Travels in the Riel World

The recent World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, included a session dedicated to “creating dialogue for a multicultural world.”

Leaders from religion, education and government agreed that politics is failing to find solutions for the compelling issues confronting peace and democracy in the world today. The solutions, they said, lie in the understanding of diversity, respect for culture and religions and in deeper levels of engagement.

You can see a webcast of the session here.  Among the individual speakers, John J. DeGioia, President of Georgetown University, suggested that:

… globalization has not enabled people to better understand themselves or the backgrounds of others. The current question, he said, is can we take dialogue to a deeper level and learn from each other to draw on our strengths?

And Mohammad Khatami, former President of Iran, noted that:

“The international arena is very dark,” he said. If extremism is not isolated, he warned the threat of war will loom even larger. Much of the world has common goals, he concluded. What is needed is common ground to fight extremism and restore global security.

Other topics of discussion at the Forum included climate change, world trade, the influence of the internet, global health, and a variety of additional subjects.  If you’re interested in reading more about these sessions, a few sites to check out include Davos Conversation, Davos Diary from the NY Times, and ForumBlog.

In another example of the interconnectedness of the globe, an increased demand for corn-based ethanol fuel is now being pegged as a culprit behind a tortilla crisis in Mexico.

Mexico is in the grip of the worst tortilla crisis in its modern history. Dramatically rising international corn prices, spurred by demand for the grain-based fuel ethanol, have led to expensive tortillas. …

The typical Mexican family of four consumes about one kilo — 2.2 pounds — of tortillas each day. In some areas of Mexico, the price per kilo has risen from 63 cents a year ago to between $1.36 and $1.81 earlier this month.  With a minimum wage of $4.60 a day, Mexican families with one wage earner have been faced in recent months with the choice of having to spend as much as a third of their income on tortillas — or eating less or switching to cheaper alternatives.

There are many angles to this story, from market economics to global energy needs, which you can explore in a multitude of related stories.  But the focus here is on culture and there are some good descriptive nuggets about Mexican culture in the article:

In another place, a rise in the cost of a single food product might not set off a tidal wave of discontent. But Mexico is different.  “When you talk about Mexico, when you talk about culture and societal roots, when you talk about the economy, you talk about the tortilla,” said Lorenzo Mejía, president of a tortilla makers trade group. “Everything revolves around the tortilla.”

The ancient Mayans believed they were created by gods who mixed their blood with ground corn. They called themselves “Children of the Corn,” a phrase Mexicans still sometimes use to describe themselves.

Poor Mexicans get more than 40 percent of their protein from tortillas, according to Amanda Gálvez, a nutrition expert at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Modern-day tortilla makers such as Rosales use “an ancient and absolutely wise” Mayan process called “nixtamalizacion,” Gálvez said.

The process is straightforward. Large kernels of white corn are mixed with powdered calcium and boiled, then ground into a dough with wheels made of volcanic rock.  The resulting tortillas are more pliable and more durable than those typically found in U.S. stores. Mexicans say tortillas are their “spoons” because they use them to scoop up beans, and can serve also as their “plates” because they’re sturdy enough to hold a pile of braised meat and vegetables.

The tortilla-making process, Gálvez said, releases antioxidants and niacin, which allows them to be absorbed by the body, and the membranes on each corn kernel provide important dietary fiber. As a result of eating tortillas, Mexican children have a very low incidence of rickets, a bone disease caused by calcium deficiency that is common in developing countries.

“It is absolutely crucial for our population to keep eating tortillas,” Gálvez said.

Something to think about the next time you munch on a tortilla at a Mexican restaurant.

In a nice essay for the Christian Science Monitor, Daniela Petrova talks about her quest to see the Big Five game animals while on safari in Kenya.  In the end, though, she passes up a chance to see a leopard in order to savor a sunset when she realizes that the pictures she sees with her eyes can often be more memorable than the ones she takes with her camera.

Toward the end of the day, we see a large herd of elephants. I reach for my camera – but then I stop myself. I decide to watch them instead as they move in a slow procession through the brush, their ears flapping back and forth, their heavy feet crunching on the dry grass.

Over the past two days, I have filled two memory sticks with images, but I haven’t really seen much outside the lens of my camera, I realize.

As the sun dips lower toward the horizon, we stop by a large acacia tree in Ngama Hills to take in the view. Below us, the vast Mara is dotted with herds of zebras and gazelles. A soft, warm wind rustles tree branches. A bunch of wildebeests are grazing 30 feet away from us. …

I’ve seen four of the Big Five, and I have scores of photos to prove it. But my favorite picture – the one I will take home not in my camera but in my mind – is of the ungainly wildebeests in front of me, their long beards glowing golden in the sunset.

I’ve previously written about clans and tribalism as it relates to Iraq and the Middle East.  But this cultural topic is of course also an issue in other regions of the world, as shown by this recent article about Somalia.

… whether Somalia pulls itself together now or explodes into bloodshed again depends not on American troops, foreign peacekeepers, investment or aid. It depends on clans. …

The government … is using a mathematical formula based on rough estimates of the population to allocate parliamentary seats and ministerial posts on a clan basis … It is the 14th attempt since 1991 to form a clan-based government; all the others have disappeared into a vortex of suspicion and violence.

The story provides a brief history of clans in Somalia and a description of the some of the challenges they pose:

Somalia’s main clans are divided into a dizzying number of subclans, sub-subclans and even sub-sub-subclans, and the term clan is loosely used for large family networks, like the Hawiye, and smaller ones, like the Ayr.

There is no definitive clan chart, with different clans disputing how they are interrelated, and Somalis argue over whether they have physical differences. But all clans are based on ancient genealogies. You cannot join a clan. You are born into one. …

Clans have been the bedrock of Somali identity since the first bands of nomads fought over water holes. “Out there, you needed to belong to someone,” said Yusuf Mohammed Ali, a shipping magnate and respected figure among the Suleiman clan.

The same is true today on Mogadishu’s chaotic streets. In a place that has teetered so long with no government, no police forces, few institutions and great uncertainty, clans function as a safety net, a social network — most people marry within their clan — a justice system and, most importantly, as protection.

The factionalism makes government a tricky affair. Somalia’s infamous warlords, like Muhammad Qanyare Afrah, are essentially clan leaders with their own clan armies.

For more information, you can read this wikipedia article on tribalism, or use Google News to see a variety of media stories from around the world that address the topic.

There was an excellent article last week in Time Magazine about the rise of China, not only as an economic power but also as a political one.

You may know all about the world coming to China–about the hordes of foreign businesspeople setting up factories and boutiques and showrooms in places like Shanghai and Shenzhen. But you probably know less about how China is going out into the world. Through its foreign investments and appetite for raw materials, the world’s most populous country has already transformed economies from Angola to Australia. Now China is turning that commercial might into real political muscle, striding onto the global stage and acting like a nation that very much intends to become the world’s next great power.

Some examples of how China is beginning to flex its diplomatic muscle:

President Hu Jintao … has been a vigorous ambassador for China: the pattern was set in 2004, when Hu spent two weeks in South America–more time than George W. Bush had spent on the continent in four years–and pledged billions of dollars in investments in Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Cuba.

While Wen Jiabao, China’s Premier, was visiting 15 countries last year, Hu spent time in the U.S., Russia, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Nigeria and Kenya. In a three-week period toward the end of 2006, he played host to leaders from 48 African countries in Beijing, went to Vietnam for the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, slipped over to Laos for a day and then popped off for a six-day tour of India and Pakistan.

However, the news is not all good for China’s leaders:

China is still a poor country … whose leaders face so many problems that it is reasonable to wonder how they ever sleep. The country’s urban labor market recently exceeded by 20% the number of new jobs created. Its pension system is nonexistent. China is an environmental dystopia, its cities’ air foul beyond imagination and its clean water scarce. Corruption is endemic and growing. Protests and riots by rural workers are measured in the tens of thousands each year.

The article is worthwhile reading if you want to understand more about what is going on today in China.  Also noteworthy is that Time has decided to commit regular space in its magazine and on its website to coverage of the country.  In addition to the articles that will be produced, they have debuted a new China blog.

With all the focus on economic growth and development in the world, it’s interesting to read about a country that may actually be trying to pull back the reins on growth in favor of a more balanced approach.  That, at least, is the story out of Thailand these days, according to this recent article in Newsweek International.

Surayud Chulanont, Thailand’s interim prime minister … has introduced measures to halt the Westernization of Thai society, downsize the role foreigners play in the economy and maximize “happiness,” not growth, as he put it. Surayud’s blueprint draws inspiration from the country’s highest authority: 79-year-old King Bhumibol Adulyadej, the world’s longest-reigning monarch. His Highness has long advocated “sufficiency” in Thai life, meaning humility, simplicity and living within one’s means. Others have a different name for it: “Buddhist economics.” …

Since the late 1990s, a small group of retired officers, bureaucrats and economists have worked to codify the king’s ideas into a unified economic theory … They say it represents a “middle path” between excessive globalization and inwardness, between unbridled capitalism and the welfare state, and between “backwardness and impossible dreams,” as the UNDP report puts it.

One main aim is to mitigate “the inevitable boom-bust cycles” that haunt many developing economies, says Wisarn Pupphavesta, a senior economist at the Thailand Development Research Institute. “I accept that it goes against neoliberal consumer capitalism,” says an economist with close ties to the monarchy. “But we must choose a new way of life.”

Some businesspeople and foreign investors are not impressed and charge that the new policies are slowing the economy, derailing the stock market and guaranteeing a permanent rural underclass.  It’s all certainly food for thought. At the very least it has led to the coining of an interesting new term in “Buddhist economics.”

Sad, but not very suprising news …

Global opinion of U.S. foreign policy has sharply deteriorated in the past two years, according to a BBC poll … In the 18 countries previously polled by the BBC, people who said the United States was having a generally positive influence in the world dropped to 29 percent, from 36 percent last year and 40 percent the year before.

“I thought it had bottomed out a year ago, but it’s gotten worse, and we really are at historic lows,” said Steven Kull, director of the Program on International Policy Attitudes. Kull attributed much of the problem to a growing perception of “hypocrisy” on the part of the United States in such areas as cooperation with the United Nations and other international bodies, especially involving the use of military force.

“The thing that comes up repeatedly is not just anger about Iraq,” Kull said, adding that the BBC poll is consistent with numerous other surveys around the world that have measured attitudes toward the United States. “The common theme is hypocrisy. The reaction tends to be: ‘You were a champion of a certain set of rules. Now you are breaking your own rules, so you are being hypocritical.’ “

Hard to believe that just a few years ago the entire world was standing alongside us.  The thing is, when I travel, it’s evident that many people still love the idea of the United States and want the country to be a force for good in the world.  People merely want us to show an interest in the rest of the planet and, as the article notes, to live by the same ideals we strive to export.  So there is always hope.

Not many people see Afghanistan as a tourist destination these days, although a few decades ago it was a popular stop on the backpacker trail that went overland from North Africa across the Middle East to India.  Despite Afghanistan’s fall from the tourist map, however, there are still travelers heading to the country. 

As Joshua Hammer reports in the Sunday NY Times, Afghanistan is an interesting destination and the capital city of Kabul is actually pretty safe compared to the rest of the country.  Some excerpts from the article:

In the 1970s, tens of thousands of visitors poured into Kabul each year, when the Afghan capital rivaled Kathmandu as the favored Central Asian haunt for young backpackers… Then came the Russians, then the Taliban, and then the bombings following 9/11, pretty much destroying Kabul’s reputation as a favored stop on the Hippie Trail. Now, however, even though much of Afghanistan remains dangerous, tourists are beginning to trickle back in…

Most tourists who pass through view Kabul as an overnight stopover on the way to more remote corners of the country: the rugged Pamir Mountains in the northeast; the exotic bazaar town of Mazar-i-Sharif; and Bamiyan, the former site of the giant stone Buddhas that were destroyed by the Taliban. But those who linger for a few days, as I did, will discover a vibrant capital, steeped in tumultuous history and rich with Silk Road atmospherics…

In a week of exploring the city, from the windswept, near-deserted ramparts to the teeming, labyrinthine passageways of the Mandayi Bazaar, I never once felt threatened. To the contrary, I was welcomed everywhere by Afghans eager to show me that their country and city were groping their way toward recovery.

If you’re interested in reading more about contemporary Afghanistan, you should pick up a copy of The Places in Between by Rory Stewart.  It’s a tale of the author’s walk across Afghanistan and was named one of the ten best books of 2006, an unusual compliment for a travel narrative.

Women in every country have strived for decades to achieve some measure of equality in the corporate boardroom and in politics.  Gains have been easier to come by in some countries and more difficult in others.  Not surprisingly, progress has tended to be slower in societies that are more conservative or that have cultural tendencies toward the masculine, such as the machismo-influenced Latin world.

In recent years, however, Spain has begun to make up for lost time.  According to this Business Week article, there are more females than males enrolled in Spanish universities, and “Spain now ranks eighth in the world in number of women with political posts,” thanks in large part to efforts by the current government.

No question, the female population of Spain has had a lot of catching up to do. The four decades of authoritarian dictatorship following Spain’s civil war kept women in traditional roles far longer than other Europeans, and they trailed far behind women in the U.S. and Britain who gained substantial ground during World War II when they filled in for men away at battle. Even now, less than 3% of top management in Spain’s public companies is female.

Yet in recent years, Spanish women have made substantial progress in business, politics, and the judiciary. Now, with new laws on the way designed to increase their power in business, they may be on the verge of breaking the glass ceiling at last.

“There has been a deeply rooted traditional culture we have had to overcome, much like an obstacle course,” says Petra Mateos, president of Spanish satellite operator Hispasat. As in many countries, she says, women were expected to assume all responsibility for caring for the family and educating children. “Today’s generation has a different mentality,” Mateos says.

Ironically, one of the biggest challenges still remaining is another cultural obstacle, one that may be considerably more difficult to overcome than that of machismo.  Although it poses difficulties for men with families, as well, the tradition of the long afternoon lunch and the late dinner hour is particularly hard on many women who wish to have a career.

… many Spanish workers, not just women, continue to contend with a traditional schedule that includes a two-hour lunch break followed by office hours often stretching past 8 p.m. Young and single people can handle the classic Spanish workday, but it’s tough for women with children.

The sight of couples kissing or showing affection in public is common in the United States and is almost a cultural requirement in Italy and France.  That’s not the case everywhere, though, and particularly in a conservative culture such as India’s.  But it appears that Indian society may be changing.  There’s a fun little article in Time Magazine this week about the rise of public affection in India.

Where love in India was once a very private affair, it’s now on display all over the movies and soap operas, magazines and newspapers, and between young couples canoodling in parks. At this time of year, wedding season and the lead up to Valentine’s Day — a Western tradition increasingly popular in India’s more cosmopolitan cities — it’s even more noticeable.

It may seem strange in the land of the Taj Mahal — one of the greatest-ever public displays of affection, built by the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan as a mausoleum for his late wife — that an increase in public displays of affection is so notable, but this increase is a departure for a culture that has long kept hidden its romantic emotions. In the recent past, unmarried couples would not hold hands in public, let alone kiss or cuddle.

As one would expect, of course, this cultural evolution isn’t universally popular.

The changes aren’t welcomed by all Indians, the vast majority of whom live outside major cities and remain far more conservative than their urban cousins. Police officers have been known to rough up young couples holding hands in public parks. Over the past few years a group of Hindu nationalists around the country have burned Valentine’s Day cards and branded the festival “cultural corruption.” Kissing still raises eyebrows when depicted in big Bollywood movies.

There is an interesting experiment happening on Canadian television at the moment.  A sitcom about Muslims - called “Little Mosque on the Prairie” - that uses humor to explore relations between the Islamic community and other Canadians.  According to this article:

The show follows a small group of Muslims in, of all places, a prairie town in Saskatchewan where, in the first episode, the group was trying to establish a mosque in the parish hall of a church. A passer-by, seeing the group praying, rushes to call a “terrorist hot line” to report Muslims praying “just like on CNN,” which touches off a local firestorm.

Hoping to avoid making a stir in the town, the group hires a Canadian-born imam from Toronto who quits his father’s law firm to take the job — career suicide, his father thinks. On the way, he is detained in the airport after being overheard on his cellphone saying, “If Dad thinks that’s suicide, so be it,” adding, “This is Allah’s plan for me.”

The first episode of the show last week drew a near record audience and people associated with the program hope it can help to foster some bit of understanding about the Muslim community.

The show’s creator, Zarqa Nawaz, said that she was not trying to bridge all of the cultural gaps, but that she hoped the program could elicit laughs on all sides and perhaps foster a better understanding between Muslims and non-Muslims.

“I want the broader society to look at us as normal, with the same issues and concerns as anyone else,” said Ms. Nawaz, who based the series loosely on her own experiences as a Muslim woman who moved from Toronto to the prairie. “We’re just as much a part of the Canadian fabric as anyone else.” …

The show has generally been well received by Muslim leaders, who welcome the light touch it brings to issues that are normally debated in numbing seriousness.

“Muslims are a bit late in laughing at themselves, but we have to use humor to remedy these divisions, just like any community,” said Mohamed Elmasry, an imam and president of the Canadian Islamic Congress.

Within the next two years, apparently, a majority of the world’s population will live in cities for the first time in human history.  According to experts quoted in this story in the Christian Science Monitor, much of this urban growth is being driven by cities in Africa and Asia.  And, not surprisingly, the rise of these cities is posing tremendous social and environmental challenges.

Among the major challenges are the mundane features of daily living: clean water and air, sanitary waste facilities, the cost of food, and the availability of shelter and transportation. …

Of the 3 billion people who live in cities today, about 1 billion are in slums without clean water, adequate toilet facilities, or durable housing. Some 1.6 million urban dwellers - many if not most of them children - die each year due to causes associated with the lack of clean water and sanitation.

There are also natural risks to consider.

Eight of the 10 most populous cities are on or near earthquake faults. Some two-thirds of the cities projected to exceed 8 million residents by 2015 are in coastal areas where sea levels may rise as a result of climate change.

Experts say there is also good news, in that some cities recognize the challenges and are pursuing innovative strategies to deal with energy, transportation and economic issues.  Nevertheless, the growth of some of these urban areas is breathtaking.  According to the article, within ten years “there are likely to be 59 African cities with populations between 1 million and 5 million, 65 such cities in Latin America and the Caribbean, and 253 in Asia.”

I was intrigued by a recent article I came across that described the cafe culture of New York City.  Not the culture that surrounds the crowded Starbucks on every corner, but the life of the European-style cafes where creative professionals gather and network most mornings over coffee or breakfast.

Such are the benefits of belonging to a Manhattan social tribe (or several tribes) whose members regularly languish for an hour or two on weekday mornings at European-style cafes. Drawn from the self-employed ranks of late-rising professions like fashion, art, publicity and Web publishing, these affluent breakfast clubbers avoid Starbucks …

Unlike the “power breakfast,” that well-documented institution that plays out among corporate executives at the Regency and Four Seasons hotels, members of the late-morning breakfast tribe, who gather from 9 to 11, don’t have to put in an early appearance at an office. But don’t be fooled by the casual vibe and the late hour. These breakfast clubbers are not slackers. …

Eventually the caffeine takes effect, and the late-morning breakfast clubbers must move on to start the day. They head to the home office, or the film set, or the design studio.  “Once 11:30 hits, the energy shifts in the city,” Ms. Erickson said.

The article made me reflect on the cafe life in other cities around the world.  In fact, on cafe culture in general. There is an interesting article on wikipedia about the history of the coffeehouse.  If you want to read further, you can also linger over a few other stories that I found, about the cafe culture in such cities as Paris, Vienna, Rome, Buenos Aires and Hanoi.

Just make sure to pour yourself a fresh cup of java or, better yet, read the articles over a wireless connection at your favorite neighborhood cafe.

Apparently, stricter U.S. visa and customs regulations are not only keeping potential security risks out of the country, they are also driving away an increasing number of business travelers.  A recent article by Bloomberg News noted that the amount of international business visits to the U.S. fell by 10 percent in 2005 and that foreign travelers gave the country by far the worst marks in the world for ease of travel, more than twice as difficult as the Middle East.

Companies say U.S. rules have become so onerous in the wake of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that it is often simpler to meet customers, business partners and employees elsewhere. …

The National Foreign Trade Council estimates that the entry rules cost U.S. businesses $31 billion in lost sales and higher expenses from 2002 to 2004.  But more broadly, U.S. business groups say, foreign travelers choosing other destinations might fuel the growth of rival commercial and financial centers.

International travel “has expanded in Dubai, Budapest, Dubrovnik, not Washington, Philadelphia and Boston,” said William Hanbury, president and chief executive of the Washington Convention and Tourism Corporation. …

Even if U.S. officials can argue that a need for heightened security justifies their actions, they are ignoring the negative image that such programs create, business travel groups say.  “We do have a perception out there that it’s a difficult country to enter, this whole ‘Fortress America’ idea,” said Kevin Mitchell, chairman of the Business Travel Coalition, a group of frequent foreign and U.S. business travelers.

The story also gave a few examples of the challenges faced by some businesses:

… executives at Exxon Mobil are meeting with a “significant” number of foreign customers, business partners and employees in Europe and Singapore, said Dan Nelson, who heads the company’s legislative strategy team in Washington.

Pixelworks, with no time to appeal visa denials for some 20 employees in China, sent the workers to a Canadian branch office for training, said Chris Bright, a spokesman for the semiconductor maker.

At Ingersoll-Rand, a travel troubleshooter, Elizabeth Dickson, tells the story of the Indian engineer who had to make three trips to the U.S. consulate in Madras, an 18-hour trek, because of U.S. government mistakes. Those included first issuing him the wrong type of visa and then refusing to give him the correct visa, she said.

Translating from one language to another is not always an easy task.  Anyone who has traveled much has certainly gotten a chuckle now and then from seeing either a bad translation or a too literal translation of a local phrase into English.  The Beijing government has apparently noticed these mistakes, as well, and it is now determined to clean up as many translation problems as possible prior to the 2008 Summer Olympics. 

This humorous article notes the government’s efforts and delights in sharing some of the more humorous results of ”Chinglish” translations.

Visitors to China’s capital can stroll through “Racist Park,” enjoy a plate of “Crap in the Grass” and stop by a Starbucks franchise for a cup for “Christmas Bland” coffee. Now the Beijing government is trying to clean up such mistranslations and sloppy editing (including the inversion of “a” and “r” in “carp” on menus) before an expected 500,000 foreigners arrive for the 2008 Summer Olympics. …

The campaign includes teaching 300 English phrases to 48,000 taxi drivers, helping restaurants edit menus and standardizing public signs. The English translations on signs range from charming mistakes to baffling renditions that spread anger and confusion. …

Many of the funniest examples are found on packaging, such as instructions on a Chinese-made candle warning owners to “keep this candle out of children.” “For a foreigner, eating in a Chinese restaurant can be daunting, especially when you have a choice of dishes on the English menu ranging from ‘Swallowing the Clouds’ to ‘Hot Crap,’ ” a newspaper reported.

Another article in an Australian newspaper makes similar points, with different but equally humorous examples:

Also at risk are the literally correct translations such as saliva chicken (a cold dish of succulent poached chicken in a peanut, garlic, ginger and green onion, and no saliva sauce) and pocked-face ladies tofu (mapo dofu, the chilli hot bean curd dish named after an old woman called Ma).  Simple errors such as pee soup (pea soup) and hot crap (spicy crab) will soon go the way of Beijing’s old hutong neighbourhoods.

It makes sense for Beijing to clean up these translation errors, although I have to say there’s also a certain amount of cross-cultural charm involved in stumbling across the occasional harmless language mistake during one’s travels.

There was an interesting article in the NY Times last weekend on how the University of California, Berkeley, now has a student population that is more than 40 percent Asian, and some of the ways in which that affects the campus culture.

On this golden campus, where a creek runs through a redwood grove, there are residence halls with Asian themes; good dim sum is never more than a five-minute walk away; heaping, spicy bowls of pho are served up in the Bear’s Lair cafeteria; and numerous social clubs are linked by common ancestry to countries far across the Pacific. …

Spend a few days at Berkeley, on the classically manicured slope overlooking San Francisco Bay and the distant Pacific, and soon enough the sound of foreign languages becomes less distinct. This is a global campus in a global age. And more than any time in its history, it looks toward the setting sun for its identity.

This does, of course, change the university dynamic in many ways.  For one, the rise of Asians on campus has coincided with a decline in the number of blacks and Hispanics. The fact that the university population does not accurately reflect the composition of state residents has become a topic of debate in some quarters. 

Beyond that, though, there are also cultural implications.  The article discusses, for instance, a study done by Hazel Markus, a Stanford professor, on the ways in which Asians view education differently than do students from other cultures.

Her studies have found that Asian students do approach academics differently. Whether educated in the United States or abroad, she says, they see professors as authority figures to be listened to, not challenged in the back-and-forth Socratic tradition.

“You hear some teachers say that the Asian kids get great grades but just sit there and don’t participate,” she says. “Talking and thinking are not the same thing. Being a student to some Asians means that it’s not your place to question, and that flapping your gums all day is not the best thing.”

One study at the institute looked at Asian-American students in lab courses, and found they did better solving problems alone and without conversations with other students. “This can make for some big problems,” she says, like misunderstandings between classmates. “But people are afraid to talk about these differences. And one of the fantastic opportunities of going to a Stanford or Berkeley is to learn something about other cultures, so we should be talking about it.”

Interestingly, this week also saw a report on NPR about a class offered by a Berkeley professor which introduces foreign students to the basics of American culture.  You can listen to the report here.

It somtimes appears as if there’s a never-ending quest to find and label the new, hip international city. Paris in the 1920’s set the gold standard for this vision, which always includes cheap housing for expatriates, abundant cafes, a thriving arts scene and, of course, the newest incarnations of Hemingway and Fitzgerald chipping away at a literary masterpiece.

In the 1990’s, Prague was the city of the moment.  Today, a lot of buzz is going in the direction of Buenos Aires.  This is how the city is described in the most recent issue of Newsweek International:

An invasion of foreign artists is transforming Buenos Aires into an emerging international capital of cultural cool. Like Prague in the 1990s, Buenos Aires offers chic on the cheap and is attracting scores of musicians, filmmakers, journalists, designers and even sitcom writers from abroad. Hundreds, if not thousands, have spilled in from the United States, England, Spain and beyond…

Today, while Buenos Aires has yet to produce an expat artist of world renown, the feel of a happening city is there. … Local officials don’t like to hear that B.A. is hot because it’s cheap, but love the fact that it’s emerging as an art colony. Not only are foreign artists settling here for the first time, but creative Argentines are returning from self-imposed, post-crisis exile abroad, creating the most vibrant cultural scene the city has ever known.