Last week 135 of Plan China's 150 staff began our annual retreat. In truly Chinese style it took 23 hours to get to our destination via coaches and trains; though we all had beds the electric fans on the 25 year old trains struggled to beat the 30 degree evening heat. We ended up at a place called Bamboo Sea, 'not that famous' a place according to my colleagues almost none of whom had heard of it before.
Not that that matters, it was far enough into the mountains to have fresh air and a great opportunity for me to be forced to speak more chinese. Unfortunately most of my colleagues from the field offices have rather thick accents. Bamboo Sea was, as the name implies, a forest entirely made of Bamboo (not actually a sea, but a metaphor) which was rather large and took up several mountains.What makes the trip so Chinese?
-the tour guide talking for more than 2 hours on the bus about the local area, then organising a 2 hour karaoke competition on the bus (she did not get the humour when i sang Oasis' Wonderwall whilst looking at her: "I don't believe that anybody// Feels the way I do about you now") and forcing everyone to participate.
-the party 1 evening whereby offices/groups perform 'short' skits which in total lasted over 3 hours. It did look funny, and everyone else was laughing a lot, even though i had barely a clue what anyone was saying. Never the less there was some fruit and munchies...
-the 'sightseeing' which requires being bussed around the area we were in between various bamboo related sights (often involving lots of carvings of famous sayings or legends into the rock that is really nothing to do with bamboo and that are found at every famous place in China).
-the food which was 90% made of bamboo dishes. There are, in my recent experience, at least 30 different dishes you can make from bamboo and many other herbal medicines that can be created from bamboo according to the women trying to sell it to me.
-the incredible amount of photos the chinese people took of bamboo and of themselves in front of bamboo (bamboo is quite common all over china).
-lunch on a boat cruising along the river looking at more bamboo
-how loud (and how fast) chinese people speak on buses
and so on.... Anyway it has been a fun trip and great to get out of the office and enjoy more social time with my colleagues. Especially after reading Only 1 percent of the country’s 560 million city dwellers breathe air considered safe by the EU.
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Saturday, August 25, 2007
Banteay Srei amongst the trees
Banteay Srei is undoubtedly the most beautiful of all the temples in Angkor. Many people miss it as it is 25km from the main complex, but the completeness, the intricacies, the colours, the designs and the stories are breathtaking. I walked around it for over an hour doing at least 6 laps and still did not want to leave.
Bayon and lake 2
Bayon, one of the most impressive temples in Angkor has an incredible amount of faces carved into the rocks and some even more incredible carvings of daily life, wars and escapades the rulers got up to at the time. One of the many interesting aspects of Angkor's temples is the various religious influences on them: sometimes Buddhist, sometimes Hindu depending on the year. And of course, depending on which ruler built the temple.
Pretty hut
A family's home in rural Cambodia. Nearby is their 1 pig, a small fire that they cook over and some other huts.
Painting of the killing fields
Evidence of the incredible regime run by Pol Pot wiping out a third of Cambodia's population. A visit to the school that was turned into an interrogation/torture centre coupled with a trip out to where the unlucky inhabitants were clubbed to death is sobering. The children (of which there were hundreds, often only a few years old) somehow ended up being killed as 'children of political enemies' by being held by the legs and swung against trees. How does mankind do such things?
Adam and massive tree in Ta Phrom
Indiana Jones eat your heart out. These are the big mama trees that are taking over thousand year old temples. does put the little old human into perspective
Angkor Wat rising above the forest
Angkor Wat and the many other temples are lying around in a jungle... almost literally. indeed the smaller temples are so rarely visited it is a fantastic experience to be there alone amongst the nature.
Stunning Angkor Wat at first light
Angkor Wat at sunlight; photos do not do it justice... though i did try enough times!
Mirror image of Angkor Wat
Angkor Wat -the greatest of all the temples at Angkor which is now in tiny Cambodia but which used to be the centre of an empire covering most of South East Asia. At sunrise it is incredible.
Immaculate Banteay Srei carvings -closeup 2
Imagine entire temples packed full of carvings like this; built more than a thousand years ago -and the hundreds of temples sited in a 'capital' whose population was 1 million people! And then, they all disappeared and the jungle swallowed up the entire complex. As spectacular as Angkor and surrounding temples are, the area around it is one of the poorest in Cambodia.
Sunday, August 19, 2007
luxury
I missed out on the (presumably) impressive celebrations on the 8th which marked 1 year to go till the Olympics, as I was in a seminar talking about the role of China in Africa. A very interesting topics, since there are all kinds of phrases that are associated with it from 'the new colonialism' to 'south-south co-operation'. There is no doubt why China is dealing with Africa -it is for its own benefit, as every other country deals with Africa. The question is will Africa benefit from China's involvement or not?
Will trading help reduce poverty or flood the market with cheap, subsidised, imported Chinese goods? Will China's endemic corruption make Africa's corruption worse or is this a chance for Chinese companies to turn over a new leaf in a new continent? Will the media and NGOs be successful in forcing China to help Africa; using the 'genocide' Olympics as leverage? How will Chinese people who can barely speak english deal with African people, and will they just live in their own communes eating Chinese food? Since Chinese workers have now started being kidnapped for ransoms, will China have to stray form its policy of 'non-interference'? Will the government controlled Chinese media ever start to accept whatsoever that China's motivations for being in Africa are not really just to help the poor black man that the white man screwed over?
All interesting questions, and all affect the whole poverty reduction agenda. Unfortunately the seminar barely touched on any of these issues, but never mind. Work is going well; organisation-wide retreat coming up soon. should be interesting/exciting/good chance to practise chinese.
I moved apartments a couple of months back into a cheap place of rather low quality; but it keeps out most of the mosquitos and has a few drips of water flowing into the sink and into the hole that is both a toilet and a shower. It is good enough for temporary stays. The reason I moved was that I am expecting to spend more time in Beijing, hence the greater expenditure of rent in Beijing instead.
A big bed in a big room with my own bathroom; a living room with 3 sofas, big screen TV, dining table, kitchen with oven, a study and a little bed+bath-room for a maid (we do not have a maid, so it is used for storage) amongst all the other fancy things i am not used to having; like bookshelves, plants and air conditioning. I honestly feel guilty living there (though i do conserve electricity), compared to the people that Plan is actually helping. But never mind, it lets me live close to work in Beijing, gives me space to study chinese in quiet and provides a green park between the 58 buildings of the complex to go for a run in the mornings.
Unfortunately this week i am in Xi'an. But never mind. Spurs won, and that is all that matters!
Will trading help reduce poverty or flood the market with cheap, subsidised, imported Chinese goods? Will China's endemic corruption make Africa's corruption worse or is this a chance for Chinese companies to turn over a new leaf in a new continent? Will the media and NGOs be successful in forcing China to help Africa; using the 'genocide' Olympics as leverage? How will Chinese people who can barely speak english deal with African people, and will they just live in their own communes eating Chinese food? Since Chinese workers have now started being kidnapped for ransoms, will China have to stray form its policy of 'non-interference'? Will the government controlled Chinese media ever start to accept whatsoever that China's motivations for being in Africa are not really just to help the poor black man that the white man screwed over?
All interesting questions, and all affect the whole poverty reduction agenda. Unfortunately the seminar barely touched on any of these issues, but never mind. Work is going well; organisation-wide retreat coming up soon. should be interesting/exciting/good chance to practise chinese.
I moved apartments a couple of months back into a cheap place of rather low quality; but it keeps out most of the mosquitos and has a few drips of water flowing into the sink and into the hole that is both a toilet and a shower. It is good enough for temporary stays. The reason I moved was that I am expecting to spend more time in Beijing, hence the greater expenditure of rent in Beijing instead.
A big bed in a big room with my own bathroom; a living room with 3 sofas, big screen TV, dining table, kitchen with oven, a study and a little bed+bath-room for a maid (we do not have a maid, so it is used for storage) amongst all the other fancy things i am not used to having; like bookshelves, plants and air conditioning. I honestly feel guilty living there (though i do conserve electricity), compared to the people that Plan is actually helping. But never mind, it lets me live close to work in Beijing, gives me space to study chinese in quiet and provides a green park between the 58 buildings of the complex to go for a run in the mornings.
Unfortunately this week i am in Xi'an. But never mind. Spurs won, and that is all that matters!
Monday, August 06, 2007
3 years without...
...going to a cinema, since cinemas are so expensive in China (around 10 USD), they only have around 20 foreign films a year (due to government regulations) and fake DVDs are so cheap.
But, in Bangkokg, in one of the best cinemas in town, it is only a few dollars and they show loads of movies, so I popped in on saturday to watch Die Hard 4 (a great 'return to the cinema after 3 years' choice).
Now the Thais love their King -and it really is not possible to understate the word 'love'. In fact, though 95% of Thais are Buddhist I think the king fulfills a god-like role. Yellow is his colour so Thais often wear yellow t-shirts (especially on Monday, when the subway is full of yellow). On many tall buildings there are massive (covering 20 or more storeys/floors) posters of their dear king. Along the roads there are posters and temples to the king. He is everywhere. I have no problem with this, and was quite willing to stand up during the 3 minute 'infomerical' about the kind that was showed just before the movie started. It was quite surprising though, when after an advert about shampoo, the whole movie theatre gets up and bows their head and then the king comes on!
...going to a live sporting event, since there are not many world famous teams in China. However, on sunday 1 world famous team, Barcelona, was in town so i went to buy the cheapest ticket (18 Euros; most expensive was 180 Euros!) to watch them beat Beijing 3-0. The game was surprisingly good and open. Barcelona were in another league altogether, especially in individual skill, but Beijing did get better towards the end.
There were 30,000 fans, though the stadium is very different to British ones: no roofs, jsut 1 tier of seating and an athletics track means the atmosphere is not as good. Though it did heat up when some Americans (supporting Beijing) had a scuffle with some Chinese (supporting Barcelona). Of course there was plenty of fake t-shirts and posters outside the stadium, but the Chinese still have some way to go to prepare for the Olympics -for example, there was so few snack stalls that they ran out at half-time and were only twice the price of normal shop prices! Wembley can give them some advice on extortionate pricing I am sure!
But, in Bangkokg, in one of the best cinemas in town, it is only a few dollars and they show loads of movies, so I popped in on saturday to watch Die Hard 4 (a great 'return to the cinema after 3 years' choice).
Now the Thais love their King -and it really is not possible to understate the word 'love'. In fact, though 95% of Thais are Buddhist I think the king fulfills a god-like role. Yellow is his colour so Thais often wear yellow t-shirts (especially on Monday, when the subway is full of yellow). On many tall buildings there are massive (covering 20 or more storeys/floors) posters of their dear king. Along the roads there are posters and temples to the king. He is everywhere. I have no problem with this, and was quite willing to stand up during the 3 minute 'infomerical' about the kind that was showed just before the movie started. It was quite surprising though, when after an advert about shampoo, the whole movie theatre gets up and bows their head and then the king comes on!
...going to a live sporting event, since there are not many world famous teams in China. However, on sunday 1 world famous team, Barcelona, was in town so i went to buy the cheapest ticket (18 Euros; most expensive was 180 Euros!) to watch them beat Beijing 3-0. The game was surprisingly good and open. Barcelona were in another league altogether, especially in individual skill, but Beijing did get better towards the end.
There were 30,000 fans, though the stadium is very different to British ones: no roofs, jsut 1 tier of seating and an athletics track means the atmosphere is not as good. Though it did heat up when some Americans (supporting Beijing) had a scuffle with some Chinese (supporting Barcelona). Of course there was plenty of fake t-shirts and posters outside the stadium, but the Chinese still have some way to go to prepare for the Olympics -for example, there was so few snack stalls that they ran out at half-time and were only twice the price of normal shop prices! Wembley can give them some advice on extortionate pricing I am sure!
Thursday, August 02, 2007
Motos
A city of 2 million people, and probably more than a million Motos (Motobikes), Phnom Penh gets my award for the most dangerous traffic of all the cities I have been to. It is hard to describe in words; but suffice to say there are about 4 times more Motos than cars and if ever proof is needed of how dangerous it is, surely the fact that at least 1/3rd of drivers wear helmets is it. Spot a helmet elsewhere (especially China) and you deserve an award!
For a capital city it really is a bit disappointing: barely a building over 6 stories tall and an airport that is probably smaller than Wembley Stadium, but as towns go it is a fantastic place full of character and pleasant architecture, a lack of slums (considering the poverty of Cambodia), tremendous food, nice sunsets and very warm people.
Despite this, despite the great guest houses that extend into a pretty lake (and provide rooms for only 3 dollars), despite the fun that can be had when travelling with a girl whose hair is braided and attracts all kinds of attention.... despite all these and more, the endearing memory of Phnom Penh is still of the [... how can one describe this...] despicable atrocities that took place during the late 70s when the Khmer Rouge killed 1/4 of the population (the civil war lasted a shockingly long 30 years in total). These atrocities are remembered in the museum at a school which was turned into an interrogation and torture centre for almost 20,000 'enemies of the state'.
I've been to Nazi concentration camps, I've read about the Rwandan genocide, I've seen movies like Blood Diamond and I can deal with the evil that is in all of us. But it is very, very hard to accept the fact that adults can pick up babies by their legs and kill them by smashing their heads against trees. It is extremely hard to understand how 6 year old children can be accused of being political enemies and need to be tortured and killed. I asked a friend what she would do if told to kill a child or be killed herself -no answer of course; it is awful when these kinds of situations are created whereby everyone down the chain of command is ensuring those beneath them are committing these kinds of acts in order to stay alive themselves.
The best part of the (sparse) museum [though best is not the right word] is the small section about those who were the torturers and killers. Is the excuse of 'If i didn't kill the innocent child/adult i would have died myself' an excuse anyone can actually believe in themselves?
On a lighter note, whilst visiting the projects that Plan supports in Cambodia it is impossible not to see how much aid other countries are pouring into Cambodia to try to help them recover from what the country went through (note that the Americans also did their best to destroy the country whilst the Viet Cong were hiding there during the Vietnam war) and it is evidently working. Though how effective it is when so many charities are all trying to help the same village with different techniques is questionable. I saw a school with 3 different wells, built by 3 different organisations. I suppose the school needed 3 wells, but why 3 different kinds of well?
No wonder the whole country still harks back to the incredible glory days of 9th-12th centuries when the Angkor empire ruled much of South East Asia and build such incredible temples and housed cities of a million or more people (London, at the time, was apparently about 40,000 people). Even now, no one is quite sure how such a population was sustained (water, food, sanitation, order etc). At least the future can only continue to get better for poor Cambodia; even if their current government is as corrupt as most of the others in developing countries. Interestingly this week the UN organised war crimes tribunal finally started to actually do something about convicting those in charge of the awful regime 30 years ago. A bit late though, since most of those leaders are already dead of natural causes!
For a capital city it really is a bit disappointing: barely a building over 6 stories tall and an airport that is probably smaller than Wembley Stadium, but as towns go it is a fantastic place full of character and pleasant architecture, a lack of slums (considering the poverty of Cambodia), tremendous food, nice sunsets and very warm people.
Despite this, despite the great guest houses that extend into a pretty lake (and provide rooms for only 3 dollars), despite the fun that can be had when travelling with a girl whose hair is braided and attracts all kinds of attention.... despite all these and more, the endearing memory of Phnom Penh is still of the [... how can one describe this...] despicable atrocities that took place during the late 70s when the Khmer Rouge killed 1/4 of the population (the civil war lasted a shockingly long 30 years in total). These atrocities are remembered in the museum at a school which was turned into an interrogation and torture centre for almost 20,000 'enemies of the state'.
I've been to Nazi concentration camps, I've read about the Rwandan genocide, I've seen movies like Blood Diamond and I can deal with the evil that is in all of us. But it is very, very hard to accept the fact that adults can pick up babies by their legs and kill them by smashing their heads against trees. It is extremely hard to understand how 6 year old children can be accused of being political enemies and need to be tortured and killed. I asked a friend what she would do if told to kill a child or be killed herself -no answer of course; it is awful when these kinds of situations are created whereby everyone down the chain of command is ensuring those beneath them are committing these kinds of acts in order to stay alive themselves.
The best part of the (sparse) museum [though best is not the right word] is the small section about those who were the torturers and killers. Is the excuse of 'If i didn't kill the innocent child/adult i would have died myself' an excuse anyone can actually believe in themselves?
On a lighter note, whilst visiting the projects that Plan supports in Cambodia it is impossible not to see how much aid other countries are pouring into Cambodia to try to help them recover from what the country went through (note that the Americans also did their best to destroy the country whilst the Viet Cong were hiding there during the Vietnam war) and it is evidently working. Though how effective it is when so many charities are all trying to help the same village with different techniques is questionable. I saw a school with 3 different wells, built by 3 different organisations. I suppose the school needed 3 wells, but why 3 different kinds of well?
No wonder the whole country still harks back to the incredible glory days of 9th-12th centuries when the Angkor empire ruled much of South East Asia and build such incredible temples and housed cities of a million or more people (London, at the time, was apparently about 40,000 people). Even now, no one is quite sure how such a population was sustained (water, food, sanitation, order etc). At least the future can only continue to get better for poor Cambodia; even if their current government is as corrupt as most of the others in developing countries. Interestingly this week the UN organised war crimes tribunal finally started to actually do something about convicting those in charge of the awful regime 30 years ago. A bit late though, since most of those leaders are already dead of natural causes!
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