Though I often looked for one, I finally had to admit that there could be no cure for Paris.
These are the opening words of Paula McClain’s novel, The Paris Wife. Told from the viewpoint of Ernest Hemingway’s first wife, Hadley, the book shares the story of the young couple as they dive into life in Jazz-Age Paris.
I’ve not read the book, but I’ve read the first page, on the back of the most recent issue of the travel magazine Afar (which, by the way, I purchased with frequent-flier miles). The page is part of an advertisement, displayed on a Kindle Paperwhite held by a tourist overlooking the iconic white and blue buildings of Santorini, Greece. The caption for the ad reads, “Perfect for Getaways.”
It seems that some Japanese travelers have the same view of Paris as Mrs. Hemingway: It’s a condition in need of a remedy.
Back in 2006, BBC published an oft-quoted story about a phenomenon called “Paris Syndrome.” According to the article, each year, a dozen or so Japanese tourists have a psychiatric breakdown of sorts upon visiting the French capital. First identified by Hiroaki Ota, a Japanese psychiatrist in France, the syndrome is brought about when the realities of Paris don’t match the visitors’ romanticized expectations. While some of the symptoms sound like culture shock, others, such as delusions and hallucinations, are more extreme.
While some deny the existence of an actual syndrome, BBC reports that the Japanese embassy in France has set us a 24-hour hotline to help deal with the situation.
Below is a short documentary from John Menick, Paris Syndrome(2010). It takes a more in-depth—and sometimes sceptical—look at the condition, including interviews with French psychiatric professionals. Besides Paris Syndrome, the video also touches on such topics as Stendhal Syndrome, psychiatric portraiture, and historical views of travel-related mental illnesses. It even looks at Mehran Karimi Nasseri, the inspiration for the movie The Terminal.
So . . . what is the cure for Paris? While some are searching for one, most see no need. The author Gertrude Stein, a friend of the Hemingways from their time in France, saw the City of Light as a place that nurtured her creativity. “America is my country,” she said, “and Paris is my hometown.”
There are more slaves in the world today than at any other time in history. In fact, estimated at 20-30 million, the current number of people enslaved in forced labor is well more than the 13.5 million people taken from Africa during the 350 years of the transatlantic slave trade.
The ballooning numbers of human trafficking is the subject of J. J. Gould’s article, “Slavery’s Global Comeback,” published in The Atlantic this past December. Gould not only covers the statistics but looks at the definitions and perceptions concerning slavery as well as abolitionist movements throughout history.
While, on the one hand, the numbers are worse than they’ve ever been, Gould also sees a reason for muted optimism: Because of the increase in the world’s overall population, the percentage of people currently enslaved is at an all-time low, and the $30-45 million generated by slavery annually is the smallest-ever portion of the global economy. This, along with a growing global intolerance for human trafficking, makes Gould wonder if the current situation is nearing a tipping point for a new abolition movement.
The Faces of Slavery Slavery takes many forms around the globe, and photographer Lisa Kristine has spent the past two years documenting them with her camera. Kristine first became aware of the scope of human trafficking when, at an exhibit, she met a representative of Free the Slaves. Since then, her subjects have included slaves in the brick kilns of Nepal and India who carry bricks on their heads for 16 to 17 hours every day; children hauling sheets of slate from quarries in the Himalayas; sex slaves in Kathmandu; families in Uttar Pradesh enslaved coloring silk in vats of toxic dye; an estimated 4,000 children forced into fishing on Lake Volta in Ghana; and people forced to pan for gold in water poisoned with mercury, as well as miners and those who crush the stones from the mines, looking for gold, also in Ghana.
You can see her photos and hear her stories in the following TEDtalk. She ends her presentation by showing photographs she took of slaves holding candles she had given them, symbolically “shining a light” on their tragic circumstances. She says,
They knew their image would be seen by you out in the world. I wanted them to know that we will be bearing witness to them. And that we will do whatever we can to help make a difference in their lives. I truly believe, if we can see one another as fellow human beings, then it becomes very difficult to tolerate atrocities like slavery.
Not Just “Over There”
For those of us in the West, we need to realize that forced labor is not a problem limited only to the rest of the world. As present-day abolitionists are quick to point out, while slavery is illegal all over the world, it is also present all over the world. The International Labour Organization estimates that there are 1.5 million people in forced labor in “Developed Economies” (including the United States) and the European Union.
The movie, I Am Slave, gives a glimpse of the kind of slavery that is hidden in plain sight in the West. Inspired by the real-life story of Mende Nazer, it tells of a girl, Malia, stolen from her home in Sudan and forced to work for a family in London. The deeply moving film is advertised as a thriller, but it is less thrilling than it is frightening—frightening for “Malia Al-Noor, daughter of Bah Al-Noor, champion wrestler” . . . in her tribe, a princess . . . in London, a slave—and frightening for us all, as well.
Produced by Altered Image Films, I Am Slave aired on Britain’s Channel 4 in 2010. It is available online in the UK at 4oDand can be rented for streaming at Netflix (viewer discretion, for “violence and some strong language”).
I nominate Dick Gordon to be America’s first Listener Laureate.
Gordon is host of “The Story,” an hour-long show broadcast on many public radio stations five days a week.
Everybody has a story to tell. Everybody. But it takes time to hear it. The longer we listen, the more we learn about peoples and groups and cultures. And the longer we listen, the more we learn about individuals who are unlike anyone else around them.
Gordon’s soothing voice has rounded edges, and his style is unhurried. His questions invite his guests to speak at their own pace. He allows them to meander a little, since the place they end up is often better than where the question was pointing. “The Story” isn’t hard news. While we do learn facts from listening in, we learn more about the people who are living out those facts.
According to Gordon’s page at the show’s website, the idea for “The Story” came from a train ride through the former Soviet Union, while he was working for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation:
On his way to interview a government official, Dick walked the train aisles and spoke to passengers. One by one, he heard their stories, and he realized that what they had to say was way more interesting and illuminating than any interview with any politician. It was a seed, and he tucked it away.
Born in Ontario, Gordon has had a reporting career that has taken him “from South Africa to India, and Moscow to Iraq,” and he often has guests who tell first-hand stories from their own experiences around the globe. A couple weeks ago, Gordon talked with Iraqi-born Azzam Alwash, who became a civil engineer in the US and has returned to Iraq to restore the marshlands along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, drained by Saddam Hussein to drive out the people who lived there. Earlier, he also talked with Sokeel Park, of the NGO Liberty, about how people in North Korea are using illegal cell phones to communicate beyond their borders and outside the reach of their totalitarian government.
But the interviews from April 23rd are the ones that caught my attention. They’re with people here in the US. These people aren’t movers and shakers on the world stage, and that’s what makes their time wtih Gordon so poignant.
The first is a conversation with Nita Gerik, the 88-year-old widow of the former chief of the volunteer fire department in West, Texas, site of the terrible explosion that killed 14. Gerik was planning to attend every funeral. Gordon talks with her son, Jim, as well. (West, Texas, Is Home)
Then there’s Damion Roberts, a firefighter and bagpipe player who was taking part in a ceremony at Baylor University honoring the 11 first responders who died in West. (Amazing Grace)
And then Gordon interviewed Dotan Negrin, who travels the country—and to places as far away as Panama—with his upright piano, playing for whomever is willing to listen. (A Man and His Piano)
The kind moments that make these conversations special to me are these:
Gordon isn’t afraid of waiting in silence. The pauses at the end of sentences let his guests think and turn and move in new, natural directions.
He says things like “You must be . . . (as in “You must be very proud”) and “Sounds to me like . . . ,” entering into the moment and giving affirmation to the emotions involved.
He has questions that make his guests respond, “That’s actually really funny that you ask that. . . .” They know that he understands what they’re talking about, and they know that he deserves to hear more.
When Mrs. Gerik tells him, “They’re going to have one every day,” Gordon says he doesn’t understand and asks her what she means, because truly understanding is better than seeming to understand. And when Mrs. Gerik replies, “Funeral,” he apologizes. His apology is left as part of the interview, because heartfelt apologies lead to heartfelt responses that give even more depth to our stories.
I look forward to learning more from Gordon about how to listen well as I catch more of his work. “The Story” is produced by North Carolina Public Radio and distributed by American Public Media. Past episodes are archived under the heading “Stories: The language we all speak.”
If you’ve not seen it, or if you’d like to watch it again, here’s a video put out by Chick-fil-A, reminding us that “Every Life Has a Story.” Here’s to taking the time and the effort to listen to them.
I don’t have cable or satellite TV, so I’d never seen National Geographic’s Locked Up Abroad until I stumbled across it on YouTube. It’s a series that combines interviews of people who have spent time in foreign prisons with dramatic re-enactments of their stories. I wouldn’t call it must-see TV, but the one episode I’ve watched so far grabbed my interest. Entitled “Tokyo” (see the trailer), it’s about Jackie Nichols, an American who traveled to Japan, met a drug smuggler from Israel, helped him transport hashish from Nepal to Tokyo, and, after several successful trips . . . got caught. In the end, Nichols says that her 18-month stay (shortened from a five-year sentence) in a Japanese prison turned her life around for the better. The conformity and rules of prison gave her the stability that she’d been missing in her life, and she ended up reconciling with her mother.
If you’ve ever been nervous in the ticket line because you were checking a bag that might be a couple pounds overweight, Nichol’s airport stories—as she carries hashish in her clothing and in her stomach—will put your fears in perspective. And you’ll see that culture shock takes on a whole new meaning when the “culture” is dictated by prison guards.
The country with the highest proportion of foreign inmates is the United Arab Emirates, at 92.2%—out of 11,000 prisoners. Next comes Monaco, at 91.7%, but it has only 12 prisoners in all.
The other countries with foreign-prisoner populations over 50% are (in order) Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Lichtenstein, Switzerland, Andorra, Luxembourg, Gambia, American Samoa (USA), French Guiana, Macau (China), Cyprus, Greece, and Israel.
The US has the highest number of prisoners in the world, at 2.2 million. Of that number, 5.9% are non-citizens.
Not that you would ever want to be jailed in any country, but four years ago Foreign Policy named five places you definitely want to avoid—the worst of the worst, the “most notorious prisons” in the world:
Did you hear the one about the Fulbright Scholar in China studying stand-up comedy? The student, Jesse Appell, put together a spoof of Psy’s “Gangnam Style,” called “Laowai Style.” Lao wai is a Mandarin term for foreigner—literally meaning “old” and “outside.” Here’s the video, with subtitles:
And then there’s the former amateur soccer player from Norway, Havard Rugland, who watched the Super Bowl in 2011 and started working on his American-football-kicking skills. The result was a video of amazing trick kicks, called “Kickalicious.” It went viral and caught the attention of some NFL franchises, with a couple giving him tryouts. Last week, the Detroit Lions announced that they had signed him to their team. No joke.
I heard about the two stories above on “PRI’s The World” while I was listening to NPR in my car last Friday afternoon. This last video isn’t related, but it shows some cross-cultural miscommunication, between an English-speaking tourist and a couple French locals—and I think it’s pretty funny. It’s “Do You Speak English?” by BBC’s Big Train comedy team:
Jeremy Lin shoots in a game against the LA Lakers last year.
60 Minutes devoted a segment of its April 7th show to Jeremy Lin. Lin’s is a great story—born to Taiwanese parents in California, he graduated from Harvard and now plays basketball for the NBA’s Houston Rockets. The interview covers a range of topics, including culture, race, religion, and . . . prejudice.
When Charlie Rose asked Lin about why he didn’t get any scholarship offers from Division I schools, even though he was named California’s player of the year in high school, Lin replied: “Well, I think the obvious thing, is . . . in my mind is . . . that I was Asian-American, which, you know, is a whole different issue, but that’s . . . I think that was a barrier.”
“When you say because you were an Asian-American, what is that?” said Rose. “Because there’s nothing about being an Asian-American that doesn’t give you the ability to play basketball.”
“Yeah,” said Lin. “I mean it was just, I mean it’s a . . . it’s a stereotype.”
“Average” Asian Americans? While Lin certainly contradicts some common Asian-American stereotypes, he seems to fit with others.
A study by the Pew Research Center, “The Rise of Asian Americans,” gained attention last year for announcing that Asian-Americans had surpassed Hispanics as the largest group of immigrants entering the US. But there is a lot of other information in the detailed report, including:
In 2010, 49% of Asian Americans age 25 and older had a bachelor’s degree or more (compared to 28% of the overall US population).
“More than six-in-ten (61%) adults ages 25 to 64 who have come from Asia in recent years have at least a bachelor’s degree. This is double the share among recent non-Asian arrivals, and almost surely makes the recent Asian arrivals the most highly educated cohort of immigrants in U.S. history.”
The median household income of Asian Americans is $66,000 (US population: $49,800)
93% agree with the statement, “Americans from my country of origin group are very hard working.”
50% identify as part of or lean toward the Democratic Party, while 28% identify or lean Republican.
The largest religious affiliation for Asian Americans is Christian, at 42%. The next largest group is “Unaffiliated,” at 26%.
A Double-Edged Sword While much of the information in the Pew report reflects well on Asian-Americans, some feel that the statistics can have negative consequences.
it’s really important to understand that the community’s not a monolith and that we can’t use this information to think that it is the norm across all Asian-Americans because, historically, our communities have either been seen as model minorities or we’ve been put into the box of being disloyal, suspicious or we’ve been put into a box of foreigners who take away jobs. And the reality is that none of these stereotypes are true. Right?
Iyer wants us to remember that within the group of Asian Americans are many subgroups, representing people from a great diversity of circumstances and from a great diversity of countries—such as China, India, Vietnam, Pakistan, Cambodia, and the Philippines. (The Pew site has a great graphic that breaks down the demographics for each country of origin, here.)
Asian immigrants themselves tend to identify more with their country of origin than simply as “Asians.” While 19% most often refer to themselves as “Asian” or “Asian American,” 62% most often describe themselves by their country of origin, as in “Chinese” or “Chinese American.” Only 14% most often call themselves “American.”
Academic Robots? The question of what to call oneself can be especially relevant to high-achieving high-school graduates. According to an Associated Press article, published in USA Today, some are refusing to check the “Asian” box on applications for top colleges. That is because they believe they need to score hundreds of points higher on test scores to compete with applicants from other ethnic groups. Critics of the current system believe
that Asian-Americans are evaluated not as individuals, but against the thousands of other ultra-achieving Asians who are stereotyped as boring academic robots.
Some applicants refuse to mark any box in the race section, but some who are mixed race, have a choice of which box to check.
Tao Tao Holmes is a student at Yale. Her mother is Chinese-born, and her father is a white American. She told AP:
My math scores aren’t high enough for the Asian box. I say it jokingly, but there is the underlying sentiment of, if I had emphasized myself as Asian, I would have (been expected to) excel more in stereotypically Asian-dominated subjects.
Holmes calls herself “an American . . . an Asian person who grew up in America.”
Susanna Koetter, another student at Yale, said that her racial identity changes depending on where she’s at. The daughter of a Korean mother and a white American father, Koetter said she’s “not fully Asian-American. I’m mixed Asian-American. When I go to Korea, I’m like, blatantly white.” But back in the US, when it came time to fill out her college application, did she leave the “Asian” box unchecked? No. “That would be messed up,” she said. “I’m not white.”
You already know that McDonald’s is the global king of fast-food success, but do you know which US chains are next in line outside of America’s borders?
Well, the answer depends on how you define success. If overall non-US sales is important to you, then number two is KFC, followed by Burger King (according to figures from 2011).
But if you’re more of a How-many-international-restaurants-do-they-have? kind of person, then Subway comes after the Golden Arches and KFC.
Or maybe you care about who’s expanding the most. In that measurement, McDonald’s isn’t in the top five. The three American companies that opened the most non-US units—from 2009 to 2010—are Subway, Dunkin’ Donuts, and KFC.
All this information comes from QSR‘s “Global 30,” a sortable list ranking the top American “quick-service” restaurants outside the US.
Below are the ten American chains with the most restaurants outside the US. That’s the list I’m most interested in, since that gauges your chance of running into one of them overseas. Most are in Taiwan, so I’m adding embellishments from my experiences during my time in Taipei. We had more than our fair share of American fast-food outlets in the capital city, but there were still some gaps. I mean, how can a city of 6 million be Taco Bell-less?
McDonald’s – 18,710 units When we first arrived, we didn’t have the vocabulary to order individual items, so we just ordered meals by number. This meant a soda for even our smallest child, and we had four children. One day I walked up three flights of stairs (most McDonald’s in Taiwan are vertical) balancing 6 Cokes on a tray. I was pretty proud that I’d made it and pretended to stumble when I got to our table . . . and spilled the whole tray. . . . On another day we went to our local McD’s to find out that they’d run out of hamburger. I didn’t know that was possible.
KFC – 11,798 The extra crispy chicken at Taiwan’s KFCs is spicy hot, which we grew to like more than its American counterpart. And because the Taiwanese like dark meat better than white meat, when we ordered a bucket of chicken, we could substitute white for dark at no extra cost. One negative is that their KFCs don’t have slaw. I love KFC’s slaw.
Subway – 10,109 You could almost replace your vegetable-vocabulary unit in language learning with several trips to Subway. If you want the right toppings on your sandwich, you simply have to learn the words. Pointing at “that green thing” won’t do. Building a sandwich at Subway is like a chapter test. . . . By the way, a Subway near us in Taipei also ran out of meat. For a few days it was a salad shop.
Pizza Hut – 5,890 We had a Pizza Hut around the corner from our last apartment in Taiwan. Loved their pepperoni pizza. Not so crazy about toppings with peas or corn . . . or squid . . . or tuna.
Starbucks – 5,727 Most of what I have to say about Starbucks I’ve already said here. The chain has made a big enough impact on the tea-drinking island of Taiwan that several coffee shops have sprung up with circular green logos and/or copycat names (ecoffee, for example). My favorite was the shop that had a sign that said, in a small font, something like, “We’re Not,” over the very large, “STARBUCKS.”
Burger King – 4,998 For a while, my absolute favorite sandwich was a bacon cheeseburger from the Burger King in Keelung next to the train station, eaten on the train as I and a teammate rode back to Taipei after our evening Bible studies with students at the National Taiwan Oceanic University. My second favorite sandwich near the station was a da chang bao xiao chang, or “big sausage wrapped around a small sausage” (the outer “sausage” was made from sticky rice).
Domino’s – 4,422 After serving for two years as a Mormon missionary in Taiwan, Scott Oelkers returned to Minnesota and double majored in Chinese and economics. Following his graduation, he got a job as a buyer for Domino’s Pizza International and worked his way up to vice president. He sold franchise rights in Taiwan to a private equity firm, and the firm asked him to run the business for them. He did, and in the process became a minor celebrity in Taiwan with his humorous TV commercials. Now Oelkers is president and CEO of Domino’s in Japan. He’s still making commercials, like the one below that just came out last month. Betsy Isaacson of the Huffington Post calls it “the most awkward ad in the universe.” I guess one man’s awkward is another man’s profitable.
Dunkin’ Donuts – 3,005 When the first Mister Donut opened in Taipei in 2004, the lines were so long that there was a sign a ways back on the sidewalk that read, “240 minutes from this point.” Dunkin’ Donuts came not long after, and we were glad to see one open in our neighborhood. We held our team meetings there for a while because we usually had the upstairs mostly to ourselves. Not a good sign. It closed.
Dairy Queen – 802 There’s no DQ in Taiwan that I know of (and we usually heard about those kind of things). I do see from an article in Taiwan Today that one was slated for opening in 1986 “located near Church’s Texas Fried Chicken and Lotteria in Taipei.” Someone else with a longer history in Taiwan would have to say whether it ever opened its doors.
Papa John’s – 755 We’re getting farther down on the list, and neither is there a Papa John’s in Taiwan. But that doesn’t mean there’s not room for another pizza franchise, or room for some other kind of fast-food chain. The question is, which one should it be? . . .
For those of you living outside the US, are there any restaurants that you long for? For you American expats, what tastes do you miss, and what do you think would go over well among the locals?
Wendy’s? It comes in at number 11. Taipei used to have at least one. I’ve heard stories from my former coworkers, and a Taipei Wendy’s is even the setting for a short scene in Ang Lee’s 1994 movie, Eat Drink Man Woman.
Or how about Long John Silver’s? It didn’t make the Global 30. One came to Taipei for a short time. We ate there a couple times just to try it out. As I recall, it didn’t last more than a year.
Oh, yeah. There’s Taco Bell (#19). Why can’t you find more Taco Bell’s overseas? I can’t count how many times I heard American expats say that when they get back home the first thing they want to do is eat at a Taco Bell.
I asked a good Taiwanese friend—who had studied at a US university—if he thought Taco Bell would do well in Taiwan. He wasn’t sure that it would, as Mexican flavors don’t always fit the Asian palate. Then I asked him about Arby’s (#21). It seems to me that roast-beef sandwiches could fit in in a lot of cultures, and I like them a lot, too. He said, no, that he didn’t think that there would be enough room for parking. That seemed strange since most fast-food restaurants in Taiwan don’t have any dedicated parking at all. When I questioned that, he said that Arby’s are just too big for Taiwanese. I was confused. Were we talking about the same thing? They’re too big, he said again. Who in Taipei would have room to park an RV?
Hmmmm. Maybe our miscommunication has birthed an idea. How about setting up a fleet of mobile Arby’s in RVs around the globe. I wonder. . . .
Clearing Customs 