Vignettes of the World
The last stop before Jordan River was St. Peter’s home, and we also saw the ruins of a synagogue adjacent to it. The statue of Apostle Peter holds a key and a live fish swims at his feet. The key symbolizes St. Peter’s office as …
Due to the historic influence by the Romans and the Greeks in this area, my Latin learning in Ovid has prepared me for this trip in unexpected ways. The Temple of Pan was one such example. Like other ruins, the Temple of Pan (Banias as …
“Shalom!”
I witnessed my father’s first act in Israel, and it was brilliant.
We entered Israel via a land route from Jordan. As we crossed the border over to Israel, two Israeli soldiers came on board to check the bus. The two men carried a rifle each, along with a chilled silence.
Meaning “peace be with you,” shalom is a standard greeting in Hebrew, just like “how are you” in English. A simple courtesy in Hebrew eased the tension on the coach immediately. The young soldier turned around to face my father with a smile, “shalom!” Everybody on the tour relaxed, smiling to each other. My father, who was serving as the attending pastor on this tour, then explained the meaning of the phrase as the first course on Jewish culture. There could not have been a better opportunity to do so.
I learned that if the Israeli stamp was found in one’s passport, the neighboring Arab countries (including the UAE) would deny entry. To get around that problem, the Israeli immigration issued a little slip of VISA for entry and exit purposes. This was just one of the many ways in which the hostilities between the Jewish people and their Arab neighbors manifested. In Israel, the animosity was not confined to the four corners of the TV, but lived and breathed in every aspect of life.
We wasted no time in sightseeing on our way. The first site was Zacchaeus’ sycamore tree (Luke 19:1-10). This would be the tree that Zacchaeus eagerly climbed up just to get a glimpse of Jesus, who was entering the city of Jericho. He rejoiced in Jesus spending the evening at his home and his house was redeemed. This tree seemed more convincing as a historical fact than Moses’ rock. After all, the New Testament occurred at a much later time.
At Bet She’an (lit. home of the God She’an, a Greek god), we saw the ruins that spanned the Egyptian, Assyrian, Greek Roman and the Byzantine reigns before its decline under the Arab rule. In its heyday, the city was known as Scythopolis, but along with its decline the name was slowly forgotten. Because of its long history, the city has experienced many rounds of construction. There was the original city and the many additions that subsequent rulers built. The archaeologists were able to identify which parts of the remains were constructed in what period. The theatre was a Greek construction because the seats had the mount on their back, and that was an exclusively Greek feature.
In terms of Biblical significance, the Philistines held King Saul’s remains in contemptuous display after his defeat in the quest for the city (1 Samuel 31:7-11). King David, however, seized this ancient city and it was the seat of government under King Soloman’s reign.
When touring these ancient sites I heard a comment commonly made thus, “the ancients were not necessarily less developed or sophisticated than we are.” At Bet She’an this was spoken about the public latrine, its remains being well excavated, preserved and explained. Apparently in this Roman invention there was no separate provisions for the two genders. Slim stone tablets acted as the seats and water flowed underneath as flushing facility. I learned that only the wealthy could afford private toilets.
We had a distant view of the Mount of Temptation in Jericho, but we did not have a chance to do the cable car ride. That was our tour in Jericho, to my disappointment. The glorious story of Joshua’s battle of Jericho (Joshua 6) welled in my heart as we departed the oldest city in the world with 9,000 to 10,000 years behind it.
In the evening we checked into Emily’s at Tiberia. It was a really nice, modern and well-kept hotel. The Galilee was in view, calm and content in the night’s cool breeze.
“Most of the events in the Old Testament took place in Jordan,” our Jordanian tour guide said. At dinner on my first night in Jordan I fell in love with the creamy, nutty flavored hummus and helped myself with two, three servings. By then, I knew …
I have never seen so much sand in my life. The wonderful aerial views of the United Arab Emirates greeted me in a variety of forms: first a coastline, then what seemed like ranges of barren hills. Finally it was all sands in vast …
By Paul French
“Even the Albanians described North Korea as an ‘unbelievably closed society.’”[i]
Famine, credit default, constant blackouts, economic collapse, failed piecemeal reforms, nuclear weapons, repression – the indicators of a failed state are no longer hidden from the world now, despite North Korea’s persistent isolation. Yet what intrigued me was the fact that the North Korean communist regime has survived despite its acute inability to provide even basic necessities for its people. In this book I found answers and explanations.
Insightful and lucid, North Korea: State of Paranoia provides facts, history, analysis and explanations on North Korea’s economic policies, and how and why the regime has failed to give food to its people but at the same time was able to intimidate the world with nuclear weapons. It is the author’s view that a sound understanding of its economic failure is the vital lens through which any outsider learn about North Korea as a whole.
The book opened with a description of the common people’s lives in North Korea and that was surprisingly effective as an introduction. What I came to know on the first chapter was the human face of North Korea. The reality as depicted reminded me of China in the 1960s, when the whole society, and every detail of daily life, was driven by Mao Zedong’s cult of personality. What was happening more than half a century ago in China is very much alive in North Korea today. In the author’s words, North Korea is “clearly an anachronism in the modern world, adhering rigidly to principles that is former allies have either jettisoned or sought to reform.”[ii]
The discussion of Juche as a founding ideology of the North Korean regime was one of the major learning I took from this book. It was Kim Il-sung’s spin on communism, combining the principles of Marxist-Leninism command economy, Confucian social order, self-reliance and elements of Maoism. It is the fundamental thought that justifies repression, frames state propaganda, writes its own history and even drives the “military first” policy that eventually led to the development of nuclear missiles. The pervasiveness and exclusivity with which the state imposed Juche in North Korea was part of Paul French’s explanation for why the regime remains in power. There simply was no alternative thinking to Juche in North Korea. If not Juche, the North Koreans would not know what else to believe.[iii]
There are certainly other aspects of the North Korean society that has enabled the communist party to maintain its grip on power. The author has noted an irony, that while it was wholly the fault of the command economy that brought about the famine, the prolonged famine has actually kept the North Koreans docile—they were simply too preoccupied with basic survival to think of anti-government organization. “From the start the population was asked to sacrifice economic growth and access to services and goods in the name of national independence and self-reliance.”[iv] For the North Koreans, it was either to struggle at home, or to risk one’s life and defect.
Paul French has made it possible for readers to learn about the “most opaque of opaque countries.”[v] This book was well-researched with critical perspectives on the West (primarily the United States)’s share of responsibility in the sufferings of the North Koreans. As Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump play yo-yo in their denuclearization agreement, little seems to have been done to bring forth hope, or even basic survival, to the North Korean people.
[i] Paul French, North Korea: State of Paranoia (2014) at 47.
[ii] Id. at 410.
[iii] Whereas in Poland, for example, there was the Catholic Church and Solidarity, Id. at 399-400.
[iv] Id. at 413.
[v] Foreword, Id. at xvi.
By Han Kang Ah, what a surprise. I thought this would be a lighthearted and fun book about a Korean woman who decided to turn vegetarian in a culture where meat is consumed as much as air is breathed. As it turned out, not only …
On my last full day in South Korea, I booked a 1st class room at a hotel in Incheon, as I was hoping to see the MacArthur Landing. Once I checked in the hotel, however, I realized that I would be going backward on my …
The Jackfruit Festival of Kwong Ban Tin Village in Tsuen Wan has become a popular event amongst the Hong Kong locals as a family-friendly occasion to celebrate the jackfruit harvest in the fall each year. In October 2016, I went there to learn the story of the village and its people.
The villagers set up a bazaar at the community square to welcome visitors. They offered delicious foods, many of which featured the jackfruit. I tried a very simple sticky rice wrapped in jackfruit with lettuce and it was refreshing. The sticky rice was a perfect match with the natural sweetness of ripe jackfruit, and the lettuce gave the texture a crisp that was a pleasant surprise. There was also jackfruit with chicken, which was creative, rich with sweetness and delicious.
The Kwong Ban Tin Village used to be a squatter settlement. Most of its residents were refugees and immigrants from China and the long-time residents came mostly during the 1950s. There were about 200 families in the village. Many were seniors, and some were new immigrants from China. In the past, villagers raised pigs, chickens, and ducks for food. Now the only animals that could be seen were the dogs and cats that the villagers kept as pets.
A resident Sam told visitors about his childhood in Kwong Ban Tin Village. About 50 years ago when he was a child, there were no jackfruit trees in the village. The village was just like any other, and people raised livestock for a living. He would play war games throughout the hills with a group of friends. Other entertainment were marbles and cartoon cards. He said he used to dig yam as well.
The natural question was, then how did the village earn its fame for jackfruit?
I learned from the newspapers that the villagers simply put the seeds of the jackfruits into the soil after eating them. They never thought that the trees would grow. The seeds sown in the 1970s blossomed into trees, its fruits drawing hundreds of visitors each year to the village now.
It was the first time I saw jackfruit trees. To be able to carry such a heavy fruit (the jackfruit is the heaviest tree-born fruit in the world), these trees were naturally very tall with a large trunk. Mr. Yim showed us how to pick a ripe jackfruit. He said we should look for large bumps on the surface of the skin. Then gently pat the fruit, if it is soft, that means it is ripe. He would climb up two stories on the tree to pick the jackfruits.
Apparently, of the few decades that the jackfruit trees were growing, these large fruits have never fallen and injured anyone in the village. That itself was really quite amazing to me.
I saw people at the walking tour dressing in spacesuits. The villagers also kept hive colonies for honey. Indeed, the village has preserved the natural environ that was still suitable for some farming activities today. Besides the jackfruit trees, the village also prides in its bananas, papayas and starfruits. Mr. Yim told me that he still used water from the stream for washing. Other villagers told me fascinating stories of their lives as new arrivals in Hong Kong during the 1950s. While the jackfruit might have sown an unintended fortune for the village, its people remain as authentic as ever in living through Hong Kong’s struggles well before my time.
To visit the Kwong Ban Tin Village, take a taxi from Tsuen Wan MTR station. The taxi should drop off close to the community center. Do watch out for newspaper or facebook announcements for the date of the Jackfruit Festival each year, sometime around October. For 2018, it will be held Sunday, October 7.
Yun-hak, the young man that I met on the plane, rather insisted that I saw the Gyeongbokgung Palace. Although that was not what the Lonely Planet recommended, I went because a Korean native told me to. Once I was there, however, I began to understand …