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The most irmpotant reason why China may not invest in the..."
Foreign baby in China essentials: IMPORTED BABY FORMULA (
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I am going to have a baby in china , are there USA..."
Steve Jobs, Apple, China and Us [updated] (
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Dr Ross Grainger: "
The American CEOs I mentioned are less..."
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I understand that, but look what Erica wrote: “paying too..."
Affordable gadgets vs. Chinese workers’ rights (
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Mike Daisey, who is featured in the CBS News article..."
Happy Lantern Festival 2011 from Tianjin, China! (
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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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I have yet to see the Chinese rip-off of UNO, but once I do I’ll definitely be picking myself up a deck or two!
My wife and I did bring a couple of decks of UNO to teach our friends here and we have yet to find a Chinese person who does not love the game. All of the extra rules you mentioned aren’t part of our playing here except for one:
It seems that with any game we play our Chinese friends are unhappy to just have a winner – they MUST PUNISH the loser!
haha, yeah, punishment is apparently half the point. The university students like to make each other yell nonsense out windows, pick up the tab, or root around in the deck with their nose like a pig, among other things… especially when they’re playing “squeeze the pig.”
This was the first time I’d seen the Chinese UNO, but one of our friends said we could find it on Taobao, and I just did.
Oh, Joel…you’ve got to get in touch with “western” trends! The kind of UNO you described, or “Jungle Uno” as my friends call it has been around for YEARS! Another rule…anytime a 1 is played, everyone has to pass their cards one person to the right. It’s great because you could lay a double “Draw 4″ on your neighbor and then a 1 gets played and you end up with the 8+ cards! I’ve been teaching this version to my students since I got here! :)
I wondered. So I guess the only “Chinese” part of this is the punishments, and playing to not be the worst loser rather than the winner? Apparently people don’t like to play for nothing… like if there isn’t going to be money involved, then there a least needs to be some Truth or Dare.
i’ve been out of touch with ‘western’ trends since middle school… maybe that’s how i ended up over here…