Month: August 2018

Hi again! This last week or so has been a whirlwind of activity, as directly after our midterm exam, we made our way to the train station to catch our sleeper train to the city of Datong (大同市), in Shanxi Province. Unfortunately, due to the recent severe rainfall resulting from a hurricane near the coast, the train tracks outside of Beijing were covered in water, and our train was delayed three hours while the tracks were cleared. We eventually made it on the train, and settled in for the six-hour journey. Many of us napped, some did homework, others played cards or chatted amongst themselves or with other friendly passengers, and though we arrived in Datong rather late, overall it was an enjoyable experience.

Our first full day in Datong was our busiest, we climbed Mount Heng, visited the Hanging Monastery, and admired the world’s tallest wooden pagoda. Mount Heng, or Hengshan (恒山) is the northern mountain of the Five Great Mountains of China, the most renowned mountains in Chinese history that were regularly the subjects of imperial and common pilgrimage. Hengshan is about an hour drive southwest of central Datong, and is littered with Taoist temples and shrines to mountain gods dating back to the Han dynasty.

We hiked from the parking lot to one of the highest vantage points on the mountain, although unfortunately didn’t have time to make it all the way to the top. The lush forests and nearby lake made for breathtaking scenery, and it was with regret (and rumbling stomachs), that we made our way down the mountain for lunch.

After, we visited one of Datong’s most popular attractions, the Hanging Monastery. The Hanging Monastery (悬空寺) clings to a crag of Hengshan, and is dedicated to three religions, Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism. According to legend, was built by a single monk, Liaoran (了然), in the late Northern Wei dynasty to appease the severe yearly flooding in the region.

Wooden poles drilled horizontally into the cliff face and vertically into the surrounding rock support the monastery’s 40 halls and pavilions. The temple is protected by the summit from rain and sunlight erosion, which along with its location well above ground level (and a restoration effort in the 1900s) has left the monastery remarkably well-preserved.

Our final stop was one of the tallest wooden pagodas in the world, again about an hour from Datong. The Sakyamuni Pagoda is a wooden pagoda built inside the Fogong Temple complex in 1056, during the Liao dynasty. It has survived several earthquakes and although severely damaged during the Second Sino-Japanese War, was quickly repaired, and today is the oldest fully extant wooden pagoda in China.

After returning to downtown Datong, my classmates and I, exhausted from the sightseeing,  quickly ate dinner and went to bed.

Our second day in Datong was our last, after breakfast we trekked out to our last site, the Yungang Grottoes, before boarding our return train to Beijng. The Yungang Grottoes  (云冈石窟) are ancient and massive Buddhist temple grottoes, located about half an hour west of central Datong.

There are 53 major caves and 1,100 minor caves, excavated during the Northern Wei dynasty, which are today part of a large outdoor complex including several gardens and other historical buildings.

Since the caves and cliffs are sandstone, the grottoes and Buddhist statues inside have been exposed to heavy weathering over the years, especially the ones exposed to the open air. The wooden buildings in front of many of the cave entrances were constructed during the early Qing dynasty, built in an attempt to preserve the caves.

After viewing the caves, we took a short shuttle ride to another part of the complex for lunch and some light shopping, before packing up our things and returning to Beijing. The trip back was much like our journey there, with several rousing games of Uno and a serious game of weiqi being played along the way.

After arriving at our university, although some students had hoped to rally and head to Sanlitun (三里屯), an area known for its foreigner-friendly clubs and bars, most of my classmates and I promptly passed out, and woke up late on Sunday, ready to face the coming week (although less ready to do the homework most of us had neglected)!

Next weekend, I’ll travel with some classmates to Qingdao, in Shandong Province, so keep checking back for updates on the fun!

Katherine Alesio
B.S. Civil Engineering 2020
Sigur Center 2018 Asian Language Study in Asia Grant Recipient
Minzu University of China – Associated Colleges in China Program

My fieldwork site is in Aceh, Indonesia. Aceh is at the western most province of Indonesia, and is known as the historical gateway to Indonesia – from economic trade, to cultural, political and religious influences.

This point is literally what is called “Zero Kilometer,” referring to the western most tip of Indonesia:

Aceh is probably most known by foreigners for being hit by one of the most devastating tsunamis in recorded human history – the boxing day tsunami of 2004.

The magnitude of the tsunami was met with one of the largest humanitarian responses in the history of humanitarian responses. Crucially (and the subject of a future post), the tsunami also brought an end to a 30 year-long civil war.

Below is an aerial photo of Banda Aceh (the capital) today:

(source)

The oval-shaped building at the centerpiece of the above photo is the state-of-the-art Tsunami Museum, also pictured below:

(Source)

This is not to say that Aceh has been “built back better” without complications after the disaster. Some aspects of the destruction are irreversible. Apparently, there was a land bridge to the island pictured below before the tsunami (the waterbody was originally a lagoon). Now, the village from the island cannot return to their ancestral land

Banda Aceh’s urban landscape is also unsurprisingly replete with memorials of the tsunami. Below is a picture of a boat that was swept on top of a house after the tsunami. It has now been preserved.

The landscape also includes structures such as the one below which people can run to in the case of another tsunami.

One challenge of such structures is that they are often left unused and thus lack maintenance because they do not serve other functions. This can be seen from the interior below:

From the sky, one can see the colored patterns of tsunami houses – houses built from the tsunami reconstruction. There are different colored patterns because different NGOs would reconstruct different communities’ houses, and is seen today as a symbol of inter-NGO politics that characterized the reconstruction.

Below is a street-view of a tsunami house. Some of these houses are empty today, especially those that were rebuilt in locations that are no longer inhabitable. For example, few live next to the coast worst hit by the tsunami – not only are many still traumatized by the ocean, but many of the aquaculture ponds (that were the main source of livelihood for the communities that used to live there) are beyond rehabilitation. I was told that it is not uncommon that such neighborhoods are inhabited by students who have moved to Banda Aceh for study – the ones who need cheap accommodation and have little alternative.

Although the boxing day tsunami grabbed headlines all around the world, the 30 year civil war (most of which was kept secret, and ended shortly after the tsunami) has gained less attention. Tellingly, in comparison to the tsunami, there is very little memorialization of the conflict, even though both ‘events’ registered over a hundred thousand deaths, with the latter occurring over a 30 year period, and thus leaving a much deeper impact on the Acehnese’s social pscyhe. Below is one of the memorials that have been erected to remember a torture center in Pidie, Aceh. It is a stark difference from the tsunami museum pictured earlier. Although such a memorial is surely sensitive to the central government, the Acehnese we talked to are clear-headed that remembering the conflict in a fair way is important to learn from their history.

Crucially, it is problematic to reduce the Acehnese identity to victims of either the tsunami or the conflict. Aceh has a rich heritage that not only extends much further back into history, but also much further into the present. In these narratives, the Acehnese are not merely victims, but actors in their own rights – fighters, activists, humanitarians, each with different ways of exerting agency over who they are and their future. If we pay attention, they also offer lessons for the world.

I will take up some of these themes in my upcoming posts.

Amoz JY Hor is PhD student in Political Science at the George Washington University. His research explores how emotions affect the way the subaltern is understood in practices of humanitarianism.

Greetings again from Taipei! For my first video blog post, I did a very short video in Jiufen (九份), a town just on the outskirts of Taipei. Please forgive me for the shaky camera work! The town was formerly the site of a gold mine operated by the Japanese during the era of Japanese occupation. Though the Japanese were not the first colonizers of Taiwan (occupiers of the island also include the Dutch and Portuguese), they left the most notable imprints on the island.

As my Mandarin teacher pointed out, the Taiwanese have a mixed view of the Japanese occupation. On one hand, the Japanese built up much of the infrastructure that the island uses to this day (from the post office and bureaucratic system to the roads and the hot spring bathhouses spread throughout the northern part of Taiwan), but on the other hand, the Japanese occupiers did very much exploit the natural resources of the island (including the aforementioned gold and wood).  Today, there is no shortage of admiration for Japanese products, department stores, and food (the Japanese even claim that the best Japanese food outside of Japan is in Taiwan). Additionally, there is a definite mutual admiration for each island nation’s tourist destinations.

Later, I hope to write a post on my daily routine. Until then, 再見！

Lexi Wong M.A. International Affairs 2019
Sigur Center 2018 Asian Language Fellow
National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei

Lexi Wong is a Sigur Center 2018 Asian Language Fellow studying Mandarin in Taipei, Taiwan at National Taiwan Normal University’s Mandarin Training Center. Lexi is currently a first-year graduate student at The George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs where she is studying International Affairs with a regional concentration on Asia.