Anthropology and Uncertainty Principle

According to Wikipedia, anthropology “is the comprehensive study of human beings and of their interactions with each other and the environment.” We went to relatively remote areas of China in our summer 2009 study tour partly because the people there are very different than those we are familiar with. They are different in their ethnicity, their culture, their language, and their life style. And for anthropological study, the emphasis is the culture and life.

 

Uncertainty Principle is a principle in quantum physics. It states that certain pairs of quantity, such as velocity and location of an object, cannot both be measured precisely. Uncertainty Principle is usually only observable in tiny particles that we cannot see with the naked eye, such as electrons and photons.

 

Now these two concepts seem to live in different worlds. How could they relate to each other?

 

One interpretation of uncertainly principle, attributable to Heisenberg, is that the equipment one employs to measure an object unavoidably disturbs it. For example, if we want to measure the position of an electron, we need to shine some light on it. But light is made of particles called photons. Consequently, a photon that revealed the location of the electron would necessarily knock the electron off its course, making it impossible to know its velocity precisely.

 

Here we were, a group of more than a dozen people, following the lead of a real-world anthropologist, trying to be amateur anthropologists for a few days. The difficulty comes about in that we the observers are a large group, and our intrusion into the world of our objects of study was as the cannonball brought to that of the fly for which it was intended. In other words, we could not simply quietly observe the world as it evolved, but instead we brought unintended changes to the world we meant to observe, simply because we had such a formidable presence. People in turn observed us, and their state of being was changed, even though we intended to observe unobtrusively.

 

Take the example of this picture, which you might have seen in an earlier post. A De’ang boy was pushing about an automobile tire in the mud, wearing a pair of slippers. He was full of energy and enthusiasm, with the tire bringing him as much enjoyment as a new video game brings to a similar aged boy in New York.

 

The picture changes considerably if we zoom out in our minds’ eye, both in time and in place. Then we would see a much different picture. With much noise and enthusiasm, the boy was first heard, then seen, coming down the muddy slope. Kalliopi, another member of our group, and I were fortuitously there to observe this marvelous moment. But unfortunately, our cameras were not ready. We nevertheless aimed our cameras at the boy, hoping that he would keep on playing the trick, at least for one more time. We did not verbally transmit our wish, of course (beside our intent to only observe, we also don’t speak the language). Now a women nearby, possibly the boy’s mother, observed us and asked the boy to do it again. The boy obviously was tired, but obliged the women (and indirectly, us). Hence our picture at the beginning.

 

Now I understand why anthropology is usually done by a single researcher. That is the only way that the target group is not overwhelmed by external disturbance. To further remove the curiosity factor, the research is better served when the researcher lives with the target group for a while, so that s/he becomes a part of the natural landscape. While the number of cameras at the ready is reduced, the human interaction observed is less disturbed, and the overall quality of research is much improved.

 

So in the end, we were not very successful in learning about the natural state of the Chinese minority ethnicities. Prof. Ruf was quite disheartened. But I am not too distraught. In my analysis, we couldn’t have apprenticed anthropology like that. On the other hand, we did learn a lot more about Chinese minority ethnicities than if we joined a plain tourist group. And if I really wanted to do anthropology, now I know the price I need to pay.

WMD, Non-Believers, and Power of Words 语言的力量

During our last trip to China, we visited many regions predominately populated with people of minority ethnicities (minorities), and saw their languages used (or not). We also met with some unconventional usages of Chinese and English.
在我们今年夏天的中国行中,我们去了很多少数民族地区,看见很多少数民族的语言应用实例。我们也看见一些不寻常的中文、英文的应用。


Seen in the restroom of a restaurant in DuJiangYan.

在都江堰的一个餐馆所见。WMD在英语里通常是“大规模杀伤性武器”的字头。


 

Seen in a restaurant in Xining. Rough translation of the Chinese version: "Our Lord! Pray don’t punish us, were we to forget or err. Pray don’t burden us, as you burdened the ancient people. Our Lord! Pray don’t task us with what we couldn’t accomplish. Pray forgive us; pray pardon us; pray pity us. You are our protector; pray help us, so as to confront those who do not believe [in Islam]." (Emphasis added.) Those are pretty strong, fighting words. I guess freedom of expression (or of religion) is sometimes more abundant than we would have thought.
我们在西宁的一个餐馆所见。看来中国还是很有一些言论和宗教自由的。


 

Some humorous signs seen in the hotel shown below. We don’t know if the humor is intended. The first is a sign in the bathroom, warning about a possible slippery floor. The second is over a flight of stairs, warning about a low beam above.
这两个警告是在下面的旅店所见。第一个是在客房厕所内,其英文提示是“小心滑坡”。第二个是在楼梯上,其英文提示也有些问题,但不好翻译。


 

Our hotel in Lijiang, Yunnan. According to the Dongba (a scholar in the Naxi minority language and culture) shown below, the Naxi language hotel name (second line) is written with "right sound, but wrong characters."
我们在丽江的旅店。据下面的东巴(纳西学者、长老)讲,它的东巴文名字“音是对的,字是错的”。

A Dongba we met in Lijiang. The newspaper he was reading is in Chinese. Almost all social function is carried out in Chinese here. Dongba’s are only found in stationary stores, such as the one shown in this picture.
我们在丽江见到的一个东巴。他读的报纸是汉字的,当地日常用的是汉文。东巴只是在当地的纸店里才能找到。


 


Winery in Mu’s residence, the palace of the local administrator. Even though the Mu family is of Naxi minority, as is most of the local populace at the time, the sign is written in Chinese only, with no Dongba ideograms. Mu’s family strongly believe that the knowledge of Chinese language is an important tool to bring prosperity to the region and people.
木府酒坊的照片只用汉字,不用东巴文,而木家和当地大多数居民都是纳西族。木氏土司掌当地行政权和军权二百多年,他们觉得汉语、汉字能带来繁荣。


 

Dr. He (no relation), a Naxi medicine man famous for his cures for cancer. Here he’s showing off some of the newspaper articles about him published in western media. Inside the house there are more collections like this, which he liked to show his visitors as well. Although he speaks Chinese perfectly, he prefers to use his not-so-perfect English.
和士秀是世界闻名的纳西医生(但是当地人却很少光顾),专治癌症。这里他在给我们看国外报道他的文章剪报。他房子内还有很多这样的剪报,他也津津乐道地一一给我们看过、念过。他的汉语很好,但是更愿意用不那么好的英语跟我们对话。


 

House of AI Siqi, Mao Zedong (Mao Tse Tung)’s philosophical adviser. Why would a revolutionary need a philosophical adviser? Because he wants his words weighted with the persuasion of a philosophy.
毛泽东的哲学顾问艾思奇的故居。“毛泽东思想”的形成和艾思奇很有关系。


 


"Their ultimate sacrifices is forever." Dedication to the Nationalists (Guomindang) died during the war to recover Tengchong, by Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai Shek). It is rare to see Jiang’s handwriting in mainland China. But here in the
Cemetery of the National Heroes for the Tengchong recovery battle, it’s only proper to have the highest dedication from Jiang, who was the head of the Nationalist government.
蒋介石手迹。这在大陆是很难见到的。但是在纪念腾冲收复的国殇墓园,有当时国民政府领袖蒋介石的题字才最得体。


 

"Righteousness of Heaven and Earth." Dedication to the Nationalists died during the war to recover Tengchong. The character for "Earth" is left intentionally incomplete, to signify that at the time parts of China were still under Japanese control.
“天地正气”的“地”字少一笔,表示当时国土尚未恢复完整。

China, the not so beautiful

Maybe it’s inevitable, that over a long trip some unpleasantness is bound to occur. During this long trip of a few weeks, we got a few encounters that we’d rather forget.

The one that almost jeopardized the whole trip happened in Yunnan. There we had this tour bus driver that was a little discordant with our tour guide from the first minutes. Eventually, the two got into such locked positions against each other that the bus driver asked our group to either get off his bus all together, or at the least jettison our tour guide. Through heroic intervention by the two professors, the bus finally moved on, until our tour guide was able to locate a different driver for the rest of our journey, but not before the disconnection between the two caused a local guide to be missed for some 100 kilometers. And the conflict caused reverberations long after we parted ways. Up to the point when the tour ended, our tour guide was still fighting to get a part of the prepaid bus fare refunded to her.


Our bus driver argues forcefully for the removal of our tour guide.

A second unpleasant encounter happened when our family temporarily left the university group to travel on our own, in and around the city of Chengdu. Our tour package includes cost of meals, but the food was deemed below acceptable levels by our local guide, Little Peng, who was very intent on improving it—even though we didn’t ever complain about it. So when we were on our way to Leshan to see the Giant Buddha, she let the driver take us to a restaurant which swindled us into a 1000 Yuan (about $150) fish. Through a lot of struggle we talked it down to about half price, but the experience was painful.

A third incidence happened during a terrible downpour. Agnes’ umbrella was practically destroyed by the wind, and she needed an umbrella right then and there. After she agreed on the price of 20 Yuan for two umbrellas, the seller woman took the 20 Yuan and gave her only one umbrella! Even the other vendors nearby were upset by this injustice, and voiced their indignation, the swindler would not budge. Because of the terrible weather, and being alone and away from the group, Agnes had no option but to accept the deal as it was forcibly revised. “It’s not about the money! It’s the total lack of integrity, which gave me the feeling as if I just swallowed a dead fly!” Agnes concluded when she related the story to me later.

Although we’ve run into trouble before during our trips, the number we run into in China is above average. This could be related to the length of this trip, and could also be related to the lower economical condition the people live in. Fortunately for us, these were but some small blemishes in our otherwise great travel experience, and we are not deterred.

China the Beautiful 美丽中国

Here are some of the most beautiful scenes we observed during our trip last summer.
这里是一些我们暑假在中国看见的最美的景致。

rape flowersA couple of Tibetan women sitting by rape flowers, their faces covered up to avoid damages from the intense sunshine at the Qinghai plateau. The waters of Qinghai Lake can be seen in the background.
两个女人坐在油菜田边,她们的脸都蒙着布,以防青海高原上的强烈的紫外线的伤害。油菜田的后面是青海湖。

A temple built on the side of a steep mountain, near Xining.
在西宁附近的一个寺庙,很像河南的悬空寺。

River of Yellow Water, near Xining.
黄水河。

A pond in Heshun, near Tengchong, Yunnan.
宁静的池塘。云南和顺。

Snow Dragon MountainPerformance in front of Snow dragon Mountain, directed by the famous movie director Zhang Yimou.
以玉龙雪山为背景,张艺谋导演的《印象·丽江》气势浩大。


More photos in a SlideShow.
更多的像片。

China: New and Old

News reports and the extravagant 2008 Summer Olympics could give people the impression that China is this up-and-coming industrialized country. Maybe in a few large cities things have modernized, but in places, especially in rural areas, people can be living in abject poverty. We didn’t have the opportunity to get to really remote places, due to the size of our 26-seat (or more) tour bus. 
我们的26座旅游车到不了很偏远的地方,但是我们也看到一些很穷的村寨。

 

A Jingpo household with few belongings. Cardboard boxes and a very old desk are some of the main furnitures; clothes are stored in the upright cabinet with sheet plastic cover.
这三张照片都是同一个房间。这个景颇人家很贫穷,装东西都是用纸盒子。一个课桌很破旧,大衣柜是薄塑料皮包的。

Several bags in the corner of the bedroom were marked “Urea,” a fertilizer, but I suspect that there were reused bags containing food stables.

塑料袋上写着“尿素”,装的可能是粮食。

A boy, of DeAng minority, playing with a tire. It does not look like he has many alternative play toys.
一个德昂小孩在玩汽车轮胎。我想他可能没有很多可以玩的东西。

A young woman coming back home from a day’s farm work. You can see the container and chopsticks she used for lunch—not only was the lunch cold, it was not even covered.

一个德昂女人下工回家。她的手里拿着饭盆和筷子,大概中饭是在外面吃的冷饭——饭盆连盖子都没有。

An old lady sifting through garbage, looking for recyclable items. This was in a medium-sized city (Dali, Yunnan).
在云南大理,一个老太太在加油站的垃圾桶里寻找可以回收的东西。

Along the rural highway atop the Gaoligong mountain, a service station advertised its services on the wall: Restaurant, Hotel (note the rooms numbered 1 to 4), and vehicle repair.
我们的汽车在高黎贡山上的这个地方加水。左边照片里的是饭店,右边的是住宿。

Rooms in this hotel start from more than 1000 yuan ($150) a night, while a young man of Dai minority can “buy” (in the word of our local tour guide) a bride from Myanmar across the borer for 2000 yuan.
这个旅店的标准房价是一千多元一夜,而不远的边寨的傣族小伙子可以从缅甸那边用两千元“买”(我们的傣族导游的话)一个新娘。

Third Time’s a Charm? (Or how much blood for one test)

As I mentioned in an earlier entry, we were being charged hundreds of dollars for a blood test at the University’s Cancer Center. So we got our latest blood test done at an outside lab. Many trouble ensued. I called my oncologist’s office many times, but they did not get the results. The doctor’s visit was postponed by a week. Then still more phone calls were made to ensure that the report was there. Then on the day of my visit, the doctor looked at the report, and couldn’t make anything out of it!

As I also mentioned in the previous blog entry, the test for this cancer has not been standardized. Not only the format of the report from the outside lab different, the test was done with a different control gene. This made the test not comparable with the ones I had in the past. So the doctor asked me to get another blood test done, this time at the same Cancer Center Lab. It’s fortunate that we got a verbal commitment that my insurance coverage would be processed as in-network.

A week later, when I called the doctor’s office to get my blood test results, her secretary found out that there was none! Somehow, the test request was simply never input into the computer, and the blood sample they took did get analyzed at all! You’d think somebody would be asking questions about a blood sample that was drawn for no apparent reason, wouldn’t you?

Any way, a third blood sample was drawn for this doctor’s visit and I hope all will turn out well.

In the mean time, we got good news (sort of) from the University Hospital. 14 groups of physicians have signed multi-year contracts with the insurance company; out of these, 3 of them rescinded their termination with the insurance. The pathology group, which caused our decision to get the lab results from outside of the University, was in the process of doing so. Let’s hope that not too many patients’ health interest is hurt in the interim.

Upon receiving the notice, however, we got some new worries. My oncologist is not obviously in one of the 14 groups of physicians.

Traffic in China

The most excitement we got while in China was from a ride—not in an amusement park, but in a not-obviously-legal motorcycle taxi. This was in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province. We had a guide, a young lady named Little Peng; and together with our family of four, no regular taxi would take us. So we engaged this motorcycle taxi for a trip to the Panda Breeding Research Base.

Our motor-taxi and its driver.
The motorcycle taxi does not have much power, but it makes up the deficiency and more with its flexibility, or its driver’s flexible interpretation of the law. When the traffic was jammed, our motor-taxi dexterously switched between lanes for motorized vehicles and bikes, and sidewalks for pedestrians. When the traffic light turned red, our motor-taxi ignored the light or drove onto the crosswalk, side by side with pedestrians crossing the road. And when the jam became really bad, due to a fire at a building by the side of the road, we drove onto lanes and sidewalks on the other side of the road, or into small alleys. It is a hair-raising experience to see cars coming at you from all directions, but in the end, we all survived the rides with nary a scratch. As a matter of fact, since we (besides Agnes) liked it so much, and we practically had no other choice, we took the same motor-taxi back to downtown Chengdu.After a few weeks of staying on the road in China, I came to some appreciations to the intricacies of road practices. First, laws and rules are somewhat followed, but with generous latitude. Not considered set in stone, they are subject to on-the-situation interpretations. It’s not just the drivers that bend the laws to suit, the police and road maintenance crews also assumed as much—when there are traffic accidents or road repair works, no detours or temporary traffic control markers/personnel are set up; rather, the drivers themselves must work around the problems, and come up with workable alternatives.

Second, there are some implicit rules that everyone follows. One of these is that an act is likely acceptable if it does not stop the traffic outright. Another is that if you can get to a place first—be it the middle of an intersection or part of a lane for the on-coming traffic—you can assume you have the right of way.


Driving on the wrong side of the road, where there is only a partial lane due to a stopped vehicle.


In front of us, another motor-taxi, and a utility tricycle, crossing the busy traffic.

(The practice in Beijing has changed quite a bit in the last few years, and is now much less flexible than that described above. This might be a legacy of the 2008 Summer Olympics.)

Here is a set of pictures of scooter riders on a rainy day. Note the police cars in the background. What I failed to capture are people wearing construction hard-hats or combat helmets, but those were spotted on more than one occasion.

Count-down timers on traffic signals are something we wish we can have in the US. These are not universal in China, but can be seen in several cities.

As the Road Turns

More insurance coverage twists and turns

 

For a while it looked like we were getting nowhere. A few representatives from our insurance company said there was nothing they could do. A representative for the University Hospital exhausted all her attempts to help us. And a representative for the pathologists group informed us that regulations do not allow them to give us any breaks. There was still one more representative for the Hospital who did not completely give up, but his effort to get a higher-level involvement from the insurance company did not successfully connect us.

 

Then, the representative from the pathologists group called. It turned out his group could reprocess the claims through the insurance company in a way that would not require us to pay. The reasons he gave, relating to the insurance company hated the fact that they would end up paying more for the same treatments when their group went independent, and relating to the group of doctors should be considered providing services through the Hospital when the work is thus rendered, were somewhat opaque to us. I wonder whether the email I sent to a widely-followed blog the night before added some oblique push for a different resolution (I never got any follow up to the email).

 

In the mean time, I’ve already had my latest blood test done in an outside lab. The upside is that I’m pretty sure (now how much is that worth?) that I would not be asked to pay more than a predetermined co-pay. The downsides are a few.

 

First, when I went to get my blood drawn, the person could not understand the prescription. Not that it is hard to read, I assure you, as it is written in one of the neatest handwritings I’ve seen. It’s the acronym of the oncogene that is too hard to decipher, even after a phone call to someone she trusts. I was glad that I know this stuff, and explained to her the gist of BCR-ABL in two minutes. Equipped with the info about chromosome 9-22 translocation, the code for the blood test was eventually found, after another phone call.

 

Then, one day before my scheduled visit to see my oncologist earlier this week, we found that the test results were not yet available. The visit was then rescheduled to a week later, for the 16th of September.

 

Unfortunately, serendipity has it that September 16th is a day on the other side of a virtual line in the sand along the river of time, where we could get into insurance coverage trouble yet again in another saga.

 

A couple of months ago, our insurance company sent us a letter notifying us that its contract with the University Hospital was likely to lapse, and any treatment we get from the hospital may be billed as out-of-network. When we called, the university’s representative was very adamant: they strongly believed that the contract would be renewed in time, and they believe the insurance company sent the letters solely to cause fear and uncertainty in the community, and to apply extra pressure to the contract negotiation process.

 

Alas, the contract was not renewed in time, and when we called before my previously scheduled doctor’s visit, we were told by the hospital that a temporary contract was in force for the time being, until September 15th.

 

So now we are uncertain on two fronts: we don’t know whether the doctor will be getting the correct test results in time, and we don’t know if we see our doctor on the 16th our visit will be covered by the insurance plan.

 

Would anything in the healthcare reform plans being discussed help our situation?


Solar Energy in China

Compared with US/Europe, China is using much less energy (per capita). For example, all the super-highways we’ve traveled on are not lit; more lights in buildings are fluorescent than in the US; and in Xining, the capital of Qinghai province, most shops by our hotel turn off their lights and shutter their doors by 5pm. And a lot of traffic is still by foot or bicycle.

Of the renewable energy uses, I saw mostly hydro- and solar ones; and between these, solar is the most popular by far. Of the solar energy usages, the most prevalent is hot-water panels. Compared to photo-electric technologies favored in the west, solar-heating is definitely low-tech and low-budget, but it is very mature, and scales well.

View from our hotel room in Kunming. All those panels are for hot water, not electricity.
我们在昆明的旅店窗外。这里的太阳能光板都是加热水的,而不是发电的。


Solar-electric energy powers this SOS call box by the side of super-highway GZ65, near Kunming.
在昆明附近的高速公路边,太阳能给紧急电话供电。


Hot-water panel on a Dai family’s bath-house.
在一个傣族的洗澡间房顶上也装了太阳能热水器。


A solar stove seen from the train near LongXi, GanSu province. Although it’s not easy to tell it apart from a satellite dish from the picture — one distinctive feature is the lack of a LNBF (a blob-looking thingy) near its focus, in real life it has a very distinct silvery shine.
在陇西附近,一个太阳能灶。虽然从照片上看像是个卫星天线,它比卫星天线更亮,而且在焦点附近没有卫星信号的放大器。

How’s China Today — First Impressions

After a few years, and with an Olympic Games in between, Beijing has changed a lot. My first impressions include the many new roads, especially the super-highways connecting the Capital Airport and the city of Beijing. It’s very confusing. But it’s only to us mere mortals. My cousin, who went to the airport to pick us up, has a very chatty GPS, which not only knows all the roads, but also all the different speed limits on different sections of roads, as well as toll plazas. It would say things like: "You have exceeded the speed limit," or "You’ve just entered ChaoYang district," only in Chinese. Another thing I notice is that compared with a few years ago, Beijing has a lot more foreign tourists.

Swine Flu
We are considered to be from a pandemic area, and are very much guarded against. The airport has a couple of extra temperature checking stages; but because they employ very sophisticated infrared devices, we didn’t get slowed down much. And the border control people are all wearing masks. We hear that a few weeks ago the flight attendants wore masks too, but they didn’t this time. I guess they felt pretty hopeless, and resigned their health status to Fate herself.

Once we arrived, we got phone calls from a local hospital, and from a local organization (I didn’t quite figure this out), about our health status. An agent working for a disease control center came over on a motorcycle, just to give us a notice saying we’d better stay home for 7 days, and avoid in general but keep record of all contacts, especially of those on our airplane. And all this in the first full day we’re here. This is serious stuff!

Bank
I had to get some money from a bank. But unlike most tourists, I was able to wait to do it on the day after I arrived. I went to a local Bank of China branch. There were much confusion, as foreign exchange service is not conducted often in this branch. I have my choice of undesirable ways to make the exchange: I can use an ATM card inside and get charged a large amount (several percent); I can use the ATM outside but can only get a small amount (less than US$400) for each transaction; or I can get a check deposited but it’d take about 40 business days for the money to show up. Fortunately I could write the check to my parents, and can start to use their RMB without waiting for the resultant cash from the check.

Do you see the bullet-proof glass, and the speakers mounted on them to transmit the voice of the cashiers? You can imagine the amount of private banking information broadcast to everyone present. ("Did you say you wanted to take out 6000 Yuan from your savings account?") It’s amazing.