Does anyone know whatever happened of her?

Once upon a time, God lived in and among us the Portlanders.

http://portlandtribune.com/news/story.php?story_id=27234

In honour of a nation history has forgotten

Image via WikipediaManchuria was home to various Tungusic ethnic groups, whose languages were more in common with Mongolian, Japanese and Korean, and with them shared a long tradition of shamanism.  Like the Mongols, at one point the Manchus became powerful and took over China, ruling over the Han and other ethnic groups for centuries.

At the collapse of the Qing Dynasty and beginning of the Republic of China (Xinhai Revolution, of Dr. Sun Yat-Sen), the Manchu people founded a separate country under the leadership of His Imperial Majesty Aisin-Gioro Puyi and with support of Japan, who had an interest in securing the strategic natural resources and railroads away from invasions of the nascent Soviet Union, and to have a buffer zone for Japan against the Bolsheviks.  The newly reorganized Manchuria quickly became the most ethnically diverse nation in Asia, with Japanese migrant farmers, White Russians who fled the Soviet revolution, Koreans, Han Chinese, Chinese Muslims, living side-by-side with the ethnic Manchu people.

The economy and currency of Manchuria at the time was considered most sound and stable in the region, only next to those of Japan.

In 1945, the Soviet Union invaded Manchuria -- and shortly after the surrender of Japan to the Allied Forces, the Russians unilaterally handed Manchuria over to Mao Zedong's Communist Party.  Thus the nation was quickly forgotten except as a "fake (puppet) Manchukuo" that is occasionally mentioned in history books.  The cultures, spiritual heritage and language of the Manchus were all but destroyed.

There is however an effort to revive Manchuria.  Recently His Imperial Majesty Lee Chee Chuan, a direct descendant of the Tang imperial family who had been exiled to Malaysia, assumed his throne as the emperor of Manchuria (on May 28, 2011).

Speaking of cartography

Image via Wikipedia
Maps, just like history, are inherently biased and are outdated the moment they are printed.  We live in a dynamic world, with people with varying perspectives, and therefore a map does not convey an objective truth -- even if it might represent a widespread consensus.  The existence of international boundaries and its highly arbitrary and political nature is an epitome of this phenomenon.  We have the earth and its natural phenomena.  We then have a map of the world, neatly divided into various coloured zones.

Somewhere between the yellow sign (in Tsawwassen, BC) and the street sign (Roosevelt Way, Point Roberts, WA) is the U.S.-Canada border.

Look at the ditch on the right.  It is a border. (0 Avenue, Surrey, B.C., just a few metres east of the Smugglers' Inn, Blaine, Wash.)

The yellow concrete marks the end of Canada, while the USA welcomes neighbourhood walkers into the park with the sign "scoop your doggie poop." (On Peace Park Drive, Surrey, B.C., looking towards Peace Arch State Park, Blaine, Wash.)

On the ground level, such borders can defy the reality and may even be really silly, especially in case of the U.S. and Canada.

Re-packaging oppression: What do you think?

Image via Wikipedia

The Portland Police Bureau just unveiled the redesign of its squad cars, with a nod to Portland's love for social media, featuring its Twitter handle where it would have conventionally had something like "Call 911." (This probably does not, however, mean that the dispatchers will respond to DMs.)

Sometimes rebranding and repackaging are done to present a "new image" after a series of scandals or publicity nightmares.  The Portland Police has suffered from a series of PR problems for years, from the allegations of sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and string of murders of the mentally ill people and those without housing.

It is quite telling that the PPB decided to put the slogan, "sworn to protect, dedicated to serve" back on the cars.  What is not explicit is that the police is there to protect and serve the interests of those who help elect the mayor into office, not the interests of those whom the same special interest groups marginalize.  The sight of a police squad car slowly cruising through downtown streets and parks causes discomfort and fear among the homeless population, while the presence of this same car makes the upper-middle-class business executives walking through downtown to a power lunch meeting and tourists who are about to dump hundreds of dollars into Portland's economy "feel safe."

Portland Pioneer Courthouse Square: On invasion of Taiwan and Sakhalin by Japan!

Image via WikipediaThis post has been merged with http://iriscatartanddesigns.blogspot.com/2011/06/diplomatic-nightmare-at-pioneer.html as of Sunday, June 5.