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Good good study, day day up!
Pronounced: guó bǎo
Literally: National Security/National Treasure
Means: The two terms are homophones, and "national treasure" often means "panda". A writer at Seeing Red in China explains the rest: "how panda becomes the symbol for Chinese security thugs: Chinese national security (more like secret police) is called 国保 (guó bǎo) for short, and it’s pronounced exactly the same as 国宝, national treasure. Netizens sometimes refer 国保 as 国宝, jokingly, hence Panda, China’s national treasure. Kungfu Panda movies provided the basis for Panda to be a martial character."
With the recent confrontation between Batman actor Christian Bale and some infamous Chinese security thugs, online Chinese are been passing around "Pandaman vs. Batman" jokes, and photoshopping "Pandaman" into all kinds of scenarios, including movie posters and images from other security embarrassments and scandals. See here, here and here for more.
- 2011/12/19
InterWǎng Debris
Recent China internet debris.
Affordable gadgets vs. Chinese workers' rights
Three recent news articles (and one response) return the spotlight to the mammoth electronics factories in China that make most of our favourite electronics, pointing out what everybody knows and no one wants to think about:
Happy Chinese workers spell the end of affordable tech (ZDNet)
"Human and worker rights reforms in China would have serious negative consequences for the efficiency and cost of the gadget supply chain.
[...]
"Foxconn’s client list reads like a celebrity tech roster that includes Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Intel, Lenovo, IBM, Cisco/Linksys, Netgear, Microsoft, Sharp, Sony, Motorola, Asus, Acer and Vizio... tablet runners and e-reader champions Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Yes, your Kindles and Nooks are also made by the very same companies with the same awful working conditions that make products for Apple."
The dark side of shiny Apple products (CBS News)
"...our most popular electronic devices are largely made by hand ... MANY hands, as it turns out ... hands that often are very over-worked, or so industry's critics contend."
[...]
""I met workers who were 12. Do you really think Apple doesn't know?"
"But what was news were the suicides..."
In China, Human Costs Are Built Into an iPad (NYT)
and
BSR: New York Times’ Apple-Foxconn article contains untruths, inaccuracies, and misleading info (Mac Daily News)
- 2012/02/06
Those aren't Chinese New Year's fireworks; they're "recreational munitions"
From Nankai Rob's Chinese New Year 2012 post "Spring Festival Time. . .Lock and Load":
"...parties are held on a scale so massive that Caligula would have nodded in approval, and enough recreational munitions are set off to make the Battle of Waterloo feel like a suburban bar mitzvah. You’ll notice my careful word choice here: “recreational munitions” rather than “fireworks.” “Fireworks” as a term carries with it more celebratory, even innocent connotations, but you can’t define Chinese celebratory fireworks by the intent behind them. Certainly they’re set off with great excitement and joy, but you can, after all, also lob a grenade into a dumpster with great excitement and joy, and most of what is being set off these days qualifies for inclusion in the dumpster-grenade category. So: recreational munitions."
For more about the genuinely stunning Chinese New Year fireworks phenomenon with photos and video, see:
Happy Chinese New Year!
- 2012/01/22
Tension rising with Mainland students in American universities
Interesting observations at China Law Blog about how Mainland Chinese students studying in the USA -- in contrast to Chinese from other countries -- are apparently generating a lot of anger among the American students: Chinese Students In America. It's Bad Out There.
It seems that Mainland Chinese attitudes toward education don't play well among their American classmates. For example:
"They cheat all the time. It is pretty unbelievable how often I have seen them cheating. I am always complaining to my professors about this, but they usually just act like they are too important to deign to deal with something like this. Just come watch a test being adminstered and it will be obvious. They are allowed to get away with it because they pay the foreign tuition rate."
"One student told me of how all the students not from China agreed not to speak one day to see what would happen. There was no class discussion and the teacher asked them not to do it again."
- 2012/01/11
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| Culture fun 
We sang karaoke for FOUR HOURS this afternoon with some of our teachers and classmates. Tons of fun, and our throats are sore now. I’d include a video clip of one of our teachers singing Wannabe by the Spice Girls, but she’d probably kill me. We sang a mix of Chinese and English songs. I once read somewhere that one of the reasons Mainlanders love karaoke so much is because it’s one of the few places where they get to explicitly verbally express romantic feelings. On the way out we passed a room where a middle-aged businessman was totally rocking out to some love ballad. 
Canada:
China:
Taiwan:
The States:
Ecuador:
Brazil:
Haiti:
UK:
农历的十月初一 因为天气逐渐寒冷，所以人们“烧寒衣（棉衣，抵御 寒冷的衣服）”，后来人们逐渐用纸钱替代了“寒衣 ”，并在纸钱上加上信封或纸条，写上祖先的名字。
十月初一烧纸钱还有一个传说是关于“彗娘”的，是 一个经典的营销故事。大意是说慧娘假死，蔡莫烧纸 给她，慧娘说烧的纸在阴间都是钱，所以她就买通了 阎王又活了过来，当然这只是一个传说故事罢了。
除了农历的十月初一，一般天津还有这样几个日子需 要给祖先烧纸，乃至去“上坟”。
首先第一个就是除夕，一般是在除夕的一早就要到坟 地去上坟并烧纸钱。
其次就是清明节，也称寒食节。
再有就是每年的农历七月十五，民间俗称“鬼节”“ 七月半”
除此之外，还有一个日子就是先人的祭日，也就是亲 人去逝的日子。
从此可以看出，中国人对于祖先的尊敬，每年都有固 定的时间提醒人们缅怀祖先。当然，在现在的这些大 城市里面，天津是传统民俗文化保留相对比较完整的 城市。在路上烧纸可能有污染空气、火灾隐患等等弊 端 。但是作为一种传统，相关管理部门不应该是禁止 ，而是应该想办法疏导。比如指定烧纸的范围，或者 为居民社区在特定时间提供烧纸的容器等。
yabaliu says (rough paraphrase):
On the 1st day of the 10th month in the Lunar Calendar, because the weather is getting colder, people “burn cold clothes” (烧寒衣), meaning paper versions of cold-weather clothes. On that day (tomorrow 08 Oct 29), people will “send cold clothes” (送寒衣) to their dead relatives. Before and afterward people will burn “paper money” (纸钱) as a substitute. Sometimes the cold clothes or paper money is wrapped in an envelope or slip of paper with the ancestor’s name on it.
There’s a fun story surrounding the “send cold clothes” tradition (yabaliu calls it a “classic marketing story”). The Chinese credit a man named Cài Lún (蔡伦) with inventing paper. Legend has it that his little brother Cài Mò (蔡莫) was jealous, because the paper he made was worse quality than that of his older brother. So in order to get people to buy his poor-quality paper, his wife faked her death and Cài Mò burnt paper resembling money for her ghost. Then she came back and told everyone that in the underworld, that paper is money and she was able to bribe the king of the underworld into letting her come back to this world. So then everyone wanted the “paper money” to send to their dead relatives.
Aside from sending cold clothes on 10-1 of the lunar calendar, Tianjin has lots of other lunar calender days where you’re supposed to offer paper money to your dead relatives. Other especially important days to do this are:
All this shows how much Chinese people respect their ancestors. Every year has fixed times that remind people to remember their ancestors.
Even in today’s big cities like Tianjin people retain these kinds of traditional customs and culture. Burning paper offerings on the roads maybe makes air pollution, and fires can be dangerous, but with this kind of tradition, it shouldn’t be prohibited. Instead they ought to think of a way to do it properly, for example designating the extent to which you can burn paper money, or providing each community with a special time, place, and container to burn the paper money.
[The photo above was taken three days before "send cold clothes," and they were burning ghost money, not clothes. There are posters and paintings in nearby neighbourhoods criticizing this practice as a "feudal superstition," but it's pretty common. In Taipei this was done every 15 days, during the day, out in the open in special containers (photos here). In Tianjin, people do it at night in the dark, and not as often.]