At 11:23 AM 4/23/99 -0400, Miller, Bert wrote:

Some of the comments below make me sound more negative than I
really am about this episode.  

	That's ok, I'll just put on my asbestos skivvies...

In general, I applaud efforts

to get geography and politics correct.  However, my impression
is that you didn't really try very hard.  If you're not
willing to put the work in to get the details right, you
probably should just skip these parts altogether.

	It IS cursory.  As I stated in ch.1, this is laying out the framework of
the story.  Because I am using an existing work as a basis for this that
was very sketchy, I am plotting out the changes and additions I want to
make.  The filling in comes later.
	The ideas about travel in a communist country were based more on things I
know about how Russia was, rather than China.  I haven't done any research
because I'm still outlining.  I was making a basic assumption (perhaps
wrong) that China required internal passports and permits the way Russia did.
	Which, when you get right down to it, is why I'm posting these outlines
instead of waiting and putting up a more finished version.  I WANT to be
corrected!  That way I know what needs fixing!

Genma, Nodoka and the baby Ranma wandered the back roads of 
China for a time,

Circa 1980 then?

	Ranma was set in the early nineties, so this would logically be the late
seventies.  Ranma was 16 at the beginning of the series, so we backtrack
from his age.

learning trade secrets from the Chinese martial arts masters 
when they could.
Genma supported his family by odd jobs and the charity of the 
schools they
visited. The family did not stay in China for very long, 
however. Avoiding the
attention of the Communist authorities was never easy, and 
wanderers were
always suspect. That they had no permits meant always living 

Individual travelers from the 1980s who've written about their
experiences traipsing around China (Vikram Seth, Nick Danziger)
don't seem to have experienced this level of trouble.

	Although presumably they were in the country legally.  Genma doesn't
necessarily pay attention to national borders... something I'll have to add
to the story.  He's trying to do better, but he backslides occasionally.
Especially when it comes to cash outlays...

in fear of
discovery. Genma steered their steps towards Tibet as the 
eventual goal of the
Chinese journey. When finally they reached that sad country, 
it was to find
that the Chinese occupation had impoverished the Tibetan 
religious heritage.

I'm not sure that I think of "impoverished" as the right word.
"Raped", perhaps, or "devastated"; but I think of the response
by the Tibetans to their cultural oppression to be one of the
most inspiring experiences I've ever had.

	That's something I knew of off the top of my head.  When the Chinese
invaded, they systematically suppressed the Tibetan Buddhists.  Why?  I
don't know.  The Buddhist creed is nonviolent.  Maybe they thought they
were eliminating a rallying point of resistance?  Tibet had a large
percentage of its population active in service to the temples, so that was
a lot of suppressing, and it did get very bloody at times because of
Chinese brutality.

Genma had hoped to learn spiritual balance there to offset 
the warrior skills
he had learned from the Amazons, but the monasteries Tibet 
was so famed for
were, for the most part, gone.

Sera and Drepung were mostly just depopulated, not destroyed
like Ganden.  Tashi-Lhumpo was turned into a museum/amusement
park.  My understanding, however, is that, from any point
after the Cultural Revolution, one would have always been able
to find a few dozen monks at Sera or Drepung.

	That is definitely something I didn't know.  I was under the impression
that active monk and rituals were strictly controlled.

Disappointed, Genma and Nodoka decided to cross into India 
and seek the wisdom
of the Dalai Lama, who lived in that country in exile. The 
trail was a long one
through the stark beauty of the Himalayan mountains, and many 

I'm curious about their route.  Did they go through Nepal, or
around to the west?  The latter route would give a high
probability of starvation unless they were adequately prepared.

	Since I'm doing this in between answering the phones at work, my map was
mental and hence very vague.  I'll figure it out later.

times they were
forced to sleep hungry, but all roads one day reach their 
destination. When
they reached the border of India and crept past the guards, 

Guards?  _AT_ the border?  So the family is not deviating from
the main roads/passes through the Himalayas?

	Can you?  On TV, the terrain looks very much vertical.  If you don't
follow the main routes, is it possible to get from the Chinese border to India?

it was as if they
had entered a new world. Genma was able to seek work openly, 

How did he get a work permit for India?  They're not, as far
as I know, handed out to just anyone, and the Saotomes are
conspicuous on sight in India in a way they are not in most
of China.

	Day labor.  You walk up to a country house and ask if you can do something
in return for food.  An actual work permit would have to wait for the
passports to go through.  I admit, I am skimping on the problems they would
have had with the Indian authorities, but that can be fixed in the first
rewrite.

and they could
walk the roads without hiding every time another traveler 
appeared. In China,
they had always had to be careful of roving patrols of police 
or soldiers
catching them and finding out that they had no permission to 
be in the country.

The question that occurs to me here, or course, is why "patrols
of police" were stopping them at all.  Do they not have the
intelligence to dress in a local fashion?  Can they not learn
to grunt a few words of Mandarin, and change their body language?

	Again, I was thinking of Russian communism, where KNOWN LOCALS couldn't go
from one city to the next without a permit.

When they reached the city in which the Tibetan government in 
exile lived, they

It's called Dharamsala, as five seconds with a web browser would
have informed you.

	If you can take the time for research off from working... :-P

found the monks whom they had thought to find in Tibet. 

They were looking for specific individuals?

	Just someone they could settle down with for a while.  The atmosphere in
Tibet would not have been conducive to peaceful study for a foreigner.

Arrangements were made
to allow them an extended stay as guests of the Tibetan 
people, and Genma spent
many happy years as a Buddhist monk, balancing his growth as 
a person with his
growth in the martial arts. Nodoka found instructors in the 
sword, and was able

Tibetan sword instructors?  Whose art is sufficiently similar
to the Japanese to be of use to Nodoka?

	Actually, I was thinking of local Indian instructors.  The Indians had
their own styles, and she was looking to expand her horizons, so to speak.
Sort of like going to France to study fencing.

to continue her learning in her own art as well. Both of them 
doted on their
son, who grew like the proverbial weed.

When Ranma celebrated his sixth birthday, it was decided that 
the time had come
to return to Japan. The boy had grown up in foreign lands all 
his young life,
and needed to learn of his own people. The offices of the 

Nodoka would, of course, be worried about Ranma's ability to
fit in; back then, "returnee" children were often ostracized.

	Good point.  That's sort of what I had in mind in blocking out that paragraph.

Dalai Lama were able
to obtain travel permits for China, so they were able to 

You know, the offices of the Dalai Lama are about the _last_
place I would try to get travel permits for China...

	Another point for your side, but I was thinking of underground contacts.
The Tibetans in exile would have to have ways of getting people through
customs in order to stay in touch with the homeland.

"Nihao! Shampoo is name! You Ranma, is right? Great-grandma 
make your mama part
of family, so we cousins now, yes? You want to play? Shampoo like to
practice-fight, weapons or no weapons okay. I kick your butt!"

This is supposed to be six-year-old Mandarin, right?  (If Shampoo
is addressing Ranma in Japanese, this is more than she knows at
her first appearance in the manga.  How did she learn it?)

	Argh, you're right!  I'll have to block out Ranma being taught some Mandarin.

written of their imminent return to Japan, her mother had 
called long distance
to the Amazon village with dire threats of dismemberment if 

This is about 1986, or as late as 1988?  And the Joketsuzoku
village is wired for telephone?  Just checking...

	Didn't most towns have at least one phone by the late seventies, if only
for the local commissars or police?  Since the Joketsuzoku are under
Chinese authority, whether they admit it or not, they would have to have a
villager who coordinated things with the government.

To Ranma, Japan was an eye-opening experience. He had never 
seen so much
electrically operated equipment in his life as could be found in his
grandmother's kitchen, and negotiating traffic was a new and 
unsettling hazard.

Traffic in Kyoto is worse than Dharamsala?  Somehow I have
trouble with this.  It's quite modest in Kyoto; the streets
are too narrow for high speeds.  Cars were scarcely that
rare in India in the mid-eighties.  (I have not been to
Dharamsala, but I doubt it's _that_ different from Delhi.)

	Another one I'm not as familiar with.  Other than the well known cities
like Bombay or New Delhi, I don't know much about India.  Kyoto doesn't
have as much traffic as major Japanese cities, it is true, but the
commercial districts would still be hazardous to someone raised in
backwater areas.

	Again, thanks for the time you've taken to write all this.  I WANT people
to rip it apart and point out the inconsistencies.  In reworking Metro's
tale, I am trying to detail Genma's travels a little more and use more
accurate background scenery.  Just be patient with the development of the
story; I am working hard on laying out the overview of this right now, so
the drama aspects are not as much a priority as getting together the frame
they will hang from.  I'd like to be certain that I will finish this story!


Ja ne,
Larry F