Formosa Tea House
May. 20th, 2003 12:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldWork again. I just came back from lunch; I used the last six dollars (Canadian) in my wallet to go lunch at the excellent Formosa Tea House, where I had a green iced tea with dumblings and bamboo rice. Quite fine.
While I was there, I glanced over the Spring 2003 issue of Cultural Survival Quarterly, a magazine that has been active for more than a decade, detailing fragile tribal societies worldwide. The Spring 2003 issue was devoted to reindeer-herding peoples in northeastern Asia, in the area where Mongolia meets Russia and China. Not surprisingly, given a bit more than a half-century of intrusive state controls via Communism and paranoid frontier nationalisms, these cultures are all declining to various degrees. It's an unfortunate story, and I can't help but be certain that despite the hopes for revival they are doomed: In a densely-populated and relatively modern area of the world, how can a few tens of thousands of reindeer herders scattered across vast areas of land with little to bind them hope to survive as distinctive cultures? It might well be better to try to make the assimilation process as easy as possible.
While I was there, I glanced over the Spring 2003 issue of Cultural Survival Quarterly, a magazine that has been active for more than a decade, detailing fragile tribal societies worldwide. The Spring 2003 issue was devoted to reindeer-herding peoples in northeastern Asia, in the area where Mongolia meets Russia and China. Not surprisingly, given a bit more than a half-century of intrusive state controls via Communism and paranoid frontier nationalisms, these cultures are all declining to various degrees. It's an unfortunate story, and I can't help but be certain that despite the hopes for revival they are doomed: In a densely-populated and relatively modern area of the world, how can a few tens of thousands of reindeer herders scattered across vast areas of land with little to bind them hope to survive as distinctive cultures? It might well be better to try to make the assimilation process as easy as possible.
