The NY Times ran these articles about the current situation in Myanmar today. Very well-researched and written. The writers do a far better job explaining the situation there today than I ever could. I highly encourage people to read it (it’s free to read as I’m a long-time subscriber to the Times)
My last trip to Myanmar was in July 2013, in the intervening 11 years, a lot has happened there. Some at first was very good, democracy was finally emerging with Aung San Suu Kyi out of jail and the de-facto leader of the country. Sadly though things would go downhill resulting in a Coup-de-tat on February 1, 2021, resulting in a civil war breaking out. This last entry will cover those events and the present situation there.
The 2015 Elections: As I mentioned in my previous post, the 2015 General Election finally brought an opposition party into power with the National League for Democracy (NLD) getting 86% of the seats up for election. Remarkably, the ruling military-dominated USDP party led by Speaker Shwe Mann conceded defeat on November 9, 2015 one day after the election
Shwe Mann, outgoing Speaker of the House of Representatives
On November 12, Party Leader Thein Sein congratulated the NLD on its victory promising that the party will respect and obey On November 12, Party Leader Thein Sein congratulated the NLD on its victory promising that the party “will respect and obey” the election results and will “transfer power peacefully”
Thein Sein leader of USDP
Most importantly though the leader of the Myanmar Armed Forces (Tatmadaw) General Min Aung Hlang vowed that the military would cooperate during the transition to civilian power. As result on February 1, 2016, the NLD took power with Htin Kyaw as President, and Aung San Suu Kyi taking the role of “State Counselor” as she was ineligible to serve as president under the constitution.
General Min Aung Hlaing
As result, world leaders recognized the election as legitimate and it appeared that Myanmar was on the path to democracy. However:
Trouble was on the horizon in the form of a genocide of the Rohingya and Aung San Suu Kyi’s involvement in it.
The Rohingya Genocide: Back in 2015, I posted about what was going on there, so instead of writing something new, I’ve decided to paste in what I wrote then along with some updates on the present situation
By the time I arrived for my first visit in July 2007, the government was starting to open up. You could easily get (especially if you were an independent traveler) a 28-day tourist visa which allowed you to see most of the country. What the government did not allow you to see was the number of internal conflicts with ethnic groups including the Kayah in the far north, the Shan around Inle Lake, and the Karen in the East-Southeast. Out in the northwest was a group of people the government was fighting rather they were pretty much leaving them alone. These people known as the Rohingya would become the group that now are the focus of an international refugee crisis.
The Rohingyas are like the Burmese majority a dark-skinned people who originated from India. Most had come over from what is now Bangladesh with the British on their conquest of Burma. They initially settled in the areas around the Burmese/Bangladeshi border with some coming down with the British to Mandalay and Rangoon to assist the British with their administration of the region. For most of the past several hundred years them and their families and settled into Burma establishing their own unique communities and carving out enclaves such as the areas immediatley to the east of Sule Paya in Rangoon. Perhaps though the biggest difference with the Rohingya was that they were practicing Muslims which posed what was percieved as a threat to Buddhist-dominated Burmese (the ethnic groups the government were figthing in the east/north tended to be a mix of Christian, pagan, animalistic and shaman which did not at least in terms of the ordinary Burmese pose a threat to them while the Rohingya did because of 1) their much higher than the Buddhist majority population growth 2) the rise of Islamic Fundlementalist teachings that seem to have been on the rise throughout the region. Because until 2011 the government supressed ANY form of dissent the Rohingyas were not really subject to discriminaton. They were pretty much allowed to live and let live in their enclaves though they didn’t have the protections of being Burmese citizens. That would all change starting in 2011 and continues until today.
What changed from 2010 until today where a group that was tolerated to one facing genocide? It’s the same opening of things that allowed Aung San Suu Kyi to be released from house arrest and being allowed to serve in the nominally independent national assembly. People were now able to express themselves and, now a group of radical Buddhists known as the “969 group”, led by Buddhist Monk Ashin Wirathu, who advocates an expulsion of all Muslims from Myanmar believing their continuing population growth combined with a slower Buddhist birth rate will result in Myanmar at some point in the future becoming a Muslim dominated country. As a result of the government allowing more free speech, Wirathu’s radical ideas have gotten a lot more publicity with the government actually agreeing to their demands. In 2012 and 2013 a number of anti-Muslim riots started breaking out in Mandalay Sittwe and even sections of Yangon. In the past few years, the Rohingya have been pushed off land they have owned for centuries into squalid concentration camps. They are now not allowed to have children, work or leave these camps without government permission. The government have refused groups like the Red Cross/Red Crescent, Doctors Without Borders, and other humanitarian NGO’s access to these camps to provide much-needed medical aid. Foreign journalists have also not been allowed into the region to document their plight though a few such as New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristoff have managed to sneak into the camps to document the plight of the Rohingya.
What has also changed in recent months is that the plight of the Rohingya has now become much more of an international refugee crisis as now desperate refugees are resorting to sneaking out of these camps and onto boats that will take them to what they hope would be a new life in a more tolerant country. What is happening is far from this. Human traffickers are overloading boats to dangerous levels then sending them out to sea with little in terms of provisions and when countries such as Thailand. Malaysia, and even Bangladesh started refusing these boats to land and they are then stranded out in international waters with little in basic supplies under what was a blazing sun but ot is now with the onset of the summer SW monsoon season is fast becoming very turbulent waters. Even worse, is when nations of the region had a meeting recently in Bangkok to work on solutions the Myanmar government refused to send a representative denying a problem even exists. A very temporary solution has been worked out with Malaysia and Thailand agreeing to take in refugees for a short period of time but an overal solution and an end to this ongoing humanitarian disaster is far from certian.
Perhaps what has bothered me the most about this crisis is the utter silence coming from Aung San Suu Kyi’s own National League for Democracy on the issue. The Lady as she is called has been asked on numerous occasions to express her support for the Rohingya only to be met with silence which to me is absolutely appalling given what she has gone through. I can only speculate what is going on with her to explain this silence and I can only come up with 2 political ideas. One is because the government of Thei Sein has proposed sending all the Rohingya to a 3rd country (an idea supported by the 969 group) and given her what she percieves is her tenuous freedom than expressing any sort of dissent may result in her being arrested again though I don’t believe that. The other possibility which I do tend to believe is that the government is planning on holding a presidential election either late this year or in 2016 and as of right now The Lady is forbidden from running for office since she has children with a foreign national (a law enacted to only keep her from running), maybe she is staying silent so she can get the law repealed so she can run. If she is able to run then maybe like a republican here in the US she has to run towards the most radical elements of her party in order to win an election. No matter what the excuse it is still appalling that perhaps the world’s best-known living dissident and peace laureate would stay silent on such an important issue not only to the plight of the Rohingya but also to the international refugee movement in general.
Since I wrote this in 2015, the government has restarted its genocide of the Rohingya people in August of 2016. The big difference this time was who was in charge of the government when these actions started. Gone was the military instead the NLD was in charge with Aung San Suu Kyi nominally in charge, her reaction to the military crackdown is what caused a lot of us to radically change our view of her from hero to war criminal In November of 2019, the Government of Myanmar was sued by a number of nations and organizations in the International Court of Justice. Aung San Suu Kyi would lead Myanmar’s defense against these charges a great link to her testimony here: https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/12/17/aung-san-suu-kyi-denies-burmese-genocide-rohingya-hague For a lot of us who admired her, we became very disillusioned to what she had becoe. We honestly don’t know why such a great humanitarian and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize would defend her government’s well-documented charges of genocide. Maybe she was afraid if she said something contrary to what the military was doing, her government would be ousted from power by the military. Maybe she actually agreed with the military’s actions, we do not know. As a result of this, a number of organizations who had given her some highest humanitarian honors demanded she give back her prizes
The human suffering of these actions is simply stunning. At least 25,000 people mostly civilians have been killed, tens of thousands more, either injured or subject to sexual violence. As a result of this, there are now over 750,000 people in a refugee camp in Bangladesh
Which leads us to the present day, the 2020 elections and the 2021 Coup
The 2020 General Elections and subsequent coup d’etat On November 8, 2020 the second generally free election would occur in Myanmar despite the ongoing crackdown of the Rohingya, major economic problems, and the COVID-19 pandemic. The results were similar to the 2016 election with the NLD winning a large majority of seats contested.
This time though, there would be no continuation of the NLD in the new parliament scheduled to be sworn in on February 1,2021. As on that morning General Min Aung Hlaing the still leader of the Myanmar military (remember earlier when he said in 2016 that he would honor the results of that election?) This time he would have nothing of it and ordered the arrest of the NLD leadership including Aung San Suu Kyi, Win Myint, and Than Hyi Mint. In addition the the NLD leadership, civilian members of the newly elected parliament (the military still held 25% of the seats) were also detained along with a number of monks who had been involved in the 2007 Saffron Uprising on the claim that the 2020 election was rigged (hmmm where I have heard that before? I bet the MAGA folks loved seeing this and wished this had occurred here on January 6)
Soldiers were sent to major cities like Yangon and Mandalay to stop any potential protests. Non-state media were taken off the air and internet access was cut off to the outside world.
The international reaction to this was swift. There were demands that the NLD leadership be released from prison, foreign ambassadors in Myanmar were recalled, and a new set of sanctions have been imposed. Also widespread Civil Disobedience and strikes were reported in Myanmar
The people in Myanmar have resisted this new crackdown at a huge price. There have been reports of numerous atrocities against protesting civilians, villages have been burned to the ground.
The protests and crackdown continue to this day. Aung San Suu Kyi is now in prison serving a 33 year sentence having been convicted of trumped up charges by the military. Other leaders have also been convicted and have been sentenced to similar long prison terms.
Sadly, the outlook for the people of Myanmar is again not good. It appears that the window of democracy has been shut by the military for the foreseeable future and again the west has turned a blind eye to what is going on there.
Conclusion: In 2006, I became interested in Burma after hearing friends talk about it. I was lucky to get there not once but four times between 2007 and 2013. What I saw and felt, were a people with an incredible history as evidenced by the stunning pagodas I saw throughout the country. These people had been through some trying times. First under British Colonial Rule, then once independence had occurred in 1947 a brutal military regime would suppress these people until finally in 2010 a crack of hope had finally emerged. On my trips in 2011 and 2013, I saw people welcoming foreign tourists in droves and opening up to the Western world resulting in a transition to the beginnings of a democractic government in 2015.
Sadly though this was only fleeting as the Tatamaw came back with a vengeance in 2021 and whose brutal rule continues today. My hope for these great people is that in time democracy will return and I get to go back to a country that I still find utterly fascinating.
I left off on the last post about the devastation Cyclone Nargis caused in the southern part of Burma in May 2008. Today, I’ll continue the story this chapter focusing on the reforms from 2010-2015 and what I saw on my 3 trips there in 2009, 2011, and 2013
The 2008 Myanmar Constitutionand 2010 elections Amazingly in the aftermath of the destruction Cyclone Nargis caused, the government decided to go on with the scheduled referendum for the proposed new constitution on May 10, 2008, barely a week after Nargis hit despite widespread international calls for the referendum to be postponed. There were widespread allegations of fraud in the election including:
A village visited by officials in advance of the referendum where 185 people were forced to vote “yes” with absentee ballots [15]
Officials giving out ballot papers already filled in with a tick [16]
Voters ordered to complete votes for their relatives [17]
Government officials sitting close to the ballot boxes and telling voters how to vote [16][17]
Anyone married to a person who was not a citizen of Myanmar would be barred from running for the office of president.[6] Many international media reports suggest that this provision would have the effect of making opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi ineligible for the presidency,[7] although her British husband died in 1999
Despite these flaws, a reasonably free election would occur on November 7, 2010. The results as expected gave the pro-military Union Solidarity and Development party a sizeable majority. The National League for Democracy (Aung San Suu Kyi’s party) did not participate in this election as Suu Kyi was still under house arrest because John Yettaw, an American Citizen managed to twice evade security and got into Suu Kyi’s residence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aung_San_Suu_Kyi_trespasser_incidents However shortly after the elections Suu Kyi was released from house arrest on November 13, 2010,
A first for Myanmar, Aung San Suu Kyi shown in a Myanmar newspaper shortly after her release
The 2012 By-Elections and the Promise of Democracy
With Suu Kyi now released from house arrest, along with the NLD being allowed to participate after a number of reforms by the government including a lessening of censorship, the release of political prisoners and economic reforms including the easing of economic sanctions (bye-bye having people coming up to you on the street asking if you wanted to exchange money or heading to the gem shop to exchange money) The NLD decided to participate in these elections for 48 vacancies in the parliament on April 1, 2012. The NLD won 43 of the 45 seats they contested.
As result of these ongoing reforms, the Obama Administration eased sanctions, Secretary of State Hilliary Clinton visited Yangon, ambassadors were exchanged and aid was approved by the US Congress. Things were beginning to look very promising for Myanmar as in the 2015 elections, the NLD, managed get a supermajority of seats in the parliament and Htin Kyaw was selected as President of Myanmar with Aung San Suu Kyi given the newly created position of “State Counselor” since she was not allowed to serve as President under the 2010 Constitution.
For me during this period, I managed to get to Myanmar three times from 2009-2013. On my 2009 trip, you could see the devastation from Cyclone Nargis as most of the trees in Rangoon were gone and the poverty had definitely gotten worse. By 2011, things were beginning to get better, it was easier to get online, the people were beginning to talk in though albeit hushed tones about the government. My final trip in the summer of 2013, you could really see things getting better. There were actually international ATMs where you could get money from your overseas bank accounts WOW!!!!, the internet was pretty much unblocked and you even began to see the widespread use of cell phones which was unheard of during my first three trips there. But perhaps the biggest change I saw over the 6 years of visiting Myanmar was the dramatic increase in the number of foreign tourist You would see. On those first three trips, I primarily saw young (well middle-aged in my case) backpacker types. You rarely saw a tour bus full of “package tourists” seeing the sites. I recall sitting on a temple in Bagan watching the sunset enjoying a beverage with my fellow travelers remarking “man this place is going to be ruined once it gets shown on the Discovery or Travel Channel” Well on my last trip to in 2013, my fears were confirmed. While I was still wandering the temples in a horse drawn cart:
There were now buses of primarily Chinese and Korean tourists being shuttled en-masse from temple to temple. I was happy for the people who needed the tourist dollars to survive I just hated how “commercial” this area was starting to turn into.
Yes it was good that Myanmar after almost 50 years in isolation was beginning to emerge, but soon the NLD would learn that governing especially with the Tatmadaw or military looking over their should would be a much harder task.
That will be covered in the next part, later this week hopefully
Earlier this week, I talked about some of the recent brutal history in Myanmar. Today, I will attempt to talk about the events over the past 35 years and the sad state of things in Myanmar today. This post will cover the events of 1988, 2007, and 2008. The next post will talk about the 2021 Coup and Civil War.
Anote about names: Until around 1987, Myanmar was formally known as Burma. In 1987 the government changed the translations of the original Burmese language that the British used hence “Burma” became “Myanmar”, “Rangoon” became “Yangon” etc. The opposition in Burma refused to use these new names as they felt it lacked legitimacy. Overseas it is a hodgepodge of names. Many nations and International Organizations have adopted these names, while others such as the United States still use “Burma” Most if not all international media uses “Myanmar”.
For my purposes, for events up until 2010, I will use the term “Burma”. For events after 2010, I will use “Myanmar” as that’s what a person with the National League for Democracy told me to use on my 2011 visit.
1988: The 8888 Uprising After 26 years of brutal military rule under General Ne Win and Burma’s failure of its “Burmese Way to Socialism” policy which transformed Burma from one of the most prosperous countries in SE Asia to one of its poorest countries, Burma was ready to blow up. Starting in March of 1988, student protests were starting to occur on college campuses in Rangoon. By August the universities had been closed for several months, Ne Win had resigned and there was hope that Burma would transform itself into a multi-party democracy. Sadly this would not come to fruition as by Septemeber the military came back in full force with a massive crackdown:
Demonstrators march on a street in downtown Rangoon in August 1988. Students, civil servants, monks and others joined the protests that summer. As a result of this, a new leader would emerge for the opposition
Aung San Suu Kyi who was initially in Rangoon to tend to her ailing mother became the leader of the opposition movement. As result of her leadership, she would be put under house arrest on and off until 2010. A note: When driving in from Rangoon Airport you can actually see the street where her house was but weren’t allowed to get near it as there were always troops stationed there. I could go on about this but I’ll leave this link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8888_Uprising
2007: The Saffron Uprisingand another brutal crackdown
After a relatively quiet 20 years in terms of violence, Burma started to open up a little bit, private ownership had returned, sanctions were eased a little, and Burma began to open up a little bit to foreign tourists. In late-July-early August of 2007, I made my first visit to Burma. Like I said in my earlier post, I found a beautiful and fascinating country. Little did I know a couple of weeks after I had left, Burma would be again engulfed in protests and another brutal crackdown would occur.
This time the catalyst was a sudden spike in the prices of basic commodities and economic stagnation by August 2007, the price of gasoline had suddenly doubled from US$1.40/gallon to US$2.80/gallon due to the government ending subsidies on gasoline, natural gas prices would increase by 500%. The resulting increase in food prices made an already very poor population desperate.
On August 19, 2007, a week after I had left the country the first protests and arrests occurred. By September this was happening:
This was how the monks started their protests by turning their alms bowls upside down refusing to take offerings from government officials every morning.
With Aung San Suu Kyi still under house arrest and basically incommunicado, it would be the monks who are held in high regard by both the people and the government who would lead the protests this time
By late September things would come to a head as the government would again start a bloody crackdown on the monks opening fire on them resulting in massive casualties and numerous arrests of monks which was unheard of.
For me back in the cozy confines of my Seoul apartment, I was shocked and saddened by these evens. Where just 6 weeks before these events, I was wandering the streets near Sule Paya in downtown Rangoon, the streets were covered in blood. Around that time, a group of us in Seoul decided to protest at the Burmese Embassy in Hannam-dong
Sadly this would not be the end of the hardships the people of Burma would endure, as just 9 months later, mother nature would take its pound of flesh from the Burmese people.
May 2008: Cyclone Nargis
This time the culprit would be in the form of what we call a hurricane but in that part of the world are called cyclones. On May 2nd, Cyclone Nargis would make landfall in Southwest Burma in the Aywerwaddy Delt a low-lying region with the little in terms of protection for the residents there with winds to 135 mph or a low-end Cat 4 storm by our standards. It would lose strength as it crossed Burma passing just to the north of Rangoon with winds to 80 mph. The results were devastating an estimated 135,000 people would perish making it the 3rd deadliest cyclone to hit Asia.
What makes this even sadder, was the total lack of response by the government to the devastated areas. For several days it wouldn’t allow foreign relief flights into the country. They refused to issue visas in Bangkok to aid workers who were ready to come in with relief supplies. Finally, it would take the United States a full week to get supplies into the country.
For me, I was again shocked by the events there. At the time we, were in Hong Kong taking a long weekend away but were glued to the BBC for updates on this sad situation. We would eventually donate money to the International Red Cross to help out.
If there was a bright spot here, it would be that finally the government would start the process of transforming to a multi-party democracy albeit for what would turn out to be a very short time.
Schwedagon Paya in Rangoon, the highlight to any trip to Myanmar
During my years of teaching in South Korea, I got to travel extensively throughout SE Asia during our long summer breaks (mid-June-late August). I’ve been to Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Viet Nam, and Hong Kong several times. But perhaps the most fascinating place I got to visit was Burma or as it is now called Myanmar. When I made my first trip in 2007, Myanmar had very few foreign tourists coming. Why? Well from 1962 until around 2011 and since 2021, Myanmar was ruled by a military junta which for a number of years had pretty much closed off the country to foreigners. The regime also suppressed any and all forms of political dissent culminating in the 8888 uprising in 1988 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8888_Uprising. The uprising was led by by:
Aung San Suu Kyi, the daughter of the founder of modern Myanmar Aung San who was assassinated in 1947. As a result of this, she was imprisoned by the regime from around 1990-2010. As a result of this, severe economic sanctions were imposed on the generals running the country and foreign tourism was highly discouraged as the regime made it very hard for tourists by imposing strict visa requirements and a mandatory exchange of a minimum of US$200 for government-issued “Foreign Exchange Certificates” at approximately US$1-1FEC when in reality on the black market it was closer to US$1-1000 Burmese ‘chayt”
Well by 2006 the government had abolished the mandatory exchange, was issuing 28-day tourist visas, and allowed some privately owned businesses. It became viable for tourists to finally begin to visit if you followed guidelines that the Nation League for Democracy outlined to help keep most money in the hands of private businesses as opposed to state-owned or state-connected enterprises. After talking to some of my colleagues at the university where I was working, I decided to take the plunge and in July 2007, I got my visa and headed to Rangoon (now known as Yangon) despite the advice of the US Government not to travel there. What I discovered on that first trip was a fascinating place that would lure me back three more times before leaving Korea in 2013.
Here are some of the more interesting things I discovered: 1) You couldn’t use a credit or debit card and there were no ATMs to be found. You had to bring cash preferably in the form of “perfect” US $100 bills as not a spec of dirt or a wrinkle on them. Most tourists there would simply keep their money in between pages of a book (most of us used our Lonely Planet Burma guidebooks for this).
2) You never exchanged your money for the local currency at a government currency exchange office as the “official” rate was again around US$1= 1 chyat. Instead, you would be approached by people in your hotel lobby offering to exchange your dollars at a rate of US$1=1100 chyat. If you were staying at a family-owned guesthouse where nobody offered to exchange money, you may have wound up going to a market and exchanging your money at one of the numerous jewelry shops. Heck, you would even be approached on the street by people offering to exchange money. You did though had to make sure you got your entire amount of local currency as the highest denomination was 1000 chyat, so US$100 would give you a stack of 110 Burmese notes. You did though need to keep a supply of US dollars on you as you had to pay for your hotel (anywhere from US$10-US$30/night), and plane tickets if you were flying in-country. Also, all the big sites like Schwedagon Paya charged admission fees in US dollars (usually around US$5-10).
3) Power outages were commonplace. Luckily most places had generators and within a couple of minutes the power would be back on in a couple of minutes. Some places especially upcountry would only have electricity on for a few hours a day in the morning and evening.
4) You never saw a “new” car on the street because of the sanctions imposed. What you had were very old cars that depending on where they came from were either left-side or right-side. Under British rule Burma had driven on the left side of the road until the mid-70’s when the government decided to switch to the right side of the road.
5) The internet was very slow if impossible to access as many sites were blocked. Luckily there were internet cafes where people used proxy servers to get around the blocks (a pre-VPN method) so you could access sites like Yahoo mail etc.
6) Cell phone service was pretty much unheard, there were a few people who had access but the cost of a sim card approached US$2000. People would make local calls from phones on the street. For international calls you either had to go to a government-owned phone office or if you were staying at a decent hotel you could make a call though it cost between US$8-US$10 a minute!!!! I was only able to call my wife a couple of times during my trip (she was visiting her parents in Austin) just to say I was OK as the cost was nuts!!!
Besides this, I found a country full of history both ancient and colonial. There were Paya or temples some that had a history going back a thousand years. Next to these were lots of run-down buildings from the British colonial era. On that first trip I wound up spending two weeks in the country starting in Rangoon, then a few days in Mandalay followed by a few days at the Temples of Bagan (a picture you can see at the top of this blog) Here are some pictures:
Novice monks out on their morning alms roundsSome cute kids I met in Independence Park in RangoonA Buddha image on Mandalay Hill pointing to where the city would eventually be laid outThe Mustache Brothers, a comedy group that was only allowed to perform for foreigners. If a local was caught seeing their show, they would expect a visit from the police. In 2008, Par Par Lay on the right would be arrested and died in around 2012Some lovely ladies from Barcelona I met in Bagan, we had pretty much followed each other down from Mandalay.Temples of Bagan
A fascinating trip to say the least. Little did I know what was about to happen in Burma less than a month after these pictures were taken in late August 2007 and the following May.
Well back to my story about my 18 months in China. I left off the story on Saturday, August 27, 2016. After 2 months of dealing with the Chinese bureaucracy I had FINALLY got my passport back with my Chinese visa in it and I was at the Tampa, Florida airport after visiting my aunt and father for a week for my flight to Nanjing. To say the least it was a long flight as it took around 24 hours of flying just to get there. First it was a relatively short flight from Tampa to Dulles airport in DC, then it was a 15 hour flight from Dulles to Beijing, then after a 4 hour layover in Beijing a 2 hour flight to Nanjing. I had actually splurged a bit and got an Economy plus seat with more legroom, then I decided to buy the in-flight wifi service which would as I will talk about later turned out to be a huge mistake. So at 7:30 PM on Sunday August 28 Nanjing time, I arrived. My friend from Korea who got me the job met me with the office staff who took me to my apartment. To say the least I was exhausted, jet lagged to hell but excited to be starting what I thought was a reboot to my life after an awful two years in Austin.
To say the least it would turn out very different. First the bright sides: My apartment was nice, a fully furnished 2 bedroom place in a nice complex in a nice part of town with access to decent grocery stores, a McDonalds, a mall with some good places to eat and reasonably close to the metro station
After crying myself to sleep wondering what I had gotten myself into, it was off the headquarters of Ahead Education, my employer in Nanjing for 3 days of orientation. It started off fairly well as I was met at my apartment and shown where the metro station is and taking it downtown. It turned out my school and apartment were on the NE side of Nanjing around a 30-minute metro ride from downtown. There we met up at a Starbucks (YEAH!!!!) and met my co-workers
Over those first few days, we learned about the US-based school that was actually running the program we were teaching, Wasatch Academy a boarding school based in Utah that runs a number of programs at schools in China. You look at the school website, and you say “Damn this is a good program, they are serious about academics”https://www.wasatchacademy.org/global-partnerships Well:
Well, it turns out Wasatch has very little involvement in the actual program. It’s more of a revenue stream for them as they sell their brand to Chinese schools and companies like Ahead and they run the program. They sell to the parents that their kid is getting 2 high school diplomas. A Chinese one and an American one from Wasatch which will allow them to apply to American Colleges and Universities as Chinese universities have a terrible academic reputation and it is a prestige thing in China to have your kid attending college in the States. Also, the US universities love it as they can charge full tuition to these students and they pay cash up front so its a great revenue stream for them.
Anyhow I digress. The rest of the first week I began to discover what a nightmare this was turning into. First, there was the frustration of dealing with the Chinese bureaucracy even doing simple things like getting a bank account set up to getting cell phone service and internet for my house set up. At least the folks at Ahead gave us a nice cash advance on our first paycheck and reimbursed us for our airfare so at least I had some cash. I was homesick, lonely, tired, and culture shocking at the same time. I was MISERABLE. Then on my 4th night in Nanjing, I went out to wander around my neighborhood and discovered this place
A place run by a western family the Gillespies where a lot of the expats in the area would hang out. Tom and his family made you feel welcome, the food was good and it became my oasis from the insanity that would soon surround me. If it wasn’t for this place I don’t know how I would have survived all my time in China. A note here, sadly Gilly’s had to close as a result of the pandemic as Tom and his family were in Cambodia when the world shut down because of Covid and couldn’t get back to China. They are doing really good in Cambodia running a bar called the Pig Pen BBQ in Kampot near the beach resort of Sihanoukville.
I was like OK, I can survive here, I found a bar to hang out at, a grocery store nearby, and a McDonald’s and downtown wasn’t that far away. It may not be the states but I had survived worse. Or so I thought: By Thursday we were finally given our teaching schedules and to my surprise:
What do I see? 4 sections of 11th-grade English Literature and 5 sections of World History. I was told I would be teaching American History to 4 classes 5 days a week and a Literature class maybe a couple of days a week. WTF?? To top it off, the World History I would be teaching would be one 50-minute period a week to each of the 5 10th grade classes, HTF were they going to learn anything, plus there was some sort of problem with the textbooks, UGGHHHHH!!!! Well my friend who had brought me to this school said he had a curriculum for the Lit classes and he would get it to me. So I had the weekend to try and figure out what I was going to teach. I was like “OK this is doable” I have wifi at home, my laptop is working great so I got this” That was until:
I was robbed!!!!!!! I know what you are thinking, there is very little crime in China. True petty street crime is not that bad in China and this didn’t happen to me physically. Rather on that first Saturday in Nanjing, I was trying to pay for my NY Times online subscription with my Austin debit card and it kept being declined I was like “that’s odd, I should have over $4000 in my account” as I had sold my car for cash before coming to China. Well I went to my bank’s website to check my balance and it turns out my balance was not $4000, rather it was a NEGATIVE $4000 balance. Apparently, my card details were hacked likely when I used it to buy the wifi during my flight from Dulles to Beijing or when I used it to pay for something in the Beijing airport as those were the only places I had used my card over the past week and they went on a buying spree in the Phillippines to the tune of $8000!!!
I’m like “WTF am I going to do?” My cell phone service didn’t allow me to call internationally, I had a Skype App on the iPad I had, but I had no credit on it and I thought I had no way to add credit to it. Then I remembered my father gave me a credit card on which I was an authorized user so I was able to add credit luckily even though it was Saturday morning in Austin, my credit union (UFCU, a great institution where I have been a member for almost 30 years) was open and I was able to get a hold of them, get my card canceled and start the process of getting my money back. I first had to make a police report in China which I had no idea how to do. Luckily, there was someone in the Ahead office who took me to the police station the next morning and made a report which I then had to get translated and notarized then sent to Austin which took a couple of weeks. In the end, I got all my money back, a new card and all was OK.
That is until I got into the classroom on Monday to find out what I was dealing with and adjusting to life in Nanjing.
This past Monday brought us here in North Carolina legalized sports wagering. Yes, I am a happy camper that you can finally legally put a wager down on a sporting event as I’m always interested in point spreads, the over/under, you name it. In fact, my favorite segment on Sportscenter is Scott Van Pelt’s and Stanford Steve’s “Bad Beats”
Today though I want to expand on this and talk about the other major gambling player here in North Carolina. The North Carolina “Education” (my quotes) Lottery and why I’m strongly in favor of one and opposed to the other.
First let’s look at how they are advertised. Here is a Draft Kings Sportsbook ad
The ad is pretty generic, it gives you a promotion code and offers “free” bets though there are strings attached. Notice how there is nothing about winning millions or having a life of luxury.
Now let’s compare this to a recent ad for the North Carolina “Education” Lottery
Notice how the ad conveys an image of playing the lottery and becoming wealthy, getting massages, manicures, and living in mansions. A stark contrast to what Draft Kings is offering.
This is my beef with the North Carolina “Education” Lottery. It’s portraying something in reality that is not going to happen if you buy tickets. They promote “million dollar prizes” and odds of around 1/3, 1/4 etc. of winning. HOWEVER, those are the odds of winning ANY prize, the vast majority or prizes are mostly under $100. Here is what they aren’t telling you. The odds of winning the top prize of $1 million https://nclottery.com/scratch-off-prizes-remaining notice the odds are for the top prizes around 1/2.3 MILLION. If you play the multi-state Powerball or Mega Millions where the top prizes can be in the hundreds of millions even billions of dollars the odds are 1/293 MILLION, you have better odds of being struck by lightning TWICE!!!. Yet people gobble up these tickets dreaming of hitting it big,
Compare this to the odds of betting on a sporting event which are set by the sports books to get even amounts of money on both sides. Right now the Carolina Panthers perhaps the worst team in the NFL have odds of +25000 to win the Super Bowl meaning if you bet $10 on this, and Carolina manages to win the Vince Lombardi Trophy in New Orleans next February, you would win $2510. Yeah not a huge total but a nice payoff and there are ways to increase your payouts.
OK but you say the “Education” Lottery helps fund public education in North Carolina which is a noble cause, perhaps you have an ad like this (and in other states that have lotteries, there are similar ads
It looks really nice but is it really true?
Well our friends at the Washington Post seem to think otherwise https://wapo.st/3TAD9wX in reality states are CUTTING Education budgets and relying on lottery revenues to make up this shortfall
So who is paying for this? Well, I guarantee it’s not likely your friends who live in 5 Points here in Raleigh, or West Lake Hills in Austin or say Coconut Grove in Miami. No, they are more than likely to live is less affluent areas like East Austin, Southeast Raleigh, etc. According to this article https://www.cbsnews.com/news/who-buys-lottery-tickets-those-who-can-least-afford-them/ the vast majority of people tend to be the ones who can least afford it. They are buying a dream, a dream that is more often than not is not going to come true.
Whats worse is legislators know this yet still underfund the schools relying upon the people who can least afford it to pick up the slack.
Second, these entities are private companies, not a state agency whose purpose is to raise revenues for the state. Yes betting on sports does generate revenue for the state but it is not designed to replace revenues to fund vital services
It’s why I will support sports betting but continue to oppose the so-called North Carolina “Education” Lottery. Something that for me goes back to 1991 when I voted AGAINST creating the Texas Lottery. It is nothing more than a regressive tax that hurts the people who can least afford it.
Now would you excuse me, I need to put $20 on Dayton winning the A-10 Championship 🙂
So in the next few posts along with some comments about the events of the day in this revived blog, I thought I would talk about my time in China. To say the least, it was an interesting time in my life. I had been back in Austin for a little over two years in 2016 but was miserable. I couldn’t find a full-time job, I was substitute teaching, refereeing soccer, and teaching English to a class of new immigrants just to pay the bills, and to top it off my marriage was over. I was looking for something different to do when a friend of mine from my days in Korea suggested I come work at his school in Nanjing China. He said I would be teaching American High School Social Studies to Chinese kids who wanted to attend college in the United States. It sounded great, motivated kids, teaching something I was actually trained to do having a Texas High Social Studies teaching certificate. The money was enough to live a decent lifestyle as housing was included. Nanjing though not Shanghai was a decent city (8 million people) it was only an hour or two from Shanghai via the bullet train (307 KM or 188 MI), had good western health care options, and a vibrant expat scene. I was like sure, let’s give it a go. So in May 2016, I signed a contract to teach for Ahead Education which ran the program at the Nanjing Foreign Language School starting in August, and started the process of getting the work visa.
In hindsight, I should have run from this idea as soon as I realized what an arduous task it would be to get a Chinese work visa. You have to do the following just to get the visa approval form to submit to the Chinese Consulate in Houston: 1) A complete (and I mean complete) physical which needed to include an EKG, chest X-ray, and drug test. Since I had insurance, the vast majority of this was covered but still look a lot of time. This needed to be sent via Fed-Ex to the school in Nanjing. What is insane is when you get to China, you have to do the exact same physical again at a Chinese Hospital. THEN you needed 2) A certified copy of my M.Ed. diploma. This meant having to get a new diploma from Texas St, having them notarize it, then taking it to the Texas Secretary of State Office to get the equivalent of an Apostille done (China is not a party to the treaty regarding this). Then you have to send this over to the Chinese Consulate in Houston to get their stamp on it. Here is the catch though, you couldn’t just send it over yourself or drive to Houston to get this done, you had to use an agency based in Austin to send the documents over which incurred another fee besides the ones just to get the diploma certified. Total cost for all of this was over $100. But this wasn’t the end. You still had to: 3) Get an FBI criminal check done. Luckily early in 2016 when I started to think about going back overseas I got this done. It took around 3 months to get this done so I had this ready to go at the end of June when I finally had all the other paperwork together to send to Nanjing.
THEN IT WAS:
I spent the month of July waiting, waiting, and more waiting for the agency in Nanjing to get the visa approval form from Chinese immigration in Nanjing. Between holidays and the general ineptness of the Chinese Bureaucracy, it would not be until the end of July that I finally received notice that my visa issuance letter had been issued and that I would be able to get my visa. I was so excited to finally have an exit date out of Austin, I was able to put in notice at the call center job I had at Starwood Hotels taking hotel reservations, get with my ex about getting her stuff out of the house, and take our cat.
However:
The Chinese consulate told the agency in Austin I was using that my visa letter had been rejected not once but twice for missing bar codes. Then on the third time, the reason was absolutely insane. It was rejected because the heading in Chinese said “To the Peoples Republic of China EMBASSY in Houston” instead of “CONSULATE“. By this time, I had left Austin and was in Florida visiting my family, I had booked my flight from Tampa to Nanjing for August 25, luckily the consulate would accept a faxed copy and the agency was able to get my passport to me in Florida and on August 27, I said goodbye to the United States and head on what I thought was going to be an exciting time teaching Social Studies with an old friend in a new city. I was ready for a reboot of my newly single life.
Little did I know how wrong that would turn out to be More in part 2
The last time I posted here was April 2017 and I was teaching in Chongqing China. Since then a lot has happened and I decided to revive the blog. So here in a nutshell is where I have been for the past 7 years.
First I adopted this monster:
This is Granger, or his Chinese name is Tao qui which means “naughty”. We’ve been together now 7 years keeping each other sane
Then in July 2017 we moved here
We landed in Shanghai, which is an incredible city despite Xi Jinping. However, the school I taught at was an absolute hell hole. Out of control students, an admin was more concerned with making money than educating students. Throw in a Chinese bureaucracy, which will drive you insane, and I was miserable. So, after one semester there, in January 2018, Granger and I landed here:
Raleigh, North Carolina. I could have gone back to Austin, but the only thing I had there was an ex-wife and some bad memories. My sister and her family live here, and she got me set up with an apartment, furniture, and a car.
So, what have I been doing since moving to Raleigh?
Started out substitute teaching for a couple of years at a couple of high schools near my house, then right before Covid hit, I landed this:
For three years, I taught EFL at the local Community College, it was fun teaching foreign students despite the insanity of Covid teaching from my dining room table, the widely separated and teaching while wearing a mask, my colleagues were mostly great people. However, about a year ago, the extra Covid funding ran out, and being an adjunct meant I was low man on the totem pole, so it was back to this:
Which I now do pretty much every day, getting to know the teachers and I admire the hell out of them for dealing with so much crap in the post Covid era. No way I could do that now
And yes, I am back refereeing. It provides some good exercise, some extra cash, and I work with some great people. I cut back for about 18 months, primarily high school games. Now, I’m working a bigger schedule doing high school and club games. The big change is I’m doing younger kids games (the game has gotten too fast for me with the older kids) and working with new referees. We still have a huge referee shortage for several reasons, the main one is 80% of new referees never come back for a second season. I’ll save the reasons for another post.
Finally, in December of 2018, I got Granger a friend:
This is Chocolate Chunk, or CC as I call him. I got him from a great cat shelter Safe Haven for Cats https://www.safehavenforcats.org/ these people do great work and I support them financially. He has been a great addition to the family despite him always waking me up at 5 AM wanting to be fed
So there you have it, 7 years in a page.
The next post will be about what I’m planning to do next
NOTE: This was originally written in 2017, I discovered today that I never published it, so here it is with some revisions. In part 1 I talked about some of the expats you run into after being overseas for while talking about the Alex Rieger types, the Reverend Iggy types and the Miser types. Today instead of going on about several more different types of people, I’m going to stick to one type that drives most people absolutely crazy and for good reason and drove me crazy for 15 years in 2 countries: The apologist
This is a bit of tricky one to define for people who have not been overseas and especially teaching. A big problem with coming overseas to teach is many (not all) schools will do anything and everything to screw over the foreign teacher, substandard housing, not paying on time, not paying into government mandated pension and health insurance etc. it can get pretty ugly at times. Before you say “well you went overseas to teach etc, you should adopt to the local culture/customs etc” Yeah true this is not about bitching about say not being able to drink from the tap or not being able to watch the NFL whenever or a bunch of other things. I’m not talking about those things. What I’m talking about extremely ill teachers being dragged out of their apartments by bosses to teach, some even being taken from hospitals while they were being treated for appendicitis to teach, bosses striking teachers, teachers being forced to live in substandard housing, not being paid for months on end so not trifling things
So what happens as result is a “us versus them” mentality as in the foreigner vs the locals. I’m sure in the various immigrant communities in the U.S. there is a similar mentality going on. I’d say 95% of expats here tend to take the side of the foreigner in this situation. Which brings me to the apologist.
So what is an apologist? Instead of using our old pal Mr. Dictionary for a definition; I’m going to quote a Korean blog ” What the Kimchi???” From June 2010 they write:
“Easy definition is that an apologist is someone who is always defending something. Be it a country, person. institution, etc. But it means a little more, at least when talking about Korean apologists. These are people that feel they have to defend against any slight, whether real or perceived, no matter how minor or major. They will pursue this defense even when it goes against the reality of the situation. ” http://whatthekimchi.blogspot.com/2010/06/what-apologist.html
You can substitute “Korean” with any other country
These people think their host country is absolutely perfect and it is the expat who needs to adapt to the country’s culture and practices. To an extent they are right, but to justify an employer or culture to deny you your basic rights as a resident and/or worker and say “deal with it” are simply off base.
mumblingsofanexpat 