That being said, TSAE isn’t going anywhere. Why? Here’s the thing: writing this blog was meant to tell our family and friends what we were up to, but it was also meant to be used as a resource by prospective students who were considering embarking on semesters abroad themselves. In the spirit of continuing to provide some amount of information, I’m leaving this blog up, at least for the foreseeable future.

If you’re trying to find some information or an answer to a question, please feel free to leave a comment. I’ll see what I can do about getting it answered for you.

Happy travels!

I am leaving China in less than one hour.

I’ll already be in Japan by the time this gets posted, but I’m actually writing it while sitting in Terminal 3 of the Beijing airport. I think the less I say about Beijing the better – it was frustrating, I’ll put it that way – but overall my experience has been a good one. I’ve gotten to see some cool things, met a lot of nice people, and my Chinese has improved tremendously (still not fluent, but that’s life, right?).

Less than one hour. By my rough calculation, I’ve been here for 3,795 hours, give or take a few. From February 23rd until now, July 31st, I lived, slept, eaten, breathed China. I’ve eaten more fiery, taste-bud-consuming spicy food than I ever wanted to. I’ve also eaten a wider variety of *ahem* exotic cuisine than I ever have before, including yak (delicious!), several insects (some palatable, others less so), and cuts of meat that in America we wouldn’t consider fit for animal consumption, much less for ourselves (duck spine, anyone?). Also, I’m pretty sure I’ve eaten my weight in rice. I don’t want to see any for a long, long time.

Most of my time here I’ve been fighting The Man in one way or another (and by that I mean the Chinese Communist Party). I now know proxy servers like the back of my hand, or maybe better. I don’t look at my hand very much. I’ve weathered close to a dozen different sites getting censored, much to my chagrin. Almost every time I’ve plugged away and managed to make it past them anyone, a fact I am more than a little proud of. That being said, I admit to getting a bit lazy these past few weeks. Quite frankly, there was a lot to see and do while traveling; when internet access meant walking several blocks to a cafe with bad food or leaving the comfort of an air-conditioned room for the sweltering heat downstairs, more often than not I chose to forgo the world-wide web.

I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time banging my head against the wall in frustration over one thing or another. Financial issues with my bank, cultural differences that leave both me and a Chinese person looking incredibly rude in each other’s eyes, language barriers that so often occur when the official language is one of only dozens of dialects used in a country; these things can really wear a guy down. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve made inquiries about something – my residence permit, for example – and been told to wait a while longer. When I ask how long, the response is some variation on, “I don’t know.” If you’ve ever been upset at things going slowly in the United States, trust me – that’s cake compared to the tortuously slow machinations of Chinese bureaucracy.

Not everything has been so bad. I’ve had a great time doing things like hiking Tiger Leaping Gorge and visiting Buddhist monasteries in Tibet. Getting to see so many different parts of China was an education in and of itself, and I’m happy to say that I never let school get in the way of a good trip. My grades weren’t entirely stellar, but they’ll do the trick (straight Bs, thanks very much), especially when it all converts to Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory back at OU.

I’m also glad to have gotten plenty of first-hand experience in a country I find so fascinating academically. Though I’m by no means an expert, I feel like I understand China a little better now. Of course, many of the more nationalistic Chinese would scoff at such a statement and say that because I’m not Chinese, I can never truly understand China. That might be true in some ways, but if it is I would suggest that not even the Chinese truly understand China. The country is 5,000 years of history wrapped in communism, which is itself clothed in social capitalism, which itself suffers such a laundry list of peculiarities and exceptions and special clauses that it is hard to determine if China is really any of those things, or all of them, or even none of them at all. There’s history, yes, but more often than not it ends up destroyed in the name of progress. There’s communism, sure, but only when it’s still convenient. There’s social capitalism more than anything, but it’s only the most recent in a long series of developments, no more likely to survive than the dynastic rule of old. As far as I can tell, the “social” angle on capitalism just means the the CCP picks and chooses which parts of the system they like, and puts a stranglehold on those they do not. Everything from the massive import/export inequality to the 40% higher operating costs for foreign business owners tilts things in China’s favor, and they seem disinclined to change that anytime soon.

I guess if you’re looking for my final opinion on the country, China is all right. I picked well in going to Kunming; Yunnan province was by far my favorite region of China. As a whole, it still has plenty of work to do. On the way to the airport this morning, Raymond and I surmised that China is like an adolescent child. It might be almost as big as adults, and it certainly wants to be treated like one, but almost all behavior points to a definitive lack of maturity.

It’s time for me to board my flight to Tokyo. See everyone at home in one week!

Thanks for allowing me to share my experiences with you!

Besitos!
~Hollita

The numbers listed in the title provide some basic indication of the state of affairs in Xinjiang. That being said, they reduce what has happened to little more than statistics, devoid of any of the important issues that led to the riots. I’m by no means an expert on the matter – in fact, I’ve only been aware of the situation for a little over six hours, due to news website *mysteriously* being rendered nigh-unusable recently. That being said, there is more going on than meets the eye, and certainly more than news agencies are reporting (or being allowed to report).

Where to start? The situation is a difficult and complicated one. Currently, Xinjiang is one of China’s Autonomous Regions; the present population is split roughly in half between Uighurs, a Muslim Turkic minority group, and Han Chinese, who are China’s ethnic majority. Historically, the region’s population has varied as different groups gain and later lose control. Uighurs have had a clear majority presence since roughly the 18th century; Han Chinese have only had a significant population there since around mid-20th century. That being said, many Han Chinese also claim to have had presence in Xinjiang over 2,000 years ago.

Tension has existed between the two groups for decades. Uighurs view the growing population of Han Chinese as encroaching on their land; Han Chinese tend to think of Uighurs as hostile, violent, and untrustworthy. Uighurs regularly report experiencing extreme difficulty finding jobs or housing in Chinese cities, as well as general prejudice and distrust. Han Chinese claim that Uighurs are the beneficiaries of reverse discrimination, and that most Uighurs are thieves and thugs.

From what I’ve gathered, both groups’ claims are, at least to a certain extent, true. It remains something of a chicken-or-the-egg situation, though – the tension is cyclical. Han Chinese avoid dealing with Uighurs because they don’t trust them; Uighurs turn to petty crimes because they can’t get legitimate work; Han Chinese cry foul and discriminate even more. Tension, anger, and misunderstanding on both sides builds and builds and builds, until conflict was practically inevitable.

The riots are the result of an earlier incident, in which Uighur factory workers were accused to abusing Han Chinese women. A fight erupted, and several Uighur men died. A silent, peaceful protest of their deaths was started by Uighur demonstrators, but the protest quickly grew violent. Groups of both Uighurs and Han Chinese roamed the streets, attacking those of the opposite ethnicity. Once the Chinese paramilitary rolled in (literally rolled in; they subdued rioters with armored vehicles), something over 1,400 were arrested. Bear in mind that number is what was reported by Xinhua, the national government news agency, so it’s likely the the actual number was higher. The last count of the dead and injured showed 156 killed and 800 injured; the government has thus far refused to reveal what proportion of those numbers are Uighur versus Han Chinese.

This incident was the most violent protest since the Tiananmen Square Massacre 20 years ago, but it is by no means unprecedented. The Han Chinese have a history of clashing with the minority ethnicities China is home to, though the clashes with Tibetans are the most widely publicized. As an outsider, I’ll admit that the situation is not entirely clear from my perspective. I live in Yunnan, a southwestern province that is home to somewhere around two thirds of China’s minorities. Oftentimes, I have difficulty distinguishing between the various ethnicities unless I’m informed by a local. That may help explain why ethnic clashes occur more in the fringes of China’s territory, where strong concentrations of various minorities are more likely to exist. In those areas, which are often under-developed and lack basics such as stable sources of electricity, the Chinese government spends a significant amount of money to speed growth and bring quality of life on par with other regions. Along with that funding, though, come Han Chinese who are eager to settle in less-crowded areas. This tends to breed resentment among the local minority, who may prefer to think of themselves as a separate entity from China proper. Han Chinese can’t understand the feeling and declare them ungrateful. Rinse and repeat for a few decades, and you’ve got a serious problem on your hands.

Han Chinese view Uighurs as the aggressors in Xinjiang, and Uighurs probably feel like they’re being made the scapegoat for the problem. The conflict has bred even more animosity, particularly among the Han Chinese. Responses run the gamut, including implications that Islam is inherently violent and unwelcome in China, calling Uighurs terrorists, illogical blaming of the United States for those so-called terrorists, calls for a genocidal extermination of the Uighurs, and declarations that this is a Western attempt to destabilize and shame China. I could go on for hours, quite frankly. The illogical hatred and racism is simply astounding; you need only look to the comments section in this Economist article for examples.

Despite trying to cover all aspects of this situation, I’ve still probably managed to over-simplify things. That being said, I can tell you right now – this isn’t over, not by a long shot. China’s relationship with its ethnic minorities is a tortuous one, full of misunderstanding on both sides. If the Chinese government hopes to rectify the situation, it would do well to actually examine the problem, instead of sweeping it under the proverbial carpet. Standard party lines won’t solve anything here – in fact, they’ll probably make it worse. The government must engage in dialogue with the Uighurs and work to resolve differences. As it stands, all they’re doing is making an already-desperate group even more so.

Salvador's: the closest you'll get to American food in Kunming. 'Nough said.

So – it’s the Fourth of July. Hooray! Only that’s not celebrated in China. Boo.

My compromise? I’m having dinner in an American-owned cafe, having a bacon cheese burger, fries, and a coke. I don’t have any fireworks, but if I can find any, believe me – I’m buying them. Then I’m buying a lighter. Then tonight, after all the security guards at my university have gone home, I’m going all pyromaniac (is there a better word that involves explosions?) on everybody.

Even though the 4th isn’t the biggest or most important holiday I celebrate, I’m usually home for it, and it feels weird to be somewhere else. The Fourth of July is supposed to include a ritual showing of the musical 1776, burgers, things that go boom, and in recent years, ill-advised street luge-ing escapades.

There are other Americans here, but I don’t know them very well, so I celebrated with a Swede, an Australian, and a German. Cecilia (the Swedish girl) wanted to order spaghetti – horrors! I set her straight, and quickly at that. We all had bacon cheese burgers. Much, much more appropriate.

During the meal, we had a very interesting conversation regarding Guy Fawkes Day, another super-fun celebration of things that explode. Jenny the German girl mentioned that she thought it weird to celebrate the averted attack on Parliament with fireworks. The Australian girl and I laughed and (sarcastically) maintained that the celebration was clearly FOR Guy Fawkes, not against him. She was confused and couldn’t quite wrap her head around the concept of celebrating rebellion and acts of subversion, and we never got around to explaining our sarcasm (all in good fun, I promise), so I think she’s now got very strange ideas about us. Oh well.

In closing, this certainly hasn’t been a typical 4th of July, but I’m getting by, no thanks to my bank (more on that tomorrow). Happy Independence Day!

Base of operations

Cool skylight thingy

This little guy guards the place

Oh, and if anyone was expecting a post about climbing Haba mountain, you might as well stop, because we didn’t go. My friend didn’t have enough time before he had to leave, and the weather was particularly nasty that weekend. It happens. In closing, I’ve got one more week of class, then finals. Another week after that, and I start my month-long trip across China and Japan. It will be a welcome break from spending my time in a classroom, I can assure you.

I suppose after living in Spain for almost 5 months, there are some occasions where I can very effortlessly ‘do as the Spanish do’ and not worry about a thing! My friend Katie and I (another exchange student here from UT) put away our worries and headed right down to Alicante, Spain for a few days this past week to relax, and remember why we enjoy Spain before embarking on our dreaded finals. I must say that while sun-bathing on the beach and swimming in the clear, beautiful blue water I was most definitely not thinking about finals, because I simply wasn’t thinking about anything!
Alicante is the capital of the Spanish province of Alicante, which is the southernmost province of the region of Valencia…put in Holly terms, it is a cute, beautiful little Spanish town located right on “La Costa Blanca”. Our hostal was so perfect, and had air-conditioning!! I realize this might not be very exciting to some people, but now that Spain is hot-hot-hot, not having air-conditioning in my apartment has proved to be a little uncomfortable, so we definitely took advantage of it and cranked that thing until we were freezing- best sleep ever. Another small exciting thing (very un-Spanish) was that Alicante had a Subway-and I am not ashamed to say that I also indulged in a delicious turkey footlong, or four… After spending a lovely day just soakin’ up the sun for the entire first day, we got ready and headed to the port to look for some delicious sea-food/Spanish food. We found a wonderful little restaurant, we had the most delicious croquettas (still my favorite tapa- and these in particular win on my rating scale for sure) and also some ‘arroz con gambas’ or rice with shrimp- yummy, yummy, yummy.

The next day, we walked around the little town some more and found a wonderful little Banana Boat excursion that allowed us to take a little ride out on the Mediteranean Sea, snorkel a bit, and then enjoy the sunset over a few glasses of Sangria..it just doesn’t get too much better than that! The next morning we got up, packed and then went and toured the Castillo de Santa Barbara, an old mediveal castle that once stood as a fortess against the Moors. I get made fun of a lot, but I just love ruins, so I enjoyed being able to see it and walk around for a bit. Alicante was beautiful and like most places in Spain leaves me so content and happy to be able to see, experience and truly enjoy so many little treasures of the world.

~Holly

1 final down, one paper and 2 more finals to go!

Such a date brings to mind several questions for your moderately-aware citizen of the western hemisphere. Were there any demonstrations? Did people get arrested? What is the state of democracy in China?  It might be better to check as to whether or not democracy even exists here in the first place.

This isn’t a post of me whining about unfettered access to the internet, or my rights, or anything of that. I’ve done plenty of it already on my tech blog. Rather, I’d like to offer my viewpoint on the events (or non-events) of the past two weeks. The effort the Chinese government put into minimizing people’s abilities to communicate seems to have been largely unnecessary. Sure, there were some small demonstrations, and I’m told that one brave journalist even went so far as to directly discuss the event, but the only noteworthy thing was that the government allowed these things to occur without severe consequence.

If not a fight for democracy, what then? Why has much of the outcry over that event faded away? Where is the outrage over hundreds of government-sanctioned deaths, the calls for accountability? They’re in jail, to be perfectly honest. Many of the protesters and those involved in the tragedy were summarily locked up and never released. The lucky ones are now under a modified form of house arrest, as the government closely watches to make sure they don’t try to pull anything. In fact, the only place in China where a large percentage of the population is still vocally upset over the events of June 4, 1989 is Hong Kong (HK’s chief executive was recently publicly rebuked for saying that he felt the people of Hong Kong no longer cared about Tiananmen Square).

It also doesn’t help that today’s youth has little to no idea what happened twenty years ago. Chinese history courses conveniently exclude it from their lesson plans; students are banned from studying the subject. All most of them know is that there were some protests a while back, and most of them seem to think that the protests simply lost steam.

Without a doubt, quality of life has vastly improved in China since that time, and the country is more open to international influence now then ever before. A desire for democracy and the right to vote has been replaced by explosive consumerism and the right to have fun. The CCP has cleverly reinvented itself as lenient and progressive by giving its citizens every part of Western culture – except the important parts. Buy all the fashionable clothing and mp3 players you want, they say, so long as you don’t ask for government or social reform. The sad part is that it’s working. Most of the people I’ve talked to don’t see any need for change – they’re perfectly happy with things the way they are.

Additionally, the public’s anger simply isn’t focused on the CCP anymore. Currently en vogue is the exposure and punishment of corrupt local officials – certainly a worthwhile practice, laudable even, but it has something of a “can’t see the forest for the trees” flavor to it. The public is content to go on its witch hunt, fighting individuals rather than the system that creates them, and the CCP is more than happy to let them. Better to empathize and fake outrage over a few small, unimportant individuals than find the accusing finger pointed at themselves.

There are two characters that you see a lot in China – 人民, Renmin. It means the people; the people’s university, the people’s square, the people’s currency. How ironic, then, that the government of the People’s Republic of China is anything but that – the people’s.

I’m not trying to advocate democracy as the end-all, be-all system of government. The United States isn’t a paragon of virtue, and few of its citizens are genuinely more concerned with ideological matters than material gain.   I don’t pretend to have any sort of moral high ground in this matter. I merely wish to express sadness that the people of China came close to achieving something twenty years ago, and are so far away from that same goal today. Consider this a my own small remembrance of that terrible event, and my hope that China someday achieves what so many of its own people died trying to accomplish.

Chilled pineapple juice. Does a body good.

Xishuangbanna – southern China, tropical, bordering Vietnam, Laos, and Myanmar *involuntary shudder*. It’s a fun destination, with a fascinating mix of asian cultures. You can hop the border into the first two of the above-mentioned countries, go see an elephant preserve, visit local villages… all kinds of stuff. What did I do?

Absolutely nothing. Really.

It wasn’t on purpose exactly; that’s just how things turned out. My friends and I took a sleeper bus down from Kunming, and I’m pleased to report that it was by far the nicest I’ve ever seen in China. My German friend Jenny says that’s because the manufacturer was a German company, and I’m inclined to agree with her.

Anyway, we got there crazy-early in the morning, as is typical of these bus rides. After finding a cheap hotel, we promptly crashed and got another three or four hours of sleep. Woke up in time for lunch – a bit too early, in fact; half of the shops and restaurants we walked past weren’t even open yet. This was at noon, mind you. That should some indication as to the pace at which everyone takes life around here.

The weather is hot, sticky, and has been raining sporadically since our arrival. Other than the rain, it reminds me of spring in San Antonio or Corpus Christi. To combat the weather, we’re doing everything slowly. We walk slowly, talk slowly, make decisions slowly; I think the only time we did anything quickly was when we rented bicycles to ride around town for a bit.

Most of our time was spent in one cafe or another – drinking chilled mango or pineapple juice, eating Thai or local Dai cuisine (“ghost chicken” was a highlight), and chatting with other travelers. We met an Australian, an Israeli, some expats, and of course the owners of each establishment. Upon seeing my camera, one Chinese man furiously scribbled down a web address – bn1988.com, I think – and asked me to take a look at it. It’s for photos of Xishuanbanna, he said, take a look at it! I did. It’s one of the ugliest websites I’ve ever seen. Straight-up looks like it came out of the 1990s.

I got some writing done, reviewed some music for Independent Clauses (shameless plug), and generally had a good time. It wasn’t nearly as exciting as some of my other excursions, but it was a nice change of pace. I love weekends like that – slow, with an abundance of food, drink, and conversation. Good times.