From 2010 to 2017, there was a thing called #AseanCitizen that we Aseans started as a grassroots movement. We were all bloggers from across, well, #ASEAN or South-East Asia.
Some of us joined together to produce one of the best multi-authored regional blogs. We talked about our cultures, write about what makes the region awesome. As well as, try to address the oftentimes silly and sometimes heated debates.
It's all gone now. Forgotten. The blogs dead or offline. We all grew up, got busy with our personal lives, and moved on separately. And the important reason? We lost interest in it as we started to see ASEAN was, is, and will never be for the grassroots.
That was the end of what was once a vibrant grassroot ASEAN Citizens effort. We did it all voluntarily. Without a single recognition from the top-down organisation that is ASEAN.
But today? ASEAN is still a top-down organisation. They kept trying to get the grassroots involved, but they are always failing. Why? Because it is a top-down organisation, as simple as that. They will never understand until they shift their mindset and approach to bottom-up.
(P.S I want to restart this grassroots movement, but I just no longer have the spark. Give me a very good reason why I should give it another chance. Or, at least, guide the new generation.)
A growing number of casinos in #Cambodia, #Laos and #Myanmar are engaging in large-scale money laundering, facilitating #cyberfraud that is costing victims in America and abroad billions of dollars, according to new research by the United Nations.
My stalled collection of #minority#folklore in #China is picking up steam again. Today's books come to us from the #Hani peoples of China. The Hani are a #Chinese minority culture living chiefly in the south of China and in northern #Vietnam and #Laos. The books here are #bilingual#Mandarin/#English ... unfortunately the original Hani language material is not available in them. This means I'll be reading a translation and a translation's translation, but ... it's still better than not knowing anything about these interesting people at all, isn't it?
There's two things that intrigue me about the Hani. First, they claim to be an offshoot of the #Yi peoples (who are my absolute favourite minority group in China). Second, they are typically able, at least by reputation, to recite their entire family history from the mythical progenitors of the Hani peoples to the individual doing the recitation. When you consider that they date to before the 3rd century CE, that's ... a lot of years and a lot of generations to recite!
The first of my two books is the origin story, in effect, of the Hani dating back to when they purportedly branched off of the Yi. The second is twelve common folklore songs. These are beefy books (~450 and ~350 pages respectively) so it will be a lot of months of study for me.