Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Where have all the flowers gone?

Chinese villagers 'descended from Roman soldiers'?

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2010-11-24 14:24

Cai Junnian's green eyes give a hint he may be a descendant of Roman mercenaries who allegedly fought the Han Chinese 2,000 years ago

Genetic testing of villagers in a remote part of China has shown that nearly two thirds of their DNA is of Caucasian origin, lending support to the theory that they may be descended from a 'lost legion' of Roman soldiers.

Tests found that the DNA of some villagers in Liqian, on the fringes of the Gobi Desert in north-western China, was 56 per cent Caucasian in origin.

Many of the villagers have blue or green eyes, long noses and even fair hair, prompting speculation that they have European blood.

A local man, Cai Junnian, is nicknamed by his friends and relatives Cai Luoma, or Cai the Roman, and is one of many villagers convinced that he is descended from the lost legion.

Archeologists plan to conduct digs in the region, along the ancient Silk Route, to search for remains of forts or other structures built by the fabled army.

"We hope to prove the legend by digging and discovering more evidence of China's early contacts with the Roman Empire," Yuan Honggeng, the head of a newly-established Italian Studies Centre at Lanzhou University in Gansu province, told the China Daily newspaper.

The genetic tests have leant weight to the theory that Roman legionaries settled in the area in the first century BC after fleeing a disastrous battle.

The clash took place in 53BC between an army led by Marcus Crassus, a Roman general, and a larger force of Parthians, from what is now Iran, bringing to an abrupt halt the Roman Empire's eastwards expansion.

Thousands of Romans were slaughtered and Crassus himself was beheaded, but some legionaries were said to have escaped the fighting and marched east to elude the enemy.

They supposedly fought as mercenaries in a war between the Huns and the Chinese in 36BC – Chinese chroniclers
refer to the capture of a "fish-scale formation" of troops, a possible reference to the "tortoise" phalanx formation perfected by legionnaries. The wandering Roman soldiers are thought to have been released and to have settled on the steppes of western China.

The theory was first put forward in the 1950s by Homer Dubs, a professor of Chinese history at Oxford University.

The Roman Empire reached its greatest territorial extent under the Emperor Trajan in the 2nd century AD, just as the
Han empire was beginning to decline.

Most historians believe that the two empires had only indirect contact, as silk and spices were traded along the Silk Road through merchants in exchange for Roman goods such as glassware.

But some experts believe they could instead be descended from the armies of Huns that marauded through central Asia, which included soldiers of Caucasian origin.

Maurizio Bettini, a classicist and anthropologist from Siena University, dismissed the theory as "a fairy tale".

"For it to be indisputable, one would need to find items such as Roman money or weapons that were typical of Roman legionaries," he told La Repubblica. "Without proof of this kind, the story of the lost legions is just a legend."

Telegraph

Monday, November 22, 2010

Where have all the bodies gone?

Fishing for bodies on China's Yellow River

Wei Xinpeng's child died in the river but he says he never found the body

On the banks of the Yellow River, Wei Xinpeng draws on a cigarette as he casts his eye over the murky waters.

The 55-year-old is a boatman here. But he plies a gruesome trade.

For Mr Wei does not look for fish in these waters. Instead, he pulls human bodies out the river, which he then sells back to grieving families.

"I bring dignity to the dead," says Mr Wei.

For the families of the missing, the boatman has become the call of last resort.

Every day, Mr Wei rows out to a temporary footbridge on the river.

It is at this point the bodies can go no further.

Since starting his business seven years ago, Mr Wei says he has collected about 500 bodies.

Some of them have been murdered, while others have drowned or committed suicide.

Mr Wei says he charges relatives up to $500 if they want to take the body home

He says that his last grim catch was just six days ago.

"I feel that these people have passed away in a very cruel way," he says.

After the boatman collects the bodies he puts them in a small cove where they are sheltered from the currents.

When I visit, there are four clay-like bodies lying face down in the water.

Mr Wei then places advertisements in local newspapers describing the bodies.

Families of the missing phone him and some travel to his village in order to inspect the bodies.

Mr Wei takes them out on his boat to the cove and flips over the corpses.

He charges them a small fee to look at their faces.

And then up to $500 if they want to take the body home.

Mr Wei lives in a hut close to the Yellow River

He says that he has sold about 40 corpses. Generally, he says, the families are not angry when he asks for money.

But when he found the body of a Communist official the authorities wanted it returned for free. That caused an argument, he says.

Sometime people's emotions are strained when they see the corpses.

"One time parents came looking for their son," he says. "They saw his body and then walked away without saying a word. They didn't take his corpse."

Mr Wei defends what he does. He says the authorities would let the bodies rot in the river.

Sometimes he fishes corpses out of the river and gives them a proper burial.

But it is not just about the money. The boatman says it is also personal.

"My own child died in this river and I could not find the body," he says.

"It was very painful. That's why I started doing this job."

Swept away

Eighty kilometres upstream, the city of Lanzhou is the main source of Mr Wei's trade.

Peng Shuja's wife went missing this summer but so far he has been unable to trace her

Once a poverty-stricken provincial capital, it is now a major industrial city.

Peng Shuja, 52, visited Mr Wei after his wife, Han Yuxia, went missing this summer.

He says that she went to get a bus to visit a relative but never arrived.

Mr Peng spends his days putting up missing posters around the city, desperate for any news on his wife.

The factory worker has contacted the police and put advertisements in local newspapers.

But there has been no word and Mr Wei did not have his wife's body.

"It was a form of help," he says, referring to Mr Wei's service.

"But it's hard to find anyone missing here. It is just so chaotic. It is almost impossible to track anyone down."

Back at Mr Wei's hut, he is packing up for the day.

The boatman has lived through a time of remarkable change in China.

But every day out on the waters on the Yellow River he sees the dark side to development here - where in the clamour for economic growth some are simply swept away.

BBC

Sunday, November 14, 2010

Missiles

hinese missiles close US bases in attack?

The Chinese military’s non-nuclear missiles have “the capability to attack” and close down five of six major U.S. Air Force bases in South Korea and Japan, an unpublished government report says.

China’s improved inventory of short- and medium-range missiles provides a “dramatic increase” in its ability to “inhibit” U.S. military operations in the western Pacific, according to excerpts from the draft of the 2010 annual report by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission scheduled for release on Nov. 17.

China’s current force “may be sufficient” to destroy runways, parked aircraft, fuel and maintenance facilities at Osan and Kunsan air bases in South Korea, and Kadena, Misawa and Yokota bases in Japan, the report says. The facilities are within 1,100 kilometers (684 miles) of China.

An upgraded missile arsenal, including a 30 percent increase in cruise missiles since last year, “poses a significant challenge to U.S. forces operating in the region,” the report says. Defense Secretary Robert Gates in June called China’s improved missile arsenal “a real concern” that also threatens U.S. aircraft carriers.

The 12-member bipartisan commission was created by Congress in 2000 to monitor the U.S. national security implications of China’s economic and military rise and to report annually to lawmakers with recommendations for U.S. action.

The commission’s 2010 report says Congress should evaluate Pentagon spending to fortify bases from Chinese attack, including missile defenses, early warning systems, runway repairs and hardening buildings and hangars.

Increased military spending could benefit companies that make sea-based missile defense and electronic warfare systems, said Loren Thompson, a defense analyst with the Lexington Institute in Arlington, Virginia.

The report also said U.S. Pacific commanders, as part of their annual budget statements, should report on the “adequacy of the U.S. military’s capability to withstand Chinese air and missile assault on regional bases” as well as steps being taken to strengthen U.S. defenses.

The commission’s conclusions are “certainly much stronger” and “much more explicit” than related findings in the Pentagon’s own annual report on Chinese military developments, said Mark Stokes, an analyst for the non-profit Project 2049 Institute in Arlington, Virginia, that studies Asia security issues.

The commission’s report says a decade of improvements in ballistic missiles and in advanced aircraft carrying precision- guided weapons “have greatly improved China’s ability to carry out” a strategy designed to hinder or prevent the U.S. from operating in the region or from aiding Taiwan in a conflict.

Separately, the commission warns that “the future deployment” of China’s new anti-ship ballistic missile “could seriously interfere” with U.S. regional access.

China “appears to be in the final stage of developing” the missile capable of targeting large ships at sea such as aircraft carriers,’’ the report says.

The missile, with a range of almost 900 miles, would be fired from mobile, land-based launchers and is “specifically designed to defeat U.S. carrier strike groups,” the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence has reported.

The Pentagon places a “high priority” on responding to the increased threat to U.S. bases and vessels and it “is soon to gain a much higher profile as a critical public policy challenge,” said Richard Fisher, a senior fellow at the International Assessment and Strategy Center, a nonpartisan research group based in Alexandria, Virginia. (From Bloomberg)

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Po Chu - I

Koon Woon (Poetry 2010) on Po Chu-I

The Selected Poems of Po Chu-I

Translated by David Hinton, New Directions 1999

Chinese poets, ancient or modern, do not force themselves upon you, like “Shock and Awe,” but quietly state their case. There is no brilliant display of virtuosity or great constructions, but only a handful of lines in each poem that sometimes seem like offhanded remarks, with nothing to prove. Yet, these sparse and spare lines, have endured the ages and come to us as the things we are telling ourselves now in this life. And of the greatest poetic epoch of China, The Tang Dynasty, the most prolific and the quintessential poet of this era is Po Chu-I (772 – 846 A.D.). Arthur Waley has written a 240 page book on Po Chu-I of his life and times, and 2800 poems of Po survived. And so what I can write here is a very limited account of what I take away from a very few of his poems that affected me in some useful way. Let us begin with the poem “Reading Chuang Tzu” written during his years of exile between 815 and 820 A.D. –

Reading Chuang Tzu

Leaving home and homeland, banished to some far-off place,

I wonder how it is I’m nearly free of grief and pain. Puzzled

and searching Chuang Tzu for insight on returning to dwell,

I realize it’s a place beyond questions: that’s our native land.

Po Chu-I was a Taoist poet, like T’ao Ch’ien (365 – 427), who was a man who preferred idleness and contemplation. Chuang Tzu was a follower of Lao Tzu, the legendary author of the Tao Te Ching and Chuang Tzu was famous for the puzzle of whether he was a man who dreamed that he was a butterfly or whether he was a butterfly which dreamed that it was a man. In this poem, consisting only of 4 lines, which most likely are 2 couples of 7-character lines in Chinese, Po Chu-I says that the puzzle is that the place he is banished to almost feels like home, but it isn’t, the same way that a man can dream that he is a butterfly but isn’t one, for the reality lies in not thinking, or idleness in this sense of Ch’an (the Chinese predecessor of Zen in Japan). In the West we speak of being. To

try to resolve this puzzle, Po reads Chuang Tzu, that is, going back to authority, but it only leads to more questions about existence. Only in one’s native land does one take everything for granted and that there is no harm in doing so. There is, however, a deeper philosophical point here – whenever we encounter change or the unfamiliar, we are led to seek similarities with the familiar (“I wonder how it is I’m nearly free of grief and pain”) but we never can trust our thoughts because as Jacque Lacan has stated, our thoughts are words that chase other words and that chase never ends. Buddhism puts it this way: “All thoughts lead to vacuity.” And so in the end, the only time when we are comfortable with ourselves is being in our native land, and that’s to say, being in a place where we do not ask any questions – and that’s precisely what the Ch’an Buddhists call idleness or its near equivalent in Western thought, being. One does see the koan-like quality of this poem. And so back to the level of being, well, then, this poem is about pain, the pain and grief of not being at home, in one’s familiar territory, and being banished, which at that time in China, was a very grievous punishment. I might add one other remark before we move on – the word dwell at the end of the third line is well-chosen, because of its double-function of dwell, as a place to live, or to dwell, as to linger on the thoughts of.

Po Chu-I was a very capable scholar as well as social redeemer. He, by his native gifts, passed the Imperial exams despite his family’s dire poverty. He never forgot his roots, and so when he was the palace librarian and had direct access to the emperor, or when he was governor of various prefectures, he advised or criticized the policies of the ruling clique. Therefore, he was banished three times and demoted in rank. Each time a new emperor shows infatuation with Po’s work (and his work was extensive – ranging from yueh fu, folk songs, to vignettes and poems), Po tries to affect social change, but each time, the palace intrigues and misfortunes placed him in jeopardy and so finally, he learns not to partake in politics but retire to semi-monastic life. But before he did that, he retired from his sinecures and built himself a comfortable dwelling, and here is one poem of the Late Period (829-846):

A SERVANT GIRL IS MISSING

From the low walls of our small courtyard

to the notice-board outside our district gate,

I’ve searched and searched, ashamed our love

proved meager, wishing I could do it all over.

But a caged bird can’t bear a master for long,

and the branch means nothing to the blossom

freed on the wind. Where can she be tonight?

Only the moon’s understanding light knows.

This is a beautiful poem that elevates the servant girl above and beyond the grossness and corruption of the master. Perhaps Po is talking about himself here. He gave up all his governmental posts to live the life of a recluse, knowing that in the palace, he is only a tool for the emperor and the men of low conscience. So, he chose not to serve but to be idle.

There are almost 150 poems in this collection. Each poem reads like a polished jade piece and I am sure in the original Chinese, the multiplicities of meaning would be more generous. Truly Po Chu-I was one of the greatest poets of China. It does make me homesick to read his poetry, written some 1,200 years ago. In a way China has not changed. But still, I regret I cannot go back to the China that I knew. I am banished from a place of time and locality. My dwelling is in the culture that I must win back. This commentary is really a wake-up call to myself. You can’t go home again but you can look back, albeit with a sense of regret.

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Not Friendly

US is infiltrating China's backyard?

China's military expansion worries its neighbours?

China’s military expansion and assertive trade policies have set off jitters across Asia, prompting many of its neighbors to rekindle old alliances and cultivate new ones to better defend their interests against the rising superpower.

A whirl of deal-making and diplomacy, from Tokyo to New Delhi, is giving the United States an opportunity to reassert itself in a region where its eclipse by China has been viewed as inevitable.

President Obama’s trip to the region this week, his most extensive as president, will take him to India, Indonesia, South Korea and Japan. Those countries and other neighbors have taken steps, though with varying degrees of candor, to blunt China’s assertiveness in the region.

Mr. Obama and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India are expected to sign a landmark deal for American military transport aircraft and are discussing the possible sale of jet fighters, which would escalate the Pentagon’s defense partnership with India to new heights.Vietnam has a rapidly warming rapport with its old foe, the United States, in large part because its old friend, China, makes broad territorial claims in the South China Sea. (From New York Times)

China's backyard, America's military playground?

The U.S. military holds about 300 annual exercises in the Pacific region, including war games with Southeast Asian countries.

As Hillary Clinton tours the region to shore up American support, here’s a look at U.S. courtship — and Chinese counter-courtship — in four strategically crucial Southeast Asian countries.

THAILAND: Perhaps America’s truest Asian military ally, Thailand plays host to the world’s largest multinational war games: “Cobra Gold.” Each year, more than 11,500 troops from the U.S., Thailand, South Korea, Indonesia and Singapore stage beach assaults, rescue missions and more. The Chinese are invited too — but only to watch.
In recent years, China has pursued its own war games with Thailand. Thailand has accepted only small-scale games. Full-on war games risk angering the U.S., fearful the Chinese will learn American invasion tactics from U.S.-trained Thai troops.

VIETNAM: Vietnam’s defense policy is distilled into three ultimatums: No military alliances, no foreign bases and no relying on a third-party country to attack its enemies. But Vietnamese anxiety over China’s rise — shared by the U.S. — is encouraging an intimacy that would have been unthinkable decades ago. U.S. warships have also docked to welcome aboard senior Vietnamese generals. A lifted ban on all but “lethal-end” arms has even helped Vietnam repair old weapons seized after the U.S. retreat in 1975.

INDONESIA: According to the U.S. Defense Department, up to 80 percent of China’s fuel imports pass through the so-called naval “choke points” around Indonesia. But despite China’s huge need for stability along this island chain, they have largely failed to influence the Indonesian forces tasked with securing it.

Previously, Indonesia was heavily courted by China’s defense industry. Since 2006, the U.S. has poured $47 million into Indonesia’s anti-piracy and other military programs. Amidst criticism this year, the U.S. lifted a ban on aiding Kopassus, Indonesia’s elite commando unit.

MYANMAR: U.S. defense companies are strictly forbidden from exporting arms to Myanmar. What the U.S. fears most, however, is Myanmar’s nuclear ambitions. A Myanmar army defector, Maj. Sai Thein Win, has supplied ample evidence to prove the isolated backwater has a nuclear weapons program, said Robert Kelley, former director of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Still, the program is rudimentary, he said. “The workmanship is extremely poor,” he said this week in Bangkok. (From Global Post)

Is US infiltrating China's backyard?

Monday, November 1, 2010

Paranoia about China

Blaming China is of paranoia: Time Magazine

08:37, November 01, 2010

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An article appeared on The Time Magazine late last month said that the United States should act like "a great nation", and not always blame China for its own economic problems.

The story, authored by Zachary Karabell, said that China is not perfect yet, but holding the rapidly rising Asian country accountable for U.S.'s domestic woes is beyond anachronistic. It reflected a dangerous refusal to deal with the world as it is.

It said that retaliating against China over currencies will not restore high-end manufacturing jobs back to the United States. It will also not revive construction or retool the American labor force, and it will not rebuild rotting U.S. bridges or create a next-generation energy grid.

The article believes that this is an argument born of fear and fueled by paranoia. It obscures the degree to which the economies of China and the U.S. have become symbiotic.

"Those trillions in reserves that China accumulates: Where do they go? Back to the U.S. in the form of loans to the federal government. Those made-in-China goods that account for the trade deficit: Whom do they benefit? China, yes, but also American consumers and companies. Without China, American companies could not have maintained their profitability in recent years. Take two marquee names, Caterpillar and Nike. Both manufacture in China, but both also view China as a fast-growing market for their products," the article said.

The U.S., leading the charge for developed nations, has convinced itself that China has purposely kept its currency undervalued to make its exports more attractive.

"When did we collectively go through the looking glass and end up in this distorted economic universe? The idea that the U.S. is not responsible for its own economic stagnation, housing bubble and unemployment is a black-is-white, up-is-down view that only insecurity can breed," said the article.

"The U.S. cannot force China to bend, but it can cause serious disruptions to the global economy. We can take the cue from our fears and plunge the world into chaos. Or we can act like the great nation that we profess to be and tend zealously to our own problems rather than looking abroad for dragons to slay," it said.

By People's Daily Online

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