E. C. (Gene) Ayres Blogspot

A recent article in The Atlantic by Matt Schiavenza (see link below) brings to mind my shared experience with an aging North Korean couple enroute home from Harbin, China, where I'd been teaching and working for two years. Here is an excerpt from my book Inside the New China above (Chapter 31: The Korean Connection ): The flight from Harbin to South Korea was two hours, although the distance was less than a thousand miles, mainly because a certain inhospitable “Evil Axis” country lay directly in the path of the route from Harbin to Seoul: North Korea. We had to fly around it with 200 miles to spare. This, even though China and South Korea were business partners in all sorts of ways, and China was North Korea’s last and only friend. I saw the relationship between China and the two Koreas like this: South Korea was the brash, successful nephew. North Korea was the black sheep. But from a pan-Asian perspective, both were family. On the flight I was seated next to a shopwor...

This photo of Vilcabamba is courtesy of TripAdvisor It was so long ago I can hardly remember. This image comes close. Sadly my very serviceable Pentax 35mm SLR was stolen by my guide and bearer, along with all the film, but then perhaps in his view it was merely a gratuity of sorts. The year I can remember well enough: 1972. It was a winter weekend at a friend's gentrified farmhouse in upstate New York. We were reading the New York Times Sunday Edition. There was a headline story in one of the inner sections referencing a recent article in National Geographic--a magazine I'd been reading since childhood, mostly for the pictures. The story was about longevity--a topic of little interest to me, being a twenty-something at the time. But then one of my favorite Beatles songs was 'When I'm Sixty Four' and there was a lot of pathos in that song, and let's face it, we all have, or have had aging parents and/or relatives. According to the authors, a noted anthropolog...