Word: dam
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Dam is a third-grader in Seoul who, like many eight-year-olds around the world, is nuts about Pokémon. But unlike most kids, he's conflicted. He knows the popular animated characters come from Japan. He has also learned in school how Japanese soldiers brutally invaded and colonized his homeland back in 1910. After his mother reminded him that every Pocket Monster sold helped Japan get richer, Doo Dam successfully resisted buying any Pokémon cards. "Japan is bad," he says. "No one nation should be above another nation...
...planted from airplanes. Or coming across an old man scrubbing syringes and needles in a basin for reuse in the local hospital. Or watching fireworks soaring over the beautiful gorges of the Yangtze on Chinese New Year and realizing the town will soon be submerged by the biggest dam in the world...
...central fact of Fuling is that along with many other towns on the banks of the Yangtze, it is going to be submerged over the next decade as the water rises behind the Three Gorges Dam. Red lines have been painted on buildings to show how high the water will go. Hessler is mystified at first by the lack of concern in Fuling about the huge project. It will displace at least 2 million people, could cause substantial environmental damage and, should it fail, leave casualties in the millions (3,200 dams have burst in China in the past half...
...slowly Hessler comes to realize that compared with the turmoil of the past 60 years--war, revolution, a famine that killed 30 million, the Cultural Revolution and the recent opening to the outside world--the disruption of the dam is relatively minor from the Chinese perspective. And he sees that the quaint old houses built on the cobbled streets leading up from the Yangtze--the structures Western tourists like to photograph--are in fact dirty, cramped and without running water or toilets. Many Chinese prefer to move to the industrial new towns built in all their tasteless utility. Writes Hessler...
...difficult for economic policy to deal with the abruptness of a break in confidence. In earlier testimony, I likened this process to water backing up against a dam that is finally breached. The torrent carries with it most remnants of certainty and euphoria that built up in earlier periods...