« September 16, 2007 - September 22, 2007 | Main | September 30, 2007 - October 6, 2007 »
Based on stories Kim heard when working with North Korean refugees in China and told (mostly) in a first-person narrative from the point of view of the title character, a North Korean orphan who manages a comparatively privileged existence, Jia doesn't pretend to have documentary verisimilitude. What it does is paint a composite portrait with small, intimate strokes. This is a fast, oddly flat but hypnotic read, full of tiny but searing details about life in what is commonly regarded as the world's most secretive and most repressive regime.
China and seven countries in and around central Asia have reached a preliminary agreement to build a $19.2bn (£9.6bn) modern-day equivalent to the historic 'Silk Road' trade route between China and Europe.
The plan was agreed by senior officials in Manila this month and is expected to receive formal endorsement at a November ministerial meeting in Tajikistan. It is backed by the Asian Development Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the Islamic Development Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations Development Programme and the World Bank...
...The road and rail investments agreed to by Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan are to begin next year, for completion in 2018.
Hell hath no fury like 11 angry mistresses. Stories didn't get much better than this. Subordinates having to send their wives to a corrupt party secretary and mayor if they wanted to get ahead. He's finally brought down by his own treachery after allowing one of the husbands to be executed to protect himself. The story was everywhere on the Internet, and it traveled round the world's media. Google "Pang Jiayu" and take your pick.
Unfortunately it wasn't necessarily true.
Without a doubt the life of migrant workers in Chengdu, like elsewhere in China, is one of acute poverty and instability - but is anything being done to help them?
In Chengdu, at least, something is being done. According to an article in the September 24th edition of the Chengdu Commerce Report, a new school called "New Citizens School" will be opening its doors in October, and will be attempting to help many new migrant laborers adjust to life in the big city. It will take in just three hundred eager pupils as its first class.
All the participants in a two-day forum held in Wuhan on Tuesday agreed that the project had exerted a "notably adverse" impact on the environment of the Three Gorges reservoir, with a total circumference of 600 km, and along the Yangtze since last year, when the project began operation. They said the huge weight of the water behind the Three Gorges Dam had started to erode the Yangtze's banks in many places, which, together with frequent fluctuations in water levels, had triggered a series of landslides.
Both domestic and foreign media have been trumpeting last night's "opening" performance of the revolutionary ballet The Red Detachment of Women...as the venue's premiere performance. However, despite all the big proclamations, the venue has been holding unofficial test performances for over a week....Alice Xiu did manage to sneak into a performance of another revolutionary production, Sister Jiang, last Wednesday. She offers this report from inside the egg.
Includes lots of links to other articles in the media.Privately, in talks with the US, and publicly in recent weeks, although less explicitly, China has urged Burma to engage the now-detained Nobel laureate, Aung San Suu Kyi, directly in recognition of her democratic mandate...
...In September, Tang Jiaxuan, a former foreign minister who has been used as an envoy by Beijing, told Burmese leaders that "China wholeheartedly hopes that [Burma] will push forward a democracy process that is appropriate for the country".
Do Chinese street cops need more weapons? On the same day earlier this month that it was reported urban riot police in one southern city were undergoing training to use crossbows, a new program began in south-central China's Chongqing Municipality which, in addition to handguns and bulletproof vests, would see traffic police there equipped with machine guns every night after nine for the purpose of carrying out drunk driving and traffic violation spot checks.
The concept behind the show is one I haven’t seen before, as every episode takes place one year after the previous one. It goes from 1956-2005....
The series is also important because it shows the continuity in Chinese society that we don’t get to see from accounts of the turmoil of the 50s-70s period. I think it’s hard for us non-Chinese to imagine what it might have been like living during that time, and here is a completely plausible story of one family. In a lot of brief China histories from western news stories one gets the feeling that China did not really exist before 1980, or that it was this backward, chaotic place, but people really did live through that time.
Dell Inc said yesterday it will begin selling personal computer products through Gome Group, China's largest electronic retailer, in a move to win back consumers by going beyond its direct-sales mode
Like those who preceded him, Hu, 64, aspires to be not just his country's political leader but also its chief theorist, and the revised constitution is expected to serve as his platform. Indeed, it has taken considerably less time for Hu Thought to work its way into the party charter than it did for the wisdom of Deng and Jiang to be recognized as sacrosanct.
See CMP for an interesting statistical analysis of some buzzwords.Too many appalled foreigners, too many foreigners with links to the media. If their thinking is that the rough treatment will convince the drug dealers to go straight, then they are surely misguided. The incident had the appearance of being all for show and it has received negative coverage in the media. There won’t be any further drug raids in Sanlitun for a while so it appears it is now safe to peddle illegal substances on its streets.
A common problem I find among editors from China is an attempt to package the culture without ever having left China. The result is another book on the Great Wall, another book on Chinese tea and another guidebook on the magnificent places to see in China. Yet how can one understand a country without ever having left it?
In her essay Lung responds to criticism that Eileen Chang did not portray the character of Mr. Yi (who is inspired by Ding Mocun) as a sufficiently evil person. I certainly commend her for this, as I really don't think Chang's fictional character Yi needs to be either everything that Ding Mocun was. However, many writers who try to counter efforts to portray the wartime collaborators as one-dimensional evil-dooers and malicious traitors, in my view, take the completely wrong approach: the reversal. Instead of restoring nuance, or at least moving beyond simple nationalist critiques to evaluate the legacy of these figures in terms of their acts while in positions of power (under whatever regime), Lung embraces a strategy I find frustrating, to say the least: the evil-dooer wasn't evil at all, he was, in fact, a patriot.
Lung Ying-tai's essay is translated at ESWN.That's right: the State Council and China's meteorologists are willing to permit the release of 1000 hydrogen-filled balloons at an event - so long as permission is obtained and the balloons are "checked." I, for one, would very much like to know when - in China's recent history - such an event was held. Barring the release of such information, I'd be content knowing who thought that it was a good idea to release 1600 hydrogen-filled balloons at a facility dedicated to the study of electricity.
According to the government, [Thomas Debrowski] was apologising for the fact that though the problem was Mattel's, Mattel allowed it to appear as if the problem was China's. But according to Mattel, he was apologising to Chinese customers of his dolls (I wonder how many of them there are), and in particular for the one issue that no-one disputes was Mattel's fault - a design flaw involving detachable magnets.
So why didn't they sort this out between them beforehand? Well, we'll come to that.
In any case, it associates Mattel with a piece of nonsense.
The new launch site will be mainly used for launching synchronous satellites, heavy satellites, large space stations, and deep space probe satellites, according to the plan which has been approved by the State Council and the Central Military Commission...
In 1958, China began building its first rocket launch site in northwest China's Jiuquan. At present, the country has three space launch grounds. The other two are located in Taiyuan, capital of north China's Shanxi Province and Xichang in southwestern Sichuan Province.
"I have not really ever seen anything so brutal," my friend told me. "There was blood all over the street. I will not sleep well for a long time."
Police also beat up the son of the Trinidadian (some say Grenadian) ambassador, until he was able to pull out his ID between blows Witnesses say as many as twenty black men were arrested, although many were quickly released.
Also in SCMP and China Expat's Daily Tea Leaves.