Closed To Tourists... Tibet And Timbuktu

Ever see the uncropped version of this famous picture of Tiananmen Square? (click on it to enlarge)

Roland and I were just rejoicing that we had a chance to visit Timbuktu and northern Mali before the whole area-- as much as two-thirds of the country-- was captured by savage Tuareg slavers and closed up tight. Supposedly the alliance between the militant Islamists and the slavers has been cancelled but, on the other hand, flotsam and jetsam, fanatics and jihadists from all over the Muslim world are flocking to northern Mali. There's not much there. I mean, beautiful, varied Afghanistan it will never be. And now the residents-- or what's left of them-- are fighting back against the conquerors, at least in Timbuktu.

Timbuktu was incubating a proper little tourist industry when we were there a couple years ago-- I mean beyond just for tourists who were backpacking and roughing it. That's totally over now. Everyone who invested in boutique infrastructure must be bankrupt. And the Islamists are systematically destroying whatever it was-- apart from the allure of the name itself-- that has drawn people to Timbuktu for hundreds of years.

Since seizing the city in March, Ansar Dine has targeted Timbuktu's precious Muslim heritage.

The shrine of a 15th Century sufi saint Sidi Mahmoud Ben Amar has been attacked, according to Lazare Eloundou Assomo of Unesco.

"The entrance gate of the mausoleum was completely destroyed and burnt," Mr Assomo told the BBC World Service. "The curtain that protected the shrine was destroyed."

Timbuktu is known as the city of the 333 saints, says Alida Jay Boye, author of Hidden Treasures of Timbuktu.

The fundamentalist Salafi branch of Islam objects to the veneration of saints' tombs, maintaining that it amounts to saint worship.

"Salafis do not want there to be any intermediary between the believer and God. It looks like Ansar Dine is going after shrines just like other groups have done in Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia," she says.

Neil Whitehead, a former hotelier in Timbuktu, has fled to Morocco because of the recent unrest.

He says that conditions are deteriorating in the city.

"The Salafis are turning on the locals, raiding their homes and taking anything of value, together with any food. All shops are shut and, in the words of our friends, 'everything is broken'," he said.

"They have introduced a form of Sharia and the locals feel like prisoners in their houses."

His account is confirmed by Mari Touri, a Timbuktu resident.

"There is no food in the shops, no stocks of supplies, because everything in Timbuktu comes from Bamako in the south and it cannot get through at the moment."

Another resident, Youba Ag Moha, said that the situation in the city was "calm" but that government offices were closed and there was a problem with the electricity supply.

There are also concerns for the city's wealth of manuscripts.

Exactly a year ago, Roland and I were getting ready to visit Tibet. Unfortunately, just as we were getting ready to leave, our visas were pulled and the borders were shut. We wound up staying far longer than anyone should have to in Katmandu, the overly polluted capital of Nepal. It was for one of the periodic crackdowns-- they normally last a few weeks-- that the Chinese occupiers impose on the country for a brutal crackdown they don't want to be embarrassed by in the West. But this week ABC News is reporting, ominously, that China has shut down tourism to Tibet indefinitely.

In a matter of days, the number of expected foreign visitors to Tibet has gone from millions to zero.

Chinese authorities alerted foreign travel agencies Tuesday that they would no longer be issuing entry permits to Tibet, the latest in a series of regulations being put on travelers to Tibet. The announcement follows the self-immolation of two Tibetans last week.

Tibet is no stranger to Chinese interference in its tourism industry. Tibet’s failed rebellion in March 1959 and the event’s annual memorial on National Uprising Day has chronically put the region at odds with the People’s Republic of China. In 2008, protests after National Uprising Day turned into riots that were met with violence by PRC forces. The Chinese government temporarily closed Tibet to foreign visitors. That is a now-annual practice in March, and during other national events significant to the Chinese government.

Now, many are saying that the latest in a string of Tibetan self-immolations led to the country’s shutdown to outsiders. According to Free Tibet, a campaign promoting Tibetan independence from China, there have been more than 30 self-immolations since March 2011. Most recently, on May 27, 2012 two Tibetans were the first to set themselves on fire in Lhasa, Tibet’s tightly-controlled administrative capital. The shutdown also coincides with the Saga Dawa festival, which celebrates the Buddha’s birth and draws many Buddhists to Tibet. This year, the festival began on June 4, which is also the anniversary of the Chinese government crackdown on the Tiananmen Square protests.

While many tourism agencies have learned to adapt and predict the trends on tourism bans, this closure comes as something of a shock. According to Nellie Connelly, marketing director of WildChina, a prominent travel company that regularly coordinates trips to Tibet, Chinese authorities informed the company in mid-May that travelers would only be allowed to visit Tibet in groups of five people of the same nationality. Last week, the government stopped issuing entry permits to Tibet altogether.  Connelly is in the process of rerouting customers whose Tibetan vacations are affected by the new ban. Only those Chinese nationals are allowed to enter the region.

“Tibet is a bucket-list destination for many people,” she says.

Last year, WildChina sent approximately 100 travelers to Tibet. This week, the company had to turn down approximately 10 inquiries about travel to Tibet. Four other WildChina trips are being re-routed, and five more are on indefinite hold.

The loss of income for Tibetan communities is significant. Tibet received 21.25 million domestic and foreign tourists in between 2006 and 2010, generating $3.58 billion in income for the country. Tourism is a staple of the region’s economy. Tibet set a goal to increase tourism revenue between 2011 and 2015 to more than 20 percent of its gross domestic product.

The Chinese government’s recent actions will make reaching 2012 targets difficult.

We never made it to Damascus either.

How Important Is Food In Determining Where You Travel? Hygiene?

I was 15 the first time I hit the road and hitchhiked from Brooklyn to Miami Beach. I had the wanderlust. It never left me. When I was 15 Florida seemed exotic-- and my grandparents were down there for Passover/Easter so I knew I'd have a (free) place to stay. Motivations and destination targeting has changed for me over the years. Delicious food is always an incentive when I think of going to Italy, Morocco, Turkey, France or Thailand. A poor cuisine or an unavailability of healthy food is always a detriment when I think about Egypt, Mongolia, Cuba and, oddly enough, China. (We decided to go to Mali anyway and managed to survive well enough... and then found an absolutely fantastic restaurant-- serving traditional food-- in Bamako.)

China? With it's world famous cuisine? Well, I have to say, I was just in Hong Kong for a few days and every meal was really excellent. I was also in Nepal and... well, no one goes there for the food. And the amebic dysentery I picked up only lasted for 8 or 9 days. But China... David Sedaris put it so very elegantly in the Guardian this past weekend:

I have to go to China." I told people this in the way I might say, "I need to insulate my crawl space" or, "I've got to get these moles looked at." That's the way it felt, though. Like a chore. What initially put me off was the food. I'll eat it if the alternative means starving, but I've never looked forward to it, not even when it seemed exotic to me.

...I think it hurt that, before landing in China, Hugh and I spent a week in Tokyo, where the food was, as always, sublime, everything so delicate and carefully presented. With meals I drank tea, which leads me to another great thing about Japan-- its bathrooms. When I was younger they wouldn't have mattered so much. Then I hit 50 and found that I had to pee all the time. In Tokyo, every subway station has a free public men's room. The floors and counters are aggressively clean and beside each urinal is a hook for hanging your umbrella.

This was what I had grown accustomed to when we flew from Narita to Beijing International, where the first thing one notices is what sounds like a milk steamer, the sort a cafe uses when making lattes and cappuccinos. "That's odd," you think. "There's a coffee bar on the elevator to the parking deck?" What you're hearing, that incessant guttural hiss, is the sound of one person, and then another, dredging up phlegm, seemingly from the depths of his or her soul. At first you look over, wondering, "Where are you going to put that?" A better question, you soon realise, is, "Where aren't you going to put it?"

I saw wads of phlegm glistening like freshly shucked oysters on staircases and escalators. I saw them frozen into slicks on the sidewalk and oozing down the sides of walls. It often seemed that if people weren't spitting, they were coughing without covering their mouths, or shooting wads of snot out of their noses. This was done by plugging one nostril and using the other as a blowhole. "We Chinese think it's best just to get it out," a woman told me over dinner one night. She said that, in her opinion, it's disgusting that a westerner would use a handkerchief and then put it back into his pocket.

"Well, it's not for sentimental reasons," I told her. "We don't hold on to our snot for ever. The handkerchief's mainly a sanitary consideration."

Another thing one notices in China is the turds. "Oh please," you're probably thinking. "Must you?"

To this I answer, "Yes, I must", for if they didn't affect the food itself, they affected the way I thought about it. In Tokyo, I once saw a dog pee on the sidewalk. Then its owner reached into a bag, pulled out a bottle of water and rinsed the urine off the pavement. As for dog faeces, I never saw any trace of them. In Beijing, you see an overwhelming amount of shit. Some of it can be blamed on pets, but a lot of it comes from people. Chinese babies do without diapers, wearing instead these strange little pants with a slit in the rear. When a child has to go, its parents direct it towards the kerb or, if they're indoors, to a spot they think of as "kerby." "Last month I saw a kid shit in the produce aisle of our Chengdu Walmart," a young woman named Bridget told me.

This was the seventh day of my visit and so desensitised was I that my first response was, "You have a Walmart?"

There are the wild outdoor turds of China, and then there are the ones you see in the public bathrooms, most of which feature those squat-style toilets, holes, basically, level with the floor. And these bathrooms, my God. The sorriest American gas station cannot begin to match one of these things.

In the men's room of a Beijing subway station, I watched a man walk past the urinal, lift his three-year-old son into the air and instruct him to pee into the sink-- the one we were supposed to wash our hands in.

My trip reminded me that we are all just animals, that stuff comes out of every hole we have, no matter where we live or how much money we've got. On some level we all know this and manage, quite pleasantly, to shove it towards the back of our minds. In China, it's brought to the front, and nailed there. The supermarket cashier holds out your change and you take it thinking, "This woman squats and spits on the floor while shitting and blowing snot out of her nose." You think it of the cab driver, of the ticket taker and, finally, of the people who are cooking and serving your dinner. Which brings me back to food.

If someone added a pinch of human faeces to my scrambled eggs, I may not be able to detect it but I would most likely realise that these particular eggs taste different from the ones I had yesterday. That's with something familiar, though. And there wasn't a lot of familiar in China. No pork lo mein or kung pao chicken, and definitely no egg rolls. On our first night in Chengdu, we joined a group of four for dinner – one Chinese woman and three westerners. The restaurant was not fancy, but it was obviously popular. Built into our table was a simmering cauldron of broth, into which we were to add side dishes and cook them until they were done. "I've taken the liberty of ordering us some tofu, some mushrooms and some duck tongues," said the western woman sitting across from me. "Do you trust me to keep ordering, or is there anything in particular you might like?"

I looked at her thinking, "You whore!" Catherine was English and had lived in China for close to 20 years. I figured the duck tongues were a sort of test, so I made it a point to look unfazed. Excited even.

When I was eventually forced to eat one, I found that it actually wasn't so bad. The only disconcerting part was the shape, particularly the base, from which dangled tentacle-like roots. This reminded one that the tongues had not been cut off but, rather, yanked out, possibly with pliers. Of course the duck was probably dead by then, wasn't it? It's not as if they'd jerk out the tongue and then let it go, traumatised and quackless but otherwise whole.
It was while eating my second duck tongue that the man at the next table hacked up a loud wad of phlegm and spat it on to the floor. "I think I'm done," I said.

The following morning, and with a different group, Hugh and I took a drive to the mountain where tea originally came from. It was late January, and the two-hour trip took us past countless factories. Mustard-coloured smoke drifted into the sky and the rivers we passed ran thick with waste and rubbish. Eventually we hit snow, which improved things visually but made it harder to move about. By the time we headed back down the mountain, it was almost three. Most restaurants had quit serving lunch, so we stopped at what's called a Farming Family Happiness. This is a farmhouse where, if they're in the mood, the people who live there will cook and serve you a meal.

One of the members of our party was a native of Chengdu, and of the five Americans, everyone but Hugh and I spoke Mandarin. Thus we hung back as they negotiated with the farm wife, who was square-faced and pretty and wore her hair cut into bangs. We ate in what was normally the mah jong parlour, a large room overlooking the family's tea field. Against one wall were two televisions, each tuned to a different channel and loudly playing to no one. On the other wall was a sanitation grade-- C-- and the service grade, which was a smiley face with the smile turned upside down.

As far as I know there wasn't a menu. Rather, the family worked at their convenience, with whatever was handy or in season. There was a rooster parading around the backyard and then there just wasn't. After the cook had slit its throat, he used it as the base for five separate dishes, one of which was a dreary soup with two feet, like inverted salad tongs, sticking out of it. Nothing else was nearly as recognisable.

I'm used to standard butchering: here's the leg, the breast, etc. At the Farming Family Happiness, rather than being carved, the rooster was senselessly hacked, as if by a blind person, a really angry one with a thing against birds. Portions were reduced to shards, mostly bone, with maybe a scrap of meat attached. These were then combined with cabbage and some kind of hot sauce.

Another dish was made entirely of organs, which again had been hacked beyond recognition. The heart was there, the lungs, probably the comb and intestines as well. I don't know why this so disgusted me. If I was a vegetarian, OK, but if you're a meat eater, why draw these arbitrary lines? "I'll eat the thing that filters out toxins but not the thing that sits on top of the head, doing nothing?" And why agree to eat this animal and not that one?

I remember reading a few years ago about a restaurant in the Guangdong province that was picketed and shut down because it served cat. The place was called The Fangji Cat Meatball Restaurant, which isn't exactly hiding anything. Go to Fangji and you pretty much know what you're getting. My objection to cat meatballs is not that I have owned several cats, and loved them, but that I try not to eat things that eat meat. Like most westerners I tend towards herbivores, and things that like grain: cows, chickens, sheep, etc. Pigs eat meat-- a pig would happily eat a human-- but most of the pork we're privy to was raised on corn or horrible chemicals rather than other pigs and dead people.

There are distinctions among the grazing animal eaters as well. People who like lamb and beef, at least in north America, tend to draw the line at horse, which in my opinion is delicious. The best I've had was served at a restaurant in Antwerp, a former stable called, cleverly enough, The Stable. Hugh was right there with me, and though he ate the same thing I did, he practically wept when someone in China mentioned eating sea horses. "Oh, those poor things," he said. "How could you?"

I went, "Huh?"

It's like eating poultry but taking a moral stand against those chocolate chicks they sell at Easter. "A sea horse is not related to an actual horse," I said. "They're fish, and you eat fish all the time. Are you objecting to this one because of its shape?"

He said he couldn't eat sea horses because they were friendly and never did anyone any harm, this as opposed to those devious, bloodthirsty lambs whose legs we so regularly roast with rosemary and new potatoes.

The dishes we had at the Farming Family Happiness were meant to be shared, and as the pretty woman with the broad face brought them to the table, the man across from me beamed and reached for his chopsticks. "You know," he said, "this country might have its ups and downs but it is virtually impossible to get a bad meal here."

I didn't say anything.

Another of the dishes that day consisted of rooster blood. I'd thought it would be liquid, like V8 juice, but when cooked it coagulated into little pads that had the consistency of tofu. "Not bad," said the girl seated beside me, and I watched as she slid one into her mouth. Jill was American, a Peace Corps volunteer who'd come to Chengdu to teach English. "In Thailand last year? I ate dog face," she told me.

"Just the face?"

"Well, head and face." She was in a small village, part of a team returning abducted girls to their parents. To show their gratitude, the locals prepared a feast. Dog was considered good eating. The head was supposedly the best part, and rather than offend her hosts, Jill ate it.

This, for many, is flat-out evil but the rest of the world isn't like America, where it's become virtually impossible to throw a dinner party. One person doesn't eat meat, while another is lactose intolerant, or can't digest wheat. You have vegetarians who eat fish and others who won't touch it. Then there are vegans, macrobiotics and a new group, flexitarians, who eat meat if not too many people are watching. Take that into consideration and it's actually rather refreshing that a 22-year-old from the suburbs of Detroit will pick up her chopsticks and at least try the shar pei.

I'd like to be more like Jill, but in China something kept holding me back. In clean, sophisticated Japan the rooster blood, arranged upon a handmade plate between the perfect, tempura snow pea and a radish carved to look like a first trimester foetus, would have seemed a fine idea. "We ought to try making this at home," I'd have said to Hugh. Here, though, I thought of the sanitation grade, and of the rooster, pecking maggots out of human faeces before being killed. Most of the restaurants in China to me smelled dirty, though what I was smelling was likely some unfamiliar ingredient, and I was allowing the things I'd seen earlier in the day-- the spitting and snot blowing, etc-- to fill in the blanks.

Then again, maybe not.

While on our trip we ate at normal, everyday places, and sometimes bought food on the street. Our only expensive meal was in Beijing, where we went alone to a fancy restaurant recommended by an acquaintance. The place was located in an old warehouse and had been lavishly decorated. There was a wine expert and someone whose job it was to drop by every three minutes and refill your water glass. We had the Peking duck, which was expertly carved rather than hacked and was served with little pancakes. Towards the end of the meal, I stepped into the men's room to pee and there, disintegrating in the western-style toilet, was an unflushed turd, a little reminder saying, "See, you're still in China!"

Back at the table I asked for the bill. Then I remembered where I was and amended it to "the check". In France, you can die waiting to pay for your meal, which is something I've never understood. "How can they not want me out of here?" I'll think. Ten minutes might pass. Then 20, me watching as the waiter does everything but accept my goddamn money.

I'll say that for China, though-- offer to pay and before you can stab a rooster with a rusty screwdriver someone has taken you up on it. I think they want to catch you before you get sick, but whatever the reason, within minutes you're back on the street, searching the blighted horizon and wondering where your next meal might be coming from.

Asian culture doesn't subscribe to the germ theory. I'll never forget the first time, decades ago, I visited Thailand and watched our beautiful, smiling waitress coming towards us with a huge platter of delicious looking food. She sneezed all over it, and kept smiling beautifully as she served us. My friend Digby, who lived in Thailand for many years, suggests you kill whatever bacteria you can by using plenty of hot sauce... on everything.

Planning A Trip To Tibet?

St. Regis, Lhasa-- guests complained when they ran out of lobster

In 1971 I trekked up near the Nepali-Tibetan border and wondered if I'd ever get across it. Back then no Americans were allowed. Now, China encourages American tourists... kind of-- and sometimes. There's even a 5-star hotel there now, as China works to turn Lhasa into a kind of Disneyland destination for the wealthy.

For decades, the hardy travellers who braved the icy roads and 2,000-kilometre drive to Lhasa from Sichuan have been greeted with austere monasteries filled with crimson-robed monks and the terrible taste of yak-butter tea.

But the Chinese government, which defends its mandate to rule over Tibet by claiming to have brought economic prosperity to the region, is determined to make life more luxurious for today's pampered tourists by opening Tibet's first five-star hotel--The St. Regis Lhasa.

Guests arriving at Lhasa airport are whisked away in Mercedes-Benz limousines to one of the 150 suites or 12 private villas. Personal butlers escort guests to their rooms and give tips on life at Lhasa's 3,600-metre altitude. Guests are told not to shower on their first day, since hot water is believed by the Chinese to open up blood vessels and suck oxygen away from the brain. Each room, meanwhile, is equipped with oxygen tanks, just in case.

Downstairs there is a spa, a swimming pool, a restaurant boasting Cantonese and Sichuan delicacies, including yak meat, and a wine bar with hundreds of bottles specially flown in, including Château Lafite-Rothschild. Any guests wanting to taste "more basic Tibetan fare, such as yak butter and boiled noodles" will have to leave the premises, the hotel's website flatly states.

Tourism is now responsible for almost 15 per cent of Tibet's economy and more than six million tourists visited last year. Four more five-star hotels, including a Shangri-La and an Intercontinental, are to open in the next four years. Beijing is planning to introduce a luxurious train service to Tibet, with tickets costing as much as $9,000 per person.

I just spent the last six months or so planning a trip to Tibet, though the St Regis wasn't on our itinerary. A trip to Tibet isn't easy, not like getting on a plane and flying to Bamako, renting a jeep with a driver and going on an excursion through Mali's Dogon country and then on to Timbuktu. China makes it a lot more difficult-- and expensive. But in the end-- after lots of hassle and lots of weighing of conflicting moral perspectives-- it was all set. Then a few weeks ago, I got an e-mail that all foreign visas were canceled for the period I was planning to be there in June and July. They don't tell you why. But we knew.

There's been some trouble in paradise; the natives are restless. And the Chinese are cracking down again. Journalists are already banned from Tibet and they don't want any tourists there to bear witness to their brutality. For one thing, Beijing's nemesis, the Dalai Lama, has formally ceded any political role. The Dalai Lama will still be Tibet's spiritual and religious leader and a symbol of national unity but the Tibetan exiles' parliament has elected a Harvard scholar, Lobsang Sangay, to be the head of government (prime minister) based in Dharamshala, India.

Although the Dalai Lama will retain the more significant role of spiritual leader and will still be influential when it comes to major policy-making decisions, the transition will make Sangay a far more prominent figure than his predecessor as prime minister.

The Dalai signed amendments to the constitution of the Tibetan government-in-exile at the weekend to formally cede his political role. ...The Dalai Lama's political successor represents a major shift from the historic dominance of Tibetan politics by older religious figures.

The spiritual leader's move is part of an effort to strengthen the Tibetan movement's democratic structure so it can guide the movement following his death.

Sangay has publicly backed the Dalai Lama's policy of seeking "meaningful autonomy" for Tibet under Chinese rule.

But his former membership of the pro-independence Tibetan Youth Congress has fueled speculation he may take a more radical stance and embolden the political strategy of Tibetan exiles toward China.

Beijing considers the Dalai Lama as a separatist bent on fomenting unrest in his homeland.

By late this month expect to hear more unconfirmable rumors about more oppression in Tibet.

Is It Safe To Eat Or Drink Anything In China?

This morning at DWT we tried to make the point that the very nature of commerce in China-- in Asia really-- is built on fraud and corruption. Reactionary American politicians like Pat Toomey (R-PA), Ron Johnson (R-WI) and John Boehner (R-OH) admire China so much-- Communism or not-- because their financial and commercial system embodies the very depths of caveat emptor taken to the extreme. In two weeks I'll be back in China and, I have to admit, I know I have to be warier than in most places about what I consume. What's in the bottled water? How safe is it to eat in a restaurant, even a highly rated one?

So it was with some interest that I noted yesterday that China will be handing out the death penalty for food safety violators. An announcement like that presupposes some real problems that need to be addressed. Their highest court has ordered lower court judges to toughen up the sentences for people violating food safety standards "amid deepening public concerns over the country's food safety following a wave of recent scandals." If someone dies because of food safety violations, the death penalty is now in order-- and government officials taking bribes to protect the criminals will also be facing harsher penalties.

From milk laced with melamine, pigs fed with performance-enhancing drugs to watermelons juiced up with growth-stimulating chemicals, a series of recent scandals have outraged Chinese consumers, despite ramped-up government crackdown and state media campaign against food safety violations.

From last September to April this year, Chinese courts have tried and convicted 106 people accused of violating food safety, including two who received life imprisonment last month in a "melamine milk" case, Xinhua reported.

As vegan as I can be-- especially when traveling in dodgy countries-- I'm not worried about being fed dog meat disguised as something else. Although others probably should be.

Authorities say a battle has been escalating in China between the country's dog lovers and those who consider the animals a mealtime feature.

The controversy is more evidence of China's changing social landscape, where dog meat has been a coveted food item for centuries but pet ownership has burgeoned in recent years as a booming economy created a middle class with both money and time for four-legged friends, the Washington Post reported Saturday. ... China has no laws against cruelty to animals, and animal activists estimate as many as 10 million dogs, some strays and some stolen pets are sold for human consumption each year.

But I am interested in the new organic food movement started to sprout up in China's cities. Can it be trusted? Maybe...

In recent years China has been hit by a number of food scandals and fears about safety have lingered. In 2008, 300,000 babies became seriously ill and six babies died after being given formula contaminated with the industrial chemical melamine. In April this year, police seized 40 tons of beansprouts which had been treated with dangerous growth promoting chemicals and hormones, while this month, watermelons started exploding in the fields because they had been treated with too much accelerant.

In March health officials discovered pork that glowed and iridescent blue in the dark because it had been contaminated by a bacteria.

Amid the scares it was reported that China's government departments were running their own organic farms to feed staff, sparking criticism that officials were putting their own safety before that of the people. ... [O]rganic farmers and a host of co-operative schemes that lease small parcels of land to urbanites who want to feel the soil under their fingernails-- not unlike British allotment schemes-- report business is suddenly booming.

Peng Xunan, the founder of the "Farmlander" allotment scheme that has 200 sites across China said the plots were being rented in ever-growing numbers, and no longer just be pensioners looking to occupy their time.

"I'd say it was split three ways between families who want to teach their children where food comes from, older people in their retirement, but in recent months definitely a growing number worried about food safety concerns after all these reports of lax food safety," he said.

Interestingly, the other China-- Taiwan-- is having a similar situation, with legislators urging tougher penalties for tainted food and better regulations for factories manufacturing food products, particularly sports drinks, juices, tea drinks, fruit jam or syrups, tablets or powders, all of which have been found to be poisoned with plasticizers.

A legislator of the ruling Kuomintang proposed yesterday to revise regulations to levy stiffer penalties on suppliers of food products that threaten consumers' health, establish an information system for all products, and change the listing of plasticizers in the second category of toxic chemical products.

...Chang pointed out that the current law only stipulates fines between NT$60,000 and NT$300,000 for using plasticizers like carcinogen di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP) or other toxic substances in food and beverages, not enough to deter unconscionable food processors and suppliers from harming consumers.

An integrated registration mechanism should be set up to record all information concerning raw materials, components, additives, manufacturing and packaging to help manage every step of the food and beverage supply chain, Chang said.

Such a product identity system will also help to track products, he added.

Oh-- and the crackdown and regulations... that's not what Toomey, Johnson and Boehner admire about China.

Is It Immoral For Tourists To Visit Tibet?

The closest we could get to visiting Tibet in 1970 was to hike up to the border with Nepal and gaze across. Now there are regular flights from Kathmandu to Lhasa on China Air ($500 roundtrip). I always wanted to go and now I'm going to. Whenever I post something about it, I get barraged with sincere pleas not to go to Chinese-occupied Tibet because it will add to the plight on the Tibetan people, who would still like to maintain their national identity and even regain their national autonomy. Journalists aren't even allowed into the country at all.

We're staying at Yabshi Phunkang, a recently renovated residence of the 11th Dalai Lama that was built in 1838 in the heart of old Lhasa. Yabshi is title given to the parents of the Dalai Lama and Phunkhang is a short form of Phuntsok Khangsar (11th Dalai Lama’s family house). Presumably this notice, which is posted in every hotel in the country, will greet us when we arrive:

NOTICE

Ladies and Gentleman Welcome to Lhasa. So that you may have a safe and enjoyable travels, we would like you to be aware of the following government regulations:

1) Foreigners travelling in China must abide by Chinese law and must not endanger the national security of China, harm its Public interests, disturb the Public order, or engage in any other activities incompatible with tourists status.

2) If Chinese citizens are holding a rally or demonstration, it is strictly forbidden for foreigners to participation, follow along with, take pictures or video film any of these affairs. Foreigners are not allowed to interfere in Chinese internal affairs.

3) Foreigners are forbidden to distribute any propaganda material and join in any religious activity.

4) In accordance with regulations, foreigner tourists must go through all registration formalities and stay only at a designated hotel. Without prior permission it is forbidden to travel in unopened areas, to use undesignated transportation, to operate individual business or privately take up an occupation.

5) It's forbidden to visit and photograph the sky burial site according to the local government's regulations for the minority nationality's habits and customs. The tourist who breaks the regulation will be punished strictly.

6) For safety reasons, it is strictly forbidden for foreign tourists to travel by tractor or other privately operated means of transport. If by any hance a traffic accident happens, under these circumstances you will be responsible for your own actions and the results.

7) Valuables should deposit in checkroom, otherwise, the hotel won't be responsible for the loss.

As "political" as I am on my blog, I'm not travelling around the world looking to interfere in other countries' affairs. In Tibet just speaking with a foreign about politics could land a Tibetan in jail for 20 years. We're going there to see place and get a feel for it. I have enough to worry about with my own country's political dysfunction. On the other hand, I'm not unaware that China would like to turn Lhasa into a kind of Disneyland destination for insensitive tourists. And the beef with travellers going to Tibet is that by going there you implicitly condone the status quo and you enrich the oppressors in Beijing. Yeah, tell it to someone who shops in WalMart... or who owns an Apple computer. Here's a perspective that tries seeing it from all angles:

The first point is something which you must decide for yourself, but I feel that this worry is outweighed by the personal insight one can gain into the current political situation. It must also be borne in mind that over 98 percent of Tibetans live (willingly or otherwise) under the jurisdiction of the Peoples Republic of China and one cannot ignore them; they are trying just as hard to free their country as those in exile. Some live within the system, trying to get the best for themselves and their culture, whereas others attempt to live inspite of it, ignoring the rules.

It is true that Tourism in Tibet is used as a propaganda weapon by Beijing to purvey the message that all is calm in Tibet. If this irks you (as it does me) then make sure you tell people how it really was when you get back home.

The second point is something in my view is far more serious:

Many shops and restaurants are not owned by Tibetans, but by migrants. These migrants are encouraged by tax breaks and other government measures. The government would appear to be following a policy of cultural harmonisation by marginalising Tibetans and Tibeatan culture through a dilution of the Tibetan population. This is being done in the hope that future Tibetans will not be able to differentiate themselves from people in other parts of China. This policy would appear to have had some success in Chinese Inner Mongolia where Mongolians are outnumbered 20:1.

As tourism is an important part of the local economy, the growth of tourism will allow more migrants to earn a living in Tibet. There are two ways to combat this: don't go to Tibet, or if you do choose to visit, then you should stay in Tibetan owned hotels, shop in Tibetan stores and eat in Tibetan restaurants. Anyway, who wants to go all the way to Tibet just to eat cuisine from China? The Chinese and Hui food is far better in Chengdu and Linxia.

The Free Tibet website lists the pros and cons for travelling to Tibet.

Arguments for travelling to Tibet:
 
• The Dalai Lama  encourages foreigners to witness the oppression in Tibet and to inform others of their experiences on their return.

• Tourism provides a window to the outside world for Tibetans. 

• Tibetans find the presence of tourists in Tibet encouraging.

• Consider going to Tibetan populated areas outside the TAR in Sichuan, Gansu and Qinghai provinces, where you can travel without a special permit and the need to hire an official guide.
 
Arguments against travelling to Tibet:

• Tourism provides legitimacy to China's occupation.

• Most of the money you spend will go into the pockets of Chinese enterprises. The tourist infrastructure in Tibet is largely controlled by Chinese businesses with headquarters outside Tibet.

• It is hard to travel in Tibet without tacitly complying with the Chinese regime.

• Tourists are only allowed to travel to the TAR in an officially organised group, on an officially approved itinerary and guided by an officially approved guide.

And if you feel it's wrong to go to Tibet, where do you draw the line? Russia? Israel? Morocco? Myanmar? Arizona?

Hong Kong: One Country, Two Different Identities

Tourism has been an important part of the Hong Kong economy for decades and the last figures I was able to find showed around 26 million visitors annually-- around half of whom come from Mainland China. I asked Sandra McAubre, who normally writes on the topic of sports management degree programs to do a guest post on the feelings of Hong Kong Chinese about the change of status of the former British crown colony. She welcomes your comments at her email id: SandraA@sportsmanagementdegrees.net/ Her post follows:

How does it feel to be born Chinese, raised the British way of life, and then go back to being Chinese all over again? For the middle-aged citizen of Hong Kong, this is a very real conundrum-- the tiny island nation which belongs to China was leased to the British in 1898 for a period of 99 years. And so in 1997, it was officially handed over to the Chinese with much pomp and splendor. How do you cope with going from capitalist to socialist society in the blink of an eye? Fortunately for the people of Hong Kong, the island is not governed by the rules of Mainland China; rather, it is called a Special Administrative District and is being run the way it was when it was under the British. And so they’re able to retain their British way of life even as they revert back to their Chinese identity.

If you were to visit both Hong Kong and China, you would not be able to visibly tell the difference in the way of life in both places, but if you lived in either or both of them for some time, I guess the difference would become obvious. The larger cities of China may seem to be going the cosmopolitan route and adopting the Western way of life, but underneath the suits and inside the swanky multi-storied skyscrapers runs the thread of communism, the administration that allows only one child a couple, punishes people who speak against the State, and runs the country with an iron hand. China has only polished its external appearance to keep pace with the rest of the world and open its doors to developers and multinationals who provide opportunities for the nation to grow and flourish. Beneath the tip of the iceberg is a nation that is still proudly socialistic and which closely guards its secrets.

The people of Hong Kong are free to lead open lives, say what they want, and do what they wish to within the confines of the law that existed over the past century. But because they are no longer British, there is some form of censorship, even if it is self-imposed, as if they were a little apprehensive about some invisible punishment. And perhaps they are justified in trying to adhere to the way of life that China follows because this special status expires in 50 years. With 13 of them are already gone, only time will tell whether Hong Kong will still remain the capitalist economic success that it is or if it will slowly be assimilated into socialistic China and be forced to accept a new way
of life.

I recently visited Hong Kong and was impressed with the efficiency of the nation (I’m still unable to accept it is a part of China), and I sincerely hope it retains its unique flavor that is part British and part Asian (I cannot say Chinese in all honesty), no matter how many years go by.

What Are The Most Polluted Cities On Earth? Is It Even Safe To Breath The Air In Indian And Chinese Cities?

Chongqing: bring a gas mask

The first time I was in Delhi, in 1970, the air was so unbelievably filthy that I got out of town as fast as I could. Like many cities-- Los Angeles and Bangkok being two good examples-- Delhi is a lot cleaner now. But not so much, apparently, as I thought it was when I was there last year. According to the World Bank in 2004 it still had the second worst air pollution of any city in the world. Numero uno was Cairo. Here's the list of the 20 most polluted:

Cairo
Delhi
Calcutta
Tianjin
Chongqing
Lucknow
Kanpur
Jakarta
Shenyang
Zhengzhou
Jinan
Lanzhou
Beijing
Taiyuan
Chengdu
Ahmadabad
Anshan
Wuhan
Bangkok
Nanchang

Twelve are in China and five are in India. I'm finishing up on Robyn Meredith's NY Times best selling book on the economic changes in India and China in the last two decades, The Elephant And The Dragon and she has a lot to say about the overwhelming pollution in both countries.

Nothing can prepare visitors for the pollution in China... One of the worst places to breathe on the planet is the world's biggest city: Chongqing, China, with a population of 30 million people counting the exurbs, about the same number of people as live in the entire state of California. There the New China coexists with the Old China: skyscrapers and construction sites decorate downtown, but scrawny bong-bong men wait for work on street corners. Bong-bong men are paid sixty cents an hour to ferry heavy loads-- from building materials to groceries-- up and down the city's hilly streets using bamboo poles slung over their shoulders. They must have powerful lungs, not just strong legs: the city is half dark most days. Sunlight barely reaches the ground, dimmed by thick, gray smog. Skyscrapers just three blocks away are mere outlines because of air pollution. Emerging from the inside of a building onto the streets prompts one's eyes to water. The air is filthy but that is not all. The raw sewage produced by 30 million people-- 30 million-- is dumped straight into the Yangtze River as it flows past. The countryside nearby is not the place to go for fresh air: there you notice that the leaves of trees-- along with everything else-- are coated with black dust from the coal mines and factories in the region. More acid rain falls on Chongqing than anywhere else on earth.

...Nearly a third of China's rivers are so polluted that they aren't even fit for agriculture or industrial use, according to Chinese government statistics. Village doctors have documented increased cancer rates near polluting factories and chemical plants. Untreated waste water dumped into China's famed Yangtse River is killing marine life and turning its water "cancerous," according to Xinhua, the state-controlled media outlet.

...Lack of enforcement of environmental laws is also a big problem in India. Its capital city, Delhi, used to have pollution levels ten times higher than the nation's legal limit, mostly because of the high-pollution taxis, trucks and buses on its roads. Delhi has the world's worst air pollution in 2002, but managed to clean up its filthy air after being taken to task by India's Supreme Court. The overhaul began in 1997. Some steps were long overdue: the city finally banned lead gas. However belatedly, the city reduced pollution from Delhi's power plants by installing scrubber to clean up smokestack emissions and requiring them to burn cleaner coal. It banished motorized rickshaws and buses built before 1990 from the roads. In 1998, the court required all city buses to run on compressed natural gas (CNG)-- a cleaner fuel than gasoline-- by 2001... Just 10 percent of sewage is treated in India, with the rest dumped into waterways, along with industrial pollution. India's rivers-- even the holy Ganges-- have become sewers.

I still remember leaving a restaurant in one town after dinner and seeing some kids behind it filling up the "bottled water" from a garden hose.