While "random photos from around Asia" might not be the greatest blog title this is in essence what these are. I quite like the photo of the Beijing Bird's Nest Stadium and the tourist with the drone from Laos. Overall I think I am most happy with this set of photos. I guess with travel I saw new places so consequently the photos of those places are new. In Shanghai I often did just my daily life or saw the same things several times.
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On our last day in Xiamen we were all woken up at the bright and early 6:00AM to visit the last three things we didn't see in the city: a Buddhist temple, a fort, and a former fishing village turned shopping center. I actually don't have much to say on anything since we spent so little time in each location. What I can say is that the Buddhist temples in other parts of China were nicer than the one in Xiamen simply because they had less people. The fort is a fort, it had big guns pointed at the Nationalist (I guess now Democratic Progressive after their last election) "Republic of China" occupying Taiwan; we only spent like 20 minutes there so I think we actually spent more time driving to and from the fort than we did in the fort. Finally we went to an old fishing village that is now a shopping center, I had coffee and tasted a Taiwanese shaved ice. Diplomatic abnormalities and political conflict are no reason why we can't enjoy a shaved ice every once in a while, right? We had lunch at a distinctively Chinese barn of a sea food restaurant that was actually pretty good. I guess I got the fish I wanted but I could have used a Sedrin (the local Xiamen beer). We were then taken to the train station for our six hour trip back to Shanghai. We made it back pretty late so my friends and I got a roast meat sandwich from less sketchy roast meat guy.
In my recent post about the inclusive religions of China, I mentioned Puyi (溥儀) who was the last Emperor of China and the only Emperor of Manchukuo. I realized that not everyone might have the context for what Manchukuo was and how did Puyi end up as its Emperor. In short, the Great Empire of Manchukuo (大滿洲帝國) was the Japanese puppet state set up in Manchuria, northern China, after the Japanese took the region form the Chinese in the early 1930s. Legally Manchukuo was a constitutional monarchy with the Concordia Association of Manchukuo (滿洲國協和會) serving as its only legal party; minority groups were permitted to have their own political organizations (there were actually two Jewish political organizations, the Betarim Jew Zionist Movement and the Far Eastern Jewish Council under the direction of Dr. Abraham Kaufman but I can’t find much information on ether) but they could not contest the rule of the Concordia Association. In practice, Manchukuo was never independent form Japanese rule: the Manchukian military relied on the Japanese military, Japanese officials wrote most of Manchukuo’s laws, and Manchukuo was a member of the Japanese backed Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. In Puyi’s book From Emperor to Citizen he describes the Manchukian Privy Council Meetings where the Council would meet to agree that the Japanese wrote awesome laws and that Puyi should sign them without question. The Japanese also attempted to make Manchukuo more Japanese: Japanese was an official language of Manchukuo, a large number of Japanese settlers moved to Manchukuo, the Emperor of Japan Hirohito was equally revered to Emperor of Manchukuo Puyi (in Form Emperor to Citizen Puyi mentions that all classrooms in Manchukuo had portraits of both himself and Hirohito), the Japanese tried to integrate the Manchukian Imperial family into the Japanese Imperial family (Puyi discusses how the Japanese were able to get his brother to marry a distant relative of Hirohito and how they wanted him to marry a Japanese women), and (as I mentioned in the inclusive religions blog post) the Japanese attempted to get the Manchukians to worship Shinto gods. While the Japanese did attempt to preserve some elements of China, for example Puyi became Emperor because having the former Qing Emperor be the Emperor of Manchukuo would give legitimacy to the new state, I believe that Manchukuo would have gotten less and less Chinese as time went on. I do not believe that Manchukuo would have remained independent for very long if the Japanese won the Second World War, Manchukuo would have eventually been annexed into Japan like Taiwan or Korea. Today Manchukuo is not remembered well, Chinese historians will often call the Great Empire of Manchukuo something like the “Illegitimate Manchu State” or the “Manchu Puppet Government” and write about the war crimes that took place there. Since 2004, there are a small number of people in Hong Kong who claim to be the Manchukuo Temporary Government (滿洲國臨時政府), but they are kind of a Poe’s Law type entity where it is hard to tell if they are serious about reestablishing the Empire of Manchukuo, commenting on the modern Chinese government, joking, or are basically a bunch of Chinese political historical LARPers. Oh ya, if you are worried about poor poor Emperor Puyi don’t. He died peacefully in a Beijing hotel 1967 after being pardoned by the People’s Republic working as a gardener for the Beijing Botanical Garden (Puyi quite liked gardening and spent a good deal of his time as Emperor of Manchukuo gardening).
Random Stuff on a Random Day in Hanoi
So I really didn’t have a theme today for why I did what I did, it all was just kind of around and sounded cool so that is what I did. I decided I wanted a lighter day since I have a water puppet show scheduled for later today so I just did two big things: the Military Museum and the Fine Art Museum of Vietnam. I liked the Military Museum but I generally like military museums so that is not a helpful statement. What I can say is that if I was French and I visited the Military Museum I would be pretty bummed. Most of the large artifacts were American made war trophies used ether by American or French forces. The only French made weapons in the place were small arms while the Vietnamese proudly displayed American planes, tanks, bombs, and guns they captured, they even displayed a pile of scrap from shot down American aircraft. It is nice to know that your military’s stuff is so valuable that even 50 years later even the literal junk gets displayed proudly to show the overwhelming odds a people fought against. The Military Museum also had weapons used by Communist Vietnamese forces: the regular NVA, VC, and various other Communist militia forces. They even had the first Communist tank that rolled into Saigon and a MIG fighter that shot down several American jets. Be warned though, the Military Museum does expect you to be at least somewhat familiar with Vietnamese history, for example the Museum spends a lot of time discussing the Battle of Dien Bien Phu without really telling you why the Battle of Dien Bien Phu was important (it was the last battle of the First Indochina war and a victory for the Vietnamese over French forces FYI). After so much Communism I kind of wanted to do something different so I went to the Fine Art Museum of Vietnam later that day. This did not help get me away from Uncle Ho and the ideas of Marx though. Had to first walk by the North Korean embassy in Hanoi which, while somewhat nondescript, was obviously the North Korean embassy because of the bulletin board with framed photos of Kim Jong-Un in it. The Museum itself was also very communistic. Only the first floor was devoted to art from before the rise of the Vietnamese Communist Party. The rest of the art was heavily influenced by communist ideas. Much of it was about the workers, the peasants, Ho Chi Minh, and the Communist military forces. Still, they had a nice collection of early Vietnamese Buddhist statuary and a fine collection of Vietnamese lacquer painting. Two of the museums other three exhibits, a special exhibit on ASIAN printing, a pottery exhibit, and the exhibit on Vietnamese folk art, were also beneficial to the Communist Party. While the pottery and the folk art exhibits were kind of weak the ASIAN printing exhibit had some cool works. I just wish the museum actually explained things a bit more, I have very little context for any of the works. Finally I took a short walk to Hanoi’s Opera House. It was a cool building I guess. It was also next to the actual Hanoi Hilton Hotel something I always wondered if they had. Note: I plan on doing a small update ether late today or early tomorrow on the Water Puppet show and dinner. Today I decided to do the Vietnam War, or the Resistance War Against America tour around Hanoi. First thing in the morning I decided to pay Uncle Ho himself a visit since like Kim, or Kim, or Mao, or Lenin Ho Chi Minh is still in a glass coffin. Photos were ban in the mausoleum so I was unable to take any pictures. I would describe the experience as almost pseudo-religious. You walk passed many nicely uniformed PAVN troops before being allowed into the mausoleum itself, there you are lead through several passageways with gradually dimming lights, finally you are brought into the room where Ho Chi Minh himself lays permanently in state, you shuffle past the body as you make your way back out into the light. Uncle Ho doesn’t look bad for a dead man, he is a bit waxy though. Afterword I went to the Ho Chi Minh Museum located on the same site. I don’t know how much I learned about Ho Chi Minh or the struggle for Vietnamese independence against the French then the Japanese then the French again than the Americans but it was a trip. The whole museum is several massive modern art pieces with some random stuff from Ho Chi Minh scattered about. While some of it is kind of weird, like a set of crystalware the czechoslovakian Government gave Ho, to the cool, like the actual pens used to end American involvement in the Vietnam war. It is the kind of place that would either be, in proper 1970s fashion, great or terrible place drop acid in.
After a lunch of chicken with mushrooms over rice, I went to the Hanoi Hilton, officially called the Hoa Lo Prison. The prison was actually built by the French colonial government in what was then French Indochina to house Vietnamese political prisoners. The museum spends most of the time focused on this period in Hao Lo’s history discussing at length the atrocities of the French imperialist regime in what is now Vietnam. The small section dedicated to American POWs unsurprisingly tells a different story of the Vietnamese Communists. The Vietnamese are depicted as being extremely charitable and gracious hosts to the American pilots who were illegally and aggressively invading Vietnam. In comparsion to what the French gave the Vietnamese, the clothing the Vietnamese claim they gave the Americans, while simple, looked acceptable. The American POWs were shown studying Communist thought, making art, and playing sports while being well cared for by Vietnamese doctors and guards. They also had trophies form the captured American piolets, like a flight suit that allegedly belonged to Sen. John McCain of Arizona before his capture. I finished my day with what is called an egg coffee, a Hanoi specialty. It tastes kind of like what would happen if Starbucks made creme brulee. It wasn’t bad but I couldn’t see drinking them often. |
AuthorI am a junior at Juniata College spending a year studying abroad at East China Normal University. Please feel free to join my on my journey to China and beyond. Archives
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