Beneath the Butterflies

The aborted trip to Thailand turned into a mostly-delightful, last-minute trip to Cambodia, a pearl with its own stunning beaches, amazing history (Angkor Wat), and stupas everywhere.

Among the stupas visited was this one in Chheoung Ek, maybe ten miles south of Phnom Penh.

It was striking with garudas garnering the corners of the roof and dragon-like nagas below them. On the pathways all around this stupa, dogs and chickens joined visitors from all over the world, and butterflies hovered thickly over some of the low-lying depressions. Bird-call dominated the otherwise very still soundscape.

Beneath the butterflies was this.

Look again. Bones. Beneath the butterflies were bones, lots. Human bones. Chheoung Ek is the Auchwitz of Pol Pot’s regime, the most well known of Cambodia's 300 some “killing fields" where collectively 3 million people were brutally murdered, more than a quarter of the population.

The beautiful sugar palm leaf is connected to the tree trunk with a thick curved stem with razor sharp edges, stems that were used at Chheuong Ek to slit throats so  screams couldn’t be heard. Bullets were expensive, so innocent Cambodians were instead bludgeoned to death with bamboo sticks and the heads of hoes and then toppled into one of the many mass graves. The less fortunate were raped first and subjected to watching their babies being swung by their ankles until their little heads were smashed against the "killing tree." Only then were the mothers bludgeoned to death.

Electricity was run to the place, however, so the Khymer officials would have light by which to see their records: Before being murdered each victim signed his own death warrant; each name was matched with one of those on the trucks that ferried innocent Cambodians from the too-crowded TS-21. No escapee would go unaccounted for.

Were Pol Pot and his hit man "Duch" paranoid schizophrenics? How crazy did they have to be to think a quarter of the population were traitors out to undermine their Khymer regime? How did they persuade members of the Khymer Rogue to commit such brutal acts against their Cambodian brothers and sisters? And how crazy did the US government have to be to recognize Pol Pot and his Khymer government at all? How crazy is it that Pol Pot lived to the ripe age of 82, with his government taking a seat at the UN?

Tapes were available in different languages to hear stories by and about some of the survivors of Pol Pot’s regime. While listening to gut-wrenching personal testimonies, visitors could hear  plaintive cries from today's children on the other side of the chicken wire fence, children crying out “Som mah-nee---som mah-nee—som mah-nee.”

Inside the memorial stupa are hundreds upon hundreds of skulls, stacked high.

 Outside bicycle taxis and tuk-tuks waited for somber tourists to climb in for the long and bumpy way back to Phnom Penh. 

Jim Curley photos

Pearls, Pots, and Peace Corps

 

Some volunteers from more remote places in China had to travel 30-plus hours by train to get here to Peace Corps headquarters at Sichuan University and are still recalling the ten awful things they’d rather do than sit another minute on a crowded hard seater. My train ride, only two hours long, was a relative delight—cushy seats with lots of leg room. At 160 kpm, we zoomed in and out of tunnels through one terraced mountain after another.

Here in gray Chengdu the weather is mild, almost springlike, and the 125-some volunteers gathered for our mid-winter training scurry back and forth between two different hotels at each end of campus. Bicycle taxis line the roads, waiting for service, but most of us hoof it. Sessions for me and the other second-year volunteers focus on language, although we have the option of attending other sessions targeted for the first-year volunteers.

One of the sessions I chose to attend was facilitated by Kandice, one of our all-female medical team. It was Kandice, not the topic, that drew me, for I’ve always enjoyed her down to earth humor and her perspective on life in China. Her subject, though, was anything but humorous. She opened with a slide of a pearl, something like the screen shot below, which was her metaphor for the growth that sometimes comes from adversity—but not always. China, where competition is fierce and pressure to excel is intense, is no stranger to suicide, but suicide usually goes unreported. Here at Sichuan University, there were 14 suicides in one year just a while back and the university took the bold step of reporting it, risking loss of face, because it wanted to do something about it. But what? One of the foundations for counseling—patient confidentiality—doesn’t really exist, and there is still a huge stigma attached to getting any kind of psychological service. People endure their suffering quietly; some would rather die than admit there is a problem or consider that there might be a solution. What should volunteers do—when confronted with students showing suicidal symptoms? Kandice made clear in so many words that 25 year olds newly arrived from the US shouldn’t pretend they understand China and have all the answers, but she did provide lots of evidence for the benefits of letting people talk, maybe over and over. She also suggested that it’s our responsibility, however old we are, to report suicidal behavior, even if we know that the consequence will usually be sending the student home. That’s what most universities do. Draconian as that seems, it may be the best bet if no real services are available. The Chinese members of the medical staff were present, too, and it was widely understood that these issues are not unique to China—and that the situation in the US wasn’t so different all that long ago.

I have to say—clichéd as the pearl metaphor might be, it was apt in Kandice’s talk (which was anything but clichéd ) and subsequently in my own life. Nick’s facing some adversity that I hope might be turned into a pearl of sorts—and nineteen of us volunteers who had plans to go to Thailand after winter training (beautiful and relatively cheap) received the last minute axe. None of us were surprised, given the simmering political situation in Thailand, but many of us had been assured by various Thais as well as travel advisories that things would be okay if we avoided downtown Bangkok. However, the state of emergency declaration and the subsequent ban left nineteen of us scuttling to make new plans.  Bummed though I initially was, I find that my Plan B may indeed turn out to be better than Plan A. Very possibly a pearl.

The sun was somewhere behind the gray haze hanging over the city, and we continued on about our week. We’ve been fortunate to be put up at two classy  hotels, although yesterday we discovered we were without water. Not only the hotels, but this whole part of the city. Restrooms—private and public—got increasingly smelly. Not just hot showers but any kind of shower was out of question. On the main drag between the two hotels was a water faucet, and people lined up with tea pots, cooking pots, plastic buckets, and the like, patiently waiting for a little bit of water to take home. Is this possibly an omen of things to come—not only in China, but in California, Colorado, and you name it? Whether it is or not, thirty some hours later the water came back on.

With and without water, I found myself trudging up and down three flights of stairs across the way for my five or six hours of language lessons each day. Heading down a dark hall, I’d hear the sound of clicking tiles coming from each of a half dozen or so little rooms with mahjong tables. On the other side of a large sitting room with beautiful wooden screens and windows, was another dark hall where our classes were held. It was easy to forget our desks were really mahjong tables until the teacher accidentally put a pen in the wrong place and the volcano-like center erupted with a few tiles and around the four sides tiles shot up in neatly stacked rows. It was amazing, almost as amazing as the language lesson about the names of various Chinese dishes. I don’t know if anyone can outdo the Chinese with imaginative names for dishes, no matter what the ingredients are. . . Buddha Jumps Over the Wall; Chicken without a Sex Life; Crossing the Bridge Noodles; Ants Climbing a Tree. And more.

Ask not

I was only a kid in primary school, but I vaguely remember the buzz after John F. Kennedy's inaugural address and the famous line that helped pave the way for the creation of the Peace Corps: "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."  (A question for my writing buddies. . .would you call this rhetorical trick a "chiasmus" or an "antimetabole"? Is there a difference?)

Who knew that decades later I'd be a white-haired Peace Corps volunteer teaching English on the other side of the planet. Who knew that I'd be asked to celebrate Peace Corps Week by telling some of the stories my Chinese friends most want Americans to hear.

That's what was on my mind when "Bill" and "Eileen" showed up last week to make another batch of jiaozi and to unfurl red paper and set out the calligraphy brushes. "Bill" was about to paint some couplets on the vertical red strips that would later be mounted on either side of my door, couplets extending good wishes for the Chinese New Year to all who enter.

"Bill" first taught me how to grip the calligraphy brush, holding it vertically--pinching it firmly but as if I had an egg cupped in my hand. Although I have learned maybe a couple hundred Chinese characters in recent months, the characters I regularly write look nothing like those that swish off the tip of Bill's brush. Indeed, his characters are masterful, beautiful. 

And he didn't learn them at once. He remembers practicing each one hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times. He remembers his teacher beating him if he made a mistake and, because his mother was present at all of his lessons, he would be shamed even more. She would say nothing on the tortured walk home, but once there she would beat him again--unless he fled to his nearby grandmother, begging for her protection. 

"Would you teach calligraphy this way?" I ask. "Yes," he replies. He thinks it's an effective method.

"Eileen" sitting nearby raises an eyebrow, having no doubt been brought up somewhat differently. She learned to make fabulous jiaozi and navigates my kitchen with the same confidence that "Bill" moves his brush. But she learned by watching her mother and father, both of whom love to cook, and then experimenting herself throughout long summers when they were away at work. Her experiments, some wholly unusual, were celebrated, I come to understand. 

While she teaches "Bill" her way to cook in my kitchen, "Bill" comments on recent heightened tensions between Japan and China. Knowing only a tiny bit about some of the atrocities committed during the Second Sino-Japanese War, I ask Bill what he wants Americans to better understand.

He proceeds to recount stories still told in his hometown, far north of Beijing, stories about the Japanese invasion in the 1930s. His voice lowers when he describes the thousands of people who had been buried alive in giant pits. Accounts of the infamous "Rape of Nanking" far to the south bring "Eileen" into the conversation. The stories historians tell about Nanking in books and on CDs are similar.  

Japan was hungry for resources in northern China, and its invasion of Manchuria eventually led to all out war. To the south, during the "Rape of Nanking," the Japanese were unmerciful, as this Wikipedia passage suggests:

Over the following six weeks, the Japanese troops committed the Nanking Massacre, commonly known as the Rape of Nanking. The duration of the massacre is not clearly defined, although the violence lasted at least until early February 1938. Estimates of the death count vary, with most reliable sources holding that 200,000 to 300,000 Chinese civilians were massacred in this period.
During the occupation of Nanking, the Japanese army committed numerous atrocities, such as rape, looting, arson and the execution of prisoners of war and civilians. The executions began under the pretext of eliminating Chinese soldiers disguised as civilians, and a large number of innocent men were intentionally misidentified as enemy combatants and executed as the massacre gathered momentum. A large number of women and children were also killed, as rape and murder became more widespread.

I don't have to condone the traces of animosity toward the Japanese to understand why it lingers. Consider that China has rarely been an aggressor. It's pretty amazing that China has a "5000 year history," but it's a history largely absent of external aggression. And yet China has suffered at the hands of foreigners--and it has been humiliated repeatedly by the Japanese, particularly in the Second Sino-Japanese War. Westerners may not fully appreciate why the recent conflict over the Daoyu Islands is so charged, what memories it stirs as well as what anxieties it provokes about control over future resources.

I'm not blind to what the US did to Japan and the horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, so I'm hardly pointing fingers. I'm only trying to understand the Chinese perspective, to understand why current tensions are so loaded with memories and feelings.

I'm grateful that in this politically charged climate there is nothing like art to break some of the tension. Japanese cartoons are enthusiastically enjoyed by the youngest generation of Chinese--and with the cartoons come another way of looking at the world.  Hooray for anime! The Japanese teacher at SWU, an energetic and dedicated young man who speaks Chinese fluently, is beloved by his Chinese students. I am hopeful.

Meanwhile, the Chinese everywhere prepare for the New Year. On the center of the door is an upside down "fu," wishing people good fortune.

Some students mounted these outside my closed kitchen door.

"Bill" had to put his greeting on the door
rather than on either side of the door because
of space problems.

View from out on the water

In China, the seascape and landscape are changing fast.

What to make of all of it?

 New York, London,  Rio, Cairo . . .all these cities are lands of dramatic contrasts, too. If the statistics below are to be believed, China's GINI index is not as bad as that in South Africa, Brazil, and Nigeria, and only a tad worse than that in the US  . . . but the short-term prognosis for equality in all these places is grim. Important as market reforms have been, I hope that China doesn't embrace too quickly what some might see as the excesses of the West and Mid-East.

According to the Economist about a year ago, "China scored 0.474 for 2012, having peaked at 0.491 in 2008. Many sceptics (and some substantial research) suggest China's inequality is actually far greater." The authors go on to suggest that the good news is that at least some data are being released and the Chinese leadership is paying attention.

These figures and images are still rolling around in my head as I reflect on the fabulous few days my foreign teacher friends and I enjoyed in Hainan. We were fortunate to be there. Soft sea breezes greeted us in Sanya Dongtian Park and we strolled for hours along the water's edge at Tianya HaiJiao. We swam. On the horizon this way and that were glittering ultra-modern buildings. But from the street and a boat, we could see into the living quarters of many who were having no vacation. Wealth concentrated here and here was not being experienced over there. The disparities within the city were stunning, and the urban/rural disparities are even more so.



http://www.economist.com/news/china/21570749-gini-out-bottle

Gini index defined by Wikpedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient
The Gini coefficient measures the inequality among values of a frequency distribution (for example levels of income). A Gini coefficient of zero expresses perfect equality, where all values are the same (for example, where everyone has the same income). A Gini coefficient of one (or 100%) expresses maximal inequality among values (for example where only one person has all the income).

The Chinese Riviera

So what was the carrot that kept me slogging through all those pages of student writing?

Hainan, dubbed the Chinese Riviera.
Hainan is an island in the South China Sea,
about the same latitude as Hawaii.

Ahhhhh! Sand underfoot . . .water cold upon entering but just right after swimming a bit.

Wuzhi Zhou Island, a beautiful little island off the coast of Hainan, a bigger island.
Sanya is the city in the background.

A dozen or so Chinese ventured out beyond the roped off swimming area;
lifeguards used little motorboats to generate waves and spray
to force the determined outliers back within the roped in area.

 

Let me explain: This is not the typical Peace Corps experience! Perhaps Southwest University is spoiling the half dozen of us foreign teachers who are being treated to this incredible New Year's holiday. Plane ride from Chongqing to Sanya, posh hotel, ferry rides out to various islands, a little scuba diving. This, of course, is not the Chinese New Year, otherwise known as Spring Festival or Chun Jie, but it's a good enough excuse, apparently, for a trip. (Upon my return I'll have exams waiting for me to grade--I need to enjoy this while I can!) Thanks to our waiban and to Southwest University in Beibei!  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sanya_beach_scene.jpg