Not your grandfather's Chinese laundry
At Newsweek's China Calling blog, Nick Mackie writes about riverside clothes washing in Wanzhou and the niche businesses that have sprung up to serve the needs of washers.
« February 15, 2009 - February 21, 2009 | Main | March 1, 2009 - March 7, 2009 »
February 28, 2009
"Hide and seek" death actually a beating
While the Chinese media has been fascinated by the Internet representatives invited to investigate an unusual death at a Yunnan detention center, local prosecuters have been conducting their own investigation, with a good deal more success. They now say that Li Qiaoming was beaten to death by prison bullies who used "hide and seek" as an excuse to beat him up.
The China Daily reports that six prison and public security officers have been punished or dismissed. Xinhua has a report as well.
China's giant water scheme opens torrent of discontent
Chris Buckley writes for Reuters about people displaced by the massive South-to-North Water Transfer Project:
In the decades before and after the dam was finished in 1973, 436,000 villagers were forced to move, often in hurried, unplanned evacuations for meagre compensation, say historic records.
In 2002, when the government announced the central canal for the project would be built, villagers were told to prepare to shift again. They have been waiting ever since as scheduled completion of the canal has been pushed from 2008 to 2010 and now 2014.
"We're locked in a room and can't see or hear what's happening to us," said Zhao Jingming, a 63-year-old farmer in Shizigang with a hoarse bellow that silenced his neighbours.
Related articles: China farmers recall bitter days of famine for dam about the 1959 move, and a Reuters blog post about the feature.
February 27, 2009
The best commuter in Beijing
On The Beijinger Blog, an excerpt from the Insiders' Guide to Beijing 2009 about the best way to get to the Drum Tower from the CBD out of seven.
Chinese history for freedom
Gady Epstein of Forbes Beijing bureau starts a new column, Beijing Dispatch, today on the Forbes website. The first topic takes inspiration from Pierre Berge's remark that he would return the bronze animal heads of Yuanmingyuan in exchange for Tibet's freedom:
This week's Yves Saint Laurent auction, of all things, offered an oddly appropriate epigraph for one of China's sensitive anniversaries this year: the 50th anniversary this March of a failed Tibetan revolt against Chinese rule and the flight of the Dalai Lama into exile in India.
Annual human rights tiff
From China Daily:
"We urge the US to examine its own human rights problems and not use human rights as an excuse or publish human rights reports in order to interfere with others' internal affairs," Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu told a regular briefing.
The China Daily article also links to the "Human Rights Record of United States in 2008" full text. Shanghai Daily also has the following article: China hits back with report on US human rights record.
For another foray into China's defense of its human rights record against the U.S., see this China Daily report, China foils US' human rights motion again, from 2004.
From the International Herald Tribune: China assails U.S. report on human rights.
Jackie Chan steps into debate over sale of bronze animal heads
From The Guardian
Chan, who collects and has in several cases donated antiquities, said he was to start filming a movie next year about the search for, and return of, treasures from the palace. "But now we have lost two more pieces. This has made me really angry," he said, adding that the sale was "shameful".
China's global spending spree
Peter Ford at The Christian Science Monitor examines China's purchase of stakes in French, Canadian, and Australian firms this month.
Translating the Economist
Waxy looks at a translation team made up of Economist fans who translate every issue of the magazine into Chinese. From the site's about page:
"Like the forum name says, producing a Chinese version of The Economist is our goal. But we're still young and immature; very amateur, not professional. So what? Because we are young, we have the fervor, the enthusiasm, the passion. Because we are amateurs, we'll double our efforts to do our best. As long as we wish, we can be successful and do a good job!"
via Sinosplice. See also: Time Weekly, a blog of Time magazine translations.
February 26, 2009
Guangdong official sacked for expenditure over Africa and Middle-East trip
The sacked official was Tan Rigui, deputy Party secretary of the Duanzhou district of Zhaoqing city in Guangdong. He led the group of 13 abroad. From China Daily:
The committee has asked all members of the tour group to accept responsibility and repay the cost, estimated at more than 450,000 yuan ($65,800).
News of the trip was made public last week when a citizen from Luoding in Guangdong posted a 17-minute video on the Internet.
The 17-minute interview, not all of it interesting, can be seen via The Shanghaiist.
Bush maize
From Sun Bin, which links to a funny advert from Green Foods (绿色食品) in China.
Different versions of New Year
Yesterday was the start of the Tibetan New Year festival, which lasts for 15 days. Nearly all major Western and Chinese media have reported on Losar, but with varying angles.
From Geoff Dyer at The Financial Times:
Diplomats and reporters who have recently visited Tibetan areas say there is some support for the boycott, although there is also plenty of opposition, including from shops and other service businesses for whom the holiday season is peak business.
Reports are being made by The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times, amongst the foreign press.
About how China is handling Losar, see China Daily's report as well as the wealth of pictures in the Chinese papers.
China's attorneys
Peter Ford at The Christian Science Monitor's China bureau writes about the recent forced closure of the Yitong Law Firm, and the range of legal activists who have in the past been detained:
The closure order, which activists here say is unlikely to be overturned at the hearing, is part of "a wider effort to stifle and intimidate lawyers who aspire to defend human rights and the public interest," says Albert Ho, chairman of the China Human Rights Lawyers Concern Group in Hong Kong. "This is really a very serious matter."
February 25, 2009
A slice of traditional life in Beijing
At Language Log, Victor Mair introduces a music video of Zhang Bohong's "Native Beijinger," along with a transcription and translation of the lyrics.
Who looted those French-Italian animal heads?
Richard Spencer at the Telegraph blogs about the history of the bronze animal heads up for auction in Paris:
According to [Jasper Becker], quoting the British writer Hope Danby who visited in the 1930s, studied the site and spoke to descendants of the contractors who built the fountain (among other researches), the empress of the Daoguang emperor took such a passionate dislike to the fountain (whose heads are, in fact, rather crude in my view, and not as fine as genuinely Chinese bronzes of that or any other period) that she had the animals torn down around 1840.
That of course doesn't answer the question of what happened after that or how they got out of China. The obvious guess is that they were stored somewhere in the Palace gardens, and were indeed looted after the Palace was set on fire. Danby thought they had been melted down - though that is clearly wrong.
Three set themselves on fire in Beijing
From Reuters, via The New York Times, about the incident this afternoon where three people in a car set themselves on fire near Chang'an Avenue, Wangfujing:
Police also removed piles of blankets and cans from the back seat of the car, said the witness, who was passing by on a bicycle and stopped to see what a crowd of around two hundred bystanders were looking at.
By 5:30 pm the area had returned to normal.
Xinhua English news had a report about a hour and a half after the incident, which was updated. There is no statement from Chinese Xinhua at time of writing.
Some photos on the Fengniao forum － before it gets taken off by the Net Nanny.
Update: That post has been taken down. The photos are now circulating online bearing various watermarks; the originals, by user "zxx402502" on the Fengniao BBS: Photo 1, Photo 2.
What plagiarism was not
Via IP Dragon, a paper by Charles R. Stone on traditional Chinese attitudes toward intellectual property, published in the Marquette Law Review.
In this paper Charles makes it plausible that the classical Chinese authors expected their readers to be erudite enough to know what and when they quote and how to interpret these often substantial quotes within the rest of the text. By comparing Chinese classical texts with a legal text that includes references to Supreme Court opinions and quotations, Charles gives his readers (especially the ones with a legal education) the chance to actually experience that the process of interpreting a legal text has in a way many similarities with interpreting a Chinese classical text, which is of course only possible if you have had a classical Mandarin education.
Bronze animal heads appeal blocked
From Maureen Fan at The Washington Post:
... After a cultural group led by a Chinese lawyer who has previously represented Chinese state interests appealed to stop the auction, a Paris court rejected the case and fined the plaintiffs for holding up the sale, which started Monday.
Also from China Daily: fights to stop sale of looted relics.
Beijing's same-sex 'happy couples'
Tania Branigan at The Guardian's China bureau reports on the changing attitudes to homosexual relationships in China, prompted by a Valentines Day demonstration in Beijing.
February 24, 2009
An unprecedented investigation or an unprecedented propaganda stunt?
David Bandurski at the China Media Project explains why the netizen investigation of a prisoner's death in Yunnan is not a step forward for transparency and public oversight:
If you look carefully at the language Wu Hao and others use to talk about this "unprecedented" event, you'll notice it is not at all about more transparent governance, how to better handle policy or law enforcement issues, or how to ensure greater responsibility and oversight.
Let's look again at Wu's now famous line to explain his handling of the "eluding the cat" case:
"As for online public opinion, it is best resolved by the laws of the Internet itself."
As this sentence should make patently clear, Wu's objective is not to "resolve" the investigation into the "eluding the cat" case, to make it fairer or more transparent. His objective is to "resolve" the problem of online opinion itself.
Officials trained to handle social unrest
From the Associated Press:
More than 3,000 county-level public security directors from across the nation will be trained in Beijing by mid-June to improve the response to threats to public security in the provinces, a statement on the Ministry of Public Security's Web site said.
H.S. Liu talks about Chinese media
Well-known photojournalist H.S. Liu recently joined the Modern Media Group. In this interview with Danwei he talks about bringing his international experience to the company, skewed foreign reporting on China, and life in old Beijing.
A brief visit with Jimmy Lai
CNN talks to Hong Kong media mogul Jimmy Lai:
Hailing from southern China, Lai's family was wealthy but marginalized by the communist government. After working as a railway porter boy, Lai dabbled in the black market before being smuggled into Hong Kong when just 12 years old, taking a job as a child laborer and earning just over $1 a month.
"You know I was free. I was full of hope. When I saw people in a Rolls Royce, in a Mercedes Benz, there was no envy, there was no jealousy, there was just hope that one day I was the one that will sit there," he told CNN.
China Daily USA edition
China Daily, everyone's favorite state-run English-language newspaper, launched its American edition with Deputy Editor-in-Chief Qu Yingpu ringing the opening bell at NASDAQ:
"The US Edition is focused on meeting ever-increasing demand for information on doing business with China," says Qu. "NASDAQ's community of technology, business and finance is the perfect place to celebrate this launch."
Targeted at North American businesses and observers of China's changing economic, cultural and political landscape, the U.S. Edition will feature reports of local events related to China in the U.S. It will also have analysis and opinions from American and Chinese thinkers and business leaders, and personal profiles of noted contributors to China and America's growing understanding of each other.
February 23, 2009
The end of a sordid expat episode
A British business consultant in China 'quoted' a government official on the yuan dollar exchange rate, causing strong denials from Chinese government organizations, condemnation by expatriate bloggers in China, and finally his resignation from the company he started.
Update (2009.02.24): It may not be entirely over. The Beijing News reports today that China Briefing may be an "illegal publication" and thus subject to GAPP controls. That's not a completely airtight allegation because the magazine is free and may not actually fall under GAPP supervision, but it is interesting to see a major mainland newspaper following up on the story.
Beijing's Olympic building boom becomes a bust
Barbara Demick of the Los Angeles Times writes about the empty buildings of Beijing, after its Olympics-related architectural boom:
By Rodman's calculations, 500 million square feet of commercial real estate has been developed in Beijing since 2006, more than all the office space in Manhattan. And that doesn't include huge projects developed by the government. He says 100 million square feet of office space is vacant -- a 14-year supply if it filled up at the same rate as in the best years, 2004 through '06, when about 7 million square feet a year was leased.
74 killed in Gujiao coal mine accident
In a surprisingly frank article, China Daily reports on the explosion at Tunlan Coal Mine, situated in Gujiao city, 60km west of Taiyuan:
A total of 57 rescuers, some from other places including Taiyuan, were involved in the rescue operation, a local police officer said.
But Gujiao residents said the number was not enough.
"The rescue team here with the mine is severely understaffed as the headquarters is based in Taiyuan," Kang Changqing, a former Tunlan miner who lives nearby, told China Daily.
What the Chinese want from Obama
From New York Times' Room for Debate blog, Michael Meyer, Daniel A. Bell, Andy Xie and Zhang Haibin air their views on what the Chinese people are expecting from the new administration, following Hillary Rodham Clinton's visit.
Mark Kitto's China Cuckoo
Interview with Mark Kitto, whose struggles with his that's magazine publishing partners have been widely reported. Kitto has authored a book, China Cuckoo.
National security in China's Special Administrative Regions
At China Elections, Suzanne Pepper writes on the Protection of National Security bill that will probably be approved this month:
The great irony is that while many concerned Chinese are looking forward to a day when progressive change can bring an end to such constraints, Macau and Hong Kong are being forced to move in the opposite direction. They will be subject to the same kinds of laws that are a constant threat to all forms of critical political expression elsewhere in China. Hence for Macau and Hong Kong, the price of patriotism has suddenly grown much heavier than the 50-year guarantee of political protection originally implied because the local way of life will have changed irrevocably long before that guarantee has expired.
A book doctor at the National Library
Xinhua talks to Du Weisheng, a book repair specialist at the National Library of China, about the past and future of rare book repair:
"Now, universities teach book repair courses. That's good because students can learn the whole set of skills systematically," he said.
"An apprentice will inherit both skills and flaws from his teacher, even a bias against other schools of repair techniques," Du said. "It's best to get systematic training in a school and then follow a master for further education."
February 22, 2009
Internet investigators visit detention center
Global Voices Online translates some online postings regarding the group of Internet representatives recruited to investigate a detention center where a prisoner died, reportedly from injuries sustained during a game of "eluding the cat". They haven't been too successful:
The deputy of the investigation team "marginal citizen" said, members wanted to see Pu and other detainers who were in the jail with Li Qiaoming, but the deputy chief justice in the county said that according to the law, such kind of interview is not procedural and rejected their demand. The committee also requested to see the Close circuit television, the government said that they could disclose whether such tapes exist or not, according to regulations and non-disclosure principle, what they are demanding is not within the law.
Meanwhile, other Internet users suspect that the representatives are part of the system they are ostensibly investigating - they are all current or former media professionals. The representatives have denied being part of a conspiracy:
As for the selection process, Tail End of the Wind has his own speculation: "If the active netizens in Yunnan are not selected and only a few netizens whom nobody has ever heard of are chosen instead, this netizen investigative team would be subjected to even more doubts. The netizens would say that these are sock-puppets from the publicity department."