Thunder from the East: Portrait of a Rising Asia - Hardcover

Kristof, Nicholas D.; Wudunn, Sheryl

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0375403256 ISBN 13: 9780375403255

Verlag: Alfred a Knopf Inc, 2000

Inhaltsangabe

Kristof and WuDunn (Pulitzer-prize winning New York Times correspondents) depict a continent pregnant with potential and poised to reassert itself in the global era. Centering their analysis on the 1997 economic crisis, they consider the economic development of China, predict a renaissance in India, and discuss the role of technological innovation in Japan. They characterize the continent through the stories of people they have encountered: a Cambodian girl sold by her parents to a brothel; a bankrupted Thai businessman who started anew as a street vendor; a Japanese veteran haunted by the mother and child he killed during the war. They also consider Asia's shortcomings, such as the pervasive discrimination against women, the pollution accompanying development, and the rise of nationalism. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, husband and wife, shared a Pulitzer Prize in 1990 for their coverage for the <i>New York Times</i> of the Tiananmen democracy movement in China and its suppression. They are the authors of <b>China Wakes: The Struggle for the Soul of a Rising Power</b>. Kristof has served as <i>Times</i> bureau chief in Hong Kong, Beijing, and Tokyo; WuDunn was a <i>Times</i> correspondent in Beijing and Tokyo, and has specialized in business journalism. Both now work for the <i>Times</i> in New York City and live nearby with their three children.

Aus dem Klappentext

itzer Prize-winning <i>New York Times</i> correspondents, a cutting-edge report on Asia and how its people are reshaping the world.<br><br>Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn bring to their revelatory book all the authority and insight of the fourteen years they spent covering Asia. They depict a continent poised to reassume the role it ceded five hundred years ago as the "center of the world." They muster convincing evidence that China may soon overtake the United States as the world's largest economy, that India is awakening from its long hibernation, that Japan is developing future consumer technologies that will benefit millions of people. <br><br>Kristof and WuDunn tell their story through vivid descriptions of the unforgettable characters they have encountered: the Cambodian girl sold by her parents to a brothel; the bankrupted Thai entrepreneur who starts life anew with a street-vending business; the Japanese veteran haunted by the mother and child he killed in war

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Chapter One

He must have been a raffishly handsome young man, with his bushy eyebrows, large coal-black eyes, high-cheekboned face, and thick mop of black hair dangling over his ears. He looked pale but improbably serene, showing no sign of the torture he had endured, and those eyes were still wide open and frozen in a final instant of surprise. He had a strong, projecting chin, but his head ended a few inches below that chin in a jagged eruption of blood, tissue, and bone. His head had been hacked off with a machete and was impaled on a bamboo stake, and he seemed to be staring at me.

I stared back. That abrupt transition from human flesh to bamboo stake wrenched my gut and paralyzed my legs. I was scared stiff. The mob that had killed him was in front of me now, the killers waving machetes and screaming Allahu akbar, God is great. There were about two dozen of them, mostly men in their twenties and thirties, all riding motorcycles slowly down the main street of the little farmtown of Turen, Indonesia.

It was a typical warm afternoon in what seemed a bucolic, prospering community. A tropical drizzle had created a shine on the beautifully paved blacktop road, but there were plenty of trees to shield people from the rain. Comfortable one- and two-story homes lined the road, their walls neatly whitewashed, their roofs made up of pleasant red tile. A few repair shops and small restaurants competed for business, and a billboard advertised "Sun Silk Shampoo" with an image of a young woman with thick, beautiful, black hair. A few bicycle rickshaws were waiting for rides and several pushcart vendors were selling fried rice and noodles. Townspeople were emerging by the side of the road to see what was causing the racket.

It seemed like any of Indonesia's tens of thousands of little villages, except that it had abruptly tumbled into savagery. Some motorcyclists were waving S-shaped machetes, two feet long and bloody, while others wielded sickles that were equally grisly. A few were clenching their fists in power salutes of victory, and they were all grinning happily, cheering and shouting, while the fast-forming crowd on the sidewalk waved back and roared its approval. In the middle of the cluster of motorcycles was a glossy black one, and its driver smiled proudly at the responsibility he had been given. Behind him on the same motorcycle was a long-haired younger man, perhaps twenty years old, his black shirt unbuttoned to the waist, his face gleaming with excitement. Black Shirt was standing up on the footrests, holding on to the driver's shoulder with his left hand, and with his right he was holding up the bamboo stake. Exultantly, he waved it all around, as if he were exhibiting a doll's head on a handle, so that everyone could admire it. Black Shirt was small and skinny, shining with his eagerness to please, and he looked less like a killer than like a proud high-school kid in the center of a homecoming parade.

I was standing under a tree to keep out of the drizzle, and the motorcyclists did not see me at first. But now the cries faded as the mob became aware of the presence of a foreigner. Black Shirt frowned, switched hands and thrust the severed head toward me, he too shouting Allahu akbar. The head was raised high, and my eyes locked on the bloody tissue, jagged and ragged, where the neck ended.

Instinctively, I transferred my notebook to my left hand and reached up with my right to feel my own neck. I massaged it absentmindedly with trembling fingers, appreciating its continuity and imagining a motorcyclist's machete arcing down on it and parting the skin.

.  .  .

I had come to Java not in search of a beheading but to understand the upheavals in rural Indonesia caused by the economic crisis in Asia. The crisis had begun in Thailand in July 1997 and then had devastated once-booming economies throughout the region, leaving Indonesia worst hit of all. I was staying in a town in East Java called Mojokerto, where I met Salamet, a twenty-seven-year-old rickshaw driver. Salamet was a gentle man with a round face, a drooping moustache, and a pleasing smile. Years of work as a rickshaw driver, rock-crusher, and gravel-hauler had left him as strong as an ox, and with roughly the same build. He was of only average height, but he had a barrel chest and a boxer's neck, and he might have looked intimidating if he hadn't spent so much time gently cradling his youngest daughter. He would sit back in his rickshaw, his bare feet dangling out over the footrest, rocking the girl on his knee and griping about the rising price of food.

The neighborhood seemed as placid as the nearby river running through the town, but Salamet had been telling me that tensions were mounting. One day when he was eating a bowl of noodles, he told me between loud slurps that one bad sign was the rise of sorcery. "Sorcerers are taking advantage of the confusion these days," he warned. Slurp. "There didn't used to be much black magic around, but now it's beginning again." Slurp.

Salamet referred to a series of two hundred gruesome murders in East Java, mostly of Muslim leaders whose bodies were chopped into pieces that were left hanging in the trees. I believed that some army unit was behind the killings, trying to create political instability or even conditions for a coup d'état, but to Salamet and most people in Mojokerto the obvious suspects were sorcerers. Javanese have always believed in black magic and sorcery, and rumors were spreading that the killers wore black and could vanish into thin air. "Those killings -- that's the work of sorcerers," Salamet told me confidently. Slurp.

In nearby towns angry mobs began to kill suspected witches and sorcerers. And even in Mojokerto vigilante groups were organized to fight against the sorcerers, whom people called "ninja" after the Japanese warriors. Salamet joined one of these vigilante groups, and the men in it spent their days sharpening their knives and their nights roaming around looking for sorcerers to kill. They were good family men, and I went with some of them to a meeting at the local mosque where a charismatic man named Ahmed Banu was urging the crowd to butcher the sorcerers. Banu and the others greeted me warmly, made sure I was seated comfortably, and then got down to business.


"If we Muslims are being treated like animals, will we stand for it?" Banu asked, his voice rising to a crescendo.

"No!" his followers yelled back.

"If we catch the ninja, what should we do? Give them to the police or kill them?"

"Kill them!"

"So send this message to your families," Banu added grimly: "When we catch the attackers, we must kill them."

That night, I tossed and turned. Would these villagers, who had been so hospitable to me, actually attack people they suspected to be sorcerers? I wondered whether I had lent credibility to Banu by attending the meeting, increasing the chance that he and his friends would butcher strangers. Finally, I decided that it was all talk and fell into a comfortable slumber. But in the morning, my interpreter brought a local newspaper and I learned that at roughly the same time that Banu was holding his meeting, mobs a bit farther to the south had been tearing apart five men who lacked identification and were consequently suspected of being sorcerers. Two were burned alive and three were beheaded, their heads impaled on pikes and paraded through the nearby towns.

"Where did that happen?" I asked.

"In a little town called Turen," replied my interpreter, a local journalist. As I looked at the articles, I felt revulsion and fear, but in the mix there was also a large dose of curiosity. What kind of people...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Alfred a Knopf Inc
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2000
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0375403256
• ISBN 13: 9780375403255
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 377
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar