Thoughts on our travels through Asia from Myanmar to Japan

World Book Group Edinburgh, first UNESCO World City of Literature. Myanmar - "Not out of Hate" by Ma Ma Lay (Score 6.9) This is the first inserted book for some time. Only one copy was available on the internet at a reasonable price when I started this entry. However, several more became available, so the group decided to backtrack a little. The preface and the introduction give some good background on the story, and on the author. On page 12 I fancy I see the beginning of Way Way's infatuation with the colonial way of life. It will be interesting to see if she starts to feel inferior to the colonists in the way which we have seen in several of our books. The translation generally flows well, with only the occasional thing which doesn't seem quite within the personality of the person being talked about. For example, on page 25 we find "When one first meets him one gets the impression ..... but when one talks to him ... . Most people just wouldn't think that way, except mockingly. On page 38 we have a very clear statement of the detrimental effect of colonialism on the local culture. We have seen this time after time on our travels. Is Ko Nay U's reaction preparing us for a sorrow to come to the family of Way Way some time in the future? Way Way's new husband, U Saw Han, is extremely possessive and oppressive to her. The author tells us he loves her very much (and the author cannot lie to us), but it seems to be the love of a child for a favourite toy or a puppy. He wants her to dress in a way chosen by him, and only provides British style food. We see the tragedy of this later. He forbids her to spend any reasonable time with her sick father and forces her to go against her whole cultural heritage (though she made a massive start in that by herself when she felt shame at having a Burmese style home once she saw U Saw Han's British style home being assembled). In a way I can understand U Saw Han wanting to be like one of his British bosses so that he can get on in business in the colonial society in which he lives. What I can't understand, or forgive, is his rubbishing of his entire civilisation and culture. I found his approach to Maung Mya particularly abhorrent, especially when he "came down on Way Way like a ton of bricks" when she automatically treated Maung Mya with the respect due to him in Burmese society, servant or no servant. On page 104 (note 49) - I didn't know that Burma had once been part of India. I googled this and found it had been set up that way by the British for ease of administration. That could have been yet another disastrous intervention by the British Empire, leading to horrendous wars. Despite U Saw Han's coddling of Way Way, she inevitably has a miscarriage and, on top of that, she catches tuberculosis from her father. For me, the book began to drag. I feel that Way Way's long drawn out decline and her death were necessary because the author did not know how to close the book without them. Way Way is a wimp, besotted by the idea of being in love and thus putting up with everything put on her by her husband. He, in turn, is a totally unthinking egotist. He forces Way Way to eat dairy food and drink milk (good food for a Westerner) which are effectively poisonous to Burmese and other south-east Asian peoples because their bodies are not genetically able to deal with these foods. If U Saw Han did not know this, he has clearly been ignorant of his own people since long before the book started. If he did know it, what on earth was he thinking of? Malaysia - "The Rice Mother" by Rani Manicka (Score 7.0) I worried when I read the reviews published in this book. They were invariably by magazines which I have never heard of, or by a couple of newspapers, one of which I have absolutely no respect for. I had to contrast this with the one "word-of-mouth" feedback which I have had of this book, which praised it highly. As always I will have to make up my own mind. I have now reached page 150, and I was right to be concerned. This book, I'm afraid, is doing nothing for me. I am finding it bitty and episodic. Nothing much seems to hang together. The short section where we see the excitement of the children when presented with the wonders of nature by Professor Rao is good, though it is not really narrated as if by a child. It is very much told years later when their education has equipped them to understand what the professor is talking about (ie it is the author who is talking and not the children). This is one of the main problems I have with the book. All the characters have the same voice, that of the author. Lakshmi turns into a brutal woman, and could in fact be insane. Her treatment of Jeyan on page 278 over a missing coin of little value (which it turns out she lost herself) is indicative of what is driving her family to fear and hate her. Her eldest son, Lakshman, seems no better since he inflicts the decreed dreadful punishment on the innocent Jeyan with gusto. I learned a lot, presumably accurate, about birth, marriage, life and death in Malaysia. So much, in fact that this seemed almost to be the main purpose of the book, for example long lists of food prepared (page 349) by Jeyan's new wife. She is a paragon, and seems to have been introduced as a foil to Rani. This book grows increasingly tedious and is keeping me from books which I would much rather be reading. Dimple's surrender to opium doesn't seem realistic. She knows that it is a trap set by Luke, her philandering husband, she has seen the effect on people round about her, she knows how her daughter will be hurt by it, no-one is putting any pressure on her, she has never shown any hint of being so weak, she doesn't want to be a user - and yet she starts deliberately. I took a week's break to read one of the books I was more inclined to ("A Thousand Splendid Suns" by Khaled Hosseini of "The Kite Runner". Thank goodness I did. It was magnificent and kept me sane). Strangely, when I went back to the tedious "Rice Mother", struggled through twenty pages at a time up to that point, I flew through the last 80 pages in one sitting, finding much more of interest as things were closed down. Was this merely a last sprint designed to get me to the tape before I collapsed with fatigue at the end of the 580 page marathon? Indonesia - "This Earth of Mankind" by Pramoedya Anata Toer (Score 6.1) This is the first volume of the "Buru Quartet", and seemed a reasonable place to dip our toes into the water. Almost from the beginning we become aware of the inferiority complex felt by those who are full blooded indigenes of the country as opposed to the Dutch colonists and the children of the colonists and Indonesian women (it seems to be exclusively that, and never the children of a Dutch mother and an Indonesian father). This type of complex seems to be widespread throughout subjugated nations. We have witnessed racialism of all kinds during our journey. Now we see it again in the attitude of Mellema the Dutchman, to Minke the native Javanese, when he finds him sitting at dinner with his (Mellema's) concubine and his daughter. We already know that Minke has accepted the name given to him by the Dutch pupils at his school, and that it means "monkey". We now find that the colonial society, and the colonised, consider the concubine's daughter to be of a higher status than Minke because she is half Dutch and he is a pure native Javanese. Mellema's disgust is palpable. I think there is more to be uncovered here. It is clear from the description of the resistance of the Achenese to the Dutch colonial invaders that the Dutch army used the same tactics as all other colonials seem to have used, extreme cruelty, slaughter of the innocents, and divide and conquer to achieve the aims of the puppet-masters, conquest of the land, enslavement of the people and pillaging of their resources. Round about page 80 we see a perfect example of the degradation caused by the colonial process to both colonised and coloniser. We see the sale of a 14 year old woman, by her father, into a life where she seems likely to become a living sex toy to an important Dutch official. On page 282 it is interesting that, at the trial, Nyai is not allowed to testify in Dutch. If she had been, that would have confused the Dutch authorities, and would have destroyed the prevailing attitude, probably fostered deliberately, that non-Europeans could not be educated. This is not a great work of world literature but it is an entrancing, if at times heartbreaking, story. I want so much to follow the story, to find out what happens to the main characters, that I have bought the rest of the quartet and will read them as and when my commitment to the rest of our travels round the world allows. Vietnam - "Memories of a pure spring" by Duong Thu Huong (Score 7.3) We are taken suddenly (page 16) from life in a small, isolated hamlet into a wider, much more dangerous world - "That night, planes bombed the road on the other side of the mountains". The description of the celebrations for the end of the war (page 25) is dramatic, followed by the hints of the hardships experienced by the people during the war. It seems incredible that the theatre group could keep going through ten long years of war, constant bombing and defoliation of the forest, moving from place to place, keeping up the people's spirits. My parents have told me of a similar spirit of community reigning in the United Kingdom during the Second World War, and I always imagine a similar attitude in every country which was involved, on both sides. We see on page 50 that, even when travelling though the countryside, living underground to avoid the bombing, Hung has still managed to keep hold of a few books by such as Chekhov and Gogol. Later in the book at page 165, when Lam goes to warn off Doan from any further contact with Hung and Suong, he exposes Doan's venality to his parents, with no pity for any of them. (I'm not saying why this occurred since this is one of the main threads of the story). On page 188 we have Auntie Tuang's words of wisdom, still true today unfortunately "People today are short on compassion but they've got cruelty to spare". The abject poverty of those with no manual skills such as fishing or farming, living in communist Vietnam, comes through in this book, especially for those whom the state (in the shape of the petty local officials) has decided must be Orwellian non-persons. I cannot feel sympathy for the condition of the painters and poets in this book since everyone in the country suffers. The painters and poets are a particularly unattractive group, and I am not even certain that they have any significant talent in their fields. On page 245, the ylang-ylang appears again as Dam visited Hung and Suong. The threat of these flowers pervades the story as their scent pervades the air around them. A passage later in the book gives away part of the story which we will read when we arrive in Russia (A hero of our time). The concert scene near the end is magnificent and very moving. However, the very end of the story really brought me back down to earth. Hung, despite his cavalier attitude to Suong, and his behaviour after release from the prison camp (he was prepared to satisfy his desires at the risk, indeed certainty, of her contacting a deadly strain of venereal disease) did not deserve to die like that. The constant menace of the ylang-ylang is finally explained by the strange fruit. The ending was like a hard punch in the stomach. It took me quite a while to recover from it. I had kept thinking that Suong would arrive, in the nick of time, to save him. Philippines – Noli me tangere – José Rizal (Score 6.25) This book was inserted nearly at the end of Part 1 of our "trip" when a paperback copy was reprinted, making it available once more. The title is a biblical reference to the occasion on which Jesus tells Mary Magdalene not to touch him because he is filled with the power of God. “Noli me tangere” was published in 1887, so it is by far the earliest fiction which we have read in our journey round the world. The author was born in the Philippines in 1861 to a prosperous family. He agitated, both in the Philippines and throughout Europe for an end to the Spanish colonisation of the Philippines. The colonial authorities were the Catholic Church in the islands. Rizal was a thorn in their flesh and was eventually, after a period of internal exile, subject to judicial murder by firing squad. He was 35 years old. He then became the main symbol of Philippine nationalism. The book opens with a dinner party given by Don Santiago de los Santos (known as Captain Tiago). It is a grand affair. We meet a large number of people, lay, clerical and military. At this stage we are not certain who are key players and who have bit parts. We learn of the behaviour of the Church. I am not religious and I found it horrifying that the locals were compelled to go to “confession” when the priests had not taken the trouble to learn Tagalog, and it was illegal for the locals to be educated in Spanish. They could have as easily been reciting a shopping list as a list of their “sins”. It makes a mockery of the whole concept. There is a chapter devoted to Captain Tiago. This paints him as a fascinating and complex character. One of his many characteristics is that he appears to make a great play of worshipping all of the saints, with particular devotion to a selected small number. He has his tongue firmly in his cheek, and doesn’t seem to believe a word of anything he does in connection with his religious practices. Rizal is extremely scathing of the attitude of the Catholic Church in the Philippines, and of its priests, to the poor and to the native people. He asks, on page 91 “and you, your religion created for a suffering multitude, have you forgotten your mission of consoling the oppressed in their misery, and humbling the hubris of power, and now render promises only to the rich, those who can pay? He has already made a watertight case for the creation of purgatory, as a money making idea, by the Church with absolutely no grounding in the origins of Christianity. Then he says “The Church doesn’t save beloved souls for free”. Is the origin of all these costs and charges to take money from the poor to keep priests well fed and in comfort, and to erect grand, though undoubtedly beautiful, edifices to perpetuate the mythology? On page 135 there is a comparison between the songs of the mythological lake sirens and the sound of an Aeolian harp. If you have ever heard the sound of an Aeolian harp, you will know exactly what Rizal means. If not, I suggest that you find a website and listen to some harps. They are entirely wind driven, and have the most incredibly beautiful voices. Aeolus was the ruler of the winds. On page 152 Father Salvi, spying on Maria Clara, Victoria and Sinang, is compared to Actaeon spying on Diana. Diana drove Actaeon’s own hounds to tear him to pieces for spying on her bathing. Later, as a festival breaks up in disorder (page 271), he is again spying on Maria Clara, rushes out and follows Ibarra who is carrying her home. The text makes it clear that Father Salvi’s thoughts about Maria Clara are not exactly those of a Christian cleric sworn to chastity. Ironically, the newspaper report on the riot gives the influence of the Church pride of place by allocating to the “virtuous good Father Salvi the unearned credit for ending the riot by force of personality alone. There are occasional odd changes of tense throughout the book. For example, in the middle paragraph on page 293 the last two sentences are in the present tense although they are clearly an integral part of the past tense discussion in this whole chapter. In Chapter 46 Rizal introduces us to the customs and “culture” of the time in the Philippines – the cockpit. He is clearly knowledgeable about the proceedings so may have been an aficionado himself. At the end of the chapter we see the preparations for an attack on the barracks of the Civil Guard. Dona Victorina’s behaviour in Chapter 47 and after, right to the aftermath of the riots, is utterly appalling, and a dreadful example of how her snobbishness and unwarranted hatred of some people has dreadful consequences. Altogether, this book gave me an insight into the early history of the Philippines as a Spanish colony and followed the trend on many of the books we have read on our “travels” that the evils resulting from colonialism far outweigh any modicum of good which might have been done by fair-minded people. Despite that, I didn’t think that it is a great work of literature and there are places where, frankly, it was so tedious that I skimmed several pages. I scored it at 6.5. Taiwan - "Wintry Night" by Li Qiao (Score 7.0) I advise you to make up a family tree right from the start of this book. You may well find it difficult to keep track of the characters if you don't. We learn how to make potash and other chemicals by watching these Haka invaders of Taiwan do it to make their living. The book begins to have a "Wild West" feel about it, with fears of attacks by the native Taiwanese peoples, who are certainly not of Chinese origin. So much for China's claim on Taiwan. The time period at the start of the book is about the same as that of the American West. The Haka people are very much steeped in their old traditions, and life is hard, particularly once they have been cheated out of "ownership" of the land they took from the natives and cleared. Ye Atlan is the name of the con-man and thief. We learn a lot about the history of Taiwan, the original take-over of the islands from the native peoples by Chinese settlers, the ceding of Taiwan to Japan after the Sino-Japanese war, and life under the Japanese. It had never occurred to me that the Japanese might be like all other colonial countries and conscript the conquered peoples into fighting in their wars - largely because, I suppose, before reading this book I did not know that Taiwan was the spoils of war, ceded by China. Thus we have the bizarre situation in the Pacific war of conquered Taiwanese conscripted into the Japanese army to fight against conquered Indians and Burmese conscripted into the English army. There is an extremely poignant section from page 232 to 239 when many of the families have to collect white boxes containing the ashes of their sons and grandsons who have died in the war. Then, on page 239 we find that Yonghui's box, at least, only contains river sand and no ashes at all. We had an interesting discussion on whether this was a humanitarian gesture by the Japanese army who had been unable to identify individual bodies after the bombing by the Americans, but wanted to give the families some reminder to bury and grieve over. We felt that this was likely since the author would hardly have shown them in a good(ish) light if she had not heard of such experiences. The whole latter half of the book mostly deals with the Taiwanese men being transported back and forwards across the Pacific, finally ending up on an island which was being captured by the Americans. I was really cheering for these guys to get back to Taiwan, especially Mingji. What a blow it was when he died. Dengmei, his grandmother, died at exactly the same time. China - "Red Sorghum" by Mo Yan (Score 5.4) We open the book and we are right in the middle of the Japanese invasion of China. From there the story alternates between the war and life in a small village where wine is made from the sorghum of the title. There is a "Special Reserve" variety, made in small quantities by adding a special ingredient. This, however, must stay a secret until you read the book. This book is not great literature, but it has the occasional nice image. For example, there is an occasion when the narrator's grandfather Yu Zhan'ao, after an encounter with the bandit Spotted Neck, dives into the river "splashing around like a fritter in hot oil" (page 170). What an image. The book is full of conflict - the Japanese invasion, battles between the guerrillas and the Japanese, the civil war between at least three different groups of resistance fighters. There are many horrific scenes of brutality, murder, rape, skinning alive, slaughtering children. This is not a pleasant book, but no doubt it gives a pretty accurate picture of what it was like in China at the time. The cover blurb tries to say that the author is on a par with people like Kundera and Garcia-Marquez. I think not. Russia - "A Hero of Our Time" by Mikhail Lermontov (Score 8.0) We meet this book here, not because we think Russia is an Asian country, but because so much of it is in Asia. We needed a passage from China to Korea. The introduction to this book is very helpful in understanding the period and the setting. The chronology is also interesting. It is amazing that Lermontov seems to have been publishing poetry at the age of 14. In this book we are once again in the frontier lands of an expanding empire. There is much talk of friendly tribal chiefs and untamed (ie free) tribes raiding across the river Kuman. This is a valuable insight into the origins of the present situation in the Caucasus, where the Russians claim that the land is part of Russia even though it was only occupied (taken from the inhabitants) less than 200 years ago. The parallels with the American West are obvious, except that the Lakota, Apache etc are no longer raiding the invaders. In "Maxim Maxymich", the first part of this book, the frontier feeling is strong when we read that the narrator has to wait for an escort which will guard the convoy through the hostile lands to Yekaterinograd. In how many westerns have we seen the same thing? I wonder if the "Indians" will attack. Having seen the kind of unthinking and inconsiderate person Pechorin is in "Bela", where he is totally indifferent to the death of the woman who loves him, he reinforces this in "Maxim Maxymich" by his cold response to Maxim who greets him warmly and enthusiastically as an old friend. In "Taman" Pechorin does not come across in his own account as being the cold and uncaring person he has appeared to be in the earlier accounts by others. He has to fight for his life against someone who is determined to kill him, by drowning, to keep a secret. However, later I had to change my mind when I met the cool, calculating Pechorin, and the disturbing manner in which he sets about, for his own amusement, the destruction and humiliation of the guileless young man, Grushnitsky. I believe that Pechorin suffers from a dreadful disability - he is unable to empathise with another person. Basically, he seems to feel that he is the only real person in the world and that everyone else is only a shadow, there for Pechorin's convenience and amusement. Will they all cease to exist at the moment of his death? Yes, but only from his, soon to be extinct, point of view. His philosophy seems to be that of Hogg's "Justified Sinner". On page 122 Pechorin wonders why everyone hates him. He seems to have no idea that he is a brute. On page 131 he clearly reveals that he is well aware of his defects, but cannot understand why he is like that. I have mixed feelings about Pechorin's behaviour during the duel. In the first place he effectively forced the duel, but Grushnitsky's second hatched the plot to load Pechorin's gun with a dud. Grushnitsky won the toss so gained the right to shoot first and did so without revealing the plot. Trying to put myself into the frame of mind of the people, I can only think that Grushnitsky was more afraid of dishonour than of death, and carried on when Pechorin revealed that he was aware of the plot, and loaded his gun. The real villain of that piece was Grushnitsky's second. Korea - "Translations of beauty" by Mia Yun (Score 7.7) We have had hints about the accident suffered by one of the twins, but on page 33 we just know that it is going to happen. I have not named the twins so that the surprise is not spoiled if you chose to read this book. The description of the other twin's experience of slow motion and silence, and stop-start as she watches, unable to take it in, is so realistic. I enjoyed the description on page 39 of one of the twin's first sight of the Grand Canal and its teeming life, so positive in its many forms. Then we have the immediate contrast of the other twins foul temper breaking through. The dreams which one of the twins has at the end of Part 1 match the kind of dreams experienced by someone who has lost a loved one, or fears for such a loss. On page 55 we read "all but forgotten, pushed in the place where memory goes for a long hibernation, to re-emerge later". What a wonderful way this is to say "forgotten". On page 74 - before the point at the end of the fight there had been no indication that Uncle Wilson is an Afro-American. On page 93 the Koreans who know Aunt Minnie certainly seem to be racist. They look down on her because she married Uncle Wilson. I felt that the poems on pages 104 and 105 seem very advanced for children who are supposed to be 11 and 12 years old. They say that you can learn anything from books. On page 136 we are given a dramatic lesson on the perils of jay-walking (and of driving too fast). On pages 164 and 165, the images of Inah and Yunah with their father, walking in the woods are magical, even if the two girls don't seem to enjoy it very much. Racism once again rears its ugly head on page 172 when the hillbilly redneck tells the children (would you believe?) that they are not welcome in the area. I get the impression that Yunah feels immense guilt about the severe injury which Inah suffered as a child, even though she was in no way responsible. Is this a kind of "survivors guilt"? On page 195 we are watching TV where they are showing lions in the African tundra!! Tundra is found in areas just south of the Arctic Circle. She surely means "savannah". On page 294 Inah and Yunah are eating in an open air restaurant on Via del Lavatore. I very much doubt it. I know that street very well. It has a few small restaurants and cafes, one of which used to be owned by my uncle's father before he retired. The street is far too narrow for outdoor eating, to say nothing of the hordes of people constantly thronging up and down the street since it is one of the small streets which run from the Fontana di Treve. She doesn't even mention the Fontana which the sisters almost certainly passed when they walked from there to Piazza Venezia. There is a small square at the extreme end of Via del Lavatore away from the Fontana where an open air market is held. She may mean there, or perhaps a roof level restaurant though she doesn't say that. I loved the concept on page 330 of immigrants being biodegradable and fitting in. Most nations seem to have large percentages of their populations descended from immigrants who have arrived over the centuries, and who have melded into one whole in the famous melting pot. Japan - "The waiting years" by Fumiko Enchi (Score 8.1) The first thing which I noticed when reading this book is the Japanese speech rhythm and phraseology which comes through in the conversations. This is an extremely good translation. On page 20 we read of male geisha. I have never come across this concept although some of the other members have read about it. Tomo's feelings about the purchase of Suga are clearly ambiguous. She went along with her husband's intentions, sought out over an extended period a beautiful child when she knew that she was destined eventually to become her husband's mistress, and hated herself for it. Is she beginning to hate her husband? To our 21st century morals it is an incredibly shocking thing which she has connived at with her husband. If we try not to judge people (possibly atypical, possibly not) in 19th century Japan, can we see that she may have had no alternative. Is she not simply in the same situation as many a wife with children (or without) in our society, unable to leave her husband because she would then find herself in an impossible situation with no money and no home? Presumably there were no centres for women in that situation in rural Japan at the time? The astonishment that we see in the people who witnessed what she is doing in Tokyo suggests that such purchase of a young girl was very rare by that time. On page 44 we read about Kobayashi Kiyochika (1847-1915) who was an ukiyo-e (floating world) artist who also painted in oils. He liked scenes with fireworks which are called "hanabi" or "fire flowers" in Japanese. That is a beautiful concept. On page 85 I almost, but not quite, felt sympathy for Shirakawa, the merciless prefect. Page 92 is the first occasion on which we read of the son, Michimasa, who has been brought up in the country. Was this isolation and apparent abandonment by his father the main reason for his "twisted disposition". Does the description of Michimasa on page 93 hint at a degree of retardation. About page 90 we have the baby Takao. Who was his mother? It comes as a considerable shock to realise that the baby is Michimasa's son, especially when we remember the brutal way in which he has talked about the child, on page 95, to the wet nurse, Maki. On page 115, Yukitomo's behaviour with his daughter-in-law must surely be frowned on in any culture, if not downright illegal and criminal. On page 116 we have a reference to the "snow country". This is also the title of an excellent book by Kawabata Yasunari. Even at the end Yukitomo refused to fulfil his wife's final wishes, clearly thinking more of his family's reputation. From here we board a 747 for a long-haul flight from Japan to Australia on the first leg of our trip round the New World continents.