Years of Poems and Spirits

Just heard on NPR about this book and movie: Keep the River on Your Right.

Author/Source of Inspiration: Tobias Scheenbaum, a just died gay artist-turned-anthoropologist, who lived among Peruvian Amazon Indians, adopted a sex partner and practised cannibalism.

Related:
New Yorker artcile on 2005/9/19 issue on Colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett. A nice blog here (Totally agreed. I’ve written to the magazine myself and the reply was professional but nonchalant, “Actually, all our articles are searchable through LexisNexis”)

Anyway, this article also talked in some detail about cannibalism among the indigenous tribes. Some of the tribes don’t really know how to interact with modern society, so they become some kind of terrorists: instead of eating those they captured (scholars, tourists, explorers, etc.), they now demand ransome of thousands of dollars.

Also, I remember there was a documentary made by some Frenchmen living among cannibals and showed all kinds of savagery and sexual deviancy only the French can think of. The graphical depictions caused quite an uproar before it was revealed as a fake. I just can’t think of its name, damn!

I always have a soft spot for photo portrait of daily lifes. It is probably because one can “internalize” a picture much easier than a video.

Just read an article on a Chinese portal, the title was “厕所·买妻·艳舞–图片讲述中国故事”. Here is a snapshot of it.

I was really fortunate to have discovered it, because the portal is mostly a gossip/tabloid type. The pictures in this article are beauifully composed, lively yet so believeable.

Those are copyright-ed materials (see the article for more details)

The story of “buying wife” from impoverished western China, with the picture of a couple on opposite ends of the frame, could be easily made more inflammotary. The picture of the newly weds is a pictorial version of the many poems depicting rural lifes throughout history. Seeing the pictures has arosed strong emotions in me, but I will leave the pictures to tell the stories.

Foreign Affairs 2005/9-10 Zheng Bijian/China’s Peaceful Rise …

Zheng Bijian: China Reform Forum Chair

China has averaged 9.4% GDP growth since 1978

In 1978 China accounted for less than 1% of world economy, today, it’s 4%

Foreign trade: $851 billion, 3rd largest in the world.

300 million mobile-phone users.

100 million Internet users.

China’s population has not yet peaked. In 2030, it will reach 1.5 billion.

In per capita terms, China ranks 100th in the world.

China’s per capita water is 1/4 of world average.
China’s per capita cultivatable farmland is 2/5 of world average.
China’s per capita oil is 8.3% of world average.
China’s per capita natural gas is 4.1% of world average.
China’s per capita copper is 25.5% of world average.
China’s per capita aluminum is 9.7% of world average.

About 10 million rural Chinese migrate to urban areas each year.

China controls 85% of world output of Tungsten (钨), uses maybe 35-40% of it. (The Economist 2005/4/16)