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 Rabbits! Chinese New Year 2011 fireworks from Tianjin, China!
• Photo Gallery: Tianjin 2009-2010 Fall & Winter
• A little taste of Chinese New Year in our neighbourhood
• Fireworks

Happy Chinese New Year!

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.”

You’ve maybe heard the name “Watchman Nee” before. That’s because he founded one of the largest Christian groups in Chinese history before dying in a Chinese labour camp. Here’s a summary of a longer article on him and his work, with a link to the PDF of the original article: Watchman Nee and the Little Flock Movement in Maoist China

A basic understanding of the place of Watchman Nee and the Little Flock Movement in Chinese history adds some helpful nuance to understanding the relationships between the Party, Chinese Christianity, the TSPM, and Chinese patriotism and anti-foreignism.

Foreigners and locals in China both routinely but superficially interact with street vendors. One young researcher spent a few days with a street vendor family and wrote about it here, giving us a more intimate look at the lifestyle, struggles with the authorities, and living conditions of China’s street market migrants: Street Vendor Life in China

You can read about a similar project here: Thirty Days in a Fuzhou Barbershop

For more about street market migrants and the chéngguǎn (bylaw enforcement thugs), see: The Tianjin Chengguan Street Market Game and Making our neighbourhood more “civilized”

In China, Christmas Eve is actually called “Peaceful Night” (平安夜 — after the Chinese translation of the song “Silent Night”), but peaceful is the one thing it definitely isn’t. Here’s a short post about Christmas Eve in urban China, from a foreigner who’s witnessed it go from nothing to the spectacle it is today in just a few short years: Some Thoughts on “Ping An Ye” (Silent Night)
An here’s a Chinese perspective, translated into English: Christmas in Shanghai

For more about the odd creature Christmas Eve has become in China (with pictures!), see:

• Christmas Eve 2009 – Tianjin, China
• Merry… something, from Tianjin! :)
• Christmas Eve… with Chinese characteristics

There are many qualified candidates for the 2011 Grinch Award, but this year it’s going to the authorities of Xitan Village in Zhejiang Province, because you just can’t violently shut down a large public Christmas party in “Christmas Village” and not get a Grinch Award. Especially when you get caught on video and uploaded to YouTube:

• A very silent night: Chinese officials shut down outdoor Christmas party in toy-making town (WP)
• Video (BI)
• Video (YouTube)

There’s actually a lot of interesting details to this situation; what details we do get suggest a complex local relationship between Christians, Buddhists, local authorities, and Christians and Buddhists who have positions of local authority.

Previous Grinch Awards:

• China’s grinches play hardball
• “And the 2008 Tianjin Grinch Award goes to…”
• An UnChristmas party in Tianjin

China’s official Xinhua News Agency reports that a senior Chinese Communist Party official has reminded the increasingly religious ranks of the Party what they’re required to believe. From China party official warns members over religion (AP)

“Religious practice among Chinese Communist Party members is increasing and threatens its unity and national leadership, a top party official said in remarks reported Monday.

“Party members are required to be atheists and must not believe in religion or engage in religious practice, said Zhu Weiqun, a member of the party’s Central Committee [...]

“”Voices have appeared within the party calling for an end to the ban on religion, arguing in favor of the benefits of religion for party members and even claiming the ban on religion for party members is unconstitutional,” Zhu said.

“”In fact, our party’s principled stance regarding forbidding members from believing in religion has not changed one iota,” he said.”

Just what you’ve always wanted: Dora the Explorer (爱探险的朵拉 ài tànxiǎn de Duǒlā) and SpongeBob SquarePants (海绵宝宝 hǎi mián bǎobǎo) in Chinese!

Watch Chinese cartoons Sponge Bob & Dora the Explorer

I can’t decide if Chinese SpongeBob or English SpongeBob is more obnoxious. Either way, if anyone knows of any good Chinese kids shows for learning Mandarin (or good iPhone apps), please let us know!

Every year Beijing’s brutal air quality (and even brutal-er public reporting on it) makes international news. But this year Beijing finds itself with a domestic P.R. problem in which its own citizens are no longer willing to accept the gov’s Orwellian “blue sky days”, “fog” and “light” pollution levels. And a large amount of the credit goes to… the U.S. embassy in Beijing.

From Beijing Air Pollution Brouhaha:
“Since flights at Beijing’s airport have been canceled on any number of occasions over the past two decades because of pollution, why all the attention now?

“Several reasons… But the real catalyst for the current contretemps is the U.S. Embassy. If Beijing citizens were once resigned to living in this alternative state of reality, then that’s no longer the case. The U.S. Embassy has changed the way the game is played. On a daily basis, the embassy tweets data reflecting the real air quality for the area in which the embassy resides. Last Sunday, for example, as NPR reported, the pollution recorded by the embassy hit a level described as “beyond index.” The Beijing Municipal Bureau of Environmental Protection, in contrast, reported the air pollution as “light.””

We’ve got lots of our own stuff on pollution in the Beijing area, including comparison photos. See our Pollution category for everything.

Here’s a link to recent air pollution photos from Beijing, and a bit about trying to get real pollution stats to the Chinese public:

Photos: Smog-shrouded China denies citizens right to know pollutant measurements

We’ve got lots more on pollution in China, including our own comparison photos, in our Pollution category.