Will Taiwan become <a title="To Young, a Russian Enclave Is Too Much the Old Country" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/08/nyregion/08BRIG.html?8hpib=&pagewanted=print">the PRC's Brighton Beach</a>?  Tibet is already monopolizing the Disney image.

<quote>But lately Brighton Beach is a tourist attraction for another group of people - more recent immigrants who have come to America from a transformed Russia, where Moscow sparkles with shopping options for the affluent, where malls have sprung up in suburbs, and where sushi bars are more popular than McDonald's. To them, Brighton Beach, in the eastern part of Brooklyn's Coney Island peninsula, is a place frozen in time - a Brezhnev-era closed world, one full of sour looks, suspicion, and hopelessly outdated fashion.</quote>

Even for fashion.  At the present time, Taiwan is more hip, but I'm predicting that the mainland will overtake the renegade province someday.

--The <span class="newspaper title">Michigan Daily</span> had an article today about the South Korean embassy in Beijing closing down because they are sheltering <em>too many</em> North Korean refugees.