Tianjin, China and Seoul, S. Korea 13-20 August 2000

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i think the dates are wrong, i was gone almost 10 days. it was funny--when i got back from china, to korea, i felt like i had come home (my 7th stay in the ritz carlton seoul). then, when i came back to singapore, i really felt like i came home. but of course not as much as if i'd gone back to san diego. home is relative for me these days.

lunch at a japanese rest. in Lotte World. Lotte is a large company in Korea that put its name on a huge mall/theater/iceskating rink/bowling/themepark/museum complex. seung-weon, at right, works for hp korea and graciously escorted us here on sunday.	asking about entrance fees to the amusement park. i couldn't get anyone to ride the roller coasters so we didn't check it out.	someone, somewhere, thought it was necessary to manufacture plastic poop, so sulhan and wee han played along.
this is one of the guardians of the compass, so he represents either north, south, east, or west (i forget)	the museum started from the very beginning--dinosaurs!	the dioramas were pretty damn realistic.
bearing ancient korean farming implements	the original palace that this diorama represents is still intact and visit-able. korean tv shows docudramas where historical episodes are reinacted like a soap opera. pretty interesting, actually.	the dragon represents heaven and the tiger represents the earth, so the sky and the land are fighting. mom, this will be arriving in fullerton sometime in the next four weeks!!
arriving in tianjin, the 4th largest city in china (next to shanghai, beijing, guangzhou). tianjin is a significant manufacturing center. i wondered if taking pictures at immigration was prohibited, but did it on the sly.	the tianjin government will renovate/build factories in exchange for the jobs it will bring. the unemployment rate is high. many factory workers come from the country tho, and live in company-provided dormitories.	the sign for daewoo's factory. all cars in tianjin are labelled "tianjin". tianjin cars are not allowed in beijing--you will be turned back. the govt doesn't want a mass exodus of people flowing to beijing.

at the optimistically named "crystal palace hotel" in tianjin, i watched a tv show that showed a river trash-picker's life. they showed a humble man who worked diligently all day long scooping trash out of the river, under sunny skies. they claimed he enjoyed living in tianjin, and appreciated the progress that tianjin had made. amazing bit of propaganda, because tianjin is one of THE most polluted cities i have ever visited. the air was thick with...something. during the day, the sun was just a dull red disk in the sky behind the haze. coming out of the restaurant at night, the smog/haze is so thick the view across the street starts to become obscured. ther are significant amounts of standing water and hence huge clouds of mosquitos. only the main roads are paved. there is a 12 lane highway leading from the airport but it stops after a few miles. must have run out of money.

a story in time magazine stated that the fundamental problem to be overcome in southeast asia is actually a lack of paved roads. in fact cambodia's roads used to be paved but they ahve all passed into disrepair during the strife of the last n years so they're back to almost 100% dirt roads. that's pretty fundamental. there is agreement to reopen the railroad from south korea thru north korea, into china and thru russia to europe. problem is (according to my friend brad), the russian and japanese railway systems are different scale so they will have to double track the whole way. this will cost 3 trillion won...which is 3 billion US dollars.

brad mentioned that the prices of things in korea utilize so many 0's that they don't even know what words to use to represent so many zeros. apparently these are numbers exceeding trillions and billions. so they just put down all the 0's. the supervisors hate it but they don't know what terminology to use either.

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