Category: Sigur Center Summer Research & Language Fellows

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. 

Tens of thousands of Myanmar citizens today are internally displaced. It is estimated that there are about 100,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Kachin State and northern Shan State alone. Some estimates go as high as 120,000. These estimates are unlikely to include IDPs who have left the camps and attempted to integrated into nondisplaced communities; this means that the estimates do not indicate the cumulative number of civilians who have been displaced as a result of armed conflict between the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) and the Tatmadaw, the armed forces of Myanmar. These IDPs have been taking refuge camps for seven years now, and the amount of aid they receive have dwindled over the years. Several forms of domestic abuse, difficulty in accessing basic education, making ends meet, and young girls trafficked across international border are common challenges faced by IDP families.

This is not the first time that civilians in northern Myanmar have been displaced. In the wake of Kachin armed rebellion in the early 1960s, many families were displaced. Some more were displaced in the subsequent decades. However, this was before the age of media in Myanmar, and international and domestic communities seemed unaware of or easily forgot about their displacement. Furthermore, these families resettled in new places and began their lives anew, further obscuring their displacement. Therefore, it was not until 2011, when fighting resumed in the Kachin region, that people started talking about IDP crisis in the Kachin region. However, it is worth reflecting on the previous waves of Kachin IDPs, for they illuminate invaluable insights on dire implication of armed conflict and displacement on ethnic minority communities in Myanmar. Just a few days ago, I had a unique opportunity of observing just that.

I stayed at Pyinmalut, which is a village tract in Katha Township, Sagiang Region for about three days. It is located along the Irrawaddy River, which is the largest and most important commercial waterway in Myanmar. It is just a few miles south of Kachin State and west of northern Shan State. There I met families who were displaced decades ago from southern Kachin State and northern Shan State. When their villages became consumed by armed conflict, they fled to Katha which offered safe refuge. Decades have passed and by all account, they seemed settled. But there is an undeniable stagnation particularly in education and job security.

The only job available to the villagers seems to be to work as day laborers, usually under 90-degree weather, on surrounding rice paddies. This job pays about 4000-5000 kyats (about $3.5) per day, which would amount to a decent monthly salary (Myanmar standard) if the laborers were guarantee 5 days of work every week. But laborers from this village do not get a full month of work even in July, which is when the bulk of planting occur. Once the planting is done, the villagers then wait for the harvest season when they can expect day laborer jobs. Every now and then, a few villagers would land fruit-picking jobs, which typically involves climbing up trees. Depending on difficulty of tree-climbing and the baskets of fruits picked, the laborers could earn up to 9000 kyats (about $6.5) per day. But there aren’t fruit plantations in the area, so fruit picking jobs usually last a day or two at most. The bottom line is that there is no job security.

Negative implication of the lack of job security in the village is most felt in terms of education. Even without cash in their hands, the villagers cannot hire “tuition teachers” for their children. In Myanmar education system, tuitions are integral part of obtaining formal education. They are usually held before or after school and during weekends by public school teachers for a fee. The parents typically explain that without tuition their students do not perform well in school. Tuition becomes even more important for 10^thgrade students who will sit for matriculation exam at the end of the academic year (tuition is perhaps even more so than school itself for 10^thgraders. Why students and parents alike believe that tuition is integral to passing the matriculation exam is a discussion for another time). Total tuition fee for a 10^thgrade student can average 1,000,000 kyats (about $714) at the lower end. How can villagers making 5000 kyats intermittently afford to pay for tuition? As a result, matriculation exam success rate is fairly low and even those who passed the exams rarely ever achieve subject distinction. The parents cannot afford to pay for university school fee and with relative low passing scores, scholarship or sponsorship from philanthropic families cannot be expected. For the few students who make it to universities, their scores are not high enough to pursue professional majors, which means that they cannot make a living in the cities. Thus, the cycle of job insecurity continues.

This is not to say that every displaced person remains stuck in the village and remains in poverty. Some were able to pull themselves up by their bootstraps because they have family connection, resources and for many other reasons. The lucky few ventured out to the jade mines of Hpakant, Kachin State and became wealthy (chances of this happening are probably the same as that of winning lottery). But generally speaking, displaced families are systematically disadvantaged in their attempt to achieve desirable societal outcomes.

Although poverty is experienced by the Bamars, the ethnic majority in Myanmar, it is important to note that displacement and subsequent implications predominantly affect ethnic minority communities because armed conflicts tend to be ethnic in nature in Myanmar and are waged only in ethnic minority areas. A glimpse of the previous waves of IDPs suggest that even decades after they have resettled, the vast majority of displaced population remain uncertain of their future.

Jangai Jap is a Ph.D. Candidate in George Washington University’s Political Science Department. Her research interest includes ethnic politics, national identity, local government and Myanmar politics. Her dissertation aims to explain factors that shape ethnic minorities’ attachment to the state and why has the state been more successful in winning over a sense of attachment from members of some ethnic minority groups than other ethnic minority groups. She has won the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, and her dissertation research has received support from the Cosmos Club Foundation and GW’s Sigur Center for Asian Studies. 

Hello everyone! 大家好! I’m Kelly Alesio, this summer I have the opportunity to study Mandarin with Hamilton College’s Associated Colleges in China (ACC) program, so I’ll be living and attending classes at Minzu University of China, in Beijing’s Haidian District.

This program is an intensive one, recommended by the university’s Chinese department due to the program’s relatively small student body and individualized instruction, moreover, ACC student must adhere to a language pledge the entire time they attend the program.

I arrived in Beijing in mid-June, and after reaching Minzu University and sleeping for 12 hours straight, I immediately took my language placement exam.

In the couple of days between the placement exam and the beginning of classes, the ACC teachers my classmates and I to few well-known sites in Beijing, Tiananmen Square and the nearby Jingshan Park (景山公园), a former imperial garden with an amazing view of Beijing’s Forbidden City.

Although I had heard quite a lot about the rigor of ACC’s curriculum, particularly the summer session (it’s only 8 weeks long, as opposed to the spring and fall sessions’ 13 weeks), it was rather difficult initially to adjust to three to four hours of back-to-back language instruction (completely in Chinese!), and took slightly longer to become comfortable expressing myself in everyday life using a foreign language I’m not yet fluent in.

Additionally, the vocabulary learned at each level in ACC isn’t the same as those learned at a similar level in George Washington University’s Chinese courses, so the first week mostly involved adjusting to the workload (fourth-year students are expected to learn over 100 new words a day), and playing catch-up with some of the vocabulary.

My second week at ACC was both more difficult and more fun. The second week marked the start of extracurricular activities, of which I chose Taijijian, a form of the traditional Chinese martial art Taijiquan (太极剑) that includes swords (not sharp ones), and calligraphy, as well as our weekly 800+ character essays and oral presentations.

On the second Friday of the program, after our weekly exam, my classmates and I met our language partners, Minzu University students who would be in Beijing or studying at the university during the summer, and later our met Chinese host families. Additionally, the fourth-year students had the opportunity to visit a museum dedicated to Lu Xun (魯迅, real name Zhou Shuren), a highly influential 20^th century author famous for his breadth and depth of work, having produced everything from thought-provoking essays on the Chinese education system, to classical-style poetry, to Chinese translations of foreign literature.

In these past three weeks I’ve fortunately found time to hang out with both my Chinese host family and my language partner, and had the opportunity to visit the Mutianyu (慕田峪) section of the Great Wall, explore a popular hutong (a traditional Beijing neighborhood), and visit Beijing’s National Gallery.

As I go into my fourth week at ACC, which marks both the halfway point in my time in Beijing as well as the beginning of midterm exams, I find that our small student body, regardless of year level or home university, has become increasingly closer, and more confident speaking Chinese in our private lives, whether deciding what movie to watch or debating the merits of the various campus canteens. I’ve eaten a variety of delicious (and strange) meals with these wonderful people, and can already tell these are friendships I’ll want to hold on to even after I return to the States.

It’s been a fantastic experience so far, having the opportunity to study Chinese intensively along with a group of incredibly motivated and hardworking classmates, and I’m looking forward to what the rest of the summer will bring!

After midterm exams, we’ll travel to Datong, a city in Shaanxi Province (山西省) about 6 hours by train from Beijing, so keep checking back for updates!

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