Diary of an alien in Beijing
E2MAN, a Grey, snaps photos of its travels throughout Beijing, applies vintage filters, and posts them with short, untranslated comments.
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January 31, 2011
Beijing's hidden ads in Taiwan media
Taiwan journalism professors gathered to charge that China had deployed hidden ads in the local media since 2008, when two sides began to talk to each other in earnest after 60 years of official silence.
CNOOC to buy 33% of Chesapeake energy project
ABC News:
China's state-owned offshore oil and gas company is intensifying its search for oil in the western United States.
CNOOC Ltd. announced Sunday it will pay $570 million for a one-third stake in Chesapeake Energy Corp.'s drilling project in an emerging oil field in northeast Colorado and southeast Wyoming.
Chesapeake, an oil and natural gas company based in Oklahoma City, will operate the 800,000-acre project in a pair of basins in a region called the Niobrara shale. CNOOC will pay two-thirds of the project's drilling costs, up to an additional $697 million.
In October, CNOOC paid $1.08 billion for a one-third stake in a Chesapeake drilling project in South Texas.
January 30, 2011
Recycle rare earths at home, with a screwdriver
Adam Minter at Shanghai Scrap explains why the push to stop the export of scrap electronics may be indirectly damaging the environment by destroying recoverable rare earth magnets.
January 28, 2011
Beijing's 36th consecutive "Blue Sky Day"
The Live From Beijing blog rejoices over the capital's air quality.
Senior editor Chang Ping forced out of Southern Media Group
Tania Branigan in The Guardian:
A leading Chinese journalist said he had been forced out of his job this week amid tightened restrictions on the media.
Zhang Ping, better known as Chang Ping, is an influential editor and columnist who had worked at the Southern Media Group - one of the country's best respected news organisations - for many years.
His departure has increased concerns that authorities, who already censor publications and broadcasts heavily, are clamping down harder on China's increasingly independent-minded journalists.
Zhang has repeatedly been punished for tackling sensitive issues and was banned from writing columns for the Southern Weekend and Southern Metropolis Daily newspapers last July.
January 27, 2011
CCTV repurposes Top Gun fighter footage
The Ministry of Tofu covers reactions to CCTV's gaffe.
Scenes of crowded holiday travel
Youku Buzz presents videos of the Spring Festival Rush.
"Fake news" and a real tragedy
China Media Project reports on two "fake news" episodes: the concocted heartwarming story of a mother who trekked for days to visit her child, and an expose of official malfeasance which got its author fired at the behest of the propaganda authorities.
Overseas students react to "Tiger Mom"
The Ministry of Tofu translates a post and comments from the MITBBS overseas student community that discuss Amy Chua's controversial article:
1. The long-established feeling of superiority of Americans/Westerners. They feel that other cultures and races are non-mainstream and backward. Now there is someone, a professor from the reputable university Yale, who points out in a high-profile that the Chinese style is superior. This naturally caused a powerful shock, it’s like slapping the Americans in the face, with their narrow-mindedness in full disclosure.
Not all of the commenters agree.
Shanghai to kick artists out of studios to make "creative zone"
Shanghai Eye, the blog of British artist Chris Gill, reports on the eviction of more than 70 artists including himself from 696 Weihai Road in Shanghai.
The Shanghai government apparently wants to remove the artists in order to construct a "creative zone".
January 26, 2011
Going home for Spring Festival
Youku Buzz reviews current videos for Spring Festival Rush － or chunyun
Police ban photocopying of "sensitive materials" at Peking University
From Peking University News:
As the Global Times reported and PKU student journalists confirmed on Wednesday, local police have banned the photocopying service of sensitive documents on campus since the New Year, probably as part of their comprehensive control campaign.
Here, “sensitive” means that “materials that express hate against the Party, the State, or the social politics are forbidden,” read the order enforced by the Yanyuan Police Station and PKU Security Department.
On Hu Jintao's plane
Jorge Guajardo, Ambassador of Mexico, on the plane Hu Jintao used to travel to the U.S.:
At a time when China is making a lot of Americans nervous, what could be less threatening than its leader arriving in a Boeing-747, made in Seattle and bearing the Star Alliance logo?
January 25, 2011
Lang Lang says his choice of "My Motherland" not political
Melissa Block (NPR) (via James Fallows' Atlantic blog) talks to Lang Lang about his supposedly nationalistic dig at the White House:
Sample convincing/exasperated detail, about the Korean War movie that introduced the song: "This movie was like.. when my mother was two years old." His "I am a man of both countries" theme was exactly the tone Lang Lang had when my wife and I were fortunate enough to talk with him at the dinner before he performed, as described here. Now I'm really going away and leaving things to the guests. But had to say it.
Li Qiming (Li Gang's son) goes to court tomorrow
From the China Daily:
Li Qiming, also known as Li Yifan, will face charges of "perpetration of a traffic accident" in Wangdu county of North China's Hebei province, according to the newspaper. The China Youth Daily obtained the information from Chen Lin, the brother of a victim in the crash.
Military controls too much airspace,
civilian flight delays get worse
In The Global Times:
The Beijing Daily reported Monday that the flight punctuality rate on the mainland last year was only 75.43 percent, while the figures for 2008 and 2009 are 82.38 percent and 81.89 percent respectively.
Li Xiaojin, a professor at the Civil Aviation University of China in Tianjin, blamed the problem on growing numbers of airplanes in the country operating in limited airspace...
...He said that airspace for civil aviation should be expanded, adding that the sector occupies about 25 percent of the country's airspace, while the rest is occupied by military aviation.
January 24, 2011
Patriotism displays itself most powerfully under pressure
Berlin Fang muses on Lang Lang's motivations for playing "My Motherland" at the US state dinner for Hu Jintao:
At such a stage of his career, I wouldn’t be surprised to see him look for other dimensions to venture into, even though I personally would have preferred that he’d remain purely a pianist, to go down in history as the best among the best. But that does not seem to be the aspirations many Chinese artists have. Jackie Chan, for instance, is now devoting much of his time to mainland China and try hard to set up his image as a “patriotic artist”. His son was said to have given up his US citizenship. There might be some deeper reasons here why these people choose to do so. Were they snubbed by their western counterparts? Were they uncomfortable working in the west? I can only guess. Yet I do see an interesting pattern: Chinese artists would fight their ways to “March to the US” (进军美国), but once they made names for themselves, they tend to go back to China with all their accolades under their belts. The melting pot does not melt them.
Being perceived as a patriotic pianist does seem very important for Lang Lang . In 2008, when China first battled an earthquake and then dazzled the world with the Olympics, patriotism was a big deal. At this time, some in China doubted the authenticity of his proclaimed patriotism of this pianist who was seen often with foreign dignitaries. Lang Lang went so far as to scan his Chinese passport and post it online for people to check. He said he was and would remain to be a Chinese and he is proud of that.
January 21, 2011
Sinica podcast: Hu Jintao in America
A podcast about Hu Jintao's visit to the U.S., with Kaiser Kuo, Gady Epstein and Danwei's Jeremy Goldkorn.
Big Iron's broken promises
According to the Ministry of Railways, the end the Spring Festival ticket shortage problem is always just a few years away.
Hu Jintao visits congress,
listens to American whining
In a story titled 'Chinese president listens to U.S. lawmakers' complaints', the Los Angeles Times lists the litany of complaints about China that Hu Jintao endured yesterday:
Chinese President Hu Jintao, who was toasted Wednesday evening at a White House state dinner, met with a harsher reality Thursday as he heard congressional leaders recite grievances on China's approach to trade, military expansion and human rights.
Zhang Neixian's 100% Strawberry
An independent digital film adapted from a Japanese comic without authorization makes a splash online with a quasi-porno promo.
Why is Hu Jintao going to Chicago?
Evan Osnos considers the question at the New Yorker:
There are a few obvious reasons why Hu might go to Chicago: it’s the President’s home town; it’s the headquarters of Boeing, which just sold China $19 billion in airplanes; Illinois is also home to the U.S. operations of Wanxiang International, an auto-parts company that employs more Americans than any other Chinese company. But the deeper explanation involves how China has come to view the city differently than it did a few years ago. Five or six years ago, Chicago was still digging out from its old reputation among the Chinese as the home of Al Capone and Michael Jordan. The Beijing government could hardly care less about the place. In 2006, I watched Daley go have tea with Wang Qishan, who was then the mayor of Beijing and is now a vice-premier and top finance boss. Wang barely seemed to know who Daley was.
But Chicago was building America’s largest Chinese-language education program. There was nothing preordained about Chicago being home to a program of that scale. Rather, it was largely the work of a Chicago educator named Robert Davis, who had studied in China and returned to the city to discover that Chinese was not widely offered.
January 19, 2011
Village chief Qian Yunhui's death remains in the news
The Global Times looks at the ongoing Qian Yunhui story, in which a petitioning village chief is thought by many to have been murdered by local government officials in order to shut him up.
Let's start with the more certain part.
The Zhaiqiao village chief lay mangled underneath the left front wheel of a vermilion truck with eyes shut, blood streaming from his half-open mouth.
Qian Yunhui's internal organs had splattered outward across the shoulder, one arm reaching from under the tire, his head detached from a crushed body near the Puqi county village in the suburbs of Yueqing, a city under the prefecture of the city of Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province.
Qian, 53, had led a six-year campaign defending villagers' rights against land seizure by the Yueqing government. He had spent three and half of the last five years behind bars for demonstrations in Yueqing and petitioning in Beijing...
...After Qian's suspicious death, tension between villagers and the government officials of Yueqing inevitably intensified.
Hu Jintao arrives in Washington
From China Daily:
President Hu jintao arrived in Washington Tuesday afternoon (local time) for his four-day highly-exposed state visit to the United States.
Hu is expected to lay out his blueprint on US policy during his three days in Washington, where he'll meet with President Barack Obama, top legislators and business executives, followed by a stop in Chicago.
The US has made grandeous reception for Hu, with the White House busy preparing for a State banquet on Wednesday night, prior to a private dinner given by Obama to Hu on Tuesday night.
Jon Huntsman: Ambassador on a bicycle
Jeremy Page in The Wall Street Journal:
Summoned for a diplomatic dressing down last year, Jon Huntsman Jr., the American ambassador to Beijing, hopped on his sturdy "Forever" brand Chinese bicycle and pedaled off to the Foreign Ministry.
Flustered guards there, expecting the U.S. representative to sweep up in an armored Cadillac made him park by a side gate and walk in.
The unceremonious arrival—at once suggesting humility and defiance—was typical of Mr. Huntsman, a Mandarin-speaking former Mormon missionary and the son of a billionaire who has set himself the ambitious goal of "humanizing" the world's most important bilateral relationship.
January 18, 2011
Chinese rock fans on Net censorship and anal sex
The Inside GFW blog has published a series of Q&As with young rock fans conducted at the Zhenjiang Midi Music Festival last October. The odd selection of questions ranges from sexual preferences to attitudes to government and censorship.
Directing the National Palace Museum in Taipei
Chris Gill interviews Chou Kung-shin, the director of the National Palace Museum, for The Art Newspaper:
TAIPEI. When a 40-strong delegation headed by Cai Wu, China’s minister for culture, visited Taiwan in September, it was the latest sign that cultural relations across the straits that separate the island from the communist mainland are thawing. Foremost on the Chinese officials’ itinerary was a tour of the National Palace Museum, Taipei, home to a large collection of artefacts that came from the Forbidden City in Beijing. Having survived wars and revolution, they were evacuated to Taipei in 1949.
“It was his first visit to set up exchange relationships with Taiwan,” said Chou Kung-shin, the director of Taipei’s National Palace Museum since 2008. An example of just such an exchange was “Dynastic Renaissance”, an exhibition of art of the Southern Song Dynasty, which closed at the National Palace Museum in December.
“We borrowed items from six museums in Zhejiang [Province], three museums in Fujian, the Shanghai Museum and Liaoning museum and two Japanese museums, so it is quite a big international exhibition,” said Chou.
Via Shanghai Eye.
Developments in Zhu Xueqin's plagiarism case
Fudan University has cleared professor Zhu Xueqin of charges of plagiarism, but his critics are not satisfied with the decision, writes the blog China's Scientific & Academic Integrity Watch:
Half a year later, the Committee publicized its verdict. It declared that Zhu Xueqin's thesis and book contained irregularities in providing end notes and citations, as well as mistakes and misinterpretations in translations from foreign languages, but nonetheless did not commit plagiarism.
In the specific case of using Gao Yi's work, the Committee accepted Zhu Xueqin's explanation that Gao Yi himself had agreed on his usage, although the work was not properly cited as so. For the English books, the Committee noted that a part of his thesis was originally intended to be a preface for the translation of Susan Dunn's book, so a lack of citation or notes in that scenario is acceptable. As for Carol Blum's book, the Committee noted that the book was cited in the beginning of the thesis.
January 17, 2011
"Prizes", "awards" now off-limits
Oiwan Lam at Global Voices Online describes the censors' response to unwanted prizes in 2010:
Feng Xiaogang describes the awkward situation in a recent directors' award...
Now when directors receive award, we can't say the word “award” and have to use the word “praise”. Since the “Award Cup” carries the word “award”, the host has to avoid the word and says: let the praised receives the evidence of praise from the praise presenter. “The thankful remarks presented by the awardee” has to be changed into: let the praised express thankful remarks. Li Xuejiang (a famous mainland actor) said: so many directors make their presence in this solemn award ceremony. Now that we have to avoid the word, everyone are fed up. This is really sad. All directors clapped their hands.
Privileges have led to rampant abuses
The Global Times follows up on the case of Shi Jianfeng the toll-dodger:
Shi Junfeng, his younger brother, surrendered himself Saturday, admitting that he was the trucks' manager and claiming that the licenses had been bought from local armed police division personnel and therefore were not fake.
He showed a one-year contract that was signed by Zhang Xintian and Li Jinliang, two armed police officers who Shi Junfeng claimed sold the plates to him.
The contract showed that the division allowed four of Shi Junfeng's trucks to carry military plates to help the local armed police with infrastructure construction, the younger brother said. Each year, Shi Junfeng had to pay 1.2 million yuan to the division. The contract also specified which sections of the highway the trucks were entitled to drive on.
This item is partially based on a report from The Beijing News
January 15, 2011
The story of Ruth meets Beijing Opera
The New York Chinese Opera Society stages an adaptation of the biblical tale of Ruth in the style of a traditional Peking Opera.
How should history be written?
Ruoji Tang writes for the Economic Observer about the latest installment of the official History of the Communist Party and Frank Dikötter's Mao's Great Famine:
On the whole, Mr. Zhang's comments are admirable. He acknowledges that the party, and the country itself, must come to terms with its recent history and that writing an honest historical narrative means admitting that the policies of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution were mistakes.
But Mr. Zhang surprisingly insists that "the focus should not be on individuals, not even Mao Zedong." He says that this is the history of the Party itself, and to allocate blame on individuals is "not how history should be written."
January 14, 2011
Liu Jianfeng's investigation into the Qian Yunhui case
ESWN translates a thorough investigation into the suspicious death of a village head, followed by an analysis by blogger Wufatian.
Renren and Kaixin, not quite the Facebooks of China
In Fast Company, a good long profile by April Rabkin profiles Renren.com and Kaixin001.com, China's most popular Facebook type social networking sites.
Here's another reason [Renren founder] Wang [Xing] cannot be called the Mark Zuckerberg of China: He sold. In 2006, Oak Pacific Interactive bought Xiaonei for about $4 million, Wang says. It seemed like a lot of money at the time, but today, Renren, as the new owners renamed it, is estimated to be worth as much as several billion dollars. "There is no regret,"
Confucius in Tiananmen Square
The Useless Tree blog looks at the meaning of the massive new statue of Confucius in Tiananmen Square.
4 stand trial for forcing blind men to beg in Beijing
In The China Daily:
Two couples stood trial in the capital city on Thursday for forcing blind people to beg.
The four reportedly became the city's first to be prosecuted for organizing disabled people to beg since the crime was included in the country's Criminal Law in 2006.
The Haidian district people's court heard that the couples, both from Shangcai county in Central China's Henan province, allegedly organized at least four blind men to beg for money in Beijing from early 2009 to April 30, 2010, when they were rescued by local police.
January 13, 2011
Happy 106th birthday to Zhou Youguang, father of Pinyin
On Sinocism:
Everyone who has studied Chinese owes a debt to Zhou Youguang 周有光, considered the father of Hanyu Pinyin, the romanization scheme for Mandarin.
On January 13th Professor Zhou turned 106. Not only is he still alive, he published his most recent book-“朝闻道集”-last year. And something he said today at his party encouraging people to think independently was forwarded hundreds of times on Sina Weibo...
January 12, 2011
Why Chinese mothers are superior: Animation
Next Media Animation comes up with an animated video for the controversial book.
Original exposure was on the Wall Street Journal under the title Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior by Amy Chua, which ran a controversial excerpt from her book Battle Cry of the Tiger Mother.
North Korean guards kills five on China border
Reuters reports:
The Chosun Ilbo reported that North Korean border guards had never before shot at defectors once they had reached the Chinese side of the border, adding that guards could have been issued with new instructions for dealing with defectors.
Gao Zhisheng's ordeal revealed
AP releases details of torture after months of disappearance. From BBC.
The Independent of London also has an editorial.
A political message in Let the Bullets Fly?
"The box-office smash Eastern Western is interpreted by some as political satire," writes the AP:
Jiang was coy when pressed about the hidden messages at the Hong Kong premiere of Let the Bullets Fly late Monday.
Asked if his latest work was in fact a political criticism, the 48-year-old filmmaker said, "Whatever interpretation is fine. Whatever. You are welcome to think whatever you want to."
He then jokingly chided a reporter for asking the question, saying, "You really lack imagination."
Behind the scenes at a musical in Sin City
Nick Frish braves the wilds of Dongguan to watch a dress rehearsal of Love U, Teresa! (爱上邓丽君), a musical play about legendary Chinese singer Teresa Teng.
China's top news stories of 2010
A roundup of lists of top China news stories of 2010, a podcast and links galore to reviews of the past year.
China stealth jet test upstages Gates, Hu?
By Jeremy Page and Julian E. Barnes in The Wall Street Journal:
China's first test flight of its stealth fighter Tuesday overshadowed a mission to China by U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates to repair frayed military relations, and prompted concern about whether President Hu Jintao and the civilian leadership are fully in control of the increasingly powerful armed forces.
The strange case of Zhou Yongjun
At Hong Kong Journal, Thomas E. Kellogg looks into the case of Zhou Yongjun, a political exile who entered Hong Kong in September 2008 under an alias formerly used by the late zhonggong master Zhang Hongbao and was later turned over to mainland authorities in Shenzhen:
The case of Zhou Yongjun is a strange one. Zhou, a student activist in Tiananmen Square, spent roughly 18 months in detention for his involvement in the 1989 student protests. After his release, Zhou fled China, and sought and received political asylum in the United States. Around 2002, he became involved with the exile spiritual leader Zhang Hongbao, the founder of the Qigong group Zhong Gong—not related to the better-known Falung Gong. Many have speculated that Zhou’s ties to both overseas democracy activists and exile Qigong groups heightened the Chinese government’s interest in him, and that these ties are very much related to his transfer from Hong Kong to China.
The murkiness of his case, and, more recently, revelations which have heightened suspicions that he was in fact involved in bank fraud, have obscured the very real concerns over Hong Kong’s autonomy and the integrity of “one country, two systems” that are raised by his treatment in Hong Kong. During his roughly four days in Hong Kong, Hong Kong authorities took decisions on his case that, while apparently not illegal, are nonetheless inconsistent with established practice. Since Zhou’s detention in Guangdong has become known, the Hong Kong SAR government has repeatedly refused to provide information on its handling of the case, instead resorting to bland restatements of government immigration policy and blanket refusals to comment on individual cases.
ESWN has followed Zhou's case extensively; an archive of relevant documents is here.
January 11, 2011
From "civil society" to "public society"
China Media Projects reports that in the wake of a directive banning the use of "civil society" (公民社会), some Chinese media outlets are substituting the term "public society" (公共社会) to talk about the same concept.
Trying to visit Chen Guangcheng
Siweiluozi translates an account by Chen Yunfei of his attempt to visit activist Chen Guangcheng. Yesterday, netizen He Peirong (known online as @pearlher) made a similar attempt and was detained by police.
Police vs. chengguan
In Kunming, a policeman accuses urban enforcement officials of breaking his leg, reports Go Kunming:
A neighbor estimated that the group of chengguan beat Zhang for 10 minutes, stopping only after his face became covered in blood and he passed out. He also suffered a broken right leg. Witnesses said that a group of bystanders repeatedly told the chengguan officers that they were beating a policeman.
Zhang's beating is the latest in a series of incidents in which apparent excessive force has been used by Kunming chengguan and were also involved in a clash with residents in northern Kunming that started when chengguan flipped over a 56-year-old woman's food cart.
January 7, 2011
Another villager crushed to death under truck
On ChinaSMACK:
On the morning of the 3rd, in Zhumadian of Henan province, a woman trying to stop construction was run over and killed by a construction vehicle, and it was reported that the police and water department personnel present at the scene turned a blind eye.
The Zhengyang County Shenshui River Regulation Project headquarters made an announcement, claiming that it was a fatal construction accident, that the victim slipped on the river slopes onto the moving excavator.
Officials deny that the deputy fire chief said “I’ll take responsibility for running over her”.
Past Forward in Taipei
At the Beijinger blog, Jerry Chan writes about his recent trip down memory lane, and Taipei:
These quaint, one-story structures are characterized by intricately tiled roofs and elevated wooden floors (where my mom and her sisters slept on tatami mats) – the same as back in Japan. In old Taipei, they were typically enclosed behind walls on small plots of land with spaces for gardens that allowed the tenants to grow vegetables and raise a few chickens and such. Most – including our family’s – are long gone and have been replaced by the non-descript multi-story tile-faced townhomes you find all over Taipei.
January 6, 2011
Anal rape not a crime in China
In The Global Times
A 42-year-old security guard was sentenced to one year behind bars for "injuring" an 18-year-old after raping him last year, Chaoyang district court revealed Tuesday, a case that exposes the absence of law defining anal rape as a crime in China, according to experts...
..Although Zhang admitted to sexually assaulting Li, since there are no laws that define rape or sexual assault committed between men as a crime on the Chinese mainland, the court sentenced Zhang to compensate the victim 20,000 yuan ($3,036) and one year in jail for "committing intentional injury" in September.
The current legal definition of rape is "a man's penetration of the vagina without the woman's consent," according to Criminal Law of the People's Republic of China.
Tiger kills bus driver in Heilongjiang
AP / Yahoo:
A rare Siberian tiger attacked and killed a tour bus driver in northern China while the man's horrified passengers watched, Chinese media reported.
The tiger pounced on driver Jin Shijun and dragged him into the forest after he got out to check on his bus, which was stuck in the snow at the world's largest Siberian tiger breeding base in the northern province of Heilongjiang, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
The tiger breeding base is near the city of Mudan, according to Chinese reports.
January 5, 2011
Leper colonies in China
Calum MacLeod in USA Today
For the past half-century, Huang Shaokuan prayed daily for spiritual support as she coped with the disease that took her lower legs and all her fingers. This year, she added an urgent request.
"I pray that God will help us move quickly back to the mainland," says Huang, 84. "I want to see my family again."
Banished decades ago to the Dajin Island leper colony in the South China Sea, Huang and her fellow leprosy victims, all cured but disfigured, have buried hundreds of friends over the years. The last 45 survivors wait for God, and the Chinese government, to speed their return to a country that has changed beyond all recognition but retains fear and prejudice about leprosy.
January 4, 2011
Grave inflation
Author Michael Meyer in The New York Times:
On the high-speed train from Beijing northeast to Harbin, passengers around me munch sweet popcorn and read books titled “Currency Wars,” “The Collapse of the Eurosystem,” and “The Upside of Irrationality.”
Despite the raft of anti-inflationary measures introduced by the Chinese government in November, the lead article in the morning New Capital News announces that the price of gasoline is at a record high of $4.91 a gallon. Another article says that a popular Chinese online forum voted “zhang” — rapid price increase — 2010’s “character of the year.” It outpolled the runner-up, “resentment,” nearly six to one.