17 Postcards From Our Correspondents Around the World in 2017

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/21/world/best-journals-2017.html

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Correspondents for The New York Times reported from more than 140 countries this year, covering war, terrorism, political upheaval, natural disaster and social change. But they also found stories about searching for mussels beneath the ice in northern Quebec, about Italian pizzamakers recognized for their intangible contributions to human culture, and about running the Beirut marathon.

Most of these stories were what we call “journals” — a longstanding weekday feature by Times correspondents around the world that aims to bring readers to places they haven’t been, in the hope of offering insight into a place and culture. The journals can offer a refuge from the weighty, pressing and — let’s face it — tragic news that tends to fill the headlines. Like postcards, they offer glimpses of communities and subcultures, often touching on food, history, sociology and the arts.

Here are some of our favorites from 2017.

Tourist traffic clogs Venice’s narrow streets, choking its glorious squares and pushing the locals of this enchanting floating city out and onto drab, dry land. The lingua franca is a foreign mash-up of English, Chinese and whatever other tongue the mega cruise ships and low-cost flights have delivered that morning. Hotels have replaced homes.

A small hip-hop festival on the outskirts of the southwestern city of Chengdu reveals how hip-hop, once an underground subculture, has stormed the Chinese mainstream. Fans are flocking to nightclubs and music festivals to see their favorite local rappers and D.J.s perform, while English terms like flow, freestyle and even diss have made their way into popular urban parlance.

Norilsk, 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle, is a place of brutal extremes. It is Russia’s coldest and most polluted industrial city, and its richest — at least when measured by the value of its vast deposits of palladium, a rare mineral used in cellphones that sells for more than $1,000 an ounce. Beyond the city, a former gulag, lies an endless, mostly uninhabited wilderness.

In Buenos Aires, the “falsa boda,” or “fake wedding,” is on the rise. It’s really a good excuse for a party. Real weddings have been on the decline in Buenos Aires — less than half of what they were about 20 years ago — as couples are simply living together or waiting longer to marry.

“Wandergesellen,” or journeymen, a vestige of the Middle Ages in modern Europe, are hitchhiking across Europe. These young men — and these days women, too — wear wide-bottomed, corduroy trousers, white shirts and colored jackets that identify them as bricklayers, bakers, carpenters, stonemasons and roofers. They have finished their required training in any number of trades and are traveling to gather experience. Most are from German-speaking countries.

Ian Austen, a Canadian who covers Canada for The Times, looked back at Expo 67, the Montreal fair that showed Canada off to the world. It marked the country’s celebration of its 100th birthday (or, more accurately, the centennial of its current political structure) in a way that no single event marked its 150th this year.

China’s population is rapidly aging; experts predict that by 2055, 400 million Chinese — or about a quarter of the country’s population — will be over age 65. And dramatically improved life expectancy and rising incomes have afforded older people a freedom to enjoy life post-retirement in a way that would have been unthinkable for their parents’ generation. They have turned Sanya, a seaside city on Hainan island, the southernmost edge of China, into a wintertime paradise.

Liberians consider their presidential mansion to be both haunted and jinxed, according to Helene Cooper, a Washington correspondent who grew up in Liberia. No president who has slept at the house for any extended period has come to a decent end. Spirits are said to roam the hallways, while the applause of ghosts can be heard late at night, as if clapping at the end of a speech.

Deliveries are rarely simple in Kabul, Afghanistan, which has about five million people but few street names or addresses. Fahim Abed, an Afghan reporter for The Times, followed Mohammed Rahim Khaksar as he tried to deliver the notice for a package for one Atta Mohammed — a common Afghan name. He biked from neighborhood to neighborhood, navigating dirt roads that can resemble obstacle courses.

The city once known as Stalingrad, a pivotal battle that helped turn the tide in World War II, was completely rebuilt, and in 1961 renamed Volgograd, an effort to erase Stalin’s legacy. But memories of the fighting, 75 years ago this year, are strong. Volgograders walking the streets or going to work pass by many kinds of memorials to those who sacrificed their lives.

Given the scale of decay and decrepitude in Fordlândia — founded in 1928 by the industrialist Henry Ford in the far reaches of the Amazon River Basin — it’s surprising to find stately, largely well-preserved homes. The town is home to about 2,000 people, some who live in the crumbling structures built nearly a century ago.

Manila North Cemetery is home to an estimated one million of the dead — and a few thousand of the living. The final resting place of presidents, movie stars and literary icons, the cemetery is also inhabited by some of Manila’s poorest people. Many live in the crypts and mausoleums of wealthy families, who pay them a stipend to clean and watch over them.

The Romanès family spends most of the year in the upscale 16th Arrondissement of Paris — in a small park where their circus caravans have a permanent spot and where they perform their show. The rest of the time, they take their show all around France. The Romanèses, who originally came from Romania, are part of a community that is often the object of stigmatization.

Fuad Sahyoun and Zuheir Sahyoun are brothers — and fierce rivals — with competing falafel shops next door to each other in Beirut.

Wildcat prospectors are trying to draw the dregs out of Myanmar’s largest unregulated oil field. They are lucky to collect a barrel a day, earning a little over $50. That is good money in rural Myanmar, where most farmers earn a subsistence income. But most drillers saved for years or borrowed money from family members to come up with the setup costs.

India has some of the most pro-dog laws on the planet. It is illegal here to kill healthy strays, and the result is millions of them — perhaps as many as 30 million across the country. Packs of dogs trot through the parks, hang around restaurants for scraps (which they usually get), and sprawl on their bellies inside railway stations as rushing commuters leap over them.

The weirdest town in Canada’s Yukon Territory might be Keno City, a gold-rush-era relic with about a dozen full-time residents, tap water not fit for human consumption and two bars whose owners haven’t been on speaking terms for more than a decade. Perched among hills rich in silver, zinc and lead, it began as a Swedish prospector’s staked claim in 1919.