An Adventure on the N. Korean Border

I woke up that Friday expecting to take a late-afternoon train to Shenyang where I would join Ben for the weekend. Moments later, though, he called to ask me to catch an earlier train. 1:30 found me standing at the ticket counter to trade in my 5:30 train ticket for a ticket on the 2:10.

Ben and Glen met me at the Shenyang station and we hustled to catch another train. No peaceful weekend for us. Instead we took a 14 hour hard-sleeper to Yanji, a small city on the northern end of the China-N. Korea border. We checked into a cheap hotel for a quick shower before heading out to see what we could see.

First stop was the local Korean university, the Yanbian University of Science and Technology, where, even on Saturday, we found several faculty members happy to answer (most) questions about the school. Then out of town to the border crossing where we stood looking into North Korea from just across the river. The difference was depressing. While Yanji isn't exactly modern and sparkling-clean by Western standards, compared to the filthy, dilapidated, colorless buildings across the river, it looked like paradise.


No time to linger, though...it was late Saturday afternoon, but we still had another town to visit before heading home Sunday evening. I gather the plan had been an overnight bus from Yanji to Dandong. Unfortunately, Saturday morning inquiries at the bus station proved that no such bus existed. Since I had to be back at work on Monday and Ben was determined to visit Dandong, we hired a driver. After an early hot-pot supper, we set off for what turned out to be a 12 hour, overnight ride in a small sedan.

6:30 AM saw us checking into another cheap hotel for a couple of hours of decent sleep and a shower before exploring Dandong. The highlight, if you can call it that, of Dandong is the monument/museum on what we call the Korean War, but the Chinese apparently call the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea. As I found with the Rape of Nanjing Memorial, the most interesting feature of the museum was not its content but its rhetoric. It seems to be a consistent difference between how information is presented here and how I am more accustomed to seeing it presented in the West. While most of us doubtless harbor strong beliefs about who was wrong and who was right in conflicts our country has engaged in, we make an effort in our national dialog to be dispassionate. Our wars are named for when or where they happened, or, occasionally, for the type of conflict. So, we have the Civil War, the War of 1812, the World Wars, the Korean War, etc. Here, though, wars are named to evoke feelings. To wit, the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea. I guess that makes sense in a place where the word 'propaganda' has no negative connotations.


We followed a quick lunch with a short stroll to look at the border and then a dash for the bus station to catch our bus to Dalian. We had just time for our third Korean meal of the weekend before heading to the Dalian airport for our flight home.

Nanjing

We thoroughly enjoyed Nanjing despite the late-winter chill. Its art museum is definitely one of the best in China with lovely displays of porcelain, textiles, bronzes, laquerware and more. The textiles were especially nice and the exhibit included a traditional brocade-loom. Quite a contraption! Unfortunately its operators were at lunch so we didn't get to see it in action and photographs were not permitted so I can't show it to you.

We naturally went to see the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Museum (http://www.nj1937.org/english/default.asp). [picture coming soon] It's design is clearly reminiscent of the design of other Holocaust memorial museums - lots of grey and black stone, sharp edges, candles, etc. The main exhibition hall contains a plethora of photographs from the period of the massacre as well as some artifacts. The photos are copiously annotated with far more text than we could reasonably read. To me, the most fascinating thing about the museum was how different it is from most Holocaust museums I have been to. While it is aesthetically quite similar, the content and tone is very different. Holocaust museums I have visited celebrate the victims and remain remarkably neutral in tone about the Nazis. Not that they paint the Nazis in an attractive light, but they tend to let the facts speak for themselves. Exhibits generally consist of heartbreaking photographs of the victims and artifacts from the camps and/or the ghettos. Not so at the Nanjing Massacre Museum. Although there are a few photographs of the victims, most are of the invaders. Essentially all of the artifacts are Japanese - uniforms, equipment, weapons, rank insignia, etc. Without the text you would be more likely to guess that the museum celebrated the conquest than that it repudiated the destruction. The text leaves no doubt, though. While Holocaust museums tend to avoid the language of hate, this museum refers unabashedly to the "Japanese Forces of Aggression," the "beastly atrocities" committed by the "Japanese militarists," etc.

Moving on to happier topics...the highlight of our stay in Nanjing was the Nanjing opera performance we attended Saturday night. Nanjing opera is wonderful and weird. I don't really have any notion of how to communicate what it is like except to say go see for yourself! It happens that the company we saw has an English translator on staff and provided quite good program notes and titles in English. Even without that, though, I think I would have been riveted. We saw 3 scenes - 2 comic scenes and a tragedy. The tragic scene was so haunting it actually gave me nightmares. I can still hear the otherworldy wailing in my head. Much more frightening than any horror movie!

And with that...back to this world in Beijing...