|
From the Web
Danwei Picks: Anhui's most grateful citizenPosted by Joel Martinsen, January 22, 2008 4:59 PM
Danwei Picks is a daily digest of the "From the Web" links found on the Danwei homepage. A feed for the links as they are posted throughout the day is available at Feedsky (in China) or Feedburner (outside China). China's most grateful peasant: At the China Media Project, David Bandurski tells how a blogger discovered how one Anhui peasant has many reasons to be grateful to the party leadership, from the local level all the way up to Hu Jintao: What followed was a sublimely human moment. President Hu leaned over, cupped his hands, and drank from Zheng Jichao's faucet. It was this dramatic scene that captured the particular attention of Chinese blogger "Zuo You Yi Guo Hui" (左右一锅烩).
When I heard about Hu Jia, I was full of admiration. I even felt he should be a model for young people to follow. A 27-year-old young man who sought neither fame nor fortune, doing countless things to protect the environment and wearing himself out until he got hepatitis. He had just left the hospital, but often worked until two or three o’clock in the morning. Every day my colleague’s email inbox would contain a large quantity of messages about the work he was doing. The things he cared about and dealt with were extremely diverse and even trivial, but he was extremely passionate about all of them. Full of doubt, I asked my colleague if he was sick. My colleague said yes, he’s got hepatitis. No, I said. I mean sick in the head.
There are many benefits to being a Xinhua employee: prestige domestically, opportunity to travel, comprehensive insurance, access to information and job security (you have to be a spy to get sacked round here). But watching some hugely talented, creative people donning shackles every day is not particularly pleasant viewing. Some may argue: "What do they expect? Their role is to spread governmental love." But I have met numerous graduates (Xinhua only employs fresh-faced university students so they have no time to develop any style other than "Xinhua-style"), who have joined Xinhua and, after a few months work, almost all have admitted the job is very different to what they anticipated - and not in a positive way. We're sorry to see him go, and we wish him the best of luck wherever he ends up next.
Air China Ltd., the nation's largest carrier by market value, fell the most in three years in Hong Kong trading after China Eastern Airlines Corp. snubbed a bid to buy a stake.
|
Partner Links
Jobs in China
Recent Comments
chengdude on
Blockages
Joel Marti on
Chengdu bus fire blamed on 62-year-old suicidal gambler
vivian on
Bound feet in China
Sajid on
China first police blog
China Media Timeline
Major media events over the last three decades
Danwei Model Workers
![]() Recommended blogs and new media
Books on China
Foreign journalists in China, from the Opium Wars to Mao : Paul French, author of a book on Carl Crow has written a book about the lives and exploits of foreign journalists reporting from China from the 1820s to 1949.
Earnshaw Books' Tales of Old Peking: Tales from Old Peking is available from Earnshaw Books, and like its sister, Tales from Old Shanghai is a book of fragments of information about periods, events or places in Beijing's history, collaging together pictures and text about eunuchs, concubines, the Lama Temple, Opium Wars, art, emperors, and a miscellany of other interesting topics
Henry F. Pringle's "Bridge House Survivor": Pringle was imprisoned by Japanese forces from October 1942 to August 1945, and Bridge House Survivor, available from Earnshaw Books, is his harrowing account of torture under the Japanese.
Front Page of the Day
A different newspaper every weekday
From the Vault
Classic Danwei posts
+ A short interview with Muzi Mei (2004.02): Danwei interviews Muzi Mei + CCTV vs. classic movies (2006.03): A rundown of several pastiches of Chinese movies appearing online as 大史记 - "The Year That Was". Some from CCTV, others not. With links to video. + Street hawker cries of Beijing (2006.12): Yang Changhe demonstrates hawker's cries in a video shot by Muzimei.
Danwei Archives
Danwei Feeds
Via Feedsky
or Feedburner |





Comments on Danwei Picks: Anhui's most grateful citizen
It's not like getting profiled in Freezing Point was an endorsement from the state, was it?