Robyn hung out at the pool while I splurged for a cigar at the bar. No sticks were involved. My money went up in smoke, into a ring that hung in the air, like a large rai stone wheel. Later we descended to examine the double-hulled voyaging canoe down the hill, assembled from planks and rope and painted orange and black, lying silent under thatch and in the shadow of some of the most renowned navigators in the Pacific. In the supermarket were cats, and rolls of Christmas wrapping paper, against a backdrop wall of colorful canned goods, mostly Spam and corned beef and other dead remnants of fair and honest traffic. We spent our final evening in a sushi restaurant, against a local fish chart that went on forever.
And then it was over, and we found ourselves back at the sign on the refuse bin in the airport. Do not spit betel nut chew into this garbage can. It was still surrounded by splotches of orange respect.
Five years after we left Yap, Trader Ridge went into escrow, and the New Yorkers went home.
Capt. David O'Keefe: Where did I go wrong, old man?
Fatumak, Medicine Man: The whale that swallows the dolphin chokes
and dies, but the whale who lives without greed is the king of the
sea.
His Majesty O’Keefe, 1954
For the Yapese, however, the treachery of fair and honest traffic is about to get much worse. American aid currently accounts for seventy per cent of public spending, and Washington has put its Micronesian allies on notice that it will end all subsidies by 2023. Enter the Deputy Assistant Secretary for the US Interior Department’s Office of Insular Affairs, David Cohen, and a speech he made in 2007. Christianity was alien to the Pacific until the 19th Century. Today, it is a fundamental part of most Pacific cultures.
To help smooth the way, Mr. Cohen, now a lawyer in LA, was one of ‘several American consultants’ hired by a very wealthy Chinese developer to ‘help assess community support’ for a megaproject proposal for Yap. He was flown to meet him in China on the developer’s private plane.
“I played an advisory role rather than an advocacy role.” He said. And I believe him. For what treachery could a nice Jewish boy get up to, with his deep insight into the fundamental part that Christianity played in the colonization of the Pacific, as a Los Angeles lawyer, on the private jet of a Chinese developer?
The answer lies in the identity of the Chinese developer. Deng Hong is a master of the public private partnership. The son of an Air Force Officer, Deng spent eight years in the military, sold clothes in a Beijing market, became and importer-exporter to San Francisco, married an American girl, and returned home to earn almost a billion dollars, building convention centers, and resorts for Beijing’s burgeoning bourgeoisie, on government land. His company, Exhibition and Travel Group, ETG, built Jiuzhai Paradise in the Jiuzhaigou nature reserve, and the Intercontinental Hotel in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa. I’m not sure they consulted the giant pandas, or the Tibetans. His Panda Travel agency boasts of arranging a million international trips a year for Chinese tourists.
Deng’s proposed billion dollar development on Yap involves the construction of 10 luxury hotels, a 4000-room casino and golf resort, a convention center, and the expansion of Yap's airport to allow it to handle jets large enough to fly directly to Yap from Mainland China, just over three hours from Shanghai. Choosing Yap was simple, said Yang Gang, the island's local ETG representative. “The location is close to China.” he said, sitting in his Yap apartment, lit by a bare light bulb, a Spam can overflowing with cigarette butts on the kitchen table.
And the Americans beget the Chinese invasion of imported workers, doubling the island’s population, dividing Yap into a ‘tourist area’ and a ‘native town community’ of apartments for the displaced residents. Ancestral villages would disappear.“I don't know why they think we will take their land.” Said Yang Gang, ticking off the benefits that the project would bring to residents. “We can't take over. We aren't Japanese soldiers. We do all business legally, with permits. We never force anyone to lease land. It's all based on free will.”
But wait. It appears that Deng Hong has been arrested by Chinese Communist Party anti-corruption officials, for improprieties linked to some of his land deals. But Mr. Yang is still signing land leases and pointed to a recent visit by the Chinese ambassador to Micronesia as a signal of support. “The project is going forward smoothly.” He said in an email.
Robyn and I boarded our Continental flight to Pohnpei. She wore a tiara of orange orchids, and posed for a photo under the bilingual Airline Ticketing sign. I hadn’t noticed the second language at the time. It was Mandarin.
The people of Yap have a long history of making big money the hard way. But the real big money, is coming down the tree, head first.
“The price we have to pay for money is sometimes liberty.”
Robert Louis Stevenson
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