Reality Equation

Net Neutrality: A View from the Past

If anything has changed in the last four years for net neutrality, it’s that things have gotten worse. Recently, Google and Verizon announced their plan for keeping wired internet neutral, but had other plans for wireless.

Here is an article I wrote late 2006  about the issue:

A Neutral Network of Minds
- Parimal Satyal, December 2006

Pick up that recipe for Fluffy Omlette, check out what a friend’s been busy with in the weekend and, while you’re at it, find out how exactly a Blended Wing Body aircraft flies – your typical, everyday helping of the internet. You love how you can find about almost anything, take comfort in knowing that there’s somebody out there who can answer your very specific questions, fascinate at the wonderful things people are doing, connecting from all over the world. The internet is, no doubt, one of the most important creations of humanity. And it’s being threatened.

Huge telecommunications powerhouses like AT&T, Comcast, Verizon have a new vision for the internet, one that is very different from those most of us take for granted. What they want to do is get rid of network neutrality. ‘Net neutrality’ is a principle that lets users decide what they want to view and do over the internet, with the network not discriminating in any way based on what is important and what is not. This is the principle guiding the internet right now, the reason why you can go to either my small homepage or Time Warner’s official website as and when you want, regardless of which service provider you subscribe to the internet through. The “free internet” we know today, where you are as important as anyone else, is what has made great things possible. The open nature of this global network has allowed multitudes of small startups grow from a little man’s dream to something that changed the world, like Google, created by Sergey Brin and Larry Page, and one of the many of supporters of net neutrality. A quick glance at the collaborations section on iCompositions – a website dedicated to “empowering the independant musician” – should be enough to see how the internet has helped bring people from all over the world together to do wonderful things. The internet is not only changing the the way humans communicate and collaborate, but challenging the measure of time and space itself. And it is able to do this, because it is free and open, and a yak-herder in the mountains of Nepal has equal access to resources available online as does a CEO of a huge firm in Spain, and these individuals can communicate at the same level.

But America’s biggest telecommunications firms don’t like this, and want an end to net-neutrality. They want to take control of what you view and what you get to do over the internet, and tax service providers so the ones who pay more will get to serve better the millions of people already online. Their vision? Regulate the internet so that the user is presented with just the good and the relevant, and so she won’t have to wade through pages of irrelevant, even incorrect, information to get what she wants. The concern is not an entirely unfounded; in fact, it is a real problem for some. Doctors complain of patients undermining their prescription and diagnosis based on what they read in some blog. Thousands are misled by the many who present themselves as authorities on subjects they have no proper understanding of. The internet is not without its flaws. But the solution is not to throw powers into the hands of a powerful few and hope that they know what is good for you and me. The problem won’t go away because content providers are taxed and made to pay more money for a better online presence. Destroying one of the best things that happened to humanity cannot be the solution.

The threat it real, and very urgent. Already the threats of not having net neutrality are cropping up. Just this year in April, AOL – one of the US’ largest internet service providers, blocked all email messages that included a link to DearAOL, a campaign against one of their schemes. Last year, during a labour dispute, Canada’s top telephone company Telus blocked a website supporting the Telecommunications Works Union. Censorship will be an everyday reality unless we act now. The effects of a “managed” internet is clear, and it doesn’t look pretty. The creator of the internet, Sir Tim Berners Lee thinks that “the neutral communications medium is essential to our society… it is the basis of a fair competitive market economy”. Without network neutrality, there won’t be any more eBays and Googles cropping up to improve the way the world works, because a small startup with big ideas will have to face a very high price of entry. No one to follow on Wikipedia, YouTube and MySpace. Where do we go from there?

A price-competitive, “pay for the pipe” model of the internet, where service providers agressively compete to maintain their customer base and gain better internet presence may not be an altogether bad idea, just a poor replacement for something as open as the Internet. A capitalist approach has, no question, shown to bring out the best of competing entities and allow for consumers to benefit the most when only the best is able to rule the pack, but we have antitrust laws and legislation against the operation of cartels too. Legislation to regulate that the Internet remains free and open, too, is now an urgent need. And you have the power to act on it.

The U.S House of Representatives, in May, passed a telecommunications bill that furthers the interest of giants who want to take control of the Internet. The issue is now being discussed in U.S. Senate, and despite previous failed attempts to amend the act to safeguard neutrality, support for the new Net Neutrality bill is building up. You can save the Internet. Go online, read about where the issue stands, sign petitions and and call your state’s senators and tell them you support net neutrality. You can find more information about what you can do at http://www.savetheinternet.com/. The future of the greatest inventions of mankind is in your hands. Decide.

My Chinese Noodle Soup Recipe

It’s been over a week since I got back from China and I miss it. The people I met, the language I was learning, my experiences negotiating a dynamic, evolving city like Shanghai are all reasons why finding my momentum in American suburbia has been difficult. Most of all, though, it’s the food and culture around eating that I’ve come to love and to respect that I miss.

A Day (of Eating) in China

Breakfast: walk down the street to a corner food stall to buy fresh steam buns (包子, bāozi) for breakfast, half-complaining about how expensive the meat is (even though the total comes to less than ¥6, or $1). Lunch: watch one of the laobans (老板, shopkeeper) at a noodle store knead and stretch dough as another one stir-fries meat and vegetables, glancing at and asks you what you want, accustomed by now to my foreign-sounding Chinese. Dinner: walk around the area scouring for a Sichuan place to have hot, spicy (麻辣, mǎlà) food knowing very well that you’ll have to fight for the bill and explain that it’s your turn to qing ke (请客) this time.

Post-food America

Imagine my disappointment landing at Liberty International in Newark, NJ to the sight of packaged salads, people lining up at Starbucks ordering Vanilla Chai Tea Latte for $3 in 20.4 seconds. Even the amusing linguistic redundancy of chai tea (chai is tea in Hindi) couldn’t cheer me up. There was but one thing that could.

As soon as I made my way to my cousin’s apartment in an upscale Virginia suburb, where seeing one other person not on a car puts a smile to my face, I bought some noodles, some vegetables, soy sauce and got cooking. Let street-side Chinese food be my savior, I thought, in a country where what the common man eats is two steps removed from food.

Pork Noodle Soup: The Recipe

Here’s what you need to make my version of Zhūroù Miàntíao (猪肉面条), or Pork Noodle Soup. You can replace pork with chicken, duck, beef, lamb, squid, egg, whatever. It’s very straightforward, and I encourage you to use simple, fresh ingredients and modify the recipe to your liking. (Although there are some things that don’t go; black pepper or basil would perfectly ruin it).

Ingredients (serves 2)

1. Pork meat, cut into small pieces
2. Noodles, ideally long and flat (wheat, egg, whatever)
3. Chicken broth, 2 cups (can replace with vegetable broth)
4. Soy sauce
5. Baby Bok Choy (小白菜, xiaobaicai), a bunch
6. Scallions (spring onions), 2 stalks
7. Garlic, 3 cloves
8. Chili power, salt (to taste)

The Process

There are four parts to making this. If you get the timing right, they can all be done simultaneously and the noodle soup can be ready in 20 minutes.

Here’s how I do it:

1. In a saucepan, boil water (for the noodles). Set this aside.
2. Prepare the meat by cutting it into small pieces (or cubes, but I don’t like the uniformity).
3. Clean and chop the garlic, scallions and coriander. The white bit of the scallion should be cut into small slices, and the leaves should be cut diagonally into longer half- to one-inch pieces. You don’t have to use a knife for the coriander, just rip it.
4. Clean the baby bok choy and separate individual leaves. Cut the stalks into smaller pieces, but rip larger leaves into halves or thirds with your hands.
5. Now go back to the boiling water and add the noodles, with a little bit of salt, into the water.
6. In a saucepan, heat oil on medium-high.
7. Put the meat into the hot oil with a bit of salt. Give it about five minutes to cook.
8. After you feel the meat has cooked (and even burnt a little), add the chopped garlic, the white bits of the scallion and bok choy stalks.
9. The noodles should be nice and firm by now, so add those in. In whatever you boiled the water for the noodles, heat the broth.
10. Back to the saucepan with the noodles, add a bit more soy sauce and chili powder. You’ll get nice red-ish tints. Since the stir-fry is just about done, add in the bok choy and scallion leaves and chopped coriander. (This is so the greens don’t overcook and retain their freshness)
11. Take a moment to stop and smell the noodles. And don’t forget to look, it should look beautiful.
12. Turn everything off and get two bowls ready.
13. Add the stir-fried noodles to each bowl, and fill it up with hot broth. Garnish on top with some fresh coriander, chili flakes and a dollop of soy sauce.

The Result

Home-made, China’s street-food-inspired Pork Noodle Soup:

Nepal at the Shanghai World Expo

I arrived at Shanghai from Nanjing yesterday, and got a late start to visiting the World Expo site today. Having spoken to several Chinese people about what they thought of the 世博会 (shìbóhuì, World Expo) and gotten about every possible response, I didn’t really have a strong sense of how the Expo fit into contemporary Chinese society. I did not, in other words, know what the fuss was about, and if, really, it was worth all the fuss.

So I went to see for myself. And I started with the Nepal pavilion.

(It would’ve been the China pavilion, being as it is the centerpiece, were it not for the additional ticket and the endless flood of people in line. ‘Line’ here being, of course, a loose description).

The Nepal pavilion is in the Asian section, right opposite the India pavilion. The project is organized by Implementing Experts Group (IEG), a consortium of Nepalese companies with experience, it seems, handling  expositions. Which is great, because honestly, the Nepal pavilion is rather unique and, in many ways, beautiful.

At the center is a Budhhist stone stupa that looks a lot like the one in Bouddha, Kathmandu. Around it spiraling all the way to the top are bronze decals that give it a somewhat sci-fi look. The rest of the pavilion is made with bricks in traditional Newari architecture you’ll find in Patan and Bhaktapur. It had a Dwarika hotel ring to it. Not just in how it looked, but also because of what it offered.

You can do these things at the Nepal pavilion:

1. Climb the spiral pathway that leads to upper level to reach a small room where you’ll find people throwing money (or trying to, at least) into an earthen pot there. A guy from Germany next to me was laughing, “Let’s invent a religion that says ‘give us your money!’”.
2. Follow this path downward and be taken to a large-ish room where you’ll find stuff to buy. Souvenirs, small statues, masks – that sort of thing. Funny thing was you could find some things that are very common in Nepal but not in the very least Nepalese, like the African long face masks.
3. You can drink tea and buy chicken wing, the latter written in the singular because they were ¥10 a piece! At the restaurant, you get to hear Nepali folk and fusion music, interspersed every so often with weird jazz Nepali-wedding-reception music.

The people working at the pavilion, like almost everywhere else in China, were approachable and friendly. A Nepalese staff Prakeet agreed to let me point a camera in his general direction and interview him. He told me that there were about 20 people who had come from Nepal for the pavilion, and that “about ten of them are able to converse in Chinese.”

- “And are people here learning a lot about Nepal, do you think?” I asked him in Nepali.

- “Yeah, I think they’re learning. We’ve trying to inform our visitors, for example about Gautam Buddha and how he was born in Nepal.” Given the syncretic nature of Buddhism in China, especially in the east, knowledge of Lumbini or even Nepal in that context is not common.

I’m certain that quite a few people who came to the pavilion went back having learnt a little more about Nepal, but the running theme here at the Expo seems to be to walk around, take pictures and go. So did Nepal do a good job of presenting itself at the Expo? I don’t know, but I certainly think Nepal’s effort was commendable. (This MyRepublica article has more background on the project).

The pavilion looked better than I expected. It had great architecture, was clean and well-lit and offered a place to sit down, take a breath and buy cheap snacks (relatively, for the Expo).  And although I was surprised at the lack of information on Nepal’s history, ethnic diversity and relation to China, it was still a satisfying experience. I enjoyed getting to have Nepali-ish food, speaking in Nepali (mixed in, oddly, with Chinese and English) and finding Nepali architecture in Shanghai.

If you’re in Shanghai already got tickets to the Expo, I’d recommend dropping by the Nepal pavilion.  If you’re in Shanghai and don’t have tickets to the Expo, I’d recommend buying the discounted evening tickets (fewer people) and checking out the Nepalese, Latvian, Australian and the North Korean pavilions. And if you’re in the Iran pavilion, drop by the VIP section and say hi to Aubrey for me (tell her you know Xiè Bōruì).

And if you do drop by the Nepal pavilion, let me know what you think in the comments.

French Learners in Hefei

If you’re a foreigner in China, especially in a relatively tourist-free city like Hefei, you’ll be asked this rather often: “你为什么学中文?” (Where are you learning Chinese?)

This is less the ‘I don’t see why you’d bother’ sort of question than it is the ‘I’m genuinely curious’ type. I’m quite sure of this because I found myself asking a Chinese student at the university a similar question today about French. But before we get to it, some background.

Being a Foreigner

In a place where seeing 外国人 (waiguoren, a foreigner) is odd all by itself, finding one that speaks Chinese is quite decidedly bizarre. Just this morning I had a bit of a celebrity moment when I talked to some students, recent graduates of the university, who looked a bit lost outside our apartment building. They were taking photos and wondering, it seemed, if anybody was home and if, perhaps, they could come in for a bit to continue the photo.

— “你们拍照片吗？你可以进来”, I told them they could come in. And in what turned out to be an odd interpretation of the offer, one of the students said something about me, and their photos. “You want me,” I asked, trying to form as coherent a sentence as my level of Chinese would allow me, “to take your photos?”

– “不”, they replied, explaining that they wanted instead to take photos with me. It didn’t matter much that I was perfectly unknown to them. Here was a 外国人 with long hair (uncommon, it turns out, for males here) who spoke Chinese, and they were going to document the chance encounter. Should their discovery ever be called into question and evidence be required.

It didn’t matter if I didn’t speak it right, or spoke with funky (generally incorrect) tones. That I spoke any bit of the language at all was surprise enough.

Finding French

And that’s exactly how I felt when, a couple of days ago playing ping-pong at the student sports building at the university, I chanced upon some Chinese students who spoke French. And one of the first things I asked them was, “Pourquoi est-ce que vous avez choisi d’apprendre le français?” Why French? Maybe what I meant was, Why not English?

I had to run to class that day, but spoke with them enough to gather that they were French concentrators, that they’d studied the language for less than a year (for which they spoke very well!), that they had a French professor who taught them and that it would be a very wise idea indeed to meet up with them when we all had some time to chat. So we exchanged numbers, I said “au revoir, à bientôt”, and ran to class. (And, you’ll be glad to know, got lost for a bit and ended up taking a perfectly long route to class).

L’échange Culturel

So today I texted Mars and Zola and set un rendevouz at the sports building. Once we got ourselves set up at a table and, throwing the ball up to make the first serve, began the conversation “Pourquoi le français alors?”

Mars told me that they picked French because, frankly, English — which they also spoke a little of — was rather common and they wanted to do something more exciting. To distinguish themselves in the job market, perhaps? I got the sense that might also be a reason. I asked them if there were many students learning French at the university, and was told that there were 43 students in their first-year class, a modest figure for a university of thousands.

— “There are fewer still,” Mars explained in French, “in the higher levels, second-year and on.”

— “So you don’t have very many people to practice the language with?” I asked, inquiring also about the French professor at the university someone had spoken to me about last year I was here.

— “No, we don’t,” Zola explained, with a half-smile that concealed a sigh. “There’s the one French professor, and she’s really busy.” No one else from France? “Apart from some of her friends who visit sometimes, she’s the only fluent French speaker.” So practicing the language is a problem.

— “We practice amongst ourselves”, Mars added, “but you can only do so much”. He seemed very enthusiastic about learning the language, and spoke in French as much as he could. The problem, it seemed.

It turns out that both Zola and Mars really like their French classes and the way that it’s taught, using songs, films and role-playing. Not unlike the way I learnt the language at Smith and, previously, at l’Alliance française du Kathmandou. But they are still more comfortable with written French than they are at the speaking bit, “which is what’s important”, Zola agreed.

It was a while before it really hit me that I was conversing in French and Chinese, with a spattering of English, with two really nice people that I’d just only gotten to know in some odd city in China. The French I was speaking was itself affected at times by Chinese, the “active second language” in my mind. Words like “mais”, “donc” and “non” got replaced with their Chinese counterparts every once in while, and I had to actively resist using Chinese “aah” and “oohs” while speaking. Mars and Zola too would slip in and out of English and Chinese too, quickly jumping back to French. Which gives you a pretty good idea of how hard it is to get yourself in a particularly French mode of thinking.

French! In a small city in Hefei where foreigners hardly come. Why, really?

The French Connection

My afternoon Chinese tutor Chen laoshi told me in one of our first few classes that she studies French too. I say studies because she insisted that although she likes the sound of French, and likens it to a flowing river, she is comfortable with the language only in the written form.

French and Russian, she told me, were the de facto foreign languages in the past in China. French because France was amongst the first countries to establish a relationship with China after its opening up in the 60s, and Russia because of ties to the Soviet Union. English, at the time, was hardly in the picture. It was, instead, seeping in from the sides like blotched ink on canvas.

— “At that time, you’d see signs in my university in Chinese and in Russian the way you do now in English“, Chen laoshi explained. “And universities had a French department and not an English one”. You’d have done better if you spoke French as a traveler back then, than if you spoke English. “Slowly, over time, as relations with America developed, interest in English rose” and French departments were replaced by English ones.

Employers now look for skills in English, the government has stipulated that kids learn the language at primary school and you can get away with an “O.K 了” even with fruit vendors who hardly speak standard Mandarin.

Quoi encore?

Zola’s parents worry about her choice of major. French, what’s one to do with that?

— “They think I might not be able to take care of myself”, she said. “I want to continue learning French at graduate school, and eventually become a professor”. That’s one possible path with French, as it is with Latin in the US.

— “I’m not into that,” Mars’ reasons were different. When I asked him if he wanted to go to France at some point, he nodded yes. “Maybe work for an international company,” he smiled, “it’ll be useful.”

French, once lingua franca of European diplomacy and the European Union, is losing learners to bigger, more “useful” languages like Spanish, Arabic and, ironically, Chinese. But as a second-language learner of French myself, it was great to meet others working on making French an important part of their lives.

Next, I’d like to meet someone learning Nepali here in China. Or in France. If I do, you’ll read about it.

Hui Cuisine with Han Shu & Shenxiao Ting

Returning to Hefei gave me the opportunity to meet up with Han Shu and Shenxiao Ting properly after a year. Han Shu had come to Hampshire over January term at the peak of New England’s cold, harsh winter. I was at Smith for most of that time, so we were only able to explore parts of Northampton and Amherst. But being in Hefei where both of them go to uni meant that we could revisit our favorite Hefei food places (and make the whole farewell ritual in the US rather anti-climatic, which is all well).

And so we started with a Hui restaurant not too far from campus.

Although China is predominantly Han, its 55 other officially-recognized ethnicities bring important variety to the already vast landscape of Chinese cuisine. The Hui people — muslim Chinese — are the third largest ethnic minority here with a population of around 10 million all over China (but concentrated mostly in Northwestern China). Hui food distinguishes itself from regular Chinese cuisine with the absence of pork, the most common meat in China. The way food is prepared is also different and rather specific. I won’t go into it (mostly because I haven’t a clue), but if you’re interested, this guide to Huangshan has more.

The first requirement to enjoying excellent food at the this  small street-side restaurant is not dying whilst crossing the road. At the other end of campus, where we need to cross the main expressway of Changjiang Xi road to Jialefu (Carrefour), there’s an overhead walkway. Crossing the road poses no danger whatsoever, and is a whole lot safer than walking on the pavement where cars honk at your for not giving them way. Here, though, you need to find a break in the stream of cars, lorries and motorcycles and make a run for it.

I look to my left and see a crosswalk. “So why,” I turn to Han Shu, “are we not using the crosswalk, exactly?”

— “Nobody uses it,” he says, grinning. He looks first to his left and then to his right, adding, “it’s all the same for the cars”.

When in Rome, right?

The restaurant, with a familiar board announcing its name in red Chinese characters as well as in Arabic, brought another wave of déjà-vu. It was around the same time in the evening that we last went there, and I wondered if we were talking to the same people.

One of them reached for the lid of one of the two big pots on boil at the restaurant entrance, and the other threw strings of freshly-knead dough in.

While Han Shu talked to the laobanya to select but a few dishes from the list of what seemed a gazillion (admittedly because a lot of the characters were ones unfamiliar to me), I perused the huge menu plastered all over the other wall.

— “I’ll have that,” I said in Chinese, pointing to a photo of rather appetizing noodle, and Han Shu added it to the order.

Although I much prefer ordering meals by reading the menu and talking to the fuwuyuan, which is great for language practice, there are times your limited vocabulary starts limiting the dishes you can eat. This is when photos come in really useful. If it looks good, all I have to do is ask, “Zhèlǐ yǒu shénme?” (What’s in it?) or “Zhège yǒu shénme ròu?” (What meat is it?) and I’m good to go. Especially at a unique place whose offerings one may not be familiar with, it helps having a way to try new dishes without worrying about what you mind end up eating.

We ordered a whole lot of things involving noodles, beef, tofu and vegetables. Standard-fare, you’d think, until, voilà, the food arrives:

The entire thing was made rather interesting thanks to an eleventh-hour injury to my finger which made negotiating chopsticks that much more of a challenge:

When we were done catching up, Han Shu and Shenxiao Ting insisted the meal be on them this time. “Because you’re guests here”, Han Shu reminded me. The unspoken understanding is that I reciprocate sometime later (which I eventually did at a rather impressive tea place we had also been to last year).

As we were walking out of the restaurant, headed back to the campus as the low sun put a golden tint on the busy world outside, the laobanya spoke to Han Shu. “你是好的外国人，我认识” she says too fast for me to understand, waving at us.

– “What did she say?” I ask Han Shu as we walk on.

– “You’re a good foreigner,” he grins, “she remembers you from last year.”

Second Summer in China

I’ll be flying to China on Friday to spend yet another summer there. Like last year, I’ll be at Hefei for four weeks continuing my study of Mandarin Chinese at Anhui Agricultural University and on the English-won’t-get-you-very-far environment of Hefei streets.

I’m looking forward to meeting friends and teachers from last summer. Returning to a familiar place in a foreign country is an odd thing, like coming home to a hotel with full knowledge that you’ll be checking out on a fixed date.

I’ll also be spending four days in Shanghai before flying back, to see what the World Expo is all about, and see if I can learn a thing or two about it.

There will be more photos, more videos, and even more articles about the Chinese language, food culture, Hefei street food, travel experiences. And anything else I should find interesting whilst in foreign, exotic lands. (And exotic culinary terrains)

It’s good to be back on the run.