Tumen 5 - No Vons (Tumen, China; 11/2008)

The North Market was a one-stop-shop for everything from fresh fish and vegetables to fly swatters, school supplies, and tailoring services. It was one big open rectangle, with vendor spilling into vendor. Butcher tables and seafood tanks stood in the center while vegetables, grains, beans, and other dry goods flanked the outer walls. Behind those walls, there were small eateries for dumplings and noodles. And those stood alongside hidden, often unmanned shops.

It wasn't so much the eating and shopping that I enjoyed--I kind of just liked getting lost in a landscape that was so different from the sea of Del Tacos and supermarket chains in the LA burbs.

Does Anyone Else See Coral? (Barcelona, Spain; 2/2009)

Anyone?

Tumen 4 - Broken Bridges (Tumen, China; 10/2008)

The neat thing about Tumen is that it's right across the river from NK. If I remember my history correctly (and I may not), the Japanese built a number of bridges over the Tumen and Yalu rivers during their occupation of NE China (mid 1930s through the mid 1940s). Their primary purpose was to provide a quick route for the transportation of looted resources from China to Japan. Unfortunately/fortunately, these bridges were destroyed not too long after they were constructed: further south along the Yalu, some were bombed by the Americans during the Korean War in the early 1950s. Far up in the NE, in Tumen, the Japanese actually had to bomb their own bridges as a means of blockading Russian attack, after the onset of the Russo-Japanese conflict.

The broken bridge along the Tumen River was never reconstructed, for obvious reasons, and remains unusable to this day. The funny thing is that you really don't need it to get to the other side (or for the other-siders to come across to China)--the river is narrow and shallow and it freezes over during the winter. Today, it's just this odd artifact of Chinese / Japanese / NK history that serves no practical purpose. There hasn't been an effort to clean up the debris and the fallen parts. It's just...kinda there.

I feel like those in the area (at least the older Chinese) passively acknowledge it as part of a past reality that they can still recall. And I feel like they look upon the first-world expats and tourists who come to seek it out so eagerly (cameras in tow) with some degree of mirth and judging bemusement.

Tumen 3 - Nothing for Kids (Tumen, China; 10/2008)

There isn't much in Tumen for young people. You can walk around the entire town in under three hours and the local economy is fueled by the outside world--a mix of tourism and foreign currency sent home by overseas workers (this included many of my students' parents) in South Korea, Singapore, and sometimes the US.

There were a few businesses that catered to more affluent local youth however. The kids whose parents sent money home oftentimes spent it playing Starcraft at 24-hour internet pubs or drinking at the bars against school rules. The kids with no money worked for their tuition by cleaning the squatters in the dorms and mopping the floors.

Tumen 2 - Students (Tumen, China; 10/2008)

I was there for three months teaching English at a vocational school for Korean-Chinese students, ages 15-24. Most were from disadvantaged backgrounds or broken homes. Some were extremely bright, but just didn't have a chance at going to regular school. Others were bad kids who were forced back into the classroom by grandparents and relatives. They were all eager for attention in one way or another.

Tumen 1 - Landscape (Tumen, China; 10/2008)

Tumen is a small town in NE China. It's surrounded by farmland on three sides and North Korea on the fourth. Sometimes on clear days, you can see people walking around on the NK side--a farmer, a child, a soldier in arms. On most nights you see the steady, soft lights of the detention center downtown.

BLAST

I lost part of an entry earlier this evening when my laptop ran out of power.

Please enjoy this picture of my sister eating a burrito while I try to recover it.

I like good kids. (Seattle, WA; 4/2009)

I've been going through my pictures from the past couple of years (hence this blog) and found this one from a trip to Seattle I made just around a year ago. I was visiting one of my favorite families (from my short stint in China) with three of the sweetest, most innocent kids in the world.

It's strange how you feel like a different person with different people. I think I like myself better around them--I'm who I fancy myself to be on the best of good days. It helped that the kids were so endearing and joyful and that the parents were so admirable in many ways. It helped, too, that they reminded me that I'm not always tired and sarcastic.

There's life outside of marketing.

Hi, Zachary!