tang dynasty times

The Quiet American (and the Blackened Canteen)

 

M. tells me he is lying on the couch with a stiff drink watching the movie, The Quiet American. He says, "It reminds me of you." Well, how can I resist? Unfortunately, I don't have a couch, but like many women the world over, I keep a bottle of booze under the sink. Warming up Sachiko's homemade plum wine, I recall the old US Embassy in Saigon. It had clearly seen better days, but as of 10 years ago, at least, it was still standing-- right up alongside the muddy Saigon River.

Yeah, The Quiet American.

Even after all the books I read before the trip, staring up into the glaring sunlight toward that famous flat rooftop, I wondered yet again, "Why on earth did America choose to go to war with Vietnam? What could it possibly have mattered?"

You see, all this talk about universalist and particularist theory has never been about me uncovering the various and sundry looming differences between East and West-- but rather it is a plain and simple distaste for ideology-led policy. For as I always like to repeat, much damage has been caused in the world by the perhaps good-intentioned wish to "share the good news." Whether its the universalist principles in Plato or Christian evangelical philosophies or whether its the kind seen in Marxism or even globalist economic policies, when states attempt to universally apply what are universalist philosophies the results can be oppressive-- especially when seen from the long view. For in the end, as a wise man once said, we cannot save each other, all we can do is inspire and stand witness.

A die-hard existentialist, I guess I stand with the Swiss. I believe that the function of the state is to provide for the people of that state first. Food, water, clean environment, education and social welfare. Humanitarian aid and free trade next. Other than that, when it comes to taking a stand or making an ideological commitment, I am just not sure that is something for nation-states to do-- as I think this is something that each individual person needs to take a stand on. It's bad enough when a state seeks to impose its ideology on its own people but to then export it?

This morning, the Good Professor sent me a copy of Roger Ames's translation of Sun Tzu: The Art of War. He mentions that it could be useful in roughly drawing out the distinctions between ancient Chinese and "Western" thinking, especially as the latter emerges from Greek and Christian thought. In particular, concerning my last post, Plato versus Mencius, I thought this below was pretty illuminating about what I believe is the significant difference between a universalism based on the concept of objective Truth versus a "Confucian sensibilty" based on shared dispositions.

In contrast with its classical Greek counterpart where "knowing" assumes a mirroring correspondance between an idea and an objective world, this Chinese "knowing" is resolutely participatory and creative-- "tracing" in both the sense of etching a pattern and following it . To know is "to realize," "to make real." The path is not a "given," but is made in the treading of it. Thus, one's own actions are always a significant factor in the shaping of one's world."

Is this not the existentialist political manifesto par excellance? A sensibility to shared values and a deep commitment to an embodied realization of subjective truth. Or in the words of Master Yangming, the unity of knowledge and action (知行合一) says in a nutshell, “If you want to know bitterness, you have to eat a bitter melon yourself.”

Human association, community, and personal freedom, stresses Camus. This is the existentilaist credo.

A friend in Japan, Robert Yellin tells me about his father, Jerry Yellin, a decorated soldier in the war against Japan who is now doing all he can for peace and reconciliation. His story as seen in the book video is so very moving and incredibly reminds me much of the small meetings between vets that I heard about or saw in Vietnam a decade ago, which happened on the same local level-- sometimes resulting from just one American vet going back there to find someone or something...Indeed, I will never forget the vets I met or spoke to in Vietnam. An army of amputees, and agent orange bare forests, I don't know how many times Vietnamese people would come up and ask me if I was American. Taking my hands in theirs they would say, it's time for friendship. That was a long time ago and I am sure everything has been utterly transformed. Personally, I will never forget some of the stories I heard from American and Vietnamese vets there. In Saigon, we were staying in a seedy hotel not far from the old embassy (pictured at top) and there was this older American gentlemen down slurping his pho every morning for breakfast. One morning, he suddenly struck up a conversation with me and hearing how he has returned to Vietnam over and over (not easy travel back then from the US)- I asked him why. And he said, "I cannot get the beauty of this place out of my mind." Interesting since he must have seen such horrors there.

Years later, I would meet the leader of a WWII veterans group in Japan through an introduction of my Aunt's who is active in an airforce widow's association in Honolulu. For years, this older gentleman and I corresponded--his Japanese was so formal and old fashion, it was pretty much impossible to decipher. But he always repeated how happy he was that now instead of war between our countries, there were weddings. This is not surprsingingly the title of Yellin's more recent book, Of war and Weddings.

**

Links:

Jerry Yellin's The Blackened Canteen (the video is very moving--I just ordered the book)
Carthage at war (I am re-listening to the Hannibal lectures) and always up to chatting about the Punic wars
The Iliad and What it Can Still Tell us About War
Coady's Just War on Philosopher's Zone

Also a link to a petition against a planned aquarium in Kyoto which goes against public sentiment (they are planning to build in where a public park now stands!)

On knowing as doing and doing as being, see Master Yang's unusual epistemology

1945 Outstanding Gun Camera Raw Footage from Japan

 

ritual

 

It is a journey of thousands of miles straight across the Indian Ocean.

The people of Madagascar originated in Indonesia-- I had heard this suggestion a dozen times, but being afraid of boats and the ocean, I guess I just assumed that the uncanny similarities between these two peoples had somehow happened as a result of continental drift... (!)

No-- it seems that the long ago people now known as Indonesians rode the trade-winds across the ocean on great outrigger boats that were said to resemble spiders. The ancient Greeks reported seeing them as far west as the Red Sea, and wikipedia says these ancient Indonesians hailed either from Borneo or from Southern Sulawesi (I assume this is from DNA testing).

Eiji Hattori, however, claims they had to be the Torajans, and he bases this on their very similar funerary customs.

Other evidence fits as well-- first that there is a similar people in Borneo located near the large lake on that island that are thought to be related to the Torajans. The Torajans, however, did not originally come from Sulawesi or Borneo as they are original inhabitants of South China or Indochina...and so the story goes when you start trying to disentangle where any group of people originally comes from, things get complicated.

It sounds rough (but remember I don't like boats). We have a people (the proto-Torajans) who wash up ship-wrecked on the spider-shaped island of the mythical Celebes (now known as Sulawesi). There they begin to build great houses in the shape of gigantic boats.

Perhaps they set out again for Borneo and for Africa-- or perhaps those were a different wave of the same original southern Chinese? I prefer to think of them as the unlucky boat people, who setting off, washed up on the shores of southern Sulawesi where, heart broken, they began building their houses in the shape of the boats that had brought them there. Trying to get back home, they attempted several trips back-- only to wash up on Bornean shores and then way across the ocean on yet another island off the coast of Africa. There is no evidence whatsoever that their spider boats ever touched shore anywhere else in East Africa, but on Madagascar Hattori claims you see boats just like the spider boats described by the ancient Greeks right there bobbing up and down in the harbors.

Remember the boogyman? Well, he also lives in Indonesia. Fierce pirates, the bugis descended on the southern coast of Sulawesi-- subtle as a typhoon. The Torajans had no choice but to leave behind their homes along the seashore and head north-- deep into the mountains. At that point now so far from the Sea, they must have known that their cause was truly lost.

And, yet deep in the highlands, they still constructed those houses.

Hattori compares them to the famed gassho-zukuri ("Prayer hands" construction) houses of Japan. I thought they most resembled longhouses like you see in Borneo but just with those inexplicable roofs. Housing large extended families, behind each house you will see a granery built in the same construction (only smaller). Everything is up on piles-- but of course this is common practice throughout Oceania and Asia.

When I was traveling in the Land of the Toraja (Tana Toraja), given my love of astonomy, I was more impressed with the galactic explanation of the houses which suggested that the Torajans believed themselves decended from a peoples of a planet in some distant galaxy and that these boat houses were actually symbolic of the rocketships which had carried them there.

Now, though, I somehow find myself far more impressed with the seafaring explanation.

I remember it was a very early morning flight from Denpasar to Ujung Pandang (capital city of Sulawesi and home of the Bugis). Crossing the Wallace line, we arrived into a beautifully exotic harbor city, which rather than being full of pirates, was full of more mosquitoes than I was comfortable seeing in one place!

We borderd a bus and passed mosque after mosque.It was a full day on the bus and arriving into the town at nightfall, the driver deposited us right at the door of our hotel before honking his goodbyes and driving off. The town of Rantepao, in which we had just arrived, is the center of Tana Toraja.

 In Tana Toraja people repeat the phrase that "dying is the biggest event in a person's life." That is a misfortunate expression I think. However, it is true that traditionally funerals were the biggest event of life in Tana Toraja.

When a loved one dies, the body is kept first in a room in the great house. If they can gather the necessary funds quickly enough the funeral happens within a year but if it takes longer, they might temporarily bury the body under the house.

In fact, many traditional cultures have this concept of a two-phase funeral. The Japanese too in ancient times believed that the souls of the dead resided very closeby until gradually fading into the spirit of the trees or mountains.

That thought of the dead being somehow very close in proximity to the living is as old as the mountains. We forget this since all the major world religions posit a heaven that is in a separate realm-- and while Buddhists, Muslims and Christians may entertain the thought of purgatory (or a day of judgement) in general the dead make a hasty trip to paradise after death. Hattori explains that at least in three cases that he knows of-- that is in ancient Japan, the Torajans and on the island of Madagascar there is this two-tiered funeral custom. (I've heard they have it in Borneo too as well, which is how the jars are used

It is during the first small funeral that the Torajan effigies are made. Called Tao-tao, they are effigies thought to embody the soul of the dead person.

When the the second funeral is feasible (this is single the largest expenditure a family undertakes and sometimes it can take several years to raise the funds), several temporary structures are erected to house the guests and animals for slaughter. As the funeral lasts around 5 days, the family not only has to pay for the ceremony itself but has to feed and house the hundreds of guests for the entire time.

We had somehow stumbled on day 5 of a funeral being held in a village outside Rantepao. The last day of the funeral, it was the day when everyone said goodbye to the deceased, and the family insisted we join in. This is from my journal:

"They had placed the casket and the tao tao in two separate chariots, which people then danced around for what seemed like hours. Forming two big circles, we went around and around, singing and dancing around them. After this, they set fire to the structure that had housed the tao tao for the past 5 days. The tao tao looked like a small old woman, with glistening white eyes (with dark pupils set right in the middle). They then cut a puppy's ear and let the blood drip on the casket. And this was followed by a food fight said to scare away any evil spirits. I thought this was odd for Christians (which the Torajans are) and then as if to punish me for such a thought I got hit on the head with a flying piece of roast pork!)

We then followed after as they traipsed way back into the mountains and then watched in amazement as two men climbed up rope ladders (like the kind you imagine used in the deep caves of Southeast Asia where men collect bird's nests for soup). They somehow manueavered their way to the very top holding on to the coffin and the tao tao where they then placed both in a special hallow cut out of the face of the mountain. The coffin was placed way back in the depths of the hallow, while the effigy was propped up front, right again the balcony where it stood looking down on us."

It had not even been two years since my own father had passed away. Since we were not raised within any Church, my father's funeral had been conducted hastily and truly uncomfortably (as if we were all wearing clothes that did not fit right). After the funeral, pictures of dad were slowly removed from here and there around the house and that was that. There were no real rituals to help us get through the days, weeks and months-- well, let's just say it-- there were no rituals to get us through the years following his death. Because there were no real rituals, my grief was never given a voice. I had no way to collectively express grief-- and no where was I more aware of this than in Tana Toraja.

In Japan, of course, Buddhist funerals include ceremonies which are performed for 49 years-- held on the anniversary of death every year to mark the death of a loved one.

Watching the ceremonies in Tana Toraja, I couldn't help but feel that rather than being morbid (morbidly clinging to the dead) that these ceremonies were a celebration of family, love, and more than anything of life itself.

**

A few years after my short trip to Sulawesi, I was in Bali again and had the chance to meet Lorne Blair of Ring of Fire fame in Ubud, Bali. He was in the process of building a gorgeous house with a huge pitched roof in a village outside Ubud. Made entirely of wood, it had a roomy wooden veranda encircling it. The interior was open and airy and everywhere there was art which he had brought back from his travels to remote places. In that beautiful airy house, we spoke of funerals the entire time. He agreed with me that in fact remembering the dead is a form of deep reverence for life itself. To mark a life lived and to give voice to the great sadness of those left behind must be one of the most basic human instincts of all.. we discussed the ancient Persian towers of silence-- and of course about the Torajan funeral customs as well.

I told him that I would very much like to make it to the far north of Sulawesi-- to Manado, the town located at the very northern tip of the island. That was before fighting between Christians and Muslims took the bloody turn it took. It was also before the discovery of the miraculous fish, the coelcanth-- another East Africa-Sulawesi link?? was discovered in the waters off the coast there.

Not long after that, Blair fell down a manhole in Ubud and died from complications. The village he lived in-- along with his family-- organized an elaborate Balinese funeral. When I heard about it, I thought how much he would have liked the funeral to which hundreds attended.

These are the poignant-- and really so sensible-- words of his brother Lawrence, written not long after his brother's death:

After several years of going our own ways, he and I were collaborating again for the first time since RING OF FIRE, and had charted a vessel to lead an expedition of 36 adventurers this November through the remote islands off West New Guinea. Only a few months ago Lorne and I decided to name our cruise BEYOND THE RING OF FIRE. It now seems too apt and resonant a title to be dishonored. It will be a glorious tropical Viking's wake, a reminder, for me at least, that life as we know it is short indeed: that love actually is the way; and that the only thing really worth finding is happiness. Though I don't much care for running shoes, it is also a reminder 'to do it now". 

1000 kilometers north of saigon ( 順化)

1000 kilometers north of Saigon lies Vietnam's old imperial capital of Hue. Famous for its Forbidden City set along the shimmering Perfume River, it was a place created while dreaming of China.

**

You all know that the word kara (and kuro) signifies "black" in Altaic languages like Japanese, Manchurian and Turkish. While in English, "black" doesn't perhaps conjure up the most promising images, this is not so in all other countries, and the Black Sea is no more black-- and no more "dark"-- than the Red Sea is red. For black merely signifies north, while red signifies south.

Closely associated with China's theory of the five elements, from the earliest of times four celestial beasts 四獣 have been associated with each of the cardinal directions: the tortoise (black warrior of the north 玄武): the white tiger of the west 白虎; the red phoenix of the south 朱雀 and the blue dragon of the east 青龍. These concepts (along with so many others) traveled East to Japan and west as faraway as Turkey. According to this cosmology, the Black Sea really just means the "northern sea" and the Red Sea the "southern sea." In Turkish, the Mediterranean is known as the White Sea (that is, the Western Sea).

It should also be noted that black, according to this ancient system, was considered the position of authority. The Imperial Palaces of China were always positioned in the north -- facing south.They sat, in fact, beneath the Northern Pole Star, which was associated with the color purple and abode of the Celestial Emperor. For this reason the Imperial Cities 紫禁城 of old Peking and Hue are called in Chinese "Forbidden Purple Cities" (that is, located in the place of authority-- the north-- under the Northern Pole Star).

You have to admit there is something very intriguing about imagining an Emperor sitting on a throne in a Palace located beneath where the heavenly emperor sits in sky above.

In Japanese, "kara" (using a different character-- the character for Tang 唐) has for almost 2000 years been used to refer to China, but the concept (kara→black→north→authority) is actually believed to have been of Mongolian or Turkish origin (which is why it perhaps spread so far West into Turkey).

In Vietnam, in just the same way that the Chinese calendar was adopted so that today we would be entering the time of Small Snow 小雪 (no matter how hot is was in tropical Hue) so too did the Vietnamese emperors create their own Chinese Purple City.

And, in the most beautiful country in the world, there is the world's most beautiful city. And within that city there is an imperial palace, which perhaps rather than invoking feelings of splendor and awe like the other far grander one much further north, instead slowly seduces you with its poetry.

**

During my second week in Hue, I had heard that the lotus in the pond were so venerable in age and size that one could hear them open every morning with a great pop! Can you imagine-- to hear a flower blossom?

Closing at night, they ever so slightly sink back down into the muddy water. The moment the sun comes out, however, the lotus turn to face the sun and unfold in bloom. Everyday, she told me taking my hands, the flowers do this every day at sunrise so if you really want to hear it, you have to be there early, early in the morning.

So, I set out just before sunrise.

Still dark, I got on my borrowed bicycle-- an old forest green peugeout just like I had when I was in junior highschool. It was so nearly a match, in fact that I couldn't help but wonder if it really was my bicycle! Riding under avenues of flame trees, I arrived at the bridge to wait. But as the sky began to light up, thick mist lingering between the mountains, the sound of sampans puttering down the Perfume River first distracts and then instead of the lotus all I can hear are poems coming in waves off the water. Ca dao (漢越詞?)

The wind sighs through the flame tree
So far from my parents, I sometimes can't eat.
My hunger dulled by lonesome grief
I take up my bowl. I put it back down.

A tiny bird with red feathers
a tiny bird with black beak
drinks up the lotus pond day by day.
Perhaps I must leave you.

Evening before the king's pavilion:
people are sitting, fishing, sad and grieving
loving, in love, remembering waiting, watching.
Whose boat plies the river mists
--offering so many rowing songs
that move off these mountains and rivers, our nation

It was from this lotus pond, too, that every morning palace servants would wake at dawn to board small boats and collect the dew that had settled on the lotus flowers that night for the Emperor's tea.

More than the lotus, though and more than the ancient forbidden city and tombs of the old Emperors-- even more than the flame trees and poetry, it was an old American that I met briefly in a restaurant in Saigon that has haunted me. Perhaps like all the other surprisingly large number of Vietnam Vets I saw wandering around Saigon, he was there for the same reason. But it was his words that drove it home.

I can't forget

That was it. But somehow coming back to see the army of amputees and the malaria (there was an epidemic at that time), mountainsides completely bare of life.. somehow seeing this was a comfort to him.

Long Autumn nights.

Years later back in Japan, sitting once again in front of a lotus pond with my tea senpai, Nobue, we were eating onigiri and drinking tea and she was being highly amusing talking about some book she was reading, when this old woman sneaked up on us and without a word of greeting looked at us and said,

You know, you can hear them open in the morning. Pop!

**

All the ca dao poems were from John Balaban's "Poetry of Vietnam," in Smithsonian's Asian Art and Culture (winter 1994/Vietnam)

 

NHK (Part 9) South Into India 天竺へ

On the Road again...After following in Alexander the Great's footsteps straight across the Pamirs, the NHK team next headed south. South into India.

So far, the team had been traveling along the two great east-west running roads-- known collectively, of course, as the Silk Road-- these roads that once connected the Roman empire with the Chinese empire. Yet, we are reminded again and again that in fact there were all kinds of roads. And for videos 15 and 16 of the NHK series, the team traveled on the ancient roads that led south over the mountains.

Using the Karakoram Highway, the team passed through Hunza with its beautiful valleys full of apricot trees, and then briefly joined the well-traveled Grand Trunk Road that has for hundreds of years connected Afghanistan with India. The Grand Trunk Road-- it reminds me of another book by Hopkirk I have been wanting to read for years called, Quest for Kim: In Search of Kipling's Great Game. The book traces the steps of Rudyard Kipling's Kim, which took place mainly along the Grand Trunk Road, or the GTR as it is lovingly called in South Asia.

What is it about these ancient caravan roads? Is it just me or does everyone get excited and ready to pick up and hop on a plane just thinking about them? These grand pathways that have served to connect peoples, ideas, religions and every manner of goods on earth-- they somehow beckon to us...

"Look! Brahmins and chumars, bankers and tinkers, barbers and bunnias, pilgrims -and potters - all the world going and coming. It is to me as a river from which I am withdrawn like a log after a flood. And truly the Grand Trunk Road is a wonderful spectacle. It runs straight, bearing without crowding India's traffic for fifteen hundred miles - such a river of life as nowhere else exists in the world." (Kim)

The Sino-Japanese team had by this stage lost their "Sino" partners and from here they head on alone-- over the mountains. For the most part they are following in the steps of the great monk (again) Xuanzang. Up into Kashmir (which was once a vibrant Buddhist center of great scholarship) and then further up, up into the clouds of Ladakh.

They are traveling along the the dazzling-high Beacon Highway. Up past the alpine tree-line of Kashmir, then through the snowy Zoji La Pass, they enter the moonscape of Ladakh. Cold, dry and treeless, it is unbelievably beautiful. And cultures are dispersed by altitude so that if you are about at the same altitude in these mountains, no matter how far removed, you will find the same groups of people. And, it is the Tibetans who are up at the top.

The air is so thin. But I remember Tibetans saying how much they hated descending into the Indian plains. Too much oxygen was stifling, they said

Up to Leh and then on to the place that I cannot get out of my mind: Alchi. The murals at Alchi were so beautiful that I feel as if I could easily devote the entire rest of my life just thinking about them. I very much wish to return here-- to travel there with Adonis, but he says, no, "The air is too thin up there for a little boy."  

From Ladakh, the team next travels into the deep south of India- again in the steps of the the 7th century monk, Xuanzang-- to the Buddhist Holy Land-- to Lumbini, Kusinigara, Sarnath, Bodhgaya, and of course to the legendary ancient Buddhist University of Nalanda. (For more beautiful photographs and commentary about Nalanda, see Shunya's post here). We are now back in the places where Bernstein traveled. **

And speaking of Bernstein, I no longer read much travel literature. You would think I should have become a true armchair traveler since I am no longer really able to really satisfy my wanderlust. But, I just do not seem to enjoy much of the travel literature out there. It is always so much about the traveler and less about the places themselves. This is seems to be particularly so of books about India. The Western traveler is inevitably it seems pushed to his or her limits and starts complaining-- and this usually leads to self-psychoanalysis. This was my problem with Bernstein.

I am, however, re-reading Vikram Seth's From Heaven Lake. Seth, an Indian who has spent much of his adult life in London and California is also a poet. He is also happens to be the author of my very favorite book about India (as India is every bit the main character at Lata): A Suitable Boy. I've read the novel 3 times and am next thinking of listening to it on audio (since my first-ever audiobook experience was not too horrible!)

Compared to a Suitable Boy, From Heaven Lake is so simple and sparce-- and yet it so beautifully written you just can hardly put it down. Seth, studying Chinese at Nanjing University, wants to head home to Delhi via Lhasa. This is back in the 1980s so the journey itself is impossible. But aren't all journeys impossible? Traveling along the silk road just like the NHK team, instead of going south over the Karakoram, he heads south over the Kunlun Range-- a far more daunting endeavor. The great Qinghai plateau, I believe is the source of most of Asia's greatest rivers-- the Yellow River, the Yangzi River, the Mekong River. What about the great rivers of India?

Seth is a charming and generous traveler-- something I have heard about Colin Thubron.  (Everything I wanted to say about From Heaven Lake, this lady already said quite well on her blog-- so here it is) In a nutshell, From Heaven Lake is great travel writing. The only time we ever spend any real time in the author's head is when he discusses the differences between India and China. It is a brief interlude, but it is not un-welcome. 

India and China-- these are set to be the two great powerhouses and how they view each other may start being of real interest. You see all kinds of Westerners writing opinion pieces about "India overtaking China"-- but one wonders how the Chinese view the Indians-- and vice versa. They have fought that one war-- which to my mind is the single time they ever fough each other. Seth says much about the accomplishments of China (and this is back before there was any real economic accomplishments to speak of).

To sum up his opinion, he says, both countries have overwhelming populations that could destroy them from within.  Yet, he thinks the Communist Party has made great strides in curbing that population with its authoratarian tactics. Basically his opinion boils down to probably what any of our opinions would be: if he was born in the Middle Class or above, then of course he values his freedom-- and would choose an Indian-style democracy (because of course India is a true democracy in which we have seen the people actually overthrowing unpopular governments).

However, he says, if he had been born in the bottom third of his country where people live in unbeliavable poverty, well, he says in that case he would rather be Chinese, because few people actually starve (again this is 1980s China-- the same time when the NHK team passed over those same desert tracks and dizzingly-high mountain roads,)

I have been meaning to post this article about India's first fluent Mandarin-speaking foreign Beijing correspondant's new book Smoke and Mirrors. I link a cite with no advertisements but you can access the original article via the Asia Times website-- the comments also show that there are books to be written on the subject of India/China comparisons-- Khourosh, are you listening? Seth ends his book with these words (which still hold true today):

If India and China were amicable toward each other, almost half the world would be at peace. Yet friendship rests on understanding, and the two countries, despite their continguity, have had almost no contact in the course of history. Few travellers have made the journey over the Himalayas, and not many have made the voyage by sea; trade, while it existed, has always been constrained by geography. In Tibet and South East Asia we find a fusion of the two great culture zones, but the heartlands of the two great culture zones have been almost untouched by each other. The only important exception to this is the spread of Buddhism.

As someone mentioned in the comments-- Dalyrmple's City of Djins is also a very excellent read-- highly recommended.

The most dramatic footage of this particular NHK video was of India's famous Kumbh Mela, which occurs 4 times every 12 years at 4 locations. The one at Allahabad is the most famous and the NHK team (with their usual impeccable timing) was on the scene. In Seth's A Suitable Boy, there was an incredibly vivid scene of an actual event that took place during the Mela in the 50's when several hundreds of people were trampeled to death in the crowds (the 1954 Kumbh Mela Stampede). 

Another coincidence-- but Shunya just uploaded some of his videos of the festival from 2001 when he was there. The videos are extremely well-done and watching them could be even better than actually being there! The bridge, the river, the banners, and marigolds, the music, the lights--  a window onto what is a "giant human spectacle, an intense, absurd, spontaneous commedia dell'arte that offers to anyone who cares a great mind-expanding experience.." Both videos are beautifully shot and highly recommended viewing.

**

Finally-- back to China. Jonathan Spence remains one of my all-time favorite historians. I was so looking forward to the Reith lectures (BBC Radio 4) but have surprisingly found them to be a real sleeper-- until the 3rd one. Well, I found even the third one to be a sleeper-- except it has produced some interesting dialog and the questions by Holbrooke and Kissinger, not only do they "miss the point," but in fact they showed a really very surprising lack of understanding:

Holbrooke, for example, started the Q&A session with, "Do you agree that xenophobia is a fundamental trait in China? And if so, in what way is it different from other the other nationalisms of other countries?"

That is some question, isn't it? Spence handled it really well, first off by mentioning that are many nations in the world where we find much violence resulting from xenophobia. I actually found the phrasing of the question itself rather xenophobic-- but that's me, I guess.

Finally, the last lecture,  Lecture 4: The Body Beautiful, I found to be extremely well-done. If you only listen to 1 this should be it.