Must-read China news by Danwei

In 1905, a German businessman was hunting in Laoshan Mountains in China’s Shandong province. Among some old trees, he found a spring with several hedgehogs drinking the water. He tasted the water as well and felt that it was of very good quality. He brought some water samples back to Germany for testing and the analysis proved the quality of the water.

1930, another German businessman called Ludwig started to dig a well near the original spring and very good quality water, which became known as Laoshan Mineral Water emerged from the well not far from where his countrymen saw the Hedgehogs. Ludwig then invest and established a bottled water plant near the well to produce China’s first bottled mineral water named ALAC Water, only 37 years behind the worlds first bottled water.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 6:36 PM | Permalink

Yan Zhitui (531-591) was born into a family of scholar-officials at a time when being a scholar-official wasn’t necessarily the easiest gig in the world, the tail end of the "Age of Division"....An era of family values, it was not.

But Mr. Yan found the time to write a set of "household instructions," his addition to a genre of writing quite common throughout the imperial period down to the last century. The fact that heads of households had to keep writing out the rules for living under their roof suggests that family life in old China was a bit more chaotic and disordered than contemporary stereotypes would have us believe. It’s an axiom in history that lists of rules don’t always tell us much about what people were doing, but they can tell us quite a bit about what people SHOULD HAVE been doing but were not.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 3:12 PM | Permalink

China has taken the step of asking millions of migrant workers to forgo their annual Lunar New Year trip home, saying the worst winter weather in 50 years is expected to pummel the country for at least another three days.

"For the sake of their safety, and relieving the stress on transport, I advise migrant workers to stay in the cities where they work," Zheng Guogang, chief of the China Meteorological Administration, told the state newspaper, China Daily.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 3:08 PM | Permalink

Watching TV is a major form of entertainment for tens of millions of Chinese people and they love TV dramas, which sometimes satisfy viewers’ psychological need for an ideal world and maybe give them hope that living by ideal values could bring happiness and success. It is interesting to see how the Chinese public buys into such idealism, which, on the other hand, indicates people’s disappointment and dissatisfaction with reality. These blog discussions also reveal people’s awareness of the value change associated with China’s social transition, and that they are willing to uphold traditional, or main values like true love, honesty and hard work. At the same time, they also accept some new values represented by the younger generation, such as pursuit of personal dreams and fulfillment of one’s individuality.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 1:06 PM | Permalink

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 1:04 PM | Permalink

At a recent meeting in Chongqing municipality, deputy mayor Huang Qifan cut short a lower official who was reading from a prepared document: "There's no need to use these bureaucratic clichs on this occasion. It's totally unnecessary." After that, the others skipped at least half of their speeches.

I wish I had the good fortune to be a witness to such a dramatic moment. It was tense, reported a local newspaper, as all those officials who were to report to Huang must have gone through a lightening fast process to readjust their speaking style - to be concise and to the point.

It would be great if the whole bureaucracy in the nation could be infused with a strong incentive to "cut the waffle".

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 1:02 PM | Permalink

When one newspaper or agency reports on something published elsewhere, it’s quite natural for it to be shortened, modified or added to provided these changes are sourced and not presented as a true representation of the original text. Readers in different countries will often want to know different things and focus on different aspects of a story. But how much of that story can be cut before the meaning is completely lost?

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 11:02 AM | Permalink

What Olympics host city or country hasn't had critics? A quick Google search turns up plenty of information about dissent and protests surrounding previous games. Do any of us remember hearing much about these things in the international media at the time? I don't. Why? Because the host governments treated dissent as a normal thing and didn't go around throwing everybody in jail or suppressing their publications. And guess what? The international media didn't pay too much attention to the dissenters and protestors anyway...

...Why can't China accept that dissent and argument are part of being a normal country? Why behave in such an insecure manner that violates international human rights norms, damages China's international image, and distracts media attention away from the Chinese people's genuine accomplishments over the past 30 years - as well as from the excitement of the sports competition itself?

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 9:15 PM | Permalink

Ding Zhenkuan, deputy head of the Beijing Bureau of Work Safety, grudgingly revealed the toll only after he came under pressure during a rare early evening news conference. Mr Ding at first dismissed the report in The Sunday Times. But then said: "There were two deaths at the Bird’s Nest, one in 2006 and one in 2007. We have properly compensated the families, reported the accidents to the construction community and seriously punished those responsible."

But it was only amid confusion over the total number of dead and injured that Mr Ding finally revealed that another four people had died during construction of the other Olympic venues, bringing the total to six. He declined to give details of how or where they died and virtually scampered out of the media spotlight.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 3:02 PM | Permalink

China's worst winter weather in five decades will continue over the next three days, the China Meteorological Administration (CMA) told a news conference Wednesday.

The heavy snow and sleet has paralyzed transport and coal shipments, and led to travelers cramming railways stations and airports and power supply reductions in almost half of the 31 provinces and regions on the Chinese mainland.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 1:33 PM | Permalink

Earlier this week, the Indian government bestowed one of its greatest honors, the Padma Bushan award, on the 97-year-old Ji, in honor of his contributions to cross-cultural understanding. In the realpolitik of Chinese-Indian diplomacy, the move was immediately interpreted as as indicating a positive direction in the relationship between the two countries.

Symbolically speaking, the theory has some merit. Ji has long been a believer in the transformative virtue of translation. When he received a lifetime achievement award in China in 2006 for his contributions to the field of translation, he observed that "The reason our Chinese culture has been able to remain consistent and rich throughout its 5,000 years of history is closely linked to translation. Translations from other cultures have helped infuse new blood into our culture."

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 12:46 PM | Permalink

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 12:41 PM | Permalink

U.S. based Web site About.com, which offers users advice from specialists on topics ranging from body building to horticulture, has been quietly expanding in China. Last year, without public announcement, the company opened its About.com China office in Beijing. In November, testing of a Chinese version of the site, called Abang.com, started.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 3:23 AM | Permalink

Please Vote for Me, an award-winning documentary directed by Weijun Chen, takes a closer look at an interesting social experiment with democracy in China.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 12:36 PM | Permalink

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 1:50 PM | Permalink

This has nothing to do, really, with the censors. This is because of pressure from the top – from a very high level. That’s why it has happened before the Summer Olympics, the Chinese government wants to have so-called "clean air." In their language, LOST IN BEIJING has created a very negative image of society. On the internet someone released a pirated copy of the film containing sexual imagery that was cut from the movie and that’s why the situation is so severe. The Propaganda Department became concerned about this and the pressure is probably coming from the Political Bureau.

The censors say that this is something they don’t want to do, but it is something no one can stop. This is the first time they have suspended an individual for something posted on the internet. Previously, when a director or producer has been banned they will call you into SARFT and have a conversation with you and notify you of the situation. They didn’t do that this time. According to my inside information, they were told that they have three days to deal with this.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 9:15 AM | Permalink