Webcam in Malolo Lailai, Fiji: Plantation Island Resort

So you ask Mikaele Ravalawa to name three players from South Sydney, his rivals on Thursday night.
“Aaaaah,” the Fijian says slowly, “no, I don’t know.
“I don’t know any of them.”
You can’t name even one Rabbitoh?
“Ummm,” he stammers, eyes moving off and over your shoulder like, maybe, a name can be found out in the rain now falling on this overcast Wollongong Monday.
But it can’t. Or not immediately.
Ravalawa sitting for the longest stretch of silence before, finally, a giant smile spreads wide on his face.
“The Burgess,” he grins.
You mean British brothers Sam, Tom and George?
“Yes,” the St George Illawarra rookie confirms. “Good players.”
Ravalawa admits he knows nothing about the NRL.
Seated now with League Central in the WIN Stadium grandstand — dressed down in black shorts, Dragons T-shirt and a pair of thongs — Ravalawa is finally giving the interview he asked club officials to delay until after his NRL debut, five days ago.
“But really, I wanted to wait until round 10,” he grins. “I don’t like doing media. Don’t know what to say.”
Still only 21, Ravalawa is the island flyer who has never watched a game of NRL.
Sure, he has now played the full 80 minutes. But never endured that long as a spectator.
Just as when meeting St George Illawarra officials last year, he didn’t know head coach Paul McGregor.
Nor could he name a single Dragons player.
And as for his attitude to a game taken up only two years back?
“On field,” Ravalawa says, “I tell myself, ‘take the ball, run hard.’
“Then in defence, ‘tackle hard’.
“That’s it.”
The Dragons have some serious raw talent on their hands.
Born and raised in the tiny Fijian village of Galoa, Ravalawa can tell you of a childhood where he ate what the family grew, ran logs uphill for fitness and went to school barefoot, with only the one shirt.
“So every afternoon,” he recalls, “I’d have to wash and hang it.”
And when the washing and hanging was done, little “Mika” and his mates played footy with a coconut. Or if one lay about, a plastic bottle.
“We’d empty the water out,” he recalls, “then smash each other.”
And always, the game was rugby union.
Which resulted in some confusion three years back when Ravalawa, still a teenager — and having lived for a year in Christchurch as a Super Rugby hopeful — was approached by famed league scout Peter Mulholland, who appeared in Fiji with a Canberra contract.
NRL legend Noa Nadruku was unknown to Ravalawa. Only problem was, Ravalawa didn’t know Mulholland. Or the Canberra Raiders.
“So they try to tell me about Noa Nadruku,” he recalls. “But I just said, ‘Noa who?’.”
You didn’t know the original Fijian Flyer?
“I only knew Semi Radradra,” he shrugs. “And Parramatta. I didn’t know Canberra. Or Peter. They had to explain everything to me.”
Yet once they did, the kid signed. And weeks later, he arrived in Canberra with nothing but a backpack.
“Which is a funny story,” Ravalawa says. “One of the Raiders staff, they were at the airport to pick me up. And so after seeing my backpack, they took me across to that area where all the bags come out. Then, we waited …”
Together, watching patiently as, one after another, every suitcase was collected and that conveyor belt was emptied.
“So I asked the official, ‘What are we waiting for?’,” Ravalawa continues. “He said, ‘Didn’t you bring any other bags?’.
“I said, ‘My backpack’.
“He started laughing and we walked to the car.”
And since?
Ravalawa clearly has what it takes.
Well, after an outstanding debut season in Canberra — where he earned Under-20s Player of the Year — Ravalawa was last winter demoted to bush footy after revealing his decision to switch clubs, representing Gungahlin against outfits such as the Queanbeyan Blues and Tuggeranong Buffaloes.
“Which was pretty easy,” he grins. Or at least until joining St George Illawarra.
“Mika came here underdone,” McGregor recalls. “And raw. Still, I liked what I saw.
“During our first opposed sessions, he was in the ISP squad and really bending our boys back with his carries.”
And then in the trials?
“His form was irresistible,” McGregor says.
All of which now has this Fijian playing in a competition he doesn’t know.
“I’ve never watched NRL,” he says. “Growing up, this wasn’t my dream. I wanted to be a rugby player.
“Even now on television, I’ll watch Super Rugby or sevens … but not the NRL.”
So your reason for switching?
“Opportunity,” he says.
The new Dragons has plenty of perspective on what the NRL means.
Like the money Ravalawa sends home each month to his parents, who have used said funds to build a kava plantation.
“They’re also coming out to see me play,” he adds. “Mum just needs a passport.
“Life is so different now. A dream.”
Elsewhere, Ravalawa has not only improved his knowledge of Fijian league history — “Yes, I know the legend Nadruku now” — but also spent the past month bagging a trial double, winning a Dragons wing spot and making his NRL debut in the 24-12 loss to North Queensland.
Indeed, while so many of last weekend’s headlines involved countryman Maika Sivo’s own debut for Parramatta against the Panthers, Ravalawa quietly played while mourning those 50 souls killed in Christchurch, his home in 2016.
“Where the shooting happened, it’s near where I lived,” he says. “My homestay mum, she posted some stuff.
“It makes me sad. So sad.”
Yet despite carrying a heavy heart into the Townsville clash, Ravalawa still ran for 145m, more than any other Dragon, while also busting seven tackles — one better than even Jason Taumalolo.
At training, he also sits among the club’s best three gym lifters. Some going for a fella who, until a couple of years ago, would simply run sandbags and logs uphill to improve strength.
“Strong as a bull,” McGregor insists. “And while he’s quiet, Mika isn’t shy. He’s comfortable with his talent.
“Becoming a real student of his own game, too.”
But as for knowing which Rabbitoh will oppose him at Jubilee Oval? Which centre is on his side?
Anyone at all beyond The Burgess?
“Ah, no,” Ravalawa grins. “I don’t know anyone.”

The 19th Century continued into the 1880’s, and by then most of the wounds of the American Civil War had scarred over.
In 1880, children born on the day the Confederacy surrendered were now old enough to. In Dixie, the consensus amongst most whites was that the Civil War was a mistake, and though they admired the ferocity with which their ancestors fought, they regarded the cause for which they fought as misguided and wrong. It became the honorable thing to not sugarcoat or glorify the Confederacy, and though some did do this, such as the racist Bloody Shirt movement, these people were relegated to the status of a fringe subculture with no institutional support, widely-hated and frequently harassed by the occupying federal troops.
In the “Greater Texas” states of Lincoln, Jacinto, Jefferson and New Texas, the Tekisaznu communities continued to increase in number and become more assimilated, even as their influence on the region’s culture only grew. By the 1880’s, there were more ethnic Japanese in New Texas (新しいテキサス, “Atarashii Tekisasu”) than Hispanics or African-Americans, and though the Tekisan populations in Jacinto, Lincoln and Jefferson were not as extreme in number, the combination of high Tekisan birth rates, continued immigration from Japan, and widespread Tekisan adoption of children orphaned by the war (thus explaining why today there are white, Japanese-speaking Texan families with Japanese surnames), meant that by 1886, Japanese was the official “second language” of New Texas (relegating Spanish to “third language” status), and the “third language” of the remaining Texan states, cementing Greater Texas’ status as a crossroads of Anglo, Hispanic and East Asian culture. In Houston around this time, it was not unusual to see an English-speaking, well-to-do white business man with his mutton chops, cowboy hat, kimono, and revolver strapped to belt, enjoying a bowl of udon noodles with chili peppers, served by a Japanese chef and his young black apprentice. Alongside Austin and Houston, Little Nara continued to blossom as a major US city in New Texas. It’s often said that Little Nara “grew, but never got bigger”, yet the fact that it was the site of the only Japanese castle in the New World (which was also the site of one of the Civil War’s more unusual battles) made it an attractive tourist destination for the growing middle class of the northeast and Dixie.
On a somewhat related note, the poverty and inequity of the decaying Qing Dynasty drove millions of southern Chinese to cross the Pacific for new lives in the United States. As early as the 1840’s, Chinese had been arriving on the West Coasts of North and South America, though it was not until the 1870’s that tens of millions arrived to work on the railroads in the Great Basin, Mesoamerica, and the Andes, as well as to work on the ambitious Nicaragua Canal. In Northern and Southern California especially, the Chinese accumulated. “Chinatowns” emerged in cities like New York, San Francisco, Guayaquil, Mexico City, Havana and many other places. The Chinese immigrants also proliferated in the war-torn Andean states and the under-developed western states and territories of North America, mostly along the Pacific Coast, but Chinese communities also appeared in the deserts and in the Rockies. And it was in Northern California where Chinese immigration had the biggest impact.
Though most Chinese immigrants congregated in the major cities, others proliferated into the countryside. By the 1880’s, rice farming cooperatives in the San Joaquin and Sacramento valleys formed the backbone of Chinese-majority agrarian settlements like Taiman and Panzhou. Clipping off the queue braids that once symbolized submission to Manchu rule in China, these rural “Chinavilles” (in contrast to the urban Chinatown enclaves) proudly saluted their American flags and taught their children English as well as Chinese. And, mirroring the spread of Japanese in Greater Texas, by the end of the 1890’s, Chinese would become the official “third language” of Northern California, Southern California, Klamath, Oregon, Washington, El Salvador, Panama and Ecuador, as well as in some counties of Deseret, Colorado, Auraria, Santa Fe and the Unorganized Territory. The Californias and Ecuador ended up having the largest number of Chinese-speakers.
However, the Chinese and Japanese were part of a much larger period of increased Old World immigration to the New World. The combination of wartime damage and post-war farming improvements created large numbers of displaced people and surplus labor, respectively. These factors made the vast expanses of land and booming economic opportunities of the United States so appetizing to the huddled masses of the Old World, yearning for freedom and prosperity. Millions of Germans, Irish, Italians, Greeks, Hungarians, Croats, Serbs, Russians, Poles and Dutch immigrated to the United States. Even people from the nations which the US had fought against in the Great War – Britain, Ireland, Spain, France, Portugal – made the journey across the Atlantic. Additionally, tens of thousands of immigrants arrived in the US from the Middle East, predominantly Syrian, Turkish and Lebanese Christians. And the first African immigrants also made the journey to the US from the independent Saharan caliphate of Bornu , or the mighty Empire of Ethiopia, or the often-idiosyncratic kingdoms of the African Great Lakes, or from the German, British, Portuguese, Italian, Belgian and French colonies on the continent. Though compared to Europe or East Asia, Africa and the Middle East proved to be much lesser sources of immigration. Smaller numbers of immigrants arrived from India, though, given the measures the British were taking to re-affirm their control of the subcontinent following the costly Sepoy Rebellion, travel restrictions meant that comparatively few Indians made it to the United States, though you would be surprised how many did make it over. Among these, Sikhs settled in the Californias and in the Argentinian states of New South Wales, Cordoba and Tucuman, whilst small numbers of Keralans and Punjabis settled in the West Indies, Central America and the Guyanas.
The newer African immigrants very often faced a peculiar form of hostility from “Native Blacks”, particularly in Dixie. The newer immigrants for the most part tended to be animists or Muslims or follow very strange and syncretistic interpretations of Christianity, whereas Freedmen tended to identify more closely with their rural white brethren in Dixie, on account of their shared Protestant spirituality. Additionally, black intellectuals and polemicists in Dixie often emphasized the differences in how these two groups of black people arrived in the United States – one paid for their passage, the other was brought in chains. For these and other reasons, African immigration to Dixie tended to be concentrated more in urban centers, namely in Charleston, South Carolina, where, combined with the very politically-active Gullah people, African culture became a very prominent part of this very Dixie city. Following the 1886 Charleston Earthquake which almost completely destroyed the city, architects and artists from both “Continental African” and Gullah backgrounds spearheaded the reconstruction efforts. Much like the Japanese influence in the rebuilt Houston, the rebuilt Charleston would combine both “traditional” American sensibilities with a West African architectural flair, giving the city a certain feel not found elsewhere in Dixie. Though many were open to these changes, many were also hostile to the “Africanization” of Charleston, including both white and black religious leaders who feared the influence of “demonic” African culture on the city.
The early 1880’s also saw the first “skyscrapers” appear in New York City and Chicago – in the form of the Equitable Life Assurance Building and Home Insurance Building, respectively. By the end of the 1880’s, skyscrapers also appeared in Toronto, Mexico City, Philadelphia, Caracas, Seattle, Atlanta, Lima, Buenos Aires and Bogota. As well as in the new capital district of Liberty City, whose construction continued apace. More than just the seat of the federal government, this city was to serve as a monument to the greatness of the “American Experiment”, attracting the nation’s best and brightest scientists, engineers, businessmen and entrepreneurs, theologians, landscapers, innovators, artists and architects, as well as immigrant prodigies from other nations – all of them eager to make their mark on this glorious “Rome of the Enlightenment”. Hundreds of thousands of workers from both across the nation and abroad worked on building Liberty City, and, combined with the investment in building the Nicaragua Canal and the Pan-American Railroad, Central America began to flourish economically through increased integration with the rest of the United States.
New York City in this era experienced an especially impressive general growth spurt in the 1880’s and early 1890’s, as elegant skyscrapers and dingy but affordable tenant housing erupted from the islands. Commemorating their many decades of friendship, the German Reich sent the United States a present in 1886: the Statue of Liberty. Standing 151 feet tall, this copper-coated statue of Libertas enlightening the world was placed on Liberty Island in New York Harbor. This bronze goddess welcomed the many new immigrants who came to the city by the boatload in the 1880’s.
The new technology of film made its debut in this era as well. French inventor Louis Le Prince’s experiments with film culminated in 1873, when he produced the first motion picture, a brief 2.11 second silent film entitled Roundhay Garden Scene. From there, Le Prince encouraged this new art form and after becoming a celebrity overnight sets up his own studio in Paris. A studio also emerged in London, Berlin, Rome, and in the US, several emerged. In Boston, Bogota, Havana, Montreal, San Francisco, Little Nara, Liberty City and New York, independent studios rose and fell promoting the new art form throughout the 1880’s. In 1881, the first great American motion picture is released, a 14-minute silent film, the “The Battle in the Iaow Valley”, a historical reenactment of General Custer’s campaign in Hawaii, filmed in Cuba. Custer himself attended the premier, joking that the actor portraying him was a more convincing George Custer than he was. The Papal coronation of Pope Leo XIII was also caught on film, with the footage played in cinema houses packed with Catholic faithful in the US, Ireland and especially Italy. Film in the 1880’s was black and white, silent, the movies themselves were rarely longer than 20 minutes, and cinema houses were rarely found outside of major cities. These early five-cent “nickelodeons” were known for their gaudy posters and ornamental facades which were used to draw in patrons, who were typically greeted by small rooms, bare walls and hard seats. However, in the typical American spirit of innovation and taking advantage of new technologies, the US pioneered the use of film to share news with the people, with many theatres running newsreels of the most important events, such as the State of the Union.
In 1883, the US acquired the Scandinavian Commonwealth’s remaining North American territories. After the Germans applied diplomatic pressure to the Scandinavians, Greenland and the Scandinavian Virgin Islands both went up for sale and President Blackburn approved the purchase for a mere $7.2 million. As in the former Dutch West Indies and Russian Alaska, Danish was preserved as an official language in the Territory of the Virgin Islands and the Greenland Territory, alongside English. In 1877, the transfer of sovereignty was finalized, and the American flag was raised over Godthåb and Christiansted.
With the acquisition of Greenland and the Virgin Islands, Brazil was left as the only remaining region of the New World not part of the USAO.
And even so, there were even more…interesting developments in the Pacific.
The Federal Republic of Australia, Republic of New Zealand and Republic of the Philippines were independent as a result of the Laibach Treaty, but also very much within the American sphere of influence. All four were grateful for the Union helping them fight their European oppressors. The close proximity of the three nations to the British East Indies helped foster this closeness to the United States. And all three of these new countries saw large-scale American investment come in. The same engineers who connected North and South America came over to Australia to help build railroads across the Outback, and American missionaries were a persistent presence (and indeed, a growing political force) in the Philippines. Beginning in the early 1870’s, in all three countries, you had “Union Parties” emerge. The Australian, New Zealand and Philippine Union Parties each differed on their specifics, but all three favored the ultimate goal of political union with the United States.
At the same time, tensions began to grow in China. The Qing Dynasty had avoided the horrors of the 1860’s Taiping Rebellion of OTL. In 1814, Hong Xiuquan’s mother looked into her newborn son’s eyes and realized he would grow up to get 100 million people killed. So she snuffed the little bastard in his blanket on the spot. Counterintuitively, this was actually not particularly good for China. Without the shock of the rebellion, so many problems in China went unchecked, bubbling beneath the surface. With the Qing desperate for whatever solution would allow them to remain in power while conceding as little of the status quo as possible.
In Shanghai, the Americans had long maintained a strong sphere of influence. In addition to Protestant missionaries from New England and Dixie, and Catholic missionaries from Quebec and Latin America, Americans operated very influential businesses, and a good portion of Shanghai’s police force was made up of American expatriates from hardboiled cities like Boston, Mexico City and Baltimore. American ownership of Keelung and Kaohsiung, though far-flung, gave Americans a window into Chinese culture, so you also had plenty of rich American orientalists settling in Shanghai. And the large number of Shanghainese in the Californias, Hawaii, Oregon and Ecuador provided ample numbers of personal connections to exploit. Despite the heavy American presence and, indeed, American economic dominance over Shanghai, the city remained under de jure Chinese sovereignty, though this was really only on paper.
The Second Sino-European War (1880) did not start in Shanghai, but the Qing government, busy plugging holes in the declining Chinese Empire, did nothing when members of a proto-nationalist, anti-foreign, anti-colonial, anti-Christian secret society of disgruntled peasants known as the “Heavenly Fists Sect” moved to occupy most of the European enclaves by force. When they succeeded in capturing cities like Shanghai, however, the Qing figured they could score an easy victory and backed the militias. Along with other world leaders who sent troops to their respective enclaves, US President Cecil Blackburn (Republican, Ohio) authorized the use of force to rescue American hostages in Shanghai, sending in troops from bases in Keelung and Kaohsiung. They were joined by Australian and New Zealander troops. Australia and New Zealand had long had commercial interests in Shanghai as well, and were coming to rescue their own respective citizens held captive in the city by the Heavenly Fists and Qing soldiers. Qing forces were expelled from the city, though the Heavenly Fists of Shanghai stood their ground and died in a blaze of glory, charging bare-chested into the American and Australian Maxim guns, firmly believing that their discipline and moral purity would protect them from the bullets.
The Qing attempted to launch a counter-attack from Suzhou, only for the Yankee-Aussie-Kiwi forces to defeat them at the Battle of Suzhou and push them all the way to Wuxi. After the brief Battle of Wuxi, the Qing forces there surrendered, securing Shanghai. Meanwhile, a combined British-German-Italian-French-Russian-Dutch-Belgian-American-Australian-New Zealand-Japanese offensive into Peking succeeded in forcing the Qing to surrender and sign a treaty almost as bad as the one they signed following the First Sino-European War, almost 40 years ago. Among other things, the Qing agreed to sign away Shanghai to the United States of the Americas, in perpetuity. Well, technically, it was a 999-year lease, and it did not include Chongming Island, for fear of Americans controlling the mouth of the Yangtze River. A significant number of the American troops who served under Colonel Arturo Mondragón in mainland China were ethnic Hakka Chinese, who had grown up under American rule in the two Formosan territories, and for them, this was the first time they had ever fought under the Stars and Stripes. And thanks to them, the United States now possessed the largest city on Earth, Shanghai.
It should be noted that aside from the US, the Philippines, Australia and New Zealand, there was another new power on the Pacific Rim – a rising sun, if you will.
Japan had its rude awakening following the First Sino-European War of the 1840’s, and realized it needed to modernize in order to avoid being carved up like China. They sent small numbers of emissaries to Europe, but most ended up going to the United States. The sheer amount of territory that the US was absorbing convinced many Japanese reformers that they were the nation to most closely emulate. Additionally, there were Tekisanzu who had made the journey back to Japan and their stories about the United States were quite impactful, including the “radical” republican ideals they brought back with them. So in addition to the radical programs of modernization which you might associate with the OTL Meiji Restoration, you also had the Meiji Revolution – the ten-year process by which Japan became a republic. The Meiji Revolution was not bloodless – in fact, it was a very much a civil war between monarchists supporting the nascent imperial government in Tokyo and republicans under the banner of the Kyouwatou revolutionary government in Kagoshima. The republican faction won after eight years of sacrifice and effort, culminating in the capture of Tokyo in 1873. The United States was reluctant to involve itself formally in the conflict, however, boat loads of private, idealistic American citizens did come over to fight for the Kyouwatou government. On April 26th 1875, the Republic of Japan was formally declared in Tokyo, with the United States immediately recognizing the new regime in Japan.
Resolving the issue of the divinity of the Japanese Emperor (Tennō) was a complicated, but necessary affair, required in order to placate the devout, as well as to politically-neuter the monarchists. But here’s the cliff notes version: in a feat of true cunning, the Meiji revolutionaries succeeded in repurposing the positon of Tennō from a religious and political institution, to a strictly-religious one. Their reasoning being that the word “Tennō” meant “Heavenly Sovereign”, not “Earthly Sovereign”, and therefore the Tennō had no place in the “vulgarities of political life” (this exact wording appears in the Japanese Constitution). The “Emperor” of Japan basically became a “Shinto Pope”, with zero political power – a private citizen who lives in a big house thanks to generous private donations, without even a symbolic status as the country’s monarch.
As a result of the revolution, Japan reformed itself into a federal representative constitutional republic, with the Japanese Constitution modeled closely after that of the United States. The Republic consisted of: seven states - Tohoku, Kanto, Chugoku, Kansai, Chubu, Shikoku and Kyushu; three territories - the Ryukyu Territory, the Hokkaido Territory, and the Karafuto Territory (Sakhalin); and one federal district – Tokyo.
Japan took part in the Second Sino-European War, the Japanese Army’s first major confrontation, by invading Qing-held Formosa. They assisted the Americans in defending Keelung and Kaohsiung from the Qing. At the peace table, they claimed the rest of Formosa for themselves, thus creating the Takasago Territory. This initial American-Japanese cooperation is commemorated in Sakura Park – a park built by the Japanese government in 1905 as a gift to the American people, and styled like a traditional Japanese garden, located in Liberty City. Here, there is a memorial to the Japanese-American cooperation in Takasago, and at the center of Sakura Park is a fountain featuring a statue of an American bald eagle and Japanese Hō-ō (phoenix) flying together towards a brighter tomorrow.
In the Philippines, meanwhile, rampant cronyism, borderline feudal agrarian kleptocracy and general mismanagement of the economy led to the Philippine Peso becoming effectively worthless, and backlash against the corrupt and incompetent government in Manilla served as the four-stage booster that propelled the Union Party of the Philippines into national power during the Philippines’ 1888 election on promises of land reform and corruption probes. As promised, they began the process of political union with the United States, which was completed in 1890, with the former Republic of the Philippines being incorporated into the United States as the State of North Luzon, State of South Luzon, State of Visayas, State of Mindanao and the territories of Palau, Guam, the Northern Marianas Islands and Micronesia. The Philippines thus became the latest addition to the “American Far East”. Mindanao became the first predominantly “Mohammedan” state of the Union (the large minorities of Muslims in the Caribbean and South Carolina notwithstanding).
With the precedent set by Hawaii (which became a state in 1878), in 1886, the American protectorate over the Society, Tuamoto, Gambier, Marquesa and Austral Islands (former French Polynesia, acquired from the French as per the Laibach Treaty) was annexed and consolidated into the State of Tahiti. That same year, the Marshall Islands were annexed as a new US territory, and the following year, in 1887, the protectorate over the Gilbert, Phoenix and Line Islands was consolidated into the Territory of Kiribati. With the acquisition of these new Pacific states and territories, came of course an expansion of the US Navy’s Pacific Fleet.
Australia and New Zealand had long been very pro-US, though the notion of becoming part of the US still took a while to reach full momentum. However, in 1891, both countries voted – within months of each other – to ascend to the Union. Out of the former Australian republic, 11 new states entered the US - Eureka, Riverina, Canberra (formerly Australia’s capital district), Princeland, Gold Coast, Illawara, Van Dieman’s Land, Tasmania, New Albion, South Australia, Swan River Colony. The former Republic of New Zealand was incorporated as one state, though the former NZ territory of the Cook Islands became its own state. And finally, the former Australian and New Zealand territories of Tokelau, Fiji, New Holland, Vanuatu, Niue and New Caledonia became US territories.
With this latest expansion, the United States now had over 120 states, and no more room on the flag for stars. Hence, the US adopted a new flag. The design was exactly the same as the first flag of the United States – fifteen stars in a circular pattern, with fifteen red and white stripes. Additionally, the country underwent its second official name change. It now officially became the “United States of the Americas and Oceania”, or “USAO”.
This change was celebrated, among other things, during the 1892 Columbia Exposition, held in the recently-completed Liberty City, DC. Also commemorating Columbus’ 1492 landing in the Americas, the July 4th 1892 celebration coincided with the official transfer of power from Washington to Liberty City, with President Benjamin Harrison (Republican, Madison) giving speeches and cutting the ribbons for the many new federal buildings, monuments and other major sites around the city. The monuments received their first visitors, and the nation’s Senators and Representatives held their first meeting on the floor of the National Acropolis, where they unanimously voted for a recess to take part in the celebrations. And the election of the first mayor of Liberty City, James Caballero (a Republican businessman from Southern California), was integrated into the festivities, with the newly-arrived residents partaking in the city’s very first election. How else would the new capital city celebrate America than with an election?
Though Liberty City was “completed” in the sense that it was 60% complete (but ready to serve as the new seat of the federal government), much of the city was not yet inhabited, so there was rather little difficulty in using the entirety of the metropolis as the grounds of the week-long festival of American greatness and progress, under the tropical Nicaraguan sun. Like the 1876 Centennial Exposition, the Columbia Exposition drew crowds from all over the United States and around the world, with many foreign dignitaries in attendance (the Empire of Brazil notably absent). Each of the states and territories of the Union had their own pavilion – from Massachusetts to Shanghai, the Falklands to Greenland, and the new states of Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines and the Pacific, each one was their demonstration to the world. It was at the Columbia Exposition that special pavilions for Western and Eastern religions demonstrated the diversity of the nation’s faith – American Catholic and Orthodox priests, Protestant ministers, Jewish rabbis, Shinto kannushi’s, Hindu brahmins, Buddhist monks, Muslim imams, Sikh granthi’s and various Native American religious leaders, all convened to have civil discussions about the differences, and also the similarities, between their respective religions, and each gave a speech about their religion’s perspective on the virtues of the “American Experiment”.
And of course, just as with the Centennial, the Columbia Exposition displayed all sorts of new technologies. President Harrison initiated the festivities with in the evening of July 3rd – immediately after the clock struck midnight, the city’s electrical lights were turned on in conjunction with a grand fireworks display. The Gran Cine – Liberty City’s oldest and largest movie theater – opened for the first time during the Columbian Exposition, and premiered brand new films from studios all across the country. A contest was held to determine which films would make it to the opening, and among them was the first feature-length color film, El Pilar de Fuego, as well as the first film with sound, Journey To The Moon. Technologies making their debut at the Exposition included the automatic dishwasher, the Ferris wheel, the escalator, the moving walkway, the X-ray machine, the telautograph (analog precursor to the fax machine), the baby incubator, the military armored car, the first military airplane, the submarine, and the first programmable analog computer.
With the creation of the new District of Columbia, the old DC was annexed into Maryland as Columbia County, with Washington becoming a “museum city”. Despite no longer being the national capital, Washington remained a major metropolis, a center of African-American culture, and a big-time regional tourist destination.
The 1870’s, 80’s and 90’s in the US (as you may have guessed) was a period of expanding economic development, part of the wider Second Industrial Revolution. Though the US had had a tradition of bipartisan support for infrastructure and communications investment, the so-called “Gilded Era” saw the drastic expansion of roads, railroads, canals, telegraph lines and newfangled telephone services, provided by both government investment and oversight, and, ever-increasingly, private enterprise. In this new age of industrialization, the growth of mills, factories, sweatshops and chemical plants was a major part of life in New England and southern Canada, the Mid-Atlantic, Gran Colombia, south-central Mexico, the Rio De La Plata basin, the Great Lakes, and, most notably, Dixie. Dixie was not terribly industrialized, but the region has a much more diversified economy than OTL.
With this came prosperity and the hopes of a better tomorrow, as it seemed like the nation was on the path away from the bloodshed, heartbreak and agony of the Great American War. Opportunity and the promises of science abounded, and it seemed a new invention came out every day, and a new monument raised every week. But it was also a time of excess, abject poverty, urban squalor, child labor, exploitation and political corruption. In the rainforests of Gran Colombia and Bolivar, there were ambiguously-legal rubber plantations where private militias oversaw countless Indian slave laborers who worked for food at the company store; in the Andes and Mesoamerica, there were outdoor brick factories manned almost entirely by children; in the major urban centers and rural mines and farms alike, widespread child labor ran unchecked and unregulated, and factory heads across the country were hiring thugs to violently break up labor demonstrations. And even in Dixie, where slavery had been aggressively abolished, and despite the intensive efforts made under the Stevens Administrations to eliminate structural economic inequality, opportunists from other parts of the country, along with members of Dixie’s new multiethnic upper and middle class, had set themselves up into just the right positions to exploit the poorer farmers of the region. In many cases, the now-wealthy descendants of slaves were now holding what journalists at the time referred to as “the invisible whip”. All this was made possible through bribes, extortion and incestuous relationships between enterprise and state, local and federal governments.
It was around this time, also, that you had the rise of new political parties and the destruction of old ones. The Democratic Party was never able to truly recover from the disgrace of having been the party of the Confederacy and thus treason. In Dixie, where the Democrats had once dominated, only a tiny minority of even whites were voting for them. The party wasn’t outlawed, but it lost a lot of blood. And sensing the continuing exsanguination of the Democratic Party, Northern and Latin Democrats began to search for alternatives. The Republican Party became the much more dominant of the nation’s two parties, and began to suffer the strain of this overwhelming dominance. The “Grand Old Party” had bloated into an unwieldly, complacent and increasingly-corrupt political machine – and it would become a victim of its own good fortune.
The destruction of the GOP began with the breaking off of two factions of the Republicans in 1888 – the Labor Party and the National Party. The Labor Party was a pro-union, populist-left faction, whilst the National Party was a nationalistic, populist-right faction. Both were reactions to the widespread corruption within the GOP, the party’s inability to satisfy their new ideological desires, and the incestuous nature of the party’s relationship with the so-called “robber barons” of the day. Though Labor and National disagreed on specific policies, both were of the opinion that representatives in Washington had a duty to their constituents and to the citizens of the United States – not just to the wealthiest. On this basis was formed the initial right-populist/left-populist alliance between the two new parties. The divorce of these two groups from the Republicans weakened them, but still left a beast of a political machine behind, though now the crumbling husk of the Democrats had the Republicans closer to their weight class. Still, the Republican establishment at the time believed that these new “upstarts” were mere historical anomalies – fads that would come, scream and eventually go away.
And how wrong they were.
The old party system fell apart in the aftermath of the 1896 presidential election, when both major parties lost to dark horse independent candidate, Samuel “Mark Twain” Clemens. Clemens had already gained widespread popularity and acclaim across the country as a satirist, journalist and author. It was he who coined the term "Gilded Era" in 1887. At the age of 52, Clemens announced his plans to run for president in the 1888 election as a Republican. He lost the primary with only a few thousand votes – something which many historians blame on Republican newspapers refusing to even mention his campaign. He ran again in 1892 as the Labor Party’s first presidential candidate. Which he again lost. Only in 1896 – at a time when he became a very popular, though polarizing, “tells-it-like-it-is” political figure – during his independent run, did he finally succeed, though his victory was quite narrow.
As he himself had predicted, Clemens’ victory in and of itself was such a shock to the system that it shattered both the Republicans and Democrats. So in addition to the Labor and National parties, you now had the emergence of the Conservative Party, the Liberal Party, Whig Party and the Country Party. Politicians operating as “Democrats” continued to win elections in parts of Australia well into 1917, on anti-Chinese platforms, but other than that, both major “establishment” parties ceased to exist. But for a brief while, Labor and National existed as the two largest parties in the House and Senate.
The Clemens Administration was relatively brief, lasting only two and a half years before Clemens resigned. But in that time, he cooperated with the short-lived Labor-National alliance to mobilize the monumental effort necessary for triggering a Constitutional Convention, wherein two new Amendments were added to the United States Constitution; the first of these new amendments effectively abolished the first-past-the-post system, and replaced it with an instant-runoff/preferential voting system; the second new amendment instituted much stiffer policies regarding campaign finance, in order to keep money from corrupting American democracy. As stated, Clemens resigned and his less-charismatic running-mate, former senator Marcel Hervieux (Independent, Quebec) assumed the office of the president, losing the 1900 election to Aaron James Kimball (Labor, Northern California). As per the Constitution, former president Clemens was granted a non-voting seat in Congress upon leaving office (a privilege granted to all former presidents who have not been impeached), which he attended infrequently. The few times he did were characterized by Clemens resting his feet on his desk, taking loud snoring naps, and only speaking when he felt the need to troll, mock or deride whoever was on the House floor, or to give a speech to a captive audience; his philosophy of governance was that democracy was strengthened when representatives were humbled and mocked, and he preferred to keep things casual, rather than let pomp and circumstance get to everyone’s head.
Though President Clemens chose to prioritize other things, there was still the pressing issue of the Empire of Brazil. In the years since the Continuation War, things had gotten bad in Brazil. The regime was propped up by the British and French, who supplied the Empire with foreign aid and the latest weapons. They wanted it to serve as a bastion against further US expansion, and Brazil certainly had that mindset. The exact nature of this mindset was also why the Limeys and the Frogs stopped (openly, at least) propping up Brazil around 1890.
See, the reality of the situation was that Empire of Brazil was a slaveholding monarchy surrounded on three sides by a single expansionistic, abolitionist republican superstate. And it developed a requisite bunker mindset. Republican and liberal thought was actively suppressed, as were notions of Pan-American nationalism, and the country was heavily-militarized, with an officer corps founded by Confederate and FRCA exiles. To mobilize the population towards resisting the United States, the Brazilian government championed itself as the defender of faith, tradition, decency and order – as opposed to what they characterized as the decedent, corrupt, liberal, godless, degenerate mob-rule of the United States. A sort of Catholic monarchist proto-fascism emerged in Brazil. And though it lacked genocidal racial characteristics, it still oppressed much of its Afro-Brazilian, indigenous and Pardo populations. Perhaps counterintuitive to what you, dear reader, might view as “fascism”, the Brazilians actively promoted race-mixing as their convoluted way of “eventually” abolishing slavery (and making more soldiers to fight the Americans); through the process of interbreeding with whites, the Brazilian government believed that the “Negro Problem” could be resolved by “racially-whitening” the black race to such a point that they would advance socially and culturally, or even disappear entirely. Some thinkers in the regime rather amusingly believed that this process would breed a “Brazilian Race” with “white intellect”, “Negro strength” and “Indian warrior skill”. This fit in with the regime’s goals of a singular, unified Brazil – one race, united by religion and ultra-nationalistic discipline, to create the traditionalist “Kingdom of God” here on Earth, and remain steadfastly pure in the face of the “Sodom of the North”. Keeping with their obsession with order and hierarchy, they kept the institution of black slavery going well into the 1890’s, even as they attempted to industrialize and modernize their military for what they knew would be the Union’s inevitable rematch with them.
By 1896, the US had finished rebuilding, and the scars of its previous defeat against Brazil had healed. It was now prepared to finish uniting the New World, and fulfilling its territorial imperative of Manifest Destiny. The Liberation of Brazil was all that remained for the Western Hemisphere to be united under a single flag.

So, as promised, here is my brief overview of the twenty Survivor locations!!! :D Some of the maps may look a little squished, but that's because this is the brief overview post. Sometime after this gets posted (days maybe) I will begin the in-depth location-by-location threads. So here goes :).
Here is Pulau Tiga/Borneo in relation to SE Asia. And here is Pulau Tiga close-up. The yellow circle indicates Pagong-Pagong beach, and the orange circle shows Tagi's camp. However, Tagi beach, which the tribe was named after, is actually the southern most beach, which now hosts a Survivor resort. The black circle indicates the Tribal set and close proximity to Base Camp. The pink marker is the totally 100% authentic Survivor Bar where Jeff took Kelly on a date. The Brown marker is Pagong's mud volcano. The white markers are challenge locations, including Larai-Larai beach in the north, looking out to the rock featured in the intro. The south hosts Asmara beach. I've also circled Snake Island, where the merge immunity was set, and the Sand Spit, which is now vegetated! If you want to read more, click here.
This marker pins down the Herbert River in the broader scale of Australia. Notice how it's not in the Outback? Close-up, here is the map. Orange = Barramundi, Green = Ogakor, and Blue = Kucha. There is a white circle indicating the challenge beach of the maze and stretcher challenge. The black circle marks the Tribal Council Waterfall. Near it is a wide circle. I had thought the Cliff jump challenge took place there, but turns out it's actually closer to the TC set. A white circle between the camps mark the Internet Cafe. For more info, click here.
Here is the Africa location within a broader scale of Kenya. The season was set in Shaba National Reserve The red marker, Smaburu, was at the base of the cliff. The yellow Boran marker is more imprecise, but I will justify it's placement in the in depth write-up. The black circle again is a guess at the TC set. Inland seasons are hard to map out :(. The broad white oval indicates the river used for most challenges. For info found here.
It is hard to contextualise Marquesas within the expansive Pacific Ocean. Here is Nuku Hiva within the Marquesas group, and here is Nuku Hiva. Green = Maraamu, on one of two possible beaches. Blue = Rotu. Black = TC. White = challenges. Pink this time = Base camp. For more info, click here.
Ko Tarutoa is located just north of Langkawi, at the border of Thailand and Malaysia. Here is Ko Tarutao. I haven't actually seen Thailand yet, but I think this is close. Purple = Sook Jai (there are photos of caves at that beach on Google Earth), Orange = Chuay Ghan. Black = TC (the pier still stands today). White = challenges. The islets on the east of map are circled because of that challenge where they had to carry the giant puppet dude across the island. The actual island is off-map, but I was just showing that the islands are used. Keep reading here.
Rio Negro in The Amazon, Brazil. More specifically, the season was set in Rio Acajituba. 1970 satellite images offer the clearest picture, but more recent images will be used in the in-depth post :). Blue= tambaqui, yellow = jaburu, and red= jacare. White = challenges, and black = TC, located on the Rio Ariau. Read more here.
Pearl Islands Panama is a hectic, hectic location to map out! Archipelago de las Perlas. I'll break it down. North group. The northern black circle is the S7 TC set. The next black circle, on the populated Isla Contadora, is the location for Panama's fake cave TC set, and All-stars' Tc set. The white circle below S7's TC is actually Ponderosa for S7 and S8. Ponderosa for S12, as well as base camp, are on Contadora. The Yellow circle is Saboga Village, from the PI marooning, and where Shane would trade all worldly possessions for a smoke. Behind it, the blue circle is Saboga/Chaboga Mogo beach. Below that is a challenge beach. Isla Chapera's beaches hosted some challenges. Isla Mogo Mogo must be worn out for the number of uses it had. Blue= Drake, Red = Chapera. Green = Mogo Mogo, and Purple = Isla Hermita, where the Balboa contestants were sent to allow JFP time with his Thunder D. The island also hosted the grand Pirate ship structure used for challenges in PI, and the damage from that set lasted for a few years, as will be shown in later posts. The white circle at the base of the map is the sand bank where Burton and Lil had food in the rain, and where Sue quit :(. Southern group. There are two orange circles. The northern one locates Morgan's beach, on Isla Gibraleon, later used for a number of other beach-based realty TV shows, including Bear Gryll's The Island. The southern orange circle = La Mina, on Isla Vinaros. Green = Vivaros, actually located on (the now industrialised) Isla Viveros. Bonus points for being the only S12 tribe on the correct island. Blue= Bayoneta on Isla Casaya, and Purple = Casaya, on either Isla Quita, or Isla Gallo. Grey = Exile Island. Read more here.
Here is Vanuatu. Here is Efate, and more specifically, here is the Shefa province. Yellow=Yassur, Red= Lopevi. Hot Pink is the location of the Marooning. Purple= Hat island, where Rites of Passage took place. Black = TC, and White = challenges. Survivor was banned from returning here after leaving challenge props behind, as will be elaborated latter :). Read more here.
Palau! Palau! Palau! Brown = KoroAirai (lol at Koror being located on Ulong Island). Purple = Malakal/Ulong. On this island, yellow= Jellyfish Lake. White = challenges. Grey = Exile Island for both seasons. Red = the sunken plane. Black is the TC set fot both seasons, leaving a pier behind for people to use. The northern most white circle is the location of the Car challenge, which Jeff says in the episode was located a way away from most challenge sites. Read more here.
Guatemala. Yaxha-Nakum-Naranjo National Park. Yellow = Nakum, on Isla Topoxte, which no longer is an island due to a swamp? Blue = Yaxha. White = challenges, and Black = TC, at the Nakum temples. Find out more by clicking here.
The Cook Islands. Aitutaki. Yellow= Mahahiki, on Rapota Island. Red = Aitutaki tribe, on Motutikiu. Blue = Rarotonga/Aitutonga, on Moturakau, and Green = PukaPuka on Muritapua. Purple = exile, on Nude Cay. White = challenges. Google Satellite images actually captured an Immunity Challenge taking place! I will show this in my later posts. They also left behind challenge sets, and got banned here too. North of Nude Cay is One Foot Island (Tapuaetai) and Tekopua, used for challenges. Above Puka is Akaiami, used for the compass challenge, left behind by the crew. On the main island is the TC set and challenge site. Find out more here.
Fiji. Vanua Levu. Macuata province. Orange = Ravu, on Drau island. Purple = Moto/ Bula Bula. Grey = Exile, on SauSau island. Black = TC and white = challenges. Titi island, which hosted challenges, was also used in Naked and Afraid. More here.
China!. Set in the Zhelin Reservoir. Red = Feilong. Yellow = Zhan Hu. Sorry for the two greens. The west one is the Tea Island reward site. The east is Ponderosa. Grey = base camp, Black = TC, white = challenges. More found here.
Gabon, set in the Wonga Wongue reserve. Gabon is the second greenest country on earth, behind Costa Rica! Sorry for no challenge sites :(. Inland seasons are difficult. Purple= Exile, Yellow=Kota, Red=Fang, Black=TC. Read more here.
Tocantins, Brazil. Season 18 was set in Jalapao Nacional Park. This map is the most squished due to the expanse of the location. Red + Black = tribe camps, white = challenges, including the cool windy sand bank river where JT lost his tooth! Blue = Ponderosa. Orange is the drop off zone! I guess it's that far away to give Sierra time to build a decent shelter! Purple = Exile. Black = TC, which would catch fire daily, as became the source of local news spoiling the location of S18 (Though it's not as bad as the Philippines constantly breaking news that the US Survivor was filming in their country, only for it to be proven year after year (until finally in 2012) that it was international franchises filming there, such as Bulgaria/Norway/w/e). Abi's home state, Goias, neighbours Tocantins, to the south. Read more here.
Samoa. Upolu. Filming should have taken place in the North/East section, which is completely uninhabited, but instead filmed in the South West section, dominated by roads. Location. Purple= Galu/Villains/S23 Redemption Island, and S24 marooning site. Yellow is the FoaFoa/Heroes beach, thought they lived at opposite ends. Grey= Base camp, no longer in tents but the Five-Star Aggie Grey hotel. Black= TC, in a clearing of a coconut plantation made by, and left behind by, Survivor. But dw, a larger clearing in the white circle hosted most challenges. The two white circles at the base of the map are challenge beaches. Sorry for the cut off, but the blue circle at the base of the map is Upolu/Salani, and also the Outback Stakehouse site for S20 and Rites of Passage, also S20. Red (known locally as Virgin Cove) is Savaii/New Manono's beach. The S23/24 tribe camps were moved as then original S19/20 beaches were destroyed in the 2009 tsunami. As much as I don't like Samoa as a location, I'm glad they returned to give money and help the post-tsunami efforts. Read more here.
Nicaragua. San Juan Del Sur. Yellow= Masaya beach, Murlonio, and S29 exile. It is the closest to the city. Red is (I think) Nagarote beach, also Hunahpu, La Flor and Ometepe, located on Playa Escameca. Blue = Blue collar beach, also Coyopa, Espada and Zapatero, located on Playa Escamequita. Between them is S21 TC, and up in the hills in the S21/22 Ponderosa. The white circle on the left of the map are the locations for the S29/30 water challenges, which were in demand after the lacklustre pee-pool used for S21/22. Purple = RI camp, the white circle next to it the arena, and the black circle next to it is S22 TC. Most challenges took place at Playa Yankee and Playa La Flor. Continue reading here.
Philippines. Camarines Sur. If only it was Survivor: Presentacion, or Survivor: Masbate Island. Yellow= Tandang/Gota, Blue= Matsing/Dangrayne, and Red=Kalabaw/Bikal. The satellite images were taken at the time of film, and in its in depth post, I can show Bikal's pier in the lake. Brown = Ponderosa, the Black circle on the "a" for Caramoan is the TC set. White= challenges. More here.
Philippines again! Santa Ana/ Palaui Island. Red = Tadhana/Luzon, Yellow= Galang/Aparri, the purple question mark is an approximate of RI/Solana. Black = S27's Tc. White = challenges. More here.
And finally, Cambodia. Koah Rong, and KR + Sanloem. Ponderosa + swimming challenges were on the southern island. Pink = Bayon/Gondol on Bai Cheap Bay, Teal = Ta Keo/Chan Loh at Lonely Beach, and Yellow = AngkoTotang. Black diamond is the marooning site of S31. The long beach, Sok San beach, hosted the puzzle cube challenge where terry danced with himself, and behind it in the woods was the main challenge site. More here.
So that is a quick overview of all 20 locations. Soon I will be going more in depth with episode screen caps, on location images, relevant articles and other tidbits. I hope you've enjoyed the read!!!

Hi there, I'm coming to Hawaii for the first time with my partner. We're both from Montreal, Canada and will be staying in Oahu and the big Island from the 18th to the 29th. I've browsed Reddit and Google to find ideas on what to do and would love some input. I've tried not to overpack my days in order to have some leeway if we find things to do once we're there by talking to people and sharing experiences/ideas.
Friday 18: Arrive to HNL at 1730. Take shuttle to Seaside Hawaiin Hostel Waikiki. See how we feel after 18 hour flight, whether we want to grab something small to eat and have a quiet night in or have a more eventful night out.
Sat 19: Beach / Snorkel day. Hostel lends free snorkel equipment. Night out on the town
Sun 20: Pick up rental car. Maybe the movie tour (partner is a big movie fan, me not so much). Hike diamond head. Early night
Mon 21: Wake up super early, check out. Head over to Kamehameha bakery and then to the USS memorials for 06:45. Spend day, go to cemetary. Check in to Backpackers Vacation Inn & Hostel (mixed reviews, but we decided to try it out) in Haleiwa
Tu 22: 09:30 - 11:00 swim with sharks in cage. Visit Fiji Market for the curry fish. Depending how we feel, give snokeling at Turtle Bay Beach a go
Wed 23: In the AM go to Waimae valley, have lunch then go to the Polynesian cultural center. I was thinking of attending their evening show with dinner.
Thurs 24: Check out, flight to Oahu in AM. Pick up car, drive to Rainbow Falls and Bubbling Pot. It's my understanding that there are usually only rainbows in the AM and it's crowded, with not much time or energy needed to be spent there. It's on the way to the hotel. Check in to Wild Ginger Inn Hotel. Maybe beach, maybe Mehana Brewing Co?
I'd like some input on this brewery. Out of the three that I've found, this is the one I found to be the least appealing, but I really like micro breweries. Should I visit it or skip it in favour of Kona and Big Island Brew House?
Fri 25: National Park Volcanoes! Free day so I'm expecting a lot of people. I'm thinking of going after lunch so we can spend the afternoon and evening, since I've heard it's wonderful to see at night. I also believe I read somewhere that you can star gaze. Am I making this up?
Sat 26: Check out. Hilo Market in the late morning. I've seen comments recommending Honokaa Town, but when I googled it I wasn't able to find much info. Go check out the BIg Island Brew House and the Original Big Island Shave Ice on Church Row
Sun 27: Kona Brewing Company, have Pizza? at 17:30 there's a Legends of Hawaii Luau at the Hilton Waikola. Maybe the Hospice Floating Lanterns?
Mon 28: My birthday! Maybe visit a black sand beach, perhaps Pololu Valley. I'd love suggestions for a nice dinner, maybe a luau or a dinner sunset cruise or something else (for lack of originality, something "special" and "memorable", not that the whole trip won't be)
Tu 29: Maybe Hilo Hula 11:00 - 12:00. THere's a Daylight Mind Coffee Company coffee festical 10:00 - 15:00.
Things I want to do in Kona but haven't schedule in is the coffee plantation.
If you have suggestions on where to eat I'd be much appreciative. We'll probably ba making our own breakfasts most of the time and going to Costco for snacks. We're not picky eaters but aren't huge on fast food, I shouldn't have dairy but often do :P I love fish, seafood, meat, trying new things.
Thanks for all the feedback. <3

Even as the Union was rebuilding from the Great American War, it was expanding its sphere of influence across the Pacific.
At the Laibach Conference, the US walked away with Easter Island (acquired from Britain), the islands of Tahiti (taken from the French), the Marshall Islands, and the Gilbert, Phoenix and Line Islands. The Federal Republic of Australia, the Republic of New Zealand, the Republic of the Philippines, and the Kingdom of Hawaii were newly-sovereign states, existing alongside the independent kingdoms of Samoa and Tonga. Australia was granted Vanuatu (from Britain), Fiji (Britain), Wallis & Futuna (France) and New Caledonia (France), New Zealand had control over the Cook Islands, Tokelau and Niue, the Philippines controlled the former Spanish East Indies (Palau, the Northern Marianas, and the Caroline Islands). This was the political landscape of the Pacific Ocean.
The Australians, New Zealanders, Filipinos and Hawaiians were independent, but very much within the American sphere of influence. All four were grateful for the Union helping them fight their European oppressors. Australia and New Zealand in particular were close to the US, because they were constantly worried about the British East Indies to the north of them. And all four of these new countries saw large-scale American investment come in. The same engineers who connected North and South America came over to Australia to help build railroads across the Outback, and American missionaries were a persistent presence in Hawaii and the Philippines. Beginning in the early 1870’s, in all four countries, you had “Union Parties” emerge, which were in favor of political union with the United States.
At the same time, tensions began to grow in China. The Qing Dynasty had avoided the horrors of the 1860’s Taiping Rebellion of OTL. Hong Xiuquan’s mother looked in her newborn son’s eyes and realized he would grow up to get 100 million people killed, and she snuffed the little psycho in his blanket on the spot. But that was not particularly good for the Qing. Without the shock of the rebellion, so many problems in China went unchecked, bubbling below the surface.
In Shanghai, the Americans maintained a strong sphere of influence. In addition to missionaries, Americans operated very influential businesses, and a good portion of Shanghai’s police force was made up of American expatriates. American ownership of Keelung and Takau, though far-flung, gave Americans a window into Chinese culture, so you also had plenty of rich American orientalists settling in Shanghai.
The Second Sino-European War (1880) did not start in Shanghai, but the Qing government, busy plugging holes in the declining Chinese Empire, did nothing when members of a proto-nationalist movement moved to occupy the European enclaves. When they succeeded in capturing cities like Shanghai, however, the Qing figured they could score an easy victory and backed the militias. Along with other world leaders, President Cecil Blackburn (Republican, Ohio) authorized the use of force to rescue American hostages in Shanghai, sending in troops from bases in Keelung and Takau. They were joined by Australian and New Zealander troops, who were coming to rescue their own respective citizens held captive in the city. The Qing forces were expelled from the city. The Qing attempted to launch a counter-attack from Suzhou, only for the Yankee-Aussie-Kiwi forces to defeat them at the Battle of Suzhou and push them all the way to Wuxi. Meanwhile, a combined British-German-Italian-French-Russian-Belgian-American-Australian offensive into Peking succeeded in forcing the Qing to surrender and sign a treaty almost as bad as the one they signed following the First Sino-European War, almost 40 years ago. Among other things, the Qing agreed to sign away Shanghai to the United States of the Americas, in perpetuity (well, technically, it was a 999-year lease; and it did not include the Chongming District). A majority of the American troops who served under Colonel Arturo Mondragón in mainland China were ethnic Hakka Chinese, who had grown up under American rule, and for them, this was the first time they had ever fought under the Stars and Stripes. And thanks to them, the United States now held the largest city on Earth.
It should be noted that aside from the Philippines, Australia, Hawaii and New Zealand, there was another new power on the Pacific Rim – a rising sun, if you will.
Japan had its rude awakening following the First Sino-European War of the 1840’s, and realized it needed to modernize in order to avoid being carved up like China. They sent emissaries to Europe, but most ended up going to the United States. The sheer amount of territory that the US was absorbing convinced many Japanese reformers that they were the nation to most closely emulate. So in addition to the usual things you’d associate with the Meiji Restoration, you also had the Japanese Revolution – the ten-year process by which Japan became a republic. It was a complicated affair, but the cliff notes version is that, in a feat of true cunning, the revolutionaries succeeded in repurposing the positon of Tenno from a religious and political institution, into a strictly religious one. The Emperor of Japan basically became a “Shinto Pope”, with zero political power. Japan reformed itself into a federal representative constitutional republic, with seven states (Tohoku, Kanto, Chugoku, Kansai, Chubu, Shikoku and Kyushu), three territories (the Ryukyu Territory, the Hokkaido Territory, and the Northern Frontier Territory), and one federal district (Tokyo). Japan took part in the Second Sino-European War (the Japanese Army’s first major confrontation) by invading Qing-held Taiwan, assisting the Americans in defending their territories and claiming the island for themselves, creating the Takasago Territory. This initial American-Japanese cooperation is commemorated in Sakura Park – a park built by the Japanese government in 1899 as a gift to the American people, and styled like a traditional Japanese garden, located in Unity City, DC. There is a memorial to the Japanese-American cooperation in Taiwan, and at the center of Sakura Park is a fountain featuring a statue of an American bald eagle and Japanese Hō-ō (phoenix) flying together.
The Japanese purchased the Northern Marianas Islands from a nearly-bankrupt Filipino government in 1885, which was still unwilling to hand over the Caroline Islands, Guam and Palau. The backlash against the corrupt and incompetent government in Manilla served as the four-stage booster that propelled the Union Party of the Philippines into national power in 1888. As promised, they began the process of political union with the United States, which was completed in 1890, with the former Republic of the Philippines being incorporated into the United States as the State of North Luzon, State of South Luzon, State of Visayas, State of Mindanao and the territories of Palau, Guam and Micronesia. The Philippines became the latest addition to the “American Far East”. Mindanao became the first predominantly “Mohammedan” state of the Union – the small populations of Muslims in the Caribbean and Brazil notwithstanding.
In 1886, the American protectorate over the Society, Tuamoto, Gambier, Marquesa and Austral Islands was annexed and consolidated into the State of Tahiti. That same year, the Marshall Islands were annexed as a new US territory, and the following year, in 1887, the protectorate over the Gilbert, Phoenix and Line Islands became the Territory of Kiribati.
In 1882, the Russian Imperium had long given up on their Alaskan territory, which mostly had Americans in it anyway at this point, though bizarrely none of them had found that gold yet. They sold the territory to the US (minus the Aleutian Islands) for a little over $7.3 million. The day after the territory was sold, gold was struck and the Russians immediately regretted having handed it over.
Australia and New Zealand had long been very pro-US, though the notion of becoming part of the US still took a while to reach full momentum. However, in 1893, both countries voted – within months of each other – to ascend to the Union. This added the 13 new states of Eureka, Riverina, Canberra (formerly Australia’s capital district), Princeland, Gold Coast, Illawara, Van Dieman’s Land, Tasmania, New Albion, South Australia, Swan River Colony, New Zealand, Aotearoa and the Cook Islands, and the six new territories of Tokelau, Fiji, New Holland, Vanuatu, Niue and New Caledonia. With this addition, the United States now had in excess of 120 states, and no more room on the flag. Hence, the US reverted to its original flag – fifteen stars in a circular pattern, with fifteen red and white stripes. However, a six-pointed star was added in the center of the circle, to represent the six major regions of the Union: North America, South America, the West Indies, the Pacific, Australasia, and the American Far East. Additionally, the country underwent its second official name change. It now officially became the “United States of the Americas and Oceania”, or “the USAO”.
As all that was going on, the US was also rapidly industrializing. This was not a new development, but in the post-GAW era, Reconstruction saw the expansion of industry across the nation. The development of railroads and telegraphs (both of which were spurred by the war) played a big role in this. The main regions to experience this industrialization were New England and southern Canada, Gran Colombia, south-central Mexico, the Rio De La Plata basin, the Great Lakes, and, notably, Dixie. Dixie was not terribly industrialized, but the region has a much more diversified economy than OTL.
With this came prosperity and the hopes of a better tomorrow, as it seemed like the nation was on the path away from the bloodshed and agony of the Great American War. But it was also a time of excess, abject poverty, child labor, exploitation and corruption. In the jungles of Gran Colombia and Bolivar, there were ambiguously-illegal rubber plantations where private militias oversaw countless Indian slave laborers, brick factories in North and South Peru manned entirely by children, and you had factory heads across the country hiring thugs to violently break up labor strikes.
It was around this time also that you had the rise of new political parties and the destruction of old ones. The Democratic Party was never able to recover from the disgrace of having been the party of the Confederacy and thus treason. It wasn’t outlawed, but it lost a lot of blood, and Northern and Latin Democrats began to search for alternatives. The Republican Party became the much more dominant of the two, and began to suffer the strain of dominance, getting so big that it started to collapse under its own weight.
The destruction of the GOP began with the breaking off of two factions of the Republicans in 1888 – the Labor Party and the National Party. The Labor Party was a pro-union, populist-left faction, whilst the National Party was a nationalistic, populist-right faction. The divorce of these two groups from the Republicans weakened them, but still left a beast of a party behind, though now the crumbling husk of the Democrats had the Republicans closer to their weight class.
The old party system fell apart in the aftermath of the 1896 presidential election, when both major parties lost to dark horse independent candidate, Samuel “Mark Twain” Clemens. Clemens had already gained popularity across the country as a satirist and author. Having coined the term "Gilded Era", in 1887, at the age of 52, he announced his plans to run for president in the 1888 election as a Republican. He lost the primary. And then again in 1892 as the Labor Party’s first presidential candidate. Only in 1896 – at a time when he became a very popular, though polarizing, “tells-it-like-it-is” political figure – during his independent run, did he finally succeed, though his victory was quite narrow.
As he himself predicted, Clemens’ election was such a shock that it shattered both the Republicans and Democrats. So in addition to the Labor and National parties, you now had the emergence of the Conservative Party, the Liberal Party, and the Country Party. Politicians operating as “Democrats” continued to win elections in parts of Australia well into 1910, on anti-Chinese platforms, but other than that, both major “established” parties ceased to exist, though for a brief while, Labor and National existed as the two largest parties in the House and Senate.
The Clemens Administration was relatively brief, lasting only three years before he resigned. But in that time, he cooperated with a short-lived Labor-National alliance to effectively abolish the first-past-the-post system, and replaced it with an instant-runoff/preferential voting system, as well as institute stiffer policies regarding campaign finance. As stated, Clemens resigned and his less-charismatic running-mate, former senator Marcel Hervieux (Independent, Quebec) assumed the office of the president, losing the 1900 election to Aaron James Kimball (Labor, Northern California). As a former president, Clemens was granted a non-voting seat in Congress, which he attended infrequently – only when he felt the need to troll them or give a speech to a captive audience.
As all that was going on, there was still the issue of the Empire of Brazil. In the years since the Continuation War, things had gotten bad in Brazil. The regime was propped up by the Anglo-French Entente, who supplied the Empire with foreign aid and the latest weapons. They wanted it to serve as a bastion against the US – and Brazil certainly had that mindset. Which was kinda why the Limeys and the Frogs stopped propping them up around 1890.
The Empire of Brazil was a slaveholding monarchy surrounded on three sides by an expansionistic, abolitionist republican superstate. And it developed that bunker mindset. To mobilize the population towards resisting the United States, the Brazilian government championed itself as the defender of faith, tradition, decency and order – as opposed to what they characterized as the decedent, corrupt, liberal, godless, degenerate mob-rule of the United States. A sort of Catholic, monarchist proto-fascism emerged, and though it lacked genocidal racial characteristics, it still oppressed much of its Afro-Brazilian and Pardo populations. They kept the institution of slavery going well into the 1890’s, even as they attempted to industrialize and modernize their military for what they knew would be the Union’s inevitable rematch with them.
By 1896, the US had finished rebuilding and was now prepared to finish uniting the New World. The Liberation of Brazil was all that remained for the Western Hemisphere to be united under a single flag.

Some years ago, never mind how many exactly, my Grandmother and I took two planes and a boat back to Niue, the island of her birth. It was a particularly humid February that year we returned, and Avatele, the village in which she had spent a by-all-accounts blissful childhood, was in an uproar. As a matter of fact, the entire island was found to be in a state of exteme vexation. Admittedly, this was something not terribly difficult to achieve on a sleepy island populated by less than two-thousand people and without a single jailhouse to its credit!
The agitation of the locals, we were soon to find, was due to the disappearance of one of the most valuable items in the Huanaki Cultural Collection, Niue's sole museum. The artifact in question was a headdress several centuries old and boasting a bloody history. It had once belonged to a fearsome war chief whom had tamed his rivals in Tonga, Samoa and even Tokelau.
Now, the theft of an item, no matter how significant, might not be of particular interest to a city-dweller such as yourself, but you must understand: Niue is a small island. Its closest neighbours are Tonga and Samoa, but it is totally unlike them in its relative obscurity and terrain. A raised coral atoll, Niue has none of the tropical beaches that have made its sister island famous. Instead, its rocky base is perforated by numerous caves, some quite dangerous to explore. At night, humpback whales can occasionally be heard slapping their fins with great force against the waves. Niue is also underpopulated, the islanders having left by their hundreds for more cosmopolitan shores, and so the island is peppered with barren houses bent by decrepitude. The combination of loneliness and the reclamation of nature in Niue is so strong that the type of supersitions held by the locals are, in my opinion, inevitable.
It was my Great-Uncle Joseph whom was providing our lodgings for the trip. A rotund and amiable fellow with a penchent for Werther's Original toffees, he operated a delighful inn situated between a taro plantation and a rather breathtaking view of the South Pacific ocean. At night, Uga, or coconut crabs, frequented the grounds of his property in search of food waste and he would inevitably spend much of the early morning shooing them away with a dingy old broom.
Two days into our trip, Grandmother and I were enjoying an afternoon tea of hot buttered scones and hot coffee in the west drawing room. Aunt Sophia had recently had the inn renovated and consequently the innhouse had been transformed to something reminiscent of the French riviera style in which it had originally been built. As I was topping another delicious scone with a dollop of jam and fresh Chantilly cream, I was startled by a horrible wail, of such frequency and duration as to shake the entire room. Aunt Sophia, whom had been dozing in a plump pink armchair beside me, soft brown hands resting on her voluptuous belly, immediately sprang into the air with a shriek. Her eyes were wide and frightened as she hurried to the window to peer out at the quiet expanse of grass and trees stretching into the distance.
“What is it?” I asked her worriedly, coming to stand beside her.
“Tupua,” Sophia whispered.
“'Tupua'?” I asked curiously. I admit, I am not terribly well-versed in the language of my forebears and this word was unfamiliar to me.
“A monster,” My Grandmother translated from behind me, apparently unfazed by the terrible cry we had just heard and heaping more sugar than strictly necessary into her jet-black coffee. “A demon.”
“One of the artifacts at the museum was stolen a week before you arrived,” Sophia said to me, still in hushed tones. Her large dark eyes darted from left to right as if searching for assassins. “A headdress, belonging to one of the ancient chiefs. As soon as it disappeared the screaming started.”
My face must have registered some confusion to her, for she clutched at my hands with her own bejewelled ones, face feverish with conviction. “It is the tapua who screams, from deep within the island. It is the guardian of the island and the sacred taoga – treasures.”
My Grandmother chuckled. “You are even more superstitious than your father, Sophia. The tapua will not harm you – unless it was you who stole the headdress, hmm?”
Sophia shook her head, still practically trembling with fright. She had to be coaxed back to her chair and remained alert with terror all the way through dinner. Uncle Joseph corroborated his daughter's tale that evening, informing us in greater detail of the headdress' disappearance and its remarkable qualities. As my Granduncle regaled us I could tell my Grandmother was becoming more and more intrigued, a sure sign that we would soon become personally involved.
Sure enough, the very next day I found myself accompanying and chauffeuring my Grandmother as she went from place to place pestering the authorities about the unfolding case. The headdress was several centuries old, belonging to one of the first chiefs of Niue. As indicated by the museum's frantic curator and the photographs taken of the object, it was of similar make to those headdresses found in Tahiti and Samoa.
It featured a woven crown decorated with preserved pandanus leaves, the front decorated with a cluster of affixed shells and black pearls. By far its most notable element, however, was the large golden coin woven into the arched crown section of the headdress. Neither Polynesia nor Micronesia can lay claim to any gold deposits. The coin in question probably originated from what is now Taiwan, and was transported across the seas by the Lapita people.
The Huanaki Collection had not been burgled. Instead, the door had been opened neatly, presumably by use of a key, and the exhibition case dealt with in similar fashion. All evidence pointed to the curator, David Ahokava himself, but the old fellow had an airtight alibi. He and the rest of his staff had been enjoying an evening at Niue's sole hotel. In lieu of a great many other sources of diversion, the Friday night dinner and drinks at the resort had become a popular pastime for many. Eyewitness accounts corroborated his claim and so the five constabulary on Niue were left to wrestle with a theft they had become convinced was somehow supernatural in nature. The curator had, in fact, lost his key on the night of the headdress' disappearance, and it had not turned up either.
My Grandmother, an old gossip to the last, was determined to corner Mr. Ahokava so she could pry details out of him. He was a regular at the resort's restaurant, having a proclivity for their banoffee sundaes. For several nights, she lingered on in the hotel bar until the late hours, while I, her reluctant companion, nursed successive glasses of soda and bowls of kumara chips. After a few nights of this stakeout, the man himself finally walked through the lobby and slid down into a plump armchair. David Ahokava was such a regular at the hotel that the waitstaff, upon seeing him enter, immediately made arrangements for his preferred ice cream treat.
Grandmother nodded to me and together we left our barstools and plopped down opposite the curator on matching armchairs.
“I hope you don't mind if we join you?” My Grandmother asked in a friendly fashion.
“Of course not!” David said politely. “Are you visiting family? I haven't met you before.”
“Yes, yes, my Granddaughter and I are here to visit my brother, Joseph. He owns the Dawson Inn.”
At that, David beamed in recognition. “Is that so? You must be Edith, then.”
“I am,” Grandmother nodded. “This is my Granddaughter, Marina.”
David extended a chubby hand for me to shake, and I reached out to take it politely.
“You don't look Niuean,” He remarked to me. “You're very fair-skinned, aren't you? Are you a half-caste?”
“My husband was a European,” Grandmother explained. “And my daughter's husband was as well.”
“She has your eyes and hair,” David said with a smile.
“We hear you're the curator of the museum,” I said mildly. “Have the police found the headdress?”
David's brows dipped sadly. He had a very round face, a flat nose, and a crown of luxuriant brown hair which rested naturally in tight curls. His thickly-lashed dark eyes were small and often appeared shiny, like he was about to cry. “No, no, dear...They haven't found a thing.”
“It's terrible,” Grandmother sighed. “The thief stole the key right from your pocket, how awful it must be for you.”
“It was my fault,” David sighed. “You know, many times I have dropped my keys. Someone always would find them and give them back to me eventually. This is the first time something like this has happened. I just don't understand why anyone would do such a thing!”
“Money, of course,” Grandmother said, nodding in empathy. “The world is full of crazy people. Stealing and murdering all the time, running around drunk. We're lucky here in Niue, that we don't have to worry about that sort of thing.”
“Except for now,” David said gloomily.
“Except for now,” Grandmother said in agreement.
David looked very sad indeed, however his expression immediately brightened when a cheerful looking waiter set down an enormous pile of ice cream scoops before him. The dish was so overloaded with cream, chocolate and wafers that it was barely visible under the dessert.
Practically clapping his hands together in delight, he picked up three spoons and offered two to Grandmother and me before digging in with obvious relish.
“Please,” He said in-between bites of sugary goodness. “Have some. It's my favourite. They do the best ice cream here. You can't get it like this anywhere else on Niue.”
I grinned, leaning forward to sample the sundae for myself, when an horrible cry resounded in the room. It seemed to me as if it were emanating from hell itself. It was an unearthly scream, full of as to be hatred, so low in pitch as to be inhuman. As the cry continued, it abruptly escalated in volume, such that the waiter staggered backwards in terror and even my Grandmother looked perturbed. A gust of wind blew through the room, forcing open the shutters with clanging rattles and knocking a table carrying a tray of utensils to the floor with a crash. The sound caused David to jump in his chair, and a dollop of custard and ice-cream landed on his shirt and pants. He didn't seem to care, and instead stared, wide-eyed, to the open window adjacent to us. I followed the line of his gaze, standing to come closer to the window. Beyond the hotel courtyard and the single road which led to it was a rolling crest of hills. The hills led to a line of trees, still swaying in the sudden wind. It was a dark night – too dark to see what David had begun pointing at fervently with a shaking hand.
“It's there!” He hissed to me. “The tupua! The tupua! It's coming to kill me!”
Grandmother frowned at him. “If you are not the thief, you have nothing to fear from it.”
“But I was irresponsible,” David wailed. “The headdress was in my care. I lost it, and now the tupua comes to punish me.”
“There's no such thing as a tupua,” I argued. I meant to sound soothing, but the words sounded different as they hung in the air. Perhaps my nerves had been frayed by the cries.
“Yes, there is, young lady,” David said to me with conviction. “There is. I have seen it. It came to me last night.”
“Well, now, that's settled then. If it were really there, you would not be sitting here. You'd be dead,” Grandmother asserted.
“It was dreadful,” David whispered, eyes affixed to the window. “It was – tall. Too tall. As black as anything. A mouth for a face – no eyes...No eyes!” He yelped, apparently seeing something in the dark that I couldn't, and abandoned his seat, backing up to the bar. “I see it! I see it everywhere!”
Before I could say a word in response, he turned on his heel and fled, rushing from the hotel and to his waiting car.
Grandmother hurrumphed, muttering something in Niuean. She plunged her spoon into the abandoned sundae. “Bloody idiot,” She remarked idly. “What a waste of good ice-cream.”
“Tau he gutugutu,” My Grandmother muttered to me a few nights later, as we slid into our matching single beds in the cozy guest room. “I asked the police chief if it had occurred to him that one of the guests at the resort had stolen the key and made off with it. It would not have been difficult to do, what with Niue's customs being what they are. An airport with no walls, and full of chickens!”
“Why don't they just ask the New Zealand police to look into it? Surely such an item would have been noticed when the thief made their way back to Auckland,” I replied in the dark, eyelids heavy with sleep. I had been much tired of late, as had most of my family and the rest of the Alofi community, given the never-ending wails which haunted our sleep. The sounds were rumbling and inhuman, and, in my case, accompanied disturbing nightmares in which a dark figure pursued me up an infinite winding staircase.
“What makes you think they went to Auckland?” My Grandmother asked. “Several boats departed the day after the theft, bound for the shores of Vanuatu, Rarotonga and Fiji. That would be a far better place to hide than New Zealand for any thief fleeing the scene.”
“If that's true,” I yawned, voice rough with fatigue. “Then perhaps it is lost for the time being. I would much rather they get to the bottom of these terrible screams...!”
I think it was then that I fell asleep, for I do not remember what my Grandmother said in response. I dreamt, again, of the stairwell. It was as black as the room it had been placed in, and wound up and up ceaselessly. A single point of light shone from the ceiling but it never seemed to come any closer. In fact, with every breathless step I took up the stairs the little light seemed to fade a little bit more. It seemed very important that I keep climbing. There was a presence behind me at every step, an presence which suggested fatal consequences should I stop running. Its fingertips brushed my spine, and I jerked awake to a pitch-black room.
It took a few moments for the tension in my body to recede, aided and abetted by the comfortingly regular sounds of my Grandmother's snores. I exhaled deeply, rolling over onto my opposite side. Standing there, just a few inches from me, was a dark figure, leering down at me with teeth which seemed to shine in the dark. I tried to scream but couldn't – I was fixed in place by terror and some other force I cannot describe. It felt as if my body was being stretched over a rack, stretched to a point just shy of painful. The figure was skeletal in shape, with broad shoulders tapering down to spindly arms and six-fingered hands. The face was skull-like, but entirely lacking in eyes. The dominant feature of its face was a rictus smile containing rows of teeth as long as my finger.
It's cold and heavy breaths, stinking of rotting flesh, wafted down onto me as I lay frozen and helpless. After several moments of this, the tupua raised one of its hands and gripped me forcefully about the neck. What happened next I cannot describe, for I have no memory of it. All I know is that in one moment I was in my bed and the next I was standing at the mouth of a cave.
The cave was one of the underwater variety which lined the borders of Niue's coast. The tide was out, but was still high enough to reach my knees, and cold enough to send a chill down my spine. There was no illumination from within the cave and yet I felt an irresistable urge to venture inside. In spite of the obvious dangers, in spite of my lack of equipment, training or physical prowess, I waded inside. It was just as dark inside as outside, and so I pressed one hand against the stone wall to orient myself. The surface was smooth, and the cave had evidently been carved over thousands of years by the relentless tides rushing in and out of the channel.
I stumbled, fell, splashed into the water and kept going. I cannot explain what possessed me to do such a thing. It felt larger than simple curiosity but as if I were being called deeper into the cavern by a primordial instinct. I've often reflected on that night and perhaps it was the tupua who was guiding me through. Whatever the cause, light began to appear deeper in the tunnel and I rushed towards it.
The dim glow was coming from behind a pile of large rocks which seemed to have been placed there deliberately. It was heavy work, but I managed to pull several of them loose to expose the small opening behind them and the gory tableu within.
The body of a man was inside, his right leg lying at an unnatural angle and one pale hand still clutching a flickering torch. The body was headless. Blood was still dripping from the torn tendons of the wound, so fresh that it had not yet congealed and carried with it the strong scent of iron. The man's fingernails were ripped and, in some cases, missing, suggesting a failure to climb up the shaft behind him or remove the rocks keeping him in.
The shaft in question, when I climbed up, led to a long-grassed hillock alarmingly close to the edge of a cliff. When I emerged it was occupied by my Grandmother, Granduncle and several members of the police.
My Grandmother later told me that she had awoken to see the open window and me, sprinting as if my life depended on it, across the field. She'd rallied her brother and the police to go after me, winding up at the mouth of the cave's secondary entrance.
From what I could gather, the young man in question, by the name of James Wade, had been a guest of the resort, along with his brother. They had both come from rather unscrupulous backgrounds and were looking to make an easy buck out of a museum which they knew to be relatively unguarded. They had stolen Ahokava's keys and stolen the headdress, that much was obvious.
The police could not quite figure out how James Wade had ended up headless in a cave. The theory went that the two brothers had arranged for a boat to provide their getaway, and had decided to wait inside one of the caves to avoid detection in the hours between the theft and the pick-up time. However, James Wade had fallen and injured himself, and his brother, Samuel, had been avaricious enough to turn on his sibling. He had barricaded James inside, leaving the fellow to howl and lament and he fruitlessly tried to escape. The sounds we had heard were thought to be his screams echoing through the maze of caves and filtering up through the surface openings.
But why, the police wondered, had the body been headless? This, they had been unable to deduce, apart from speculating that Samuel had outright killed his brother and hidden the head somewhere else.
I believed differently. You see, in many South Pacific cultures, including Niue's, the head is the most sacred part of the body. Desecrating or stealing the head of a corpse steals the 'mana' or power of a person and condemns them to wander purgatory in a headless, tortured state. I never told the police about this supernatural explanation, but it was certainly shared by many of the islanders regardless. It was said that tupua had taken the head as vengeance and compensation for the missing crown.
My Grandmother and I returned home and we both went on with our lives. The case of the headdress had endowed and excited my curiosity and so I continued to investigate on my own working with customs officials and contacts within the police. A few months later, I was informed that there had been a gruesome murder in a small town not far from Christchurch. The murder had taken place at a nondescript roadside motel, a stop-over point for visitors headed to and from the airport. The victim had been a man calling himself Daniel Forde but turned out to be Samuel Wade himself. He had constructed a fairly convincing identity as an antiquities dealer in the months subsequent to the murder of his brother.
Samuel Wade had been in the possession of the headdress, as well as a one-way ticket to Singapore where we later confirmed he had a black-market buyer for it. His body had been discovered headless, with no evidence of forced entry and no evidence of a struggle. The head was never found and the matter remains unsolved – as far as the police are concerned, anyway.
The headdress was turned over to me and I immediately returned it back to Niue where it is now in storage at the Niue Public Service Building in Fonuakula, Alofi. It is no longer exhibited to the public but I'm told that occasionally it can be viewed when a special appointment is arranged.

Let's do this! Let's knock 5 seasons out of the park (S19, S20, S23, S24, +AusSurvivor). I've got to say, I have mixed feelings with Samoa. The location is really pretty, but also the second fakes location ever (fakes being Nicaragua). But then again, the rewards in this location were truly amazing. Normally I'd hate that 4 seasons were filmed here, but I'm kinda glad they returned to help after the 2009 tsunami, as Survivor does contribute with infrastructure and tourism that can really help an island economy. Anyway Survivor: Samoa,and all following seasons, were filmed in Upolu, with some rewards filmed in Savai'i. I do wish they used the remote North-East side of the island, but instead they used the south-west, which is flatted and less remote, which is actually ideal for filming a television show.
Here is my coded map. We'll start with the tribe beaches for seasons 19 and 20. While I'm going to talk a lot about how the challenge beaches were latterly filmed off the road, and sometimes on top of sand covered car parks, the peninsular where the tribe beaches were located is probably the only uninhabited region of south-west Samoa. That is, until 2010. So, this is what the time beaches look like today. Galu/Villains lived on the west facing beach. FoaFoa/Heroes lived on the south facing beach, but at least lived at opposite ends for a change of scenery, somewhat. As u/ColYok17 pointed out, SoPa RI arena is actually on Heroes' beach, not Villains. Foa Foa's beach, Lefaga, is now privately owned, with a mansion built on it. Also, notice the roads leading down to the beaches? They weren't there before Survivor came along. They can best be seen in this 2009 view of the beaches, possible recorded during the filming of either Samoa or HvV. These beaches weren't used for tribes in SoPa/OW, as they sustained damage from the tsunami. :(
Move north and you'll find this coconut plantation, which also looked a lot different before Survivor came to town. Zoom in and this specific sqaure clearing hosted tribal council in 3 seasons. One World was the only one not to use this space. I believe this location was chosen as in Fiji SEG made locals not use lights at nights when filming Tribal, which is too much of a strain. Though if you're in the middle of a coconut plantation, there are no interferences from the wider world, though the location looks natural, but isn't, and so is easily accessible. It is also super close by Aggie's Grey, the 5 star hotel crew stayed at cos they were tired of roughing it for the past 9 years of production. Challenges such as these took place here on the edge of the plantation.
But moving south-east from the tribe camps, you'll hit some beaches that were used for the few beach challenges. The first one is Return to Paradise, yes, as in the one that was used for the 1953 Hollywood classic. Here's some iamges of it. Most notably it was used in the opening of Heroes Vs Villains, but was used other times as well. Today it is a series of bungalows. Though that road was there at the time of filming. And that's what I mean about the season being filmed right off the road. They dug up some palm trees to make room for obstacles, covered the car park in sand, temporarily placed the uprooted palms on top of the car park to look real, then re-planted them later. Also, it is well known that the ring road of Upolu was heavily used by SEG to transport contestants in black-windowed vans, perfect for Kim to hatch illegal plans.
Further down you'll find Matareva Bay, the location of Samoa's opening, as well as other challenges. This particular challenge showcases the bay, and the little spit of rocks/palm trees, really well in the opening zoom in establishing shot.
If you continue further south you'll get the beaches used for tribes in seasons 23, 24, and Australia. Note: Semhar claimed she could see the Savai'i tribe splashing about in the water and laughing from her miserbale RI beach. Either she hallucinated this, or the RI arena is way far away from the RI beach. Dunno, I don't have enough good footage of S23 RI. Upolu/Salani lived here. This was also the site of Outback Stakehouse in HvV, and possibly Rites of Passage (sorry, I had to include that video bc it's laughably bad). But towards the end you get to see the little island thing they get.
Across the bay, Savai'i Lived at the prettier Virgin Cove, located directly behind a 5 star resort of the same name. By spinning this 360 degree panorama, I could get a view of Upolu's beach, and their little island. This video helps establish the setting too. I also really like this image of Sabrina at Dawn, but couldn't find anywhere to put it. Same goes for this.
A little east of Savaii, you get this river, where Tribal Council was built in One World. Close by is Illilli, where Ponderosa in S19+20 took place, also the site of cast photos.
Move further east and you'll reach O Le Pupu, used for Jeff's Samoa countdown as well as S19 Rites of Passage and Samoa cast photos. Also lol at Jeff's intros for S23 and S24 taking place in the exact same place.
Now onto rewards. Here is the cool pool where the Villains ate smarties in the Martyr Approach. Right across the cove from here is the site of the traditional village visited by Russ, Sham and Jaison. The beach views here are beautiful (unless the Google Earth user pinned this photo in the wrong spot, which I think they did). Close-ish by is Togitogiga Falls, I think mostly used for in between scene shots in episodes. Robert Louis Stevenson's Mansion was also a [reward]http://i.imgur.com/XOUKaSM.png), and is super close by Papasea Sliding Rocks, used as a reward in pretty much every Samoa season. Expect to see it in the Australian franchise. Samoa was advertised by Survivor really well.
Other rewards took place in neighbouring island Savaii. Afu Asu falls I'm pretty sure was just a backdrop to a picnic reward where the contestants used the sprint phone to see an idol clue. More interestingly is Taga, the site of the blowholes.
And that's it. Sorry the post is so long. It took me hours to write, linking everything necessary. But I hope you enjoy, and I hope it's relevant to Australia's new season. :)

=========================United States=========================

In the mid 19th to 20th centuries, the Chinese that migrated were almost entirely of Cantonese origin. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese men in the U.S, mostly of Cantonese origin from Taishan migrated to the United States. Anti-miscegenation laws in many states prohibited Chinese men from marrying white women.[11] After the Emancipation Proclamation, many intermarriages in some states were not recorded and historically, Chinese American men married African American women in high proportions to their total marriage numbers due to few Chinese American women being in the United States. After the Emancipation Proclamation, many Chinese Americans immigrated to the Southern states, particularly Arkansas, to work on plantations. For example, in 1880, the tenth US Census of Louisiana alone counted 57% of interracial marriages between these Chinese to be with black and 43% to be with white women.[12]

• "The United States". Chinese blacks in the Americas. Color Q World. Retrieved 15 July 2008.

Between 20 and 30 percent of the Chinese who lived in Mississippi married black women before 1940.[13]

• Susan Dente Ross; Paul Martin Lester (19 April 2011). Images That Injure: Pictorial Stereotypes in the Media. ABC-CLIO. pp. 144–. ISBN 978-0-313-37892-8. Retrieved 2 March 2012.

In a genetic study of 199 samples from African American males found one belong to haplogroup O2a ( or 0.5% )[14] It was discovered by historian Henry Louis Gates, Jr in the African American Lives documentary miniseries that NASA astronaut Mae Jemison has a significant (above 10%) genetic East Asian admixture. Gates speculated that the intermarriage/relations between migrant Chinese workers during the 19th century and black, or African-American slaves or ex-slaves may have contributed to her ethnic genetic make-up. In the mid 1850s, 70 to 150 Chinese were living in New York City and 11 of them married Irish women. In 1906 the New York Times (6 August) reported that 300 white women (Irish American) were married to Chinese men in New York, with many more cohabited. In 1900, based on Liang research, of the 120,000 men in more than 20 Chinese communities in the United States, he estimated that one out of every twenty Chinese men (Cantonese) was married to white women.[15]

• Benson Tong (2004). Asian American children: a historical handbook and guide. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 38–. ISBN 978-0-313-33042-1. Retrieved 2 March 2012.

In the 1960s census showed 3500 Chinese men married to white women and 2900 Chinese women married to white men.[16]
Love's revolution: interracial marriage by Maria P.P. Root. Page 180

Source
=========================Hawaii=========================

The majority of the Hawaiian Chinese were Cantonese migrants from Guangdong with minority from Hakka. If all people with Chinese ancestry in Hawaii (including the Chinese-Hawaiians) are included, they form about 1/3 of Hawaii's entire population. Many thousands of them married women of Hawaiian, Hawaiian/European and European origin. A large percentage of the Chinese men married Hawaiian and Hawaiian/European women, while a minority married white women in Hawaii who were of Portuguese descent. The 12592 Asiatic-Hawaiians enumerated in 1930 were the result of Chinese men intermarrying with Hawaiian and part Hawaiian/European. Most Asiatic-Hawaiians men also married Hawaiians and European women (and vice versa). On the census, some Chinese with little native blood would be classified as Chinese – not as Asiatic-Hawaiians – due to dilution of native blood. Intermarriage started to decline in the 1920s.[17] Portuguese and other Caucasian women married Chinese men.[18][19]

• David Anthony Chiriboga, Linda S. Catron (1991). Divorce: crisis, challenge, or relief?. NYU Press. p. 254. ISBN 978-0-8147-1450-8.
  
• Cretser, Gary A. and Leon, Joseph J. (1982). Intermarriage in the United States, Volume 5. Psychology Press. p. 58. ISBN 978-0-917724-60-2.
  

The unions between Chinese men and Portuguese women resulted in children of mixed Chinese Portuguese parentage, called Chinese-Portuguese. For two years to June 30, 1933, 38 of these children who were born were classified as pure Chinese because their fathers were Chinese.[20]

• Adams, Romanzo (2005). Interracial Marriage in Hawaii. Kessinger Publishing. p. 396. ISBN 978-1-4179-9268-3.

A large amount of mingling took place between Chinese and Portuguese, Chinese men married Portuguese, Spanish, Hawaiian, Caucasian-Hawaiian, etc.[21][22][23][24]

• United States Bureau of Education (1921). Bulletin, Issues 13–18. U.S. G.P.O. p. 27.
  
• United States. Office of Education (1920). Bulletin, Issue 16. U.S. Dept. of Health, Education, and Welfare, Office of Education. p. 27.
  
• American Association of Physical Anthropologists, Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology (1920). American journal of physical anthropology, Volume 3. A. R. Liss. p. 492.
  
• Cretser, Gary A. and Leon, Joseph J. (1982). Intermarriage in the United States, Volume 5. Routledge. p. 111. ISBN 978-0-917724-60-2.
  

Chinese men in Hawaii also married Puerto Rican, Portuguese, Japanese, Greek, and half-white women.[27][28]

• Smith, Alfred Emanuel (1905). New Outlook, Volume 81. Outlook Publishing Company, Inc. p. 988.
  
• The Outlook, Volume 81. Outlook Co. 1905. p. 988.
  

Source
=========================United Kingdom=========================

The first Chinese settlers were mainly Cantonese from south China, with some also from Shanghai. The figures of Chinese for 1921 are 2,157 men and 262 women. Many Chinese men married British women while others remained single, possibly supporting a wife and family back home in China. During the second world war (1939–1945) another wave of Chinese seamen from Shanghai and of Cantonese origin married British women. Records show that about some 300 of these men had married British women and supported families.[406]

• UK Chinese. Sacu.org (2006-01-23). Retrieved 2013-06-22.

Source
=========================Russia=========================

Many Chinese men, even those who had left wives and children behind in China, married local women in the 1920s, especially those women who had been widowed during the wars and upheavals of the previous decade. Their mixed race children tended to be given Russian forenames; some retained their fathers' Chinese surnames, while others took on Russian surnames, and a large proportion also invented new surnames using their father's entire family name and given name as the new surname.

Source
=========================Australia=========================

Most of the early Chinese-Australia population was formed by Cantonese migrants from Guangzhou and Taishan, including some from Fujian, who came during the goldrush period of the 1850s. Marriage records show that between the 1850s and around the start of the 20th century, there were about 2000 legal marriages between white women and migrant Chinese men in Australia's eastern colonies, probably with similar numbers involved in de facto relationships of various kinds (ex: cohabitation, sexual intimacy).[195]

• Australian wives in China. Epress.anu.edu.au (1904-03-01). Retrieved 2012-05-09.

The number of intermarriages declined, as stories of viciousness and the seduction of white women grew, mixed with opposition to intermarriage. Rallies against Chinese men taking white women became widespread, as many Australian men saw the Chinese men intermarrying and cohabiting with white women as a threat to the white race. In late 1878 there were 181 marriages between European women and Chinese men, and 171 couples cohabiting without matrimony, resulting in 586 Eurasian children.[196] Such numbers of intermarriage would continue until the 1880s and the 1930s.

Source
=========================Latin America=========================

In some countries, Asian immigrants have also intermarried among the groups. About 300,000 Cantonese coolies and migrants (almost all males) were shipped 1849 to 1874 Latin America, many of them intermarried and cohabited with the Black, Mestizo, and European population of Cuba, Peru, Guyana, Trinidad. Around 20,000 Mostly Cantonese and some Hakka coolies migrated to Jamaica, Guyana, Trinidad. Many of them also intermarried with Black women and East Indian women. Unlike in Trinidad Tobago and Guyana who were predominantly Cantonese men who intermarried with Black women. In Jamaica, the Chinese who married Black women were almost all Hakka. According to the 1946 Census from Jamaica and Trinidad alone, 12,394 Chinese were located between Jamaica and Trinidad. 5,515 of those who lived in Jamaica were Chinese Jamaican and another 3,673 were Chinese-Trinidadians living in Trinidad.[32] In Jamaica and other Caribbean nations as well many Chinese males over past generations took up African wives, gradually assimilating or absorbing many Chinese descendants into the African Caribbean community or the overall mixed-race community.[33] In Guyana, the Chinese were mostly Cantonese men and who intermarried with the local women. Because almost all of the Chinese indentured immigrants were men, they tended to intermarry with both East Indians and Africans, and thus the Chinese of Guyana did not remain as physically distinct as other groups.[34]

Source
=========================Guyana=========================

In Guyana, the prospect of sexual relations with Indian women was at first unappealing to the mostly male Chinese migrants like in Mauritius although there was a lack of Chinese women, but eventually their attitude changed and Indian women and Chinese men established sexual relationships with each other.[35]

• Brian L. Moore (1995). Cultural Power, Resistance, and Pluralism: Colonial Guyana, 1838-1900. Volume 22 of McGill-Queen's studies in ethnic history (illustrated ed.). McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. pp. 272–273. ISBN 0-7735-1354-X. ISSN 0846-8869. Retrieved June 1, 2015.

Chinese men had to marry women of other ethnicities due to the lack of Chinese women migrating to British Guiana.[36] Creole sexual relationships and marriages with Chinese and Indians was rare,[37] however, more common was Indian women and Chinese men establishing sexual relations with each other and some Chinese men took their Indian wives back with them to China.[38]

• Brian L. Moore (1987). Race, Power, and Social Segmentation in Colonial Society: Guyana After Slavery, 1838-1891. Volume 4 of Caribbean studies (illustrated ed.). Gordon & Breach Science Publishers. p. 182. ISBN 0-677-21980-6. ISSN 0275-5793. Retrieved June 1, 2015.

In Guyana, while marriages between Indian women and black African men is socially shameful to Indians, Chinese-Indian marriages are considered acceptable as reported by Joseph Nevadomsky in 1983.[40]

• Preethy Sarah Samuel (2000). Cultural Continuity Or Assimilation in the Familial Domain of the Indo-Guyanese. Wayne State University. Sociology (illustrated ed.). ProQuest. p. 38. ISBN 0-549-38762-5. Retrieved June 1, 2006.

"Chiney-dougla" is the Indian Guyanese term for mixed Chinese-Indian children.[41] Some Indian women in Guiana had multiple partners due to the greater number of men than woman, an account of the era told by women in British Guiana is of a single Chinese man who was allowed to temporarily borrow a Hindu Indian woman by her Indian husband who was his friend, so the Chinese man could sire a child with her, after a son was born to her the Chinese man kept the boy while she was returned to her Indian husband, the boy was named William Adrian Lee.[42][43] An Indian woman named Mary See married a Chinese man surnamed Wu in Goedverwagting and founded their own family after he learned how to process sugar cane.[44] In British Guiana the Chinese did not maintain their distinctive physical features due to the high rate of Chinese men marrying people other ethnicities like Indian women.[45][46][47]

• L. Liang-chi Wang, Gungwu Wang, eds. (1998). The Chinese Diaspora: Selected Essays, Volume 2. Volume 2 of The Chinese Diaspora (illustrated ed.). Times Academic Press. p. 108. ISBN 981-210-093-8. Retrieved June 1, 2006.
  
• Tim Merrill, ed. (1993). Guyana and Belize: Country Studies. Volume 550 (Issue 82 of Area handbook series). Library of Congress. Federal Research Division (2 ed.). Federal Research Division, Library of Congress. p. 42. ISBN 0-8444-0778-X. ISSN 1057-5294. Retrieved June 1, 2006.
  
• Jenny Pettit; Caroline Starbird (2000). Contemporary Issues in South America. University of Denver, CTIR. p. 48. ISBN 0-943804-90-6. Retrieved June 1, 2006.
  

The severe imbalance with Indian men outnumbering Indian women led some women to take advantage of the situation to squeeze favors from men and leave their partners for other men,[48] one infamous example was a pretty, light skinned, Christian Indian woman named Mary Ilandun with ancestral origins from Madras, born in 1846, who had sex with Indian, black, and Chinese men as she married them in succession and ran off with their money to her next paramour, doing this from 1868 to 1884.[49]
The most severe lack of women in all the peoples of British Guiana was with the Chinese and this led Europeans to believe that Chinese did not engage in wife murders while wife murders was something innate to Indian men, and unlike Indian coolie women, Chinese women were viewed as chaste.[51]

• Gaiutra Bahadur (2013). Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of Indenture. University of Chicago Press. p. 116. ISBN 0-226-04338-X. Retrieved June 1, 2015.

Chinese women were not indentured and since they did not need to work, they avoided prospective men seeking relationships, while the character of Indian women was disparaged as immoral and their alleged sexual looseness was blamed for their deaths in the "wife murders" by Indian men.[52]
One account of an Indian woman in Fiji at an auction reported that she said "Tell the fat one that it's where he can't get his bands on it... between my legs." after a man said to "Ask the little slut where her bank is" when she managed to outdo his bid, according to an Australian overseer,[54] and other people criticized Indian women as well, "The great majority of women imported from Calcutta are very loose in their habits. They were bad in Calcutta and so they will ... remain in Demerara." as reported by a Guiana-based missionary, ""The Hindu woman in this country, is like a rudderless vessel with its masts broken being whirled down the rapids of a great river without any controlling hand. She passes from one man to another and has lost even the sense of shame in doing so." said by Reverend C.F. Andrews.[55]
In East Coast Berbice in an Adelphi estate a Madrasi woman was cohabiting with a Chinese man in 1871.[56] Over time, although there were more Creole marriages with Chinese, there was a growth of Indian marriages with Chinese and it was reported that "It is not an uncommon thing to find a cooly woman living with a Chinaman as his wife, and in one or two instances the woman has accompanied her reputed husband to China." by Dr. Comins in 1891, with six Indian women marrying Chinese men in 1892 as reported by The Immigration Report for 1892.[57][58]

• Walton Look Lai (1993). Indentured labor, Caribbean sugar: Chinese and Indian migrants to the British West Indies, 1838-1918. Johns Hopkins studies in Atlantic history and culture (illustrated ed.). Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 210. ISBN 0-8018-4465-7. Retrieved May 17, 2014.
  
• Brian L. Moore (1995). Cultural Power, Resistance, and Pluralism: Colonial Guyana, 1838-1900. Volume 22 of McGill-Queen's studies in ethnic history (illustrated ed.). McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. p. 350. ISBN 0-7735-1354-X. ISSN 0846-8869. Retrieved June 1, 2015.
  

Source
=========================Trinidad=========================

In Trinidad some Chinese men had sexual relations with dark skinned Indian coolie women of Madrasee origin, siring children with them, and it was reported that "A few children are to be met with born of Madras and Creole parents and some also of Madras and Chinese parents - the Madrasee being the mother", by the missionary John Morton in 1876, Morton noted that it seemed strange since there were more Indian coolie men than Indian coolie women that Indian coolie women would marry Chinese men, but claimed it was most likely because the Chinese could provide amenities to the women since the Chinese owned shops and they were enticed by these.[59][60][61][62][63]

• Julitta Rydlewska, Barbara Braid, eds. (2014). Unity in Diversity, Volume 1: Cultural Paradigm and Personal Identity, Volume 1. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. p. 14. ISBN 1-4438-6729-2. Archived from the original on 2014. Retrieved June 1, 2015.
  
• Dennison Moore (1995). Origins and Development of Racial Ideology in Trinidad. Nycan. p. 238. ISBN 0-9680060-0-0. Retrieved June 1, 2015.
  
• Selwyn D. Ryan (1999). The Jhandi and the Cross: The Clash of Cultures in Post-creole Trinidad and Tobago. Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies, The University of the West Indies. p. 263. ISBN 976-618-031-8. Retrieved June 1, 2015.
  
• Rebecca Chiyoko King-O'Riain, Stephen Small, Minelle Mahtani, eds. (2014). Global Mixed Race. NYU Press. pp. 65–66. ISBN 0-8147-7047-9. Archived from the original on 2014. Retrieved June 1, 2015.
  
• Regis, Ferne Louanne (April 2011). "The Dougla in Trinidad's Consciousness" (PDF). History in Action (The University of the West Indies (St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago) Dept. of History) 2 (1). ISSN 2221-7886. Archived from the original (PDF) on Mar 8, 2011. Retrieved 28 June 2015.
  

Indian women were married by indentured Chinese men in Trinidad.[64]

• Mike Hoolboom (2013). Mike Hoolboom, ed. Practical Dreamers: Conversations with Movie Artists (illustrated ed.). Coach House Books. p. 315. ISBN 1-77056-181-1. Retrieved June 1, 2015.

Few Chinese women migrated to Trinidad while the majority of Chinese migrants were men.[65] The migration of Chinese to Trinidad resulted in intermarriage between them and others.[66] Chinese in Trinidad became relatively open to having martial relations with other races and Indian women began having families with Chinese in the 1890s.[67]
The situation in Trinidad and British Guiana with Indian women being fewer than Indian men led to Indian women using the situation to their advantage by leaving their partners for other men, leading to a high incidence of "wife murders" by Indian men on their wives, and Indian women and culture were branded as "immoral" by European observers, an Indian man named Mohammad Orfy petitioned as a representative of "destitute Indian men of Trinidad", to the colonial authorities, complaining of Indian women's behavior and claiming that it was "a perforating plague.....the high percentage of immoral lives led by the female section of our community......to satisfy the greed and lust of the male section of quite a different race to theirs........[Indian women] are enticed, seduced and frightened into becoming concubines, and paramours....... [Indian women] have absolutely no knowledge whatsoever of the value of being in virginhood......most shameless and a perfect menace to the Indian gentry." with him naming specific peoples, claiming that Indian women were having sex with Chinese men, Americans, Africans, and Europeans,[68][69][70][71][72] saying "Africans, Americans and Chinese in goodly numbers are enticing the females of India, who are more or less subtle to lustful traps augured through some fear of punishment being meted out if not readily submissive as requested."[73][74][75]

• Shobita Jain; Rhoda E. Reddock, eds. (1998). Women Plantation Workers: International Experiences. Volume 18 of Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Women (illustrated ed.). Bloomsbury Academic. p. 44. ISBN 1-85973-972-5. Retrieved June 1, 2015.
  
• Cimarrón, Volume 1, Issue 3. Volume 18 of Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Women. City University of New York. Association of Caribbean Studies (illustrated ed.). CUNY Association of Caribbean Studies. 1988. p. 101. Retrieved June 1, 2015.
  
• Rhoda Reddock (1984). Women, labour and struggle in 20th century Trinidad and Tobago, 1898-1960 (illustrated ed.). R. E. Reddock. p. 192. Retrieved June 1, 2015.
  

On plantations white European managers took advantage of and use indentured Indian woman for sex,[79] in addition, English, Portuguese, and Chinese men were also in sexual relationships with Indian women as noted by Attorney General W.F. Haynes Smith, while Creole women were abhorred or ignored by Indian men.[80][81] Approval of interracial marriage has slowly increased in Trinidad and Tobago and one Chinese man reported that his Indian wife did not encounter any rejection from his parents when asked in a survey.[82] In Trinidad Europeans and Chinese are seen as acceptable marriage partners by Indians while marrying black men would lead to rejection of their daughters by Indian families.[83]

• Colin Clarke; Gillian Clarke (2010). Post-Colonial Trinidad: An Ethnographic Journal. Studies of the Americas (illustrated ed.). Palgrave Macmillan. p. 107. ISBN 0-230-10685-4. Retrieved June 1, 2015.

The low ratio of Indian women compared to Indian men, along with the factor of Portuguese, white overseers and mangers, and Chinese men having sexual relations with Indian women, aggravated the problem of rivalry for Indian women between Indian men, and drove up the value of Indian women.[91]

• Ron Ramdin (2000). Arising from Bondage: A History of the Indo-Caribbean People (illustrated ed.). NYU Press. p. 72. ISBN 0-8147-7548-9. Retrieved June 1, 2015.

Source
=========================Peru=========================

About 100,000 Chinese coolies (almost all males) in 1849 to 1874 migrated to Peru and intermarried with Peruvian women of mestizo, European, Amerindian, European/mestizo, African and mulatto origin. Many Peruvian Chinese today are of mixed Chinese, Spanish, African, Amerindian. Estimates for Chinese-Peruvian is about 1.3 – 1.6 millions. Asian Peruvians are estimated to be 3% of the population, but one source places the number of citizens with some Chinese ancestry at 4.2 million, which equates to 15% of the country's total population. In Peru non-Chinese women married the mostly male Chinese coolies.[136]
There were almost no women among the nearly entirely male Chinese coolie population that migrated to Peru and Cuba.[137][138] Peruvian women were married to these Chinese male migrants.[139][140][141][142][143]

• Robert G. Lee (1999). Orientals: Asian Americans in Popular Culture. Temple University Press. p. 75. ISBN 1-4399-0571-1. Retrieved May 17, 2014.
  
• Chee-Beng Tan (2004). Chinese Overseas: Comparative Cultural Issues (illustrated ed.). Hong Kong University Press. p. 47. ISBN 962-209-661-1. Retrieved May 17, 2014.
  
• Josephine D. Lee; Imogene L. Lim; Yuko Matsukawa (2002). Re/collecting Early Asian America: Essays in Cultural History. Temple University Press. p. 181. ISBN 1-4399-0120-1. Retrieved May 17, 2014.
  
• Walton Look Lai (1998). The Chinese in the West Indies, 1806-1995: A Documentary History. Walton Look Lai (illustrated ed.). Press, University of the West Indies. p. 8. ISBN 976-640-021-0. Retrieved May 17, 2014.
  
• Michael J. Gonzales (2014). Plantation Agriculture and Social Control in Northern Peru, 1875–1933. University of Texas Press. ISBN 1-4773-0602-1. Retrieved May 17, 2014.
  

African women particularly had mostly no intercourse with Chinese men during their labor as coolies, while Chinese had contact with Peruvian women in cities, there they formed relationships and sired mixed babies, these women originated from Andean and coastal areas and did not originally come from the cities, in the haciendas on the coast in rural areas, native young women of indígenas (native) and serranas (mountain) origin from the Andes mountains would come down to work, these Andean native women were favored as marital partners by Chinese men over Africans, with matchmakers arranging for communal marriages of Chinese men to indígenas and serranas young women.[144]

• Isabelle Lausent-Herrera (2010). Walton Look Lai; Chee Beng Tan, eds. The Chinese in Latin America and the Caribbean. Brill ebook titles. BRILL. p. 144. ISBN 90-04-18213-6. Retrieved May 17, 2014.

There was a racist reaction by Peruvians to the marriages of Peruvian women and Chinese men.[145] When native Peruvian women (cholas et natives, Indias, indígenas) and Chinese men had mixed children, the children were called injerto and once these injertos emerged, Chinese men then sought out girls of injertas origins as marriage partners, children born to black mothers were not called injertos.[146] Low class Peurvians established sexual unions or marriages with the Chinese men and some black and Indian women "bred" with the Chinese according to Alfredo Sachettí, who claimed the mixing was causing the Chinese to suffer from "progressive degeneration", in Casa Grande highland Indian women and Chinese men participated in communal "mass marriages" with each other, arranged when highland women were brought by a Chinese matchmaker after receiving a down payment.[147][148]

• Michael J. Gonzales (2014). Plantation Agriculture and Social Control in Northern Peru, 1875–1933. University of Texas Press. ISBN 1-4773-0602-1. Retrieved May 17, 2014.
  
• Michael J. Gonzales (1985). Plantation Agriculture and Social Control in Northern Peru, 1875-1933. Brill ebook titles. Volume 62 of Texas Pan American Series (Issue 62 of Latin American Monographs, No 62, Issue 62 of Institute of Latin American Studies). University of Texas Press. p. 100. ISBN 0-292-76491-X. Retrieved May 17, 2014.
  

Source
=========================Cuba=========================

120,000 Cantonese coolies (all males) entered Cuba under contract for 80 years, most did not marry, but Hung Hui (1975) cites there was frequent sexual activity between black women and Cantonese coolies. According to Osberg (1965) the free Chinese conducted the practice of buying slave women and freeing them expressly for marriage. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Chinese men (Cantonese) engaged in sexual activity with white Cuban women and black Cuban women, and from such relations many children were born.[151]

• Dorsey, Joseph C. (2004). "Identity, Rebellion, and Social Justice Among Chinese Contract Workers in Nineteenth-Century Cuba" (PDF). Latin American Perspectives 31 (3): 18–47. doi:10.1177/0094582X04264492.

In the 1920s an additional 30,000 Cantonese and small groups of Japanese also arrived; both immigrations were exclusively male, and there was rapid with white, black, and mulato populations.[152]

Source
=========================Mexico=========================

The Chinese who migrated to Mexico in the 19th to 20th centuries were almost entirely Chinese men. Males made up the majority of the original Chinese community in Mexico and they married Mexican women.[154]

• Isabelle Lausent-Herrera (2010). Walton Look Lai; Chee Beng Tan, eds. The Chinese in Latin America and the Caribbean. Brill ebook titles. BRILL. p. 68. ISBN 9004182136. Retrieved May 17, 2014.

They married Mexican women, which led to anti-Chinese prejudice; many were expelled, while those who were allowed to stay intermarried with the Mexican population. The Mexicali officials estimate was that slightly more than 2,000 are full-blooded Chinese and about 8,000 are mixed-blood Chinese-Mexicans. Other estimates claimed 50,000 residents more than thought who are of Chinese descent. 10,000 full-blooded Chinese, down from 35,000 in the 1920s.[155] Marriage of these people to full-blooded Mexicans is diluting the community further.[155] Chinese Mexicans in Mexicali consider themselves equally "cachanilla," a term used for locals, as any other resident of the city, even if they speak Cantonese in addition to Spanish. The sentiment against Chinese men was due to (and almost all Chinese immigrants in Mexico were men) stealing employment and Mexican women from Mexican men who had gone off to fight in the Revolution or in World War I.[156]

Source
=========================Costa Rica=========================

The Chinese originated from the Cantonese male migrants. Most Chinese immigrants since then have been Cantonese, but in the last decades of the 20th century, a number of immigrants have also come from Taiwan. Many men came alone to work and married Costa Rican women and speak Cantonese. They married Tican women (a blend of Europeans, Caztizos, Mestizos, Indian, and Black).[160] A Tican is also a White person with a small portion of non-white blood like Caztizos. The census of 1989 shows about 98% of Costa Ricans were either white, Castizos or Mestizos, with 80% being white or Caztizos.

Source
=========================Venezuela=========================

Marriages between European, Mestizo, Amerindians, and Africans was not uncommon in the past. Several thousand Chinese from Enping resided in the country. The Chinese were still largely viewed as a foreign population who married foreign brides but seldom integrated into Venezuelan society.[161]

Source
=========================Jamaica=========================

Many thousands of Chinese men (mostly Hakka) and Indian men married local Jamaican women. The study "Y-chromosomal diversity in Haiti and Jamaica: Contrasting levels of sex-biased gene flow" shows the paternal Chinese haplogroup O-M175 at a frequency of 3.8% in local Jamaicans ( non-Chinese Jamaicans) including the Indian H-M69 (0.6%) and L-M20 (0.6%) in local Jamaicans.[162] Among the country's most notable Afro-Asians are reggae singers Sean Paul, Tami Chynn and Diana King.
When black and Indian women had children with Chinese men the children were called chaina raial in Jamaican English.[163]

• Frederic Gomes Cassidy; Robert Brock Le Page (2002). Frederic Gomes Cassidy; Robert Brock Le Page, eds. Dictionary of Jamaican English. University of the West Indies Press. p. 103. ISBN 976-640-127-6. Retrieved June 1, 2015.

The Chinese community in Jamaica was able to consolidate because an openness to marrying Indian women was present in the Chinese since Chinese women were in short supply.[164] Women sharing was less common among Indians in Jamaica according to Verene A. Shepherd.[165] The small number of Indian women were fought over between Indian men and led to a rise in the amount of wife murders by Indian men.[166] Indian women made up 11 percent of the annual amount of Indian indentured migrants from 1845-1847 in Jamaica.[167]

Source
=========================Sub-Saharan Africa=========================

There have been several cases of Chinese merchants and laborers marrying black African women as many Chinese workers were employed to build railways and other infrastructural projects in Africa. These labour groups were made up completely of men with very few Chinese women coming to Africa. In Réunion and Madagascar, intermarriage between Chinese men of Cantonese origin and African women is not uncommon.[183]

• Pan 1994, p. 157

Several thousand Cantonese men intermarried and cohabited with Malagasy women. 98% of the Chinese traced their origin from Guangdong — more specifically, the Cantonese district of Shunde.

Source
=========================Mauritius=========================

In the late 19th to early 20th century, Chinese men in Mauritius married Indian women due to both a lack of Chinese women and the higher numbers of Indian women on the island.[186][187]

• Marina Carter, James Ng Foong Kwong (2009). Abacus and Mah Jong: Sino-Mauritian Settlement and Economic Consolidation. Volume 1 of European expansion and indigenous response, v. 1. BRILL. p. 199. ISBN 90-04-17572-5. Archived from the original on 2009. Retrieved May 17, 2014.
  
• Paul Younger Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies McMaster University (2009). New Homelands : Hindu Communities in Mauritius, Guyana, Trinidad, South Africa, Fiji, and East Africa: Hindu Communities in Mauritius, Guyana, Trinidad, South Africa, Fiji, and East Africa. Oxford University Press. p. 33. ISBN 0-19-974192-1. Archived from the original on 2009. Retrieved May 17, 2014.
  

At first the prospect of relations with Indian women was unappealing to the original all male Chinese migrants yet they eventually had to establish sexual unions with Indian women since there were no Chinese women coming.[188]

• "What Inter-Ethnic Marriage In Mauritius Tells Us About The Nature of Ethnicity". p. 15. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2012-10-22. Retrieved May 17, 2014.

The 1921 census in Mauritius counted that Indian women there had a total of 148 children sired by Chinese men.[189][190][191] These Chinese were mostly traders.[192] Colonialist stereotypes in the sugar colonies of Indians emerged such as "the degraded coolie woman" and the "coolie wife beater", due to Indian women being murdered by their husbands after they ran away to other richer men since the ratio of Indian women to men was low.[193]

Source