For stop three of my Asian tour I'll be focusing on the region of Manchuria. The region is comprised of the Northeast area of China and has a history filled with controversy, having been ruled and occupied by the Russians, Japanese, regional warlords and the Chinese. The title of this thread comes from the
Manchurian Incident where the Japanese bombed one of their own railways under a false flag which they blamed on the Chinese. They used the incident to justify their invasion of the region which they occupied until the end of WWII.
As I explained in my last thread on
Dalian, I am studying developing world infrastructure and was in China for a school project. The project focuses on improving the Chinese
Kang heating system (pronouced Kong - like King Kong) which is heavily used in the region. Part of this project was to visit local communities to understand how people use their Kang and how they would feel about proposed technical improvements. I visited three separate communities:
The first was to an area just north of Dalian called Pulandian.
The second was to the border town of Dandong which sits on the Yalu river, about 200 km from Dalian. On the other side is the city of Sinuiju, North Korea. An old bridge that was bombed by the US in the Korean war serves as a major tourist attraction for the Chinese. I stayed in a hotel where all the workers were North Korean. I tried to speak to one through my Chinese translator but the girl didn't even understand Chinese. Bizarre.
The third was to a small farming village in Hebei (technically not Manchuria) where I stayed with a family and conducted a focus group with the locals.
Sorry for the long intro, I'll try to annotate some of the shots.
Some nationalistic music. I was a bit apprehensive to use this song as I felt it would come off as the type of music a foreigner would stereotype as quintessentially Chinese. Something like a Chinese tourist selecting 'America the Beautiful' for their shots of the heartland. But, I heard this song a lot at Karaoke while I was there and I don't think the Chinese were singing it to be ironic. It is meant to be a patriotic song and I felt my experiences in these smaller, lesser known cities and villages better reflected Chinese culture than what I experienced in the more cosmopolitan Shanghai and Beijing.
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I conducted a focus group with these villagers which was an unorganized mess but insightful nonetheless. People showed up to socialize and catch a glimpse of the foreigner from America. At one point during the questioning, one of the old women across from me got antsy and started adjusting her shirt. She pulled it up to reveal two sagging, bare breasts which she adjusted and then put back under her shirt. My jaw dropped and I lost my train of thought. I stammered trough the next few questions.
A typical shower at one of the farms. Many homes don't have hot water. The water is heated using solar hot water panels. The shower is shared by four adults that generally bathe once every 3-4 days. Having hot water is desired by most of the households but generally too expensive to install.
This is Sinuiju, North Korea. I was able to take this shot from my hotel room window. You can see the DPRK flag on the ships in the foreground.
The two bridges in the background connect Dandong to Sinuiju. The closer bridge was bombed by the Americans during the Korean war to stop the Chinese from supplying the Koreans. The bridge was never fixed and now serves as a tourist attraction. A new bridge was built which can be seen in the background.
Closeup of the two bridges.
Traffic is rare but does flow across the new bridge.
I went to the Korean war museum which explained all the acts of American agression and how bravely the Koreans fought against the imperialistic invaders. Keep in mind this museum is in China, not North Korea.
Not many foreigners visit these places. Unblinking stares and dropped jaws were common.
A woman that works on one of the farms I visited. She is sitting on her Kang bed.
The farmer whose home I stayed in. He is also sleeping on his Kang.
This woman is showing me how her Kang works. The hot smoke from the stove, or in this case the hot wall firing chamber, travels through a channel in the wall and into the sealed Kang chamber in the next room. The heat from the smoke is transfered to the Kang which then releases it to the room. The smoke is then exhausted through a connected chimney.
One of the issues with the current Kang system is that many are poorly built and leak smoke. This creates unsatisfactory indoor air quality. You can see smoke that has leaked from the Kang in the photo below.
This is coal that is used to heat homes on a farm I visited. The coal is dirty and expensive for the residents. We are trying to develop a system that would phase out coal use in favor of biomass (corn stalks, corn cobs, etc)
A Kang bed and a modern bed in one of the homes I visited. The farmer stated he prefers the modern bed because it is soft. The younger generation favors modern beds and many homes that are built today lack traditional Kang systems. You can see a biogas reactor outside the window. This house used biogas created from crop waste to cook. There was not enough gas created to heat the home.
A traditional stove and the biomass used for cooking fuel.
A motionless ferris wheel in North Korea. I wasn't sure if this was real or just a potemkin cut out.
A biogas reactor at one of the farms.
DPRK on the left, China on the right.
That's it. The thread was a bit of a change from my usual material. I hope it was informative without being too boring. Next, I'll get back to the eye candy with the glitz and grit of Beijing.
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