A Quote by Charles C. Mann

Seoul and Shanghai, Jaipur and Jakarta; shining skyscrapers, pricey hotels, traffic-jammed streets ablaze with neon - all were built atop a foundation of laboratory-bred rice.
There were never a lot of attacks on my work. We were building more parks than were ever built in the city, building more recreation centers, fixing more streets. We had national events, the Super Bowl, the (Major League Baseball) All-Star game, Final Four. We built seven hotels. The city hadn't built a hotel in 20 or more years.
America's skyscrapers were not built by public funds nor for a public purpose: they were built by the energy, initiative and wealth of private individuals for personal profit. And, instead of impoverishing the people, these skyscrapers, as they rose higher and higher, kept raising the people's standard of living - including the inhabitants of the slums.
People in Shanghai make a lot more money than the farmers in the rice paddies. The rice-paddy farmers are not buying Louis Vuitton bags, but the upwardly mobile ones in Shanghai, who are all working in Wall Street-type firms, are infinitely better-dressed than people in the West. Their women take this fashion thing seriously.
In the '60s, the Sunset Strip became insane. The sidewalks and the traffic were jammed. It was a renaissance.
Like the skyscraper, the automobile, and the motion-picture palace, neon signs once symbolized popular hopes for a new era of technological achievement and commercial abundance. From the 1920s to the 1950s, neon-lit streets pulsed with visual excitement from Vancouver to Miami.
In Ehrenfeld, we were all jammed together. All the fathers were foreign-born - Welsh, Irish, Polish, Sicilian. We were so jammed together, we picked up each other's accents. And we spoke some broken English. When I got into the service, people used to think I was from a foreign country.
The fact of the matter is that fewer people in Tokyo are able to do business in English than in many other big Asian cities, like Shanghai, Seoul or Bangkok.
I was in Shanghai when the Japanese invaded China. I was there in Shanghai when, the morning after Pearl Harbor, they seized Shanghai.
When I came in, the city was on the edge of bankruptcy. I'm proud of what I did. I built the foundation that mayors after me built upon - particularly Bloomberg. But the foundation was essential because if it hadn't occurred, we would have been another Detroit.
Although Shanghai is on the sea, it long lacked the prosperity that Hong Kong enjoyed, so while Hong Kong became known for its exotic ocean creatures, Shanghai built its diet around more commonplace river and sea fish.
I met a Shanghai photographer who finds these old streets and matches the French names to what they are today. I was able to find my grandfather's block, and just walking the same streets and finding his house was deeply moving. I finally felt connected to China.
My mom and dad are from the streets. My mom's from Chicago. My dad's from Memphis. My dad got out of school and got with my mom. They were hustlers. They were from the streets. They were doing their thing. The streets ain't got no love for the streets. You can light up the streets, or be a victim of the streets.
Jaipur is my mother's hometown. So, every summer vacation, we would come to Jaipur and spend the entire holiday at my nani's house.
New York! The white prisons, the sidewalks swarming with maggots, the breadlines, the opium joints that are built like palaces, the kikes that are there, the lepers, the thugs, and above all, the ennui, the monotony of faces, streets, legs, houses, skyscrapers, meals, posters, jobs, crimes, loves... A whole city erected over a hollow pit of nothingness. Meaningless. Absolute meaningless.
I see the angel Moroni, standing atop the temple, as a shining symbol of [our] faith. I love Moroni, because in a degenerate society, he remained pure and true. He is my hero. He stood alone. I feel somehow he stands atop the temple today, beckoning us to have courage, to remember who we are and to be worthy to enter the holy temple, to 'arise and shine forth,' to stand above the worldly clamor and to, as Isaiah prophesied, 'Come to the mountain of the Lord'-the holy temple.
There are eight or nine leading varieties of rice grown in Japan, all of which, except an upland species, require mud, water, and much puddling and nasty work. Rice is the staple food and the wealth of Japan. Its revenues were estimated in rice. Rice is grown almost wherever irrigation is possible.
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