Category Archives: Human Rights

Namaste from India!

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After various failed attempts at loading my blog, I have finally succeeded! I am currently in rural India, where I am writing to you from a village located in Ahmedabad district, Gujarat. I have been in India for almost seven weeks now, and am just about three weeks into my site placement at a grassroots NGO working on Dalit rights issues. Since I’m here as part of a fellowship organized by American Jewish World Service, I’ve been asked to refrain from naming the NGO I’m working with on my blog. I’m volunteering with an organization that deals with politically sensitive issues, so naming names could bring a threat of endangerment to the organization or its workers (at least that’s what I’ve been told, and it’s best to tread lightly when working in a foreign environment). So for the next 8 months, I’ll just have to refer to the place I’m working as “my NGO” or “the NGO I’m volunteering with.” Thanks for bearing with me!

Since I haven’t updated in a while, I’ve got some major backtracking to do. I’ll start with my first month in India, since that’s the easiest place to begin. I arrived to Ahmedabad in October, following a series of long and tiring flights. I’ve made many a journey across the world, but for some reason, my flight to India was particularly tiring. I’ve attributed this to the fact that I was so anxious about what was to come – would I like living in India for the next ten months? Was I going to get harassed by touts when I stepped off the plane? Were the other fellows going to like me? Was anyone going to be at the airport to meet me? Was my NGO placement going to work out? Since I was awarded the AJWS fellowship in April, a million questions had been swirling around in my head as to how this experience was actually going to turn out. Once I arrived and began to come to grips with the reality that India is finally happening, I felt like a huge weight had finally been lifted off of my shoulders.

And yet, after seven weeks in India, I still find myself missing China (and the US!). I try not to compare India and China too often, because I feel like it will only detract from my experience – sometimes, though, I just can’t help it. China and India have been declared the two next “rising giants” on the world stage, so I feel like it’s natural to weigh them against each other. The cultures are so different, though, that comparing the two can make understanding them that much harder. Judging from previous experience, I’m guessing that this comparison thing will pass as time goes by (I tend to attribute it to culture shock), and then things should get really interesting.

For the first month of my stay in India, the other fellows and I were living at Kochrab Ashram, located in Paldi district of Ahmedabad city. Kochrab Ashram is the first ashram that Mahatma Gandhi set up after his return to India from South Africa; it is from Kochrab Ashram that he first began to strategize his vision for the Indian independence movement. He later moved from Kochrab Ashram to a larger location, called Sabarmati Ashram, also in Ahmedabad; now, when tourists come to the city, they usually go to the larger Sabarmati Ashram to check out some of Gandhi’s artifacts (including a letter that Gandhi wrote to Hitler). That means that the Kochrab Ashram, while still lovingly tended, remains the more peaceful of the two – a perfect oasis set back from the bustling city roads. Besides the ashram’s residential monkeys and a local political gathering here or there, the only other occasional sites to be seen are now-elderly Gandhians who trickle in from the streets, dressed in handspun khadi, to study on the ashram grounds.

In true Gandhian style, the ashram is simple but adequate. The food we ate was all pure vegetarian, meaning that it did not include meat or eggs. (Note: in India, pure veg includes dairy; there’s little concept of veganism here). We became accustomed to bucket showers and squat toilets, the latter of which I had previously been regularly exposed to in China. Here are some photos of our accommodations:

Bedrooms, Holding Four to Five People per Room

Kitchen, Where We Held Cooking Lessons

Female Lodging Accommodations

Shower (aka Faucet/Bucket)

Bathroom (For Those Who Haven't Seen a Squat Toilet)

Kochrab Ashram Grounds

The "Gandhi Stage," a Meditation/Exercise Stage Where Our Classes Were Often Held

Luckily for me, the place I’m living now is just as peaceful as the ashram (if not more so). After a month of living a pretty basic lifestyle, I don’t know how easy it would be to adjust to the chaos of an Indian city. Of the fellows, I am the only one living and working in a rural area, which in some regards I think is much easier than living in an urban one. I don’t have to negotiate for rickshaws; my meals, while basic and lacking in variety, are healthy and provided for me; there is no pollution or garbage lining the streets; and I don’t have to worry about stepping in cow dung. Honestly, what else could I ask for?

Stay tuned for more updates from my rural Indian adventure!

Follow Me to Gujarat, India!

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This fall, I will be traveling to the state of Gujarat, India to volunteer for ten months with a local NGO in the field of Dalit rights and leadership.  Dalits, known by many in the West as “untouchables,” are the pariahs of the traditional Indian caste system.  Though caste as a formal social institution was abolished by the Indian constitution, Dalits continue to face prejudice and violence in the forms of forced labor, rape, and a myriad of other rights violations.  In a bid to address the everyday challenges of Dalits residing outside the Gujarati capital of Ahmedabad, I will be volunteering with a rural-based NGO primarily in the field of Dalit education and leadership.

My volunteer work is being organized by American Jewish World Service (AJWS), an international development organization motivated by Judaism’s imperative to pursue justice.  AJWS’s main focuses include alleviating poverty, hunger and disease among the people of the developing world regardless of race, religion or nationality.

As part of my effort, I am raising $1,800 to support American Jewish World Service’s development work. Feel free visit my personal fundraising page to learn more about ways you can help support global justice in the developing world.

This fall, check back often for updates from my Indian adventure! Follow me as I bid farewell to one Asian giant and embrace another.

Hello Blogging World!

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After more than three months of silence, I have emerged once more to offer up a post! Mostly a result of personal frustrations in dealing with the Chinese Internet, I decided (somewhat randomly) one day to abandon Beyond Backpacking — nonetheless, a few months later, here I am!  I’ve found that my desire to write about my travel experiences tends to ebb and flow, depending largely on where I am, whether I’ve been doing anything interesting, and most importantly, how painfully slow my Internet connection is.  It may not sound that difficult, but blogging from the Chinese mainland is not an easy task to manage!

Wordpress: Blocked in China

As you may or may not know (depending on whether you’re interested in the state of current affairs in the PRC), many forms of social media are blocked in China.  Most of the mainstream Internet shut-downs occurred as a direct result of the summer 2009 riots in the northwestern province of Xinjiang, after which the CCP decided that social networking sites were a risk to national security.  Since then, not only have Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube been blocked, but all WordPress blogs and the websites of many human rights organizations have been banned (or, as the Chinese government says, “harmonized”) as well.  That means that if I want to post to my blog while living in China, I have to use a VPN client server to bypass the formidable Great Firewall of China.

So if I take a little blogging hiatus every now and then, don’t fret — it’s just because I’m fed up with the Chinese system of Internet controls.  I’ll be back sooner or later!

Backpacking to Hong Kong: Part Four

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After exploring both Kowloon and Hong Kong Island on Saturday, I woke up on Sunday morning to perfect sunshine and improved health.  Ecstatic that I had at last won my battle with food poisoning, I headed across the harbor in search of an authentic Western breakfast.  Rambling along Hong Kong Island’s alleyways and peeking in bakery windows, I finally entered a small cafe and ordered a bagel with cream cheese.  Enjoying the morning scenery, I sipped a tall glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice and soaked in the view of passersby strolling down Hong Kong’s narrow lanes.

Now stuffed, I sat for a few minutes browsing the Internet.  It struck me then that although Hong Kong is technically part of China, it is not subject to any of the cyberspace restrictions currently gripping the mainland.  Amazed by how quickly and easily I could search the web, I logged onto Facebook and YouTube simply because I could.  For a minute, I felt the sensation of uninhibited access to information – I had forgotten what that kind of freedom felt like, and had tacitly accepted Chinese Internet censorship as a daily norm.

Soho: Colonial Charm with a Modern Feel

Nonetheless, I knew that I hadn’t come all the way to Hong Kong to spend my time on the computer.  So, I slowly made my way back outside and meandered the streets of Hong Kong’s well-preserved Soho district.  Home to mid- to high-end shops and boutiques, most of the items for sale in Soho are out of my price range.  Nonetheless, Soho tops the list as one of the island’s most charming shopping and dining zones; even for those on a tight budget, Soho has much to offer.  Its less-traveled side streets are home to  a variety of little-known bargains, and its bars and nightclubs are some of the most vivacious and eclectic in Hong Kong.

Crossing back over to Kowloon, my boyfriend and I walked along Hong Kong’s Avenue of Stars and admired the hand prints of a few of China’s most famous actors, including Jet Li and Jackie Chan.  Afterwards, we had the opportunity to witness an event that neither of us have ever witnessed on the Chinese mainland – a political demonstration.

In 1999, the Chinese government banned the practice of Falun Gong and began a nationwide campaign to weed out its followers.  Founded in 1992, Falun Gong is a series of meditative practices and spiritual exercises that has incorporated and synthesized elements from both the Buddhist and Taoist belief systems.  Falun Gong has adopted the focus on energy movement that characterizes Chinese qi gong, and places a high emphasis on the tenets of morality and compassion.  Throughout the 1990s, the practice of Falun Gong grew in popularity both on the Chinese mainland and throughout the rest of Asia; by the turn of the century, however, Beijing had labeled the movement as a cult and denounced it as a force for social instability.  International reports of mistreatment, harassment, arbitrary arrest, and torture of Falun Gong believers have been surfacing ever since.

In Hong Kong, my boyfriend and I encountered Falun Gong followers protesting the harsh actions of the Chinese government through silent meditation and media campaigning.  In addition, we viewed full-size information panels condemning the CCP for its role in the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989 and in perpetrating violent political crimes during the upheaval of the Cultural Revolution:

Tiananmen Square Massacre, 1989

The Legacy of China's Cultural Revolution

As a mainland resident, I can’t even imagine seeing anything of this nature posted in public in China proper.  Not only would this kind of information be promptly disposed of by a local security official, but any citizen who chose to display such beliefs would swiftly be castigated.  In a country that does not place much value on the freedom of expression or right to information access of its citizens, the ability to challenge the government’s official history is not open to the public.  To say the least, I was surprised and even proud to see such an open display of criticism leveled directly against the Chinese government – not firstly because of my personal views of the CCP, but because of a deep-rooted conviction in favor of unrestricted freedom of speech.

Around 5pm, I headed back to Shenzhen to catch an 8pm flight to Guilin.  On the subway ride to the Chinese border, I began to feel lightheaded and nauseous – believing that I was simply suffering from motion sickness, I thought that my health would be just fine once I stepped off the subway car.  It was not until two days later that I would realize I had begun to experience the primary stages of phototoxicity.

The story may be almost over, but it’s not done yet!  Just when I thought I was on my way back to Guilin in the best of health, I was about to enter my longest and most serious health battle in China yet.  You thought food poisoning was bad?  Think again!  Stay tuned for the next addition to my “Backpacking to Hong Kong” saga.

Helping Hands: Guilin’s Disadvantaged Population

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Volunteering at the Guilin Social Welfare Centre

This past weekend, a group of friends and I visited the Social Welfare Centre of Guilin, which serves as the city’s main care facility for the abandoned, disabled, and elderly.  Located about 45 minutes from GXNU and 20 minutes from the city’s downtown, the Social Welfare Centre of Guilin is an adoption center, mental health facility, foster care provider, special needs residency, and retirement home all in one.  I have to admit that I found the concept of a multi-functioning social services center a bit unusual – after all, it’s not every day that I hear of the aged, physically disabled, mentally unstable, special needs, and just plain abandoned living side by side.  Nonetheless, after spending several hours with the center’s residents, I walked away from the Social Welfare Centre of Guilin with a much more positive outlook on China’s treatment of its dependent population than I had previously held.

From roaming around the center’s facilities and recreation grounds, it seems that all of the residents are well-tended.  The Guilin Social Welfare Centre houses over 100 orphans, a disproportionate  number of whom are special needs, and maintains over 30 on-staff nurses at any given time.  The facility, which is government-funded, accepts international adoptions and provides job placement services for the deaf and blind.  Residents are permitted to live at the Guilin Social Welfare Centre for as long as they have to, meaning that some special needs children spend their entire lives there.  While some of the elderly are mentally incapacitated, others simply have no children and no funds to support themselves with; as a result, they live in the Guilin Social Welfare Centre and are supported by the government.

Taking into consideration that my younger brother is autistic and will always be dependent on others for care, I was tremendously impressed by the quality of conditions and availability of resources at the Guilin Social Welfare Centre.  Though I can’t speak for other social services facilities in China, I was pleasantly surprised when I realized that most of the adults and children living there actually seemed happy.  Unlike in the US, where quality residential care for the disabled, mentally unstable, and elderly is both pricey and hard to come by, that provided by the Guilin Social Welfare Centre is both suitable and free.

The Guilin Social Welfare Centre accepts volunteers, including foreign ones, free of charge.  Unfortunately, the facility does not have a website or e-mail address.  If you’re interested in more information about the organization, feel free to contact me at lauren.emily.nelson@gmail.com or write international adoption agencies which partner specifically with the Guilin Social Welfare Institute.

Battling Chinese Customs: An Experience Worth Forgetting

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Tiananmen Square: The Nexus of China's Governmental Bureaucracy

By now, it’s been about a month since I returned to China from my holiday visit to the US.  That means it’s been about a month since an airport ATM ate my debit card (for a reason that remains unknown, mind you), and about a month since my family air mailed me a new one via DHL.  As you can imagine, I was horrified when I realized that I was stranded in Shanghai with almost no cash in my pocket; I was even more horrified when it dawned on me that I wouldn’t be getting a new bank card for a month.  Though my package was sent priority mail from Boston to Guilin and should have arrived in a week to two weeks time, I held my shiny new ATM card in my hand for the first time today.

My bank card was sent in a small bundle with a few boxes of contact lenses and an English-language novel.  Two to three weeks ago, the entire package arrived in Guangzhou, a port city located not far from Hong Kong.  There, it was detained for further inspection.  Four or five days later, I received a long e-mail, written in Chinese, detailing information that DHL China required to process my package.  Of course, I couldn’t actually read the e-mail, so my boyfriend and I stopped at a local print shop to decipher the message.  All in all, I was forced to send them a copy of my passport, a copy of my teacher’s ID, a copy of my Massachusetts driver’s license, as well as a letter detailing the contents of my package and identifying the sender.

At that point, I breathed a sigh of relief because I thought that even though I wasn’t exactly comfortable with sending so much of my personal information to customs, at least my package was safely on its way to Guilin.  I could not have been more wrong.  A few days after I faxed all of my materials to DHL, I received a phone call saying that customs was requesting more information from me.  Not only did they want to know exactly how many boxes of contact lenses were inside the package, but also the number of contact lenses in each box, as well as an explanation of the book’s contents.  And then it all dawned on me:  the book inside the package was a personal memoir about the Cultural Revolution, one of the most controversial periods of China’s post-1949 history.  While there’s no way to know for sure, it’s likely that my package was detained simply because customs was concerned about my literary preferences.

As far as DHL is concerned, my package was “randomly selected” for further screening, but I don’t buy that explanation even for a minute.  More likely, the government detained my package because it was addressed to a foreigner and contained sensitive reading materials.  I’m not sure how many red flags are next to my name in the Chinese government database, but I can be sure that as a result of my recent debacle with DHL, I’ve just added a few more.

Reading Recommendation: ‘Half the Sky’

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'Half the Sky', the Latest Publication by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn

Half the Sky, by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, is a recently published and much-needed expose on the maltreatment and unequal status of women living in the developing world.  Offering a heartfelt call-to-action for all socially-minded citizens to provide the world’s female population with increased healthcare, education, and economic opportunities, Half the Sky reminds us that the state of well-being of women worldwide is both a moral and economic concern.

Every day, women are gang raped, beaten to death, disfigured by acid throwing, sold into brothels as sex slaves, subjected to human trafficking as children, allowed to die in childbirth, subjected to “honor killings,” and denied equal access to education and medical treatment.  As Kristof and WuDunn note, more women have died in the past 50 years simply because they were women than men were killed in all of the 20th century’s wars – while China is praised as a country which has thrived because it has allowed women to integrate into the labor force successfully, countries throughout much of the Middle East, Asia, and Africa continue to practice rampant forms of sex discrimination and gendercide.  Even in China, the sex ratio is wildly imbalanced; there are 120 boys for every 100 girls, reflecting abortion rates and infanticide based on the killing of females.

Kristof and WuDunn, who together won the Pulitzer Prize for their coverage of the Tiananmen Square massacres, show that every small donation and every day volunteered can make a tremendous difference in the life of someone in need far, far away – by offering to lend a microloan to an artisan in Zimbabwe, or by giving $10 to a farmer in Bolivia, we are endowed with an ability to enhance someone’s economic welfare and social opportunity.  One of the most important books to be written about universal human rights, Half the Sky is a book that will touch your heart and spur you to action, if not in deed than in thought.