Double Handshake

In the wake of Saturday’s devastating 8.8-magnitude earthquake in Chile, the internet is already abuzz with a curious “law” linking the event to both the quake in Haiti earlier this year and 2008’s Wenchuan earthquake in Western China. Hecaitou (和菜头), an influential Chinese blogger, claims the phenomenon has been noted, albeit in different forms, in all three countries. He credits Chinese netizen googlor for the following formulation:

The black numbers represent the month and day of the three earthquakes – ie. 5/12 Wenchuan quake, 1/12 Haiti quake, 2/27 Chile quake. The red characters are the place names – 汶川 = Wenchuan, 海地 = Haiti, 智利 = Chile. You can see that the row and column marked for each location read the same either way you read.

It’s unclear what “law” is really supposed to imply. Hecaitou himself says he finds the coincidence “interesting” but dismisses the would-be numerologists, arguing there have been hundreds of earthquakes over the past three years, and finding number patterns wouldn’t be difficult. I’ll add that had Chile’s earthquake struck anytime from February 20 through 28, the table above still “works.”

Nevertheless, number patterns are compelling stuff and easy to understand. I expect this “law” to linger in the Chinese blogosphere and media while Chile stays in the world’s news.

Writing a blog about China and Latin America, some news stories seem just too good to be true. This is one of them: Real, live bullfighting may be coming to Beijing as early as next year. CAS International, a Dutch anti-bullfighting organization, reports:

According to pro-bullfighting websites, bullfighter Manolo Sánchez made a deal with the local government of the Huairou District in Beijing (Peking) to build a bullring and a bull breeding farm close to the Chinese Wall, as part of a Spanish amusement park (also with tapas bars and flamenco shows).

…

In January, they want to import 100 bulls and 100 cows from Spain and they also want to start building the bullring. The bullring will be finished in October 2010 and will be inaugurated with two bullfights. From 2011, they want to organize 16 bullfights a year, 4 in June, 4 in July, 4 in August and 4 in September.

Wow. Where to start on this one?

It’s worth remembering that China has toyed with this idea before. In 2004, Beijing almost allowed the city’s Wild Animal Park to hold a fight, but eventually scrapped the idea. City council members complained that bullfighting was cruel and had “the potential to tarnish Beijing’s and China’s image” ahead of the Olympics.

However, that same year in October, Shanghai successfully held two days of bullfights. Organizers imported bulls from Mexico, matadors from Spain, and converted a city stadium into a bullring, spending US$605,000. Bulls were taunted and stabbed with spears, but not killed.

Not all fell under the spell of “a bullfight with a truly Spanish flavor.” The editorial board of China Daily called the event a “mistake.”

While animal protection and anti-violence is becoming more fashionable in society, Shanghai’s “bravery” in staging this kind of bloodsport betrays itself as one of China’s most modern cities.

Rather than a milestone in its bid to become a much-coveted international metropolis status – indeed, the bullfighting episode is more like a slap in the face.

Will this time be any different?

Worldwide, times are tough for the industry. Spain’s northeastern Catalonia region recently banned the sport, and other regions may soon follow suit. In Latin America, bullfighting can be found in Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela and may survive there a bit longer. Still, anti-bullfighting sentiment is on the rise in Latin America too. Many people see exporting the sport to China and other foreign countries as a last-ditch strategy to save a dying industry. Pro-fighting optimists may believe China to be bullfighting’s last great hope.

But don’t count on it. Organizations like CAS International are already circulating petitions and mobilizing efforts to stop the sport from coming to China. On top of that, it will only take one top cadre deciding there is something decidedly “uncivilized” about the bloodsport before this plan gets scuttled like the last. Don’t get me wrong, I think most Chinese could stomach the blood to watch for the “mystery” and “passion,” as this account can attest.

My guess is this project becomes something much more benign and tourism-friendly – more “Spanish amusement park” and less bullfighting. Bloodless “bullfighting demonstrations,” perhaps. Tourists dressed up as matadors. Tours of the stables and photos with the bulls. Chinese copies of Death in the Afternoon, plastic banderillas, magnets and other tchotchkes – these all seem likely.

An authentic bullfight in Huairou? Not so much.

Image: China Daily

For fans of contemporary art in Beijing, there are still 10 days left to catch the inaugural 798 Beijing Biennale 2009 happening at the city’s 798 Art District. Within the factory-turned-art-exhibition compound, there are 12 venues showing Biennale work from contemporary artists, Chinese and foreign.

I was especially drawn to 798’s Linda Gallery to check out one of China’s first all-Latin American art showings. The exhibition, “Turn on, Tune in, Drop out” features 25 Latin American artists from eight countries in a wide range of mediums. Curators Nicolás and Katiushka Arze, from Chile, have a good what-it-all-means blurb in the gallery’s information guide:

“The curatorial project for the Latin American part of the biennial does
not delineate a specific art movement or dialogue within art generations. It explores the risk of literally inventing Latin American art in China. This is only possible in a country like this, so unrelated and so far from Latin American art. We are not concerned with surveying the direction of contemporary Latin American art, but instead seek to produce cultural exchange and enrichment between artists whose backgrounds might clash…”

Entering the gallery, you’re faced with a set of five vibrant abstract
color compositions. Something feels familiar about these colors…and then you realize what you’re looking at: folded national flags. Ana Roldan’s (Mexico) “Colombia, Chile, Uruguay, Mexico and Brazil” is a nice introductory piece, acquainting visitors with the Latin American theme without telling them outright.

Not many of the works deal with “China” overtly. My favorite piece in the collection were graphite floor rubbings of “Private Property” signs from various locales around New York City. About her work “Property Lines,” artist Francisa Benitez (Chile) told Diariocrítico de México, “I am very happy to show in China how, in the US, private property is sacred, with signs that are sometimes very small…” What I enjoyed was studying the seemingly endless typefaces and styles, and imagining the past areas they belonged to.

A stronger sense of “China” comes from Nicolas Grum’s (Chile) use of a
common fuel source throughout the country: coal briquettes. Grum arranged 500 of them to spell out the words “Giants do not exist” in the middle of the gallery floor. I can’t be sure what kind of giants Grum had in mind, but from a giant’s perspective on the second floor looking down, the people looked smaller than much of the art.

The 2009 Beijing Biennale runs through September 12.

Capon Street is the heart of Lima’s vibrant Chinatown, which spans a number blocks east of the city’s historic downtown. The name “Capon” is dated to colonial times, the nickname of 16th-century priest Manuel Loayza who lived there. Technically, the street is actually the 7th block of Ucayali Street.

With its walkway inlaid with Chinese Zodiac animals and brightly painted faux-Chinese architecture, Calle Capon is both a commercial walking street and tourist draw. Nicer restaurants, banks, shops and casinos run along both sides. There are also smaller booths advertising horoscope readings and Fengshui consultation.

So, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez surprised Barack Obama with a copy of Eduardo Galeano’s 1971 book Open Veins of Latin America at the presidents’ meeting in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad. The book is a left-wing polemic about the exploitation and suppression of Latin America by foreign powers over the last 500 years. The “gift” is part political stunt – the copy given to Obama is in a language he neither reads nor speaks – to make things a bit uncomfortable for the high-flying Obama and remind him of his country’s role in “Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent.”

The gift is good timing for me, though. I finished Open Veins a few weeks ago and was planning to post some thoughts on it anyhow. As I read the book, I didn’t often think of Obama and the US as much as I thought of China, which stands to be the next country to seriously impact Latin America with its hunger for natural resources. China may have played zero role in the last 500 years of pillage in Latin America, but it may well be the leader in the next 500.

Written in the early 70s, Open Veins is Galeano’s account of how the Spanish, then English and finally Americans arrived in Latin America, stole the regions’ resources, exported its wealth, and drove its people to poverty and backwardness through their greed. Since Columbus’s arrival, Latin America’s natural resources have been a continual curse, a major reason for its stunted growth.

Galaeno doesn’t much distinguish between the Spanish conquistadors who once outright stole and enslaved from 20th-century US companies in Latin America that exploited the land and exported profits back home under the guise of free trade. The pillage has taken new forms, to be sure, but the pillage is still going on.

The US comes out looking terrible in Open Veins – a paternalistic superpower openly exploiting Latin American countries and meddling in their political affairs. Corporations like US Steel and Standard Fruit Company “invested” millions in smelting plants and banana plantations, which polluted the earth, condemned locals to dangerous and low-wage jobs, and exported a lion’s share of profits north of the Rio Grande. Development banks like the IMF and IADB are mostly US pawns used to force Latin American countries to re-structure their economies for greater US manipulation. America’s only interest in a growing middle class in Latin America is that it provides a market for US exports.

Galeano is a great writer, which comes through even in translation. There are memorable anecdotes and powerful passages, but, on the whole, I found the book dogmatic and shrill as he forced his agenda into the pages. This is not objective journalism (nor does it claim to be), but rather a kind of blood-boiling invective that tears down straw-men counter-arguments. Still, there is plenty to get incensed about; it’s a moving book. I can see why Hugo Chavez likes it so much.

But I also think he gave Open Veins to the wrong president; the book should have been in his suitcase for his trip to Beijing earlier this month. There were no awkward book exchanges on Chavez’s trip to Beijing, of course, only zesty Xinhua headlines, multi-billion dollar oil investment deals and smiling photos.

For one thing, Open Veins would simply be a great read for any stalwart Communist cadre, at least in theory. There’s anti-imperialism rhetoric, scathing criticisms of the US’s political meddling, a dash of revolutionary fervor and pleas for better labor conditions. But more importantly, if any foreign country needs a cautionary tale about the fine line between “pillage” and “commodities investment” of Latin America in the 21st century, it is China. You never know how long your welcome will last.

Times are good now because China’s buying helps shore up the region’s battered economies, and its investments come without preconditions. China also provides another major trading alternative to doing business with the US. But, everything’s not perfect. Latin America’s trade deficit with China is growing, new free trade agreements have yet to reveal how much (or little) they will benefit Latin economies, and some Chinese mining companies are already getting bad reputations for their labor and environmental policies.

While none of this yet put the country in the same league with the villians in Open Veins, Spain, England and the US’s legacy in Latin America are clearly ones that China must keep in the back of its mind. If China turns out to be as greedy and exploitative as its foreign predecessors, you can be sure it will become the subject of a similarly themed book in the coming years.

Former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori was handed a 25-year jail sentence yesterday for his role in a handful of killings and kidnappings that took place during his time in office. The ruling came down from a three-judge panel around 9:30am, the culmination of an epic 15-month trial. The 70-year-old Fujimori said he will appeal the decision.

Fujimori, who was president from 1990 to 2000, remains an polarizing figure in Peru. One poll released Monday found 64% of Peruvians believe he was guilty of human rights crimes, while 72% believe he is guilty of corruption. When most people describe Fujimori as “guilty” or “innocent,” however, it has less to do with the specific facts of the case and more to do with offering judgment on the Fujimori years as a whole. The real polarizing question is: Did Fujimori go too far or did Peru’s chaos justify his actions?

The answer from abroad is and has been clear. Fujimori began drawing the ire of human rights groups as early as 1991, during his heavy-handed campaign to wipe out the Shining Path. Terrorists and innocents were executed without trial. He dissolved congress and the judiciary in 1992 and re-wrote the constitution in 1993 to allow himself a second five-year term.

All of this did not help his popularity among democracy-loving nations. Within the country, there remains a big rural/urban divide with comes to the Fujimori issue – it depends on how the 1990s treated you. Nearly all the Limeans I’ve asked come down on him hard. “Asshole,” says the bus driver. “My brother was thrown in jail as a terrorist in 1983,” says the woman buying a newspaper. “He should die in jail,” says the restaurant owner. Fancy eateries in the city’s Miraflores district sell post cards with a cartoon Fujimori, in prison-stripes, getting kicked to the slammer.

In the countryside, the story is different. Here, where the Shining Path threat was much more palpable and economic stability is needed for outright survival, Fujimori remains popular. In countless villages, crumbling brick houses have “Fujimori Innocente” painted in red and white letters, usually alongside “Keiko” – the name of Fujimori’s 33-year-old daughter, who is a popular congresswoman. Keiko Fujimori has said she will pardon her father of all crimes if she is elected president when she runs in 2011.

The most remote place I’ve heard Fujimori’s name come up was on a trip to the floating islands on Lake Titicaca, where Peru borders Bolivia. About 250 people still live on the islands, which are handmade from floating totora reeds. Nearly everything on the islands – the houses, boats, kitchen, tools – are made from the reeds. In the 1990s,  Fujimori visited the islands twice, we were told. The president’s legacy here is not quashing terrorism or inviting foreign investment, but rather electricity. Fujimori and his people donated solar panels to the islands on their visit, which still stand today.

“Fujimori cares about us here. That is why we poor people support him,” our host Roberto said.

“El Chino”

Though his parents were Japanese immigrants to Peru, Fujimori’s nickname is “el Chino” or “the Chinaman.” “Chino” can be used either affectionately or derrogatively, serving as a catch-all for “East Asian.” Fujimori himself is said to have liked the moniker, though as a dark horse presidential candidate in 1989, he likely didn’t have much electoral room to dislike it too much. It certainly is catchier than a nickname like “la segunda generación japonés.”

More importantly, “chino” is a term loaded with associations for most Peruvians, many of them positive. “Chinos” are spendthrift shop owners, hard-working restaurant chefs. They have also been in Peru for 150 years. “Chinos” are just as legitimate to run for office as anyone else. Take the image of the “chinito de la esquina” (the little Chinese man on the corner) for instance. Here’s one recollection of growing up with the “Chinaman on the corner” from a Peruvian now in Australia. Translated (roughly):

Almost every neighborhood (in Lima) had its “Chinese Corner,” each with a picturesque character. The characteristics and habits of all of them were almost similar. The Chinaman at the corner could be identified by having a cigar in his mouth, a pencil in his ear, the cats, his credit book, scooping rice and sugar with khaki paper without spilling even one grain.

In reality, Fujimori was no shop owner nor chifa chef, but cultivating the “chino” image was especially useful given the time he arrived on the national scene in the late 1980s, Peru’s economy was in shambles with an annual inflation rate of more than 10,000% in 1990. Trust the Chinaman, he’s got his credit book.

Fujimori has been depicted many other ways as well. I’ve seen him as Christ, Satan, Blind Justice, a jail bird and a samurai, among other things.

Barrios Altos, then and now

Barrios Altos is a poor and run-down district of Lima, east of the city’s center. On the night of November 3, 1991, members of the Grupo Colina – members of the Peruvian Armed Forces – killed fifteen people at a chicken barbecue suspected of being Shining Path rebels. The Colina were dressed completely in black and sprayed the neighborhood gathering for about two minutes. This incident, and Fujimori’s role it, was at the heart of the 15-month trial.

Yesterday afternoon, five hours after the sentencing, I found myself walking in Barrios Altos, a poor and run-down district of Lima, east of the city’s center. Narrow, treeless streets baking in the sun, graffiti, peeling paint and piles of trash in the street. I walked past Jirón Huanta, the site of the massacre (which I didn’t realize at the time).

Two blocks east of the site, at Plaza Buenos Aires, I examining a historic plaque when I was surrounded by six guys in their twenties. I knew immediately what was going to happen, and it only took twenty seconds. The group bolted down the residential alley. Relieved of money, camera, phone, voice recorder and backpack, I walked back where I came from to find the police. Regardless of who I talked to in the police station over the next few hours, the first response was always the same: “Well what were you doing there in the first place? Alone? Don’t you know it’s dangerous?”

Yes, then and now.

Images: JournalPeru, DustEyes blog

If he’s working, you can’t miss seeing Francisco Choy on the main street of Lima’s Chinatown. If you don’t see his red booth with “Horoscopo Chino” painted in black letters, you’ll at least have to skirt around the dozen or so people crowding around it, straining to hear his words. Francisco has been telling fortunes, advising on spiritual matters and selling Chinese spiritual goods in Lima for the last thirteen years.

Born in Peru of a father from Guangdong and a second-generation Chinese-Peruvian mother, Francisco himself is likely in his forties, with long shoulder-length hair and balding on top. When I saw him last week, he was wearing a white button-down tucked into jeans and a pair of magnetic bracelets – like the ones he sells for ten and fifteen soles a piece – on both wrists.

There were other Chinese spiritual goods and knickknacks on sale: gold Buddha sculptures, felt posters with calligraphy, ginger in plastic bags, fake jade, dolphin wind chimes made out of blue glass. Incense smoke blew across the fifteen people crowding around the booth, making this section of Calle Capon smell like the inside of a Chinese temple.

Francisco would press his thumb into the customer’s palm and immediately began speaking – “There is a big financial opportunity coming for you,” or “Be on the lookout for love.” He’d speak for a minute or two, quickly. He had a silver engraved bowl that he would strike with a stick when the reading was finished, making circles around the readee’s face with it. Then, he’d ring a bell, holding his palm out in front of him, eyes shut. Both he and the customer would open their eyes and he’d dispense change for the transaction. Three soles (US$1) for your future told.

When I checked back with the booth three hours later, the group had swollen to thirty. Business was good.

The video above, care of the Lima newspaper El Comercio, is a little more than a year old. In it, Francisco introduces himself and talks about the then-upcoming Chinese New Year (Year of the Rat). It is now, of course, a “niu year,” but Francisco and his business haven’t  changed too much in the meantime. Enjoy!

Lima-based blogger Stuart Starrs has a nice post on Chinese restaurants in Peru, or Chifas, over at his blog en Perú. He rightly points out that while chifa food is largely considered an affordable staple to most Peruvians, there are glitzy exceptions. Buen provecho!

Image: en Perú

San Joy Lao, a Chinese restaurant in the heart of Lima’s Chinatown, gets my award for most Orientalized chifa in the city. Chifas, or Chinese restaurants with Peruvian characteristics, are ubiquitous around the city and catching on in upscale markets abroad as well. The word comes from a transliteration of 吃饭, “to eat”, which Chinese people have been doing in Peru for 150 years. When you ask a Peruvian taxi driver his thoughts about Chinese people, he will likely start talking about chifas.

Chifa food is generally cheap and good. The decor in most restaurants is on par with Chinese restaurants just about anywhere else on earth: reprints of rural landscapes and calligraphy, red lanterns, bottles of soy sauce on wooden tables, a wall calendar, a TV crammed in a corner. To my palate, the food at most chifas tastes more similar to Chinese restaurants in the US than in China (ie. more meat, less vegetables, sweeter, less oily, and, of course, fortune cookies).

San Joy Lao aims a bit higher in its imitation of all things China. Not only do they have bored-looking hostesses standing around in qipaos like China, but there’s erhu music as well. If it’s your birthday, the staff come to your table singing: “祝你生日快乐, 祝你生日快乐!”. The food is very good, but a bit pricier than your average hole-in-the-wall chifa. You’re paying for the ambience.

When I walked by the restaurant yesterday, I noticed a new addition: a banner celebrating Sino-Peruvian friendship. It reads: “159 years of immigration from China to Peru. 25 years of brotherhood between the cities Beijing and Lima.” The latter figure refers to 1983, when Lima and Beijing became sister cities.

And then, above the text, there is a high-quality Photoshopped image of – what else – the Great Wall winding seamlessly toward the ancient Incan city Machu Picchu. Ah, the harmony makes you hungry, doesn’t it?

Peru is going through something of a domestic guinea pig boom at the moment. Long a traditional protein source in the Andes, guinea pigs are now being produced and sold in greater numbers because of breeding improvements and genetic engineering. The animals, which  reproduce extremely quickly, are full of protein and low in fat. Cuy, as it is called in Peru, can be fried, broiled, roasted or turned into soup. Peruvians eat about 65 million guinea pigs annually.

The problem for the real cuy entrepreneurs is how to expand their market beyond Peru’s borders. For most, guinea pigs are still furry pets or labratory animals – not especially appetizing.

In the past, Peru has pitched “super guinea pigs” (genetically tinkered, 2.5-pound porkers) to markets overseas. Andean farmers have built small businesses exporting guinea pigs to Peruvian immigrant communities abroad. But, to date, the cuy market has been a niche one. As Lilia Chauca Francia, head of Peru’s National Agrarian Research Institute Cuy Project, sums up in the Peruvian Times article linked above: “It can only be exported to sepecific areas in Europe and the U.S. where Peruvians live.”

Only?

It is time for Peru’s economic planners – at the “Cuy Project” and otherwise – to think outside the box a bit. Why not consider introducing guinea pig as a delicacy in China instead? Consider the following:

1. Cuteness will not impede consumption. Guinea pigs are cute, in their own rodent way. Whereas in the US, any guinea pig entrepreneur would need to find ways to tone-down the guinea pig’s lovableness, in China, it seems, cuteness may just indicate it tastes better. Take for instance, Xiao Fei Yang (little fat lamb) Hot Pot restaurants, ubiquitos in Shanghai and other cities. The restaurant’s mascot is an adorable, anthropormized cartoon lamb in a bow tie. Delicious.

Or, I think about the time I had to point the finger of death at a rabbit hot pot restaurant on the outskirts of Chengdu, Sichuan province. I’d stood next to a large wire cage stacked with white bunnies, a man with a butterfly net and scale, and bloodsplattered white-tile wall. I got queasy watching the butchery, but the three eight-year-old girls standing near me didn’t blink.

2. What pet-vs-food debate? Cuteness brings us to pets. In China, I knew dog owners who ate dog. Yet, this did not mean they would ever eat their own pet, mind you. Any attempt to export guinea pigs to the US or Europe would be a struggle because there are classes of animals that are ruled out as pets for pretty much all people. In China, dietary customs vary widely. In a lot of places, there is plenty of overlap between pets and food. Tip for cuy salesman: start in Guangdong.

3. The guinea-pig marketing campaign writes itself. “Since 2,500 BC, Andean people have believed in the mystical healing and nourishing ability of the guinea pig. The animals were first used by ritual healers to diagnose illness and later consumed on the misty tops of the Andean range. They have brought nourishment, strength, virility, luck and prosperity to Peruvians for generations.” (Well, nourishment, anyway). The more exotic, the better.

4. Food for the recession. Consider the economics from an offical in Lima last December: Guinea pigs can feed a family of seven or eight for US$3.20. Last year, Peru’s governement recommended struggling families eat guinea pigs for Christmas dinner in place of a traditional turkey or pork roast. In China, meanwhile pork prices soared last year, forcing a number of families to cut back on meat consumption. Not even eight bowls of Lanzhou lamian would be as cheap a meal as a guinea pig roast.

5. Peruvian animals in China are already all the rage. Stuffed alpacas are selling well at the moment in China. Alpaca dolls are standing in for made-up animals called “grass-mud horses,” the stars of a current internet fad based on puns.

6. And on the subject of puns… “It’s keyi to eat cuy!” (It’s OK to eat guinea pigs!). Just a thought.