your grandma for a good bagel with cream cheese and unctuous lox.  That's just a complete non-starter here.

Anyhow, Sweet and Sour was a surprisingly good read.

Late Capitalism Is Adorable

It's as if, under Capitalism, companies care more about profits than they do human rights and Democracy.#obvioustweet@apple@blizzard

— Winterfell Barista James (@wetcasements) October 10, 2019

"no signaling necessary"

As a true-blooded American, I'm a fan of fake Chinese food.  (Fake Mexican as well!  I miss you Chipotle, bacteria and all!)  And while the history of Chinese restaurants in America is long and winding, it's also quite dark and often driven by racism:

"Chinese restaurants in the U.S. date back to the first wave of immigration from China, predominantly from Guangdong (then known as Canton), in the mid-1800s. It was spurred by the Gold Rush, and then work on railroads, farms, and in laundries. In 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act as white Americans increasingly blamed Chinese immigrants for low wages and a lack of jobs. 'Out of sheer necessity, Chinese had to find or develop forms of self-employment because most forms of work were denied to them,' writes John Jung, a professor emeritus in psychology and a historian of Chinese-American history, in Sweet and Sour: Life in Chinese Family Restaurants. Restaurants popped up both as places for the predominantly male Chinese population to cook their own cuisine for each other, and as a business opportunity — especially since Chinese immigrants were often unwelcome or segregated from other communities.

'You see early on… the menus are pretty standard,' says Piccoli. They were black text on white paper, no illustration or design, just a list of food. These restaurants were typically located in Chinatowns, and because they were run by Chinese people for Chinese people, there was no signaling necessary.

The rise of Orientalist design in Chinese-American restaurants begins at the turn of the 20th century. By this point, Chinese restaurants were at least a familiar sight to non-Chinese people, and some diners who fancied themselves adventurous began to pop in — the way the bohemian class always prides themselves on their willingness to eat at a 'hole in the wall.' Chinese business owners realized they could capitalize on, and expand, this new consumer base, and 'courted business from tourists and the curious with remodeled restaurants designed with a typical Oriental motif both inside and out,' writes Jung. They brought in bamboo shoots, the dragons slithering along menu spines, Buddha statues sitting on windowsills. By 1903, there were over 100 of these Chinese-American restaurants between 14th Street and Times Square in Manhattan."

When it comes to food history and culture, nothing is authentic.  Everything is authentic.

"the waiter dropped forks in front of them, and chopsticks by me"

Vanessa Hua is the daughter of Chinese immigrant parents.  She didn't learn to use chopsticks -- resisted using them! -- into her 30's:

"In the suburbs east of San Francisco, we were one of a handful of Chinese families, and my classmates teased me and snubbed me from early on. I tried to fit in, getting a perm and donning Guess jeans, Esprit canvas tote bags, and other signifiers of suburban girlhood in the late 1980s — and I’d no sooner use chopsticks than bind my feet. At home, and at Chinese restaurants, I insisted on a fork, in a muddled form of protest, of patriotism, to claim that I was truly American. My parents must have tried to teach me how to use chopsticks, in the murkiness before my memories begin, but eventually, they had to let it go. They had demanding careers in science and engineering, and it must have taken everything in them to get our family through the day, let alone try to stem the tide of assimilation.

In college, I started taking a tentative interest in my heritage, but knew no better than my non-Chinese friends where to go for a late night bite in San Francisco’s Chinatown. We ended up at a dive with paper napkins and Formica tables, the air heavy with grease. Without a word, the waiter dropped forks in front of them, and chopsticks by me. My friends protested. I felt pleased, but then almost immediately like a fraud — hyphenated, never quite American or Chinese enough. Most likely, the waiter had decided he didn’t want the hassle of coming back to deliver forks. Maybe, more often than not, tourists didn’t know how to use chopsticks. And I didn’t either — at least, not correctly, not then and not years later, despite my father’s renewed efforts to teach me."

What a beautiful piece of writing.  Absolutely read the whole thing.

I'm reminded of a passage in Roy Choi's great autobiography about his life as a first-generation Korean-American, L.A. Son, and how his father would hit him if he ever caught him speaking Korean.  (The idea being that excising Korean would hasten his learning of English.)

"small mutton"

A very brief and cool overview of vegetarian "fake meats," why they originate in China, and why they aren't nearly as popular in Japan and India:

"While mock meat has a place in some temple kitchens, much of the cooking consists of vegetables, rice, and plant-based proteins that have not been purposely twisted to resemble meats. This is especially true in Japan, where Buddhist law prohibited the consumption of four-legged animals throughout the empire for centuries, eventually doing away with the edict in the 19th century. Due to a lack of appetite for meat, Japanese people never tried to imitate it with other substances, says Akiko Katayama, a food consultant and host of the Japan Eats podcast. Similarly, in the heavily vegetarian country of India, you won’t find traditional mock meats for the same reason. 'For many Indian vegetarians, I don’t think a meat substitute would even register since meat was never a reference point to begin with,' says Chitra Agrawal, the author of the vegetarian Indian cookbook Vibrant India.

However, in China, the origins of both tofu and wheat gluten are somewhat linked to their use as meat replacements. In Mandarin, mianjin, or wheat gluten, means literally 'wheat meat' (George Ohsawa, the founder of the macrobiotic diet, coined the term 'seitan' for the same food in 1961). And tofu, a food that dates back to prehistoric times in China, was popularly known as 'small mutton' in the 10th century, according to records. Although they need not only to be enjoyed as meat analogs, they have been used as such for centuries. There is mention of seitan textured to emulate goose in the classic Chinese cookery book Recipes From the Sui Garden by the Qing Dynasty Chinese poet Yuan Mei. And the Ming Dynasty novel Journey to the West references wheat gluten several times, including a scene in which demons attempt to serve a monk a meal of human flesh and brains fried to resemble wheat gluten—that is, meat masquerading as mock meats."

The author concludes that if we always approach these foods as "substitutes" we'll never learn to appreciate their own culinary virtues.

Never Start A Trade War In Asia

It's clear that no amount of pussy-grabbing, vulgarity, racism, or spite will ever alienate Trump from his supporters.  (In fact, those are the reasons they like him.)

But a self-inflicted, outright trade war with China?

The reason I think this holds some water beyond all the White Racial Resentment stuff is two fold.  First, Americans have grown used to a Walmart lifestyle dependent on cheap shit from China and the rest of Asia.  Given a few weeks, that could be over.

Second, China is (obviously) a lot smarter than Trump.  They're going after agricultural goods from Red States like soybeans and hogs.

Again, this doesn't mean Trump is finished by a long shot.  But it means he has to explain the benefits of a trade war that not even his advisers wanted.

If that's what it takes to get him out of office come 2020, so be it.

There Is No "Bloody Nose"

A good long-ish read on how disastrous a US pre-preemptive attack on North Korea would be.  One of the biggest problems is that the US fundamentally misunderstands the relationship between China and Pyongyang (short version: it's a relation of convenience, not a military alliance):

"'China would have to fight its way into North Korea,' Mastro told me in an interview. 'For the North Koreans, enemy No. 1 is obviously the United States, but enemy No. 2 is China. They understand they’d have to potentially fight both countries.'

Things would get really complicated, and really dangerous, once Chinese troops made their way to the nuclear facilities. The Pentagon has spent years practicing how to send US special operations forces into North Korea to seize Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons if there were signs that Kim’s government was collapsing. The problem is that Chinese troops would almost certainly be sent into North Korea at the same time, and with the same goal, as the US forces.

Mastro notes that Chinese troops would only need to advance 60 miles into North Korea to take control of all of the country’s highest-priority nuclear sites and two-thirds of its highest-priority missile sites. Given that enormous geographic advantage, Beijing’s troops would almost certainly arrive before the US ones do."

The notion that Kim Jong-un would passively "absorb" a US first strike is stupid and absurd.  Seoul will be devastated, and within a few days you'd be looking at US and Chinese ground forces coming into direct contact.

That isn't a "limited strike," it's World War III, and the Russians aren't going to sit on their asses and watch this play out either.

Love And Theft

It's a national stereotype that Western nations produce intellectual property, while China merely copies it.  In the case of South Korean T.V. (shows of which are popular throughout Asia), it just might be true:

"When Chinese television network Hunan TV announced late August on its official Weibo account its lineup for the upcoming television season, it was met with criticism over possible plagiarism by not only Koreans but also Chinese audiences, who wrote comments saying, 'It’s gone too far. Stop plagiarizing.' and 'I feel so embarrassed.' 

The description of one of the shows, 'The Inn,' sounded quite similar to JTBC’s 'Hyori’s Homestay' that wrapped late last month. The Korean show follows Korean pop diva Lee Hyori and her husband, guitarist Lee Sang-soon, offering accommodations at their home in Jeju Island to travelers. Similarly, 'The Inn' is a reality program centering on two famous celebrity couples offering accommodations to visitors. 

Amid the backlash, its first episode aired on Saturday. The show took a famous married couple, actress Liu Tao and businessman Wang Ke, to a remote area near Lugu Lake in Yunnan, where homes set against the beautiful landscape were prepared for the stars to take in guests. The first episode did not reveal much, as it showcased the celebrities getting ready for their guests by setting up equipment and purchasing ingredients to prepare meals. How much it will parallel 'Hyori’s Homestay' will be seen in the upcoming episodes."

I've actually never warmed up to the charms of Korean dramas.  Even K-Pop is occasionally good for a laugh or an ear-worm of a chorus, but when my Korean friends discuss the merits of the their favorite shows I, ahem, tune out.

Note:  Advanced Conversation posts are based on articles I've discussed with my adult conversation students.

The Rest of the World Totally Respects Mighty Trump Now

A round-up of Chinese and Korean play-on-transliterations for "Trump."  What Koreans have done with Orange Hitler's name:

"The nickname is 도람프 or 도람푸 — a play on the Korean word that means to be crazy/insane/mad.

Krista Ryu remarks:

돌다 (dolda) literally means to turn (v)

But when you use it after the word 'head' or directly to a person, it can mean you are crazy or 'nuts'.

So it is a combination of this verb and the name Trump

Trump in Korean transliterated would be Teuleompeu 트럼프

(Some one is crazy) dol-assda 돌았다 ('turned')

–> dolampeu 도람프"

 Approve.

Everything Is Permitted

On the one hand, the calmness and resilience of South Koreans in the face of possible nuclear armageddon is reassuring.

On the other hand, as I’ve been telling my Korean friends since Trumpolini was elected, nothing is normal any longer.  The assumption that any US foreign policy, either by a liberal or a conservative president, would generally hold to decades-long standards of self-interest and mutual benefit between the US and SK is no longer in effect.

Not Good

The University of Virginia student who supposedly tried to steal a North Korean flag, was imprisoned and sentenced to 15 years hard labor, mysteriously fell into a coma, then returned to his parents in the U.S. in a vegetative state has died.

I've previously believed that companies like Koryo Tours, which basically set up trips for Westerners to get into North Korea, were basically harmless (despite the fact that their cash was being funneled directly into the DPRK military).  But it just seems like the height of foolishness to want to travel their now, let alone facilitate the next murder of a U.S. or British or Australian citizen.  (Their website and Twitter feed says nothing about the Warmbier case, albeit it's my understanding he traveled with another tour company.)

All I have to add is that Trump is desperate to find a reason to start a war with either North Korea or Iran.  North Korea was, on cue, more than happy to oblige.

I don't think it's too outrageous to expect war on the Korean peninsula before the start of 2018.

President Moon

After the impeachment of the conservative Park Geun-hye, Korea has a new president named Moon Jae-in, a liberal:

"'I will work toward peace on the Korean Peninsula,' he said. 'If necessary, I will travel to Washington right away. I will go to Pyongyang if conditions permit. For peace on the Korean Peninsula, I will do anything.'

He also said his government will engage in serious negotiations with the United States and China in order to resolve the conflict involving the deployment of the U.S. antiballistic missile system."

A lot going on here.  First of all, he'll have no transition period.  As of today he is now living in the Blue House (Korean White House) as president.  Transitions are tough on anybody, but he's filling a huge vacuum left by an unexpected impeachment and he'll have no grace period to speak of.

Second, conservatives have been in the South Korean presidency (Lee Myung-Bak for five years, then President Park for almost four) for almost a decade.  There's going to be a big shift with regards to relations with North Korea and China, at a time when Trump is pushing for the conservative "hard line" approach.

Still, at the end of the day, I'd imagine many Koreans are happy to just have a president in place and restore a bit of normalcy to what's been a very tumultuous year.

Meanwhile, an adult student (avowed PGH fan) let me know that the South Korean economy would now collapse since a liberal is in charge.

I was unable to check my cheek in letting him now that after nine years of conservative stewardship, the South Korean economy is completely stagnant, especially for young people.

It's no secret that Koreans are in favor of change, for better or worse, that voters in England, America, and France also voted for (terrible change, horrific change, pretty good change, natch).

Soft Power Politics

South Korea recently deployed U.S. made anti-missile defense systems.  China is very unhappy about them :

"China’s boycott against Korean culture is in full swing. The country that once was the largest fanbase for Korean stars, television programs, K-pop and so much more is shunning not just its popular culture, but also the fine arts, expressing their growing discontent to Korea’s plan to install the U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (Thaad) antimissile system.

It started with removing Korean celebrities from China’s TV commercials, dramas and reality programs, followed by halting all joint productions of Korea-China dramas and films. Then recently, the country went a step further and began rebuffing scheduled events of Korean artists in China and even canceling its own events in Korea."

It's interesting that China isn't just boycotting tourism, a big source of revenue for South Korea, but also Korean "soft power" in the form of Hallyu, or the Korean cultural wave.  Losing money is one thing, but a threat to South Korea's perceived cultural significance around the world is another thing altogether.

Tit For THAAD

Many hackles were raised when South Korea recently decided to deploy a U.S. missile defense system poetically named "THAAD."  Conservative Koreans thought it was a necessary step against North Korea and possible Chinese aggression.  Liberals thought it was yet another multi-million dollar giveaway to the United States via military spending.  A larger issue was that China might somehow retaliate, given that Seoul and Beijing have deep economic ties.

Lo and behold, China just dropped the hammer on the growing, lucrative tourism business in South Korea:

"The Chinese government told provincial travel agencies to cut the number of tourists traveling to Korea by over 20 percent compared to last year, according to various sources on Monday.

Sources in the Korean Embassy in China, consulates and travel agencies said that city and provincial governments, including in Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui and Shaanxi, contacted travel agencies in their regions either by phone or by meeting with executives and delivered this directive."

Obvious economic downturn aside, it's interesting that a country like China can just decide to order up a 20 percent decrease in tourism to another country.  I guess dictatorships do have their advantages.

Who Gets To Speak "Real" Chinese?

Historically, the advent of mass communication in the form of television, newspapers, and radio tends to homogenize languages.  Regional English dialects in the United Kingdom were "normalized" by things like the BBC.  The American Mid-Atlantic Accent became the most popular accent for TV and film due primarily to market forces.  But now in China, social networking is having the reverse effect:

"This linguistic homogenisation is being enforced, however, just as a number of forces are pushing in the opposite direction. Technology is empowering regional languages, of which there are hundreds, and enhancing the centrifugal effect of migration, modernity and social change. Young people, empowered by mobile phones and computers, are changing the way they use their own language and breaking out of the straitjacket that has restricted communication for millennia. The trends in language mirror broader tensions between centralising, top-down forces trying to prevent dissent, and bottom-up trends among an increasingly empowered populace. They are adding to social fault lines that the Communist Party fears may threaten national unity. 

Linguistically, China wants to be like America—a country where language and script are unified. In reality it is like medieval Europe—a continent full of different languages, nominally united by a written lingua franca. Before the 20th century, regional Chinese literati could communicate on paper in classical Chinese, but barely in conversation, just as European scholars communicated in Latin. The fracturing of Europe, politically and religiously, led to the emergence of written regional vernaculars like English and German."

 I speak absolutely no Chinese, but apparently the Chinese government refers to Cantonese (the Chinese of Hong Kong and Guangzhou) as a "dialect" of Mandarin.  That's at very best an understatement, if not an outright howler.