Traditions in Chinese foreign policy

            I’m taking a class at Harvard on Chinese foreign policy. It’s more interesting than I thought it would be, for several reasons. Among them, is that the professor places a very strong emphasis on how we should “think theoretically” and place our thinking about decision-making processes in a proper analytical framework. However, that’s a discussion for another time. This time round, I’m going to talk about one of the themes for this week’s readings and discussions, which was about the multiple traditions in Chinese foreign policy.

Most of this material comes from a work written by a guy named Michael Hunt, who analyzed the shadow of history and how it impacts (or does not impact) the way China views the world today. Central to his point is that China’s long history and philosophical traditions pull Chinese foreign policy in several directions, making analysis more tricky than at first glance.

Where do analysts, Western and non-Western, look to when they study China?

Well, many professors, hacksters and other people tend to point at three traditions which have historically informed how China deals with the rest of the world. The first is the Marxist-Leninist tradition, which emphasized world revolution, ideological orthodoxy and the overthrowing of the capitalist world. The second is China’s imperial tradition of maintaining tributary states in East and Southeast Asia, with smaller states recognizing China’s moral superiority in exchange for access to trade and titles by the Chinese emperor. What is rarely discussed with regard to this tradition is the fact that the Chinese state has traditionally split the periphery into “near” and “far”; the “far” periphery was entangled in the tributary system, whereas the “near” periphery was dealt with by colonization and Chinese settlement, backed by military force, turning it into a buffer zone between the outside world and the “core” of Chinese civilization. Some may even argue that this strategy has persisted up to the present day.

A third tradition is that of the Century of Humiliation (百年国耻). In this view of things, China is a victim. Having been bullied by the West and the Japanese for years, the country is prickly about anything to do with national sovereignty and will not take bullying. China’s goal, under this narrative, is to reclaim its former glory as a nation and, in the most extreme view, take revenge on the evil outsiders who have been trying to suppress China for so long.

Therefore, when people look at China’s behavior in recent decades, they tend to point to one of the above in explaining it. The Marxist-Leninist explanation has more or less died out with the collapse of communism, but it is easy enough to paint all of China’s actions in the framework of the “China as neo-imperial power” view.

However, there are other traditions out there which are often forgotten or overlooked.

One is the “cosmopolitan” tradition in Chinese foreign policy, which stems from the 富国强兵 idea. This strand began in the late Qing era, and was a very pragmatic approach towards how not to be totally humiliated by foreigners. Qing-era thinkers such as Xu Jiyu and Liang Qichao very openly called for learning from other countries in order to strengthen China. (It is interesting to note the Xu, when analyzing the United States, concluded that American culture and society represented the Confucian ideal to a greater extent than that of China!). In opposition to this is a “nativist, culturally-chauvinist” tradition, which has an interesting populist strand, namely that in order to drive out the evil foreigners, the Chinese people should unite and pool their efforts in order to fight and win against the barbarians. The inherent virtue of the Chinese people and civilization will prevail. Such thinking led to the Boxer Rebellion; shadows of this thought can also be found in Maoist writings on the role of the peasantry in revolution. These two schools of thought were in conflict during the 19^th century, and to a certain extent this debate is still alive today.

Another strand of thought has its origins in the Warring States Period, and is informed by the Chinese military classics and popular works such as the Three Kingdoms. This view stresses, to put it in modern-day language, that “it’s a dog-eat-dog world out there, and the strong survive and the weak perish”. When Qing China was facing foreign incursions in the 19^th century, several Chinese analysts likened the state of China in the world then to the situation during the Warring States Period; therefore, China needed to adopt practical, Machiavellian strategems of “playing the barbarians off against each other” and “self-strengthening” in order to survive. This hard-headed, practical, realistic view of international affairs, where only national interests matter, is strikingly similar to the Western neo-realist view of the world.

So, we have here a multiplicity of ideas on how Chinese foreign policy works. How does this filter through to decision makers?

It is impossible to get into the head of the people running foreign affairs in Zhongnanhai. However, after scanning through the list of conflicting ideas and traditions running through Chinese history, one has to realize that in the historical scheme of things, Chinese foreign policy cannot be described as one-dimensional, and the way in which Chinese leaders see the world will be filtered through several historical lenses. Furthermore, given the opacity of the Chinese policy world, it is difficult to predict with certainty how any of this actually plays out.

It’s hard to untangle the strands sometimes, but China’s long and tangled historical and philosophical traditions serve to further prove a single point; China, as a country, is way more complicated than most analysts like to think, and is not easy to pigeonhole.

Beijing's 798 Art District

Today I went wandering around the north-east of Beijing. To be honest, it’s pretty hard to consider the area I was in “Old Beijing”. The city has exploded in size, with the Chinese government building ring roads named with ever-increasing digits every two or three years. The place where I was at happened to be around the fourth ring road, which encompassed both faceless apartment blocks as well as patches of agricultural land which have somehow managed to survive the onslaught of economic development.

I got off at the Wangjing stop. A pretty romantic name for a characterless area, covered in smog and devoid of human warmth. However, it is here where much of Beijing’s population lives, so if you want to complete your picture of Beijing, you have to visit one of these concrete slabs. I really wonder what they look like on the inside. 

A half-hour walk away from Wangjing, you stumble across the 798 Art District. You would be forgiven for thinking you were in Soho in New York City, for the vibe there is exactly the same.

There were cafes, bars, galleries and bookshops squeezed together in a bunch of disused factory buildings. It was all rather pretty; the galleries had some cutting-edge art which, although not to my taste, had plenty of artistic merit. The cafes were really well done, avoiding the easily-made mistake of 中西掺杂, mostly by throwing out all Chinese elements and achieving a recreation of a New York coffee shop in Northeastern Beijing. I stopped for a while to have a club sandwich. It was pretty pricey, but I liked the vibe. My first Western meal in China for the past five weeks!

Hipster cool has arrived in Beijing, along with the corresponding irony which New York artists try so hard to achieve. There was nothing more ironic than eating an expensive club sandwich in a disused factory, bearing authentic Cultural Revolution-era "The Chairman's Instructions" plastered on the walls! Talk about good fun.

It was raining really heavily, but I really didn’t mind. In fact, it was the heaviest rain that Beijing had seen in 61 years, but I only found out the next day; probably a good thing! The rain forced me to spend longer than I had planned in individual galleries or cafes, which allowed me to appreciate them better.

The place was very comfortable and authentic. However, something is biting at my thoughts.

In the midst of Soho, where is China?

It seems that in their attempt to create a cutting-edge, avant-garde area of the city, Chinese artists have successfully rebuilt Soho, or Greenwich Village. Sure, the art in the galleries was Chinese enough, as in it successfully blended Chinese and Western influences into a complete whole. However, in the whole area, I counted only one Chinese restaurant. One Chinese restaurant! Just one! For a civilization which places an extremely strong emphasis on food, this seems surprising.

There was no shortage of Westerners walking around, doubtlessly comfortable that they were in a mini recreation of the bohemian district of New York. To be honest, I quite liked the place myself. It’s just that I think that it exists in an alternate world. The place is very real and very grounded; it’s just that it is grounded in a reality which does not conform to its immediate surroundings, but rather New York and San Francisco.

It’s telling that I didn’t notice any Chinese flags fluttering in the breeze. It really felt like a different China from the one which I am used to; but then again, the so-called conception of "China" is not as simple or stereotypical as people think. I had an interesting discussion with a professor of Chinese culture about this. But let's leave that for another day.

难忘安阳

这个周末，我跟我的同学们去安阳旅游。周五去了太行山，离安阳市区很远，坐车要坐两个小时才到。我们七点半出发，大部分的人不习惯那么早起床，觉得很累，在车里睡觉。但是，我却一直很清醒。我坐在靠窗的位置，戴着耳机听着音乐，望着外面欣赏着风景。

我们都在北京学习。北京是大城市，可是安阳市的外围是农村，跟北京完全不一样，给我一种很特别的感觉。车的外面有无边的绿色玉米田，有如一块地毯蔓延到天边。那天有大雾，像帘子掉在地球上。有的人抱怨，他们不喜欢天气，什么都看不到，不适合照相。我则持相反的态度，觉得看不到什么反而是增加风景的优美度。我所想象的中国农村便是常常有大雾的，大抵是因为我看过太多山水画吧。

所有的土地已经被驯服了。我想，这个便是代表中国文明最基本的因素。虽然山水画描写的是山野自然的风景，但是实际上，中国的农民常常要掌握大自然，不像传统的艺术家描绘的那样。这个地方真的是中国之心，看起来不那么发达，生活节奏也比较慢。人们的生活没有城市人的那么复杂，只关心他们的农作物，但是当然也没有他们的北京同胞那么富有，舒服。

我不能说这个地方特别好看，而且也没有什么古老的建筑，寺庙，宫殿，等等。那我为什么对这个地方感兴趣呢？我觉得安阳的农村虽然没有像北京那么有历史的建筑，但并不是说没有文化，意义。北京在中国当然扮演着很重要的角色，是中国政治和文化的中心。不过，历史上，中国以农业为主，中国的人口大部分以种地为生。中国几经迁都，但是中国的农村依旧存在。那么，河南也是中国文明的发源地，中原的土地也接受了五千年风雨的洗礼。这个地方已经经历了五千年的风雨，看过无数的皇帝和军阀，被中国每一次内乱所困。北京当然有故宫，颐和园，中南海，代表中央政府权力的地方。但是，没有乡村就没有像北京那样的城市。每年都有无数农民从农村地区向城市，趋之若鹜。中国十三亿的人口也依靠农村来获得他们的食物。

                突然，外面的风景致有改变。在玉米田中，凸出一些新建的高楼。高楼跟玉米田有什么关系呢？它就是新中国的代表，好像侵略着传统中国的生活方式，但是还被玉米田所围绕。我想不明白，哪一个是中国真正的代表？无边的农田，还是摩天群楼？高楼是长期稳固的现象，还是短暂的泡沫？如果这些高楼突然消失，对农田没有那么大的影响，这个不是太难想象。

                我们的车过了这些高楼以后，无边的农田继续蔓延，一直到我们的目的地，就是太行山。我终于看到像山水画里一样的风景。有山，有水，有大雾，农村在山下很渺小。怪不得，古代无数的艺术家，知识分子，道士，对人世大失所望时，愿意离开人世，归隐山林。不过，江山之美，虽然动人，但是并不代表中国的社会。我觉得山下的小村子更有意义。农村的居民在山边种地，像他们的祖祖辈辈一样。当然生活也发生了很多改变，现在有电，有汽车，有马路。可是基本上，他们看的风景是像商朝人一样的。山高，皇帝远，北京的政治戏剧对这些人的日常生活没有那么大的影响。

                我们都下车，开始爬山。因为有大雾，所以什么都看不到。中国是这样的。以为已经了解了这个复杂的社会，这个灿烂的文明，但是还有更多我们看不到的因素。我们的旅程只有两个小时，但是依然可以看到很多。中国这个国家，充满着矛盾。历史悠久，有不少英雄，高官，诗人，将军，演出历史的戏剧，但是他们的戏台就是中国的普通人，农民和工人的背后。但是谁注意到中国的老百姓？谁要关心无边的农田，看到残断的农舍？

                很多人觉得没有意思，但是我觉得是分析中国最基本的因素。

偶遇

我喜欢在北京闲逛，但我不是说不喜欢跟朋友们出去玩儿。我当然喜欢。但是，每次在城市自己走，常常会偶遇很有意思的情况。

上个星期三，我去参观了清华大学。我之前曾经拜读过朱自清先生的“荷塘月色”，他把清华大学的荷塘描写得淋漓尽致货活色生香。不过，他是在月光下欣赏荷塘的风景。我则是白天来到清华，太阳的光芒被空气污染所掩盖。但是，我且把污染看作一种大雾吧。明天，“大雾”有可能会消散，让阳光照耀荷花的美。不过，大雾的存在是坏事吗？我觉得真没有减少荷塘的优美。

我本来没有打算来清华。那天的功课很多，而且下午宿舍没有电，留在宿舍里学习不舒服。所以，我打算去参观北大，带着功课去校园找到宁静的地方坐下来，在那里做作业。到了北大的东门，才发现有很多保安，不让游客进去，说是现在有考试，周末才可以进去。也罢，我不去北大啦。我往北走，走到我没参观过的清华大学。

到了清华，我走到荷塘。荷塘附近有一片竹林，很宁静，没有人。好的，我就在那里读书吧。我坐在板凳上，打开我的课文，开始读，用蓝色的圆珠笔圈定我不认识的字，写下拼音和声调。竹子长得很高，在下面觉得自己真渺小。那么高的竹子，一定会年长我几岁，树根一定很深。

“你在读什么？”

是女人的嗓音。我转头看，有一位女生站在我的后面，在竹林中。她短短的头发，穿着黄色的衣服，皮肤有一点黑，好像是被夏天的太阳晒的。我告诉他：我是外国学生，正在学汉语，现在读蔡元培的演讲。

“你可以念一下，我要听。”

莫名其妙，我不认识她，但是她已经要考我念汉语的能力。不过，出于礼貌，我并未对他说“不”。心说，好的，不妨给她念，我有可能会学到一两件新的事。

我开始念：“五年前，严几道先生为本校校长时，余方付务教育部。。。”

“不是‘付’，是‘服’。二声”。

好的，“服”。我拿起笔来把声调写下来。

“你是左手啊？左手的人很聪明。”

用左手是一件好事，从来没有人告诉过我，甚至常常被看作一种毛病。

我继续读：“开学曾有所贡献与同校。诸君多自预科毕业而来，想必闻知。士别三日，刮目相见。。。”

“你知道那个成语是什么意思吗？是从三国来的，吴国的孙权。。。”他就给我讲述成语的背景，不过她说得太快了，有的地方我听不懂。

我们就那样继续着。我念课文，她改我的发音和声调的错误。有时候，她抓住我的笔和纸，给我写拼音，声调，英语的翻译。她比我年轻两三岁，但是她的态度像老师，我被当作十五岁的中学生。为什么她要那样做？

“我喜欢帮助别人。”

我有可能是被看作了外人，来他的学校，所以这是一种欢迎的方式。我真不知道。抑或她是真正的好人，真正的君子。

三十分钟以后，课文终于读完了，这三张纸充满了蓝色的墨水。然后她看到了课文后面的释义。“好的，念这个”。

我还要再念吗？我觉得有一点无奈，不能不念。这一部分确实没有文章那么难，所以我的错误比较少，读得较为流利，也更快一些。

我也开始对她产生好奇。这个女生到底是谁？他告诉我她是清华大学的学生，读的是理科。她普通话说得非常标准，像主播一样。“下课”以后，我要跟她多聊一些，要知道她从哪里来，要问她为什么对文学有那么深的了解。有可能我们可以继续联络，我也希望可以后日再回清华，跟她多谈话，加深了解。

不过，读完了最后一字，她就说，“没有了？好的，我走吧！”。我竹林中的老师就匆匆地离开了。我来不及问她。我觉得很吃惊，手足无措。来也匆匆，去也匆匆。

她到底是谁？好像从天上掉下来的，给我教课，然后无影无踪了。我们那半个小时有老师跟学生之间的关系，可是这个关系好似月光下的大雾，日一出就失踪了。我来北京作客，也是来清华大学作客。那个女生来欢迎我，给我最珍贵的礼物，就是知识，然后离开，我们永远不再见面。

有缘千里来相会，可是这缘分缺转瞬而逝。人跟人之间的关系是那么表面。不过，果真如此吗？我所收到的临别礼物，真有价格。

天色渐暗，快要七点了。谁知道，暮色下掩盖着什么秘密？清华的历史悠久，每个角落都有自己的故事。在荷塘的旁边，谁知道有多少教授跟他们的学生解释生活中最复杂的问题，有多少喝醉的朋友们望着月亮，又有多少爱人牵着手望着荷花？我的小故事已经变成了这些故事的一部分。虽然很小，但是历史难道不是由各种各样的小故事组成的吗？

如果我等到晚上，可以在月光下欣赏荷塘的风景，可是我应该回宿舍，所以就离开了那个地方。我独自走进来，独自走出去，就像当年徐志摩“不带走一片云彩”一样。

在北京

我现在在北京，我前六个星期呆在这个充满历史感的城市，还有两个星期。

我要把我的看法留在这个博客里。有的是中文，有的是英文。中文的是我所写的作文，就是为了中文课。英语的，是我给自己写的，用英语来写还比较方便，写得更快。有时间的话希望把它翻译过中文来，就是一种联系中文的方法！

Rocky Mountain High: Reflections on Yellowstone

“Now he walks in quiet solitude, the forests and the streams

Singing praise with every step he takes,

His sight has turned inside himself, to try and understand

The serenity of a clear blue mountain lake”

I love the wilderness. There is really nothing more amazing than just being in the great outdoors, looking at what nature has to offer. I am convinced that no artist’s canvas is able to best the beauty which nature has endowed.

The best parts about Yellowstone are not the main attractions. Magnificent as they are, Old Faithful and The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone are separated from their viewers by walls and fences and rightfully so, as they do need to be protected from the cold hands of humanity, which would otherwise fling rocks and trash into them as a silly game or try to “tame” them with dams of cold steel and cement.

No, the best experiences in this park come when you park your motor-vehicle by the side of the road and run into an open field, with the wind singing in your ears and the heavens opening up in front of you. You feel limitless, unbounded and, most importantly, free.

I can now say that I have wandered into a mountain valley, and that I have dipped my hand into the cold fresh water of a mountain creek. I love the feeling of being alone in an open field or a pine grove, where I feel there are no restrains on me and I can do whatever I want. The troubles of the world melt away, and I feel that my problems are small compared to the vastness of the lakes or the eternity of the mountains.

I realize that I feel most at ease when I walk alone in a great plain, or sit alone by a river bank, or wandering alone in a forest. While trekking through the plains in Yellowstone, I sometimes felt the uncanny urge to just leave my fellow travelers behind in the car and run for the hills, just run until I could run no longer, and then collapse and leave myself to the mercy of the elements and the spirits who almost definitely roam the mountains at night. Or while walking through a path through the pine trees, I felt the urge to forge on and on and on until I had lost everyone and everything, and give myself up to the ghosts who live among the trees.

Ultimately, I suppose that I’m a loner at heart.

Yellowstone was only the second place where I truly felt the feeling of the sublime.  I had felt that beautiful feeling once before; in Japan, when I opened a screen door overlooking a snowy pine grove. The total quiet, punctuated only by the drip-drip-drop of melting snow falling from the pine needles to the ground below, took me to a place which I had not been to since, until I arrived at Yellowstone. There were times in the park that I wanted to sing, run and cry at the sheer beauty of the landscape.

Night in Yellowstone is magical. The setting sun bathes the rivers and the mountains in a rainbow of colors. Then the moon rises and imparts a silvery-blue sheen on everything it touches.

There was one time during the darkest night when our car was in the middle of nowhere, and we stopped by the side of the road. We got out to look at the stars. The night sky was a deep-blue dome covering the earth, studded with stars which were placed there by the Gods to allow us earthly creatures to walk around by night. Even with one’s modern scientific knowledge of stars, planets and galaxies, while in the woods at night it makes more logical sense to cast all that aside and believe that there is indeed a dome which surrounds a flat earth, and give a prayer of thanks to the gods who were so kind as to place lights in the heavens for us mere mortals to make use of. I certainly did.

And perhaps if you wished on one of these magical creations, your wish would indeed come true. I certainly did. Childlike, perhaps. But isn’t it good to let the inner child out sometimes? While embedded in the social constraints of our offices and classrooms, the inner self is repressed, but when there is no one around to watch you, who cares what the neighbors think? Especially when the neighbors are bison and grizzly bears.

Another time, we were at the lower falls of the Yellowstone Grand Canyon. I took the time to observe the water and listen to its roar as it plunged into the cavern below. The purity and clarity of the river water has yet to be equaled by any human artist, Eastern or Western, from antiquity till now. The miniature pine trees which studded the rock-face of the mountains were more Zen than any Japanese garden designer could dream of attaining, not after a thousand years of tradition and a hundred years of training. No, no artistic creation which man has come up with has yet to equal the beauty of nature. I would suggest that all the artists of Paris and New York, with all their fancy dress and theories of life, love, existentialism and painting, should case their brushes aside for a week and camp out in the wilderness. The ones who the bears didn’t eat up should hopefully become enlightened, and finally learn some humility.

From the point of view of the Yellowstone River, you are nothing. The individual, with his career, education, unrequited loves and checkbook of ten million dollars, is not important. He could be cast screaming headfirst into a raging waterfall and perhaps it would cause a disturbance among his friends and family, but in the grand scheme of things, he only takes up a space of about 5 cubic feet, which is nothing compared with the magnificence of what surrounds him. Most of us work in offices and live in cramped apartments where we are constantly in interaction with other people, which makes us believe that we are the center of the universe. It takes a sudden shock, where man is flung out of his social networks, even for a day, for the individual to suddenly understand that he is not the be-all and end-all of existence.

Perhaps I am a romantic at heart; to my mind the New World remains untamed and relatively untouched by the hands of man, as compared to the Old World of Europe and Asia which, as the Chinese say, can be described as 沧海桑田. Despite the fact that Asia is “rising” and “reclaiming” it position in the world system, and despite the fact that China and India are building skyscrapers and parking lots and other architectural monstrosities at a rate unprecedented in world history, the Old World still feels tired, as if it has been weighed down by social conventions and outmoded traditions, and as if its soils have been ploughed through so many times that they do not have the wherewithall to produce so much as a peanut without a generous injection of chemical fertilizers. America is simple and straightforward; some laugh at the New World as being unrefined and crude, but is simplicity of civilization necessarily a bad thing?

The hustle-and-bustle and human artifice of New York and San Francisco is one side of America, where tech wizards and financial engineers create the economic architecture which keeps human society ticking. The quiet of the wilderness is another side of America; fresh, open and untouched, and which will be here long after we are all gone. I ought to visit it more.

Thoughts on the San Francisco Bay Area

Over Spring Break, I visited the San Francisco Bay Area for six days. I travelled rather extensively in the East Bay, through cities which are just a little off the beaten track (Oakland, anyone?); I also went through Palo Alto and the North Bay where I saw redwoods and went wine tasting. In San Francisco itself, I visited a kaleidoscope of places, including the Golden Gate Park, Union Square, Chinatown, Little Saigon, Civic Center, the Mission, the Castro, the Financial District, the North Bay, Fisherman's Wharf, Fort Mason, Japantown... the list goes on.

I was lucky that I had a local friend to show me around. The Bay Area is actually not the easiest of places to get around; BART, the train system, does not have a very extensive reach. My friend therefore took me around using the bus system; the family car helped a great deal too. He has a long history of community service in some of the more blighted areas of the Bay Area (actually, the most blighted) and he brought me through some of the neighborhoods where he volunteered, which in his words "had charm"; many places in the Bay Area look bright, pleasant and clean but are really quite nasty. I guess that I wanted to get a window into the social fabric of Bay Area society, and that is what I got from his tour of the region.

Over the course of my conversations with my friend, as well as our journeys through the good, the bad and the ugly of the Bay Area, we analyzed several aspects of the region’s society and culture.

The Bay Area has a very different feel from New York. New York (and the East Coast in general) has a solid, grounded feel, but the Bay Area has something mildly surreal around it, as if it is not quite settled. (I guess the same could be said of California as a whole). It is a real salad bowl; as someone once said, if you picked America up by Maine and gave it a shake, all the bits which are not nailed down would fall to California. As a result, California attracts all nature of people from across the United States and beyond, from hippies to tech-whizzes to professors to management consultants to strange people declaring that the world will end tomorrow. Their culture is not quite rooted in history, or even the present; it is ultimately based on a repudiation of the puritanical, hierarchically-driven East Coast culture, and to a certain extent cultures in other places in the world; almost an “anti-culture”.

Some less charitable people would say that Californian culture is not quite based in “reality”… but I think this is a bit too harsh. The world needs “laboratories” like this, where ideas and cultures mix and match on a grand scale, often yielding shiny new things that are snapped up by the rest of the world, such as the iPhone, iPad, the internet, Silicon Valley, the California sushi roll, Californian wine, Facebook, the organic food movement, Hollywood, and so on and so forth.

Californians therefore like the unlikely agglomeration of cultural influences, often throwing together things which do not quite make sense. They are real cultural vultures; if you don’t have to think about tradition, you don’t have to care too much if what you do makes “cultural sense” or not. Laotian tacos spring to mind. So does Jack London's cabin; the city of Oakland moved his former cabin from the Yukon to California, placing it in a grove of... palm trees. Well, it is California, and the odd mix of cultures and influences is something that can be termed "Californian culture". It's not quite "Middle American" culture; everything is flung together, with no one caring about the origins of their individual elements. Of course, that the Hispanic influence here is very strong. If you go to the right neighborhoods, you can find plenty of taquerias and small Mexican restaurants which serve really excellent food.

That brings me to another aspect of Bay Area culture; its cuisine. I was informed that Bay Area people place a premium on the quality of their food, and I can safely say that Bay Area food beats the East Coast in terms of both variety and quality. The national pastime is searching for good restaurants. It's an obsession that matches Singaporeans' and Malaysians' quest for good food, except that Bay Area people are also on a perpetual search for the best wine.

They really are spoiled for choice. The town of Berkeley, for example, has every cuisine you want (and probably some you don't!) compressed into two streets. I ate really good quality Indonesian food, complete with Ais Cendol, fifteen minutes from the University of California, Berkeley. You can get Thai, Indian, Laotian, Chinese, Mexican... you name it, they have it. Again, New York has all the same food, but they are spread out around the city, whereas Berkeley is really a food-lover's paradise. Again, Californians in the know know where to get the best tacos or ramen, and will brag about venturing into gang-controlled territory in order to sneak a bite of Manuel's special burritos.

Let's also not forget the natural beauty of the Bay Area. My friend took me through the East Bay Regional Parks, which are a set of hiking trails scattered throughout the Oakland-Berkeley hills. The views are stunning, and my friend literally lives five minutes away from one particular park! If you take the effort to get to the parks (and they take quite a lot of effort, often passing through the Bay Area flats) you will be richly rewarded. There are redwoods in the parks, which are not as commercialized as the Muir Woods. It really feels like you are away from it all when you are in the parks. Also, most of the time, the weather is perfect, like an air-conditioned room (however, when it does start raining it rains for days and days and days...)

As a result of the beautiful weather, great food and overall friendly nature of the people, Bay Area people are immensely passionate about their region. They all want to return one day. Apparently, most people who go away to university end up returning to the Bay Area to work; there's some strange addictive quality to the place. I admit that even I am somewhat pulled in by the region, to the extent I want to return, perhaps multiple times. I find that it is a region that is just as multi-layered and interesting as New York City, if you take the time to truly plumb its depths.

This all sounds like a slice of heaven on Earth, but no one really can have it all that good; there must be a flip side, that being that there is something that feels just a little “off” about the area. The Bay Area is ultimately a collection of disparate peoples who are thrown together and forced to live next to one another, whether they like it or not. They don’t really mix and merge; due to the easy availability of land, the rich float to the hills and the poor live in the "flats"; they self-segregate. This causes some very interesting political, economic and racial tensions, as the hills are mostly white and Asian while the flats are populated by Hispanics and African-Americans. A city like Oakland, for example, has some of the highest property values in the hills (as well as some of the most stunning views), which are uncomfortably perched right next to the crime-plagued flats. As a result of the rich and poor living uncomfortably side-by-side, I always detected something slightly unsettling about the Bay Area, lurking right beneath its clean, pleasant and sunny surface. If you're a tourist you wouldn’t really notice it, but if you looked carefully, there are many little things which catch your attention.

For example, in the richer neighborhoods, you see glass crystals mysteriously strewn on the ground. Those are the remnants of some thief smashing a car and running away with its valuables. San Francisco itself has a pleasant enough exterior, what with all the palm trees and abundant sunshine, but look carefully and you notice the homeless and the drug addicts hanging around on the street corners; the city has the highest concentration of homeless people per capita of any major city in the United States. My hostel was in a nice enough part of downtown, but I would not explore the area carelessly; you never know when you end up in the Tenderloin, a rather nasty part of town. The BART stations have announcements warning you to take care in quiet stairwells and instructing you how to guard against carjacking.

The strange thing is that the nasty neighborhoods don't actually look that bad. They are usually equally cheery, clean and sunny, until someone points out that you have taken a wrong turn into gang territory. I recall being taken around the innocuous-sounding region of Fruitvale, Oakland, which looked sunny and cheerful, with no litter on the streets and a newly-built shopping complex. Turns out that you really, really don’t want to go through that neighborhood by night… when talking to other Bay Area people, they sort of looked at us askance when we said that we had a good time in Fruitvale…

Often times, the richer denizens not only do not mix with their poorer neighbors, they actively ignore and deny them. The wealthy neighborhood of Pinole, for example, went as far as to secede from the city of Oakland. Meanwhile, the residents of Rockridge, Oakland, refuse to consider themselves part of Oakland even though they share the same facilities and government. Another observation is the MUNI buses; even though they are all run by the same company, the buses which serve Berkeley are clean and comfortable, while the ones which serve Oakland and Richmond look… like New York buses. This division between the hills and flats was apparent during the Great Firestorm of Oakland in the 1990s, which engulfed the richer Oakland Hills neighborhoods. However, due to poor communication with the fire departments in the flats, disaster relief was immensely slow. This caused a political firestorm (pun intended) and served to highlight the deep divisions which mark society in the Bay Area.

There's so much more I can say, but I'll leave it at that. I guess that the Hotel California verse "You can check out any time, but you can never leave" rings true. The Bay Area is mildly unsettling, surreal and not quite nailed down, but is still strangely addictive. It really does draw you in; after all, given its natural beauty and laid-back attitude, it really is a little slice of heaven on Earth, although you just have to get used to its slightly sinister side. Or maybe it’s the palm trees that do it for me…

And here are a couple of pictures which I think are quite emblematic of the Bay Area...