America is difficult, English is difficult

"You're from America? Life there is really difficult, isn't it?" An unemployed, single man from Fujian asked me this today in Milan.

I was almost relieved to hear someone say this.

I've been outside of the United States for nearly six months now -- the midpoint of my journey -- and up until today, no one from any of the Chinese communities seemed aware of the many hardships that confront immigrants in the U.S.

To many people, the U.S. is Disneyworld; even some Italians said they were surprised how different New York City is compared to how it is portrayed in Sex and the City.

Is it the influence of American culture and media? Maybe: one bored day in Sao Paulo I spent with a first-generation Chinese family watching American music videos from Mariah Carey to 50 cent, and then watched the first two "High School Musical" movies. Mind you, I had never seen any of the above, and considered the day well spent if for purely ethnographic purposes. One of the kids later told me that when he was in China, Michael Jackson was hugely popular, and he had bought a couple music videos of "Thriller" and "Billie Jean" when he first got to Brazil. American movies, television shows, music, have an enormous influence everywhere in the world, which undoubtedly help create a certain idea of America.

To be clear, I'm not saying that the "American Dream" doesn't exist. I know it does -- at least for a lucky few -- like my family. But it is this fantasy that the U.S. is paradise that is especially striking. Perhaps Europe may seem less appealing to Chinese immigrants, since Europe has only recently become an immigrant destination. Maybe, for poor Chinese immigrants, America's culture of individualism and capitalism are more promising than Western Europe's more socialist-leaning tendencies. I don't know.

Oh, and about English being hard: I got asked a bunch of English grammar questions by a first-generation Chinese immigrant, who at age sixteen, has only been in Italy for three years. The questions were mostly about distinguishing prepositions such as on/above, on/over, through/across, etc. As a native speaker of English I know instinctively what is right and what is wrong, but found it nearly impossible to explain these differences. I took comfort in the fact that the textbook was in Italian and I was trying to explain it in Chinese. But nevertheless, it made me remember how hard teaching English is. I did it for a few months when I was eighteen, in Nicaragua, and ffter that informative experience, I decided I could never do it again.
Kudos to my friends teaching English as a second language!

"Who's killing all the Chinese people?"

"Who's killing all the Chinese people?"


This isn't the question you want to hear asked of you, especially when you're researching the local Chinese community.

Yet after explaining my project at a bar in Sao Paulo, I was asked this very question. Not a good sign, eh?

I don't know the answer to this question, but it's a fascinating subject. Four Chinese merchants have been murdered in the past two months, and forty to fifty have been robbed. The circumstances are usually more or less the same: someone breaks into an apartment, usually at night, perhaps knowing who is living there, takes the cash. Whether or not violence follows seems completely unpredictable. Apparently it is well known here that many Chinese immigrants keep their money (in cash) at home, rather than putting it in a bank. Many carry loads of cash around themselves in the first place. I've heard some people claim that this is a cultural difference, but it may also be a very practical thing -- many immigrants here are illegal, and therefore don't open any sort of account.

I happened to stumble upon the crime scene of the last murder, which didn't fit this profile at all. A Fujianese man was beaten to death in the early morning of a Saturday, inside of store on a quiet street in Pari, a commercial district. He was just a worker, and not the owner -- and given the strangeness of the crime -- the murder seemed completely random. Other Chinese merchants around the area knew about the murder, but didn't know him nor any details. One Taiwanese family two streets down was good friends with him, and said he was a very... "straight" and "abiding" man (terrible translations, sorry). Apparently he used to live in Ciudad del Este with the Taiwanese family, and were regular churchgoers in Sao Paulo.

Violence is a strange thing, which has unfortunately touched the heart of the Chinese community here in Sao Paulo.

Sao Paulo

For the record, I am in Sao Paulo now. I expected I might escape the chaotic streets of Ciudad del Este in coming to this city, but I was sorely mistaken. The street "March 25," a major commercial street in Sao Paulo (and where many Chinese immigrants set up shop), is strangely reminscent of Ciudad del Este. Heck, there's even a Galeria Page, even bigger and badder than the one in Ciudad del Este. Tons of people selling all sorts of things on the street. I suppose one difference is that there are lots of police here, and every time a police car rolls around, everyone scrams and picks up all their stuff, and sets it right back down on the ground when the police car drives away.

Sao Paulo is a concrete jungle. I have never seen anything like it. Photos to come.

In the throat of the devil

"Galeria Page" is a shopping mall anonymously tucked inside one of many busy streets in the commercial center of Ciudad del Este, Paraguay. Although Galeria Page is busy with commercial activity all day, it is a hidden cove obscured by a barrage of signs advertising Adidas footwear, electronics, fishing gear, and batteries. All told, Galeria Page appears to be one of many shopping centers in Ciudad del Este, with little to offer.





But Galeria Page is special. The owner of Galeria Page is a member of the Lebanese terrorist organization Hezbollah, who apparently uses the Galeria as a front for all kinds of illicit activities -- such as money laundering, trafficking, and organizing of terrorist activities.

I knew that Hezbollah (and the Chinese mafia) had found Ciudad del Este to be a friendly place for their evil operations, but all the Chinese I talked to said the mafia had come and gone with the fortunes of this frontier town. That is to say, since business started souring about five years ago, the mafia has seemed to have left the area. But I had no idea where Hezbollah was -- nor did I particularly have any good way of asking. Despite living in the Lebanese part of town (Two shawarma and hookah cafes, "Edificio Lebanon" a block from me, as well streets "Mohammad Hussein Taiyen" and "Rahal Canan"), the last thing I was going to do was ask my neighbors if and where Hezbollah was in Ciudad del Este.

Anyways, I started talking with two Brasilians who worked in the area, and they brought up Galeria Page as the center for Hezbollah activity. Of course, I had to pay a visit -- it wouldn't exactly be guarded by terrorists armed with AK-47s (although a guard or two with shotguns is standard in CDE) -- as I learned in Ciudad del Este, organized violence is bad for business, and worse yet, draws official attention to the city. Better to keep things discreet and under the table.



I tried to locate the Galeria Page a few times, but even after asking around for it, I was unable to find it. It was simply far too anonymous for me to find by myself; few people could recall what street it was on, and if they did, there were far too many signs to be able to distinguish it.

Finally, I found out that Mr. Huang, a major figure in the Taiwanese community in Ciudad del Este, happens to own a business very near Galeria Page. I asked him what he thought about his neighbors, simply saying that there were suspicions they were involved in "bad activities." He simply said, "I don't know, I don't want to know. I've been here for over twenty years, and I've done perfectly fine here."

Perfectly fine indeed. I visited his house, located in a private neighborhood called the "Parana Country Club," where Ciudad del Este's wealthy own sprawling mansions within a guarded, gated community. I'm hesitant to post photos here, but Mr. Huang's place (not exactly a house, nor a mansion, but a giant building) was so big, that at first I couldn't believe it was actually a house. Perhaps even more ostentatious was the house he built for when his "mother or guests come visit," as big as the mansions in Concord, Massachusetts. I think there must be some sort of contest going in the Parana Country Club, because even though the house was enormous, most of it seemed empty and unfurnished. But like most things Chinese, it is perhaps all about "saving face," or perhaps showing it off, of putting on a beautiful facade and showing off your success, especially in a commercial city like Ciudad del Este.

But now I'm getting off topic. I believe my only interaction with my Hezbollah hosts was when I asked permission to photograph their hookahs (permission denied), but being the intrepid photographer that I am, I took a photo, no, TWO photos anyway! Eventually the angry/suspicious stares won over, however.






In other news, "The Devil's Throat" (Garganta del diablo) is the most stunning area of Iguazu Falls, the part that lies on the Brazilian/Argentine border. Funny how accurate it seems to describe some of the illicit activity around here. Here are some photos of the Devil's Throat, which are not stolen from Google images, taken with my very own camera, straight from inside the throat of the devil.




Brasilian webpage with a list of accused Hezbollah members in the Tri-border area.


BBC page (unfortunately, in Portuguese... can't seem to search in English here in Brazil!) on the same topic.

Brazil... photography... China... gender...

I normally don't post about photography-related things, but since I spend a lot of time taking photos and looking at photos, I'm going to make an exception now for a really cool photography exhibition. French photographer JR , has an awesome public photography exhibition in Rio de Janiero on women. Yes, he's too cool to have a real name, apparently he's an "underground" photographer that first gained fame (or notoriety?) through his illegal exhibition of mural-sized photos in public spaces; later, his stuff became recognized and received positive reviews. The exhibition displays blown up portraits of women in Brazil's notorious favelas -- slums or shantytowns within Brazil's big cities such as Rio and Sao Paulo. Favelas are infamous for their high murder rates, drugs, and poverty.

Although I haven't seen any of JR's stuff in person, it is really impressive; it is socially-conscious photography that is made even more impressive by its public, mural-sized exhibition. The first stuff that I saw was a series of portraits that he took following last year's riots in Paris's banlieues, which were then exhibited as large mural-sized photographs around Paris. You can see an awesome short film on the project, I highly recommend viewing it on youtube here:
The 28 millimeter project

I hope the exhibit might still be up in Rio when I make it to Brazil. You can see photos of the exhibit here at the photography website Lensculture.

Here's a photo of the favela at night:
On gender

On a similar note, I first became fascinated with gender equality in college in my development-related classes, and reading about the Nobel Prize-winning Grameen bank's microlending to Bangladeshi women. The Grameen bank famously found that women were much better clients for loans -- they used money more wisely, and also contributed to many beneficial externalities (better child health, education, etc...).


A woman's position in society is not only a good index of a country's economic development, but also a good index of it's social development as well. My own thesis work also examined gender equality initiatives under China's communist government, which found a positive relationship between political emphasis on gender equality and improved child health. But I was also disturbed by the phenomenon of China's missing women: the phenomenon that since economic reforms began in 1979, the sex ratio of China's population has become far more biased toward males. For instance, in most normal populations the sex ratio at birth is about 105 to 107 male births for every female births. In China this has increased to about 116 male births, and this bias is pervasive in other cohorts as well.

In fact, many Asian and Muslim countries have this problem, including economically developed countries such as Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. The most basic explanation is that in these countries male children are more valued than female children, and hence practices such as sex-selective abortion, female infanticide, and selective neglect has lead to imbalanced sex ratios within these societies. Strangely, Latin America doesn't seem to have the problem of sex ratio, despite being an infamously "macho" society. I would hypothesize that this might be partially due to the cultural and religious abhorrence toward abortion; of course, this doesn't explain everything. Anyways, this is a subject that I have found fascinating, and I still do not fully understand the underlying reasons.

Another phenomenon is that of China's extraordinary rate of female suicides: in most countries, the male to female suicide rate is about 4:1, in China, it is 1:1. What is driving China's women to commit suicide at such an alarming rate? Are the pressures China's women (or for that matter, East Asian women) face similar to those among Chinese women abroad?

Consider this an introduction to a future post about my observations on gender within Paraguay's Chinese community.

A few points about the Paraguayan Taiwanese

Earlier I wrote that most of the Taiwanese immigrants here came in the 1949 immigration, but that seems to be less true than I originally thought. In fact, many of the people I've talked to have said that their family has been in Taiwan for hundreds of years, part of an earlier Han-Chinese migration to the island.

One family said that many of the first Taiwanese immigrants in the 1970s left Taiwan not only because of poor economic conditions, but also because of political reasons as well. It may seem hard to believe now, but the "East Asian tigers" (Taiwan, S. Korea, Singapore, and Hong Kong) were very poor countries even in the late 1960s. I can't remember the exact ranking, but I remember in my East Asian and Latin American Development class the GDP ranking of Taiwan and South Korea was in the ballpark of countries like Congo and Sudan, which they have obviously surpassed. Suffice it to say, only thirty or forty years ago, these were poor countries.
Furthermore, only in the past thirty-something years has Taiwan (as well as a slew of other developing countries, such as S. Korea, Brazil, South Africa... and notably NOT mainland China) moved towards a functioning democracy. Apparently the Kuomintang, (KMT) the ruling party in Taiwan after 1949, suppressed any kind of opposing political activity for its first few decades in Taiwan. As a result, many immigrants came to South America. That same family that came to Paraguay for political reasons told me that the father went panning for gold in the Brazilian Amazon during the late 1970s and early 1980s, getting malaria a remarkable eighteen times!

One final remark about Paraguayan-Taiwanese relations: they exist (diplomatically, that is). Taiwan, or more correctly, the "Republic of China," is only recognized by 23 countries, mostly countries you haven't heard of. Surprisingly, most are in the Americas, mostly Central American countries (Nicaragua, Panama, Honduras...), and little Caribbean islands. Paraguay is the only country in South America that recognizes Taiwan.

Why so few? Well, the People's Republic of China, aka mainland Communist China, makes cutting relations with Taiwan a prerequisite for diplomatic relations. Most countries, such as the US and all of Europe (sans the Vatican City, which still recognizes Taiwan), have jumped ship and joined the PRC sometime in the 1970s or 1980s... Taiwan also lost its seat in the UN then.

So why recognize Taiwan? For small, poor countries -- which describes every country (excepting the economic powerhouse, Vatican City) with diplomatic relations with Taiwan -- Taiwan can offer lots of aid and economic opportunity. While the PRC is obviously an economic powerhouse, Taiwan is perhaps more willing to engage in "aid-diplomacy," exchanging lots of cash and economic aid in exchange for diplomatic recognition. Hospitals are built. Public facilities constructed. Money injected into the economy. Let us not forget, either, that Taiwan is not excluded from the World Trade Organization: whereas the UN can function politically without Taiwan's participation, the world economy is far more dependent on Taiwan's participation. If anything is going to keep the current status quo and keep Taiwan afloat, it's Taiwan's economy.

Okee, one final anecdote. So the Lonely Planet guidebook alleges Paraguay is the most bribe-hungry country outside of Africa. I haven't seen much police around here, and saw my first police car earlier this week -- which had decals all over it reading "donated by the Republic of China."

Why Ciudad del Este?

I've been told in both Peru and Paraguay, "Wherever there is money you can find Chinese people." That seems to be a pretty big generalization, but it might be worth trying to explain why Chinese people have flocked to the City of the East, which in fact feels like the wild, wild West. Ciudad del Este is a border town, along the tri-border area of Argentina and Brazil.
Paraguay, as a land-locked country, has heavily depended on Argentina and Brazil for international trade. Without any port cities, Paraguay was basically forced to set up frontier trading towns along the border with Argentina and Brazil.

With such a dependence on foreign trade, it's no surprise that Paraguay should have relatively open international economy. Paraguay industries are hardly export-ready, and Paraguay must thus depend on the international market for its wealth.

Thanks to the historically trade-phobic economic policies of Brazil and Argentina, however, Paraguay capitalized on the high tariffs rates of Brazil and Argentina and began importing stuff from Asia and exporting it to its neighbors.

That's where Ciudad del Este comes in. Ciudad del Este is basically one giant duty-free shop, where Brazilian and Argentine traders come and buy up all kinds of stuff tax-free. Stuff gets exported, too, although somewhat under the table (or under the border). Although Argentine and Brazilian governments are well aware of the many illicit activities that have been undertaken in Ciudad del Este, it is nearly impossible to clamp down the border (think about how hard it has been to seal our border with Mexico).

"Ten years ago Ciudad del Este was a gold mine."

Ten years ago -- everyone seems in agreement -- was the golden age. Brazil still had many tariff peaks (i.e., high taxes on specific or groups of items), and basically anybody could come to Ciudad del Este, begin importing anything and everything from Asia, and make a handsome profit. The riches of Ciudad del Este reportedly even attracted the Chinese mafia, who got snuggly with sleeper cells of Hezbollah here (a side note: there's a substantial Lebanese population here, who people seem to have strong prejudices against).

After all, the Chinese people here are all merchants. They're here to make money. All of them own some sort of store or work in one, selling everything from clothes, food products, to electronics.

Now, however, everyone seems to agree that business is down. The mooncake seller told me that the mafia has since left and gone elsewhere -- Argentina and Brazil. I don't know the history of Brazilian economic policies, but it seems as if Brazil's recently liberalized economy has hurt business in Paraguay. Electronics are still a good business, but you can no longer simply buy from Asia and sell to Brazil. Now, Sao Paulo residents can buy most things in Sao Paulo for not much more or the same price as in Ciudad del Este. I suspect the same goes for Argentina, although trade with Brazil has been far stronger. All that seperates Brazil and Paraguay is a footbridge that can be crossed in about ten minutes by foot. This is an incredibly porous border, and I had to chase down customs on both sides in order to get my passport stamped.

Despite the famous corruption and illicit activities of Ciudad del Este, Paraguay's government simply can't afford to clamp down on the city. It relies on the chaos, on the crazy commercial center that is open from 4 am to 3 pm (Paraguay lags an hour behind Brazil and Argentina, and many people who work here in fact live in Brazil), on the laissez faire nature of this wild town.