Donating money is a public thing in China — like a big group peer-pressure exercise. In your company, they might send an e-mail around listing everyone’s name and how much they donated. In neighbourhoods like ours, they’ll put up big posters by the main entrance with the names of residents who’ve donated and how much (and maybe whether or not they’re a Party member). Though there’s a common public standard for how much you should donate, you can’t donate too much or you’ll make other people look bad. For example, you wouldn’t want to publicly donate more than the company boss. Sometimes it goes beyond peer-pressure to coercion:

A few days ago a public servant friend said that, for the Wenchuan earthquake last time, at least the employees had been “mobilized” to donate; this time they simply had our salaries docked. The boss hypocritically notified everyone: Whoever doesn’t wish to donate, come talk to me in my office. Who dares to go to his office and say “I’m not willing to donate”? Unless one doesn’t wish to live! [from Yushu Earthquake Donation: Compassion or Tyranny?]

Our first encounter with this quirky (to us) practice of very public charity was after the Sichuan earthquake, when neighbours asked me point-blank home much we’d donated.

“For Qīnghǎi Yùshù Disaster Area Donation Name List”
为青海玉树灾区捐款名单
wèi qīnghǎi yùshù zāiqū juānkuǎn míngdān

This time we decided to donate through our neighbourhood committee rather than through our N.G.O. Although the money would be better accounted for with our NGO (there’s controversy over what happened to large amounts of the Sichuan earthquake donations – see here, here, here and here) and we have a closer personal connection to how it would be used, this time we wanted to try a more local approach and we were curious to see how it would go over. Plus it’d be kind of funny to see our names up on the poster by the front gate.

If you haven’t heard, there was another big earthquake in which thousands of people died, this time in Yùshù, Qīnghǎi (青海玉树). See these links for more photos and controversy:

• April 21st, China’s day of national mourning for victims in Yushu earthquake (photos)
• Spinning the relief effort (NYT)

Related stuff on the blog:

• Donating money… with Chinese characteristics
• The Good Samaritan with Chinese characteristics (Pt.1): examples
• The Good Samaritan with Chinese characteristics (Pt.2): explanations, excuses, & scapegoats
• (How to be a) Good Samaritan with Chinese characteristics (Pt.3)

Pronounced: ái zhèng cūn
Means: cancer village

A well-sourced report from Environment magazine on the number, locations and causes of China’s infamous “cancer villages” (which, of course, are not necessarily the same thing as electronic-waste villages, weird-disease villages, and lead-poisoned villages). I’m not impressed with how Tianjin featured in this!

Portrait of an LBX has a great descriptive post of an up-close and personal experience with a Zhuang family during the Tomb Sweeping Festival, complete with photos and videos: Rites and Reunions: Zhuang Tomb-Sweeping Day

Here’s a satellite image of the area encompassing Beijing and Tianjin, wish an explanation of what makes the air pollution particularly bad here.

From ChinaSource: “A long history of respect and sensitivity pays huge dividends as time goes on. Likewise, one error of judgment or moment of weakness can hinder progress for years to come, and the effort required to heal those breaches is almost always larger and more time consuming than we imagine.”

According to a report from Xinhua, extemely early onset of puberty happens up to 100x more frequently in Shanghai than in Western countries. Among the suggested causes: eating vegetables treated to mature quickly.

“…in Shanghai, the rate was as high as 1 percent. “That is amazing because the rate in most Western countries is between 0.02 and 0.01 percent,” said Kong Yuanyuan, whose clinic is at the Beijing Maternal and Child Healthcare Hospital.”

Lilia and I have recently started having play dates with other babies and moms. Yesterday we met up with a new Chinese friend and her 11 month old baby. This mom lives on one of the university campuses that is a short walk from our apartment… there is a lot less traffic on campus, and a lot more trees…which makes it a good place to go for a stroll. While we were waiting at the place we were supposed to meet our friend, Lilia played the role of “foreign super star baby.” People gathered around us, making clucking noises at her, touching her hands and face, and saying over and over “Bee-yoo-tee-full.” At one point we must have had about 10 people leaning over her, all trying to get her to smile (which is, fortunately, not too difficult to do).

Once our friends got there we found a little clearing where some other moms and babies had gathered. I was telling her about the scene she’d just missed, and my friend said (in Chinese): “She is beautiful. She is much, MUCH more beautiful than you.” Then in English, she said “No offensive.” :)

I thought it was funny. I wasn’t offended, as I know that Lilia is more beautiful than me (and want her to be). I just wouldn’t have ever said it that way myself. Yet another example of how the supposedly indirect Chinese are often very, very direct.

Pronounced:
hēi māo bái māo zhuāzhù hàozi jiùshì hǎo māo
Literally:
“black cat, white cat, catch mice is good cat”
Means:
“It doesn’t matter if it’s a black cat or a white cat, if it catches mice it’s a good cat.” Deng Xiaoping’s famous reformist pronouncement favouring practicality over ideology. (There’s no actual direct quote; different versions of this are attributed to Deng, though all convey the same idea.)

From Howard W. French at The Atlantic: “All across Africa, new tracks are being laid, highways built, ports deepened, commercial contracts signed—all on an unprecedented scale, and led by China…”