James Fallows

In Beijing the first three days of November were spectacular, as they had been last year.

Yesterday, November 4, some brown and grey in the sky. Today, some more:

Looking south from our apartment on Jianguo Road near East Third Ring Road.

Two hundred and seventy-seven days to go now. It's probably time to take a picture of the sky every day as the Games draw near, for later chronicling purposes to see how and when the campaign to clean up the air finally kicked in. Assuming and hoping that it does.

Two reader reactions to my bemusement about Germans taking me for one of their own: 1) From Ward Wilson, of Trenton, NJ:

My friend Richard - a wonderful big Mississippian with a civil-war beard and a slow drawl went to Paris to play classical saxophone. You know they always say that thing about "If you just /try/ to speak their language, they'll appreciate it and everything will go so much more smoothly"?

Richard went into a corner patisserie or something and said to the beefy, angry-looking Frenchman behind the glass case: "Ave vous . . . un . . . croisant du . . . chocolat?" You have to imagine this done haltingly in a heavy Mississippi drawl.

The big Frenchman leans toward him, hands on the glass case and says, "Spick Anglish! Do nut /waste/ mah tahm!"

2) From Mike Schilling, of the East Bay area in NoCal:

True story: I was out for a walk in Amsterdam and discovered that I was a bit lost. I stopped a passerby to ask directions to the Rembrandt museum.

“Excuse me, do you happen to speak English?”

(*very* irately) “Of course! I went to school!”

More »

Two hundred and seventy-nine days until the opening ceremony for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, according to a big sign downtown. And -- unlike some other days -- it couldn't be more beautiful! My family's first two days of residence in Beijing coincide with two days of spectacular weather. Robin's-egg blue skies; not a hint of pollution; the briskness that follows the passage of a cold front from Mongolia/Siberia, without the actual cold.

Looking north from near the Guomao subway stop, toward the half-constructed new CCTV building by Rem Koolhaas:

Looking east along Jianguo Road:

I was here one year ago today, at the time of an African presidents' summit, and it was just as pretty. Maybe this, as opposed to mid-summer, is the time for international games? Just a thought.

All memories of the last year-plus in Shanghai are fond. But I realize that I took too long to bow to the inevitable: months ago I should have called off my quest to find actual good beer in China and instead made my peace with the thin, weak, rainwater-bland local brews. All in all it's a minor cost of the major adventure of being here. Here is what I finally got hold of in Shanghai: And here is the representation of my new beer philosophy as I start my new life in Beijing:

That's a little can of Beijing Beer in the foreground, among devotional Mao-era figures. It and (the identical-tasting but oddly more popular) Yanjing Beer are cheap, are available everywhere, and require no thought or effort to locate or wash down.

Going local, step by step

.

What living in England, Japan, and China has taught one American about the character of his own country

With all the expertise that comes from a full two days in country, en route to Beijing.

1) These people are tall! For my purposes, human beings come in two sizes: Taller than me, and any other height.* I can't help noticing that many more Germans fall into the first category than I am used to encountering -- and don't get me started on the giant Dutch. I had followed the whole academic/journalistic discussion of the fact that Americans are no longer, on average, the tallest people on earth. It's hard to appreciate this when in China, where people are larger in all ways than they were twenty years ago but on average nowhere near as tall, big, or heavy as the typical Yank. In Western Europe you see that the phenomenon is real.

2) I had better start thinking of Germans as a distinctly good-looking people, because apparently they're how I look. In most places where I don't belong, culturally or linguistically, my outsiderness is obvious at a glance. In Asia or Africa: naturally. Even in France -- maybe it's the clothes, maybe the lack of a Gallic je ne sais quoi, but for whatever reason no one ever approaches me there and starts speaking French.

In Germany, they come up all the time and start speaking German. It's happened every time I've been there, and it happened often this time. My point is not: "people in Germany are always speaking German." What I mean is, "people in Germany are always speaking German to me." Which I can't speak back.

It's quite a strange feeling to be assumed to belong -- as someone asks quickly for directions on the street or a shopkeeper starts making colloquial banter, in the quick informal tone you use only with native speakers -- and then have to explain, haltingly, that in fact you have little idea of what's being said. In Germany (or Holland or Sweden), the speaker then usually apologizes and switches to a cultured variety of English, which completes the humiliation. This gives me a glimpse into the experiences of my Chinese-American, Japanese-American, and Korean-American friends who show up in their ancestral homeland without knowing the ancestral tongue.

* Ask me if someone is closer to 5'6" or 5'10" and I'll say, I'm not sure. Ask me if someone is 6' 1 1/2" versus 6'2" and I'll know exactly, since that's the critical zone.

I love Berlin, and in the late 1990s I wrote a very brief item in the Atlantic's travel section with some reasons why. (Link here; the item in its terse totality is after the jump.) At the time I wrote, I hadn't been back to Berlin since its reunification, and I worried that its smoky, feverishly-doomed evocative nature might have disappeared along with the Wall. In several visits since then, I've found I had little reason for concern. The place is spiffed up and modernized, but it is still plenty noir! Yesterday it was Berlin as I imagined and remembered it: raw, overcast, pouring rain, the noontime sun very low in the sky as it headed toward twilight at 4:30 and pitch blackness at 5. As we walked through the rain and wind and blear on Unter den Linden, I was thinking: This is so atmospheric! My wife, the reality-based member of our household, was thinking and finally came out and said: This is so miserable! So we ducked into the nearest dry structure, the Deutsches Historiches Museum. (The difference between visiting Europe and visiting Asia: any English speaker can guess what the name of this structure means. Its counterpart in China, which would be called something like 中国历史�šç‰©é¦†, is more of a stretch.) This proved to be Berlinish serendipity. We spent several hours inside the museum, fascinated by, among many other things, a display of early-Nazi-era propaganda art. The guard told me to stop taking pictures only after I'd seen this Village of the Damned-style poster of a wholesome Aryan family.

More »

The Atlantic has a gala new on-site recording "studio," which casual observers might confuse with "a regular office with acoustic foam stapled on some of the walls."* But it has a high-quality transmission line and works fine. While in the U.S. last week, I used it for a conversation with Dave Davies of the Philly Daily News, guest-hosting for Terry Gross on Fresh Air. It was broadcast today in America; link here. Yes, the first part of the show is Jerry Seinfeld! I will listen to that now, and will not blame a soul (except my dad) for starting there. * Tech update: I am informed by the Atlantic's tech high command that this is not in fact stapled on but attached with special acoustic foam glue. No half measures for us!

So it appears that Stanley O'Neal will leave Merrill Lynch with > $160 million in stock options and other retirement benefits, after being paid nearly $50 million last year and immediately after the company reported a gigantic loss, based largely on sub-prime mortgage risks O'Neal had decided it should take on. I know that markets are markets, that financiers go into finance because they like the dough, that compared with 99.9% of people on earth I myself am rich, and so on. But every now and then one of these sticks in the craw. For me, it's this one -- and probably because of the years-long struggle I have waged to get my retirement-style savings out of ML, where I put some of them 15 years ago and where the meter immediately started running on high and not very well disclosed fees.* You would think that a brokerage itself would not be too comfortable with so flagrant a reminder of how hefty its fees must be, if it can afford this kind of payout. I also wasn't crazy about the news, during the 2004 election, that O'Neal had ginned up nearly $300,000 in donations to the Bush-Cheney campaign from Merrill Lynch employees -- you know, the people whose future and careers he controlled. I probably also would have objected if he had been pressuring his own people to give to Kerry-Edwards. In either case, the idea of my (steep) account fees supporting this kind political activity didn't sit well. Enjoy the money, Mr. O'Neal. That's what it's all about. * Where are they now? It would not be very hard to guess: a well-known low-fee, not-for-profit investment organization. Why is the fight still going on? Because ML tied some of the money up in annuities that I still must spend several years waiting out -- while the fee meter keeps turning over.

Congratulations to the Atlantic's own Liam Casey, founder and CEO of PCH China Solutions and protagonist of my recent article about the factory-land of Southern China, "China Makes, the World Takes." (Article is subscribers-only; this slide show, which contains some pictures of Casey, is free.) Last week he was named Ireland's "Entrepreneur of the Year" by Ernst & Young.* Well done, Liam.

Casey informs me that in the last day or two he has received a number of congratulatory messages from contractors and business associates. These are not just about the august E&Y award but also about a long, detailed report on Casey's company and the larger Shenzhen economy, which has just appeared in the local Guangzhou newspaper. It's all in Chinese; it is illustrated with elegant photos by Michael Christopher Brown; in fact it is written by me; and it is a word-for-word translation of our original article. China' cavalier approach to copyright and the whole notion of intellectual property: this time it's personal.**

* Can't-say-it-often-enough policy note: Casey, who grew up in Cork and has built his business in China, hoped to become an entrepreneur in America but was driven out by visa rules. As the article says:

At age 29 he arrived in Southern California and worked briefly for a trading company. He says he would be in America still—“Laguna, Newport Beach, ah, I luvved it”—but he could not get a green card or long-term work permit, and didn’t want to try to stay there under the radar.

** Many other times too. In the 1980s, I visited Beijing and had a meeting with some officials from the defense ministry. As a gracious gesture they presented me with a special leather-bound copy of a book in Chinese. Indeed it was my own book National Defense, which they had (without asking, etc) translated for use in the some of their courses. They thought I would appreciate a copy. I told them I was pleased to have it.

Or else they're taking pity on us. Luggage-cart rental stand, Tegel Airport, Berlin, this afternoon:

So, if you want to rent a cart, you can pay: one Pound, one Euro, one Swiss Franc, or one shiny American quarter, which at today's rates means:

Brits pay ~ $2.06 Europeans in general pay ~ $1.44 Swiss pay ~ $1.16 And my wife and I paid $0.25 each for our two carts, delighted as we were to find two quarters wedged into our pockets after the redeye from the U.S., en route to our new home in Beijing.

Is this legacy pricing from the days when the dollar really was strong? A means-tested scheme, reflecting Europe's patronizing view toward the puny dollar of modern times and what Yanks can afford? An expression of karmic gratitude for the American role in defending Berlin through the long decades of the Cold War and the intense months of the Berlin Airlift, when planes full of supplies for hungry Berliners landed at this very Tegel airfield?* Could be any of 'em. But -- oooops! Five minutes later it turns out that when you return the cart, you get back whatever coin you put in. So technically all the chart means is that the quarter is physically about the same size as the other, mightier coins. Still, in the era of the shrinking dollar, something about this chart sticks in your mind. * Before anyone feels obliged to mention it: Yes, I know that Tegel was in the French sector of Berlin, while Tempelhof was the main airport in the American sector. But you get the point. Footnote update!!: Andrei Cherny, who has a book on the Berlin Airlift out next year, reminds me that the airport was in French-controlled territory but most of the airplanes were of course American. I guess this is why we don't hear so many references to "the vast French air force darkened the skies" in accounts of the post-war era...

Yesterday I mentioned the parallels among the lobbying efforts and influence of three special interest groups, or "factions": the (mainly Orthodox) Armenian-Americans who pushed the Armenian Genocide resolution; the (mainly Catholic) Cuban-Americans who have pushed the US embargo of Cuba; and the (mainly Jewish) supporters of AIPAC who have been making a case for a military showdown with Iran. Today Gabriel Schoenfeld of Commentary Magazine quotes only the part about AIPAC -- and then asks why I am singling out the Jews!?!?! "Why is this game played only one way, with America’s Jews the primary target?" (Full text after the jump) Not much amazes me any more, but.... I wonder which is the more plausible interpretation: That the author heard I'd written something objectionable and attacked it without reading it? Or that he did read it -- and deliberately left out everything that didn't fit his case, including through artful cutting of quotes? I took it for granted that Commentary wouldn't see the Iran issue the way I do, given their recent cover story on "The Case for Bombing Iran" etc. But wow, this makes me nostalgic for the comparative "honesty" of the Chinese state media I've been dealing with recently.

More »

A way to think about the Walt-Mearsheimer book and related controversies:

• To the (large) extent that the Armenian-American lobby ginned up support for a pointless and destructive resolution condemning sins of the Ottoman Empire, it advanced its own causes at the expense of larger American interests. The people who did this are mainly from one ethnic group (Armenian-American) and of one religion (Christian, notably Armenian Apostolic or Armenian Orthodox).
  -
• To the (huge and obvious) extent that the Cuban-American lobby has muscled the United States into its small-minded and punitive embargo of Castro's Cuba these last 45 years, it has advanced its own causes at the expense of larger American interests. The people who have done this are mainly from one ethnic group (Cuban-American) and of one religion (Christian, notably Roman Catholic).
  -
• To the (ongoing) extent that AIPAC -- the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which calls itself "America's Pro-Israel Lobby" -- is trying to legitimize a military showdown between the United States and Iran, it is advancing its own causes at the expense of larger American interests. The people who are doing this are not from one ethnic group in the conventional sense but are mainly of one religion (Jewish).

To observe these patterns, and warn against them (including the disastrous consequences of attacking Iran), is not to be anti-Armenian, anti-Orthodox, anti-Cuban, anti-Catholic, or anti-Semitic. Nor is it to deny that members of each lobby claim, and probably believe, that what they're recommending is best for America too. But in these cases they're wrong. And noting these groups' power and potential to distort policy mainly means recognizing that James Madison's warnings about the invidious effects of "faction"* apply beyond the 18th century in which he wrote.

* Federalist 10: "By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community."

In August of last year, after a month in China, I said that among the things I'd miss from my D.C. life -- apart from our friends, our house, our cat (below), etc -- was the towpath along the C&O Canal, one of the world's great places to go for a run.

Yesterday afternoon -- under blue skies, with a gentle breeze, in unseasonably balmy mid-70s temperatures* -- I went for a run again along the towpath. It was the first time I'd run outside in more than a year, after doing so three or four times per week through the previous three or four decades.

The impediments to outdoor recreation in China are not my point. The beauty, abundance, and taken-for-granted Arcadian glory of much of America is what, yet again, amazes and awes the visitor. No matter how fast China keeps developing or how high its stock markets or trade surpluses may soar, it is hard to imagine that anyone now alive in China will ever see such splendor in its own cities.

Of course, this is the way the Europeans may have consoled themselves as they watched America's rise.

More »

Well, in case you did, here's the answer. At least, this is what it looked like last month in Gansu province, a very poor western part of the country that also contains some very beautiful scenery.

In less scenic parts of Gansu, including near the capital of Lanzhou, hillsides were long ago stripped of trees and shrubs so they could be turned into little terraced farming plots or grazing areas for sheep. Many then eroded and turned into pure wasteland. That's where the trees are going back in.

It appears to work this way: local farmers are paid to girdle the hillsides with row after row of little foot-wide terraces. They plant trees on each terrace. Somehow they must get water to the trees (it's a dry region). On a few hillsides, we saw thickets of saplings 8 or 10 feet tall, which looked like they would survive. Most hillsides look like the ones below (and after the jump).

Now you know.

(Scale note: the baby trees in this first shot are about three feet tall; they're shown on a very small hill.)

More »

This is not my usual beat nor my usual way of operating, but: on this visit to the U.S. I feel obliged to note, in solidarity with Andrew Sullivan and Matthew Yglesias of the Atlantic (among others), that I hope senators will vote No on the nomination of Michael Mukasey as attorney general.

Here's the reason: The Administration has proven that it cannot be given the benefit of the doubt on questions of civil liberties, expansion of executive powers, or the conversion of its open-ended, ill-defined, decades-long state of "war" into an excuse for permanent, abusive, often secret changes in the balance of rights and powers that is America's greatest constitutional achievement.

On crucial points, Mukasey's second-day testimony amounted to a request that he and the Administration be trusted to do the right thing. Nothing against him personally, but the time for trust has passed. Unless Mukasey explicitly repudiates the most abusive parts of his predecessor's (and his President's) record, the Senate would be negligent and reckless to approve him.

A specific point: the "waterboarding" outrage. As is now becoming famous, Mukasey said this, when asked by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse whether waterboarding was constitutional:

“I don’t know what is involved in the technique,” Mr. Mukasey replied. “If waterboarding is torture, torture is not constitutional.”

Either way you slice it, this answer alone is grounds for rejecting Mukasey. If he really doesn't "know what is involved" in the technique, he is unacceptably lazy or ill-informed. Any citizen can learn about this technique with a few minutes on the computer.* Any nominee for Attorney General in 2007 who has not taken the time to inform himself fits the pattern of ignorant incuriosity we can no longer afford at the highest levels.

More »

You've heard about the gala feature-packed 150th Anniversary issue of the Atlantic Monthly! See it discussed, in real time and with exciting viewer call-ins, on C-Span's Washington Journal this coming Sunday morning, Oct 21, 9:15-10 am. (Assuming I can get up by then.)

Three weeks ago my wife and I flew China Eastern from Beijing to Shanghai and, thanks to traffic miracles on both ends and the absence of the usual Beijing departure hold, made it door-to-door in about four hours.

Today I flew US Airlines from Washington to Boston, a more-or-less comparable route, in just about the same door-to-door time. One difference: Beijing-Shanghai is more than half again as far (576 nautical miles, vs. 343). Another: often I've been loaded onto a 747 for the Chinese route, versus the Airbus 319 that is standard for US Air. But here's the general compare/contrast rundown:

1) Cost: Roughly $150 advertised fare on China Eastern, vs $385 for USAir. Edge to the Chinese, especially considering that the trip is longer. On the other hand, given the 7- or 8- fold difference in national per capita income, the US fare is obviously more "affordable."

2) Amenities: No contest. China Eastern is way nicer. Hot meals on all flights -- standard choice is "rice" or "noodles," meaning a choice of the side dish that will accompany chicken, fish, etc. Plus, free beer. (Yes, Chinese beer, but still.) On USAir today, tiny pack of pretzels and a soft drink. On the other hand, the "seat pitch" in Chinese airplanes seems an inch or two shorter than even for US economy class, with that much less leg "room."

More »

Thomas Wales was, of course, the federal prosecutor who was murdered in his home in Seattle six years ago. The widespread assumption in Seattle's law enforcement community is that he was killed in revenge for a past prosecution, and by a person who strongly objected to Wales's very prominent role as a gun-safety advocate. (Background here, and in a Jeffrey Toobin article this summer here.)

Wales came into the national news this spring through testimony suggesting that the U.S. Attorney in Seattle, John McKay, had been fired by the Bush administration because he was trying too hard to solve the case. (To spell out the reasoning: if this was a gun-control killing, then, allegedly, the Administration didn't want to get on the wrong side of the gun lobby by looking too aggressively for the killer.)

This week, two amplifying bits of information from the Seattle press.

More »

It turns out that quite a few sessions from last week's "Google Zeitgeist" conference are available via YouTube, here. The session that starts up when you hit that page is a conversation between Tom Brokaw, of NBC, and his friend Yvon Chouinard, founder of Patagonia and very much a non-digital-age guy. (Chouinard says that his fingers have never touched a keyboard.) Clip starts with a brief setup of their discussion, by me. The other interviews and clips are linked from that page.