Travels in the Riel World

We often take for granted certain aspects of life in our own culture. In the U.S., for instance, risk-taking tends to be seen as normal, failure is an accepted part of trying new things, and an abundance of venture capital firms exist to fund intriguing new business ideas.  These are not universal traits, however, as Jacques Souquet discovered when he tried to transplant some of these business assumptions to France in the process of founding a new high-tech firm in his home country. As this article reports:

Jacques Souquet had gone through several start-ups in Seattle, but he still was not entirely prepared for beginning a high-tech company in his native France.

Failure is still a no-no here, creating a challenge for any start-up. … And Mr. Souquet, 58, a compact man with a gentle manner, has a lot of rules to learn. When he once had to meet a deadline, he asked his colleagues to come in on a Sunday, which they did; but Mr. Souquet got a scolding from his lawyer, who lectured about the legal limits on the French workweek. …

French attitudes are a bit rigid, compared with the American approach of if-at-first-you-don’t-succeed. And French law, which mandates a 35-hour week, still crimps entrepreneurial flair.

“In a start-up environment, you cannot work a 35-hour week,” Mr. Souquet said, referring to the time he asked his colleagues to work on a Sunday. “My lawyer was furious,” he said, fearing the company could be penalized.

Still, the story does note that the situation is improving for would-be European entrepreneurs:

Now, Mr. Souquet’s company is up and running smoothly, and that is a testimony to recent changes in France and greater Europe: start-ups are no longer rare. Moreover, Europe’s new entrepreneurs are turning West to learn the start-up culture bred in Silicon Valley before coming back here to apply their learning.

Thomas Friedman, in his 2005 book of the same name, coined the now well-known phrase, “The world is flat,” which he described as meaning that “the playing field is being flattened.”  As he wrote:

It is now possible for more people than ever to collaborate and compete in real time with more other people on more different kinds of work from more different corners of the planet and on a more equal footing than at any previous time in the history of the world.

Now, a new report is suggesting that Friedman is only partially correct.  Taking nothing away from the insight that the playing field is more flat, the report claims that “the globe actually is ’spiked’ – that is, studded with regional hot spots that tower above a mostly flat landscape.”

While Friedman’s flat world suggests that innovation can happen just about anywhere, it may be that regional spikes and their behaviors are the more critical factor. A map of the spiked world, for example, shows unmistakable clustering of venture capital, IT employment and patents – key indicators of innovation activity.

In the United States, those clusters occur most obviously in Silicon Valley, but also in Boston, and secondarily in Seattle, Austin and Raleigh. Globally, as the Index of Silicon Valley shows, such clusters occur in Israel, India, Beijing, Singapore, Seoul, Shanghai, Taiwan and Tokyo, and at a handful of locations in Europe.

You can read more and can download the entire 2007 Index of Silicon Valley report here.

During my own travels in parts of the Middle East, one of my strongest memories is of the rhythmic beauty of the Islamic call to prayer, which is heard five times each day from the minarets of every mosque in every city and village in the region.  So I could appreciate this recent essay in the Christian Science Monitor, written by Marcella Prokop, which recounted memories of her time in Cairo, Egypt, and in particular the timeless chant of the call to prayer.

An American student in this historic city, I am in awe of the endless sounds, the ever-present taxis, and the liquid curves and solid dots of the Arabic script. The scents of Cairo beckon to me not unlike a wispy cartoon finger of smoke. The fruit-infused haze from the tea shops, the scent of lamb and peppers roasting on a spit, and my own cucumber-melon lotion - all these memories are now and will forever be part of Cairo to me.

The Nile, the Sphinx, the pyramids are also forever locked in memory, but there is something more poignant, something sharper that resonates internally when I think of Cairo. It is the azan, the call to prayer, that anchors my thoughts when they drift to Cairo. …

The effect of the call is the same no matter the timbre or clarity: The words of ancient humanity swirl around me as I pause while shopping, dining, or even golfing - and become one with time and history, one with religion and civilization. … The call is beautiful to me. I am moved to my core by its reassurance, its grace, and its timelessness.

For additional information on the call to prayer, you can read this wikipedia entry.

There is a famous quote about punctuality in Italy, which goes: “When you are an hour late, you are already half an hour early.”  That is less true of northern Italy than of the southern part of the country, and it is perhaps less true in general than it once was.  Nevertheless, it speaks to an essential truth about Latin cultures, both in southern Europe and Latin America, which is that time simply has a different meaning there.

Because of this, the Peruvian government, for one, is now taking steps to promote punctuality.  According to this Associated Press story:

The government wants to take some of the mañana out of Peruvian life.

Mañana, meaning “tomorrow,” is an age-old euphemism for the lateness and procrastination that are common in Latin America. Weddings, funerals, meals, and business meetings rarely begin on time, and it’s even considered rude to be punctual for a party.

But Peru’s government says it’s time for an attitude adjustment.  On a recent Friday — known affectionately as “sabado chico,” or “little Saturday,” because workers tend to have their minds on weekend parties — the government announced a campaign to combat lateness, saying it reflects a negative attitude toward work and hurts productivity.

Several people have written about different attitudes toward time around the world.  One of the more interesting books on this topic is Robert Levine’s A Geography of Time.

There is a fascinating article in today’s NY Times that follows some Korean men as they journey to Vietnam in search of wives.  In a matter of hours, they select a bride from a group of women.  In a matter of days, they are married.

… after a five-hour flight on a recent Sunday, Kim Wan-su was driven straight from the airport to the Lucky Star karaoke bar here, where 23 young Vietnamese women seeking Korean husbands sat waiting in two dimly lighted rooms.

“Do I have to look at them and decide now?” Mr. Kim asked, as the marriage brokers gave a brief description of each of the women sitting around a U-shaped sofa.

Thus, Mr. Kim, a 39-year-old auto parts worker from a suburb of Seoul, began the mildly chaotic, two-hour process of choosing a spouse. In a day or two, if his five-day marriage tour went according to plan, he would be wed and enjoying his honeymoon.

This is made more possible by an interconnected globe, of course, but the real factor driving it is a shortage of potential brides in Korea.  Like a few other Asian countries, the population of South Korea now has more men than women due to a cultural preference for sons over daughters and the availability in recent decades of “sex-screening technology.”

The other factor, ironically, is South Korea’s economic success and the growing equality of men and women.  Educated and career-oriented Korean females can now afford to be choosier about potential mates, particularly with a larger population of males.  The Vietnamese women, on the other hand, are amenable to marrying a foreigner because, despite Vietnam’s quickly developing economy, South Korea still has a higher standard of living overall.  And many of these women are the children of poor or rural families.

In a way, it’s all attributable to the law of unintended consequences.  Because numerous Korean families have opted for sons over daughters, some of those sons are now going abroad to look for wives.  That, in turn, is going to affect the country’s future population and culture.  Because, as the story also notes:

The marriage tours are fueling an explosive growth in marriages to foreigners in South Korea, a country whose ethnic homogeneity lies at the core of its self-identity.  In 2005, marriages to foreigners accounted for 14 percent of all marriages in South Korea, up from 4 percent in 2000.

This seems to be good news.  Apparently, most people around the world do not believe that Islam and the West are caught up in a clash of civilizations.  That is the result, at least, of a recent BBC poll of 28,000 people in 27 countries on six continents. 

According to an AP article:

A majority of people around the world do not believe the world is locked in a “clash of civilizations” that will lead to violent conflict between Islam and the West … 56 percent of respondents believed “common ground can be found” between Muslims and Westerners, while only 28 percent said violence was inevitable.

The survey also found that 52 percent of people believed that tensions between Muslims and Westerners were caused by political power and interests, compared to 29 percent who said religion and culture were to blame.

A similar BBC story noted that:

Most expressed the belief that ongoing clashes could be resolved without violent conflict (even though) the results showed that a significant minority of those polled appeared pessimistic about the future.

“There is clearly pessimism about the inevitability of events,” Mr Miller added.  “But twice as many people believe common ground can be found. There are real opportunities for peacemakers here.”

Meanwhile, a story about the poll in the Sydney (Australia) Morning Herald suggested that the results were “bad news for radio shock jocks and clash of civilisation theorists.”

For more in-depth information about the poll results, you can go to this article at WorldPublicOpinion.org.

There is a nice little essay on NPR’s This I Believe, written by a woman who has created her family’s own “Sweet Friday” tradition based on something she learned while working in the Republic of Georgia.

When I finished my work there, I brought home the traditional dolls, daggers and wine, but I also brought home Tkbili P’araskevi: Sweet Friday.

It was a tradition of our Georgian office where every Friday at 3 p.m., work would stop for a blissful half hour while we convened in the basement kitchen to feast on cake: gorgeous, fluffy delights of cream and sugar. The cook, drivers, doctors, office staff and bosses would gather to connect and relax. Then, slightly light-headed and sometimes even a little nauseated from overdoing it, we would return to our offices to wrap up business before the weekend.

My five children and I have instituted this indulgence among our neighborhood friends ever since. … My children and I fantasize about the event all week long. And then, walking home from school on Fridays we round up everyone we pass. “We are having cake today. Come by. There is coffee and milk, too.”

Mothers and children linger in the yard on nice warm days, abandoned backpacks and jackets strewn across the grass. In the winter, children squeeze two to a chair around our big kitchen table and the mothers cram into the living room.

Wedged between Thailand and Vietnam, Cambodia doesn’t always get a lot of attention as a Southeast Asia hot spot.  And when it does, the coverage tends to center on the spectacular, thousand-year-old temples of Angkor Wat.  However, as the International Herald Tribune recently reported, the capital city of Phnom Penh now seems to be gaining ground as a travel destination.

It’s a late Saturday afternoon in Phnom Penh, and the waterfront along the Tonle Sap River is the place to be. As clusters of elderly women sit on concrete benches overlooking the water, peddlers set up stands from which they sell slices of fresh pineapple while youngsters on motorbikes deftly weave among the crush of pedestrians. Boat captains yell out to passing couples, offering sunset rides on their tiny wooden vessels, as shirtless children swim or fish in the muddy water. Suddenly, a lone elephant, gently guided by its young handler, majestically makes its way through the crowd.

At this moment, Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital, seems frozen in time, as the scene in front of you plays out much the way it must have 70 or 80 years ago, when Cambodia was part of French-controlled Indochina and the city was known as the Pearl of Asia. But then you notice the bank of ATMs in the nearby storefronts, the Internet cafés crammed with fashionably dressed teenagers checking their e- mail, the sleek air-conditioned bars with names like Metro and Heart of Darkness. And all around you, you hear the polyglot of languages — English, French, Korean, Spanish, Chinese — that are a testament to this city’s reappearance on the global tourism map.

In fact, after a few days , you notice that Phnom Penh has something of a “next Prague” vibe about it — a place where many young people from around the world, heady with excitement and the thrill of the unknown, are coming to reinvent themselves.

If you want to read more about Cambodia, an interesting travel memoir published just last year about the country and about Buddhism is The Gods Drink Whiskey by Stephen Asma.

There was an informative article in yesterday’s NY Times about the unique work culture at Toyota and the automaker’s challenge now as it tries to transfer that culture to plants and offices in other countries.  For example:

It does not occupy much space on the office wall, but Latondra Newton calls it the hardest thing for Toyota’s new American employees to accept: those colored bar charts against a white bulletin board, in plain view for all to see.

No, they are not representing the company’s progress toward goals. Rather, they are the work targets of individual workers, visibly charting their successes or failures to meet those targets.

This is part of the Toyota Way. The idea is not to humiliate, but to alert co-workers and enlist their help in finding solutions. It took a while for Ms. Newton, a general manager at Toyota’s North American manufacturing subsidiary, to take this fully to heart. But now she is a convert.

As part of its efforts to ingrain this culture in its far flung enterprises, the company has developed a Toyota Institute, where executives are trained in the corporation’s management style.

“Before, when everyone was Japanese, we didn’t have to make these things explicit,” Mr. Konishi said. “Now we have to set the Toyota Way down on paper and teach it.”

“Mutual ownership of problems,” is one slogan. Other tenets include “genchi genbutsu,” or solving problems at the source instead of behind desks, and the “kaizen mind,” an unending sense of crisis behind the company’s constant drive to improve.

The whole company prizes visibility. To nurture a sense of shared purpose, Toyota has open offices — often without even cubicle partitions between desks.

Latondra Newton is one of the executives who has attended the Toyota Institute.

One tenet that she studied was “drive and dedication,” a practice of always seeking out problems and then solving them by breaking them into smaller, more manageable pieces. The class also discussed other slogans, like “effective consensus building” and “respect for people.” …

Toyota’s culture, she said, is still grounded in a Japanese-oriented brand of group-think. But in some cases, Toyota has also adapted it to fit American culture, she said, dropping group calisthenics at American factories, for example, although that is still common at Japanese plants.

O.K., so Valentine’s Day was yesterday, but love is still in the air, right?  Is anyone considering traveling with a significant other in the near future?  Rolf Potts had a column a few days ago about the benefits and challenges of being on such an adventure.  He considers a list of ten factors to keep in mind, ranging from flexibility and space to stress and romance.

Few things test a romance like traveling together.  In packing your bags and hitting the road with your lover, you aren’t just leaving home — you’re leaving behind the habits, routines, and comfort zones that keep that relationship on neutral ground. 

Sometimes, the shared novelties of a new adventure can result in a closer romantic bond (and I have several sets of friends who decided to get married after completing a long-term journey together).  At other times, being together full-time on the road can reveal just how mismatched you are with a person you thought you knew intimately.

Taking a long trip with a significant other can no doubt be stressful.  But it can also bring you closer together than you ever imagined.  Lisa and I have done two round-the-world journeys together, as well as numerous shorter trips, and we’ve had a great time.  You can read about some of those travels here.

Or, for more advice, you can also check out Mary-Lou Weisman’s light-hearted book, Traveling While Married.

People in Latin societies tend to be rule-breakers, or at least rule-benders.  Not in a malicious way, of course.  It’s just that their cultures tend to be hierarchical and bureaucratic, yet the people are individuals who value close family relationships more than any abstract notion of law and order.  It’s a clash waiting to happen.  So, whether running a red light or ignoring a government regulation, most individuals are just not as concerned with rules as are, say, the Americans or the Germans.  And one of the best national examples of this rule-bending culture is in Italy.

There is a fun story in today’s NY Times that describes this very situation:

The shrugged shoulder is real, a daily reminder here that part of Italy’s charm rests in the fact that it does not much care for rules. Italians can be downright poetic about it, this inclination to dodge taxes, to cut lines, to erect entire neighborhoods without permits or simply to run red lights, while smoking or talking on the phone.

“We undervalue the law of cause and effect,” said Lisa Tumino, who runs a bed-and-breakfast here near the Vatican. “We overvalue the law of the universe.”

This nugget was mined with a single, simple question: Why were Ms. Tumino, in her beat-up white Nissan, and two dozen other Roman drivers parked on Via delle Fornaci on a recent rainy day when parking there clogged traffic, made the roads more dangerous and was, in fact, illegal?

Boiled down, she was saying: No sterile, one-size-fits-all rule book applies here. Italians prefer a more individual justice for their reality …

Paolo Catalfamo, now the managing director of the American Chamber of Commerce in Italy, recalled the six years he spent managing an American investment fund here.

“The issue I spent most of my time on was trying to explain to my headquarters in San Francisco why the rules they received had to be interpreted,” he said. “They didn’t get the concept that rules don’t have one meaning only, that they have many meanings.”

The article has many more examples and theories, and it’s well worth reading.  If you want more depth, try Beppe Severgnini’s recent book, La Bella Figura: A Field Guide to the Italian Mind.

There is a unique story in Business Week about the bread that is made by Paris’ Poilâne bakery and the circumstances that led 23-year-old Apollonia Poilâne to become the company’s chief executive while still an undergraduate at Harvard.

Ms. Poilâne was thrust into a management position when her parents were killed more than four years ago in a helicopter crash.  Remarkably, she has grown the business even while keeping up with her university work.

Now a senior majoring in economics, Apollonia manages Poilâne’s operations trans-Atlantically during the school term, returning to Paris every four to six weeks to check in. … Despite her youth, the sharp scion of the French baking dynasty is well in control. Under Apollonia’s leadership, Poilâne’s annual sales have grown from $15 million in 2001 to $17.9 million last year.

Though known for her decision-making skills, she relies on a team of responsables, many of whom worked alongside her father and have been with the company for more than 35 years. … The company now produces 12 to 19 metric tons of bread per day, some 20% of which is destined for international markets.

As interesting as the story about this young executive, though, is the tale of the bread and its iconic role in French culture.

Making bread may seem like a prosaic task, but Poilâne is no mere bakery. Started in 1932 in a tiny shop near St. Germain des Près in Paris, Pierre-Léon Poilâne’s storefront has grown to become a potent national symbol. The rich, dark sourdough loaves—a marked contrast to France’s ubiquitous fluffy white baguettes—are the gold standard for country-style bread in supermarkets and restaurants across France. …

At the same time, Poilâne maintains its hand-crafted feel. Walk down a quaint street in the Left Bank and you will notice a long line of sophisticated French customers queuing in front of the original store for their daily bread and pastries. Forget low-carbs or wheat-free.

“Our bread is food for the body,” says Apollonia Poilâne.

The article includes a slide show about the Poilâne bakery and its bread.

When most of us think of China, we conjure images of Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong.  Or the Great Wall, the Yangtze River and the Xian warriors.  We rarely think of Muslims in China.  But as Howard French shows in a travel article he wrote for the NY Times, there is indeed a flourishing Muslim region in western China, centered on Kashgar, that can serve as an interesting travel destination.

For at least two millenniums, Kashgar was one of the most prosperous market cities on what eventually became known as the Silk Road. Caravans of camels sometimes stretching for miles made their way through its walls, carrying silk or spices, silver and gold between East and West.

Separated from Pakistan by the Karakoram mountain range … this area was also one of Islam’s main points of entry into China. Ever traditionalist, conservative Kashgar remains perhaps the most important Islamic center for Chinese Muslims today.  The best answer to the question of why travel to China’s westernmost city, though, is the visceral response you get from plunging into Kashgar’s streets …

As you leave the wide boulevards of modern Kashgar behind and ascend a small hillside lane, the jolt you receive constitutes one of the most powerful feelings that travel can provide — of leaving one world and entering another. In Kashgar’s case it is a matter of a few yards from the familiar China of onrushing modernization to places that, but for a few details … seem scarcely touched by time.

The high, old brick walls of closely spaced houses pressed in on us. Bearded men huddled in conversation, some working their prayer beads as they listened. … A little way ahead, a clutch of women in veils approached, the first evidence of what I came to understand as a general rule here: once a woman is beyond her 20s, the veil is pretty much standard attire. That befits a place where in most old neighborhoods there is a mosque every hundred yards or so.

Interesting story a few days ago about the angst that some in Germany are feeling over an apparent exodus of professionals to other countries.  Many of these emigrants, though, are not leaving for the usual reasons of lack of jobs. Some are attracted to the warmer climes of nearby European Union countries, such as Spain.  But a surprising number of people are moving abroad over frustration with the German work culture.

As Dr. Friedrich Boettner, a German orthopedic surgeon at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York, puts it: “I make more money. I’ve got more opportunity. New York was the chance of my lifetime.”

German salaries, he said, are not competitive with those in the United States or Britain, and the hierarchical structure of some professions in Germany discourages ambitious young people from staying. The medical field, in which advancement is controlled by powerful chief doctors, has been hit particularly hard, with 2,300 doctors leaving in 2005 alone.

“In Germany, it is nearly impossible to make a medical career unless you go into a pipeline and wait for your time,” said Helmut Schwarz, vice president of the German Research Foundation. “You’ve got little time to pursue research, and you’re under the thumb of your director.”

In Mr. Thoma’s view, the root of the problem is deeper. Germany, he said, has a “blockage” in its society. ”Germans are so complacent,” he said, sitting at the dining table in his neat-as-a-pin home here. “They don’t want to change anything. Everything is discussed endlessly without ever reaching a solution.” …

The same is true for Dr. Boettner, 35, who studied orthopedics in Münster and got a taste of New York when he trained for a year in arthroplasty, or joint replacement, at the Hospital for Special Surgery.

Back home in 2001, Dr. Boettner found that Germany did not appreciate that specialty. He also dreaded the formality of the medical system, rooted in a society where people still address their superiors with formal titles like “Herr Professor Doktor.”

When the Hospital for Special Surgery offered Dr. Boettner his own practice last year - at a starting salary three times what he would be earning at home - it was not a tough call. Now ensconced on Manhattan’s Upper East Side with his wife and two daughters, he said he could not imagine going home.

The Chancellor of Germany is a woman.  So is the President of Chile.  Two prominent women are seeking to make history in the United States and France.  And Israel may be getting ready for its second female Prime Minister.  Now there is buzz that Argentina may also soon have a prominent female contender for the nation’s top office.  According to an article in the Boston Globe:

Argentina’s first couple, a power pair often compared to Bill and Hillary Clinton, won’t say whether it will be a his or hers candidacy in this year’s presidential election.

President Néstor Kirchner boasts soaring approval ratings amid an economic recovery. His wife, Senator Cristina Fernández de Kirchner is also popular — and unlike Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, she established her own political career long before her husband became president.

With both Kirchners doing well in the polls, they’ve been floating the idea that she should run to succeed him while he’s still in office.

Cristina Kirchner flew off without her husband this week to pick up some foreign policy credentials, going to Paris where she met privately Monday with another rising female politician: France’s socialist presidential candidate Ségolène Royal.

Who knows what the likelihood is that all of these nations will soon be led by women, but we certainly appear to be at an interesting historic treshold in much of the world, where gender is becoming less of an issue in national politics with each passing year.

As chaos continues to plague many nations in the Middle East, it’s not a surprise that regional powers such as Saudia Arabia and Iran are making a play for greater influence. What is intriguing, though, is that some of the smaller Arab Gulf states are also trying to take on a more prominent role in the region.

The Christian Science Monitor, for example, recently reported on efforts by Qatar to forge a more active role in foreign affairs.

A desert of 4,500 flat square miles jutting into the Persian Gulf and controlling the third-largest gas reserve in the world, Qatar seems to be involved in everything lately. It has presided over OPEC (three times), is bidding for the Olympics, and bankrolls Al Jazeera, the controversial satellite TV channel.

Controversy seems to be the order of the day here. Qatar is the only Gulf country to maintain any sort of official relations with the Jewish state, allowing a “trade representation office” to remain open in Doha since 1996 … But this relative openness to Israel does not stop Qatar from funding the militant group Hamas …

In the case of Iraq, Qatar has been supportive of both Sunnis and Shiites and is close to many other players in the Iraq field. All of which has potential, argues Mr. Rikai, to help broker positive change. “The Qataris can be a bridge for all of us. We all respect them. So, why not? ”

In January, Qatar, in cooperation with Georgetown’s School of Diplomacy, hosted a regional model UN. There was discussion of Iran’s nuclear ambitions and an emergency session on the Lebanon crisis. And here, unlike many other model UN programs in the region, Israeli students were invited and Israel was represented amongst the nations in the debates.

And, on a completely different but equally interesting note, Abu Dhabi (one of the United Arab Emirates) is striving to become a new cultural center, both for the Middle East and the world.  According to an article in the New York Times:

Over the next decade or so it aims to become one of the great cultural centers of the Middle East: the heir, in its way, to cosmopolitan cities of old like Beirut, Cairo and Baghdad.

This latter-day Xanadu … would boast four museums, a performing arts center and 19 art pavilions designed by celebrated architects like Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid and Jean Nouvel. The development could include leading cultural lights of the West, from the Guggenheim to the Louvre to Yale University. …

With once-proud cities like Beirut and Baghdad ripped apart by political conflict bordering on civil war, Abu Dhabi offers the hope of a major realignment, a chance to plant the seeds for a fertile new cultural model in the Middle East. It’s easy to be skeptical. But judging by the designs released so far, the buildings promise to be more than aesthetic experiments, outlining a vision of cross-cultural pollination.

It’s anyone’s guess as to whether all of this might someday change the political or cultural calculus in the region, but it’s an interesting development in any case, since some of these Gulf states have less of the historical baggage that plagues the region’s traditional powers.

It’s not January anymore, but that doesn’t mean we can’t still consider new travel destinations for 2007.  The Los Angeles Times ran an article this past weekend about “don’t-miss destinations” for the coming year.  China tops the paper’s list, which includes Nepal, Guatemala, Dubai and six other locales.

Interestingly, China is also atop Lonely Planet’s previously released list of hot destinations for 2007.

For its diverse landscapes, amazing culture, world heritage sites and general affordability — not to mention its accelerating emergence as a power on the world stage — China is the place to visit this year. Shanghai, Beijing and Hong Kong all warrant some travel time, but travelers who really want to understand China should get out into the rural areas where 70 percent of the population still lives. There the old foundations of the new China are poignantly revealed.

Morocco, Argentina, Nicaragua and India are four of the other destinations on Lonely Planet’s list, as are Hawaii, New Orleans and Brooklyn in the United States.

Meanwhile, Rolf Potts recently polled a variety of regional experts for a few 2007 tips.  Among their recommendations are Bolivia, Ethiopia and Fiji.  Philip Briggs had this to say about Ethiopia:

Popular perceptions of Ethiopia are dominated by images of drought and famine, but it is actually one of the most fertile and densely populated countries in Africa  … It’s also a remarkably underrated travel destination, particularly for independent travelers, for whom it offers the combination of limitless off-the-beaten-track sightseeing and a high level of affordability.  Culturally, Ethiopia offers a unique blend of the Biblical, the medieval and the modern, creating what Dervla Murphy referred to as the “Orlando-like illusion of traveling through different centuries” — nowhere more so than at Lalibela, where a dozen rock-hewn churches, still in active use today, pay devout testament to one of the world’s oldest and idiosyncratic Christian denominations.

So, where do you want to travel in 2007?

Two different articles about sports caught my eye recently for their connection to culture.

The first story was about the rise of women runners from Ethiopia.  It focused in part on Tirunesh Dibaba, the current world record holder in the 5,000 meters, and on the astonishing number of champion runners that hail from her region of Ethiopia.

The paved road south from Addis Ababa ends after 100 miles near the village of Asela, the hometown of Haile Gebrselassie, widely considered the greatest distance runner. From there, four-wheel-drive vehicles are needed to navigate the next 30 gravel