I finally put together a photo gallery of my favourite shots from about October 2009 through Spring Festival: Tianjin 2009-2010 — Fall & Winter
Click the photos to go to the gallery, or click: Tianjin 2009-2010 — Fall & Winter.
Click the photos to go to the gallery, or click: Tianjin 2009-2010 — Fall & Winter.
The China Beat provides a helpful summary of a dystopian novel critical of the way things are in China: “The novel can be read … as a realistic presentation of the shocking darkness behind the dazzling economic miracle created by the Chinese model. It also proposes that China’s younger generations suffer from the consequences of collective amnesia and historical half-truths… The book can also be read … as an allegory of the modern nation-state. Taking China as a case study, by questioning the morality and political legitimacy of the Chinese model of development, the novel is intended to lead us to the potential catastrophes that a modern nation-state may bring about if it is out of its people’s control.”
The Ministry of Environmental Protection acknowledged on Monday that the first half of 2010 had the worst air quality since 2005.
The good doctor in Beijing recently conducted a new air pollution survey around the city, comparing indoor and outdoor pollution, and the effects of things like air purifiers.
There’s also an air pollution Q&A with another doctor in Beijing about the actual effects on healthy people and when and where to exercise.
NPR has an on-going series on the apparent rise of religious belief in China.
| Cute | Family | Foreign baby in China | People | Photo posts | Have we ever seen this woman before? Nope. And did she just come up, start touching our kid’s face and try to make her smile? Of course!
This is routine whenever we take Lilia out for walks. A friendly stranger or two (or ten) will often stop to try and make her smile, and that often involves touching. Younger people like the girl in these photos tend to be gentler than middle-aged and older women, at least in our experience. We have some neighbourhood committee ladies who talk so loud when they’re trying to get a reaction out of Lilia that they make her scared; they pretty much yell in her face, but not intentionally — that’s just how they talk all day long. Those kinds of folks also tend to play a little rougher with the way the pinch legs and touch cheeks.
Obviously we don’t let the general public manhandle our daughter, but since it’s so expected that any friendly person can play with a stranger’s baby, and since “foreign dolls” (洋娃娃) are such an attraction, we try to be as accommodating as we can while still protecting Lilia. As you can see, she likes it sometimes.
I’ve only had to directly physically block someone’s hand once, when a woman who honestly looked like a KTV prostitute tried to stick her finger in Lilia’s mouth on the Beijing subway. People don’t understand when you bat their fingers away, but there’s no way I’m letting random people stick there fingers in our daughter’s mouth, regardless of whether or not they’re dressed like a xiǎojiě (小姐)! Same goes for anyone who seems like they might be too rough. I use as much finesse and tact as I can, of course (we indirectly block people all the time), but obviously we’re willing to cause offense if we have to to protect our daughter. Those kinds of situations are very rare, however, and most people are great, wanting to coo over a baby like people do anywhere… just maybe a little more so.
Other stuff about having a foreign baby in China:
While acknowledging the role of foreign Christians in agitating for positive social reform and assisting Chinese resistance to foreign imperial aggression, and while claiming “that there is much cheap argument in the narrow nationalistic attack which sees in the Christian missionary an agent of imperialist aggression”, Dr. Hu Shi predicts in a 1927 editorial that nationalism, rationalism, and humanism will take root in China and successfully kill off Christianity within China.
A reflective review of Peter Hessler’s latest book Country Driving:
“For many Chinese, their biggest concern has always been poverty. They believe that all their problems would float away if only they had money. When success does strike — and for the first time in their life they don’t need to worry about money — many Chinese are still anxious and lost and don’t know why. They are just unhappy. In Hessler’s account of Wei Ziqi, I see my family, my relatives and my friends all facing a similar predicament … Hessler does a good job capturing both the anxiety and opportunity of this transitional period…
“There is a myth, one believed by many Chinese, that foreigners do not and cannot understand China. This book shows that this myth is simply nonsense.”
A piece translated from the Chinese internet argues that grass-roots level government officials are more victims than perpetrators when it comes to China’s drinking/banquet culture:
“Official reception is currently an “important task” for grass-roots level cadres. Some unit chiefs spoke candidly [on this topic]: “If we didn’t have to wine and dine people, work wouldn’t be so hard.” In other words, grass-roots level cadres are fed up with the excesses of official reception.”
The China Beat profiles the late on Joan Hilton, an American who left to join the Communist Revolution in 1948 and never returned: “She was shocked to learn that tens of thousands of Japanese were killed by the bomb which she had helped to make. She didn’t want to spend her life figuring out how to kill people, Hinton said, so she went to China to help them… and settled into pastoral obscurity outside Xi’an, where their two sons and a daughter learned only Chinese.
“In 2002, Rob Gifford of National Public Radio asked Hinton if she regretted either the hard times during the Cultural Revolution or the disappointment of the post-Mao reforms. No, she replied, with an incredulous, almost querulous laugh — she had taken part in the two greatest events of the 20th century, the invention of the atomic bomb and the Chinese Revolution. “Who could ask for anything more than that?””
What’s the official Chinese view of the internet? That all depends on who’s listening. “How the Chinese Authorities View the Internet: Three Narratives” (also here) neatly sources and outlines three distinct official views of the internet: one for the Chinese public, one for the foreign media, and the government’s own internal version.
We both write, but Jessica only writes when I bribe her. See all of her posts here.
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
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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