Word: area
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Until recently, the Amur-Ussuri area has been the site of the most spectacular provocations. On several occasions, the Chinese made a practice of marching prisoners to the center of the river, accusing them of being pro-Soviet traitors, and then beheading them. Another favorite habit was forming up on the river ice, sticking out tongues in unison at the Soviet troopers, and then turning and dropping trousers to the Russians in an ancient gesture of contempt. That tactic stopped when Soviet troops took refuge behind large portraits of Chairman...
...Shan range of mountains. Late last year, a Japanese tourist persuaded his Intourist guide to allow him a day close to the Soviet side of the border. He saw no troops, nor indeed any sign of unusual military activity, but he returned dazzled by the natural beauty of the area. "The Soviets called it a second Switzerland," he said later, "and it was-so lovely, peaceful and sparsely populated...
South of the Tien Shan on the Chinese side lies the Taklamakan Desert and the lake of Lop Nor, home of the Chinese nuclear tests. Beginning about 1960, the Peking government set out to transform the desert into a fertile area. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers, party cadres, middle-school graduates and intellectuals thought to be in need of "reeducation" have been sent to Sinkiang to work for the cause, and their efforts have had some results. But for the most part, Sinkiang remains a wasteland, even less developed than the Soviet lands to the north...
...thousands of miles of inaccessible jungle and remote highlands. The government's solution was Projeto Rondón (named after Brazilian Explorer Candido Mariano da Silva Rondón), which takes student volunteers into Amazonia and the northeast territory for month-long "vacations" of unpaid toil among the area's impoverished people...
Calm Waters. While taking their pictures from a 281-by-113-mile elliptical orbit, the astronauts could see whitecaps in the ocean site southwest of Bermuda that had been chosen for their landing. The weather in the recovery area was so bad, in fact, that controllers avoided mentioning it to the astronauts until McDivitt asked...