Why should you be concerned with a small volcano on a tiny island nation so far away? Because sometime in the future it could affect your quality of life. Volcanic activity has always been a precursor to large eruptions under the Eyjafjallajokull glacier in southern Iceland. In 1783 an eruption killed a fifth of the population by famine, and created severe climate disruptions across Europe. Even today, a large ash-producing eruption could cause rapid, if temporary, climate changes in the northern hemisphere. Geologic evidence points to many past events in human history.

My wife Claire and I rode mountain bikes across the center of Iceland one spring. We found ourselves surrounded by a stunning landscape of green meadows dotted with sheep and horses, sod covered homesteads, snow-capped mountains against cobalt blue skies, an omnipresent northern ocean, crystal rivers and thundering white waterfalls. In fact, the island nation is so full of extremes, we found the landscape  slightly unsettling. Everywhere we saw evidence of the violence that created Iceland. Gray volcanic rock, collapsed lava tubes, and active steam vents cuddle up against villages of brightly painted homes.

Iceland is a magical place for more than just its landscape. Possibly because of the harshly beautiful landscape, Icelanders believe a variety of wee beings share their magic island: elves, fairies, dwarfs, mountain spirits, hidden people, gnomes, and lovelings. Most modern Icelanders scoff at the beliefs, and yet many still believe in these beings. In recent years, local authorities relocated at least one road  because of unnatural events ultimately blamed on the wee people.

Iceland is part of the Mid Atlantic Ridge, an area where Earth’s crust rises above sea level, continually ripping apart as the tectonic plates slide on the molten mantle. In one photo we took, Claire is straddling the North American plate and the Euro-Asian plate. (See photo below)Iceland is splitting apart slowly and consistently – and yet the people thrive. From its small population of less than 300,000, Iceland has produced many internationally acclaimed writers, painters and musicians. Could the belief in wee people have something to do with their creativity? Go ask a gnome. After all, Iceland is a place of magic.

All this volcanic activity so close to the surface has been a blessing and curse to Icelanders since its earliest settlements. Steam from vents warms homes, produces electricity, and draws tourists during the short summer. Where there is steam, there is fire and water. With lots of precipitation and a location barely kissing the Arctic Circle, Iceland is a unique land with its unusual combination of fire, ice, and rumbling rivers.

Iceland has the third, fourth, and fifth largest ice sheets on Earth – quite a distinction for such a small island nation. Rivers are harnessed for electricity to smelt aluminum as thundering waterfalls carry the rain and glacier melt to the sea. Aluminum ore arrives from all over the world, coming to this small island because of access to cheap hydro-electric power. In recent years, the aluminum smelting industry has been a major contributor to Iceland’s economy, overtaking commercial fishing, an industry in trouble because of increasing competition in the North Atlantic fishery.

The harnessing of rivers has become a contentious issue with Icelanders. While they like the economic benefits, they aren’t so sure about the environmental consequences. They’re also afraid of the consequences to the unmatched purity of their gene pool due to an influx of foreign smelter workers into their island country.

We met a young Icelander, a ranger assigned to a national park in the far north. She is pure Icelandic, lovely and pleasant. She studies opera in Europe, and works summers to pay for her education. We asked about her lineage, and how she could trace her heredity to early settlements of Iceland by the Norse. For years, scientists have used Iceland as a place to study the genetic makeup of humans because the line goes back to the 9th century. These isolated genes were halfway between continents and located far into the inhospitable north. There was little to gain for others in conquering this small island, so Icelanders were left to fight among themselves, and then write epic stories about the battles.

With new gene sequencing methods, it won’t matter much to science if the Icelandic pool  loses its purity, but it’s still important to the people of Iceland. I wouldn’t call it racism in this case, but more akin to their cultural pride. There might be a change in attitude if pure Icelanders begin to intermarry with foreign workers brought in to do the backbreaking and isolated work at the smelters. The social contract within Icelandic culture has many subtleties not easily assimilated or even understood by outsiders. That, of course, is part of the charm of Iceland and its people.

For the well-prepared visitor who arrives properly clothed for wind, rain and snow, bringing along a reasonable amount of cash, Iceland will be a very special treat. Travelers looking for just a bit of adventure, exciting landscapes, and a rather different culture, will find what they are looking for. What they find certainly won’t disappoint them.

In the meantime, let’s hope that Iceland’s fire stays beneath its ice.

For more pictures and facts about Iceland, go to this page at Bob and Claire Rogers’ website.

This is a question Claire and I get from Americans when they hear of our tandem bicycle travels in third-world countries and our perseverance in spite of difficult conditions. Of course, there is no answer to such a pejorative question. By using the phrase “possess you” they are saying they think us possessed – maybe even crazy. Perhaps we are. Crazy – but also fulfilled.

Many JOO readers visited our New Bohemians website between early September and late December of 2009. We hope you enjoyed the journals, photos, and videos you found there, and we hope you learned something about Asia.

Just in case you joined us in the middle, I’ll give you a snapshot of our journey, and what inspired us to pick our difficult route.

The first part of our plan was to ride our tandem bicycle across the mountains of historic Tibet and into Yunnan province, to the mythical and literal land of Shangri-la. The concept of seeking out Shangri-la the hard way, on a tandem bicycle, came from ongoing motivations:

• To see our World from a unique perspective, at a speed that allows for contemplation of its many mysteries.
• To challenge ourselves against the unknown, find adventure, excitement, and fulfillment doing what we love.
• To represent a side of America foreigners seldom see on TV: wholesome, optimistic, open and caring, with a physical work ethic like their own.
• To share with diverse peoples our joy in life. From Urumchi to Winnemucca, from Alice Springs to Baku, the love for a spouse and shared labor is universally appealing.
• To gather material for our magazine writing, Just One Opinion, and NewBohemians.net.

This is not our first such adventure. Our tandem bicycle, somewhat inappropriately named Zippy, has carried us 40,000 plus miles (nearly 1.6 times around the world) over the last few years. “In Search of Shangri-la” was our second tandem journey in Asia, our first being our Silk Road Crossing from Beijing to Istanbul. Despite the difficulties of that trip – language, political unrest, route location, illness, and food – we wanted to go back.

We chose the most mountainous route possible to Shangri-la, over the steep fingers of the east end of the Himalayas. This turned out to be almost too much for this not-so-young-anymore tandem team, but by cooperation, tenacity, and thanks to a lot of help from friends we made along the way, we prevailed. There was the Tibetan family who took us in when a snowy night overhauled us. Later, a road crew shared their space and dinner with us as high winds, sleet, and our own exhaustion threatened our ability to go on.

After descending into Yunnan, China we found the literal Shangri-la, and were somewhat disappointed by its touristy reality. On the other hand, it did have a certain charm, sheltered us for three days, and provided better food to help us continue our trip. Did we actually find the mythical Shangri-la? Read on:

The “Shangri-la” most of us know is the mythical place of perfect happiness. The word and the concept were invented by the British author James Hilton in 1933. He described a Utopian kingdom where people lived to healthy old age, content and happy beyond the understanding of most Westerners. His “Shangri-la” was located in the mountains of northern Yunnan Province and western Sichuan Province where the Tibetans and most of the other fifty-three minorities of China live. It is a spectacularly beautiful part of the world, from the plateaus and barren gorges of Tibetan Sichuan, to the botanical paradise of the mountains of Yunnan.

Unfortunately, life is not always easy for the people living there. The terrain is brutally steep, the rivers violent, the winters high-altitude harsh, and the ethnic majority Han population of China is not always kind to them. Some residents are stoic and others are happy – not too different than those of us from the West – but their happiness quotient is very high considering the challenges they face in their daily life.

Further along in our journey we found the people who would be most like the mythical Shangri-la people – and in a most unlikely place.

Laos has been the whipping boy for Southeast Asia for much of its ancient history. In recent history it has been misused by its neighbors and colonial powers alike. During the “American War” (as southeast Asians call the Vietnam War), more total tonnage of bombs was dropped on Laos than by all sides during World War II. Even now, hundreds of people are killed and maimed every year by unexploded anti-personnel ordinance dropped over 40 years ago.

We felt the fear they live with every day when we were lost for two days in an area not cleared by bomb disposal crews. They go to work in their rice paddies or hunt in the jungle each day, knowing there may be a “bombie” out there with their name on it. And yet they bear no grudge against the Americans who salted their land with death.

The Lao we met are happy, well nourished, and live a rich family and village life. Laos has one of the few Communist governments left in the world, but it seems to have little influence on the lives of the people.

Is Laos Shangri-la? As we worked our way up a Lao mountain, we met a German with a story to tell. He was bicycle touring nine years ago when he became ill with food poisoning in Laos. While recovering, he met his future wife, and they now have two children. He runs his father-in-law’s pig farm, and has become Lao in every way except for his race. I asked if he would ever return to Germany. “Never!” was his answer. He has found his Shangri-la.

After eight months of bicycle touring in Asia over the last few years, the continent has again left me staggered. Just as I think I have the real Asia nailed, I find myself blindsided by the reality, the vitality, the sheer size and complexity of the continent.

Some will say I should just stay home and absorb the opinions of the talking heads, those government and politically motivated experts – most who have never set foot in Asia outside the capitals. I don’t believe that accepting observations from someone riding in the back seat of a Mercedes with darkened windows – never stopping, but just driving past the toiling masses – necessarily offers a true picture of that great continent.

Westerners have always misunderstood the Asian ethos, and underestimated the tenacity of the people. We need to get past stereotypes and open our eyes. Those of us living in the West will be competing with Asians and need to understand their hopes and desires, allowing us to work with them in mutual respect and to our mutual benefit.

Both Claire and I will be writing about Asia for a long time, for Just One Opinion and on our own website. If you would like to read our stories and see our photos and videos during our “In Search of Shangri-la” journey, follow the link to NewBohemians.net.

Wrapped in plastic as carefully as though it were an original, the book I wanted had a full color cover, plasticized, just like an original, but something was fishy. The photo quality was poor and the alignment skewed. A medallion featuring the Kiriyama 1999 Pacific Rim Book Prize was flat and fuzzy. I rattled the loose spine, flipping through the unevenly trimmed pages. The tilted text, a blurry slate gray, lay flat against a too white field, cratered with distracting stray pockmarks. The photocopied pages irritated my skin like a million little paper cuts and lacked the warm eggshell color and texture of a real book. Leaves squeaked rather than rustled.

I was revolted; why would anyone want to even hold this book, much less read it? It didn’t even smell like a book. It was as annoying as scratchy Muzak or fuzzy red and gold wallpaper.

Bob’s patience wore thin as we rounded the block, combing shop after shop, looking for an original of the book I wanted. Again and again, I left the shopkeeper looking confused after they went to the trouble to dig out the title I asked for. Flipping through the flaky pages, I left, crestfallen, time after time.

The irony was the book was Catfish and Mandala: A Two-Wheeled Voyage Through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam, by Andrew X. Pham. Pham, a Vietnamese American, returned to the country of his birth, only to find it far astray from his own culture. He’s been carefully explaining to me, page by page, why I found Vietnam so maddening: aggressive vendors, raucous drunks, deafening horns, and unshakable beggars. Like Pham, I wanted to like Vietnam and felt guilty for not being able to, after all, I was born here too. There must be something I can bond with. I appreciate his honesty. I appreciate having found a genuine volume.

Asian sentiment lacks an appreciation for original work, for intellectual property or the concept of copyright. Everyone in Asia seems to work so hard that it doesn’t seem to matter that your occupation is simply to make copies of something. Same-same.

Pirated books and tapes in Saigon…

www.youtube.com/watch?v=167RNHVTYMw

I wondered at my visceral reaction to the fakes. Was I feeling sorry for the unrewarded authors? I was upset that the vendors expected me to take part in their farce and willingly accept an inferior product. Maybe my puzzling behavior will set the knock-off vendors to consider what the big deal is.

As that lease approached its end in 1999, Great Britain’s negotiations with the emerging dragon of commerce, China, were going nowhere. Many of Hong Kong’s resident Chinese became alarmed. The new China seemed to be heading toward a free market economy, but to to guarantee their personal safety, many residents immigrated to Great Britain, other European countries, the United States, and Canada (Vancouver, BC being a favorite destination).

Many of Hong Kong’s capitalists decided to stay behind. In hindsight, they seem to have made the better choice, at least from a financial point of view. The early fears of strict mainland government control over local commerce have not materialized. In spite of the termination of British control, Hong Kong continues to reign as one of the most powerful financial centers of Asia, if not the world.

The Chinese government has long considered Hong Kong to be either a cancer about to metastasize and destroy their Communist system, or an opportunity to exploit. Both situations appear to be coming true.

However, the changes to China involve much more than just taking back Hong Kong. Having a beacon of free market capitalism end up on their doorstep, and knowing that the rest of the world was watching to see what they were going to do with it, surely played a role in the Communist Party’s decision to move all of China toward a market based economy.

The failure of the old central control model was also a major factor. For years, China’s Communist Party leaders relied on creative accounting for their production goals, along with their use of semi-controlled social upheaval (as during the “Cultural Revolution”) to distract the people from their plight. When these methods proved to have fleeting value, they finally considered the use of a freer market model. They slowly began to ease central control, giving more freedom for market participation to those willing to take risks.

How are they doing?

When we wanted to buy a few things for our trip, we were directed to the biggest store in Chengdu. Getting there required a two kilometer walk, broken up with a sidewalk lunch of pork pastries, chili sauce, and beer. We joyfully meandered through a market area where everything from fourteen cent sandals to pig snouts was being sold. During another aside while we searched for public toilets (because of the beer), we came across a quiet park where people drank tea and played mah-jongg and checkers.

This is the hidden China, off the main thoroughfares, where people enjoy both business and pleasure together in the inimitable Chinese way. They’ve used a form of mixed free market capitalism for years, using small markets to sell street food and many other products, no matter what gyrations the central government might have been going through. This is the China we love best.

But I digress. When we found the big store we were nearly overwhelmed by the size and number of products offered on just two floors. Their marketing ideas included having numerous employees, or representatives of product lines, give away samples and push products. Along one short thirty foot long aisle there were nine people, all selling products. At hand level along the moving walkway to the second floor, were hundreds of impulse buy products. Arriving on the second floor, we were met with more product demonstrators and hawkers in a non-food area. For instant gratification, with service being the order of the day, there was even a complete tailor shop located in the clothing area.

Downstairs in the food section, I was distracted by a familiar packaging design: Great Value, Wal-Mart’s private label.

“Look Claire,” I said enthusiastically. “They carry Wal-Mart products in this store.” But these were not products you would find in a U.S. store. Instead, we found hawthorn discs (we love them as candy and to settle the stomach), dried sweet potato sweets, and other uniquely Chinese snack foods.

Then I noticed one of those stations where you can scan a product bar code to check the price if the shelf label is gone – with a big Wal-Mart logo. This store didn’t just sell Wal-Mart products, it actually was a Wal-Mart – a symbol of western style capitalism if there ever was one.

While I was very impressed with the marketing, I also noticed that the same sandals that sold inside the store for 6.50 yuan could be purchased in the street market for only 1.0 yuan. So why were the Chinese willing to pay so much more? It was product variety, the people mover, everything being spotless and new, and personal attention from sales people. It was also proof to some, that they were finally becoming “wealthy” compared to their usual standards.

I looked hard for the “socialism” that has become such a political topic of late. Even in Communist China, in this store as well as in the street market, that concept seems well hidden. Where do you find “socialism” in a society where people work seven days a week for as little as 10 yuan a day, or $1.40 USD. Where is the “socialism” when pollution requirements on vehicles are far lower than in the U.S.? Universal education doesn’t exist in China, so where is the socialism in that fact?

The Communist Party is still the only political party ruling China. In small villages, and even in major cities like Beijing, there are few actual party members. Instead, there are a billion small capitalists who are increasingly gaining more influence and a larger voice in the direction of China.

We posted a video on our website early in our bicycle tour of SW China. It showed us riding our tandem bicycle in Chengdu traffic. I think the way Chinese behave on their streets is a metaphor for the way the people organize themselves – mostly ignoring authority in the commonplace aspects of life. I titled the video (shot by Claire from her stoker’s seat on the tandem), “Chaos Theory in the Streets of Chengdu.”

Although private cars are catching up in numbers, there are still more scooters and bicycles on the streets, along with large numbers of buses and taxis. The streets have separate lanes for small vehicles, and wider lanes for cars and buses. This arrangement sounds safe until you get to major intersections where chaos rules. Pedestrians, scooters, bicycles, loaded tricycles, cars and taxis are all crossing in different directions at the same time. Only when there is a critical mass of one group, and not when a traffic light changes, is when that group finally gets the right-of-way.

As scary as this as this arrangement might seem to us, it does seem to work for them, keeping their speeds lower than in highly regulated Western cities. When a pedestrian is hit by a car or scooter, the speed is fairly low. I doubt that anyone bothers to call lawyers or insurance companies after one of these accidents.

Traffic cops with red flags and whistles stand on the corners of most busy intersections, attempting to bring governmental order to the chaos. Seeing how little affect they have on what actually happens in front of them, the police might as well stay home.

I think this is how most Chinese deal with their government. The vast majority simply ignore it, and there doesn’t appear to be much the government can do about that attitude. The government has the ability to block Twitter, Facebook, Blogger, YouTube, and other social networking sites on the local Internet. They can probably read anyone’s email if they really want to do so. However, they seem powerless to stop anyone from stealing intellectual property or running their own business any way they want. They can’t even stop jaywalking.

So far they have been able to stop a few who seem to understand and want democracy – or demand their independence – like the Uyghurs and Tibetans. That fact may change eventually, but not soon. I believe most Chinese are so busy surviving or getting rich by their capitalism, that they care very little about the prevailing political system.

Let’s face the fact that the Chinese are different. That’s the way the world works, keeping it interesting. When democracy becomes something they want, they will have it either with blinding speed or slow evolution – but they will have it. Their government won’t be able to stop them, and we will not be able to help them. All we can do is just stand back and watch with amazement the power of a billion people.

I’m not saying that China is a pure capitalist country, any more than the United States actually is. Both have different blends of capitalism and socialism. Both ideas have been able to live side by side in both countries, which seems to work pretty well, since we are the two most powerful economic engines in the World, and have become highly interdependent.

We should study the people of China and their social and business practices; they study us. Like them, we should learn to worry less about the Chinese government, which has very little to teach anyone. Wal-Mart pays close attention to the Chinese people, uncovering their needs and desires. Wal-Mart has the right idea: just watch and listen.

We have much to teach the Chinese. They too, have much to teach us.

If you haven’t seen it recently, rent the DVD of “Inherit the Wind,” starring Spencer Tracy and Fredric March. This Oscar nominated movie recreates the events that surrounded the so-called “Scopes Monkey Trial” in the late 1920s.

Tracy, playing a character based on the famous attorney and agnostic, Clarence Darrow, takes on March, who plays a character based on famous orator and presidential candidate, William Jennings Bryan. It is an entertaining battle of wits, logic, and Bible knowledge between two men who, in real life, had the utmost respect for each other.

Events taking place outside the courtroom frame the trial inside and add to the drama, as local Southern Baptist, Methodist, and Assembly of God true believers march and carry on at a fevered pace. They sing Civil War era church songs, wave their copies of the King James Bible, and carry signs denouncing the theory of evolution and asking God to condemn Tracy’s character to a fiery Hell.

The jurors, simple folk who are members of the local churches, are afraid to take a stand against local customs or the mobs outside. The judge just wants to get the trial over, is under heavy political pressure to find the defendant guilty. The odds do not favor either science or reason.

That was in the 1920s. Average Americans would probably assume that those kinds of behavior and extreme religiosity would have disappeared at least fifty years ago -- but average Americans would be wrong.

These are Sarah Palin’s “real Americans” -- gun-toting, rebel yelling, Bible thumping, “holier than thou” evangelicals who believe every single word in the Bible as being from the mouth of God himself.

These are the very people who hate President Obama and oppose gay rights, gun control, stem cell research, health care reform, and any politician from states north of the Potomac and west of the Mississippi.

“If churches would stand for the Word of God (King James Bible) and kick the sorry heretics out the door with their false doctrines that don’t believe that the Bible is the Word of God every Word of it without error, the deity of Christ, that Hell is a literal lake of fire, that Jesus was born of a virgin, that there is only one way to heaven that’s through Jesus Christ alone, and God created the earth in six literal 24 hour days not thousands of years. If our country would put God back in the White House and the school house [sic]…” (Amazing Grace Baptist Church website)

I suggest you do two things:  Watch this recent news video from AP. Then later, when you get an opportunity, rent “Inherit the Wind” (1960). Discover for yourself how far some folks in the south have come in the last 100 years -- and enjoy a really good movie.

Church burns Bibles…

www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FkbgeR8LKs

Obviously this ignorant yokel pretending to be a religious authority doesn’t realize that the King James Version of 1611 was written in Elizabethan English, a dialect that was only spoken within 50 miles of London and for less than 100 years. Yes, it was the language of Shakespeare, but Jesus and the Apostles spoke in first century local dialects of Greek and Aramaic. Their “Bible” was written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. The 17th century English pronouns “thee” and “thou” never crossed Jesus lips during his lifetime. Why would God select that particular version over all others as his only true “holy book” ?

This is a perfect example of the “blind leading the blind.”

I wonder what political party these people will vote for next election…

Ever since Charles Darwin introduced the world to the evolution of life forms by means of natural selection, debate has centered upon the perceived challenge to one’s faith by the theory of evolution. Now the debate has expanded to the public school classroom where religious fundamentalists advocate that “alternative theories to evolution” be taught. The candidate usually proposed for such “alternatives” is intelligent design creationism, albeit the term creationism is usually omitted from the moniker by its proponents so as to avoid challenging the Establishment Clause of the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

The basic tenant of Intelligent Design is that some biological structures (e.g., the vertebrate eye, the bacterial flagellum, bird’s wings) or some biological processes (e.g., blood clotting mechanisms, cellular replication) are too complex to have been produced by natural processes (natural selection) alone; therefore, these structures must have been “intelligently designed.” Although ID supporters ultimately have to acknowledge that to be intelligently designed, there must be an intelligent “designer.” And that this too represents a challenge to the Establishment Clause of the Constitution. So strategically, most ID advocates cautiously avoid such obvious extensions of their claim.

So is ID an alternative scientific theory to evolution? No! Theories are “…in science, well-substantiated explanations of some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate tested facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses.” (National Academy of Sciences, 1998) And, ID proponents provide no testable hypotheses to substantiate their claims nor do they provide a model that meets the stringent criteria of scientific theory. Therefore, calling ID (creationism) a theory is inappropriate, as it doesn’t begin to approach the robustness of scientific theory. Furthermore, cloaking ID in the language of science by using “theory” does not make it scientific; science has higher standards than mere assertion.

ID has as its basic tenant, a fallacy of false alternative; that those biological structures and processes that science hasn’t been able to adequately explain must be the result of a supernatural intelligent design force or agent (designer). What ID proponents fail to recognize is that currently unexplained does not mean always inexplicable. Science is dynamic and answers may be on the horizon for those questions that remain unanswered. By the very nature of science, there will always be questions that remain unanswered because in the process of answering a question or solving a problem, more questions arise. This is the very nature and a most admirable quality of science. New questions will always be formulated.

If ID proponents want to present their ideas in the science classroom, they must first submit testable hypotheses to the scientific community for evaluation and validation, or, per a contemporary version of Francis Bacon’s quote: “Scientific validation must precede what is taught in the science classroom; we do not teach as science what we hope will be validated in the future.”

Here is a video of Dr. Forbes lecture on “Intelligent Design.” It is long, so clear your schedule, but it is very interesting and well presented.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcBs0ZxQ9VY

[Photo credits: "Baby World" photo by Felix Atsoram, Argentina; "3D Earth" graphic by Jamie Woods, Brisbane, Australia]

Editor’s Note: Events of recent weeks in far western China’s Xinjiang Autonomous Region, prompted this submission from someone who has been there, and who must – for now – remain anonymous.

Urumqi, Xinjiang is a fascinating city of broad ethnic diversity, mixed Soviet and traditional architecture, a reasonable infrastructure, and excellent food. In addition to the balanced and dominant Uyghur and Han ethnicities, also represented are Kazak, Hui, Mongolian, Kirgiz, Xibe, Tajik, Ozbek, Manchu, Daur, Tatar and Russian. But throughout Xinjiang, it is the Han, associated with the central government, and the Uyghurs, who still call the area East Turkistan, who are, and have been for recorded history, in conflict. As we have seen this summer, the conflict has often been violent.

We traveled to Urumqi from Beijing on our way across Asia on the Silk Road a few years ago. We found the people to be friendly, both Han and Uyghurs alike, but ethnic division was apparent throughout the region.

The year before we traveled through Xinjiang, the Uyghurs had bombed several buses in Urumqi, but it was not fully covered by the Western press, probably for lack of reporters in the region.

Who are these Uyghurs anyway? They live in such a remote part of China that few Westerners visit, or even know it exists. The Uyghurs are a Turkic people, and lay ethnic claim to a huge area of Central Asia reaching as far as Turkey in the west, Iran in the south, most of Kazakhstan and all of Xinjiang Autonomous Region. Early multiple invasions by warring peoples, and modern divide-and-conquer tactics of the Russians, with the consent of China, shattered geographic Turkistan, but the memory of Turkic speaking peoples is long.

Uyghurs, who lay moral and historic claim to East Turkistan (Xinjiang), have been the most active in attempting to regain full autonomy in historic times. As with the Tibetan minority, they chafe under Chinese (Han) rule. That constant burr under the saddle of their steppe ponies, periodically leads them to violence.

The most recent burr was the killing of Uyghurs by Han in a Southern China factory in the city of Shaoguan. The Uyghurs have trouble finding work in their own oil and gas rich region, and are forced to compete with the Han for factory jobs far from home.

As we arrived in one remote village, we were swarmed by a large group of Uyghur men, curious about the rare sight of a Caucasian couple riding a type of bicycle they had never seen. We soon learned they had been waiting for days, a prayer rug and blanket comprising their possessions, for a few low paying hard labor jobs repairing the single road to Kazakhstan. The supervisors were all Han, and paid much more than the Uyghurs

A few days later, near the border with Kazakhstan, a Uyghur had been told an American couple was staying at the hotel, and he waited for us to return from a walk. If you travel independently in China, you soon learn many people know where you are at all times. It can be unsettling at first. Local authorities knew he was meeting with us, and he probably was taking a risk.

Here is an account of our meeting from my journals:

He is a large Uyghur man of 47. He says he was a boxer and basketball player. He is fat now, in a successful businessman sort of way; proof of prosperity, somewhat of a rarity among Uyghurs. He orders the Han staff around like the stereotypical “Ugly American,” though he is a Chinese citizen. However, he is not Han, he is Uyghur, and thus does not see himself as being Chinese. Uyghur is his identity; he knows the bounds of his ethnicity and chafes at the loss of autonomy at the hands of the Chinese.

“Peejo! Peejo!” He waves his arm ordering more beer, and another Uyghur dish, both of which he pushes on us. “America good!” he says, and smiles broadly, setting broadside on his chair, legs spread to make room for his belly. He says something else, raises both hands high into the air, lifting up an imaginary something to great heights. “America,” he sighs. “America.” Then his beatific smile turns to a snarl, “China!” He turns up a little finger and spits on it, ultimate insult. “China bad.” Spit. “America!,” his voice softens again, and he lays his hand on his heart. “America.” Then he brightens, “George Bush! Good! America. Good!” He frowns again, “Saddam. Bad!” He is showing his solidarity with another small ethnic minority, the Kurdish in northern Iraq and Turkey.

We listen. He of course assumes we agree with him completely. There is no use trying to communicate that these questions are more complicated than perhaps he sees from his perspective. We smile. I try to drink just enough beer to please him, without getting drunk. I feel sorry for the poor man. He really thinks (he is not alone among Uyghurs) that America will someday restore the Uyghur homeland of western China to them. He really thinks America will attack China, just like we attacked Iraq. Poor man. Even an ego as big as George W. Bush would not consider attacking China.

The commercial dragon is awakening, and that is arguably good for the world economy; the sleeping dragon of the Chinese military might is not something to be awakened; not for a few million Uyghurs; sheepherders, horse and camel wanderers of the steppes and deserts of China. No, the Uyghurs will be free when they free themselves, and the Han will probably never allow that. They will dominate and eventually overwhelm with sheer population numbers, as they have done to the Tibetans. The dragon sleeps, but is still a dragon.

It appears that many in this major ethnic group, have somehow come to believe that we are their saviors. I’m not sure what our government has told them, or to what purpose, but since some of them are training to be terrorists, which is how they got to Guantanamo, I hope they don’t turn on us in their disappointment.

In coming months I will write about different Chinese ethnic groups, their relationship to the Han majority, and what that could mean for the Chinese government and their single party system.

China is a force to be reckoned with in this century, and we had better learn as much about the people and their ambitions as possible. The Communist government has adopted a market driven economy with a vengeance in recent years. How they bring those minorities, and the poorer Han, into economic parity with the new rich and the ruling class, will partially determine if the single party system evolves, or is replaced by something else. That something else, a system we enjoy, strikes fear in the hearts of the power elite in China.

Should current trends toward social instability remain unresolved, China could, as North Korea has done, turn to imaginary external threats and expand the military. The Han are very patriotic, and any outside threat would bind them together in a way that could threaten the peaceful relationship China has with us now. Let’s hope for continued evolution in China; in the political arena, not just the economic world.

• The Old Testament consists of thirty-nine books written by dozens of authors over at least six hundred years. And Moses did not write the first five books. In fact, it is hard to know if he ever existed.
• The New Testament was written by sixteen or seventeen authors over a period of seventy years. Only eight of the twenty-seven books are written by the people traditionally thought to be the authors. Most of the books are written not by apostles, but by later writers claiming to be apostles
• When Paul wrote his letters (penned before the Gospels) to the churches he founded, he did not think he was writing the Bible. So, too, with the Gospels. Mark, whatever his real name was, had no idea his book (the first Gospel to be written) would be put into a collection with three other books and called Scripture; and he did not think that his book should be interpreted in light of what other Gospel writers would write some thirty years later in different countries and in a different context.
• The idea that Jesus preexisted his birth and that he was a divine being who became human is found only in the Gospel of John; the idea that he was born of a virgin is found only in Matthew and Luke.
• In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus never refers to himself as a divine being, as someone who preexisted, as someone who was in any sense equal to God. In Mark, he is not God and he does not claim to be. In fact, he confirms his fallibility in this Gospel by repeatedly predicting that the end will come right away, during his own generation, while his disciples are still alive.
• The Gospels for the most part do not provide disinterested factual information about Jesus, but contain stories that had been in oral circulation for decades before being written down. This makes it very difficult to know what Jesus actually said, did, and experienced.
• There were lots of other Gospels available to the early Christians, as well as epistles, Acts, and apocalypses. Many of these claimed to be written by apostles, who, with the exception of Paul, could most likely neither read nor write.
• The creation of the Christian canon was not the only invention of the early Church. A whole range of theological perspectives came into existence, not during the life of Jesus or even through the teachings of his original apostles but later, as the Church grew and came to be transformed into a new religion rather than a sect of Judaism.

And while the list of things we know about the Bible that ain’t so goes on and on, one of the most disturbing, at least for me, of the truths is:

• There is only one book in the New Testament, 1 Timothy—forged in Paul’s name by someone living later—that states that a woman’s place in the church is to be silent and to “exercise no authority over a man.” What’s amazing to learn is that in the books that Paul really does write, this policy is clearly at odds with what he preached and practiced.

After looking at more than thirty houses, we finally settled on a custom built home on Skyline Drive. I loved my new home, especially happy knowing that I could spend as much time as I needed in decorating it exactly the way I wanted – a luxury I had never experienced. For the previous twenty-five years, I knew that no matter how much I loved my house and the country I lived in, that two years later we would be moving to another country, and possibly even to another continent.

When I felt that everything was perfect, I decided to take the car and drive around the neighborhood to get acquainted with the side streets. I was driving down this narrow street, somewhere between Skyline Drive and River Road, listening to Ray Charles singing, “I can’t stop loving you.”

Suddenly, I heard a police siren and when I looked in the rear view mirror I saw a motorcycle policeman motioning for me to pull over.

This very handsome officer, who stood about six feet tall with disarming, pale blue eyes, poked his head in the car window. “Lady, do you know you are driving down a one way street going the wrong way? May I please see your driver’s license?”

I looked up at him with a very surprised look and said, “Wo bu dung Mei Kwo hwa, dwei bu chi” (meaning “I don’t speak American, I am so sorry”). He repeated what he said, and I repeated my answer. He scratched his chin, and with a suspicious look on his face he grinned before saying, “Lady, you can go. Just don’t do it again!”

I waited until he left and then decided to go home before I got into more trouble. That was the only time I’ve ever spoken to a policeman. I did not feel guilty, knowing that I did not commit a serious crime, but if I ever have to talk to a policeman again, I hope he will be as handsome and as kind as the one that first stopped me.

From HULU.com. “Suspicious Officer” – “Psycho” (1961) Universal

He also shares the following 1981 quote from the father of the USA conservative movement, Barry Goldwater: “There is no position on which people are so immovable as their religious beliefs. There is no more powerful ally one can claim in a debate than Jesus Christ, or God, or Allah, or whatever one calls this Supreme Being. But like any powerful weapon, the use of God’s name on one’s behalf should be used sparingly. The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following their position 100 percent. If you disagree with these religious groups on a particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a loss of money or votes or both. I’m frankly sick and tired of these political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in A, B, C, and D. Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me? And I am even more angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who think it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate. I’m warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of conservatism.”

Today, Douglas Adams says that respected writers and politicians, particularly in the United States, are no longer willing to challenge religious ideas. They are not allowed to say those things. And yet, when you look at it rationally there is no reason why those ideas shouldn’t be as open to debate as any other. Fortunately, it was a Brit, Richard Dawkins, who had the courage to speak up, fervently believing that religious extremists are a serious threat to democracy and human betterment. His book, The God Delusion is easy to read and loaded with facts to support those assertions.

“Oh, but he’s an Atheist,” some will say. But be reminded that people like Einstein and Carl Sagan, to name just a few, did not believe in a personal god. However, that didn’t diminish the scientific data they accumulated and shared in their lifetime.

My mother, a hard-core Jehovah’s Witness, won’t read the book. Her church leaders tell her that it is “the work of the Devil.” That’s a pretty good reason why I think a thinking person would want to do otherwise.

What Richard Dawkins has to say and how he says it in The God Delusion is not only an important work of science, but a clear, articulate warning of what could happen if the current wave of passionate religious irrationality is allowed to continue unchecked. It is one of the best books I have read in the last ten years and I agree with the New York Times Book Review when it said that The God Delusion contained “Lots of good, hard-hitting stuff about the imbecilities of religious fanatics and frauds of all stripes.”