I’m finally back. I spent Thanksgiving Weekend in Kuala Lumpur (known by all as KL) with one of my colleagues here. We got back Sunday night and I would’ve posted sooner, but my ISP has been giving me nightmares. They only came and fixed it yesterday. I have had nothing but trouble with these guys, and if I wasn’t leaving Chennai in a few months, I would have long ago cancelled my service. For the past 2 months I’ve probably had to call them an average of twice a week to get them to fix my connection. I just can’t believe that the 4th largest city in India, and one of the main IT centers in the country, can be so clueless when it comes to connectivity. It is so maddeningly frustrating. The funny thing about all this is that they route my calls to the Hyderabad call center! Domestic outsourcing! If I wasn’t spending so much damn money on this and getting such awful service, I might even laugh…bottom line: if you're considering Tata Indicom Broadband, think again...keep looking elsewhere. Thomas Friedman’s got a best-seller out now, The Flat Earth, in which I hear he gushes with exuberance over the emerging India economy. I remember people used to write the same kinds of things when China first opened up. I wonder if his assessment would be so rosy if he actually spent any length of time here, outside of the Bangalore five-star hotels, that is. India is on the way up, no doubt about it, and rightfully so, but let’s not lose sight of reality. Oh well, on with the trip account before the cyclone hits and probably knocks my connection out for another month…my connection is still cutting out every minute or so. I visited KL before, way back in 1990. The thing that most stood out in my memories was the amazing food. That still holds true. KL is one of the few real multicultural societies around. The mix is primarily Malay, Chinese and Indian. All seem to get along pretty well, and people are very friendly. KL is a cosmopolitan city in every sense of the word: world-class food of all nations, great nightlife and many cultural events. Clubs stay open until at least 3:00am (hint, hint India). I spent most of my time scouting out all the restaurants and gorging. All the food is superb, but I concentrated on Chinese, since that is what I miss the most here in Chennai, and the Tamilized version doesn’t really do it for me. Indian food in KL is very authentic too; most Indians there are Tamils from South India. I didn’t bother with it, though, since I eat it in Chennai everyday. I needed to satisfy my Chinese fix. Most Chinese in KL speak Cantonese, so that’s the major culinary influence. Still, very good and very inexpensive. Try the restaurants in Chinatown. There are a couple of good ones outside of the Guandi temple. I also ate at the vegetarian Fatt Yan, recommended by Lonely Planet, but was not overly impressed. Worth the trip and reasonable, however. One of the highlights was the Friday night dharma talk I attended at the International Buddhist Pagoda. Venerable Dr K Sri Dhammananda is from Sri Lanka, but has lived in KL over 50 years. Almost all in attendance were local Chinese, which I thought interesting, because though 85% of Chinese Malays are Buddhist, they normally follow the Mahayana school, and this place is Theravadan. I’ve always found Theravada Buddhism especially appealing. It is very analytical, self-reliant and self-reflective, whereas Chinese Mahayana Pure Land practice tends towards the veneration of boddhisattvas, particularly Guanyin. People want to put all their faith in them and Amitabha for salvation, which makes it more like a traditional religion. By 'salvation', I mean their goal is rebirth in the Western Paradise, from where they believe ultimate nirvana will be easier to obtain. It's a very heaven-like concept, and I can't quite correlate it with my admittedly scanty familiarity with the Pali sutras. Shangri-la HotelGreat hotel with outstanding facilities. If you are a US diplomat be sure to call and ask for the special discount available. It's an outstanding deal. The breakfast buffet (included in room rate) offers Western, Chinese, Japanese, and Indian selections. By all means do the Sunday brunch at the Zipangu Japanese restaurant. Make reservations. It costs around 95 ringgit, but it is worth every penny. Here’s the view from my room. You can see the Petronas Towers, currently the tallest buildings in the world*. (*ok, maybe not: Poagao writes to inform me that Taipei now lays claim to the title. Somebody better tell the Malaysians. Now maybe they'll stop making all those crappy tourist trinkets featuring the towers). My Weekend RentalYeah, maybe if I make ambassador… 灵龟池Turtle pond at Thean Hou Temple The local swill. I stuck to Guinness. The Klang River. They’ve cemented its bed just like the Los Angeles River in LA. Main Altar at Sze Wah Temple (Taoist) Door Guard Deities at Sze Wah Sri Mahamariamman Temple
- posted by Prince Roy @ 11/30/2005 10:05:00 PM| |

 
Book Review: Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and the China He Lost by Jonathan Fenby note: in the US the book is published as Chiang Kai Shek : China's Generalissimo and the Nation He Lost This important book addresses a glaring void that exists in the historical record of modern China. While researchers have always provided ready attention to Mao Zedong and communist China, they never accorded the same serious examination to the role and legacy of Chiang Kai-shek. Before this book, most of the resources on Chiang dated from the 1970s and earlier, largely consisting of hagiographic accounts penned by pro-KMT Chinese living in Taiwan or abroad, or similar propaganda fluff pieces financed by the Henry Luce China Lobby. A well-reasoned, independent account of Chiang’s life was thus long overdue, and Fenby comes through in a huge way. He writes an engaging narrative of Chiang, a person of quite humble origins, who became one of the world’s most famous and powerful figures. Fenby also provides detailed, careful background on the China of Chiang’s time, particularly that of the 1911 Revolution and subsequent warlord period. This is important in understanding why Chiang allied with the types of people and strata of society that he did, and why this alliance alienated vast numbers of Chinese, providing moral fodder and legitimacy for the alternative offered by Mao. Much of Fenby’s information regarding Chiang’s early political career comes from an autobiography written by his largely-forgotten second wife, Chen Jieru (Jennie). While this relationship is common knowledge in Taiwan, she is practically unknown in the west. Her book is entitled Chiang Kai-shek’s Secret Past, and what Fenby was able to glean from it has whetted my appetite to read the book myself. Fenby is at his best when he examines the decades-long struggle for control of China between Chiang and Mao. Indeed, theirs was a clash of legendary, tragic proportions, and it is hard to find a more riveting story elsewhere in history, not just because of the mythic stature and personal auras these two men attained during their own lifetimes, but also due to the enormous cruelty and unimaginable suffering both inflicted on the country they would rule and the populace they would win to their cause. Chapter 15, “The Long Chase” opens with a brilliant juxtaposition between the two, and proceeds to analyze the showdown during the Long March in which Mao gained primacy in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the CCP escaped certain extinction during Chiang’s Fifth Extermination Campaign in Jiangxi. He attributes the CCP’s successful escape to Yan’an, not as the result of a secret deal Chiang brokered with Moscow to guarantee the return of his son Chiang Ching-kuo, as alleged by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday in their biography of Mao, but to the superior strategy of Mao and Zhu De: they planned the route through areas of the country largely held by warlords who often actively assisted the Red Army in getting through their territories, or gave passive half-hearted chase, because the last thing these warlords wanted was Chiang coming in with his huge armies and wresting political control away from them. The book does have two important weaknesses, one minor and one major. First, Fenby provides little insight into what I think would be one of the most important and intriguing relationships of Chiang’s life, that with his son Chiang Ching-kuo. Ching-kuo, after all, publicly denounced his father after the 1927 White Terror purges in Shanghai and Guangzhou, and attempted to join the Communist Party while living in the USSR. However, Fenby spends hardly any time at all with them. Considering the role that Ching-kuo played later in the democratization of Taiwan, this is unfortunate. Fenby devotes three chapters and 65 pages to the stormy relationship between General Joseph Stilwell and Chiang Kai-shek. It is in his negative assessment of General Stilwell where his normally astute and deft powers of analysis fail him when he needs them most. It is not my desire here to delve too deeply into Stilwell’s legacy or become embroiled in the Stilwell vs. Claire Chennault debate, but as Fenby comes perilously close to maligning Stilwell’s military competence, I feel I must come to his defense, because for all his faults, General Stilwell was truly a great American and a first-rate military mind. He earned the trust and respect of the highest leadership in the US military and received promotion over those much senior to him, at the insistence of no less than George C. Marshall and Dwight D. Eisenhower, two of the greatest generals America has ever produced. When describing Stilwell’s march of his command out of Burma into India, an epic journey of over 150 miles taken under extreme conditions and threat of imminent discovery by the Japanese imperial army, Fenby terms it a ‘grave dereliction of duty’, because he argues that Stilwell should have stayed behind to organize the retreat of other Chinese units in the theater. It is important to realize the true situation: the Japanese had put the Allies to rout. Commands and units had completely disintegrated by this point. Indeed, Fenby notes just a few pages earlier that before the main Japanese advance had even begun, Chinese commanders refused to obey Stilwell’s orders (almost certainly under instructions from Chiang) and rather than send needed supplies and materiel to units on the front lines, Chinese commanders were hoarding these and trucking them back to China to sell on the black market. Once the Japanese began their assault, there was soon no ‘retreat’ left for Stilwell to organize. In this case, he did what duty required of him: save his personal command. This he accomplished admirably: not one of the persons in his care perished or fell into Japanese hands. Fenby seems to have bought into Chennault’s air-intensive strategy as the way to defeat the Japanese in China, yet he never does manage to explain how air power can be the decisive factor when there is no means to defend air bases with no adequate ground support, and there would be insufficient supply lines for fuel and parts without ground troops defending the major supply routes from India. These were Stilwell’s main arguments as to the necessity of retaking Burma. Fenby overstates the effectiveness of Chennault’s air campaigns, not surprising since his sources on this come only from autobiographies by Chennault himself and one of his men. This is a disappointing lapse of scrutiny by Fenby. It is also important to note that on practically every point concerning Chiang, his military ineffectiveness and strategic incompetence, his regime, the venal corruption of the KMT and its likelihood of success in a civil war against the CCP, subsequent events proved General Stilwell correct, and Chennault, Henry Luce and countless others wrong. In fact, Fenby even quotes Chennault as absurdly saying that “I think the Generalissimo is one of the two or three greatest military and political leaders in the world today.” Notwithstanding these faults, Fenby gets the big picture right. His depiction of China’s domestic situation and the political machinations of the KMT and CCP is compelling, absorbing history. He is fair-handed in his treatment to both sides, and is horribly effective in revealing the brutality of the Japanese occupation. Fenby manages to present a sympathetic portrait of Chiang, at his heart a true nationalist and personally incorruptible, but a man too bound by his steeply conservative Confucian tradition, enamored with fascism, and blind to the corruption of his family and associates, to ever have had a hope of realizing his ultimate ambition.
- posted by Prince Roy @ 11/11/2005 06:05:00 PM| |

 
Foreigner Ghettos This phenomenon has always interested me. When I think of foreigner ghettos, I’m not referring to those immigrant enclaves you see in the West, like Chinatown, Little Korea, Little India, etc. What I mean are those streets or areas of cities in non-western countries whose businesses cater to the expat that is unable (or unwilling) to integrate in any meaningful way into the local culture. Specifically, the Tianmu/Yangmingshan area of Taipei and the Sanlitun district of Beijing come to mind. (I mention these only because I’ve lived in these cities. I know they also exist in every other major Asian city). There’s a key distinction between the immigrant ‘___towns’ you see in the West and the foreigner ghettos of Asia. In the West, these places spring up as a mechanism by which immigrants gradually assimilate into their new countries. They also serve to filter out the racial hostility that many of these people encounter in mainstream society. Foreigner ghettos, on the other hand, while also a kind of refuge, largely function to reinforce the expat feeling of entitlement and superiority over the ‘natives’. I admit to having a negative opinion of foreigner ghettos, which is why I avoided them like the plague in China and Taiwan. There may be some positive aspects to them that I am overlooking. Feel free to comment. So does Chennai have a foreigner ghetto? Not in the traditional sense. It may be because there simply aren’t that many foreigners in Chennai. It is not exactly a major tourist destination in India, and while Chennai is starting to attract more multinational businesses, these companies appear to assign most of their expat staff to New Delhi and Mumbai. Ford and especially Hyundai, however, are very big here. In fact, Koreans are probably the largest expat group of all. They mainly congregate at the InSeoul restaurant. Foreigners also patronize the restaurants in the major five-star hotels, but I don’t think these really count, because wealthy Indians do as well. At InSeoul, the clientele is around 85% Korean and 10% other foreign nationality, though Indians are slowly beginning to discover Korean food. There are no real foreigner bars or clubs either: Tamil Nadu’s byzantine liquor laws and 11:00pm closing times take care of that. The upper crust expat may be a member of the Madras Club, but again, no foreign exclusivity there, since their rich Indian counterparts comprise the bulk of the membership. What you will find are certain stores geared to the expat crowd, but these are spread out all over the city. The most well-known is probably Amma Naana, a grocery store stocking imported foreign products: At least 75% of the customers are foreigners: One of Chennai’s many Korean expats Attendant at the cosmetics counter Prices here are a good deal higher than Indian stores, but I have to admit that I shop here once every couple of weeks because they sell a good range of pasta. I’ve also discovered that they make decent popcorn for only Rps. 15 a bag. Spicy Masala flavor...Yum!!!
- posted by Prince Roy @ 11/05/2005 01:30:00 PM| |