Heart of Beijing

Chinese readers react to NYT Foxconn story

2012-01-31T00:00:00.003+08:00

Via Forbes

Americans really don't understand China. That's my takeaway message. ["People Are Spouting Nonsense about Chinese Manufacturing," Forbes]

Corollary: Remember the New York Times's big piece to kick off its iEconomy series? Of course you do. Well, they've collaborated with Caixin to translate the article into Chinese, and here were some of the hundreds of comments from Chinese readers (translated, of course):

Without Apple, Chinese workers will be worse off. I hope China can some day soon have dozens of its own companies like Apple, who (only) work on high-end research and development and send manufacturing lines to Africa. — Anonymous

Even though Apple should be ethically condemned, the key point is: whether the working conditions inside the factories are supervised by law. This (supervision) is the duty of judicial officers and labor unions. Now everything is driven only by G.D.P., so which government official would dare supervise those companies? They (the governments) have long reduced themselves to the servant of the giant enterprises. — Occasional Think

If people saw what kind of life workers lived before they found a job at Foxconn, they would come to an opposite conclusion of this story: that Apple is such a philanthropist. — Zhengchu1982

When the explosion happened, I was working for media in Chengdu. Domestic media were all silenced and only allowed to use the (Xinhua) official report, because that (Foxconn factory) was a key project. Compare to what The New York Times wrote, the gap really saddened my heart. — Chen Qiye

Well worth a look. [The Lede, NY Times]

Also see: Stan Abrams, China Hearsay.

Firecracker kills 1 in Beijing. In classic Xinhua-speak: "The holiday firecracker casualties this year, however, were down nearly 50 percent from a year earlier, according to the municipal health bureau." [Xinhua]

Corollary: From China Daily: "On average, a family may spend hundreds of yuan on firecrackers during the Spring Festival, with some paying more than 10,000 yuan (about $1,500) for the seasonal spree." From China Daily Show: "Man blows family’s entire food budget on fireworks."

Wukan update. "It is too easy to assume that the initial resolution of a problem in China represents the last word. That’s almost never the case. Now we know that we should continue to pay attention to what happens in Wukan. It matters a lot -- not only for the people of Wukan but also for our understanding of the evolving debate and real potential for wide scale political change in China." [Elizabeth C. Economy, Council on Foreign Relations]

Flowers of War flops in U.S. "'The Flowers of War,' a dark and violent Chinese-language movie about the Rape of Nanking that cost more than $90 million to produce, grossed an anemic $48,558 in 30 U.S. locations last weekend. Its per-location average: A mere $1,619." [Reuters]

Twitter: China thinks you're doing something right. (Pssst... that means you're not.) "It is important for it to respect the cultures and ideas of different countries so as to blend into local environments harmoniously. This is normal practice. To some extent, it is a necessary step in the evolution of Twitter. But many of its users, particularly some political activists and dissidents, have found it unacceptable." [Global Times, via Sinocism]

Also see: Wall Street Journal.

New to blogroll: Institute for New Economic Thinking.

If your sort of thing is an image of a doctor ("doctor"?) removing an organ from a boy's chest... Have at it [warning: GRAPHIC]. Via Seagull Reference.

NON-CHINA READ: "[Salman] Rushdie has had a flat in London for decades, but tells me he spends more and more time in New York. Like Martin Amis, he finds the viciousness of the British media towards writers mystifying. Journalists who rely on their exercise of freedom of speech to put food on their tables and clothes on their children's backs hate a man who had to risk his life to defend the liberties they so thoughtlessly take for granted. I am not going to go into why English literature's first great Asian novelist is the object of such venom, and was cheered to find that Rushdie did not want to speculate either. Aware of the danger of sounding like a moaner, he adds that Americans may not turn on their writers with the passion of the British because they care so little about what novelists have to say that they lack the energy even to loathe them." [The Guardian]

Something is beginning to tell me JR Smith and his sister don't really care

2012-01-30T12:22:00.009+08:00

Photo via V1.cn

Deadspin reports in a post titled "Please Get J.R. Smith Out Of China Before His Family Starts World War III" that Stephanie Smith -- this one -- was involved in another tussle, this time in that wonderful city that makes me want to kill myself every time I go there, Tianjin. One of the staffers at the game told a Sina reporter afterwards, "JR's sister really has an explosive temper. Even after getting ejected, she howled loudly and smashed stuff."

Here's a highlight video from Titan that touches on the incident. (I'll post a better video when it becomes available... as we speak, only the game's first half is online.) You can clearly see that it was a physical game all night, and Tianjin's strategy for defending Smith was apparently to get inside his head. Or his sister's, I suppose. The player charged with that task, Meng Xianglong, eventually fouled out, and said afterwards, "I didn't think [my tactics] were a big deal, I just executed our normal offense and defense, it was very ordinary."

Smith's team, Zhejiang, lost 112-104 to the fourth-worst team in the league. Smith left the court for a bit to attend to his sister -- to "protect" her (as reported by Chinese media) -- and apparently he wasn't himself when he came out for the fourth quarter (again, according to Chinese media). It should be pointed out though that he scored 37 points and went 19-for-22 from the foul line. Afterwards, Zhejiang's coach said it was "not convenient" to say why the team lost. Hmm. Here's the full quote from the above-linked Sina article:

About the loss, Zhejiang head coach Ding Wei was extremely displeased. Postgame, he said, "I was very satisfied with our players' performance, but some other factors led to our defeat, it's not convenient for me to say, I don't dare say, and I cannot say."

You know how it goes in sports: players who are high-maintenance are tolerated until the team begins to lose. And then?

Earlier this month, China Daily reported that "an insider from the Golden Bulls reveals that the team was planning to waive Smith, who has been too demanding." Too demanding, eh? Let's see...

According to Zhao Bing, the club had provided Smith with a presidential suite at a cost of 6,880 yuan per day, arranged a special chef and spent 700,000 yuan in insurance as he requested. However, he wanted another villa in Shanghai or Hangzhou with a chauffeured car to commute for training in Yiwu.

Oh, he's also making 3 million dollars. That's USD.

Oh, he pissed off some team officials recently by flying to Beijing without permission to get an MRI on his knee.

Oh, um, he's also been caught on shopping sprees in Shanghai when he was supposedly "ill." And when the rest of his team was practicing.

Did we mention the chauffeured car?

It's good to see Smith's making the most of his stay in China and living it up. You just know he's heard stories of God Shammgod's fate in the CBA and said, Nuh-uh... not gon' be me.

Your Happy-Times-Back-at-Work Links Edition

2012-01-30T00:57:00.003+08:00

Photo by Ren Hang via NeochaEDGE

Yesterday, most Chinese returned to work. By yesterday I do indeed mean Sunday. The holiday schedule is fucked up, don't ask questions.

Oops. "[Famous architect] Liang [Sicheng's] 'siheyuan,' the traditional courtyard home, was reportedly bulldozed by a real estate developer on Thursday in the name of preservation. // The former rectangle brick structure in Beizongbu hutong where Liang and his also architect wife Lin Huiyin (Phyllis Lin) resided and started the unprecedented profiling of ancient Chinese architecture during the 1930s was reduced to piles of rubble surrounding a lone wooden gate. // The government said Saturday that the demolition was not approved by the cultural heritage authorities and officials would investigate and deal with the case in accordance of the law." [Xinhua via China Daily]

Piss

Well, this pretty much sucks a big stinky asshole. "Obama... made it a point to remind the world that though the defence budget had been trimmed, U.S. defence spending would still continue to remain higher than the combined defence budgets of the next 14 biggest militaries in the world.... // The latest Pentagon doctrine identifies China as the enemy the U.S. will have to confront. 'Over the long term, China's emergence as a regional power will have the potential to affect the U.S. economy and our security in a variety of ways…. The U.S. will continue to make a variety of investments to ensure that we maintain regional access and the ability to operate freely,' the document states. 'The growth of China's military power must be accompanied by greater clarity of its strategic intentions in order to avoid causing friction in the region.' Though U.S. officials keep on harping about the China threat, they do concede that the country is far away from achieving any kind of parity in military capabilities with the U.S." [Frontline, "India's national magazine"]

Corollary: "China should impose 'sanctions' against the Philippines after it offered to allow more US troops on its soil, state media said Sunday, amid growing tensions over disputed waters in the South China Sea." [AFP]

Shit

Interview about democracy in China. Uh-oh. "I still think China needs democracy, that it needs to change."

Fuc... wait a minute. This is actually intelligent...

Ian Johnson interviews former deputy editor of Southern Metropolis Weekly Zhang Ping in the New York Review of Books.

I really oppose several arguments [that are commonly made] about why China can’t have democracy, such as the argument that China is unique—that Chinese people need to wait because their “quality” [a Chinese term, suzhi, that implies everything from educational level to manners] isn’t high enough and other ridiculous things like that. Some people said that democracy wasn’t part of Chinese culture, and then Taiwan became democratic. Then they said that Taiwan was a special case. Now look at Wukan. They had their own elections. People say it’s special, but in fact Wukan is really typically Chinese. It’s a Chinese town but they organized everything. So what argument are you left with? If Wukan can have democracy so can other parts of China.

I’m not saying that China should have western-style democracy. In fact, there’s not a single western model. What do they mean? Germany didn’t copy America and America didn’t copy Britain. The issue isn’t copying. It’s do you or don’t you want democracy? Of course democracy has a lot of problems but it’s a way forward.

Who knew, democracy really is sunshine.

A Global Times editorial done right... not by Global Times, of course. Oh no -- if you want something done right, you gotta let someone like Eric from Sinostand do it (I'm assuming Eric, who owns the site, wrote the post, but if not, apologies to the real author). "I’ve taken the liberty of re-writing it so that it has a chance of actually influencing some people toward GT’s viewpoint," the author writes. Go compare the results: Original vs. Modified. [Sinostand]

The Economist just can't catch a break. This is the third straight links post in which the London-based news magazine has been dissed. "Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi derided western economic prescriptions of the late 20th century as 'medicine that turned out to be worse than the disease.' // He singled out The Economist magazine for criticism, saying policies it advocated a decade ago had set the continent on the path to recolonization." By the way, the story is about the African Union's new headquarters in Ethiopia, and yes, it is somehow related to China. [Voices of America]

Fan Lixin, director of Last Train Home, speaks at film screening

2012-01-29T12:39:00.007+08:00

I've been on the record plenty of times with my praise of Fan Lixin's Last Train Home (winner of the Best Documentary Film Award at Amsterdam's International Documentary Film Festival), so I won't repeat myself, even though the movie probably deserves all the repeated praise it gets. Fan was at The Hutong yesterday after the film screening for a quick Q-and-A, highlights of which are below.

Fan, who worked as a cameraman for CCTV's English channel for three years, was inspired by his many encounters in the countryside, stunned by what he described as the "disparity between rural China and the cosmopolitan life that I had in Beijing." Often, upon returning to CCTV's offices near Sanyuanqiao, surrounded by glistening high-rises, he'd ask: "Where does all this prosperity come from?"

His answer, given last night to an audience of nodding heads:

"I really believe it's built on the sacrifice and the contribution of the migrant workers in China, so I felt I wanted to make a story and dedicate this to them."

Minor spoiler alert.

An update on the family:

We always kept contact with the family after we finished filming. The girl, she quit that job at the bar and went to find a new job. She's floating around. I knew she had a job at a hotel as a bartender and she went back to the factory for a small while and she came to study in a vocational school in Beijing last year for a few months, and then she quit again. Now she's working in a small city in Hubei. She's 22 now, so a big girl. She doesn't [get back for Spring Festival]. She still resents her parents very much. She thinks she never received any love from the parents, so she'll deliberately avoid them during Chinese New Year.

The little brother is now 16 years old. He was doing really great in school, he got really good marks. He's second-year in high school [Chinese high schools go three years]. He got a few No. 1s in the past few years. His parents were really happy.

Mother, she lost her job. She [technically] quit, but it's because of the financial crisis, [which] brought down the salaries so much. The factory usually doesn't fire you, it just drops the salary to a level that makes you quit by yourself. So she went back to the village to take care of the son. So now it's the father working alone in Guangzhou in the factory. So I think it's a really sad thing to see: by the end of this documentary, you see this family has been shattered into smaller pieces. Although the daughter did "succeed" in finding her own independence in the city.

What did the family get out of this film?

When I first approached the family it was only the parents. His children were still young. At the time Qin was only... almost 16 years old. But I only spoke to the parents, but it took them a while to agree to participating in the filming because nobody knew at that time how long would it be. Of course we spend time with them first, try to make friends, there's always a process for you to start filming with a potential subject. I didn't pay them or commit to any future payment, but I think the moment when they decided to participate may be when I told them that although this film is filmed with your family, it's really not just about you. I want to tell a story of all you people, all the 130 million migrant workers. So I think your story needs to be heard by all those people in the city. All this time I thought this will only be a Chinese film, I never thought it would go international.

On family's reaction to film.

When we finished the film I gave the family a DVD. The father saw it, he felt very, very sad watching their story on the big screen. The mother never saw it because she thought she couldn't take it, so she never saw it. Qin, the daughter, never wanted to see it. I also offered for her to see it, but she never wanted to. I hope she can maybe change her mind and go see it when she grows older.

But legally we did have all the papers. I think making a documentary film is really more than that, it's really more than getting the release form signed by people, so we tried to make sure that they're okay with us showing material. For example, when the fight between the daughter and father happened, that night we sat down with both the father and the daughter. I sat down with the father, my cameraman, Xiao Guang, sat down with the daughter, and we spoke for a really long time and in the end I wanted to make sure the father thinks it's okay for us to show this, and he gave us permission.

What can viewers do to help?

I would say that's the question why I wanted to make this film in the first place because I believe everybody can do our own share. We can all make our own effort in helping with the overall situation. A lot of people asked me what did I want to say with this film? I think, Wow, this really can take hours for me to answer. If it's a Chinese audience, I'd say don't look down upon the migrant workers. They could be building your house, they could be building your home, they could be serving your meal, and you really have no right to look down upon them. We know city people do look down upon them.

When we're showing the film in Western countries or the rest of the world, I would... uh, I would urge people to think about the lifestyle that we're living. All of us are consuming made-in-China products, and in a way we're part of the game, so I always thought every one of us could do something. We could maybe change a little and see how we can help. I can't get too specific.

But if I need to get specific on this family: we are doing this release and we're doing posters, we're collecting donations and we're selling posters and t-shirts made by this father to try to collect some funds for the son's education.

Next project.

I wanted to focus on the younger generation of migrants because they're quite different than their parents' generation. They grew up in a freer society and are much more aware of their rights and their opportunities in today's China, so whether they can blend into the city life or find their own destiny within the city is a question I want to pursue.

POSTSCRIPT: The picture above was taken from this dGenerate Films' post, which features a trailer and links to this very insightful interview with Fan.

Gingrich and Romney [EDIT: Sorry, no Romney] try to out-dumb one another, and NY Times goes after Apple again

2012-01-29T02:43:00.003+08:00

Via Shanghaiist, from the ATV 20th Miss Asia Awards in Hainan province

These are America's leaders:

"And I'd like to have an American on the moon before the Chinese get there." Newt Gingrich, everyone.

"I do not want to be the country that having gotten to the moon first, turn around and say, 'It doesn't really matter. Let the Chinese dominate space. What do we care?' I think that is a path of national decline. And I am for America being a great country, not a country in decline." ~~Mitt Romney~~Gingrich, everyone.

THESE ARE AMERICA'S LEADERS.

Do you hear that, Chinese people? You have absolutely nothing to fear from the U.S. Now get off its back.

[Quotes via Shanghaiist]

EDIT: Well, that's embarrassing. Thanks to Kenneth Tan for pointing out my quote attribution error. But my feelings about the Republican field of nominees remains the same.

The NY Times on Apple, China... again. "People like Ms. White of Harvard say that until consumers demand better conditions in overseas factories -- as they did for companies like Nike and Gap, which today have overhauled conditions among suppliers -- or regulators act, there is little impetus for radical change. Some Apple insiders agree." Meanwhile, other Apple insiders designed to drink some orange juice. [NY Times]

The first thing that should signal something is awry is the subhead: "For China's rise to continue, the country needs to move away from the model that has served it so well." Stop doing what works... OK, gotcha. But I hate this headline for another reason. The Economist is implying that there are only two options: 1. Western, the model we know; 2. Anything else. And if you're doing "anything else," there's no chance of you succeeding, or mending the model so that it guarantees future success. Why? Because it's not the model we know. [The Economist]

Stan Abrams of China Hearsay then finishes the takedown. "Fourth, religion. Not surprisingly, I find this one laughable. China needs religion to help the poor and to offer people a meaning to their lives beyond economic growth? From reading The Economist over many years, I thought economic growth was an end in and of itself! // But seriously, the government is certainly capable of dealing with poverty on its own; indeed, modern China can boast of having lifted more people out of poverty than any other nation in the history of the world. Thanks, but no thanks, religion. As to the meaning of life, this was a throwaway line in the article not elaborated upon, so I think I’ll ignore it." [China Hearsay]

Paper Republic's Eric Abrahamsen writes about Han Han. "'When the drivers in China turn their high-beams down as they pass each other on the road, they will be ready for revolution,' writes Han Han. 'Of course, by then, revolution won’t be necessary.' Instead, he argues, the process will be a gradual one, in which the cultural values conducive to democracy evolve along with democracy itself. 'Democracy is a long process of negotiation.'" [LA Times blog]

The death penalty. The Economist reports on netizens' support for 31-year-old Wu Ying, sentenced to death for "illegal fundraising." Really, China should practice more leniency, and judging by many of the comments in these two China Smack posts, it seems the people feel the same. I know the government really, really hates drugs and all, but smuggling doesn't warrant a death penalty. Sorry, it doesn't.

A glowing review of James Palmer's Heaven Cracks, Earth Shakes. [The Peking Duck]

NON-CHINA READ: "The accelerating rate of incarceration over the past few decades is just as startling as the number of people jailed: in 1980, there were about two hundred and twenty people incarcerated for every hundred thousand Americans; by 2010, the number had more than tripled, to seven hundred and thirty-one. No other country even approaches that. In the past two decades, the money that states spend on prisons has risen at six times the rate of spending on higher education. Ours is, bottom to top, a 'carceral state,' in the flat verdict of Conrad Black, the former conservative press lord and newly minted reformer, who right now finds himself imprisoned in Florida, thereby adding a new twist to an old joke: A conservative is a liberal who’s been mugged; a liberal is a conservative who’s been indicted; and a passionate prison reformer is a conservative who’s in one." [New Yorker]

A fireworks accident

2012-01-28T17:05:00.004+08:00

This is a story about how not to play with fireworks.

Don't do it in an alley.

Don't do it in an alley with lots of people.

In short, don't do it in Nanluoguxiang.

My friend Alex was walking through NLGX yesterday when a firework burst near him and some shrapnel sliced his chin. He bled somewhat profusely and might have needed stitches if he weren't lucky. See the picture to the right.

He demanded an apology from the person who set off the firework, but the guy apparently basically replied, "This is China, I do whatever I want."

"I was just MAD," Alex said. "Ginny had to restrain me from bashing that man's fat face in."

This is the sort of thing that happens when ~~cultures collide~~ a fella gets hit at close range with a firework. He gets MAD.

"I'm most angry about the man's lack of remorse and the fact that he and his buddy set off more of them in our faces just to piss us off," he said.

I asked Alex to write a guest post, but to his credit, he deferred, fearing he'd come off "horribly racist and xenophobic," when in fact all he wants is to express his anger at getting cut by a gunpowder-fueled projectile.

So this post is for you, Alex. You now join the esteemed Jeff Orcutt as known acquaintances to get hit by fireworks. May you consider your scar a badge of honor. You're a small part more Chinese today.

Zhang Yuan's Seventeen Years is a sad story of redemption, and it's very good

2012-01-28T13:11:00.000+08:00

Yesterday I watched Zhang Yuan's Seventeen Years at The Hutong as part of Time Out Beijing's Spring Festival film series. Props to Time Out film editor Wang Ge, who's been spot on with his picks so far. Made under the auspices of state sponsors, the movie nonetheless succeeds on several counts, most significantly a final two minutes -- capped by the most perfectly timed cut-to-black -- that are positively wonderful.

It's a simple story, but very well told. There's a great scene in the middle of the film that I can't believe I haven't seen in any other movie: the two protagonists try to cross a street in Tianjin, and it's shot in such a way that conveys the exact meaning of "urban jungle," especially for one that's been locked away for an extended length of time. The scene is well executed. That's what I'd say about the whole film, actually: it's just well done. Maybe not great across the board, but certainly good, with flickers of greatness. It's the type of movie I wish would get more publicity in China. As is, Seventeen Years won several international film awards, but wasn't even nominated for anything domestically.

The last thing I want to point out is that the Chinese title of this film is 过年回家 [Guonian Huijia], translated literally as "Going home for New Year's." I haven't figured out if it's a straightforward title or if it might be imbued with the same kind of meaning as "Seventeen Years." The English title implies the loss of the best years of one's life, and time itself as prison and punishment; the Chinese title implies a new start, which happens to coincide with a new year. The two probably work in synchrony.

Tonight, The Hutong is showing Last Train Home (been sold out for a while). Director Fan Lixin is supposed to be present. I'll probably have something to say about it afterwards.

Dance, you fucking monkey

2012-01-28T00:00:00.002+08:00

Dance.

Yesterday was the fifth day of Spring Festival, a traditional fireworks-setting day.

This is kind of why I hesitate to take a seat on the subway sometimes

2012-01-27T21:51:00.003+08:00

I'm leaning against a pole inside a Line 1 train when I hear a man sitting close to me say to a woman standing next to him, What's that question supposed to mean?

She had asked if there was a seat -- 有坐儿吗？

Do you mean you want to sit? he asks brusquely. His tone is sharp, his voice loud.

No.

He seems willing to stand but then decides better of it.

What do you mean is there a seat? Do you see any seats?

Indeed all the seats are taken. But now the two of them are both speaking loudly, attracting attention. I look left and see an older man with gray whiskers. His eyes are wide, his body tense. Swiftly, he moves over. He has an iron posture -- I know this because he nudged me out of the way -- and he stands up for the lady by planting himself next to her. Perhaps he's her husband, ready to put up his fists if the seated man dares touch her.

How can you talk like that? she asks.

Talk like what? the seated man demands.

I just asked you a question.

You asked if there was a seat. Is there a seat? I'm sitting right here and you ask if there's a seat?

She was just asking a question, the old man interjects, leaning in, shaking his finger. Their arms brush against one another.

Asking if there is a seat. What do you mean is there a seat? Does it look like there's a seat Where do you want to sit? Here? He signals at his lap.

Two more men, who are younger, come over. One stands next to the lady and joins the bickering, their Mandarin accented (unlike the seated one, who appears to be from Beijing). Everyone is staring at them. We're approaching Dongdan station, my stop.

The young one next to me leans into the seated man. Sit down, he says. Stop pointing your finger. Then, pointing his finger: Who talks like you just did? Was her question not right?

The man hesitates briefly. No, he says. I'll tell you why. You see me sitting there. So what do you mean, "Is there a seat?"

It's here that I had to get off.

This is what happens when you criticize America, and Reporters Without Borders's bit of ridiculousness

2012-01-27T15:14:00.009+08:00

Via Global Voices

This is rich. Sima Nan, a vocal American critic in China (so, like every liberal American, I guess), got his head pinched between an escalator and wall last Friday. In America. Wait, I italicized the wrong thing. Got his head pinched between an escalator and wall. Global Voices has a translated piece from blogger Yu Xiaoping in which Yu writes, "I deeply sympathize with the injured person, and I don't think this is the time to be ridiculing him." REALLLLY? I can't think of a BETTER time. I'm not familiar with Sima Nan's work, but dude -- you got your head stuck on an escalator. The equivalent on the stupidity scale has to be blowing off a digit while mixing dry ice and Coke.

China is 6th worst country for press freedom, according to organization that knows nothing about China. Even for an organization that only gets news through a Western filter, this is beyond ridiculous -- and I say this as someone who fully realizes how bad the Chinese press is, seeing as I work inside the machine and also hate censorship. Russia, a country in which journalists are murdered for doing their jobs, is 32 places above China. Mexico, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq are ranked 149-150-151-152, which is bad, but hang on... Somalia is 164... Egyptians raped Lara Logan, but that country is 166... Cuba is 167... Sudan is 170... Vietnam is 172. And then, after Vietnam, is Bahrain. Then China. [Reporters Without Borders]

Wait, you mean Americans don't like menial labor? I'm not going to quote from this rather bland Forbes article, but the author's point basically is: Americans are too good for those crappy iPhone manufacturing jobs in Shenzhen. I think the most telling thing he says is, "I would rather my children designed iPhones than made them."

So to summarize:

PEOPLE WHO DO NOT WANT iPHONES MADE IN CHINA:

Liberals: The jobs are inhumane

Conservatives: These are jobs Americans should have

PEOPLE WHO WANT iPHONES MADE IN CHINA:

Liberals: I would rather my children designed iPhones than made them

Conservatives: See above

And meanwhile, factory workers clock in and clock out, eke out a living, do the best they can.

Al Jazeera's Melissa Chan goes to a CCP school, puts her lead at the very end of article: "For hundreds, if not thousands of years, China has always had the challenging business of governing a large population." [Al Jazeera]

I tried forcing myself to watch the CCTV Spring Festival Gala, I really did. But I haven't. Maybe I will next week. Maybe I won't. It depends how drunk I get. Have at it if you'd like.

Corollary: "Sleeping Sister" via China Smack.

Falun Gong apply to march in Chinese New Year parade in New York. Well, what could possibly happen? Maybe aliens. Yes, maybe aliens alone can spare us from this stupid, stupid shit. [Wall Street Journal, subscription required (don't bother subscribing; Alicia Factiva'ed it for me, and it's stupid shit)]

NON-CHINA READ OF THE DAY: Cats. The link is full of cat videos. HT: Alicia. [The Telegraph]

A Tale of Two New Year's (a guest post)

2012-01-26T18:47:00.005+08:00

The author of the following is the editor of China Daily Show, a site that, when it first launched, ended my 10-day blogging hiatus and made me write, "Go here now. The greatest thing to happen since Ask Alessandro." The man is British, so pardon that. And the Dickens reference. Personally, I would've gone with "A New Year's Tale of Drugs, Sex, and Thievery," though only one of the three (that we know of) happens in the story. Hint: it's not drugs.

***

If there’s any time for the foreigner to feel especially dislocated in China, it’s during Spring Festival, when everyone gets ready to do one (or all) of these three things: travel, watch a disappointing four-hour televised revue, let off fireworks. Oh, there’s other stuff -- drinking, dumplings, the sending and receiving of mass blessings, some ancestral worship, perhaps the temple fairs -- but I warrant those three are the biggest, which is why, as editor of China’s only reliable news source in uncertain times, I chose to write about only two of these but will probably post the other soon (next year, say).

The celebrations are a bit of a mystery for the outsider: sure, the spirit of the festive holiday is there, especially in the nightmare 45-hour standing-room-only commute plus managing expectations after finally seeing your home and family for the first time in a year -- I’m expecting a flurry of “Migrant worker kills two after wife’s affair with ESL teacher” stories as the nation’s love affair with English penetrates even the most remote Han outpost -- but generally, China expats fall into two camps: married ones making the diligent journey to their in-laws or single youths who celebrate their way (boozing, pratting).

It’s a bit like being an orphan invited to join another family’s Christmas but given that the authentic one was less than a month ago this year, I found it particularly hard to enter the Spring spirit. But what would I have done with it anyway? Probably headed somewhere pleasant: my girlfriend, although a proper Beijinger, feels little for the festival either. Her mother, a somewhat difficult divorcee I’ve yet to meet, greeted her admission of having a winter cold with the curt directive to stay away. That was a win, though, as far as we were concerned.

As the shit kicked off around 4pm, I watched fireworks from my balcony with amused detachment, though it was already getting cold out there within seconds. I knew it was -15 outside, and there was every reason to stay indoors and hit the download collection all night long but the tiny part of me that hasn’t become a curmudgeonly, sixty-year-old estranged colonel in the East India Company was suggesting we actually go out.

No such luck for my English former housemate, C__, who was two days into his annual visit to see his best mate from the days (2007-9) back in the jewel of the Pearl River, Dongguan. Fortunately he doesn’t have to stay there (read for a summary of every night out that ever conceivably happened in DG; he’s nailed the One for the Road) as Rex’s folks actually live in nearby Hunan -- so it’s off to the country. C__’s sort of a migrant worker himself, except he doesn’t work very hard, but during these trips he gets very much under their skin, travelling down by rail “sleeping standing up, with a man with four massive packing cases for luggage snoring on my shoulder.”

Things don’t get easier on arrival: a day before New Year’s Eve, he arrives casa Rex, a remote village (maybe he should open an English school there?) one can picture easily enough: lots of one-storey buildings (ping fang) and farm outbuildings, rubble everywhere, some petrified trees, a few sorry-looking or dead animals, and kids with even sorrier-looking “toys” (often dead animals). In a few decades or so, this enclave might be replaced by three high-rise apartments that don’t accept chickens as guests, but for now it’s rural China as it really is: a hardscrabble existence. He’s a brave boy but sure enough, even he was shaken: “general living conditions are horrific… ” he texted. “I haven’t had more than 2 hours sleep in a week and about to try. Not sure when back… in my minds eye as soon as possible” ([sic], obviously, but not too [sic] considering his usual sleep-deprived texting quality).

As I received this, I’m opening a bottle of discounted weiss beer and checking the Sichuanese-style pork rinds we’re roasting in our oven like some bubble-icious expat cocooned in the 1920s. In fairness, our compound is just a bunch of squat, Soviet-style building which, in any country outside China, would rightfully be full of junkies and condoms, so it’s not inauthentic -- still, the most anti-social sight you’re likely to meet there is a granny pretending she can’t see you desperately running for the elevator.

I suspect the chief enemy out in the sticks is boredom, which, just after bad weather, is hard to deal with on a short-term basis so I sent C__ a cheery text from the history book I’m reading, which is about the sex lives of British Empire-seekers. A considerable amount viewed the Empire as a handy way to enjoy the kind of private life it would’ve been near-impossible to enjoy back home, while the rest would have been succumbed out of sheer desperation (the writer offers some salutary stuff about the chronicle of those who buckled under the toil abroad, “the heat and constant rain, the inertia and loveliness, the monotonous food, the lack of inertia and intellectual stimulus, sometimes snot even white neighbors to make up a game of tennis and bridge… men took mistresses, developed homicidal manias, drank themselves to death or broke down into neurotic wrecks by themselves in the back-bush.” We’ve all been there).

And indeed, C__ was there at that point. Was he considering taking a peasant mistress or had he, at least, developed a homicidal mania? For the situation was worse than even he’d expected: an SMS missive (no web!) baldly stated: “[I’m] living in a barn with chickens, no heating, it’s pouring with rain and I am sharing a hard bed with [Rex]. A grandma has just pumped and boiled some water from a well and given it me with a flannel so I can have a strip wash” -- no doubt, one hopes, all to take place under her vaguely disapproving, unblinking gaze. When people talk wistfully about the Real China, this is what they are in fact talking about, whether they know it or not. That’s foreign people, of course -- diehard Maoists aside, you rarely find proper Chinese yearning for the authentic old life, outside the city. That’s an indulgence only foreigners can afford.

(Plus, as anyone who’s grown up there can testify, the countryside is no place for anyone to grow up. The cost of not having multiplex car parks for shopping malls, cinemas and bowling alleys spoiling your view is -- no cinemas or bowling alleys.)

Communist country tends to be even worse. To witness this in living motion, take a train from Germany over the Polish border -- you can see the quality of life declining by the mile.

So I had an advantage in simple access to entertainment: decent-enough bookshelves, Playstation and live Republican debates, all at my fingertips. Yet... Megaupload.com has been shut down (by the folks who brought you SOPA, surely? Never used it or even heard of it actually), so I had to go out, didn’t I? Even though I wasn’t (nor ever will be) one of those sorry bastard expats joining four generations of in-laws under one leaking roof for a week in rural China not doing much.

I gave a hongbao to my ayi, then texted another couple who immediately agreed to meet at a central nightspot offering an 80-yuan open bar and 2-4-1 champagne (it turned out to be 120 when we arrived). My stomach honestly baulked at the thought of all that booze for under a tenner -- there’s nothing quite so debilitating as a gutful of fake Long Island Ice Tea -- but choices are thin on the ground if one doesn't want to spend the evening outside inhaling firecracker dust. We watched Bill Maher for an hour, then waited inside an ATM booth (whose incessant alarm was shrill enough to drive me out into the cold, among the fireworks people) to be picked up by L__, a friend of my girlfriend who had just left 14 family members playing mahjong to drive us all to Chaoyang Park West Gate. After one of the most hassle-free journeys I’ve ever enjoyed in any city ever, we arrived around 10 to find the champagne waiting, which was a delight as champagne so rarely waits for anyone. Anyway, when the critical hour struck I was mildly drunk, drunk enough to stick my head out the door to observe the jolly display (no one bothers with countdowns in China).

Fireworks don’t drive me quite as mad as they do some people, but they are irritating to me because they provide such little value: the same pop, bang or fizzle repeated ad nauseam, like a kids’ TV theme. I don't even mind listening to them outside all week, though it’s much less fun when you’re actually on the ground (cycling this morning, two giant crackers in the middle of the road went off just by my face, placed there by a group of adult men outside a restaurant). Still, five minutes was more than enough: through the smoke, I glimpsed a staggering drunk waving a lit roman candle, a mobile phone clamped to his earmuffs. Two other men dressed like security in black were unspooling firecracker rolls like soldiers solemnly preparing a Gatling ammunition belt.

The air was thick with smoke, singed with cordite and tasted worse than napalm in the very early morning. We beat a retreat upstairs, where the bar was now heaving with the city’s cheapest skinflint drinkers, mostly exceedingly young American students and Nigerian men in sportswear and sunglasses. It was either one of these two demographics possibly responsible for what happened next: my pal got his wallet lifted from his back pocket as I ordered drinks at the bar. That left us pleading with management to view footage from the camera trained on the crime scene, while I aggressively eyed disco-goers for suspicious behavior (slurred voice, strange gestures, short skirts, wearing sunglasses at night) while the womenfolk left behind on the VIP sofas got thoroughly drunk.

Indeed, on our return L__ had gone from sparky, independent 21st century Chinese woman to tearful wreck requiring full-time reassurance from the other two about the dull Scottish teacher who dumped her suddenly after returning from their beach holiday. “This is why I don’t like hanging out with girls,” A__, one of her comfort women, confided. “Half an hour ago, she wanted a threesome. Now...”

I pictured C__ down in his rain-battered barn, surrounded by farm birds, possibly watching Chunwan, probably trying to sleep. He’d mentioned having “two Advil I might drop now, or might save till later. I completely forgot to bring any books…” So, one thing in common for New Year tomorrow morning: we’d both be popping Advil.

An economics-heavy links edition, except for the one about the zombies... and Ai Weiwei

2012-01-25T13:07:00.000+08:00

Via Zero Hedge

In case you'd forgotten that Ai Weiwei is the most beloved Chinese person in the West: Alison Klayman's documentary about him, Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, got a standing ovation at Sundance. [LA Times's 24 Frames]

The race toward the Zombie Apocalypse: virus vs. bacteria -- who will win? "The WHO says the effectiveness of antibiotics is under threat from overuse in China, as diseases mutate to develop immunity. It estimates that 6.8 per cent of Tuberculosis cases in China are multi-drug resistant, compared just 2 per cent in developed countries. Experts believe that diseases as diverse as syphilis and the hospital super-bug MRSA are thriving as they adapt to China's antibiotic-heavy environment. 'We are now on the brink of losing this precious arsenal of medicines,' Dr Michael O'Leary, the World Health Organization's China representative said in a 2011 statement calling for more responsible use of antibiotics. 'The speed with which these drugs are being lost far outpaces the development of replacement drugs.'" [Time]

This Global Times (Chinese edition, translated to China Digital Times) editorial makes a couple of interesting points -- if only the author could have done it without stroking his woody: "As far as the issue of speech is concerned, in recent years there are two groups that felt the effects most deeply. One group comprises hundreds of millions of Internet users, and the Internet has opened a completely new environment for speech and a new platform for expressing opinions. There is a world of difference between their freedom of speech on the Internet and in Chinese society of yesteryear. While occasionally their online speech may be subject to keyword restrictions, nevertheless, they have all kinds of means of skirting them. // It may not be the government’s desire to provide these freedoms, but the overall facts are taking shape: it is inevitable that the Internet will bring about open speech for China." [China Digital Times]

The Beijinger wasted an entire blog post on Dashan, asking questions such as "Is it time to stop hating him already?" and "Or is it just jealousy?" They completely miss the point. Most mammals feel a natural aversion to Dashan because he looks like this:

Chinese Grammar Wiki via Sinosplice founder: John Pasden introduces this new tool in this blog post.

A Rabble-Rouser's Trip to Linyi. "'If [only] there should come a day when we are ready to die and can tell our children’s children that when we were young in 2011, we once did a little something for a fat, blind man, and we did it without the intention of changing much, but only because we wanted inner peace and to prove that in a land rife with injustice, the blossom of morality is ever opening in our hearts.' Yes, no matter how dark the skies, the flowering of justice is within us." [China Digital Times]

Deborah Brautigam, Africa expert, takes down Economist story. "The Economist still doesn't get it on China's foreign aid. They merrily mix apples and lychees in a new special report..." [China in Africa: The Real Story]

The China Growth Story. [Naked Capitalism]

Corollary: Two comments from the above link to highlight. The first is the graph that appears at the top of this post. The second is from commenter YankeeFrank, something worth remembering: "Let’s be clear: GDP, as Robert Kennedy made clear over 40 years ago, measures everything except what is important to a happy life."

If GDP is really your thing though, check this out: A debate about Chinese economics. (What, you were expecting?) [China Debate]

Because you absolutely did not ask for this, here was the musical playlist to this year's Hong Kong Chinese New Year fireworks extravaganza:

财伸到 Caishen Dao
Money God is Here (translations are mine, completely unofficial)

2.
家大欢喜 Jiada Huanxi
Everyone is Happy

3.
春天的故事 Chuntian de Gushi
Spring Story

4.

龙的傳人 Long de Chuanren
Dragon Ancestor

5.
和兰花一起 He Lanhua Yiqi
Together with Orchids

6.
功夫熊猫 Gongfu Xiongmao
Kung-fu Panda

7.
马照跑 Ma Zhao Pao
Horse Races Continue

8.
Theme (all the segments had a theme, but only the last one was worth noting): 炮声“龙龙” The Sound of Fireworks is Very Loud ("Double Dragon")

大峡谷 Da Xiagu
Big Canyon

NON-CHINA READ: "'I can’t make that movie,' Lucas recalled thinking when he read the scripts. 'I’m going to have make this kind of . . . entertainment movie.' So Lucas focused on the middle chapter: the dogfights and the Nazi-hunting black pilots who shout, 'How you like that, Mr. Hitler!'" About George Lucas's new film, Red Tails, about the Tuskegee Airmen. [NY Times Magazine]

Couple things: I'm fully aware Star Wars was revolutionary for its era. But it's a bad series of films. There's a ridiculous plot and hicks in white metallic suits who can't hit the broadside of Jabba the Hutt. The dialogue was also written by a 14-year-old.

Second: There's already been a movie about Tuskegee Airmen, a version for adults as opposed to teenagers, and you can see all of it starting here. It's good.

Because we dislike Foxconn, should we relieve 900,000 people of their jobs?

2012-01-24T18:28:00.000+08:00

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Fear Factory

www.thedailyshow.com

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This is a tricky issue. Because on one hand, America needs jobs. But on the other, as this NY Times article currently making the rounds reported, "the iPhone in the United States would demand much more than hiring Americans -- it would require transforming the national and global economies."

The above video -- however funny -- is also yet another example of the always dumb "China Narrative," wherein Western press (in this case, CNN and the Telegraph, the two sources selectively quoted by Jon Stewart's comedy writers) seek to present stories in an "objective" fashion that happens to only cite facts (which are sometimes not facts) that make China look bad while ignoring anything that might suggest the Chinese government isn't all-bad. And it's a narrative that Evan Osnos deftly picks apart:

iPhone suicides, believe it or not, are not news to the Chinese. Nobody has done more aggressive reporting on the factory conditions at Foxconn than the Chinese press. Before foreigners noticed, newspapers in eastern and southern China were investigating the deaths of workers and Chinese bloggers were documenting more details about their daily lives than foreign visitors could hope to obtain. It’s one of those examples of how erratic the Chinese world of information is these days: the Chinese press is throttled on many issues, but when it concerns workplace conditions -- or, better yet, a factory with a boss in Taiwan -- the issue resonates with enough notes from old socialist hymns that it gets reported in astonishing detail.

Osnos quotes Nicholas Kristof in his post, and you should go to this link -- a transcript of a recent show from the excellent This American Life -- to read in full what Kristof has to say about sweatshops. Excerpt:

It's a very awkward thing to defend sweatshops, if you will. I mean, I think it's useful to be reminded about how grim the conditions are. But again, I just think that if you try to think how you can fight poverty most effectively, and what has fought it within China, then I think sweatshops are a key part of that answer.

Unfortunately, Kristof wasn't given as much time as Mike Daisey, one-man proprietor of the radio show The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs. As a follow-up to Kristof's comment, Daisey basically implies he wants American corporations to change Chinese laws. Anyone who's tried to do business in China is probably snorting right now.

By the way, here's what Daisey had to say about Foxconn's suicides:

And the biggest problem is that it isn't the quantity, it's the cluster. If there was any company in America where a sizable chunk of your workforce went up over a period of time, especially close to one another, and killed themselves in the same way very publicly, it would be an enormous news story because it's far outside the norm.

Problem No. 1: The comparison with an American company... huh? Shenzhen --> Houston?? There are no comparables except within the same country. As This American Life host Ira Glass notes, "Some people have pointed out that 12 suicides for 400,000 workers is actually much lower than China's suicide rate as a whole, as China has an unusually high suicide rate of 22 suicides per year per 100,000 people."

Problem No. 2: Daisey is simply wrong. See: Osnos excerpt, above.

But, again, the China Narrative demands that we acknowledge China is worse than the U.S. and that all the faults rest with the Chinese system. Something tells me it's Daisey's show and his sentiments that will get much wider play in America, and that a vast majority of people who listen to his show will think, Yeah, burn down Foxconn!

To those people, I have this to say: unfortunately, the world is the way it is. It's not the way bleeding hearts want it, and for that, we should all be sorry, we really should, but -- at the risk of repeating myself -- the world is the way it is, so that a 12-year-old child of an Anhui farmer who works 18 hours a day on the paddies might choose to seek employment in the big city to make four times as much as her parents at a company that draws the ire of the developed world. And what has the developed world ever given her? Never mind that American politicians don't give a shit about her, they only complain about their own country's jobs and the dollar-yuan exchange rate. That girl has a great story, and I applaud Mike Daisey for getting it and the hundred-plus other stories from Foxconn. I just fear that the China Narrative being the way it is -- much like the world is the way it is -- people will see the girl as merely a symbol of a "Communist regime."

Hong Kong's fireworks extravaganza

2012-01-24T01:11:00.001+08:00

Every year on the second night of the 15-day Spring Festival (which is today), Hong Kong puts together a prodigious fireworks display at Victoria Harbor. The bombardment of the night sky is an attempt to slug melancholy back into its corner, to bury the blues in its earthy burrow and exterminate all that is not right in the world.

I was there last February and blogged the day after: "I have more to say about this soon." After a much belated "soon"...

It's impossible to convey through a video, but there's a palpable sense of joy. "Palpable sense of joy" is a bad, bad, un-writerly phrase, like "jolt of electricity," but it's the right choice of words here. Light, fire and thunder maraude the parts of our brain able to perform higher-level functions, and left with a husk of ourselves, we are children again with our heads raised in pure bliss. For just an hour or so, our worries are blasted into a million shards to the accompaniment of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture. There's certainly no room for our very adult cynicism.

Possibly the greatest commercial featuring a cat licking itself you'll see today

2012-01-23T14:02:00.003+08:00

I uploaded this before discovering that at least two others on YouTube have already uploaded it. My apologies to those people. The licking happens at the :26 mark.

The New York Times on Apple, Foxconn

2012-01-22T19:46:00.004+08:00

Here's your read of the day from the New York Times:

In 2007, a little over a month before the iPhone was scheduled to appear in stores, Mr. Jobs beckoned a handful of lieutenants into an office. For weeks, he had been carrying a prototype of the device in his pocket.

Mr. Jobs angrily held up his iPhone, angling it so everyone could see the dozens of tiny scratches marring its plastic screen, according to someone who attended the meeting. He then pulled his keys from his jeans.

People will carry this phone in their pocket, he said. People also carry their keys in their pocket. “I won’t sell a product that gets scratched,” he said tensely. The only solution was using unscratchable glass instead. “I want a glass screen, and I want it perfect in six weeks.”

After one executive left that meeting, he booked a flight to Shenzhen, China. If Mr. Jobs wanted perfect, there was nowhere else to go.

And we can frown upon guanxi -- it's technically a term that refers to interpersonal relationships among those doing business, but often it could be a way of saying "greasing the palm" -- but here's proof that it works:

For years, cellphone makers had avoided using glass because it required precision in cutting and grinding that was extremely difficult to achieve. Apple had already selected an American company, Corning Inc., to manufacture large panes of strengthened glass. But figuring out how to cut those panes into millions of iPhone screens required finding an empty cutting plant, hundreds of pieces of glass to use in experiments and an army of midlevel engineers. It would cost a fortune simply to prepare.

Then a bid for the work arrived from a Chinese factory.

When an Apple team visited, the Chinese plant’s owners were already constructing a new wing. “This is in case you give us the contract,” the manager said, according to a former Apple executive. The Chinese government had agreed to underwrite costs for numerous industries, and those subsidies had trickled down to the glass-cutting factory. It had a warehouse filled with glass samples available to Apple, free of charge. The owners made engineers available at almost no cost. They had built on-site dormitories so employees would be available 24 hours a day.

The Chinese plant got the job.

An all-around fascinating read.

And now, an unrelated anecdote:

I'm in a bathroom at Hong Kong International Airport (Chek Lap Kok) earlier this evening when I go to wash my hands. There are two nozzles, both with sensors: out of one comes water; out the other comes a sticky, cummy colloid.

Now, obviously the latter is soap. Right? But trust me when I tell you: when you're expecting water and get the alternative, your only inclination is to think, What the fuck?

Choose wisely.

On this eve of a new lunar year

2012-01-22T10:00:00.000+08:00

We revisit a fireworks display from two years ago:

Have a safe one, kids in Beijing. I'll check in from Hong Kong.

Cantonese is the most annoying sound in the world. Apologies to Cantonese people

2012-01-21T19:21:00.000+08:00

Bengali white tiger cubs [International Business Times]

Puerile shit: This video's been making its rounds. Quick background: mainland bitch eats on subway, Hong Kong bitch be like, "Hey, no eating on subway," then official subway shows up to mediate. Whatever. It's stupid, inconsequential, and stupid. But after watching, I do want to say: HOLY SHIT does Cantonese suck. I'm sure the people are first-rate and all, but how can anyone trust human beings who have acclimated to such vulgar racket as the spoken Cantonese word? Are we sure Hong Kongers aren't a subspecies evolving into Gears of War-like Grubs? I've noted before that Cantonese sounds worse than "leather-clad S&M kooks with mohawks descending upon elderly women with chain-saws," but let me amend. Cantonese is a geyser of head-on car crashes. It is the incendiary bomb of our ear canals. Hong Kong's poets could start a world war by publishing a podcast. It's naaaasty, like Big Nasty Kevin Nash nasty if you happened to picture him romantically sexing a seal elephant. If someone used a Cantonese accent to tell me to stop eating when I was hungry, I'd probably flip my shit as well. You literally could not attach ten thousand vuvuzelas end to end next to a speaker spewing microphone feedback at a Nickelback concert attended by braying donkeys and produce a series of sounds worse than a Cantonese sentence. Hey, wanna hear the most annoying sound in the world? Go to Hong Kong.

Actually, Superflak Liu Weimin of the Foreign Ministry might be more annoying than Cantonese. He commented on Christian Bale like the Superflak he is. Now he's at it in reply to Gary Locke: "As for some individuals that have been punished by law, I don't think it means their freedom of speech or religion is suppressed, but because they violated Chinese laws." I don't wish for your death, Liu Weimin, I really don't. I am simply saddened by your existence. [Global Times]

Taiwanese film -- not mainland Chinese -- gets shortlisted for Oscar. Out: The Flowers of War. In: Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale (賽德克‧巴萊). I said in my Flowers review that it had no shot at an Oscar, but to not even make the shortlisted top 9? I'm reminded of Harvey Weingard leaning over to tell Ari Gold after Medellin's flop at Cannes: "It ain't easy making a movie." [WSJ]

Corollary: This is a very telling quote from director Zhang Yimou:

Asked why he chose to film “Flowers”–based on a novel by Yan Geling–when so many films had already been made about the Japanese occupation of Nanjing, Mr. Zhang said it was because good stories have become difficult to find in China. “Good writers have all been signed away by the big companies,” he said, citing the rapid growth and industrialization of Chinese film.”

"Freedom." Below is a blog post by Eric Abrahamsen of Paper Republic reproduced in toto:

How to feel like a complete noob at the Chinese internet:

Step One: Browse weibo. Notice heated discussions about something called 目田, which apparently means "eye field". Have the vague feeling that you're not getting the joke.

Step Two: Finally catch on that 目田 (eye field) is just 自由 (freedom), with bits missing.

If only the internet censors were this slow…

Now click over to Paper Republic to give that excellent site its deserved pageview.

Headline says it all (not really). "Fake petitioners offered free rides home." [China Daily Show]

And the original Daily Show: On Foxconn. [dGenerate Films]

A Spring Festival Story. "I’m amused by the annual Ayi exodus. Since it’s rare to see a Beijing expat lift anything heavier than money, this seasonal retreat of our nannies, waitresses, cooks, cleaners, drivers, dry cleaners, convenience store owners, and jianbing purveyors is a useful exercise in deprivation and self-reliance…like an outward bound experience for the neo-colonialist in all of us." [Jottings from the Granite Studio]

New to the blogroll: Ministry of Tofu (really no excuse for this not being on the blogroll earlier); Hexie Farm, a Chinese blog of political cartoons (via McClatchy's China Rises blog); and ChinaB.

NON-CHINA READ: "Are we sick? Are we all sick?" The Tommy Craggs era is well on its way, and you'll rue not following it from the beginning if you don't start now. [Deadspin]

POSTSCRIPT: Welcome, readers of the Viva Vince Hamilton Yahoo! fantasy basketball league.

Here's Shaquille O'Neal having a lot more fun in China than Yao Ming

2012-01-21T17:36:00.004+08:00

So, first Shaq breaks news of Yao Ming's retirement on Twitter, and now this...

Here is Yao Ming trying to stay awake at a government meeting in Shanghai:

"'Poor Yao, he probably regrets being that tall and not being able to sleep!' wrote one commentator on China’s twitter-like service, Weibo." [Behind the Wall]

And here is Shaquille O'Neal on Hunan TV, doing something akin to kung fu with kids:

Someone is clearing winning this retirement. I wonder if Shaq's offer for Yao to "vacation together" is still good.

What, are businessmen NOT smuttier than porn stars?

2012-01-20T18:08:00.007+08:00

The above pictured is Sora Aoi (also known as "Sola Aoi"). You'd hug her if she offered, right?

Because she recently elicited controversy by attending a VANCL year-end party and hugging businessmen, real salt of the earth, those people. Best I can tell from this Global Times story, people are equally upset at the people who hugged her and at Aoi herself for simply existing.

One web user said, "For such a person to become so popular is a social tragedy. It displays that social morality has slipped off the edge of an abyss."

It's time to get off your perch, you.

For you see, this was a year-end party, a nianhui, and VANCL held it for the express purpose of one-upping its competitors in profligacy. Some netizens said Aoi's appearance was a "commercial stunt." OH REALLY? The woman has 9.14 million followers on Sina Weibo. She's a porn star (or "former porn star," if you had to get technical, but like syphilis, I don't think "porn star" is something someone ever shakes). She's not hugging shady old men (and Han Han) out of the goodness of her god-blessed and bountiful bosom.

Anyway, "one-upping competitors in profligacy" is the nice way of describing nianhuis, these year-end galas. You might be familiar with CCTV's Spring Festival gala, which is like America's New Year's Eve special crossed with the Super Bowl; company nianhuis follow the same concept: people perform individually or in groups, usually a song or dance or some other hidden talent, often in a banquet setting. And why? For the express purpose of jerking off the company's bosses. One boss will then say something about keeping up the good work and we hope next year you'll make even more money, blah blah blah. Then one or more of them pull down their pants and get blown on stage by the prettiest woman in the office with any real power -- with no one watching, because no one actually watches any performance at these things (or they're polite and pretend not to notice) -- then everyone engages in an orgy of drinking distilled liquor. It's fantastic. Remind me to tell you about the one I attended yesterday (I will upload a video soon).

The GT article goes on:

"If a company promotes itself in such a way, it smears its customers as well and won't go far. This challenges Chinese traditional culture out of the desire for profit," said another Weibo user.

VANCL employees defended the decision to invite Aoi, saying it was made based on the opinion of all members of staff and the move displayed the company's inclusive attitude rather than tarnishing its brand.

"I think inviting Aoi to the party was a splendid plan. It has fully displayed the company's courage, boldness, and tolerance. All criticism afterward is nonsense," a female employee from VANCL, who refused to be named, told the Global Times yesterday.

God, I don't know where to begin. Chinese traditional culture -- the one that miraculously survived the Cultural Revolution, or the one that died when Starbucks moved into the Forbidden City? Which are you talking about?

Desire for profit. As opposed to a publicly listed company's desire for...?

And oh hey, look at that, VANCL decided to do something because its members of staff wanted it. Wonderful company to work for, that. What a COURAGEOUS and BOLD company. And so TOLERANT, too. Except for criticism. Criticism, of course, is NONSENSE.

I leave you with this excerpt. Unravel it however you will:

Some have voiced concern that the phenomenon has shown young people's morality has been corrupted. However, Zhou Xiaozheng, a professor of sociology at Renmin University, disagrees with this.

"These conclusions are baseless. It's fine as long as what they do does not violate the law or go against the main stream of economic development and social stability."

Wait, we can't end on that social stability bullshit. I'll leave you with this:

You can write "shit fuck cunt cocksucker" to your Congressman about SOPA, but here's one word they don't allow

2012-01-20T11:58:00.011+08:00

Click to expand the above. Notice that it's the word DELETE (de_leted) that gets flagged by the bot.

Derrick Sobodash, a work colleague, was trying to explain in a very rational letter to his Congressman in Michigan that the proposed anti-piracy bill SOPA would end up hurting the one industry in Detroit that's still hiring, IT. In addition, American companies like YouTube would have to hire people to self-censor, expurgating content that could potentially draw the attention of the RIAA and MPAA, and naturally companies would outsource those jobs to India and Vietnam. Derrick very reasonably explained that China keeps untold thousands employed as censors, but no such employment benefit would come to the U.S. because surely no one would want those jobs.

He wrote all this and then hit send, and an error message popped up: "We're sorry, we have found the word 'delete' in this field."

Personally, I'm sad he didn't just send "Shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker and tits" on the first go.

***

Derrick, who is more tech-savvy than I'll ever be, described SOPA in terms that made me shudder:

The American Internet will become like the Chinese Internet.

Think about it: self-censorship will become necessary, as mentioned above, as preemptive measures against lawsuits (in China, self-censorship is necessary as preemptive measures against government rebukes).

Larger companies could use SOPA to bury their competitors. They could hire their version of 50-cent armies to direct attention to potential SOPA violations. Vimeo, we'll see you later.

The amount of content that could potentially become unavailable except to subscribers is staggering. It would be as if a wall were erected. A virtual wall. A... Great Firewall. And that whole paying for content? It'd be like paying for a VPN in China.

So, yeah, contact your representative. Whether you choose to curse is entirely up to you.

UPDATE: Evan Osnos of the The New Yorker has a great post about Chinese reactions to SOPA.

J.R. Smith did this last night in Beijing

2012-01-19T22:39:00.000+08:00

Stephon Marbury may have had one of the best games of his CBA career in a winning effort, but it was J.R. Smith who expressed what the Chinese might call suzhi (素质) -- character.

The first player he crossed over, Wang Xiaohui, actually hurt himself (24:43 mark in this video).

Keep your head up, young fella.

Starbury had the best game of his CBA career last night

2012-01-19T20:18:00.007+08:00

Stephon Marbury scored 45 points. Grabbed 12 rebounds. Decided to pass a few times and get 10 assists. Swiped three (felt like more).

The Beijing Ducks should have gotten blown out by J.R. Smith's team (Zhejiang ~~Cyclones~~Golden Bulls, if you're wondering, though "J.R. Smith's team" is more accurate). Instead, they came back from seven down with 7 minutes to play to win 102-93.

Smith, who took the lockout gambit and lost (his contract with the CBA has no opt-out clause, so he's stuck till the season ends in March), is currently leading the league in scoring with 33.8 points per game, so I thought I'd chart all his shots. The last time these teams played, in Zhejiang, Beijing head coach Min Lulei said, "Our strategy was to let Smith get his points and stop everyone else." I figured he could've been good for 50 (also, this). But midway through the third quarter I realized it was Marbury I should've been tracking.

The former Shanxi Brave Dragon and Foshan Dralion drained a three at the end of the 3rd quarter to bring the Beijing Ducks to within five, 79-74. WIth just under seven to play in the game, with his team trailing by seven, he drove the lane and drew a foul, prompting a Beijing TV commentator to note, "Marbury is the Beijing offense right now." A couple possessions later, on defense, he poked a ball away from a ~~Cyclone~~Golden Bull, then drained another three to pull the Ducks to within 88-86. Soon after, he stole the ball, dished to a teammate, then rebounded his teammate's miss and put it back to tie the game at 88.

From there, Smith -- who finished with a healthy 39 on 14-of-25 shooting -- went cold, and the Ducks begin to pull away (also thanks to Beijing's other foreign player [each team can have two], Randolph Morris).

Watch the entire game here.

The Ducks are now back alone in second place.

POSTSCRIPT 1: There's a video featuring J.R. Smith that's currently uploading onto YouTube that you'll want to come back for. ETA couple hours. UPDATE: Here.

POSTSCRIPT 2: JR Smith vs. Beijing Ducks, January 18, 2012:

1st quarter
8:40 remaining: long jumper from top of key, 2 pts
5:54: a couple crossovers and a silky jump shot, 4 pts
5:24: drive to basket, fouled on dunk attempt; 2-2 FT, 6 pts
4:02: crossover blow-by, bumped on way to basket, converts layup; 1-1 FT, 9 pts
3:00: Fouled while dribbling beyond three-point line, Beijing over limit; 1-2 FT (he front-rims the first, and the crowd goes, "Oooh"), 10 pts
2:05: Fouled again, by different defender; 2-2 FT, 12 pts
1:39: Ahead of pack, fast-break layup, 14 pts
:57: Step-back long J nothing but net. Commentator says something that I'll translate as, "He's got mad skills." 16 pts

2nd quarter
9:21: 2v1 fast-break (the 1 is Marbury): Smith passes behind his back, but his teammate doesn't make the layup; Smith taps in put-back, 18 pts
8:35: Hard into lane, 20 pts

7:49: Smith takes his first break of the game as the commentator talks about how much he's exerting himself and how fast his stamina has been drained. Because the CBA only allows foreigners to play a combined six quarters -- and because Zhejiang's other foreigner, Josh Boone (yes, the one from UCONN), needs some PT as well -- Smith doesn't return to the game until the second half.

3rd quarter
10:05: Smith drains a three to put Zhejiang up 53-49, 23 pts
6:59: Drains another three, Zhejiang up 61-56. "It's raining," one of the commentators says. "His shot is too accurate." The other commentator notes Smith has 28 points, but that's not right - I have him pegged for 26.
5:52: His third trey of the quarter, 29 pts: (the commentator confirms this)
In Beijing's team huddle, coach tells his team to guard Smith's jump shot.
1:23: Smith slices into lane, breezes by or through four defenders, gets fouled and converts layup. "Pretty," commentator says. "That's what we call ability." 1-1 FT, 32 pts
:48: Plows into lane again and puts in a floater. "He's playing crazy," commentator says (translation is literal). 34 pts

4th quarter
4:28: Smith knocks down a three with the shot clock winding down, 37 pts

He scores two more at some point, but my focus has shifted by then.

Former national security adviser on China, Obama

2012-01-19T02:57:00.000+08:00

Apologies this is slightly belated. From Financial Times via Slate:

"The Chinese are really good at diplomacy – and even at making their interlocutors feel very uncomfortable," [Zbigniew] Brzezinski says. "Sometimes they look at you while you’re making a point and they start laughing. And you’re saying to yourself, 'Am I really a fool? What am I saying that’s so ridiculous?' I very early on realised that their negotiating technique is a form of masterful manipulation. I was also struck by how well informed the top Chinese leaders are about the world," he says. "And then you watch one of our Republican presidential debates ... " Brzezinski does not feel it necessary to complete the sentence but he later adds: "The GOP field is just embarrassing."

It's not a very long article, but it's good enough to warrant a second quote:

Brzezinski quotes a senior Chinese official who reportedly said of America: "Please don’t decline too quickly." He then lampoons the standard American candidate’s response to any talk of decline, which is simply to assert that America’s greatness will return if only people would believe in it. "'Help is here. Smile a lot. Everything will disappear. It will be fine' – well, sad to say, it doesn’t work that way. People are ignorant and scared. It will take more than that."

So how did Slate's supposedly liberal, intelligent commentariat take to the piece? Surely their minds were opened. Surely they had some cogent follow-up questions. Surely they liked that quip about the GOP...

Here are two comments:

(Dude "liked" his own comment?)

China is the bad guy, like the USSR was the bad guy in the movie Red Dawn, or the Body Snatchers were the bad guys in Invasion of the Body Snatchers (just basically a metaphor for the USSR), or the aliens in Independence Day, or the aliens in Battle of Los Angeles...

I wonder if Americans have grown so snug in their copacetic suburbs that they're no longer capable of venturing outside their intellectual comfort zone to consider that another country with a non-democratic government might have interests that aren't demonic, or even a culture that isn't intertwined with said government. Could they believe in anything other than the narratives they've been fed by their country's myth-makers (TOTALLY not propaganda, dude!), forever sucklings on pop culture's fat pink teat? Because Hollywood has conditioned them to believe that nothing is real except the life they live, and of course they're not living the life of a former national security adviser, or even a diplomat, so of course China isn't real. China is a bad guy, who could be played by Gary Oldman. America is hero. And if history were to write a script in which the bad guy wins, well, there's always a sequel to be made, and you know the underdog narrative sells...

Yao Ming, cyber nationalists, Jonathan Levine, anger, Peng Yu, Wukan, prostitution, etc.

2012-01-18T12:26:00.000+08:00

Picture via China Daily

You can't be as intelligent, worldly and well-connected as Yao Ming and not enter politics. I think he can have influence if he doesn't let himself get pushed around... "dunked on," if you will. Please insert your own Shaquille O'Neal/Charles Barkley joke here.

YOUR MID-WEEK LINKS

I really wish an editor could have cut half this article and just left the good stuff, such as: "I want to take up one concrete example from the 'dark side'.... Over the past four years, I have been engaged in a type of digital ethnography, which has taken me deep inside one of the small corners of the Chinese internet -- a rather dark, sobering periphery inhabited by an increasingly truculent community of Han nationalists." Although it bears noting that these nationalists are somewhat the equivalent of America's dumb YouTube commenters, so I have to ask: Is it really all that insightful plumbing these depths? "I found myself banished from Hanwang.... In response to a plea from one overseas-based members about upholding freedom of speech on Hanwang, the administrator asserted: 'Hanwang isn’t a place where 'free discussion can occur,' and that overseas members could not possibly understand the difficulties faced by those living and writing inside 'the shield.' 'In order to make sure that other netizens don’t lose out,' he concluded, 'I ask you to go elsewhere to explain yourself. Thanks for your cooperation.'" [James Leibold, The China Beat]

A response to Jonathan Levine's infamous NY Times editorial that predates him by a month: This one-post blog called Dontmovetochina.com is just a plain and simple takedown of Levine... but, as mentioned, written nearly a month before Levin's article came out. Imagine that.

I'm still angry because of this. "He changed history so that it would look like the Chinese soldiers were outwitting the Japanese, eschewing the much better scene -- both in terms of art and historical accuracy -- in which viewers might have gotten the faintest idea that perhaps not all Japanese soldiers were heartless homicidal pathological psychotic raping devils." [Heart of Beijing]

NOW this comes out? "But in retrospect, everyone did seem to take for granted that Peng Yu was innocent from the beginning. In Peng Yu’s original version of the incident, he was the first to get off a bus and saw the fallen woman. He accompanied her to the hospital, gave her 200 yuan and stayed with her until after her treatment – saying she didn’t need to repay the cash. The woman said that he had knocked her down while getting off the bus." [Sinostand] Also see: Adam Minter on Bloomberg.

Wukan resolved? Last month I wrote: "In a country whose citizens are as outwardly apolitical as here, no one wants to risk their livelihoods over ideology. People would much rather cooperate, get what's theirs.... Expect a compromise in which some profit while most get just barely enough to begrudgingly stop their demonstrations."

As the dust clears completely, it's probably worthwhile to note that, according to AFP (via China Digital Times), "One of the men behind a rare revolt against local Communist officials has been named party head of a Chinese village whose protest against land grabs became a symbol of public anger over corruption."

His name is Lin Zuluan, "who was named the new party chief on Sunday, replacing the businessman who had been Wukan's leader for 42 years and who was accused of stealing village land and selling it to developers." The pessimist would say let's see how long Lin lasts before he dips his hand into the cookie jar. After all, I've heard stories about officials feeling the necessity to take red packets ("bribes," if you want to be harsh) because if they didn't, they wouldn't really be "trying." You know the saying: if you don't cheat, you're not trying hard enough.

The optimist, I guess, would just shrug. Good for the villagers. They "won." I guess.

Make love, not raids. "Well-known blogger and feminist activist Ye Haiyan, also known as Liumang Yan (Hooligan Sparrow), decided to provide sexual services to rural peasant workers on January 11 in defense of sex workers' rights after she witnessed a recent raid by police officers in a brothel in Guangxi province.... Master Meng Jianzhu [Translator note: Meng is China's Minister of Public Security]: Hope you can understand the pain of the grassroots. Don't exploit administrative fees from sex workers, especially the poorest among them. I wish that the Public Security Bureau could issue an internal notice and ask the police officers to stop raiding poor sex workers, particular as the new year approaches. A humble plea from Ye Haiyan, Chinese grassroots women's rights defender." [Global Voices Online]

Highlights of Chinese cinema 2011: A nice video by Youtube user ginsengkingdom via Shanghaiist:

... "Young mom cuts off baby's penis because she preferred a daughter" [Shanghaiist]

For you Beijing-based alcoholics, start weeping now. "A management rift at Fubar has reached the point where the police showed up tonight to deal with a dispute over one of the partners comping drinks. The incident extends to a bigger dispute late last week between original partners Chad Lager and Kevin Zhang -- some say Lager was kicked out, Zhang says he quit. In either case, the situation is a mess, and a sad one given this place ranks among the city’s success stories of the past three years." [Beijing Boyce]

Because we all like poetry, except the bad kind: The Guardian reports on Zhu Yufu, who has been indicted for writing a Jasmine Revolution poem. Excerpt:

It's time, Chinese people!
the square belongs to everyone
the feet are yours
it's time to use your feet and take to the square to make a choice

No word on whether the rest of the poem is this poor.

Rebecca MacKinnon's new blog: Consent of the Networked.

NON-CHINA READ: Not really a "read" per se, but for those who like HTML games, check this.

Burn in hell, you pusillanimous shitwicks

2012-01-18T01:20:00.004+08:00

Fuck you. Just fuck you and your ancestors.

Warning/disclaimer/whatever: to the average person, my rage will seem incommensurate to the subject matter at hand, which is censorship. But you have to understand: this shit is INSTITUTIONAL. (Fuck you for silently condescending on my usage of all-caps; it's NECESSARY HERE.) It's so ingrained that an entire generation of Chinese -- whom leaders look toward to be "soft culture ambassadors" or some shit like that -- think there's a certain way to do things, a "correct" way, and that that "correct" way is the way the "authorities" -- the history-writers of the Party -- want it. This type of mindset -- leading to institutionalized self-censorship in all its vile and sordid butchery of art and true creativity -- is going to murder this society. It will MURDER the Chinese people. And if you knew that, you too would be extremely angry, possibly even angrier than I am right now.

This article from Global Times explains exactly why Chinese film and TV suck, and why Flowers of War, as I wrote previously, could have been better:

What Qiu encountered is familiar to almost every writer in China. Faced with sometimes ambiguous regulations that are often blamed for stifling artistic creativity, some writers give up, some put up a fight, but most seem to cooperate.

I'm going to make myself very clear here. By "cooperate," what the writer really means is eat a heap of shit. A massive heap of rancid, shit-smelling, blood-streamed stool. From the rotten asshole of a Fang Binxing-like shit-eater.

COOPERATE? Here's how Wang Qiu "cooperated" (the anecdote below is about a proposed scene in a TV miniseries):

Both the Kuomintang and Japanese soldiers were weary of fighting when they agreed to a one-hour truce to bury the bodies of their comrades.

"The truce was made out of respect for the dead. Japanese soldiers treated their dead with perhaps even more dignity than we did ours," Qiu Dui, writer of the TV series Zhongguo Yuanzhengjun (Chinese Expeditionary Force), said of his motive for writing the scene set during the WWII.

"The authorities said it was humanitarianism without principle and unnecessary, and asked me to cut it," said Qiu, who was caught in a dilemma. He didn't want to cut the historically accurate scene because he felt it shed some humane light on the story, but if he didn't follow instructions, he knew his screenplay would never be approved.

"So I added an explanation for the truce, saying it was done for tactical purposes so the Chinese army could withdraw to safety," said Qiu. The revision worked and the altered scene was approved.

He changed history so that it would look like the Chinese soldiers were outwitting the Japanese, eschewing the much better scene -- both in terms of art and historical accuracy -- in which viewers might have gotten the faintest idea that perhaps not all Japanese soldiers were heartless homicidal pathological psychotic raping devils.

China's victim mentality -- its need to self-flagellate -- never reveals itself quite like in its art depicting World War II.

To that, I say: Stop it. Just fucking stop. I want you to grow up so fucking bad that here I am cursing into a FUCKING BLOGGER INTERFACE, and you JUST WON'T GROW UP. Why? Why why why?

So fuck you, General Administration of Press and Publications. If I ever meet one of you chickenshits, punches will fly.

Picture of the Day: new 798 gallery Art Bridge's logo

2012-01-17T16:10:00.003+08:00

It's a good one:

The character 拆 -- "demolish" -- in the shape of a house with a tree in the front yard.

798's Yang Art Gallery is worth visiting. Here's proof

2012-01-17T02:13:00.008+08:00

The picture above was googled upon (well, Baidu'd, technically) while searching for miscellany related to "Yang Gallery." So I ask now:

Is Yang Gallery the type of place you might be interested in?

798 Art Zone has received its fair share of criticism for being over-commercialized, but plenty of small- and medium-sized galleries there continue to impress, with Yang being one of them. Yesterday, on a day when most galleries and museums can be expected to be closed (Monday), Yang was open (as were [in order of my strolling through them] 798 Photo Gallery, Chuan Cheng Art Center, Sanmu International Art [no website] and the newly opened Art Bridge).

Some highlights:

Zhang Yucong (张郁葱): Keep Going

Rebarbative buildings colored the maroon hue of construction -- "progress" -- rise above ghostly figures moving through the swamps and shadows of all that is forgotten, or perhaps never remembered.

Jin Yu (金宇): Dance

Pressed against a glass, look at the creases in their dresses: the lines are sharp and straight. Unrelated thought: this painting is rich in metaphor.

Liu Liguo (刘力国): Living in Harmony

You would fuck her. Even the strangely attired one.

Who is China's Martin Luther King Jr.?

2012-01-16T23:59:00.002+08:00

On this Martin Luther King Jr. Day, we remember...

..."the world's most average man." [China Daily Show]

POSTSCRIPT: "I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits. I believe that what self-centered men have torn down men other-centered can build up..." --MLK Jr., Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech

It should still somewhat break all our hearts that had King not been assassinated, he might have gone on to become one of the greatest champions of poverty relief in the world, to say nothing of general global peace.

Chinese superheroes

2012-01-15T13:42:00.002+08:00

Picture from 21CB

There's been quite a bit of news recently about China's "real" superheroes, people like the "Bauhinia Heroine" (the bauhinia is the rose that appears on Hong Kong's flag, so the Bauhinia Heroine's name has been translated -- I think kind of clunkily -- as "Chinese Redbud Woman"), who first appeared in Hong Kong in May looking exactly like the picture above.

According to Want China Times:

While Hong Kong's media have been speculating as to the identity of the masked crusader for the poor — ranging from the granddaughter of the former head of China's National People's Congress to a local socialite — Bauhinia Woman has refused to confirm or deny the veracity of any of the speculations.

The laudable lady's getup has been compared to that of Black Rose, the title heroine of a 1965 film in which the protagonist is a Robin Hood-like figure who steals from the rich to give to the poor. Personally, I think her mask should be red, but who am I to judge a woman's choice of colors.

(There's a ~~Chinese~~ car commercial featuring a similarly masked woman that you can watch as soon as I find it online.) UPDATE, 1/23: Here.

Recently, mainland China got its own version of Redbud, who looks awfully similar to the Bauhinia Heroine, except maybe a bit younger. Witness:

China Hush has more photos, if you haven't already seen them.

And then came "Incredible Shining Knight" (seriously, where do these translators get their material?) who wears a black cape and cap and goes around doing Good Samaritan things. All very nice. There's a movie here, I think. (Oh wait...)

Anyway, this is all a very roundabout way for me to say: sometimes Wikipedia is worth reading. Here's your entry of the day (HT: Alicia): The Great Ten:

The Great Ten, (Shi Hao Xia) or (十豪侠) are a team of fictional Chinese comic book superheroes in the DC Comics Universe, who are sponsored by the government of the People's Republic of China.

...

First appearing in 52 #6, the Great Ten's actions are hampered by bureaucracy. Three of the team's members were forced to sit out a battle with Green Lanterns Hal Jordan and John Stewart because they had not completed the required paperwork.

And now, your late afternoon reads of the day (it's a Sunday, you're bleary-eyed from waking up for Saints-49ers [what, you didn't see it?], and, yeah, it's Sunday, so only three links here):

China shoots messenger. "Fifteen years after taking back Hong Kong amid a blaze of fireworks and patriotic fervor, China is battling what it sees as a subversive challenge: an academic survey showing that many in this former British colony identify little with China.... Infuriated by the results, Chinese officials have orchestrated a campaign of denunciation -- the latest blast in a barrage of verbal and written broadsides against alleged disloyalty in Hong Kong.... [academic survey director Robert] Chung declined to speculate on why Hong Kong’s residents appear to identify less with China but said he stands by his findings. // 'I am not a politician,' he said. 'I will let history tell the true value of my work.'" [Washington Post]

Corollary: The comments, per usual in these big-media news stories about China, range somewhere between stupid and retarded, but one blind squirrel almost managed to stick a nut: "The manifestations of Chinese nationalism and patriotism generally suggest deep-seated insecurity and resentment. Not a good trend given their growing power in Asia & the Pacific. Add in the tens of millions of young men with no prospects for marriage since decades of selective aborting or infanticide of girls has left far more males than females in that country and you have a recipe for militarism."

Basically anytime James Fallows posts about China, you should probably check it out. Even if it's links to the Daily Show (have I mentioned Mitt Romney is a hack?) and a strange, borderline erotic Chinese language video that most people (our age) have seen. [James Fallows]

And finally, just a friendly word of advice for those who need it: if you have a gun, don't fire it into a crowd of people who do not have guns. Thanks. "Chinese security forces on Saturday fired into a crowd of Tibetans in a restive area of Sichuan Province after they tried to take away the body of a Tibetan man who had died after setting himself on fire that morning to protest Chinese policies in the Tibetan areas, according to reports from two Tibet advocacy groups and Tibetan officials in the exile government in India." [New York Times]

Stupid people turn Sanlitun Apple Store into goddamn Guangzhou Railway Station

2012-01-15T01:39:00.001+08:00

Picture from the Beijinger

The only thing about the iPhone 4S Beijing launch that you need to read. "Cold and hunger? Next time, pack a goddamn sandwich and wear a hat, Einstein." [Stan Abrams, China Hearsay]

Best candidate for China, Taiwan, and U.S. wins Taiwan presidential election."Taiwan’s incumbent president Ma Ying-jeou won re-election Saturday, a result that will delight China and calm worries in Washington that this island of 23 million people might veer away from a policy of rapprochement with its giant neighbor.... 'China will be very happy,' said Yen Chen-shen of the Institute of International Relations at Taiwan’s National Chengchi University. Ma’s victory, he added, shows 'Beijing doesn’t need to use missiles but can buy Taiwan through business.'" [Washington Post]

Are mainland Chinese international students failing America's higher education system? Another thought-provoking post by Dan Harris. [China Law Blog]

Paul Manfredi, in an introduction for the poet Xi Chuan: "Journalism, regrettably, is similarly ensconced in something un-viable, at least in terms of what is printed (virtually and non) in China. And this corruption of language is not restricted to Chinese case, as in outside journalism (by which I mean that written by authors in sites beyond China’s borders) we find the same problem. In Western-press writing about China we find language suffering less from calculated or otherwise strategized intent to mislead, and more from the unwitting and unfortunate failure to grasp what is really happening." [china Avant-garde]

Events That Don't Suck: Time Out is teaming up with The Hutong and Electric Shadows to present a series of films related to Spring Festival. They'll be shown at different times, so check the schedule. I'll definitely be attending at least a few of these. [Time Out]

New to the blogroll: The very heady China Debate. Here, you can start with this post about Nobel Prizes in economics, specifically why the committee is ignoring Chinese economics.

NON-CHINA READ: "But a landmark new research paper underscores that the difference between a strong teacher and a weak teacher lasts a lifetime. Having a good fourth-grade teacher makes a student 1.25 percent more likely to go to college, the research suggests, and 1.25 percent less likely to get pregnant as a teenager. Each of the students will go on as an adult to earn, on average, $25,000 more over a lifetime — or about $700,000 in gains for an average size class — all attributable to that ace teacher back in the fourth grade." [Nicolas Kristof, New York Times]

God, are American politicians STILL quoting Abraham Lincoln?

2012-01-14T16:46:00.005+08:00

Here's what I found on Mitt Romney's website, which I had the misfortune of clicking on just now: "The best ally world peace has ever known is a strong America. The 'last best hope of earth' was what Abraham Lincoln called our country..."

...was what Abraham Lincoln called our country in 1862.

Here's what else Abraham Lincoln said in that speech: "The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just -- a way which, if followed, the world will forever applaud, and God must forever bless."

Plain, peaceful, generous... which, if followed...

Gee, and what fuck-all has America been doing lately?

The world's not applauding, folks.

POSTSCRIPT: Who is China's equivalent of Lincoln in terms of a historical figure abused for political capital? Mao would be the easy answer, but at least he was 30 percent wrong. Lincoln is American politics' version of goddamn Mother Theresa.

Watch the rowdiest fans in the CBA do their thing

2012-01-13T19:57:00.003+08:00

Following their thrilling -- THRILLING -- win at Xinjiang on Wednesday (which I think is the first time Beijing's ever won in Xinjiang), the Ducks are again on the road, this time in Taiyuan to face the Shanxi Brave Dragons.

We'll take this occasion to revisit what happened the last time this blogger was in Shanxi's Binhe Sports Complex. It was nearly two years ago, and Stephon Marbury was playing for the home team. Fans got pissed.

In each of Marbury's first two games in the CBA, fans threw stuff onto the court. Shanxi's owner ended up getting fined for both incidents.

Earlier this evening -- it's 33-26 Shanxi as we speak -- something happened near the Beijing bench and fans in that area began to stand and gesticulate (and shout, we can only imagine). Security folk waved handkerchiefs at them and told them to sit, but these folk were having none of it. One person threw a napkin or something onto the court.

To say Shanxi basketball fans are rowdy might be an understatement.

Also, they're practically all wearing black. It's like a game straight from the 1930s.

BTV has the game live, for all those in China.

Serial killers in China

2012-01-13T15:33:00.003+08:00

Here's today's frontrunner for "most interesting thing you'll read about China": a lengthy article by Robert Foyle Hunwick in Danwei about notorious serial killers in China. Here's how it begins:

Yang Shubin looked the part: fat and rich. At nightclubs, he would say he ran a power station and buy expensive drinks. Women quickly swarmed around the flashy businessman who offered double the regular price for an evening’s company and would, sometimes[,] even bring gifts. When the long nights drew to an end, Yang had no trouble persuading a girl to leave with him.

They probably thought themselves fortunate to land such a generous customer. After all, becoming mistress to a wealthy businessman is the ultimate career move for a karaoke girl in China. On returning to his apartment, therefore, they would have been surprised to find a woman already at the home: 20-year old Ji Hongzhie, Yang’s girlfriend — and partner-in-crime.

With the help of a pair of childhood friends from Heilongjiang, Wu Hongye and Zhang Yulian, they would tie the woman to a chair, then beat her with sticks and iron bars, demanding bank details. Yang liked to slap their bare flesh with a spatula while his girlfriend needled their breasts, arms and legs. Later, after withdrawing the cash — the amounts ranging from 60,000 to 500,000 yuan — they would force some victims to call their colleagues to persuade them to come over to the trap.

The bodies would later be chopped up, boiled and fed through a meat-mincing machine. Large bones would be crushed up with clamps, and added to the meaty paste which the gang would dump in drains or trash cans outside hotels and restaurants....

This part in particular makes me think a movie could be in the offing:

But Harbin policeman Xu Jianguo did not forget. Having grown up in the same neighborhood as both gang members Yang and Wu, Xu had a personal interest in seeing the case through to the end...

...even if it cost him his life.

I added that last line for dramatic effect. Like?

Here's the link again, for you short-memory people.

Is JR Smith gonna have to choke a bitch?

2012-01-13T11:15:00.004+08:00

But no one likes intercultural violence. Well, except maybe JR Smith's sister, pictured above. [Deadspin]

(I'm just paraphrasing Wayne Brady in the title; you can put down the pitchforks, Chinese friends.)

Here's what happens when you criticize someone very high up in the Party: your story disappears. And here's what happens when you try to disappear a story in the age of Internet: people like the good folk at China Media Project rescue it from the brink. The rescued article was from China Youth Daily, but here's how CMP begins its post: "On January 9, the Social Development Task Group of the Sociology Department at Tsinghua University released its 2011 'Research Report Series on Social Progress,' in which it warned that 'powerful vested interests' in China were now 'holding reforms hostage.'" Gee, I wonder what about that phrase could have possibly upset the authorities.

Corollary: this gem from the China Youth Daily article: "The fourth symptom is an overcautious mentality and policies oriented toward 'stability preservation,' which is rooted in misjudgment over social tensions and conflicts."

The things they carried. Prepare to see a spate of Spring Festival Last-Train-Home-type stories now that the travel rush is upon us. This one from Annie Lee over at China Hush: "From our last post about going home for the Spring Festival, it seems that a lot of our readers are curious as for why these long distance home-goers are carrying so many bags despite all the difficulties during the journey. A reporter asked 4 passengers to open their bags to reveal the treasure inside."

A nice piece on Hong Kong and China, aside from the regrettable Quebec reference. "It’s not that Hong Kong people don’t feel 'Chinese'; in fact, there are some who claim Hong Kong is more Chinese than the Mainland, because it was spared Mao and his destructive Cultural Revolution..." [Zhongnanhai]

Possibly the best transition from lead-to-nut-graf you'll see in a while. "Begging in human society, however, is not just a question of self-esteem. Baudelaire seemed to have reduced the elimination of panhandling to a few punches. It is both too peculiar and too simple. Nonetheless, it isn’t just the poet who tries to solve complicated social issues with simple-minded approaches. // A few days back, the Ministry of Public Security cracked down on two child trafficking gangs across 10 provinces, arresting 608 suspects and rescuing 178 children." [Worldcrunch]

If you still haven't gotten over the fact that the air here is sometimes dirty, this article is for you. Rejoice at the "huge" and "terrific" news that Beijing will be monitoring PM2.5. Now let's wait to see how they "monitor" it, really. [livefrombeijing]

NON-CHINA READ OF THE WEEK: A poem from Pyongyang, via Adam Cathcart and the Sino-NK blog... here are the first three stanzas (it goes on [and on, and on] in much the same vein):

Fellow Countrymen,  General Kim Jong Un Is With Us

Hearts are rending,
Never have we imagined
The snow-sweeping sky
The land frozen by biting cold
Would melt by bitter tears.

Hearts are tearing
Never have we predicted
This land would be frozen hard
With the tears of millions of people
Wailing over their dead father
Never, never have we imagined
There’d be so sad a day in our life

To the welkin and to the earth we are asking;
Is it really possible
That our Kim Jong Il has passed away
Leaving behind his people he loved so warmly
Leaving behind the country he was attached to so much?
Every December was warm to us
With the memory of our beloved Mother Kim Jong Suk,
Every year December came to us
With beautiful flowers in the streets and villages
With songs of celebration loud all over
On the anniversary of Kim Jong Il’s supreme
commandership

Migrant workers are better than you. Just look

2012-01-11T13:01:00.001+08:00

The Horror. Only the truly beatific can endure shit like what you see depicted above. They are better people than us. China Hush has more pictures from this Spring Festival travel season, which hasn't even begun. Also see: China Smack.

Because the exact thing China is missing is more unemployed Americans to teach English. But Jonathan Levine will buy you a ~~male prostitute~~ duck. #NYTimesRunsAnotherStupidChinaStory [NY Times]

Corollary: As Sinostand puts it: "When I first came to China a foreign friend told me a saying that floats around in the expat community: 'Foreigners who move to China are either looking for something or running away from something.'" Of course, Sinostand was talking about a sexual predator, but we're all running away from something, aren't we? Death.

No?

Pvt. Danny Chen, 1992-2011. So fucking young. [NY Magazine]

Corollary: If you can stand it, here are Chinese reactions to ethnic Chinese Americans who have died in war, as translated by China Smack. Here's one passive-aggressive (or pacifist-warmongering?) take: "So one should get respect just for being a soldier? The Japanese bastards who participated in the Nanjing Massacre were also 'soldiers,' so you also think that bunch of beasts should also of course be given respect? Is that what you think? Come out and respond to me, and if you don’t come out and respond to my question then you’re just an ignorant 2B. Sorry everyone, I’ve yelled at someone yet again."

The cleverest official of them all. "After the ruse was found out, Wu responded: 'I'm a web user too, and I have a right to ask my own questions.'" [China Media Project]

Fuck you, Fang Binxing. I don't really know what this means, and besides, I use Witopia, but maybe you're interested. "'When a Tor client within China connected to a US-based bridge relay, we consistently found that at the next round 15 minute interval (HH:00, HH:15, HH:30, HH:45), the bridge relay would receive a probe from hosts within China that not only established a TCP connection, but performed an SSL negotiation, an SSL renegotiation, and then spoke the Tor protocol sufficiently to build a one-hop circuit and send a BEGIN_DIR cell. No matter what TCP port the bridge was listening on, once a Tor client from China connected, within 3 minutes of the next 15 minute interval we saw a series of probes including at least one connection speaking the Tor protocol,' Tim Wilde, a software engineer at Team Cymru, wrote in an analysis of the incident, which he helped investigate." [Threat Post]

Gongxi gongxi. Somewhere Zhang Yimou's ears perk up: "Gong Li?" No, silly. Jia Zhangke, China's auteur, has tied the knot with Zhao Tao, who has starred in many of his movies -- "among the best Chinese films of the past decade," according to dGenerate Films.

New to the Blogroll: China in Africa: The Real Story; china Avant-garde; Screening China; dGenerate Films. Also, a site called China File, which looks like it'll be Asia Society's blog, will be launching soon. God I hope they don't go with white text on black background.

NON-CHINA READ OF THE WEEK: David Remnick on Jodi Kantor's The Obamas: "Obama is President at a moment in history when the forces arrayed against him are preposterously difficult and malign; the conservative opposition is more radical than anything confronted by his predecessors. The public is angry and the crises—economic, diplomatic, environmental, social, and political—are myriad. For all that, staff members like Emanuel hated hearing the President railing against the 'silliness' of Washington. 'The rules apply to everybody,' as one former adviser told Kantor, and complaining about how Washington works 'is like crying over the rain.” Obama was elected to lead “a rational, postracial, moderate country that is looking for sensible progress,' a White House official tells Kantor. 'Except, oops, it’s an enraged, moralistic, harsh, desperate country. It’s a disconnect he can’t bridge.'" [The New Yorker]

Your Heart of Beijing China blogs, 2012

2012-01-09T23:59:00.001+08:00

Beijing/China blogs: ROLL CALL TIME.

I recently did some much-needed housecleaning of this site's blogroll, which appears on the sidebar to your right. As I've stated before, these sites are roughly ordered by my preference, though the order breaks down a little in the categories following "Blogroll - News and Issues."

New to the blogroll is an "in memoriam" section: blogs that have been dead for a while (as I just noticed), like an unfed goldfish. These are all News and Issues sites that were notable for one reason or another, and that could not be sustained -- for one reason or another. They can be found after the "News and Resources" section.

It's unfortunate that china/divide, undoubtedly one of the Top 10 China blogs in existence for about 12 months from 2010-11, heads that "in memoriam" section. So it goes.

But china/divide wasn't the only site that dropped out of this blogroll's Elite Eight category. Danwei, which apparently is now a "web magazine" that has a new domain (.com, no longer .org), has been relegated to the second tier due to lack of posts. Sorry, Jeremy. I know it sucks being blocked by the Great Firewall, but you do know you're transitioning to the dark side with this whole "custom research" thing that you're selling, right? To each his own, I suppose. (Check out Danwei's blogroll while it's still free to access.)

Taking those sites' places: please welcome China Geeks and Dan Harris's consistently excellent China Law Blog.

A few words about some News and Issues blogs:

Some sites would be much higher if the owners would post more. Brendan O'Kane, looking at you.

China Government Watch is now a private blog for "invited" readers only. If anyone from that site is reading this: PLEASE INVITE ME. Seriously. I want in the club. How do I get in?

Completely new to the blogroll is Sinocism, which is good, but sometimes it's too much, you know what I mean? Just pure unfiltered info dump.

I don't know how often I will update the blogroll rankings. Maybe quarterly? Monthly? Whenever I have time.

The rankings under the Life category are a bit less thought-out. Let's just say that after Jenny Zhu's site, I'm not sure if anything listed is actually extant. Assume no. I really should just delete all of them, but I kind of like to keep 'em for posterity.

New under this category: Laowiseass, a guy in Taipei. How's this for a throwback: he uses Livejournal. Everything's different in Taiwan.

Some sites have moved. Don't try to access the old Beijing Sounds (北京的声儿) site. Here's the new URL.

The "art, literature, music" section has been renamed "Culture." The blogs that belong to magazines and newspapers -- i.e. traditional media -- is now simply "Media."

Here are four new tech blogs that really aren't my thing, but have at it if you like: Silicon Hutong, Tech Rice, DigiCha, TechNode.

I'm going to try to get into the habit of reading less Deadspin and more of my RSS feeds, which include all the sites on my blogroll and then some. I'll link to stories that don't suck. Let's say we'll do this every... Friday. Happy reading.

A non-basketball observation amid the Ducks' current slump

2012-01-08T20:50:00.011+08:00

After its 109-105 loss tonight to Fujian (12-9), Beijing's basketball team has now lost seven of its last eight, including four in a row at home.

It's gotten to the point where the losses are no longer surprising. But with each one, we're forced to ask a bit more incredulously: how the fuck did this team start 13-0?

They started 13-0.

And now they're 14-7, three games behind first-place Guangdong.

The Ducks played lousy basketball tonight. I can't say it any nicer than that. They trailed for basically all but 30 seconds. They couldn't rebound on the defensive end and they couldn't make shots -- we're talking layups and uncontested three-pointers -- when it mattered. The final score would have been a lot more lopsided had it not been for some garbage-time three-pointers.

***

This might not have been the story of the game (the story of the game is how much Beijing's "big men" absolutely, positively suck), and it might not even be indicative of anything significant, but the image I take away from tonight came in the middle of the third quarter. With a bit over nine minutes left, the Ducks called a timeout after going down by 11. On the bench, Stephen Marbury and Randolph Morris, Beijing's two foreign players, sat while everyone else stood around head coach Min Lulei, who took a knee on the court. He said things like, "Where is ___? Is he here?" He scrawled something on a mini-white board. "Look, if you don't get it the first time, you can try again. Okay? Add fuel, add fuel." Then all the Chinese players, standing around the coach, put their hands into the middle for a team cheer.

Marbury and Morris sat and did nothing. Nothing at all. Not comprehending a thing, nor wanting to. Just passing time.

Again, the scene may not be indicative of anything other than how spoiled the CBA's foreign players are (believe me when I tell you: no one expects foreigners to put their hands in for a group cheer among their lesser Chinese teammates, who not only play lousy basketball but are paid less and berated more by coaches and referees [yes, refs give foreigners preferential treatment], and are expected to actually follow coaches' orders). And in the interest of fairness, I should point out that Marbury has been having a really good season. Morris sometimes makes himself useful, too.

Still. Way to act like schmucks, guys.

Gary Locke said at a recent event for American study-abroad students -- as part of Obama's 10,000 Strong Initiative, I believe -- that while he might be the ambassador to China, it's "you" who are the everyday ambassadors for America. I wish more expats here would take that sentiment to heart. Because willy-nilly, foreigners here do represent something greater. While the Chinese have come a long way in their attitudes toward laowai (literally, "old outside") or yangren ("ocean people" -- basically another way of saying folk who don't belong), to differing extents, foreign cultures are still generally perceived through prejudiced lenses. Chalk it to culture or whatever, but the result is that every small action really can go a long way toward dispelling or reinforcing stereotypes. Doing shit like hectoring a streetside vendor matters. Waiting patiently in line matters, even if you don't know it (I've overheard parents say to their children, "Look at so-and-so, that's how you should behave"). Helping an old lady cross the road: yeah, you bet that makes an impression. Young people here think of just that type of act -- a small bit of goodness when no one expects it and when no reward is expected -- as the perfect example of something called "everyday heroism," this in a society that rather lacks heroes and role models.

I've gotten off on a tangent. I'm just trying to say: it's quite unfortunate that America's basketball ambassadors to Beijing can't act the part.* I wonder if Marbury's still tweeting about "love."

*Look, I understand why they may be miserable. They're in a strange land trying to do just one thing and they can't do it well because they're surrounded by incompetence, from facility managers to referees to teammates to coaches. I can't help thinking though: if you don't like it so much, get the fuck out. God forbid you feel entitled doing one simple thing like playing basketball.

POSTSCRIPT: I think one of the Beijing TV commentators -- actually commentating courtside, which is rare because most of the time they work in studios while watching the games from their corporate-sponsored laptops -- called Morris's girlfriend "hot." My sincerest apologies if I misheard the Chinese word "re" or am mistranslating it, but he definitely commented on the girlfriend, who was briefly shown on camera. Here she is, for whatever it's worth:

Review of Flowers of War [金陵十三钗]

2012-01-07T02:33:00.005+08:00

The first thing I'll say is that it was a good movie. Not being a movie critic, I shouldn't need to say much more. It has a truly fantastic story, a tremendous cast (Zhang Xinyi turns in the best performance as 13-year-old Meng Shujuan [this Zhang, thankfully, is not 13], though Christian Bale also does his thing and shows everyone that he doesn't need world-class lines to be a world-class actor). Go see it.

But...

Here, allow me to say that if you don't read the rest of this post, I won't blame you. You should just go see the movie. But if you insist on staying...

...it was a good film that was good enough for us to all get glimpses of how it could have been great. And it was not great. And because it wasn't, I can't help feeling a bit let down, even though, truth be told, the film surpassed my expectations.

Is that possible? To be simultaneously satisfied and disappointed?

A friend who left the theater with me commented that this was a "very Chinese" film. But I have to disagree. It's "slightly" Chinese, I'd say -- if anything, it tries to resist being the classic "Chinese" epic (will explain soon). This film, after all, is China's hope to win an Oscar in the Best Foreign Language category precisely because it tries to be Hollywood. We end up with a Chinese/Hollywood hybrid, and it's good, it's fine, but -- at the risk of repeating myself -- it doesn't fulfill its potential.

Let's define what it means for a film to be "Chinese." Watch enough movies made here that authorities insist on calling "epic" and you'll see some recurring characteristics. (Apologies for these generalizations.) There has to be a moral. There has to be a Manichaean divide between good and bad, nothing in between. There has to be a weepy, faux-emotional scene -- or like four or five. There is usually enough histrionics to put a Peking Opera singer to shame. There has to be endless explication, so that "the point" falls off a roof and whacks you in the head, at which point you look up and see a movie stagehand wave both arms and go, "And here's the point, in case you missed it...!"

To that end, Flowers of War was sparing -- and that's an accomplishment. This was a Chinese production about the Rape of Nanking. It featured pre-adolescent girls who spend a third of the movie crying, and obvious foil characters in the form of prostitutes. It was a war film with "flowers" in the title. Do you realize how disastrous this movie could have been? Here, read this excerpt of an essay that the lead actress, Ni Ni, wrote about her character Yu Mo:

I Yu Mo, am in love with this man. I know my love probably won’t survive, and I do not want to drag him down. I hope he can have calm and happiness … tonight, I am the most pure Yu Mo, most tolerant Yu Mo, the most lovely Yu Mo, the most real Yu Mo … I want to enjoy this short encounter, treasure every minute and every second in my mind.

Ni turned in a solid performance, but if she were under the direction of a lesser production team -- perhaps John Woo of Red Cliff fame -- do you realize how badly this could turned out?

Flowers isn't your classic contemporary Chinese epic. There are many scenes that were cut at just the right moment, before it crossed over into the cloy or arch. But -- and here's what I mean when I say Flowers could have been better -- there were a few times when I wished another editor could have looked at a scene and said, "You know what... too much."

But the people behind Flowers have studied Hollywood, and they generally know what works. (We'd do well to remember that this movie, a shoo-in for a Chinese Oscar, was made to impress the judges on the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences panel; SPOILER ALERT, CHINA: Flowers isn't going to win; if it does, it's because someone was bought off.) There's romance that's halfway plausible (despite what Ni Ni writes, it's not love; sorry, it's not, and it's better because it's not love); there are Japanese characters who are not all evil; there is this incredible scene -- and I don't think I'm giving too much away, but I'll sound the spoiler alert anyway -- this short dream sequence envisioned by the girl Shu where prostitutes are dressed in colorful gowns and saunter toward the camera while singing the most poetic music (undoubtedly the best scene in the film). (Incidentally, Chinese viewers may be turned off by all the above; sex in a movie about the Rape of Nanking? Unthinkable!) It's all good, quite good -- but it's all very derivative, not exactly hackneyed, but imitative nonetheless.

Now, we should point out that it's a good imitation of a good Hollywood film, and that's nothing to be ashamed of -- after all, there's a reason the term "Hollywood film" exists: because there is a mold, and oftentimes writers and directors are judged by how well they conform to that mold while disguising the mold from the audience. It's all sleight of hand, this "magic" of moviemaking. But the problem is, because Flowers is a Chinese film -- or is supposed to retain elements of Chinese-ness, given that it's a government organ that supplied the $90 million to make this flick -- it gives itself away a bit more easily than it might have otherwise. We see the gears churning and the imperfect seams. It's impossible for me to cite examples without spoiling the movie any more, so here I'll just repeat: go see it; what I'm saying will be self-evident.

Flowers is good despite its imperfections, yet I can't help wishing that it were good because of them. I wonder what a less canonical but better director, someone like Jia Zhangke, would have done with this material (though really, who knows how he or anyone else would have been warped by the $90-million budget).

One last thing: This film inevitably will be compared to Schindler's List. I'm not going to google this, but I'll bet my last drop of intuition that it's already been called "China's Schindler's List" by someone on the Internet. Regarding this, please allow my one observation:

Schindler's List built up to its emotional climax; just when it seemed like the film might let you, the moviegoer, slip out of its black-and-white reality without bawling like a baby, you got hit by that scene. You know the one. There's ample risk building a movie toward one breathtaking climax, but a master of the craft like Steven Spielberg can pull it off.

Flowers wanted that kind of emotional payoff, but it wasn't willing to push all its chips into one moment. Instead, it hit you with several moving, heartrending scenes -- scenes that, from what I could tell, wanted you to cry -- scenes that were good, and that really might make you cry (seriously, be prepared for that), but by the end, the accumulation of these psychic blows might leave you feeling something of emotional fatigue. We aren't able to bear more. As in, we're not as invested as we could or should be. And that's too bad, because to the very end, I really wanted to invest more -- call that a credit to the film, one that tries earnestly and should be rewarded for its effort.

And now -- in case you didn't click on that first link -- Zhang Xinyi, again:

UPDATE, 1/14: Thanks to those who have written in to point out that 13-year-olds don't have breasts that look like the above.

Which of these Republican presidential nominees knows what's up in China?

2012-01-05T12:36:00.002+08:00

Let's play this game. All pull quotes from Wall Street Journal.

Is it Mitt Romney, the suave asshole who exercises with a shake weight?

...has taken a leaf out of Obama’s 2008 playbook with a promise to get tough on China’s trade policy. Day one of a Romney administration would threaten countervailing duties against Chinese imports if Beijing didn’t move quickly to float the yuan.

Is it Rick Santorum, that social conservative? (Further insults gratuitous.)

...He says that China should be challenged on religious liberty and the U.S. should be doing more to support human rights activists.

Is it Ron Paul, that lovably losing idealist? (Idealistic losing lover?)

...His promise to boost the dollar’s strength and reduce America’s foreign-policy entanglements could give China a freer hand on the exchange rate, and to flex its foreign-policy muscles in the Asia Pacific.

Or is it this guy?

As the former U.S. ambassador to China, he is the candidate with the most sophisticated views, arguing that the reality of Beijing’s own politics makes confrontation on the exchange rate unhelpful.

Good luck in New Hampshire, Governor.

Moral situation, moral situation, moral situation

2012-01-05T01:50:00.002+08:00

Communist Party policy magazines are a hoot. On the heels of Hu Jintao's comments, there's now this latest (as reported by Global Times)...

The morality situation in China has been improving, according to an article published in Qiushi, the Communist Party of China Central Committee's flagship magazine devoted to policy-making.

Pray thee, tell.

"The reason for the hesitation in helping strangers is that the Chinese traditional culture of 'social acquaintance' is transforming into a 'strangers' society' culture, while the system of social controls and curbs is weakening," it said.

The "strangers' society culture" bullshit is just bullshit that is meaningless, because it is bullshit. The phrase "system of social controls and curbs is weakening" is worth perhaps a second of your attention, because who the fuck needs a healthy blood pressure? Let it spike through my ears, I say.

In summary: Chinese are reluctant to help strangers in need because the system of social controls and curbs is weakening.

Not because of, say, lazy judges who are more concerned about clearing their dockets than actually weighing goddamn evidence, thus setting a legal precedent that has a real effect on the choices that citizens make -- because fuck if a judicial decision in NANJING affects people elsewhere. Not like the Internet does shit like transmit INFORMATION.

Anyway, "social controls" -- maybe I understand what that means: something like a Good Samaritan Law, the kind that took the Seinfeld gang off the air. I wouldn't have chosen the phrase "social controls," but hey, potato, potahto. Perhaps a law is necessary to get people to behave a certain way, a more "moral" way.

But "curbs"? Like...

...

Fuck it, you mean censorship. You mean Chinese people have too much fucking freedom to fuck around and make fucking money and fantasize about fucking Western women and fuck if they care about some old dude dying on the street.

This is what you mean, because you're fucking idiots. Witness:

"The heated discussion of a morality crisis and the condemnation of immorality just reflect the public's great desire for a better moral situation," said Cai [Xia, professor within the Party School of the CPC's Central Committee], adding that as the main part of society, the people's thought represents that of society, therefore it is reasonable to say the moral situation in the country has been improving.

"In the age of moral pluralism, officials' and Party members' positive exemplary roles are needed to guide the public," she said.

And now, Sir Walter Raleigh, to cleanse your brain:

A Description of Love

Now what is love? I pray thee, tell.
It is that fountain and that well
Where pleasure and repentance dwell.
It is perhaps the sauncing bell
That tolls all into heaven or hell:
And this is love, as I hear tell.

Yet what is love? I pray thee say.
It is a work on holy-day;
It is December matched with May;
When lusty bloods, in fresh array,
Hear ten months after of the play:
And this is love, as I hear say.

Yet what is love? I pray thee sain.
It is a sunshine mixed with rain;
It is a tooth-ache, or like pain;
It is a game where none hath gain;
The lass saith no, and would full fain:
And this is love, as I hear sain.

Yet what is love? I pray thee say.
It is a yea, it is a nay,
A pretty kind of sporting fray;
It is a thing will soon away;
Then take the vantage while you may:
And this is love, as I hear say.

Yet what is love, I pray thee show.
A thing that creeps, it cannot go;
A prize that passeth to and fro;
A thing for one, a thing for mo;
And he that proves must find it so:
And this is love, sweet friend, I trow.

Easier said than done, Mr. Hu

2012-01-04T03:23:00.000+08:00

This latest from the New York Times is about President Hu Jintao's comments regarding soft culture. Apparently China is losing the battle to the U.S. (This is where you put on your best "Gee, really?" quizzical face. Do you raise an eyebrow? Do you pout your lips and slowly nod? Do you throw both hands in the air, scrunch up your neck and gape?)

According to the article (emphasis mine):

“We must clearly see that international hostile forces are intensifying the strategic plot of westernizing and dividing China, and ideological and cultural fields are the focal areas of their long-term infiltration,” Mr. Hu said, according to a translation by Reuters.

“We should deeply understand the seriousness and complexity of the ideological struggle, always sound the alarms and remain vigilant and take forceful measures to be on guard and respond,” he added.

Those measures, Mr. Hu said, should be centered on developing cultural products that can draw the interest of the Chinese and meet the “growing spiritual and cultural demands of the people.”

Spiritual demands.

Here is a country whose spirituality is that of commerce. It's a place where an injured lady can libelously sue the person who helped her, win the case, and see the legal fallout create a dystopia-like scenario in which people avoid helping strangers unless the incapacitated peeps, "It is not anybody's fault. I fell by myself."

This is the society we're dealing with, the one that Hu Jintao wants to rescue from the minor-key tunes and mild electro-synth grooves of Lady GaGa, lest China loses the rights to the zeitgeist of the 21st century.

Pop and entertainment, something the rest of the world sees as, well, pop and entertainment, i.e. mostly inconsequential, served best for leisure and diversion with a cocktail, is politicized by China's top leader as a thing to be "on guard" against and "respond" to. (Remember all those automaton responses to political questions during the Olympics? "Don't mix sports with politics..." Apparently pop and politics is not a problem though!)

If Hu wants to fight a culture war, his side will be massacred. The U.S. is -- I'll borrow a phrase the Chinese are fond of using -- a developed country, which means its people have the time and resources to be creative. In China, on the other hand, untold millions are just trying to scrape out a living, while millions more are caught in the rat race, and millions more are dealing with the day-to-day management of ambition vs. happiness, work vs. family, making the difficult choices those in Suburbia, USA can't imagine, not asking "Could I love him?" but, "Should I risk getting sued and help this dying man?"

But amid this backdrop, China is not a place that, despite its leaders' best efforts, only produces mindless drones and grubs in lockstep. I see this populace's resilience every day: normal working people who dare to call bullshit on the propaganda they're peddled. And it's not just me who sees it: you do too. China is a place that has produced intellectuals such as Gao Xingjian, who confronts his personal past to save his country's soul; courageous people like Chen Guangcheng, the blind lawyer whose story could be a Hollywood movie; people for whom the struggle is not between nations but much simpler, between individuals: a struggle for answers to confirm our humanity.

There are people, in short, able and willing to produce real culture, the kind you would write home about, to question spirituality or create it, to do something people actually care about. Pardon the cliche, but theirs is art as mirror for life.

And what, you ask, becomes of people like them? They are exiled. They are crippled and imprisoned. They are gagged. They are censored.

(Meanwhile, China's most well-known "pop" writer playfully acts the part of a self-aware troll.)

Chinese officials believe the way to the public's heart is through "socially responsible" TV shows. As it concerns the Chinese public, they're not completely wrong -- hey, I have older relatives who are socially conservative. But if that's what the authorities want, they should stop fooling themselves about the culture "battle," that there even can be one. They've lost. It's over. They can't even save face by banning Western culture, because it's one thing to censor a New York Times article, it's quite another to tell a 19-year-old in the club what kind of music should excite them.

So here's a proposition: that we not search for China's version of Lady GaGa -- indeed, Chinese people like America's GaGa in part because she is as American as they come, with all those implications -- but search for ways to create a society that will make the question Whose culture is better? irrelevant.

China's leaders have made a deal with its constituents: stay out of politics and we'll stay out of your lives. I think it's time for our counteroffer: you can stay in power if you stay out of art and culture. Otherwise, we have nothing.

What's up, Ducks?

2011-12-30T11:31:00.002+08:00

Beijing's professional basketball team, after winnings its first 13, lost its third straight game Wednesday night -- all at home -- to drop into a first-place tie with eminently hatable Guangdong. The Ducks surrendered a huge lead against Zhejiang Guangsha to lose 118-112, squandering a great performance by Stephon Marbury -- the China Daily columnist -- who, best I can tell, was not stoppable. He scored 34 points on 15-for-24 shooting and was credited with 9 assists, but who knows how many he'd had if the CBA weren't notoriously bad at tracking assists.

But he was outdone by one Wilson Chandler, one of the three Denver Nuggets players who elected to sign with the CBA during the NBA lockout, who scored 44 and grabbed 18 rebounds. Those are, indeed, eye-popping numbers, but Guangsha also got remarkable contributions from Puerto Rican big-man Peter John Ramos, who went 26 and 14. Ramos, in the minutes I saw of him, sealed his spot in my heart as least likable basketball player in the world, with his scowls, his complaints, his uninterested demeanor, his sleepwalking up and down the court, and the elbows he threw after every rebound attempt. The man does not look happy to be alive when he's playing basketball.

POSTSCRIPT: Unsurprisingly, Chandler was selected player of the week. Eurobasket also reports: "Guangsha L. will need more victories to improve their 12-4 record."

The new New Colossus

2011-12-29T15:24:00.005+08:00

Via Beijing Today, a story written by Huang Daohen that's not yet online:

“Come the new year, it may be hard for new expats to gain employment in the country, at least legally," said Liu Yan, consultant at FESCO, a local HR services company.

Liu said as the country tries to move up the value chain, it simply does not need foreigners with little or no actual skills. Chinese returnees can fill the positions.

“Essential expats will remain, but recent graduates will be replaced, or simply asked to work on tourist visa to keep them off the welfare payroll,” Liu said.

Perhaps you know a couple people this applies to. No more weekday binge drinking and playing of 80-cent XBox games for them.

Unless... unless there were some other developing country willing to harbor the West's tiresome, its poorly educated, its talentless masses yearning to breathe "free" in the worst interpretation of the word...

[Some girl working as an English teacher mentioned earlier in the story] will leave Beijing after Spring Festival. But since the economy in the US isn’t much better, she’s decided to try out other parts of Asia, like Vietnam.

This how the mob works, isn't it? Work flows down, money trickles up.

Chinese official calls democracy "sunshine"; Sun barfs

2011-12-27T00:54:00.008+08:00

Global Times has an interesting editorial that, other than getting Mao Zedong's birthdate wrong (the online version's date reads December 25; I'll allow that the writer thought the article was appearing in the print edition the next day, thus writing "today" instead of "tomorrow," but still), features a few interesting quotes by one Li Jie, identified as the "vice director of the Literature Research Office of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China."

Here's quote No. 1, coming at the end of the article titled "Mao's past mistakes show need for open government" (HT: Alicia Lui):

The report of the Party's 17th National Congress says that power should operate in the sunshine. This sunshine is democracy. Only with the supervision of the people can people's power be used for the people and controlled by the people.

Here are some other similes for democracy I just thought of:

This accretion of holiness is democracy.
This bag of kittens is democracy.
This Paulo Coelho novel is democracy.
This Fallout 3 stimpack is democracy.
This porn star's climax is democracy.
This Lady of the Lake miniseries poster is democracy.
This roast turkey breast is democracy.
This panacea to all our ills is democracy. (Oh wait, I'm getting confused... sunshine is panacea to all our ills.)

On a serious note, I'd like to quote Richard MacGregor from the highly illuminating book The Party, who points out that "democracy" as used by a Chinese official never really means what we would like to think it means:

Wen Jiabao blindsided many... in 2007, declaring at his annual press conference that "democracy, law, freedom, human rights, equality and fraternity" did not belong exclusively to capitalism, but were "the fruits of civilization jointly formed through the entire world's slow course of historical development."

Wen's pronouncement produced the usual flurry of stories in the foreign media about how China seemed to be embracing western-style political reform. But most missed the fact that, mindful he was addressing an international audience, Wen had left out the all-important rider carried in official documents on democracy in China, including the Party's own 2005 White Paper on the topic. "Democratic government is the Chinese Communist Party governing on behalf of the people," the paper said. Within the system, the reaction to Wen's 2007 pronouncement was more hard-headed. As a former senior official ousted after the 1989 Beijing crackdown joked to me, "You need a new dictionary to understand what Chinese leaders mean when they talk about democracy."

(You should probably read that book if you haven't already.)

Quote No. 2 from the Global Times editorial:

Just as the Party's central committee concluded in a resolution issued in 1981, Mao's positive contribution to the building of a new China was much greater than his mistakes.

IS IT REALLY? (Pardon my use of third-person singular present ["is"], but I'm confused by Li Jie's statement: does he mean "Mao's positive contributions," or does he really mean Mao's contribution -- some lone positive deed -- outweighed all his mistakes? I'm being arch with the grammar thing, but my question isn't completely facetious, is it?)

The editorial, as it reads to me, makes the assumptions that 1) readers think Mao acted maliciously when he set in motion the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, and 2) readers think Chinese people uniformly worship Mao. When you assume such things, you're liable to pen an editorial as flimsy as Li Jie's.

As to point No. 1: Educated outsiders (i.e. those not moonlighting as commenters at the end of CNN articles) don't think of Mao as a mass murderer; they merely condemn the blithe idiot for his gross incompetence. Yet criticism levied against Mao doesn't usually sit well with the conservative Chinese set, who, as they're wont to do, get defensive. But you don't know his positive contributions, they claim.

Actually, we're well aware, but were Mao's contributions to New China in the years from 1958 to 1976 actually substantial and sufficient to override all the horrors he inflicted? It's a difficult question, made more so because of the residual trama (how many thousands who survived the Cultural Revolution are too emotionally scarred to talk about it?). Yet it's one that intellectuals in this country should ask and answer, lest we want to live as the post-Mao Party nostalgics who "looked back to the Mao who was the revolutionary leader of the Party during their own youthful days as revolutionaries" (from Maurice J. Meisner's Mao's China and After). The revolution is over, people. Time for some adult questions.

As to point No. 2: without mentioning the whole "70 percent right, 30 percent wrong" silliness, I'd really like to hear someone speak objectively about whether Mao could have achieved his goals without, you know, sacrificing millions of lives. There's a difference, methinks, between failing to move forward and moving a country back via swift punt to the gonads; shouldn't we collectively be a little harsher in the judgment of one who does the latter?

So yeah, I understand that the Party needs Mao to legitimize itself post-Mao, and I understand the trappings of nostalgia, and I think I understand why so many Chinese are defensive when it comes to this subject, so inextricably tied as it is to nationalism and a fiercely nationalistic period in this country's long history, but still... I'd like an honest discussion about this, and I'd like to not be talked down to by flaks like the vice director of the Literature Research blah blah blah. Maybe that's asking too much for the time being.

Finally, a third quote from the article:

The main reason the Cultural Revolution happened and ran out of control was because of the absence of collective decision-making in the Party. Blind worship of Mao took over, and he enjoyed unchecked power.

YOU FUCKING THINK?

"Translating a good deal of the 'paratext' as well as the text"

2011-12-26T22:54:00.006+08:00

Yesterday, to no one's attention, I added the website Paper Republic to the "Best" category on the blogroll sidebar. I'm still combing through its archives, but if you want an idea why it's such a great read, check out Lucas Klein's May 11 post "A Good Translation of a Bad Poem?" and the ensuing discussion, from which this blog post's title quote is pulled. A quick excerpt:

But then I came across this poem:
Spring Dawn
From spring sleep
I awake before dawn
To a world filled
With birdsong
A stormy night
Wind and rain I recall
But of ten thousand blossoms
I wonder how many have fallen
I like this poem. I like the detail, the specificity of pre-dawn birdsong, the slight lilt of formalized poetic phrasing in l. 6, the suggestion of an ancient Chineseness in “ten thousand blossoms,” and especially the way the poem snuggles up against rhyme without taking it over (dawn / birdsong) before jettisoning it conspicuously (recall / fallen).

I'd also recommend these related sites:

Xiao Kang 2002: No updates for a while, but all bloggers out there, take note: sometimes it's wise to go for quality over quantity, because then your best work remains visible even after other affairs of the world suck up your time and attention; Xiao Kang 2002 is a prime example.
Notes on the Mosquito, a blog (by Lucas Klein) about poet Xi Chuan (whom I had the pleasure of hearing at the Bookworm) and "Chinese Poetry in English translation."
The always good Bruce Humes, whose site has been buried under the wrong category in the blogroll for much too long.
Twelve Hours Later: Chinese sci-fi.
And I think everyone knows about this already, but Popup Chinese is a site that's here to stay. Check out its podcast on the translation literary journal Pathlight, a copy of which arrived at my door today. (Pathlight is very good so far.)

I guess it's that day

2011-12-25T14:41:00.001+08:00

Wukan update: you don't really know

2011-12-23T14:29:00.005+08:00

A few interesting points to take away from the two New York Times articles yesterday about Wukan (Canny Villagers Grasp Keys to Loosen China's Muzzle; Demonstrators Who Took Over Chinese Village Halt Protest).

The villagers have been very welcoming of reporters. They even set up an impromptu "press center":

On one wall of the living room was a portrait of God staring down from the heavens. Below that was a small wooden cross with a figure of Jesus. And below that, taped to the wall, was a white sheet of paper with a statement in Chinese and English. It beseeched reporters not to call the protest an “uprising.”
“We are not a revolt,” it said. “We support the Communist Party. We love our country.”

Of course. In a country whose citizens are as outwardly apolitical as here, no one wants to risk their livelihoods over ideology. People would much rather cooperate, get what's theirs. In this case, we're not exactly sure what that is. Perhaps to keep their homes or be properly compensated? Though that seems like an unlikely result, for land disputes never end well for the majority of people. Expect a compromise in which some profit while most get just barely enough to begrudgingly stop their demonstrations.

You know how sometimes, at the scene of a fight or an accident, everyone rubbernecks it or gathers around to watch? This happens all the time here. Public disputes are a spectacle, a free show. But ask someone to intervene, and watch them turn their heads. Anyway, I wonder how much of what's happening in Wukan is simply a spectacle for the villagers. They don't actually want to risk anything, and you can't really blame them, or say "too bad," for there's a measure of hypocrisy in that sort of response -- we too just want a spectacle, don't we? Because we're safe and sound wherever we're at, and god forbid we're the ones asked to make the real sacrifices in the name of change.

In midmorning, as officials began arriving outside the village, hundreds of residents lined the roadside. Dozens held up a red banner that welcomed the officials “to come to Lufeng to resolve the Wukan incident.”

And the central government's stance?

On Thursday, People’s Daily, the mouthpiece of the Communist Party, criticized local officials for letting the situation spiral out of control while praising the efforts of Mr. Wang’s team to resolve the dispute. The provincial officials “created the basic conditions for stability and harmony” in Wukan, the newspaper said.

And finally:

There was relief that the blockade of the village was ending, but also fear among some residents. What would happen, they wondered, once all the outsiders decamped and the spotlight shifted away from Wukan?
“I’m afraid they might come and take people away,” said Huang Rongrui, 40, a construction worker. “The local government always says one thing, but does another.”

An excerpt from "Last Train Home: An Amanuensis"

2011-12-23T13:58:00.004+08:00

I may have mentioned a while back that the documentary Last Train Home, by Chinese Canadian filmmaker Lixin Fan, was "stunning and heartbreaking" and that "I don't have any other words to describe the viewing experience." I sorta lied about that last part. Below, an excerpt of the viewing experience, in words.

***

This film is dedicated to the migrant workers and their families

Opening credits. Zeitgeist Films: the red Z flies into place. We’re zoomed in as the letters in “Eye Steel Film” chug across to a backlit scrim the color of the sun. Pitter-patter of rain. In a tidy white font at the bottom left of a black screen are the words “TELEFILM CANADA and the ROGERS GROUP OF FUNDS through the THEATRICAL DOCUMENTARY PROGRAM present.”

FADE IN. Only a uniformed policeman, bundled in black, occupies the public traffic lane. He walks toward the camera, which is perched high and panning left, and quickly we understand that the emptiness on the right of our screen is a foil for the congestion on the left, the serried bodies so tightly packed that we lose the human face, the human arm, the leg, the semblance of movement: we see only a concourse of black-haired beings corralled by a vertical line of officers as barricade. There is a buzz of flesh and blood, a swelling commotion of such bestial strain that the sound of a steady downpour could well be part and parcel of this manmade scene. We see a scattering of umbrellas in the colors of neon, sky blue, army green, sandstone, burgundy, yellow, fuchsia, brown, turquoise, teal, charcoal, light purple, mahogany, orange – and as the camera pans, they proliferate until our screen is filled with these varicolored mushrooms abloom in this soil of humanity.

At ground level, men and women are rushing forward amid an expanding hiss of babble. They flow with the tide, and divested of agency, individuals are freed from obligations of human compassion, sympathy, and courtesy. Uniformed men with hard-billed caps steer traffic best they can, but they are outnumbered. The energy is ramifying from some heart of the matter, the heart which is this: the primal, animalistic instinct and need to be at a place called home. We zoom in on a man being tugged from behind by one who does not want to lose him. A woman emits a screak. A cop says into a megaphone, “Be patient, don’t crowd.”

We are in the bowels of the station, our vision pointed down a concrete gully daubed with the pale glow of cylindrical fluorescent lights. Plaster is peeling off the walls. There are over 130 million migrant workers in China. Travelers appear from the vanishing point hauling roller suitcases, handbags, duffel bags, buckets, makeshift carts – and their weighty footsteps, their burdens, their haste. They go home only once a year, during Chinese New Year. They jog, fast-walk, and now they are rounding the corner. This is the world’s largest human migration. Cut to station platform: a man cranes his neck to make space for an oversized blue bag of woven plastic, possibly containing everything he owns in life, that he hoists onto his shoulder. We see the side of the train, already in motion. The faces inside are a blur. A bright light, belonging to the camera, reflects off the windows, blinking in symphony with the clank of the train’s metal wheels. The clanks grow distant, for we have remained on the platform while the locomotive slips into the night. A whistle sounds, the mistuned French horn, distant and muted. The screen cuts to black, except these words, in English and Chinese:

LAST

TRAIN

HOME

Clank, clank, clank. Again, that distant and muted whistle…

A film by

LIXIN FAN

Winter 2006. Here is the postcard of a modern Chinese city: a layer of buildings, a mildewed sheet of fog, a few construction cranes. Arrayed in two dimensions: at the bottom are white and dull-pink low-rise buildings; slightly above that, a vanilla six-story building, possibly a factory; rising a little, pink apartments that could be dormitories. We are halfway up the page now, and here everything is hazy, implying distance. There is the mound of a hill. Higher up, hazier still, is the outline of a skyscraper, one side rounded off like a half-licked Popsicle. The top third of the page is simply a swath of gray-red, Teflon-soot, particulates of orange, the hue of cancer. It is the sky. We hear the tittering of a jackhammer, that metal woodpecker. Guangzhou, Guangdong Province.

The Chinese government on Christian Bale, and another protest

2011-12-22T11:53:00.005+08:00

From the Associated Press:

"But he was not invited to create a story or shoot film in a certain village," said [Foreign Ministry spokesman] Liu [Weimin]. "I think if you want to make up news in China, you will not be welcome here."

There's no sense getting angry at Chinese government mouthpieces. They're just doing their jobs. No one really cares about what they think, not the Chinese, certainly not, I hope, Christian Bale.

But you know what? Fuck you, Liu Weimin. Fuck you.

OK, glad we got that out of the way.

MEANWHILE in Guangdong... another protest!

From Huffington Post:

Thousands of people besieged a government office in a southern Chinese town Tuesday and blocked a highway to demand a halt to a planned coal-fired power plant because of concerns about pollution, protesters said.
Riot police used tear gas in an attempt to disperse the protesters at the highway in the town of Haimen in Guangdong province, and the demonstrators hurled rocks, water bottles and bricks in return, said one of the protesters, a 27-year-old man surnamed Chen.
It is the second major protest in two weeks in a corner of coastal southern China that has been seeing periodic unrest over the last few years, primarily over land disputes. In much of Guangdong province, conflicts have been intense because the area is among China's most economically developed, pushing up land prices.

You treat your people like shit, and they'll throw rocks at you. Literal and metaphorical. The literal rocks you probably don't care about, since you have armor and guns. The other kind? It'll ruin your day, believe that.

China Daily just does not give a fuck

2011-12-21T23:59:00.002+08:00

Yes, they will spit on your intelligence and then tell you how stupid you are. Because sometimes, their stories just aren't meant for you. Why would they be? You're just a person.

Meanwhile, Pyongyang must be pretty happy with this cover. They are, as you know, allies.

Text, cover

The culture of "journalism" here, folks. Like it or leave it.

Changes abound in this city of ours

2011-12-20T01:22:00.002+08:00

We can talk about big changes all day, but it's the little stuff that's more likely to sneak up on us and one day to make us exclaim, "Holy shit, that happened?" Take note of the neighborhoods between Dawanglu and Shuangjing, i.e. between Carrefour, Today Art Museum and Beijing City International School. There's some shit happening.

Two people kicking around a shuttlecock.

If you ever want to buy property, look here. It's still somewhat affordable -- by which I simply mean it's not in the millions of usd as a place near Second Ring Road might be -- but the area's nice enough that prices are probably only going to increase.

The Cardboard Men (A Video)

2011-12-19T09:38:00.005+08:00

You touch the cardboard man, talk to him.
What does he say?
Nothing, probably. He is made of
thickset crenellated pulpwood, after all,
and is mono-dimensional, and even if
he understood your words, golden like a metaphor,
he would not deign to reply,
to hand back your arrogance,
you prehistoric mumbler,
alien wanderer of our streets,
for the cardboard men
have evolved beyond language,
which is why, to you,
they make no reply.

Even if i know that tomorrow the world would go to pieces I would still plant My apple TREE

2011-12-19T01:28:00.005+08:00

Also see: still LOVE U.

Highlights from the latest NYT article on Wukan

2011-12-18T03:00:00.002+08:00

Full article here.

The pessimistic:

How long they will last is another matter. As the days pass, the cordons of police officers surrounding the village grow larger. Armored trucks and troop carriers have been reported nearby. On local television, a 24-hour channel denounces the villagers as “a handful of people” dedicated to sabotaging public order, with the names of protesters flashing on a blue screen, warning that they will be prosecuted. Many here fear this will all end badly.

The... not pessimistic:

Here in Wukan, many residents believed that the national government had not yet intervened to resolve matters simply because it had been misled by nefarious local officials to believe that all was well.

So far, however, it seems from inside this locked-down village that government leaders at all levels are flummoxed at their blue-moon, if temporary, loss of control.

Lin Zuluan, 67, a retired businessman who is now the village’s de facto leader, said that officials had approached him to negotiate an end to the protest, but that talks had gone nowhere, in part because the officials would not meet villagers’ demands to return all their land.

“I do have concerns” over the lack of progress, he said. “But I do believe this country is ruled by law, so I do believe the central government will do whatever it has to do to help us.”

Why a big fuck-you kick should be aimed at a whole lot of authorities:

They said that he had died of a heart attack in a hospital and that medical records of his care would be provided.

But family members say officials confiscated their mobile telephones before allowing them into the funeral home, apparently to prevent them from taking photographs. Mr. Xue’s nose was caked with blood, his body was black with bruises and his left thumb was broken, apparently pulled backward to the breaking point, one of them, a nephew named Xue Ruiqiang, said on Friday in an interview.

We should probably all be following what's happening in Wukan

2011-12-17T00:40:00.006+08:00

The New York Times called it an "open rebellion." Business Insider gave three reasons the protests are "totally unprecedented." Roads are blockaded. It has its own Wikipedia page ("Siege of Wukan").

The situation: a bunch of people are angry that government officials or cadres, in cahoots with developers, are evicting them to build luxury housing that they won't be able to afford. Of course they haven't been properly compensated -- oh, and a village representative was killed while in custody. This is a huge deal. Because while chai-qian (demolish-relocate) is common -- the biggest surprise is these large-scale protests don't happen more often -- a death of a well-respected villager is the type of cataclysmic event that can galvanize and embolden the masses, and suddenly a dispute has become a months-long protest.

We should probably be clear about what the villagers are fighting for, though. It's not, as Hong Kong's Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movement in China chairman Lee Cheuk-yan rather selfishly put it, "democracy in China" (quote: "We are very much encouraged by their struggle and we believe this is the hope for democracy in China.") For fuck's sake, their land is being pillaged; I think "democracy" and all its nebulous meanings is the last thing on their minds. We can help the movement or we can hurt it, and wielding words like "democracy" and, really, "rebellion" (implying overthrow of the government) probably aren't the best. In this sense, this is nothing like Occupy, and not really at all like Arab Spring: these villagers have a specific reason for protesting, and it's a pretty narrow, selfish reason, however justified they are.

Still: we should pay attention. You never know where the threshold is for critical mass, and once that's reached, things will never be the same.

POSTSCRIPT: Somehow related: Christian Bale stopped from visiting Chen Guangcheng. Some days, I tell ya... fuck this government.

Pictures of the Day: Beijing SantaCon

2011-12-11T12:15:00.005+08:00

Pictures by Ben Redden:

J.R. Smith is the CBA's Carmelo Anthony

2011-12-09T21:43:00.003+08:00

Laid out on flu medicine here and just finished watching the Beijing-Zhejiang game on CCTV-5. J.R. Smith missed a three-pointer at the buzzer that would have erased a nine-point deficit in two minutes. Back rim. Decent game.

Afterwards, Beijing's coach basically said Smith had no help and that the team's strategy was to let Smith get his points (at least 37, I think) and contain everyone else. Success!

This might be the Beijing Ducks' year. With its win over Zhejiang (now 5-2), Beijing sits atop the standings as the last undefeated team at 9-0. Every other team has at least two losses.

In another Chinese sports happening, there's this Peak commercial with Shane Battier where he says, "Indomitable heart and aggressive mental power." Perhaps Peak should consider a different writer.

Also, Kevin Love is sponsored by 361. Who knew? It's too bad, because Stephon Marbury's the one rocking that whole "love" theme.

Last Train Home

2011-11-06T18:58:00.005+08:00

Stunning and heartbreaking. So thoroughly stunning and heartbreaking that I don't have any other words to describe the viewing experience. It's perfect in ways many filmmakers wouldn't dare trying to be.

UPDATE, 12/23: Words.

At the Akon concert last night

2011-11-05T23:59:00.002+08:00

It was difficult hearing him say anything over the bass while sitting in the third deck of Wukesong (MasterCard Center, if you insist), but I've never seen so many Chinese people standing at a concert before -- and ushers letting them do it. Akon had the crowd hot, which is a tribute to his showmanship, I suppose, but a real sign of what Chinese club music is all about: American club music that's upbeat and safe, about beautiful girls, basically.

Hope fun was had all around. Here's a clip:

A note to Chinese web designers

2011-11-03T12:40:00.002+08:00

Just now I tried ordering from Pizza Hut's website. There's so much flash and miscellany on that site that it took about 90 seconds to respond to my clicks. I had to click through three fucking pages to get to the fucking pizza menu (never made it). I couldn't apple+click to open pages in new tabs. I didn't find the delivery number.

I ended up ordering from Pizza Company. (4008-113-113 for delivery; one medium pizza for 39 yuan, two for 69 yuan; it's a great deal!)

This is so refreshing

2011-11-01T23:59:00.000+08:00

From Shanghaiist: Shenhua coach invades pitch to lift injury-faking

Excerpting:

Shanghai Shenhua's coach was so enraged by the play-acting of his own midfielder that he stormed angrily onto the pitch and dragged the offending injury-faker to his feet.

...

The reactions of those around Besek are priceless. Liu himself looks shocked and confused, whilst Shenhua midfielder Cao Yunding appears to be asking Besek what the hell he is doing. Meanwhile, the referee's reaction is priceless, smiling cheesily at Besek and giving him the thumbs up.

Afterwards, and in a video reel, Bezek told reporters that Liu was a professional footballer and that there are some things professional footballers should never do. He said Liu was a young player who still had a lot to learn.

Chinese soccer needs more athletes, fewer cunts.

Actually, this also applies for Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, South American, and probably French soccer, too. (Help me out, what countries am I forgetting?)

There's a baseball game on right now

2011-10-28T12:27:00.002+08:00

It's going to the 11th inning. You should probably watch.

Back in the Beijinger

2011-10-24T23:15:00.003+08:00

The magazine that held its 10-year-anniversary party recently published this on its blog. Disclaimer: it's got my picture in it. Blagh.

NYT journalist in DPRK

2011-10-19T23:59:00.002+08:00

If Edward Wang got that crappy hat for three US dollars, he got ripped off. Same hat at Yashow in Beijing sells for $1.50. Less if you can bargain well.

Cartoon about American politics

2011-10-13T11:35:00.004+08:00

I've been a bit harsh on China Daily as of late, but Luo Jie does something good here:

Monday's cartoon

If nothing else, because there sure is a lot of bickering in the U.S., for the sake of bickering, I guess. Can't wait for that election season, huh.

Andre Vltchek or China Daily (again) misses the point

2011-10-12T12:45:00.007+08:00

Got this from a China Daily article, so proceed with caution, but...

[Andre] Vltchek, who is also a novelist and political analyst, has been discovering places that are rarely covered by the mainstream Western media, and exposing disparities in today's world.

One of his articles, titled The West Perfecting its Techniques to Hurt China, was recently translated and published in People's Daily, a major Chinese newspaper.
"The West has absolutely no interest in human rights in China or anywhere else. How could it, considering that it is violating them on basically all continents, worldwide?" he wrote in the commentary posted a year ago on Znet, a website focusing on politics from a left-wing perspective.

I've said this in various ways on this blog before, but I'll say it again, this time in numbered points:

1. Whether "the West" (western governments) has violated human rights is immaterial to pretty much anything. It simply DOES NOT MATTER. If you're a tenant in rural China who gets relocated because some cadre wants to build a hotel (or if you're a tenant in the heart of Beijing...), whether or not America waterboarded prisoners has absolutely no relevance whatsoever.

Similarly, whether western governments care or don't care about China's human rights doesn't matter either. See above. The idealist thinks that perhaps a country like the U.S. could push China to [fill-in-the-blank], but that's about as likely as China convincing Obama to close Gitmo. In other words, if change happens, it won't be because of a foreign diplomat.

2. There are a lot of people in a lot of places who take governments to task for abuses of human rights. Why don't we talk about the efforts of these civilians instead of dancing around government press releases and diplomatic talk? Does anyone actually find government officials interesting? Their job is to maintain holding patterns, and if we expect anything else from them, we're really giving them too much credit. A more interesting and telling question is, proportionally, are there more or fewer human rights lobbyists in China than there are in, say, the U.S.? Granted, it's not that interesting a question, and we can go a lot deeper, but at least it's not the classic red herring that Chinese commentators seem so fond of: "Because the West is flawed, we're allowed to be flawed as well."

(By the way, I think this is why I took so much issue with China Daily's Chen Weihua in my previous post, who seems to think that the blanket argument "West is flawed" is JUSTIFICATION for China's misgivings (in this case, censorship of media). It's so juvenile: Mommy, but Jimmy's doing it too! To say nothing of the fact that Chen was wrong in his premise -- his premise, I think, being that the West doesn't care about the West's own problems; Westerners do care -- quite a lot, actually. And sometimes an individual who happens to live "over there" turns his or her eye to China, and all of a sudden the natives -- such as Weihua -- flip their shit.)

3. People's fixation -- by "people" I don't specifically mean Vltchek here, even though he wrote about it -- with what "the West" or, more generally, "non-Chinese people" think about China is stupid. It's, again, immaterial to anything. It leads to straw man arguments and non sequiturs and various other logical fallacies that we can generally label "stupid."

But, then again -- and you know this already -- it's part of the country's long process of maturation. China can build skyscrapers and luxury malls and turn a fishing village into a 10-million-strong metroplex within a couple of decades, but changing attitudes and mindsets, well -- no shortcut there.

China Daily insults collective intelligence of readership, itself, EVERY FUCKING PERSON

2011-10-07T23:59:00.002+08:00

I'm quite late with this, but I just noticed this column from Chen Weihua titled, "US media blackout of protest is shameful," and I couldn't resist channeling some rancid anger. Excerpt:

While there are many videos of harsh police action on the Internet, I have witnessed how the formerly helpful police patrolling the streets have suddenly resorted to force in Zuccotti Park, also known as Liberty Plaza, in Lower Manhattan.
In one scene, several policemen jumped on one skinny man who was not acting violently. They pushed him down and handcuffed him. Just five minutes later, a policeman waved his fist at a man. That day, seven people were arrested, with one suffering a serious leg injury.

Wow. Pushing him down, handcuffing... sounds like some serious violations of human rights there.

Here's the thing: I understand China Daily's agenda. I know it secretly relishes the role of devil's advocate. I know there's nothing it loves more than using shoddy Western reporting tactics against the West. But what I absolutely don't know yet want to find out is whether their "columnists" (very poorly disguised government shills and general hacks) have any morsel of self-respect. The above-linked column isn't just pot calling the kettle black, it's Chappelle Show "black white supremacist"-level outrageousness. It's beyond "stupid," it's a sort of universal dark matter that is threatening to suck intelligence off the face of the knowable cosmos. A Chinese newspaper -- China Fucking Daily, which is FUCKING CENSORED BY THE FUCKING HIGHEST ORGAN OF STATE PROPAFUCKINGANDA -- calling out any country's media for not reporting on something, when at first there was nothing to report and later there was all this, all this, all this -- Jesus, just fucking google it, asshole -- not to mention this Krugman column, has to be the boldest, most bald-faced expression of "I'm China, and I just don't give a fuck" that anyone can slap down, short of:

China: "Traffic pretty bad, eh Los Angeles? SUCK ON A HERPES SORE, LOS ANGELES!"
Los Angeles: "Um, but Beijing has the worst traffic in the world..."
China: "I'm China, and I just don't give a fuck."

Well done, China Daily. Your quest for legitimacy, especially in those new offices in New York, is going swimmingly.

UPDATE: Article about this in Want China Times.

Beijing, please

2011-10-02T17:33:00.003+08:00

The city has emptied its bowels of people, and suddenly the streets are cleaner, the skies bluer (mountain visible!), the traffic wardens friendlier. (A short old man engaged me in a one-way conversation at a crossing yesterday, details of which aren't important, but it made me appreciate, all over again, the wardens' stupid, stupid jobs.) We are in Golden Week, the country's monthlong celebration of itself, a time when those in the middle class pack their bags and take a leave. The result is a metropolis mercifully relieved of the pressures and stresses of the hoi polloi, the ruckus and racket of the multitude among ones. There are suddenly seats in the subway and bus (and at certain McDonald's). There is a much-needed calm, a great slowing down, leading to a sense that this way of life is the norm. Of course the illusion will be lifted in due time, as this reprieve is as temporary as the blue skies. They will all return, by choice, because to live in Beijing is a privilege and at this heart of the world we are all part and parcel of the rat-a-tat of scuttling feet and all that happens, all that traffic, all that drunkenness, all that fire and ardor, the conflagration and consolidation of hopes and goals. Our choice is clear: Beijing, please -- another. And one for my friend here.

Just want to get this on the record real quick: baseball

2011-09-29T12:41:00.003+08:00

The craziest final day in Major League Baseball history saw the culmination of two epic collapses. The Braves lost after blowing a lead in the final frame. The Rays came back from a 7-0 deficit -- with a solo home run by Dan Johnson in the bottom of the 9th (two outs, two strikes, of course) to tie it -- and the Red Sox, with their presiding closer on the mound, give up two two-out runs in Baltimore mere minutes before Evan Longoria's walk-off home run in Tampa Bay. In real time, moments in the form of movements are fleeting, the world itself transitory; only in memory does time metamorphose into a spectrum and achieve shape, which can be inspected. Focus on one part and you will never believe against the trajectory, never imagine alternatives or that which is not prewritten. Thus we are taught: the slopes of mathematics are fastened to the verities of probability, order. And then it all comes undone. And then -- fans of the Red Sox, say -- are forced to focus on a parallel order, which is chaos. It is tempting -- is it not? -- to see time, that spectrum, as an accordion, and compress it so that we return to the previous spot on our mapped course where the score is 3-2, 7-0, and shall remain that way forevermore, until Boston meets Philadelphia in the World Series, until confetti fall and the world ends, until the end of time.

Now back to your regularly scheduled China news.

What happens when you hold a baseball tournament and no one writes about it?

2011-09-29T00:30:00.004+08:00

Apparently the Guilin Tourism College beat Xinjiang University in the finals of the China National College Baseball Tournament last month. I would link to the results or something, except I can't find any, in either English or Chinese. I've reached out to Xinjiang's coach, though, so maybe more info TK in the upcoming days.

This would be the same Xinjiang team, by the way, that momentarily captured the blogosphere's heart last year as it tried to muster the necessary funds to compete in the National College Baseball Tournament in Shanghai. They ended up sending 13 players over.

Meanwhile, the Red Sox and Rays are tied for the AL Wild Card going into the final day of the season, and the Braves and Cardinals are tied for the NL Wild Card. Yes, I will be getting up early tomorrow to watch those games on MLB.tv.

Arriving in Beijing

2011-09-26T13:35:00.004+08:00

The train from Dalian hadn't yet reached Beijing East Station on its way to the main station on the corner of Second Ring Road when a recorded message over the intercom listed our destination city's distinctive features, such as the Forbidden City, along with superlatives, such as the "biggest public square in the world, Tiananmen." A neighborhood of shanties swung into and out of sight like the motion of a pendulum, time itself; soon those low-rise shacks will be swept aside by the brooms of construction, their dust absorbed by the free-floating elements above, the haze, through which, at that very moment, a piercing gleam in the distance announced the presence of a golden skyscraper burgeoning out of the earth. A small child nearby kept repeating in a manner of singsong, "Arriving in Beijing! Arriving in Beijing!" until his mother told him to quit it. Arriving in Beijing, indeed. Back home.

Ultimate Frisbee in North Korea

2011-09-12T23:59:00.001+08:00

This was the purpose of my trip to Pyongyang two weeks ago. Wrote an article as well, which I'll link to when it comes out.

Related: North Korean kids playing soccer:

Goodbye, fiona...

2011-09-09T01:48:00.002+08:00

I never knew you. Except now I find out you also have a Xanga account?! Where have you been all these four years?

Sadly, quirkyBeijing moves down on my blogroll, partly to make room for the excellent Seeing Red in China.

This post was backdated on 9/29.

A trip to Pyongyang, August 27-30

2011-09-05T11:52:00.002+08:00

I know I've made a habit of saying, after returning from a trip, that I'll write "more about this later," but this time I mean it: I really will write more about North Korea in the coming weeks.

For now, though, feast your eyes on this video I made:

Full videos (two parts) here:

Duke treats Chinese "Olympic Team" like Fairleigh Dickinson"

2011-08-23T10:58:00.000+08:00

It was not, of course, the Olympic Team we all know, because last I checked, the Olympic Team was coached by Bob Donewald and has Yi Jianlian. That team would have crushed Duke. The one that played last night went down 28-6 and, despite spurts of competence, never really challenged the Dukies.

In case you were wondering: Duke: 3, teams from China: 0.

The highlight of the night -- other than a couple of monstrous dunks by the Blue Devils -- was a mascot copping a feel from two Duke cheerleaders, and the Blue Devil mascot going up to that other mascot and doing a "get the fuck off your knees you pervert" hand motion. I really, really wish I'd gotten video of that.

I'll have pictures and a vid of something else in a couple weeks or something.

This is Duke

2011-08-22T01:19:00.003+08:00

"The veteran-laden white squad dominated in full court action in a steamy MasterCard Center."

--From Duke's athletics website. A Day in the Life.

I'll be at the game tonight, so if anyone has any good Duke-related heckles, let me know ...

The most hackneyed article about China you will ever read

2011-08-21T20:38:00.005+08:00

You know how some poets write with a thesaurus or a rhyming dictionary, and end up endlessly churning out couplets that rhyme "light" with "bight"? No? Right, of course not, cause that's FUCKING RIDICULOUS. You would have to be in third grade to do that.

Well, someone at Fox News decided to write a story about China -- sorta -- using a list of cliches that is FUCKING RIDICULOUS. Let's examine the first five paragraphs, shall we:

It could be said that China has engaged the west by fighting without fighting.

Which is why the Georgetown University men's basketball team received a Shanghai Surprise in its game the other night against the Bayi Rockets in China.

The game devolved into a fight worthy of the spectacle at the Palace at Auburn Hills, rather than the Great Hall of the People.

The only thing missing was an appearance from Ron Artest.

So much for ping pong diplomacy. Try KO diplomacy. All of the punches, kicks and chairs that were thrown represented a Great Leap Forward into what some dubbed "The Great Brawl of China."

Okay. We got:

Shanghai Surprise (game was in Beijing)
Great Hall of the People (game was nowhere near the Great Hall of the People)
Ping pong diplomacy (I believe they were playing basketball)
Great Leap Forward (next time the Atlanta Braves lose a game, I'm going onto my Royals blog and leading off a post with, "War is hell.")

But of course, no article written this poorly could go without a reference to ...

Bruce Lee called it the art of fighting without fighting.

Bruce fucking Lee.

I'm wracking my brain here, and I can't think of five comparable cliches for America. I mean, maybe "You're not in Kansas anymore," but you would have to REALLY TRY to write as lazy and cliched an article as the above. Like, you would have to google "most obvious references to American pop culture as seen in other countries" or some shitty phrase like that to get the list, then you'd have to print out the list, then put it in front of you as you build sentences and paragraphs around those items. You would get something like this:

War is Hell.

The pitcher was quickly reminded he wasn't in Kansas anymore. First there was a home run, then another. Someone should have called Social Services, because this was the Invasion of Normandy.

So much for the Four Horsemen.

Phillies 5, Braves 2.

Here's how the Fox News article ends:

Perhaps the era of fighting without fighting is over.

Enter the Dragon.

A dinner exchange with Mom

2011-07-19T10:55:00.003+08:00

Me: Are these shrimps skinless?

Mom: Yes, in America, shrimps come without skin.

Have I already talked about HDTV?

U.S. of A: Free (and fast) Internet, HD TV and ... US Airways

2011-07-18T03:09:00.002+08:00

First, I have to put on the record that US Airways is my new favorite airline, at least until I fly with Southwest again. I missed my flight from Regan National Airport to Kansas City TWICE within a span of 13 hours. Leaving aside the magnitude of incompetence required to accomplish this, I have to say that US Airways put me on another flight both times without charge.

The first time I missed it, on Friday night, was due to the fact that 1) I didn't know different colored trains share the same track in DC's subway system (and I was buzzed off America's actually-alcoholic beer), and 2) the subway train I was on (the wrong subway train) broke down as I was headed toward not-Regan. Then I switched trains and waited 30 minutes and then transferred (waiting 10 minutes) and got to the airport just as the flight was leaving the gate.

The second time ... well, there's no good excuse, really. I got to the check-in counter for my 9:20 am flight at 10 o'clock and told them I missed my flight -- again -- and the guy said, "You're making a habit of missing flights, huh?" I replied, "Yeah, it was idiotic." He put me on the 10:40.

Watching the US-Japan game on HDTV without drunk people next to me. Wow. When ESPN HD showed highlights of the '99 game, which wasn't in HD, all I could think was, HOW DID WE LIVE BACK THEN?

I can stream WWE Raw from Tudou.com without lag. To put this in perspective: I certainly can't stream YouTube (with VPN, of course) in China without having to pause the video every 10 seconds so that it loads.

American Internet is the thing I miss the most about this country.

And Paninis with bacon, bulgogi beef, grilled peppers and onions.

And my cat, Kiddy.

(Mom... goes without saying, I hope.)

Quick thought about this game that I'm watching on HDTV as we pass the 34-minute mark: I've never seen any goalkeeper layout as often as this Japanese keeper without being anywhere close to the ball. Poor keeper.

Not my best side, but ...

2011-07-15T03:36:00.000+08:00

Just kidding, of course. Beijing Ultimate could use all the publicity it gets. Thanks to Vera Peneda and Global Times, which I believe I've said before is the best English-language publication in Beijing.

Article here.

Tonight at Punk

2011-06-28T16:12:00.003+08:00

I might be reading as part of Global Times' Flash Fried Fiction finals. 6 to 9 pm is all I know.

Champions

2011-06-13T19:55:00.001+08:00

Beijing Big Brother at Shanghai Open 2011

Videos here.

Mongolia?

2011-03-29T23:59:00.000+08:00

"... Mongols and Mongolians always looked down on the Chinese as a inferior race of rice-cultivating peasants."

Thus begins a series of weird comments from BAAGII on this Foreign Policy article about Mongolia. Did you know, according to another commenter, Aquarium, that...

The original and modern meaning of “Hya” is castrated male slave or eunuch, and stavkove kancelarie tad is plural. Therefore, China is called Republic of “castrated male slaves or eunuchs” in Mongolian. This term is still used to describe China and Chinese. For example, Mongolians often say that Hu jintao is the Chairman of the People’s Republic of China, and the Mongolian meaning’s literal translation is actually “Hu jintao is the Head Eunuch of the People’s Republic of castrated male slaves-eunuchs”, in Mongolian.

Great and awesome. Er, hmm.

Just started a Mongolia tag. May revisit this subject later.

Out of the dark ages?

2011-03-28T23:03:00.003+08:00

China may have relaxed its Gmail restrictions, but that's no longer relevant. My VPN is working again after a small hiccup and all is well in Internet world. Thank you to Support Team.

Happy 82nd, Nainai!

2011-03-27T23:59:00.000+08:00

From Shaguoju near Xidan

At the Beijinger's Restaurant Awards yesterday

2011-03-27T20:05:00.001+08:00

Slow fire rescue

2011-03-25T23:17:00.008+08:00

It would be an exaggeration to call this the world's slowest fire rescue, because I can easily imagine fire rescues being slower (hey, at least the traffic is moving!), but let's all agree that if you want to be rescued from the Central Business District, it's best not to have an accident at rush hour.

The below video was taken just a little after 5 pm on Thursday, with big plumes of dark smoke clearly visible against a pale blue sky:

The fire began in the "afternoon," according to Xinhua, and as you'll notice because of the timestamp in that linked article, it was still ongoing at 6 pm. A friend of mine who works near CBD said the fire went on for about two hours before any firetrucks got to it.

Beijing's roads could use more private cars to impede vehicles that actually need the road. Buy some more cars, fucktards.

Google accuses China of blocking its mail service

2011-03-21T14:19:00.003+08:00

Because China is indeed doing it. I think I said enough last week on the subject of this country's censors.

NY Times excerpt:

Google said that it was not having any technical problems with Google’s main Web site or Gmail service in China.
“There is no issue on our side; we have checked extensively,” Google said in a statement released Sunday. “This is a government blockage, carefully designed to look like the problem is with Gmail.”
Analysts who track Web developments say that the Chinese government may be intentionally disrupting access to Google and other Web services as part of a campaign to tighten Internet controls and censor material.

Global Times Flash Fried Fiction contest

2011-03-19T14:05:00.001+08:00

I'm being more than a little self-indulgent in linking to this, but here's my entry in Global Times' fiction-writing contest.

As part of the competition, the Raffles Design Institute assigned some of its students to make posters related to each of the 12 finalists. The picture in the above link is the one that got the highest grade. Below is the poster I prefer:

On Charlie Sheen and Global Times (and al-Jazeera, et al.)

2011-03-14T04:49:00.002+08:00

I didn't want to comment on this. I think satire's best left uncommented on, lest you become, unwittingly, the butt of the joke (see: Alessandro; Alessandro, fallout to; my friend's buzz thread; those in bullet points below). But now that Global Times' Charlie Sheen piece is out in the way-the-fuck open, I think it's time for me to throw in a couple cents.

But first allow me this detour: Charlie Sheen is an American hero. Can we all agree on that? Not because he lives the social liberal's dream life with three blond porn stars, but because he's been able to say, clearly and resoundingly, FUCK YOU to an establishment that includes prudish CNN and Wall Street Journal types, overly serious journalists trying to "make sense" of him, conservatives who are disgusted by him and anything resembling non-missionary-position sex, and amateur psychologists all the world over. Charlie Sheen is to be enjoyed while he's still with us (I don't say this with insensitivity) because he's the sort of one-in-a-million personality who, given the platform to communicate with wider audiences, eschews the phony in favor of brutal honesty and entertainment as if to say it actually is possible to be yourself and absolutely right-fucking okay ... okay to be interesting, okay to be funny, okay to have a laugh at everything staid and cliched. Because surely we must recognize how much of our lives are spent wading through the marshes of cliche, right? That we live trapped in houses within houses built by predecessors and ancestors and god-knows-whom, and that people like Charlie Sheen (and poets) open a window ever so slightly and allow us a whiff of freshness. Surely we must understand that the opportunity to diverge from our lockstep march toward death is an opportunity that deserves to be celebrated -- not crushed by loathsome words like "mental" and "unstable." Yes, I know Charlie Sheen is a tragedy wrapped in a comedy, but in all honesty, we have him to thank for giving that to us. Giving himself. America has allowed him to do that. He's the epitome of America in so many ways.

So any news media that uses Charlie Sheen (and they're all using them, those sluts -- worse than any of the porn stars Charlie's loved) in any way that is in the "Charlie Sheen spirit" is off to a good start. So Global Times deserves kudos off the bat here. Charlie Sheen as vehicle for satire. Charlie Sheen as net to catch the hypocrites, even long-time "China watchers" who really, really should know better.

Remember when I implied up top that the best satire ensnares as much as it incites laughter? Well, here is a compendious list of GT's victims:

Shanghaiist's Kenneth Tan
At least three people on my friend's buzz thread, linked above.
Al-Jazeera's Melissa Chan
At least he admitted to being "punk'd": Foreign Policy's Daniel Drezner
Richard, Peking Duck (disappointing...)
Snark, NICE! (I might have to spell it out for him: "nice" is in all-caps = sarcasm): former Chairman of the American Society of Magazine Editors Robert Stein, who, instead of admitting he didn't get the joke, replied: "Yeah, as I remember. Chairman Mao had us in stitches for years."

Here's the thing with all these people: they failed to get the joke even after it was explained to them by a Global Times editor (from Shanghaiist):

The answer is, it’s a spoof column, with full editorial connivance, and was intended to amuse as well as gull a few “Western” readers who’ll believe either a) any mad crap a Chinese commentator says or b) failing that, that the Chinese are incapable of humour or being “in on it” and therefore must be having a prank played on them. Either view is patronizing and/or offensive, I think you’d agree but - even if you don’t - in this case, you’re wrong.

Kenneth Tan's response to the above was essentially: we're just a blog, don't get mad at us.

But Kenneth, you're a blog of some repute, and even after the joke was explained, the best you could offer in reply was a defensive-sounding, "Yes, it didn't quite cross our minds that your bosses were in on the joke. But seriously, can you blame us for that? Have you read some of the jackshit that's published on the other pages of your paper?" You're not necessary wrong for not assuming the best in people, but your tone conveys a strange lack of awareness of who the enemy is -- if there is one.

The other things you say -- which I'll spare you the humiliation of re-reading on this blog -- sound even more defensive. You're the Shanghaiist. You probably blog out of an office -- unlike me, I'm blogging in my pajamas right now. You have influence. Act like it.

And here's al-Jazeera's Melissa Chan: "And so The Global Times editors signed off on a piece ostensibly about Charlie Sheen, probably believed there was some merit to the argument for Eastern values, recognised the reality of how business and mistresses are dealt with in China -- and in doing so, published a piece that was also mocking The Global Times itself."

I learned my lesson a while back with Alessandro: don't assume. In this case, don't assume that Chinese people don't "get the joke." And certainly don't conflate, as people are wont to do, the dispassionate and seemingly unbreakable veneer of the authoritarian government that controls China with the people who inhabit this country. It's one thing to say the government doesn't like joshing around -- though didn't Wikileaks show us the goal of international diplomacy for basically every country is to establish as elaborate a facade as possible? -- but it's another to say that the Chinese just don't "get" it.

Alas, I fear if we delve further, we're going to lose some readers. As Thomas Roche of Techyum puts it in a good but sorta roundabout piece: somehow we've reached the stage of "a hoax within a hoax within a hoax." And that's not a good place to be.

Try as I might, I can't really angry at any one person. But I'm going to use Melissa as an illustrative case here. The target of the satire was not the U.S. It wasn't China, really. It was ... you ready for this, Melissa Chan? ... YOU! (I'm channeling the spirit of Time, please excuse me.) YOU, Melissa Chan! I think balloons are falling from the rafters! Confetti is rocketing up to meet them in starbursts of color! The lights are flashing, Melissa, the lights, the hot lights of fame and glory!!! You are winning!

A friendly note to China's censors

2011-03-13T23:59:00.002+08:00

You're fucking around with our VPNs now, are you, you slimy pouches of rat shit? I don't really know how to communicate with you right now. I want to take the nastiest, runtiest, cum-filled-est pair of screwdrivers and shove 'em in your eye sockets. I want to find the most oft-used and least-cleaned douches from the fattest, smelliest, foulest cunts -- basically your daughters' -- and jam 'em up your nostrils that have been cut open by a blunt Swiss army knife. I want to break a bottle of beer over your head and castrate what little of your dick I can find with a microscope and then jam that microscope so far up your ass that your poop reeks of the spirit of Robert Hooke, and then ...

...whoa, okay, I blacked out momentarily there ... hang on...

OK I'm back. I want to hit you in the back of the head with a baseball bat. Yes, I'm borrowing imagery from a Tarantino film, that's how mad I am. So how should we talk? Over tea, you maggot-brained lard-loving swill fuck?

My anger for you knows no bounds. I will kill you, motherfucker.

More satire than satire

2011-03-11T16:41:00.003+08:00

(Paraphrasing Rob Zombie in the title, I think...)

From our favorite news site, People's Daily.

HT: Laura Fitch

Bigger space at Kro's Nest for trivia Thursdays

2011-03-10T02:34:00.001+08:00

If you haven't checked it out yet -- or even if you have, because you haven't quite seen it like this -- trivia night at Kro's Nest is going to be better than ever tonight (Thursday) starting at 8 pm. Jim and I are in the back room, which is a much better layout. More teams, more fun.

If you happen to attend because you heard about it from here, do make sure to introduce yourself.

Bye, YouTube

2011-03-07T18:35:00.003+08:00

And gchat's been sporadic for many days now. VPN, I hang to you with the last fibers of my soul.

UPDATE, 3/11: Well, I think YouTube is back, but Witopia is gone ...

NOT. Witopia, of course, is much more agile than China's Net nannies. I was angry for a while. Then I decided to contact Witopia and get everything sorted out. There is a workaround for every China problem.

Welcome back, YouTube

2011-03-06T23:59:00.000+08:00

Now if they'll unblock Blogger, my life will be ~~complete~~ slightly easier.

Chinese police and Western media dance at Wangfujing

2011-03-01T00:02:00.001+08:00

This is very cute. On one side, state police, like school girls wearing bonnets waiting for their young knights; on the other, Western media types, horny and hormonal and needing but a little punch to work up the nerve to approach. All to the backdrop of Wangfujing, where soirees are are often attended by the grand duchess herself.

There was no revolution, but you know this already. By now -- if you've been in China for any length of time -- you understand that no one cares about these sort of things, by and large. But the police showed up in force, because you can't be too careful in either sex or statecraft, and the Western media types lived up to their reputation. Consider the rabble roused. Perhaps next time ... smile?

The only losers here? As Adrienne Mong of MSN reports:

Ordinary Chinese were bewildered. “What’s going on? Why can’t we walk here?” they asked.
Some were more belligerent. One woman started shouting, “Why can’t I go down here? Why are you stopping me? Stop pushing.”

The consumers, who only wanted to spend a few hundred kuai and be on their way. But, again, you know this, too: consumers rule China.

Well done, everyone. Well fucking done.

Meanwhile, Chinese Internet buzzes over Richard Li and Isabella Leong.

Cataclysm around the corner

2011-02-28T17:30:00.004+08:00

Twenty-six. Last day of 2011's February. Late afternoon sun mere tarnished coin in a sky half-baked, as if an artist ran out of colors, as if a patient dropped his coveralls with a shrug and stepped into the light; redolent of autumn; redolent of infatuation, somehow. I don't dare say love.

Change is about us, a thing arriving like a long-expected house guest. We must embrace. We must accept one another though we are unsure whether to trust. I am sure we will never love. The ones we love are on their way out, to make way for these strangers. The rules will soon be theirs, as it was once ours.

Old men hobble on crutches. Women tote groceries forever up and down a weatherbeaten stairwell that could survive nuclear winter. One day, the days will become unrecognizable. One day we will debouch into the light and everything will be different, as if a great elemental spirit had swept his hand across our landscapes and our homes with their manicured lawns and our yawning high-rises and precious dams with the intent of starting anew, leaving nothing but the attar of nostalgia. Spring, perhaps. Surely spring.

Except this day, as clear as ever: a final day of a second month, redolent of autumn. You can sense it in the air. You can almost hold it for it has shape, it has texture; it circulates within us, breathed out in shared breaths.

Around the corner I see him, plain and recognizable as ever. Change. He extends his hand. We awkwardly hug. I know why you're here, I tell him. I know what you have come to do. He only smiles, that smile of perpetual understanding, of knowing he will outlive your son, your father; the smile one might give to a sufferer of terminal cancer. No trace of mocking. Do not mock me, I tell him nonetheless.

We walk briefly, though at any moment he is liable to disappear. Busy, he says. You understand, I hope. I tell him I do not understand much these days, perhaps nothing. Nothing feels right. Nothing feels permanent. There is nothing to hold, nothing to look forward to. Have you considered Buddhism? he asks me. Smile smaller. I remind him again to not mock me, though I say it teasingly.

He asks me what I want, and I tell him: just this day. Just let me have this day. I renounce these things, I say: these places people go, these stubs of hair on the collar of that man on the elevator, back from the barbershop. I renounce all my possessions, even that which I do not possess, the people I cannot possibly love, who cannot love me. I am renunciate, I am the elements. As I say this, it becomes apparent that I am no longer speaking, that my words have broken down beyond its smallest parts, the moneme atomized; I am communicating directly. I am a shaobing proprietor from Shanxi who cooks eggs and chicken meat over a hotplate; I am a man swerving to avoid a fellow biker; I am a foreigner rejoicing at finding Franziskaner at the local bodega; I am a salty youth in the torpor and ardor of my best days.

Trees reaching toward the waning light like supplicants. Beaks of birds desperate to start their journey. If only they knew the plushness of spring, the desolation of winter. I reach out and tell him -- I tell them many, many things, so quickly and thoroughly that there cannot be any language to translate what was said. They are unlikely to understand, but that does not matter. They search for the antonym of abandonment, an undo for renunciation. I see them stretching across the sky, the last one trailing slightly but keeping pace.

Who owns this day? Who can shake this cheeseparing owner of day by the cuff, rob it of its last penny so our journeys are halted... -- for just one day, one hour? Pardon me for wanting to be together.

I slowly fade back into the world. I am on my bike now. I am biking against traffic, toward home. Change has disappeared, though I know it is just around the corner, as surely as the sun. I am a speeding locomotive. I am watching on the platform, and it is too fast but I fling myself at it. A cataclysm is around the corner, or maybe it isn't.

After this day, nothing will be the same. Thus it is decreed -- and so it shall be, on this finest of days, redolent of autumn.

LinkedIn blocked, then unblocked

2011-02-25T23:59:00.002+08:00

Gone Thursday, back Friday. Nothing like a state nanny who can't make up her mind. Gotta love these cum whores.

Forbes:

If LinkedIn has committed a Web 2.0 crime in China’s eyes, there are a couple possibilities: the most likely issue, given Beijing’s desire to quash organizing of any form, is that there have been attempts by Jasmine organizers to reach out to others over LinkedIn, thus spreading the word via LinkedIn invitations; another issue, raised by Techrice, is the built-in ability to post to Twitter via LinkedIn, getting around the Great Firewall without the need for circumvention tools. As Techrice notes, “being the easiest way to tweet is a lousy government relations strategy in China.”

Murong Xuecun, new hero

2011-02-24T16:04:00.000+08:00

Joining Yang Youde.

Just read this.

There are journalists here, and perhaps some others, who may report later that I have delivered an angry speech. Well, I am not angry; I am just describing my situation, because I believe it is certainly not just my situation, but the situation faced by all of China's writers. And the fear I feel is not just the fear felt by one writer, but by all of our writers.

I'm angry.