As soon as I saw this in our mailbox today, it reminded me of something I’d read in the news a couple years ago. A certain religious group in China, famous for being brutally persecuted by the gov’t in the late 90′s, was apparently squandering Western public sympathy by selling tickets to Chinese cultural stage performances that contained explicit (but unadvertised) political and spiritual messages. This was making some Euro-Americans feel deceived. People felt ripped off that they’d come for a family show and got explicit politicking and proselytizing.

I didn’t know if this was them or not. My suspicious were heightened when I read the vague but very spiritual introduction section and this statement:

A performance like Shen Yun can no longer be found in China today because many of China’s best artistic traditions have been lost in recent decades.

The last page confirmed my guess. Turns out the performance advertised in the pamphlet (not mailed but hand-delivered to our door by an elderly Chinese man) is put on by the “evil cult” at the top of the Chinese government’s hit list — one of the largest, most viciously persecuted Chinese religious groups in the last fifteen years. There were propaganda posters in our neighbourhood in Tianjin denouncing them (see here for images and translations), and you have to walk past their demonstration to get into the Chinese consulate in Vancouver. To avoid tempting China’s net nanny I won’t write their name here, but here’s a picture:

I don’t blame them for presenting their religion and protest message through art and entertainment like they do. We Westerners are, after all, well-accustomed to ideological propaganda in our entertainment; that — and money — is what our entertainment is all about. But it takes a little more nuance and subtly to do this effectively to a Western audience, as evidenced by the negative reactions they’ve provoked (here’s an example). Who knows, maybe this go around they’ve tailored their message a little better.

Anyway, it’s interesting to find yet another example of China popping up in the daily life of Canadians. For more about this particular “evil cult”, see:

• Recent propaganda from Tianjin, China: evil, scheming, bloodthirsty cults! (China Hope Live)
• Shen Yun Performing Arts
• Politics and art blend in contentious Chinese show (Toronto.com)

P.S. – “Shén​ Yùn” refers to charm or grace in art and poetry. Literally it is “God/spirit/divine” (神) + “beautiful sound/charm/appeal” (韵). Here are some different dictionary entries.

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.”

Pronounced: hēi gǎi kǔ jiào
Literally: dark reform bitter education
Means: “The labour camp is dark and reeducation through labour is bitter.”

Related phrases include:

• 劳动改造
  láodòng ​gǎizào
  (Reform through labour)
• 劳改
  láo​gǎi
  (1. shorthand for 劳动改造; 2. a prison camp)
• 劳动教养
  láo​dòng​ jiào​yǎng
  (Reeducation through labour)
• 劳教
  láo​jiào
  (shorthand for 劳动教养)

You can see/hear some of these terms, with English subtitles, between 7:10 and 8:47 of this Al-Jazeera investigative report.

The sign says:
Who are you
What is this place
Why have you come here

You can find the answers to those questions in the video linked above.

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.

A Chinese writer’s recent speech delivers unflinching social criticism:
“In my country, the job of the press and electronic media is to promote the government,not to report the truth. The education system is tasked with instructing the people to be loyal to the government and keeping the people ignorant, not with disseminating knowledge. As a result, many people have never grown up intellectually even though they are adults. Even today, many people in my country still are nostalgic for the catastrophic Cultural Revolution that ended over thirty years ago and still promote the cult of personality. Some people still deny that the unprecedented great famine of the early 1960s ever occurred, and insist that the millions of deaths by starvation is a fabrication.
[..]
“In my country, there is a strange system that rewards liars, and with the passage of time, people have become accustomed to lying. People lie as naturally as they breathe, to the point that lying has become a virtue.”

I’m curious about how much of this would ring true for those who grew under Communism in eastern Europe and Russia.

And here’s an interesting piece on how such criticism are sometimes met by people in China: Agents of Conformity

Beijing’s air quality is making news rounds again, partly because some Chinese bloggers discovered a company that claims to provide air purification equipment for the homes and offices of government officials, adding clean air to a long list of resented privileges. It’s long been known that Beijing and other local governments drastically downplay the pollution levels to their own populations (see our own comparisons here and here). If you aren’t familiar with the remarkable air pollution situation in Beijing, Tianjin and much of the rest of China, here are three recent articles to catch you up:

• U.S. Embassy air quality data undercut China’s own assessments
  “Perched atop the U.S. Embassy in Beijing is a device about the size of a microwave oven that spits out hourly rebukes to the Chinese government. One day this month, the reading was so high compared with U.S. standards it was listed as ‘beyond index.’ But China’s own assessment that day was that Beijing’s air was merely ‘slightly polluted.’”
• The Privileges of China’s Elite Include Purified Air
  “But even in their most addled moments of envy, ordinary Beijingers could take some comfort in the knowledge that the soupy air they breathe on especially polluted days also finds its way into the lungs of the privileged and pampered. Such assumptions, it seems, are not entirely accurate.”
• ‘Time Is Not Ripe’ for Honest Air Pollution Readings
  “state-run media did little to suggest Beijing was prepared to tackle its air pollution levels, among the worst of the world’s major cities. The state-run Global Times newspaper early this week reported a dense “fog” had descended over the capital. The local government was reporting “slight” pollution levels even as readings by the U.S. Embassy described pollution as “hazardous.””

For more of our crying about how unbelievably brutal the air quality is, with pictures to help you believe (that’s right: we can photograph the air), see our Pollution category, or check out these selected bits:

• Beijing/Tianjin air polluton advisory warnings: Chinese vs. American
• Tianjin: Where Jogging is Bad For Your Health
• Behold the power of China’s weather gods!
• Chewing Tianjin’s Air
• Putting the OMG! in Smog

Below are some screen stills and scene clips that some friends and I were extras in for the Jackie Chan/Chinese propaganda film “1911″ 《辛亥革命》.

For some photos from filming and info about the 1911 Revolution, see:

• We were extras in “1911″ — a big-budget Chinese propaganda Jackie Chan movie! (here are some photos)

You can see all the photos and screen stills at the photo gallery:

• Photos from filming Jackie Chan’s Chinese propaganda movie “1911″

Denver Library scene

1911 movie: Denver Library scene (YouTube)

Sun Zhongshan speech scene

1911 movie: Sun Zhongshan speech (YouTube)

Related stuff:

• We were extras in “1911″ — a big-budget Chinese propaganda Jackie Chan movie! (here are some photos)
• Photos from filming Jackie Chan’s Chinese propaganda movie “1911″

The children’s story 鸭子农夫 (Farmer Duck) is fun to read out loud, usefully repetitive for language learning, and contains some interesting vocab. And as a special China-related bonus, it’s ominously, vaguely Orwellian. If you’re the kind of person who doesn’t let your kids watch The Smurfs for political reasons, then you probably won’t like this book.

You can mouseover the Chinese text below to see the pronunciation and translation, or download a PDF that has the Chinese, pinyin, and back-translated English.

Download: Yazi-Nongfu.pdf

鸭子农夫

从前有只鸭子，和一个农夫一起生活。鸭子要干所有的活儿，农夫只管整天赖在床上。

鸭子到地里把牛牵回来。
农夫嚷嚷：“活儿干得怎么样啦？”
鸭子回答：“嘎嘎！”

鸭子到山上把羊驮回来。
农夫嚷嚷：“活儿干得怎么样啦？”
鸭子回答：“嘎嘎！”

鸭子把鸡赶回鸡舍。
农夫嚷嚷：“活儿干得怎么样啦？”
鸭子回答：“嘎嘎！”

农夫从早到晚躺在床上，胖得不成样子。
鸭子没日没夜辛苦干活，累得快要崩溃了。

“活儿干得怎么样啦？”
“嘎嘎！”
“活儿干得怎么样啦？”
“嘎嘎！”

“活儿干得怎么样啦？”
“嘎嘎！”
“活儿干得怎么样啦？”
“嘎嘎……”

“活儿干得怎么样啦？”
“嘎嘎……”
“活儿干得怎么样啦？”
“嘎嘎……”

可怜的鸭子又困又累又伤心。

牛、羊和鸡很爱鸭子，他们都为朋友感到难过。
于是大家趁着月色，精心安排起第二天一早的行动。
“哞哞！”牛说。
“咩咩！”羊说。
“咕咕！”鸡说。
好，就这么定了！

天还没有亮，农场静悄悄。
牛、羊和鸡从后门偷偷溜进农夫的房子。

大家轻手轻脚进了走廊，踩得楼梯吱吱作响。

他们一起挤到农夫的床下，使劲往上顶啊顶，床开始摇晃。
农夫被惊醒，又嚷嚷起来：“活儿干得怎……”

“哞哞！”
“咩咩！”
“咕咕！”
大家拱起床，农夫叫嚷着。
大家挤挤撞撞把床掀，
农夫轱辘轱辘滚下来，
重重得摔到地板上。

农夫拔腿就跑，牛、羊和鸡紧追不舍。
“哞哞！”
“咩咩！”
“咕咕！”

一直追到小路上……
“哞哞！”
穿过田野……
“咩咩！”
翻过小山……
“咕咕！”
农夫再也没有回来过……

清晨，鸭子疲惫不堪地晃进院子里，
等着听那句——
“活儿干得怎么样啦？”
咦，竟然没有人说话！

牛、羊和鸡回来了。
“嘎嘎？”鸭子问。
“哞哞！”牛说。
“咩咩！”羊说。
“咕咕！”鸡说。
大家把事情的经过告诉了鸭子。

“嘎嘎” “哞哞” “咩咩” “咕咕”
从此以后，农场里充满了欢乐的声音。

And they all lived happily ever after:

“Four legs good, two legs better!”

Download: Yazi-Nongfu.pdf

Other children’s story Chinese translation read-alongs:

• Eric Carle’s “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” in Chinese! 好饿的毛毛虫
• 蚯蚓的日记 Diary of a Worm

We’ve also given some popular Chinese songs similar treatment (plus guitar chords!):

• Chinese Song: 宝贝 (Baby) by 张悬 (Zhāng Xuán) — lyrics & guitar chords
• Brother Who Sleeps in the Top Bunk / 睡在我上铺的兄弟
• Nothing to My Name / 一无所有
• Even in Death I’ll Love / 死了都要爱
• Liang Shanbo & Juliet / 梁山伯与茱丽叶
• Mouse Loves Rice / 老鼠爱大米

I don’t personally have any feelings about Steve Jobs and this comment ultimately isn’t about him. But I do have feelings about the interconnected world of the products we buy and the people who make them. So when we think about Steve Jobs, the Apple legacy, and how we all love Apple products (which are great, no question), let’s remember that — and here comes an unpopular bit of reality — the factories making our Apple products have to hang suicide nets on the buildings to stop the workers from jumping.

Just google “Foxconn suicide nets Apple”. Or see:

• 1 Million Workers. 90 Million iPhones. 17 Suicides. Who’s to Blame?
• Inside Foxconn’s suicide factory
• Foxconn Rallies: Employees Pledge To Cherish Their Lives
  (Normally I don’t link to this trashy website — be ye warned.)