beyondBeijing2008.com

BANGKOK, Thailand – Like many students at the Setsatian School for the Deaf, 18-year-old Supawan Klaiyana has been hearing impaired from birth and cannot listen to music.

She enjoys watching pop singers dancing on TV and thought that was the maximum extent of music she could experience. But that changed completely last week when she and 40 other deaf students attended a concert targeted to suit their special needs. 

“I’m so excited,” Klaiyana signed, as her hands fluttered over her chest, before the concert. She was sitting in a quiet yet animated classroom, as her classmates were busy signing with each other. Some giggled when she was being interviewed on camera.  “I want to dance. I want to have fun. I’m so ready to dance at the concert!”

VIDEO: Pradhana Chariyavilaskul explains her inspiration to organize Bangkok’s first concert for ‘the deaf and the rest’

The “Love is Hear” concert was held at a downtown Bangkok theater last Thursday and was the first concert ever organized in Thailand for “the deaf and the rest.”

 URUMQI, China – Riot-torn Urumqi is hosting a beauty contest. The streets are still swamped by riot police, the city tense and littered with the debris of the worst unrest in decades, but the contestants for the 35th Miss International Beauty Pageant have come to town.

I bumped into them at dinner on Friday. In all honesty, you couldn’t miss them, since very few other people were staying at my hotel, which is a few minutes away from where nearly 200 people died just a week ago. 

They paraded along the buffet line as if already on the catwalk. I picked my way along with contestants from Turkmenistan and Vietnam dressed in their finest and minimalist evening wear.

Ian Williams / NBC News

The remains a Han Chinese car dealership after ethnic riots in Urumqi, China.

The “Stans” – the former Soviet Republics – were well represented, and there were women also representing Siberia and numerous Chinese cities and regions. Prominent among the latter was a Miss Xinjiang China. One of the tallest in the contest, she wore the shortest skirt, and looked nothing like the embattled and angry Uighur woman who’d been confronting the riot police.

I asked contestants from France and Germany what it was like to be in a beauty contest in a riot-torn city.

They didn’t appear to know Urumqi is a riot-torn city.

The finals are later this month, and I guess they are not likely to be quizzed too deeply on local affairs. In the meantime, according to a poster in the lobby, they will be highlighting the “beauty of Xinjiang.”
…(read more)

ULAN BATOR, Mongolia – As events unfold in Xinjiang Province, we have seen a resurgence of ethnic Chinese nationalist sentiment mixed with fear and mistrust of not just the Uighur people but also the outside world.

China’s central and local governments were quick to accuse the U.S.-based World Uighur Congress of fomenting racial tension in Xinjiang and alluded to “outside” terrorist and separatist organizations working together to split up the country.

Meanwhile, China’s blogosphere has been rife with Han Chinese outrage at the foreign media coverage of the violence, calling it prejudiced and erroneous. And on the streets of Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, Western reporters have faced angry mobs of Han Chinese accusing them of a long-standing bias against China.

Adrienne Mong / NBC News

Mongolians today prefer looking west, not to Russia or to China.

But looking at the unrest in Xinjiang from a neighboring country like Mongolia offers an interesting perspective on China’s regional reputation. Whether the Chinese would acknowledge it or not, unfortunately the long reach of history often influences modern attitudes much more than any current day media reports.

…(read more)

L’AQUILA, ITALY – You first see this city from up high as you wind around a mountain highway and this is what you think: It’s a city in a bowl.

It’s name means “The Eagle,” and there is plenty of room for eagles to soar here. L’Aquila is encircled by enormous ridges that are part of the Appenines, that “spine” of mountains that grade-schoolers learn runs down the middle of the boot of Italy.

It’s a lovely place, this bowl, set in a fertile valley and protected by those mountains – a safe and secure place that played a strategically important role in the medieval struggle for control of central Italy. 

VIDEO: Berlusconi ‘the seducer’ still popular in Italy

L’Aquila is not big and famous like Milan, or Venice, or Florence. It is not even a small but famous place like Assisi. But it is Italy. The real Italy. There is a university here, not a world-famous one, but one where Italian families confidently send their children for a good education. There is a ski resort in the distance, one frequented not by deep-pocketed Americans or Europeans, but by ordinary Italians who live within an hour or two.

We are here because of an earthquake, and we are here because of Italian politics. But we are really here because of history.

…(read more)

ULAN BATOR, Mongolia – As events unfold in Xinjiang Province, we have seen a resurgence of ethnic Chinese nationalist sentiment mixed with fear and mistrust of not just the Uighur people but also the outside world.

China’s central and local governments were quick to accuse the U.S.-based World Uighur Congress of fomenting racial tension in Xinjiang and alluded to “outside” terrorist and separatist organizations working together to split up the country.

Meanwhile, China’s blogosphere has been rife with Han Chinese outrage at the foreign media coverage of the violence, calling it prejudiced and erroneous. And on the streets of Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, Western reporters have faced angry mobs of Han Chinese accusing them of a long-standing bias against China.

Adrienne Mong / NBC News

Mongolians today prefer looking west, not to Russia or to China.

But looking at the unrest in Xingjian from a neighboring country like Mongolian offers an interesting perspective on China’s regional reputation. Whether the Chinese would acknowledge it or not, unfortunately the long reach of history often influences modern attitudes much more than any current day media reports.

…(read more)