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Central Asia

VIDEO: My Dear Kyrgyzstan

My Dear

“Emil is a social media-obsessed entrepreneur in one of the most remote places on earth: An abandoned Soviet mining village in Kyrgyzstan. Emil has returned to put his village on the map as an international tourist destination.” SOURCE: MailChimp

This delightful video shows the former Soviet mining town of Jyrgalan and a local entrepreneur that wants to revitalize the village economy, bring in the outside world, and make is home a tourist destination.  It serves several purposes for a geography teacher.  One, it’s a great portal into a Central Asian country where most of my students don’t have any real reference points.  Two, the video highlights important geographic concepts such as tourism’s impact on indigenous cultures and globalization’s impact on previously isolated locations.  Three, this is a great case study for a cultural landscape analysis.  The video has some incredible juxtapositions; nomads wearing traditional clothes encountering adventure tourists outfitted in Patagonia gear, people in town cutting grass with scythes as well as gas lawn mowers, and traditional architectural styles intermixed with signs of modernity such as satellite antennas.  The physical and cultural landscapes in this are absolutely stunning and worth the twelve minutes of your time.

GeoEd Tags: landscape, Kyrgyzstan, Central Asia, video, tourism, globalization.

My_Dear_Kyrgyz

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China’s hidden camps

What’s happened to the vanished Uighurs of Xinjiang?

Source: www.bbc.co.uk

A few years ago, I wrote an article for National Geographic’s education blog about Eastern Turkestan, and the policies of cultural assimilation that the China is using to more fully make this place become Xinjiang.  This BBC interactive (as well as this NY Times article) is the update to understand how extensive the human rights violations are as re-education camps/detention centers have been used in the last few years to hide away political dissidents and those practicing tradition Uyghur (Uighur) customs.  This video from the Economist highlights how the Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities have not been able to participate in China’s recent economic growth as fully because of governmental policies. According to U.S. State Department, the number of people forced into these camps is at least 800,000, but potentially over 2 million.        

GeoEd Tags: Central Asia, culture, China, East Asia.

Scoop.it Tags: Central Asia, culture, China, East Asia.

   

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Kazakhstan renames capital of Astana to Nur-Sultan

"Astana has been renamed as Nur-Sultan, as a tribute to former leader Nursultan Nazarbayev, who recently resigned. Astana replaced Almaty as the capital in 1997 and boomed from a minor provincial steppe town into a futuristic city. The name Astana literally means ‘capital’ in Kazakh and there has long been speculation it could, at some point, be renamed after the leader who shaped it."

Source: www.aljazeera.com

St. Petersburg was the classic example of a forward capital that was renamed after the visionary leader responsible for that change.  The world now has another example of this phenomenon. 

 

GeoEd Tags: political, Central Asia, Kazakhstan.

Scoop.it Tags: political, Central Asia, Kazakhstan.

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Alluvial Fans

“When a mountain stream carries a lot of sediment (clay, silt, sand, gravel, cobbles, and boulders) and leaves the confines of the canyon, the sediment is deposited. Over time, this process creates a fan-shaped deposit. The sediment is deposited not because the gradient of the stream decreased, but because the power of the stream dissipates beyond the canyon mouth as the water is spread thin and infiitrates. Many cities are built on alluvium fans, often leading to hazards from flash floods and mudflows.”

Source: www.instagram.com

In mountainous, interior deserts, the largest settlements are usually not deep in the deserts or on top of the mountains but in that in between space.  Many settlements in Central Asia are built on these alluvial fans. 

 

Tags: environment, physical, geomorphology, erosion, geology, California, landforms.

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Kazakhstan to switch from Cyrillic to Latin alphabet

“Kazakh was written in Arabic script until 1920 when it was substituted by the Latin alphabet. In 1940, it was replaced by a Cyrillic one. ‘Given that over 100 countries in the world use the Latin script, it is crucial for Kazakhstan’s integration into the global educational and economic environment,’ said Gulnar Karbozova.

The former Soviet Republic declared independence in 1991. Its state language is Kazakh, a member of the Turkic family.

Yet, Russian is widely spoken across Kazakhstan and is its second official language.”

Source: www.aljazeera.com

Having to translate your language into another is one level of cultural difference, but having to change into another writing system (transliteration) adds an extra layer of foreignness that makes interactions more difficult.  Kazakhstan, a with a history of connections to the Middle East and Russia, is now making a choice that appears to signal greater connection to the larger global community.  This is not going to be an easy transitions, as as this additional BBC article notes, the choice comes with plenty of advantages and disadvantages. 

 

Tags: language, culture, worldwide, regions, Central Asia, Kazakhstan.

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India watches anxiously as Chinese influence grows

A $46bn economic corridor through disputed territories in Kashmir is causing most concern

Source: www.ft.com

The Indian government doesn’t want to seem threatened by the fact that China is paying for better transportation infrastructure that is essentially in their backyard.  India’s neighbors are excited for the potential economic growth that this can bring, but weary of China’s added clout and power throughout Asia.  As Parag Khanna argues is his new book Connectography, infrastructure and economic linkages will become increasingly more important to geopolitics and global economics; within that lens, China is certainly making a power move here. 

 

Tags: regions, transportation, economic.

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Welcome to Baku, the Fiercely Modern, Millennia-Old, Capitalist-Socialist, Filthy-Rich Capital of Azerbaijan

“Since 2006, when the opening of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline prompted a surge in crude oil exports — up to a million barrels a day travel through neighboring Georgia and on to Turkey and the West — there’s been no shortage of cash in Baku. Now, the city is eager for the prestige that goes with it.”

Source: www.bloomberg.com

Baku is described in this article as an East-West, socialist-capitalist, Muslim-secular, ancient-modern mishmash due to the numerous cultural and political interactions that it has had.  This makes for a fascinating cultural landscape emerging in a city that has been dubbed “the Dubai of the Caucasus” but still has a rich Silk Road history.  Caspian Sea oil lies at the heart of Azerbaijan’s geopolitical importance and cultural aspirations. 


Tags: Azerbaijan, political, Central Asia.

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