Rediscovering the joy of teaching

Dongsan High School is with us this week. A Christian specialist school, it's considered among the top five schools in Korea, and every year, they send their freshman students for a week at English Village, before they even start proper school. It's a chance for freshmen to get to know each other, form relationships, do a bit of teambuilding, and compete for the clubs and societies that mark this school as different from the average - which consider clubs as a waste of time that distracts students from their studies...

They are a joy to teach. My first day, I'm so used to herding unruly middle-schoolers, my jaw drops when the students walk out of their hotel ahead of me, in two perfect lines, making their way to our homeroom without even being told. I can stalk at the back, talking to two girls, who tell me "We're very excited about this great opportunity to study with real foreigners." Apart from the pristine language, who ever knew English Village students could be so thrilled about studying English!

The lessons are a pleasure; even the lower-level kids are interested, and the high-level ones actually laugh when the teachers joke with them!

On the Wednesday, we're walking them to the classroom when we pass the school teachers' hotel at the bottom of the road. A teacher is watching TV just inside the open door, and one of the girls lets out a scream of delight. Before long, we've lost them all, a crowd of teenagers cheering and clapping as Kim Yu-Na, the country's top figure-skater, takes first place in the initial round at the Winter Olympics. She's not a singer or a society princess, but Yu-Na is more than a celebrity in Korea - kids here worship those who rise above the crowds to excel in anything. When we complain, the girls reluctantly leave the doorway to get back in line, but our headteacher, who's standing nearby, says that it's ok for them to take a couple of minutes to watch the performance, and the smiles on their faces as they run back to see uplifts me. Later, my coteacher plays the full video of Yu-Na's triumphant piece; she's absolutely perfect, slipping along on the ice as if humans were made to move on two razor thin blades.

Each day, a member of the Overseas Class appears holding a bundle of newspapers for the students and teachers. The Overseas Class is an elite group of students fluent in English. The freshmen actually took a test to be considered for this class while at English Village. Because they couldn't be expected to skip any classes or initiation for the exam, it was written at 11pm - and that didn't even raise an eyebrow from my coteacher, who explained that these children, the cream of the crop, have been raised from birth attending English private lessons and piano classes from 7am until midnight in order to give them the chance of attending such a school as Dongsan. The newspaper is impressive, written at EV, rushed back to the school where it's printed on the private printing press they own, and then driven back to EV the following morning for the students to read over the morning break.

It's a bit of an ego trip for English Village. Their newspaper, commenting on the opening day, calls the teachers "of a high quality, and very handsome and beautiful like princes and princesses."

On the other hand, the headline is "Students Meet Foreigners". Yes. As if we were an exhibit in a zoo. Ahem.

On Friday at lunchtime, I'm with a number of teachers in the pizza restaurant in the Village during the freestyle skating, the second and final round. The Japanese and American contestants are awarded decent scores, but not fantastic. Kim Yu-Na comes on. The restaurant has filled with children, teenagers and parents, and one of my colleagues climbs on a table to turn the volume up on the flat-screen; everyone falls silent, the chefs stop clattering, and we all watch Yu-Na effortlessly break her own record to take the gold, 40 points ahead of her Japanese rival. I can't believe that even the young schoolkids, who haven't been herded in by adults but have hurried in of their own accord in time for her display, are absolutely engrossed in the TV, and when Yu-Na's score is announced - clearly so far ahead as to be unbeatable - the restaurant bursts into tears and applause. It's emotional...


My students compete in a debate they've been preparing for all week. My girls have to compete against boys - until now, they've not been allowed to cohabit classrooms with the opposite gender - Dongsan is strictly Christian. Not sure entirely why it's even co-ed... The boys are also terrified, hiding their fear behind jokes and laughing and formal handshakes. They're more fluent, but my girls have much better grammar. The boys win...




























I listen to their hard work, and then later, can't believe it when a head teacher tells me I was actually assigned the lowest level class in the school! These kids weren't fluent, by any means, but they were miles ahead of any of my previous students - even better than some of our Korean teachers! Polite, well-behaved, interested, willing to participate, smart, creative... At the closing ceremony, I eye their foreign English teacher, wondering if he's going to be leaving the job anytime soon - for these kids, I'd return to Korea.

East of Venice

On the way home to Korea I have an eight-hour layover. This time, however, it's in the daytime - so I get to go into Bangkok on an organised tour. It's just me and another man - a Malaysian scientist - who happens to get to the desk at the same time as me, so we share the guide's price. Our guide is Lek, and he leads us through VIP customs out into the muggy heat of the Thai winter and into a waiting car.

We drive into central Thailand and from an old wooden pier we catch a boat across the river. Unlike the lazy Mekong, this one rolls and waves and chops at the boat as we loll our way across. In the centre there's a steady line of banana leaves, fresh apples and marigolds - offerings from the morning meditation.

On the other side from the pier is Wat Arun. It's more a stupa than a temple, with an almost Islamic influence, white ridges extending up and up until the neck starts to complain about the abuse. Four smaller domed towers stand at each edge.


We start to climb up the narrow, steep stairs - the vertigo isn't too bad as long as I keep my eyes closed. My fingers are white on the railings though. From the second level I look out over central Bangkok, golden temples all around, modern skyscrapers in the middle distance. It's a beautiful city from this vantage point.


From up close, the Islamic influence turns to a more Portuguese-style decoration, perhaps, with blue-and-white pottery set into the walls, and mosaic littering the stupa from ground to heaven.


The statues are most definitely Asian, though.


Little bells hang from the outer towers playing the background music to our climb.

After placing my feet thankfully and firmly back on solid ground, we're led down to the river again. All around the jetty are hundreds of enormous fish, disturbing the surface. Lek says it's not allowed to fish near the temples, which protect all life in their vicinity (I can see this from the fat cats strolling past with an air of superiority). From the jetty we get on a long-tail boat, shorter and sturdier-looking than the Lao ones, and head into the canals.

The Bangkok khlong are ancient waterways right in the centre of the city, edged with teeming life, both animal and human.


Thais live in stilted houses and floating shacks above the water, with farms of water plants in between shops and bars. Temples and schools also back onto the canals, many with their own little jetties.


The houses are obviously poor but very sweet to an onlooker, quaint and wooden with masses of flowers and potted plants overflowing from the verandahs. Some of the families are out eating their dinner amongst the greenery on low tables; some are fishing for their dinner almost from their front rooms. There are lots of fish here too. We pause at a jetty where a heavily tattooed monk - who I'd mistake for Triad were he not in saffron robes and sitting in the lotus position - sits talking to a squatting woman.


A man sells Lek some large bread rolls and we lean over the edge of the boat to feed the fish, which leap and scuffle for the food.


By this time, I'm pretty starving myself so I'm grateful when, back on the bank, Lek suggests a restaurant round the corner that he likes. It's a local place with plastic chairs on the sidewalk, and a man frying vegetables in a wok on the street. When I ask for a Fanta inside, the boy scrubbing the floors looks at me in terror and yells "Farang!" into the back room until a woman (his mother?) appears to take my order. The food is plentiful and delicious. We walk back past Wat Arun, black in the dusk, to our car.


Back at the airport I'm taken by the massive display of Thai royalist adoration across the glass front, adorned with pictures of King Rama IX, the longest reigning current monarch in the world.


Thais love their king, who's seen as semi-divine - "enthroned in a position of revered worship, (he) shall not be violated". Harry's trip here in December coincided with his birthday and the entire city had apparently shut down. All the way into town I was met with displays of affection, the king and queen on flags, statues, monuments...


A bit different from the benign contempt the British queen is held in!

And then it's back to the cold breeze of a Korean morning in February - although it's ten degrees warmer than when I left, my tan is still hidden beneath layers of wool, and I'm looking forward to South Africa - in just three weeks' time!

I'm so grumpy at the airport and in the immigration line, where I wait for 45 minutes for one man to process about 3 visas, while his superiors watch from behind - Korean bureaucracy with minimal actual efficiency. But then I get into a taxi, and the driver practises his English all the way to the Village, showing me photos of his children and explaining how proud he is of the girls in university, and talking about his wife and his love for driving, and I walk through the Village gates with a smile on my face.

Buddhas in repose

I went to Xiang Khuane, about 25km outside of Vientiane. I thought about catching a tuk-tuk, but in the end was so glad I didn't. It was a fifteenth of the price to walk to the bus station behind the Morning Market and get on a waiting bus. It was a shabby one, full of Lao people travelling to outlying villages. It stopped on the way at the Thai border, then carried on down the Mekong through small villages almost back to back. Through gaps I could see Thailand over the river. I couldn't work out what was bothering me about the scene and I kept glancing back at the wide green river, the hotels and temples on the other side, the fishermen's boats... Then I realised. There was no security. No ten-foot fences, no guardposts protecting men with guns, not even cameras as far as I could see. It was a peaceful river between two friendly nations. Korea has obviously jaded me.

Xiang Khuane is an oddity, the dream of a Lao artist in the 1960s who mixed Hinduism and Buddhism and from the stew in his head created hundreds of concrete statues of gods and Buddhas and fantastically intricate beasts. At the entrance is a huge pumpkin-shaped construction. I've met a Chinese girl on the bus who's also travelling alone. She has no English, but we stick together taking photos of each other and laughing at the impossibly small spaces we have to scramble through. The pumpkin is meant to represent the realms of hell, earth and heaven as you climb. Somehow we get into the centre of earth where dusty statues of soldiers and broken body parts lurk in the gloom. My partner has a torch, thank god, as otherwise I don't think we'd find the stairs upwards. I say stairs, but really they were uneven ridges not wide enough for a foot. We squeeze through a narrow opening into daylight and find ourselves in heaven with a view of the whole park.




Going back down again, we discover actual steps which lead to an outer corridor circling the rooms we stumbled into - but I still think ours was the more interesting route.

The main attraction of the park is a massive reclining Buddha; I'm smaller than his feet!


Some of the statues I'm not entirely sure of, but they're a creative use of concrete - much worthier than Patuxai for instance...


I have a feeling the one above is a god eating the sun, perhaps from Indian mythology, but my shallow knowledge fails me.

When the park is exhausted, and it doesn't take too long, I pay a smiley child for the use of a mosquito-haunted pit latrine and head back on the bus into town. The driver stops on the way to pick up his lunch from his daughter in one of the villages, and we have to pause for the little girl to climb on and give her dad a hug. He smiles apologetically at the Chinese girl and I, the only foreigners, lifting his hands, but I'm not bothered - it's just another perk of being in Laos.


Everywhere in Laos, homes have small shrines in the corner of the gardens, intricate, coloured, or plain wooden mini houses, with steps and chairs and ornate rooves. I'd thought these were a Hindu method of worship but apparently Buddhists use them too. Every morning offerings are left, and it's something I love about Eastern gods. Beside the marigolds (in the sacred orange colours) are laid sweets and lao-lao and cigarettes and beer, as if the gods are just like us in their pursuit of pleasure!















Finally, because all good things must end, my last day arrives. I do some last-minute shopping at Talat Sao, have coffee and a baguette at a French cafe, and sit and read in the garden, waiting to catch a tuk-tuk to the airport. On the way back to the hotel, though, I catch sight of an advert for an English teaching job in the window of a cafe. So who knows, Laos, I may be back...

City life

An innocent question of mine on the Lonely Planet online forum had unexpectedly sparked off a heated debate over the qualities of Vientiane and Luang Prabang, one camp claiming the beauty of Luang Prabang and the big-city unfriendliness of Vientiane, the other telling me that Luang Prabang isn't "real" Laos, but a Disneyfied theme park, while Vientiane is a charming laidback city. I can now see both sides of the argument; I was still pleasantly surprised by Vientiane, though. With wide boulevards and French restaurants in some parts, other neighbourhoods boast narrow lanes filled with temples, street hawkers and (still French) cafes. The centre is easily walkable in a couple of hours.

At sunset I find myself sitting on the banks of the Mekong, 390km from where I was that morning. The scene has changed dramatically. Vientiane eschews the deep calm banks of the northern town, and instead I'm sitting in a large carpark with my beer, looking over a scene of carnage. Great machines are carving out the wide shore. Mining, perhaps, or building a new road. The carpark I sit in is an expanse of grey dust, a busy road running alongside. It's home to a few makeshift, open-air bar-restaurants and a legion of colourful tables and chairs. From where I sit I can see two temples, gold pillars glinting in the setting sun. It's not a peaceful riverside town, but it does have its own manic charm.

The sun disappears into the haze a finger's width above the Thai shore, and I retreat to my hotel.


After breakfast the next day, I hurry out into the stiff winter cold (it's probably about 25 degrees, but everyone's in jackets) and take a 15-minute walk up a wide street that bisects Vientiane. It's apparently sometimes called the Champs Elysees of the East, but I can't imagine by whom. I guess it's mainly because of what's been built at the far end. At 45m of grim concrete, Patuxai doesn't loom so much as lurk. It's based on the Arc de Triomphe. I think it's the ugliest thing on four legs I've ever seen.


As instructed by the guidebook, I climb up through the 5 floors, dark rooms filled with mass-made, shrink-wrapped souvenirs, to the viewpoint. I look down the Champs Elysees to the Presidential Palace. I look the other way to the Communist headquarters (I presume). I climb a circular staircase to the very top where I look at the graffiti and note that S.K. Was Here. I climb down again.
























Hmm. A brutally honest sign at the entrance notes that the monument "from a closer distance appears even less impressive, like a monster of concrete." I have to agree...

Back down the avenue, I come to Talat Sao, the morning market. This is much more interesting, with traditional medicine sellers and silk weavers jostling for space with refrigerator stalls and cellphone stands. Sadly they're in the process of building a Malaysian-funded building next door for the market to move into. Big rooms and well-lit corridors will be on offer. Boooo-ring.... :D


At the end of the road, next to the Palace, is Wat Si Saket, a beautiful Provence-like terracotta-coloured temple set in a courtyard surrounded by what in Christendom would be called cloisters. When Laos was still Lan Xang, the Land of a Million Elephants, Vientiane was razed to the ground by invading Siamese armies, and Wat Si Saket was the only building left standing (some say this is because it was in the Bangkok style.) When the French arrived in the 1900s, they found it derelict and lonely on an empty riverside plain, and it was one of the first buildings to be restored by them during their reconstruction of the city.


Thousands of Buddhas rest in the cloistered silence - big ones sitting on the floor, tiny ones occupying niches up the wall.


The central temple also has arched cubbyholes cut high into the walls with yet more golden statues. A sign from the curator says there are more than ten thousand. Around the outside perimeter there are monks' quarters, old cottages with dragons curled around the stairs. A young novice is brushing his teeth on a balcony. I feel a little like I'm back at the English Village with the roles reversed - so I don't take a photo. The poor monks must feel just like I do, living in a human zoo. Although they do have the comfort of being enlightened. I just eat a lot.


I have breakfast at a shack on the sand by the Mekong. More building works. A woman passes by carting eggs somewhere, but the eggs here are dangerous - in line with the rest of Laotian eating habits, many of them are fertilized duck eggs and unwary travellers are surprised by the little bird inside...

Spiritual tourism

On my last morning in Luang Prabang I woke up at 6am and walked down to feed the monks. Yes, I know, sounds like a zoo, doesn't it? It's actually a very old tradition. As I walked down towards the temples, women passed me at a trot, long bamboo sticks over their shoulders with baskets at either end. As they slowed next to me, I could see the banana leaf packages inside holding rice, and the women held these out to me, calling "Feed monk? Good karma, lucky. Only 5,000 kip!" I felt a little nervous of pretending to join in on this spiritual journey, but when I got to the main street I saw quite a few tourists kneeling on grass mats among the Lao, so I let a seller persuade me to buy a plate of bananas, and knelt in the dust. The dawn was only just breaking when the first sunrise-coloured robes appeared at the corner. Each monk carried an ornate silver bowl around his neck, and as he moved down the waiting line of devotees he paused long enough for each woman - for they were mostly women - to place a food offering in the bowl.

My bananas weren't as popular as the sweets the next lady offered - at least with the younger monks - but they went quickly enough, and I straightened up to watch the rest of the procession pass by. It was fascinating to see the long line of monks, not looking at the people and especially avoiding any physical contact with women.

Although, once again, I felt like I was taking part in a Disney play specially put on for me, when I left and walked down a side street, all the women offering food were Laotian, and it does strike me as a good way to feed those in the temples while spreading the burden of support over many shoulders. For the monks, it constitutes their only meal of the day, eaten at lunchtime after chores, and often shared with an attached orphanage or school. Some of the women were Hmong and likely to be Christian, so perhaps this is seen as more of a cultural tradition than a religious one.

Anyway. Suitably reassured, I walked down to the food market nearby. The food market is two or three streets, quite narrow, lined in the mornings by sellers from the surrounding province. The narrowness of the lanes does not, however, prevent scooters from entering; add in the surprising amount of live produce, the chatter and the loud bartering and it makes for a noisy experience.


Welcoming though - every time I requested a photograph I was answered with a smile. I felt something bang into my hip once - it was a basket being carried by a grey-haired lady with a deeply lined face. She held up her hands and smiled in apology and as I smiled in return she grasped my arm and patted my face, laughing to the other women.

The food on sale was mostly vegetables, many of which I couldn't recognise, green leaves and flowers, alongside deep purple eggplant and the pink dragonfruit I'd come to recognise in the fruit smoothies I had every morning on the side of the road.


Some of the fishermen's wives were selling balls of river weed from wicker baskets, eaten much like seaweed is elsewhere in Asia; it looks just like the weed I used to drag out of the pond as a kid and dry in strips, and probably tastes much the same, too (as a kid, I was smart enough not to eat these things - as an adult, not so much.)


There were stalls selling dried strips of pale meat - less like biltong than leather straps. The small meat section had anonymous cuts of meat sharing space with such joys of the meat-eater's world as pigs' ears and testicles; hordes of flies were kept away - though only just - by women waving plastic bags tied to sticks. I hurried past. I paused to watch two women squeezing honey from a comb into a bucket.


As I was crouching to photograph the scene, something in the foreground caught my eye, which I'd only heard of till now: two splayed and roasted rats!


Laos is well known among conservationists for its fervent consumption of anything that swims, walks, slithers or flies, regardless of the animal's position on the endangered list. It's why generally I haven't seen much wildlife here, apart from the Rivertime Lodge where the land is protected. Although the authorities are clamping down in an effort to make Laos an eco-friendly county (eco-tourism is big business here), it's still possible to see, in certain markets, monkeys, spiders and snakes sold as meat. The rats I saw were probably just common field rats though. There were also grass snakes and little piles of beetles neatly laid out on mats.


Apparently not too long ago some wildlife experts discovered a species of rat thought to be extinct before they saw it roasted at a market. It hasn't been seen since, either...



I caught the midday plane back to Vientiane, where I was treating myself with a stay at the Vayakorn Inn. All hardwood floors and dark Laotian furniture, it's not a five-star soulless hotel, but it's pure luxury for me after sharing a bathroom with 5 boys for four days! The view from my balcony takes in the magnificently ugly Cultural Hall which was built, clearly, by a big fan of gold kitsch. It's very central, so I take a walk around town as soon as I'm settled in.

Books and the art of kayaking

On Tuesday, I've booked to go on a two-day trek, spending a night in a Hmong village. On enquiring at the tour office, I find that this has now turned into a one-day trek and kayak due to market forces beyond their control. I'm a little worried about the strength (or lack of it) in my arms, but the guy assures me it's only an hour or so of kayaking, and the river current does most of the work.

Tuesday dawns, and I'm at the tour office bright and early to meet up with the other travellers - a Brit, two Canadians, and three Spanish girls. I'm already wary as the tour company promises a maximum of six on a tour. We set off in the back of a truck, kayaks strapped to the roof. The truck sets us down after 40 minutes at the end of a dusty road - very dusty, as it's the dry cold season season in Laos, though you wouldn't know it from the oppressive heat. From there we walk to a nearby school. I've brought some books in town from Big Brother Mouse, a charity that could have been set up just for me, it's so perfect: they write and publish bilingual children's books which they try to distribute to kids who have sometimes never seen a book before. I've chosen a Lao fairytale, a collection of Aesop's Fables and an English picture dictionary, which all cost me about £3 in total, and now I hand them over to the headmaster, who tells us he's trying to start a library for the use of the whole village. Great! Literacy and a bit of English in one dedicated push.

The trek leads us up over a hill through fields and rubber tree plots, and then down into the luxurious caller where a wide river winds all the way to Luang Prabang. And that's the trek over. Mis-selling? I think so! The kayaks are waiting on the beach; I share with Nicola, a British girl teaching in Thailand. We set off onto the river, which turns out to be so placid and calm that we are in fact doing all the work. We break for lunch half an hour in, but other than that it's three and a half hours of constant paddling. Despite the dull ache in my arms, I find myself enjoying it. We're low on the water looking up at cliffs and mountains and mostly the only sounds are our paddles hitting the water, and the snorts of the water buffalo. As usual there are thousands of butterflies on the shores and a few fishermen beating the water with long sticks to flush the fish into the waiting nets.



There are also lots of semi-submerged bamboo baskets, cleverly disguised with river weed and baited with food. When a fish bites, a trapdoor is released, holding the fish until it can be collected.

Sometimes we pass men panning for gold... The shores are shiny with fools' gold (I assume... unless I made a terrible mistake spending my holiday kayaking instead of collecting my fortune...)

There are rapids to break up the heavy paddling; the first lulls us into a false sense of calm but they get more and more difficult (and proportionately more fun) until we reach one where the Canadians, their centre of gravity slightly askew, Nicola supposes, flip over. From there on, every tumbling stretch of white water plunges them into the wet. Nicola and I, evenly matched in weight, coast over, shrieking with laughter and crying like kids "Again! Again!" We're almost a little jealous of the Canadians cooling off from the heat... until the last one drags them for almost 30 metres, banging them against rocks and leaving them with bruised limbs and small cuts. Luckily it's almost the end though. Nicola and I have visions of easily coasting onto a sandy beach and flinging our oars down in triumph, but we're grounded in the shallow waters and have to climb out and scramble over rocks and pebbles, dragging our kayak behind us.

It's a triumphant ending, nevertheless. Back in town, I fling myself onto my bed for a second and only open my eyes hours later in the dark when my arms ache me awake. That's when I discover the two blisters on the inside of my thumbs from the oars, one open and bleeding. The Laotian Injury List just passed the Balinese one.

The rest of my time I spend walking, endlessly. Luang Prabang is a small town but it's quite easy to while away a few hours without realising in its narrow back streets full of laundry and bougainvillea and boys playing khataw, a kind of mix between football and volleyball.


It's played with a hollow rattan ball, the players seeming to compete with each other for title of most impressive move. Their legs are amazingly strong and they fly through the air executing high kicks. In one game I watched, two players aimed at the net at the same time, grazing each other's thighs and coming perilously close to depriving Laos of future generations. It caused an outburst of raucous laughter among the spectators as the players, pale but smiling, grabbed at their crotches.

Sometimes I see older men playing petanque, the pitch boundary made of bamboo pipes so that the sandy thunk of the boules is often followed by a hollow 'tok!' as they hit the bamboo. I told one man that we play the same game at home in my family and was rewarded with a surprised smile and an invitation to join in their game. As my family knows, I'm no expert, but the two other players were very kind to me and applauded my weak attempts!

My wanderings were punctuated with cups of thick dark coffee in a thousand different cafes where I sat and wrote and watched the streetlife pass by.


It was in one of these cafes in a back street shaded by frangipanis that I met Martin, a German man working as an engineer in China, who spent a few years in the Limpopo valley, and lived in a commune in East Berlin as a university student. He was interested in my childhood in Zimbabwe, as I was in his experiences of communist Germany so we walked and talked together for a while. We crossed yet another rickety bamboo bridge to the opposite bank, paying 20p towards its upkeep to an elderly woman spinning thread in a hut.


On the other side we found the village empty, the occupants presumably enjoying a siesta in the midday heat, so we slipped down a path littered with the bones of old boats to the banks of the Mekong, where a hut, perched directly above the meeting of the Nam Khan and the Mekong, offered fresh coconuts and cold beers.


As we sat there discussing the similar confluence of communism and capitalism across Asia, an old man dressed in his underpants and an open shirt, his wide smile betraying toothless gums, climbed up from where he'd been washing to offer us a boat to the bars on the far bank. But I was flushed from the heat, and tired, so I decided to mimic the villagers and head back to the hostel for a siesta in the hammock. The blisters on my thumbs from holding the oars the previous day had split so I needed to tend to them and my various other injuries as well. I really don't know how I've turned into such a clumsy traveller - no one else I know ever returns from holiays as battered and bruised as I do.

Refreshed, I went at sunset to meet Martin and Nicola for drinks at a bar where the evening's entertainment was a catwalk to showcase traditional clothing from some of the 40-odd Laotian tribes. The variety that has developed in such a small country is amazing - I'm always a little embarrassed when people ask about the traditional clothes of Britain or Zimbabwe - neither show anything near the imagination Asians put into the way they dress.