Beijing Calling

My New Blog

2010-07-09T07:43:00.000-07:00

I've just set up my new blog about Hong Kong.

It's called The Fragrant Harbour at http://thefragrantharbour.blogspot.com.

Now that I don't have to deal with the Great Firewall anymore, it will be great to actually read your comments!

Xie Xie and Zaijian

2010-07-06T08:45:00.001-07:00

Today is my last day in Beijing.

It's my last day living in the Chinese capital after three years, two months and about three weeks.

I came here in April 2007 eager to have a greater understanding of the country and to find out if it really is going to be the next superpower.

When you first arrive, you are impressed by what it has achieved so far and think it has so much potential to be greater.

The people in general are good, honest folk, but their lack of common sense and basic skills can lead to frustration. Just go to any restaurant and flagging down a fuwuyuan or waitstaff is a test in patience, as they'd rather ignore you.

The newly-constructed buildings look shiny and sleek, but after a few years they are still unoccupied, or look run-down due to the low-quality building materials or lack of management.

And then you begin to see the numerous contradictions in the country, like how in the constitution people have the right to petition the central government and many make the journey to Beijing. But once they get to the capital, they are whisked away and thrown into "black jails" where they are illegally held for days, months, weeks before being sent back to their hometowns.

People spend their hard-earned money to buy an apartment, only to have it confiscated later by government officials who have sold the land to developers in return for kickbacks. The developers take over these properties by cutting off the gas, water, electricity, and then even sending thugs to beat up the so-called owners of the place.

While the country's GDP was at double digits for several years until last year at 8 percent, and holds some $2 trillion in US Treasury bills, these mind-boggling numbers do little justice in explaining the real situation in China.

The income gap between the rich and the poor is staggering to see in person. The Liu family living on the border between Beijing and Hebei Province at the Simatai section of the Great Wall live the simple farmer lifestyle, waking up with the sun, tilling the dry patch-work fields and eating mostly vegetable dishes before going to bed early.

Meanwhile the uber rich have no qualms ordering everything expensive on the menu, force each other to drink baijiu and smoke up a storm before leaving behind several dishes barely touched. They also think they own the road, especially when they drive SUVs.

How the wealthy gain their riches is an interesting mystery, while how the majority of the population scrape by on a few thousand RMB a month is another.

There's no question that people's lives have improved significantly in the past 30 years, but at what cost? Rivers and lakes are so polluted that "cancer villages" are springing up near these water sources. Climate change has also resulted in dried up river and lake beds that decades earlier were teeming with fish.

It seems like Beijing has a strong consumer culture -- people buying up all kinds of things from clothing to cars, everyone carrying at least one shopping bag. There is so much noise pollution, hypnotically telling people to buy more stuff, or on-going public service announcements that are so vague they hardly mean anything.

But this is the way the government wants things to be run -- it doesn't want its people to know too much or to think they deserve more. It continues its mantra that China is a big country and so managing it is a big task.

However, when you look at it, the Communist Party of China has had over 60 years of experience in governing the vast country and the world's largest population. One would have thought that by now it would know how to administer the place in an efficient and effective manner.

But the only way the CPC knows how to do this is mostly by force.

This was seen in how Tibet and the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region were governed and these two areas in particular continue to see repression. Instead of trying to understand and integrate cultural differences in policy, the Chinese government believes economic development will create harmony.

Ah a harmonious society. Practically everyone I know here mocks President Hu Jintao's slogan. How can there be harmony when there is such a discrepancy between the rich and the poor, environmental degradation, a persistent consumer culture and lack of respect of people's rights?

It's really all about the Party. It's not about improving the welfare of the people or creating a better environment. It's about preserving the Party's power. At any cost.

Which is why it was reported today that best-selling author Yu Jie was taken by police for questioning on Monday. They threatened to imprison him if he continued with his plans to publish a book criticizing Premier Wen Jiabao.

They warned him that Wen was no ordinary citizen and that the book, China's Best Actor: Wen Jiabao would harm state security and national interests, which could lead to a prison sentence similar to rights activist Liu Xiaobo.

"People cannot tell the truth," a friend remarked to me the other day over lunch. "If you do, you get into trouble."

But some believe it is important to forgo all personal consequences and try to tell the truth for the sake of the greater society.

Tan Zuoren was jailed for five years for trying to help those who lost their children in the Sichuan earthquake almost two years ago; and Liu for 11 years for helping to write the Charter 08, calling for multi-party elections among many things.

And there is also Gao Zhisheng, the human rights lawyer who was detained by police, illegally I may add, and then released, and now detained again and no one knows where he is.

The government is terrified of these people -- scared of them for saying that the emperor has no clothes on.

But it is true. How can there be any civil society in China when basic human rights are ignored, and actually trampled on? How can China ever become a great power when it cannot stand dissent or criticism?

Meanwhile we in the west cannot compare China to ourselves -- it must find its own way in establishing a just society, and looking back at its past can give it some inspiration.

So on this note I bid zaijian.

Thank you Beijing for teaching me a lot of things about China I didn't know. The country is still a work in progress and hopefully the Party leaders will make the right choices for the people.

After all, it is the People's Republic of China.

Moving On

2010-07-05T08:31:00.001-07:00

These last several days have been hectic for me. On Tuesday I moved out of my apartment in Dongzhimen and spent the entire afternoon and early evening cleaning it.

Apparently it was so clean that my landlord was pleased he didn't have to re-clean it and gladly handed back my one-month deposit.

I really enjoyed the one-bedroom place, with its convenient location right by the subway station and bus stop, as well as other amenities nearby (including the hairdresser and favourite restaurants, not to mention a concert hall too).

Downstairs is the gym I belong to (anyone want to carry on the remaining time on my membership?) where I pounded the treadmill and raced in the pool, blowing away the local competition.

I know many of the buses at the Dongzhimen bus stop and where they can take me, and best of all, practically every other taxi driver knows my apartment building so there's no need to give directions.

In the last few days I have been living in my friend's place and for another few days before starting a new adventure -- in Hong Kong.

I've just got a new job there and will be starting there in about a week.

In addition to all this packing and moving, I've been trying to see a few friends here and there and do a few last things (last massage at Bodhi, last meals at favourite restaurants).

It's a strange feeling knowing its my last few days in Beijing, but as my job will entail travel around Asia, there is a good chance I will be back in the Chinese capital for business soon.

Hoping for Calm in Urumqi

2010-07-04T05:34:00.001-07:00

Today is the eve before the first anniversary of the Urumqi riots in Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region.

And the government is taking no chances in compromising security.

The police have installed 40,000 security cameras in the capital Urumqi, much like the ones in Shenzhen to track people's movements from the moment they walk out of their homes. They have been installed in buses, bus stops, streets, lanes, schools, kindergartens, supermarkets, shopping malls and other places.

An extra 5,000 police officers were recruited this year and anti-riot exercises took place in the hopes of deterring trouble. A Uighur told AFP that on Thursday all their big knives were confiscated and they were told not to go out on Monday, the day of the anniversary.

Nothing will make people in China forget what happened last year, when according to the government, nearly 200 people were killed and 1,700 were injured in the worst ethnic violence in decades.

While the government blames the violence on "separatists" led by Rebiya Kadeer, it is really Beijing's policy in oppressing the Uighur minority group, while giving preferences to Han Chinese who move to the area that caused the unrest. The resentment boiled into frustration and anger that was taken out on the streets and on many innocent people.

However, the government has done little to adjust its policy in realising its blatant discrimination and instead focused on economic development, thinking money will make Uighurs happier.

Long-time Party chief Wang Lequan was removed in April and replaced with Zhang Chunxian, a senior official who has a good track record in terms of building GDP figures.

We will have to wait and see what happens tomorrow and with the world watching, the government will hope it will be a quiet anniversary.

But within Urumqi and elsewhere in Xinjiang, the resentment continues to simmer.

Those who have the resources are trying to send their children out of the region in the hopes that they will have better lives abroad.

For them it is their last resort in keeping their Uighur culture alive and giving the next generation a chance to flourish far from Chinese repression.

Picture of the Day: Cloud Formations

2010-07-03T08:15:00.001-07:00

Yesterday at around 6:30pm this is what the sky looked like on the east side of town. The clouds were uniformly scattered across the sky as if a giant rock had been thrown into the sky and the clouds were the ripples.

A Taste of Morocco

2010-07-02T20:35:00.001-07:00

Yesterday two friends and I had dinner at Argana, a Moroccan restaurant whose chef was behind Moro, which I had tried about a year ago.

Argana is located in Xingfucun Zhong Lu, off of the bus stop from the Worker's Gymnasium, across from a Western grocery store called April Gourmet. Interestingly enough, over a year ago I had seen an apartment in the building right next to the restaurant, but didn't like it.

In any case, with the summer heat baking us all day, the somewhat cool breeze in the evening was perfect for al fresco dining.

We got a table right in front of a giant flat-screen TV for the quarter-final World Cup match of the Netherlands against Brazil (Brazil lost in a shock defeat, 2-1).

The menu is conveniently in front of you as a place mat, and we started off with the tapas platter, which was a delicious start. The rectangular plate featured roasted slices of fennel, mushrooms, roasted peppers, salad, slightly curried squid, and prawns.

And as an added bonus we got some bread to mop up the excess sauce and olive oil on the platter.

Then we had a beetroot salad with fried quail eggs and new potatoes that was underwhelming, but as it was hot out, it was a refreshing summer dish.

For our mains we shared the vegetarian tagine, of braised pumpkin, courgette, tomatoes, onions, and carrots in a tomato-based sauce heavily spiced with pepper that was fantastic. Another was the slow-cooked rabbit leg, the meat very tender.

A strange dessert is pigeon pie, minced meat in layers of pastry with rosewater and icing sugar dressed with finely sliced almonds. The small cake cut into quarters was plenty for each of us.

We also got some free entertainment courtesy of a magician named Rock, a young Chinese guy with faltering English but had quick hands. He transformed ordinary pieces of paper into 10RMB notes (we asked if he could change them into 100RMB notes), and could pick out the cards we had chosen from the deck of cards.

However, the service was very inconsistent, with some waiters understanding English, and others not knowing English or Chinese. Obviously some training is in order as these incompetent staff would try to hide or ignore diners flagging for their attention.

Nevertheless, the manager of Argana, a rotund boisterous fellow did his best to make his guests feel welcome, many of whom are regulars who came out to watch the exciting football match.

Argana
55 Xingfucun Middle Road
Chaoyang
8448 8250

Picture of the Day: Hitching a Ride

2010-07-01T23:49:00.001-07:00

Many Beijingers have small dogs that they either have on a leash or carry in their arms.

Some like to transport them in their bicycle baskets too.

But this little pooch seems to have a cool ride from his master, who seems to need the exercise more than Fido does...

Military Bans Blogging

2010-06-28T08:59:00.000-07:00

Recently revised regulations from the People's Liberation Army (PLA) state that Chinese soldiers are banned from blogging on fears that they may inadvertently leak military secrets.

The revised PLA Internal Administration Regulations which came into effect about two weeks ago says soldiers are prohibited from setting up websites, homepages or blogging on the Internet.

"It means soldiers cannot open blogs on the Internet, no matter if he or she does it in the capacity of a soldier or not," Wan Long, the political commissar of a regiment in the Guangzhou Military Area Command was quoted by the PLA Daily as saying.

"The Internet is complicated and we should guard against online traps," he said.

The revised regulations also ban soldiers from issuing "lonely hearts" and job hunting advertisements in the mass media.

"If information of military officers and their unit aroused attention of people with ulterior motives, it'll pose a threat to the confidentiality of the armed forces," Yang Jigui, commander of the Xigaze military sub-command in Tibet Autonomous Region was quoted as saying.

The ban on blogging is completely understandable; many companies and organizations forbid employees from talking about their work online.

But the rule about not being allowed to look for mates online is a tricky one.

Many men go into the military because they can't get a good job, and after getting in, they become more eligible because Chinese women have a high admiration for soldiers.

However, what are the chances of finding a mate if they can't even let single women know they are looking?

Sounds like lonely hearts in the military have gotten a lot lonelier.

Cutting Off Access to the Wall

2010-06-27T23:30:00.001-07:00

It was surprising to find that almost two weeks ago the Miyun government shut down the Simatai section of the Great Wall until further notice.

On top of that, the authorities have told the villagers in the area to move out. While it is a suggestion rather than an order, there was no mention of compensation in the open letter issued June 16.

The letter didn't explain the reason for the closure or the length of time involved, only that there would be some reconstruction in the area.

It added that the government started cooperating with China CYTS Tours Holding Co. Ltd. last month and that investments would be made to develop tourism resources in the near future.

The closure has undoubtedly resulted in a serious impact on local businesses in the area, farmers who had opened up small restaurants and even lodgings for visitors. This could impact the Liu family who I met in early May, as the son has a bed & breakfast as well as a restaurant.

"Only two tables in my restaurant were filled today at lunch. Last year, there was a queue that went out of the door," said the owner of a roadside restaurant next to the Simatai scenic area.

"Some restaurants with worse locations are facing an even dire situation with a complete lack of customers since the closure," he said.

Rumours are abound among villagers in the area, speculating what the changes may be, including the possibility Simatai could become more like the Badaling section; the touristy area not only has a rebuilt wall, but also a sad collection of hungry bears waiting for visitors to throw food at them and a bizarre slide.

This ad hoc management of the area without consulting the residents or businesses is a good example of how the government manages things. While enterprising people may have put in tens of thousands of renminbi into restaurants and bed & breakfasts, there is little care or respect for them and their welfare.

These people are only trying to better their economic situation and then when the government sees they are making profits -- not wads of cash, but a better living than toiling in the fields, the authorities want to shut everyone else down in order to monopolize on the burgeoning businesses.

The Great Wall doesn't need more crass touristy sites. When visitors see the wall, they want to see as much of the real thing as possible, not bears or fake trees. That's why they come to Simatai.

Hopefully these local government officials will be reined in soon, but it looks like they have the upper hand when it comes to making their GDP performances look good than encourage more local businesses to flourish.

Picture of the Day: Remembering Michael

2010-06-26T06:58:00.001-07:00

Today (well today in North America) is the first anniversary of Michael Jackson's sudden death a year ago.

Outside a mall in Sanlitun called 3.3 there was an organized memorial for people to participate. A decent-sized crowd gathered, some even wearing black T-shirts made especially for this sombre occasion.

On the giant screen was a video showing Jackson performing in concert, while two posters were put up inviting the public to remember Michael.

"King of Pop," the posters read. "You are not alone."

It's that last statement, and the title of one of Jackson's songs released in 1995 that seemed to resonate with many young Chinese people here. Perhaps in some way they are searching for their meaning of life through him.

You Are Not Alone

Another day has gone
I'm still all alone
How could this be
You're not here with me
You never said goodbye
Someone tell me why
Did you have to go
And leave my world so cold

Everyday I sit and ask myself
How did love slip away
Something whispers in my ear and says
That you are not alone
For I am here with you
Though you're far away
I am here to stay

But you are not alone
For I am here with you
Though we're far apart
You're always in my heart
But you are not alone

'Lone, 'lone
Why, 'lone

Just the other night
I thought I heard you cry
Asking me to come
And hold you in my arms
I can hear your prayers
Your burdens I will bear
But first I need your hand
Then forever can begin

Everyday I sit and ask myself
How did love slip away
Something whispers in my ear and says
That you are not alone
For I am here with you
Though you're far away
I am here to stay

For you are not alone
For I am here with you
Though we're far apart
You're always in my heart
For you are not alone

Whisper three words and I'll come runnin'
And girl you know that I'll be there
I'll be there

You are not alone
For I am here with you
Though you're far away
I am here to stay
For you are not alone
For I am here with you
Though we're far apart
You're always in my heart

For you are not alone
For I am here with you
Though you're far away
I am here to stay

For you are not alone
For I am here with you
Though we're far apart
You're always in my heart

For you are not alone...

Legally Demanding Submission

2010-06-25T09:03:00.001-07:00

The Chinese government trusts no one.

Today a Tibetan man was sent to jail for 15 years, who in 2006 was praised by CCTV as "philanthropist of the year" for giving items from his art collection to state-owned museums. Karma Samdrup, 42, was convicted of robbing tombs and dealing in looted relics.

His lawyer, Pu Zhiqiang said the evidence was faked and the court did not provide a proper translator. Samdrup's wife claims he was beaten during his six-month custody and had lost a lot of weight.

"Tibetans do not touch coffins or corpses, they advocate sky burials, water burials, but not earth burials," Pu explained. "Also, robbing graves is taboo for them," he told the AFP.

The charges apparently date back to 1998 but there was no reason given why the police was pursuing them now.

Many believe the trial was to punish Samdrup for defending his two brothers who had publicly berated a local police chief who hunted endangered species on a Tibetan reserve.

Samdrup is the most high-profile Tibetan to be jailed in the past two years, and it sends a chill among Tibetans who had thought those who towed the party line were safe.

Apparently more than 50 Tibetan intellectuals who are not political activists have also been detained.

Even though Samdrup had a high-profile lawyer from Beijing, that wasn't enough to give him a fair chance.

"I felt like this was not a real trial, but that they just went through the motions to reach a predetermined verdict," his wife Zhenga Cuomao said.

During the trial Samdrup told the judge how there were days he was not given food or water, and that he was soaked in cold water in the dead of winter. "He never signed the confession because he knows he is innocent," Zhenga added.

This continual persecution of people on trumped-up charges just shows how desperate the government is in keeping its grip on power. It demands absolute obedience from its people, while it manipulates the legal system to its own ends. How can anyone continue to have faith in an institution like that?

Picture of the Day: The Wolves are Here

2010-06-24T07:33:00.001-07:00

I took a visiting relative to the 798 Art District today. And as we wandered around, we stumbled upon this exciting outdoor art.

It was a giant pack of wolves surrounding a man standing on a stone with a spear ready to defend himself.

It's a sculpture by artist Liu Ruowang and it's appropriately titled, "Lang Lai Le!" or "The wolves are here!"

Each of the fearsome animals looks different, but quite Chinese from the swirls of fur on their backs.

Of all the art we saw today, this one definitely provokes the imagination.

Making Amends for Higher Gains

2010-06-23T06:49:00.001-07:00

President Hu Jintao is on his way to Canada for a state visit before the G20 summit in Toronto.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper got a scolding from Premier Wen Jiabao in December for not coming to China earlier.

It was like a principal lecturing his student in front of the entire class and while the dressing down was completely embarrassing, Harper took it like a classy politician.

However, since then ties between the two countries finally got warmer. That's because the Conservatives had been criticizing China for human rights issues so the latter gave Canada the cold shoulder.

But as most countries cannot ignore or be shut out from China too long, Harper finally gave in and now things are smoothing over.

And it is appropriate now (or is it coincidence?) that this year is the 40th anniversary of China and Canada establishing diplomatic ties.

Hopefully on this trip Harper and Hu will sign the deal where China will grant Canada Approved Destination Status to make it easier for Chinese to visit Canada on tourist visas instead of business ones.

Hu's visit comes just before the recent announcement of China finally raising the value of the renminbi, but by how much and when are still up in the air. The Chinese currency rose to its highest level in five years by 0.4 percent on Monday, but then dropped its gains by about half at 0.23 percent the next day.

Some analysts see it as China still carefully monitoring the renminbi and keeping everyone guessing as to when and how much it will rise.

One thing is for sure -- China will not let its currency jump dramatically, not as high as other countries may want to see it go. It doesn't want its own exports to be too expensive or for its import/export firms to have even smaller margins. The recent strikes have also resulted in higher pay for workers, which also cuts into company profits, and making them less competitive.

The rise of the renminbi is just going to be a slow-going process, one that requires patience. Lots of it.

Dreams of Marrying Money

2010-06-21T07:31:00.001-07:00

Chinese women have the upper hand when it comes to finding Mr Right, or do they?

A popular dating show on TV called If You Are The One, broadcast by Jiangsu Satellite TV, reveals what women want -- which is to show them the money.

In the program, 24 single women judge a bachelor by asking him questions and watching a short video of him. If they don't think he's suitable, they turn off their lights. If there are any lights still on after three rounds of screening, then he gets to date one of the women.

And it's those who have a well-paying job, a house and car that get the most lights, while those with hardly any assets make a quick exit.

The show gained notoriety when one of the female guests, Ma Nuo, told an unemployed suitor that she would prefer to cry in a BMW than smile on a bicycle.

Another guest, Zhu Zhenfang, said her sole requirement for a boyfriend was that he had to earn at least 200,000RMB ($29,420) a month. Where is she going to get a man like that unless a) he is a tycoon or b) a corrupt official.

Bridal demands over 30 years ago weren't that outrageous.

In the 1970s, for groom to marry his wife, he had to provide a bicycle, watch and a sewing machine. This progressed to a TV set, washing machine and a fridge in the 1980s. Now bachelors are only eligible if they have a house and a car.

But buying a house in China is not that easy these days, especially in big cities like Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.

The skyrocketing property prices make it practically impossible for a young man to buy a place unless all his relatives scrape together their hard-earned savings to buy a small apartment. And after that he and his yet-to-be-born son would be paying off the mortgage, only to have the government reclaim it after 70 years. After all, the government owns all the land, not the people.

A friend told me about her friend in Guangzhou who has a rich girlfriend. He managed to get a good job, and in order to woo her, he bought two apartments, borrowing from friends and relatives. He hopes housing prices will continue to rise so that he can make a profit, but there are dark clouds looming over the possibility of the property market bubble bursting soon.

And that would put him in an even worse position than being a "house slave".

That's why others prefer to rent in order to have more freedom to travel or purchase whatever they want.

But even this carefree movement can't stop what's called the "bride's-mother economy".

Gu Yunchang, deputy director of the China Real Estate Research Association explains. "The couple is going to get married, but the man has not yet decided to buy a house. The fiancee's mother will ask the man for a 'discussion', after which the man will try his best to raise money, through ways ranging from selling stocks to pawning items."

It is this rigid demand, Gu says, that keeps the property market going, and more men becoming "house slaves".

Weddings in China are a big gold mine, as the China News Service reports a whopping 400 billion RMB ($58.8 billion), or 2.5 percent of the country's gross domestic product are spent on wedding-related items. Bear in mind that this could include the car and the house, not just the banquet, flowers and pictures.

Many men who know they hardly have a chance at the dating game are still hoping to find a non-materialistic girlfriend, usually women still living in the rural areas.

But single women like Zhu are still holding out. She said on If You Are The One, "I am genuine. I firmly believe that a rich man will marry me."

Perhaps materialistic women like Zhu will give up their marital dreams and instead pursue the chance to be a rich man's ernai, or mistress in order to get their hands on that house, car and 200,000RMB a month.

Flawless Airport Expansion

2010-06-20T07:58:00.001-07:00

Yesterday when I arrived at Hong Kong International Airport, I was surprised to find it had added more gates.

When it opened in 1998 it had 80 gates, but this time I found it has 30 more in a new mini terminal that can only be accessed by a shuttle bus in an open space near the tarmac. What was confusing was that they were labelled Gates 501-530. Why did they use these numbers? I looked on the airport's website, but didn't find the answer.

Nevertheless, some of the low-cost airlines like Hong Kong Express Airways and China Southern fly out from here.

When I got to the shuttle bus, I asked an airport staff if there was anything to eat in this terminal. She warned only small snacks and coffee were available so I imagined the worst -- like a typical mainland Chinese airport with tasteless buns or overly sweet ones and coffee that came out of a vending machine.

So I was surprised to find it was very new and modern, complete with Starbucks and a small selection of duty-free shops and a bookstore.

I grabbed a sandwich and fruit salad from Starbucks and the staff was even kind enough to put them on a tray and place it on a table for me while I managed my hand luggage.

And on top of that, this Starbucks had a few computer terminals for people to surf the net (provided they bought something) and free wireless Internet connection courtesy of the Airport Authority.

Everywhere else I'd been had their Internet connection controlled by PCCW, which meant having to shell out or not feeling connected.

The new mini terminal was a good experience overall, not penalizing passengers for choosing cheap flights. This is not the case in Beijing's Capital Airport in Terminal 1 and 2, where if you do get a cheap plane ticket, chances are you have to run to the gate furthest away or even worse, take a shuttle bus that takes you to the Siberian regions of the airport.

No wonder Hong Kong International Airport was named the World's Best Airport serving over 40 million passengers a year for the fourth consecutive year in May by the Airports Council International.

When accepting the award, Airport Authority CEO Stanley Hui Hon-Chung dedicated it to the 60,000-strong airport staff.

"We couldn't have achieved this without the concerted effort of all the staff in the airport community who provide passengers with the best possible service," he said. "It is gratifying to see that our overall score in the Airport Service Quality survey has been constantly on the rise over the past few years."

I know why this airport has been getting top grades for the past four years -- every time I get to this airport, I know that things will be as stress-free as possible aside from airline operations. And who wouldn't want that?

Picture of the Day: Blue Skies

2010-06-19T17:59:00.001-07:00

It's not often in Hong Kong to get really blue skies compared to Beijing, which, with the right conditions, a strong wind the night before, or heavy rains, a "blue sky day" actually appears.

Earlier in the week Hong Kong was overcast for most of the day and on Wednesday evening it rained, and on Thursday and Friday threatened to unleash some wet days.

However, the city got beautiful clear skies yesterday and seemed too good to be true!

But by the same token it was very hot and humid...

Here's a picture from Pokfulam, the south side of Hong Kong Island.

Continuing Hong Kong's Can-Do Spirit

2010-06-19T00:01:00.001-07:00

When I bumped into an ex-colleague in Beijing about a month ago, he was telling me that people in Hong Kong were more friendly. And I have to say in the last few days I've been in the city, I've noticed that too.

You still do get the odd person who isn't afraid of showing their frustrations with someone or being curt, but on the whole, many in the service industry are more willing to help customers than put on airs.

Some still trip up when they encounter Mandarin-speaking clients; at Nha Trang, a popular Vietnamese restaurant on Wellington Street, a server wasn't able to communicate at all with a Taiwanese woman. But this was quickly rectified when she brought over a colleague to talk to her about her take-out order.

People here understand more than ever that it's customers who pay their salaries and so they must bend over backwards to serve them whatever they want. In a way it does go back to the old days where Hong Kong people did whatever it took to get the job done.

And wandering around the western side of Hong Kong Island, I'm seeing more small shops, boutiques, cafes and bars popping up in what used to be the most unlikely places. Originally they spread from Lan Kwai Fong to the areas around the escalator. But now these small-scale entrepreneurial ventures are even further west into Kennedy Town, with Japanese restaurants practically sprouting on ever other street, in what used to be areas only locals lived or worked in.

Just today walking down Aberdeen Street from Caine Road, I saw many new shops with English names along side streets, places I didn't even know about. There were small art galleries, cafes and boutiques. Perhaps part of the fun is stumbling into these places, a small gem you find in your neighbourhood.

It's just good to know the entrepreneurial spirit is still alive on a small scale and they continue to venture into territory that exists in harmony with its local residents.

Attempting to Quell Discontent

2010-06-17T08:07:00.001-07:00

Premier Wen Jiabao is calling for better living conditions for migrant workers, saying officials should treat them like their own children. China owes them its wealth, he added.

"Rural migrant workers are the main army of the contemporary Chinese industrial workforce," he said earlier this week. "Our wealth and our tall buildings are all distillations of your hard work and sweat," he told a group of migrant workers in Beijing.

However he stopped short of saying the wages of some 200 million migrant workers should be raised after the spate of suicides at Foxconn and the strikes at Honda.

Wen pledged to improve public facilities in the countryside, such as schools and hospitals, saying migrant workers would have less to worry about in their hometowns. But what kinds of improvements is he talking about? Schools and hospitals in rural areas need better-qualified teachers and doctors as well as better equipment. If he's talking about a new paint job, then that's hardly sincere.

He also stopped short of announcing a further relaxing the hukou household registration system. From time to time, cities like Shanghai and Guangzhou and the central government claim they are making it easier for migrant workers to get an urban hukou. But the reality is that the requirements are so demanding that it is practically impossible for the majority of migrant workers to get this hukou in order to enjoy social benefits in the city, like education for their children or healthcare.

So while the premier is trying to show that he is supportive of the workers, he hasn't made any concrete measures to really improve their welfare. "Grandpa Wen" appears sympathetic in the hopes of quelling discontent, but until the central government really takes significant steps to improve things for this giant section of the population, the disillusionment of creating a "harmonious society" continues.

Button-Pushing Feedback

2010-06-16T07:11:00.001-07:00

This morning I went to Beijing Capital International Airport to head to Hong Kong.

At passport control, there were many people in line and to pass the time, I checked out the TV screen above us which showed a polite customer service message from the Beijing General Station of Entry and Exit Frontier Inspection of the People's Republic of China.

It basically said that in order to better serve people, it had to know where it was going wrong in the process in order to improve. Which is why they put these customer service feedback buttons at each officer's station. And after the passport control process was completed, each passenger should either press "very satisfied", "satisfied", "check too long" or "not satisfied" to evaluate the officer that served them.

Most of the officers seemed to be working very quickly, so the line moved quite fast, and presumably good feedback.

Us passengers just want these routine checks to be as efficient and painless as possible; and to their credit, the Chinese have made it so.

However, these buttons really give an indication if anything is wrong with the process? How can people elaborate if they have a complaint by only having the choice of pressing one button?

Accumulating these kinds of statistics make it easy to assess a person's work performance, but do they really give a true picture of what problems if any they are having?

If I pressed "not satisfied" would that mean a black mark next to my name and I would get hassles when I tried to get back into the country? Best to be nice...

It's just another opportunity for China to statistically prove that it's serving X many customers each day. But who knows if they really are well served... or not?

The Fen Dilemma

2010-06-15T08:24:00.001-07:00

China issues dollars and coins, and in the coin department there are 50-jiao, which is half of 1RMB, and then 10-jiao or basically 10 cents.

Then it divides further into fen, or cents, and these coins are really feather-weight. There are 5-fen, 2-fen and 1-fen coins.

Two friends of mine collect their spare change in a jar as they hate carrying coins. One time I counted most of the money in there and it amounted to over 20RMB ($2.92). They still didn't take it to the bank for some bills. So I've been helping them bit by bit get rid of these coins -- hey it's free change!

When I pay my water bill, the management office of my building accepts these fen, and allows me to get rid of these coins.

But when it comes to supermarkets, they aren't interested in these cent coins and would rather round up or down to the nearest jiao.

So when I went to get fruits at a neighbourhood grocery store the other day, I thought the shopkeeper would accept fen.

However, she was annoyed when I gave her one jiao and 1 five-fen, two 2-fen, and 1-fen coins to make 20 cents. "I don't accept these!" she exclaimed. But when I told her that was all I had, she grudgingly accepted the exact change.

If even small shopkeepers won't accept these fen coins in Beijing? Who will?

Perhaps before I leave, I will make the rounds to the various beggars around town and give them my fen; after all, money is money.

Picture of the Day: Curious Occupation

2010-06-14T00:56:00.001-07:00

The new Qianmen Street tries to evoke the past, with its 600-year history of retail shops selling everything from roast duck to silk, cotton shoes and watches.

A few of the stores try to present their extensive history with bronze statues in front.

And one of them caught the eye of this young boy, who curiously inspected two men forging metal in front of a shop selling scissors.

Perhaps he wondered what exactly they were doing, or why they were wearing queues, which hark back to the Qing Dynasty until 1911.

M is for Marvellous View, Mediocre Food

2010-06-13T02:54:00.001-07:00

Over 20 years ago Michelle Garnaut opened M at the Fringe in Hong Kong, one of the first few independent restaurants in the city that was not attached to a hotel. It quickly became a favourite with its no-nonsense dishes, quirky decor and personable service.

Then over 10 years ago she started M on the Bund, a stylish homage to Shanghai's art deco look, also bringing a similar menu to dinners in the Chinese financial capital. This place, which inhabits a former bank, has also become popular mostly due to its fantastic view of the Bund and Pudong on the other side.

And now over a year ago, Garnaut has taken over Beijing with Capital M. It's located at the beginning of Qianmen Street, which I can now report has practically filled up its empty store-front spaces and looks more lively, with more flowers planted in giant urns and Starbucks and H&M next to domestic shops like Quanjude and silk stores and tea houses.

Thanks to some signage that pointed how to get into the building, my friend and I went up to the third floor to be greeted with some dramatic decor again harking back to the 1930s. Most of the tables inside were empty, as all the diners wanted to take advantage of the wonderful views outside. We were seated on the patio area which was laid-back and breezy, and not a single mosquito bite either, considering these pesky pests love my blood.

However, despite being seated and many wait staff milling around, it took some time before they even seemed to take notice of us and offer water and menus. Did they think we were just going to sit around and become part of the furniture?

Finally water was poured into our art deco glasses and we were able to peruse some menus. The dishes were all handwritten and interestingly enough had no Chinese characters to help some local customers understand the menu. It's already decided what kind of clientele would be here, and many last night fit the bill -- young professional 30-somethings from abroad or those who have travelled overseas frequently and had a good command of English.

Not long after we started to dig into the bread basket, our appetizers arrived. I had M's Gravlax, cured salmon with dill and Aquavit, a Scandinavian spirit, served with a sweet mustard sauce and very thin toast.

The salmon was fresh indeed along with the dill; the plate was also dressed with edible yellow flowers. I didn't care too much for the brown sauce, preferring to eat the salmon straight with a squeeze of lemon.

Meanwhile my friend had the Lebanese Meze platter, complete with artfully sculpted dollops of hummus, muchammara (hot pepper dip), labneh (soft cheese from yogurt), falafel, and dolma with fattoush and pita bread. Perhaps he shouldn't have chosen a dish he could have eaten elsewhere for a fraction of the price, as he seemed underwhelmed by it.

As we ate the skies gradually got darker, and the buildings by Tiananmen Square began to light up. It was an interesting contrast to look at Communist architecture from the 1950s while dining on Western food.

After a short wait our mains arrived. M's Crispy Suckling Pig is a signature dish my friend had to try. Three giant squares were presented on the plate, with a small scoop of stewed broad beans and zucchini gratin. The skin was very crispy, but not enough meat underneath to make it a satisfying dish.

I ordered the Slow-baked Salt-encased Leg of Lamb on a bed of green beans, with a whole roasted garlic, and rosemary roasted potatoes. It also came with some gravy, which was a touch too salty, but the lamb needed it because parts of it were too dry.

A nice touch was the finely mashed potatoes at the bottom of the dish, along with the roasted garlic whose cloves were so soft, they spread easily on bread.

The portions were just about right to leave enough room to try some dessert.

But here my choice could have been better. I had "It takes two to Mango", which was a pastry cup filled with thick cream whipped with mango sauce which wasn't very interesting. The plate was also decorated with cubes of mango jelly and the mango garnished with a sliver of mint.

My friend's dessert was better with the Croccanta Cioccolata, a Sicilian chocolate terrine with a scoop of marscapone ice cream that was rich and had a nice flavour with finely chopped nuts and candied fruits.

It was a bit of hit and miss with the menu, and the whopping 920RMB ($134.64) for two made us feel like we were paying more for the privilege of sitting outside and admiring the view than for the food.

Perhaps Capital M is more for those who want to be seen than for those who want to eat. No doubt the view is fantastic, eating above the fray of plebians below. But for those who want some serious nosh should look elsewhere than this otherwise beautiful restaurant.

Capital M
3/F, No. 2 Qianmen Pedestrian Street
Beijing
6702 2727

Sparking a Revolutionary Change in Labour

2010-06-11T21:16:00.001-07:00

Terry Gou, the owner of Foxconn, the factory that has seen a spate of suicides recently, is calling for the end of the factory town model.

On Tuesday he told shareholders of the parent group Hon Hai that the model has to be scrapped even though Apple's Steve Jobs declared the factory that manufactures his products was quite 'nice'.

"We look at everything at these companies, and I can tell you a few things that we know," Jobs said. "Foxconn is not a sweatshop. It is a factory, but, my gosh, they have restaurants and movie theatres and hospitals and swimming pools. For a factory, it is pretty nice."

Maybe they are "nice", but the are for the most part unused because the employees are too busy working to scrape a living.

However, Gou has apparently found it hard to sleep after 10 suicides of his employees since the beginning of this year.

Perhaps despite the advantages of having workers live and work in the compound to be able to run a military precision-like production line, he realizes that employees are unable to separate work and leisure, and unable to integrate into city life, a lifestyle they crave.

Most of these young workers who are under 25 are children of migrant workers, who don't know how to farm and would prefer to live in the city than in the rural areas. But being shut within the factory compound prevents them from having any kind of life.

It's not entirely Gou's fault; almost all factories here are like this, compounds where workers live and work because when China started opening up in the early 1980s, there was no infrastructure in place for migrant workers in terms of housing, social services or entertainment.

It's time, Gou said, for local governments to taken on this responsibility. "If a worker in Taiwan commits suicide because of emotional problems, his employer won't be held responsible, but we are taken to task in China because they are living and sleeping in our dormitories," he said.

Liu Erduo, who studies labour issues at Renmin University, says it's a good idea for local governments to take on more social responsibility of migrant workers so that companies can focus on business.

However, local governments may not want to do this -- they themselves are too busy making money and don't want to have to spend it on social services and infrastructure, which would impact their GDP performance (and thus their chances for promotion).

Gou's announcement and the recent spate of suicides and strikes show that workers have had enough and they want more than just a sliver of the pie.

After all, they deserve it. It's time they get paid fairly for the work they do.

The buck stops here. Now.

The Cringe List Gets Longer

2010-06-10T07:29:00.001-07:00

After over three years in Beijing you think you've seen it all -- kids urinating in the street in plain view; young lovers having a verbal and physical fight in the street; people screaming as they are being dragged away by police and an audience watching on. I even had the opportunity to watch a man pull over on the exit ramp of the freeway and urinate on the slanted road during rush hour.

Spitting on the street still irks me, along with recklessly blowing cigarette smoke into my face. Another is cutting fingernails on the bus or even in the office.

It's usually women who do this, carrying a nail clipper everywhere they go. Do they really have to do their personal grooming while in transit? Can't it wait until they get home?

But today I saw something that takes the cake in the nail clipping department.

At dinnertime I headed to a Hong Kong diner for a bite to eat. As I waited for my food to arrive, I saw a couple walk in, the man probably in his early 40s with a woman in her late 30s.

He strangely took off his shoes and sat cross-legged in the booth.

They ordered their food and then he proceeded to trim his nails in the restaurant.

While the eatery has signs on the tables saying "No Smoking", there are no regulations about clipping fingernails... or toe nails for that matter.

As wait staff, what do you say? "Excuse me sir, can you please not trim your nails here?"

Probably being a typical Chinese man he would get all worked up and retort, "Why not? I'm a customer here, I can do whatever I want!"

Thank goodness when their food arrived, he stopped this personal grooming routine.

The sound of clipping nails really doesn't enhance the dining atmosphere...

The Life of a Masseuse

2010-06-09T10:32:00.001-07:00

After walking around the Summer Palace and buying lots of stuff at Yaxiu Market at Sanlitun, my friend was in a dire need of a massage.

We went to my usual spot, Bodhi, but it was already busy at 9pm and we'd have to wait an hour.

So we decided to check out a massage place near where I live, which on the outside looks a bit sketchy despite listing its prices at the door.

Also, all the female staff seem to wear the same orange form-fitting jumpsuit paired with heels. Doesn't that send mixed messages about the place?

In any event we soaked our feet in the hot medicinal concoction and one of the women massaging us who wasn't wearing the orange outfit told us she was from northern Guangdong Province. She had tried to set up a business here selling beauty products, but after she signed the lease she found out she was cheated out of 200,000RMB ($29,267) and hinted this was why she was doing this job.

She told us she already learned how to massage clients when she worked at the White Swan Hotel in Guangzhou, where it opened her eyes to the shady world of the massage industry in China. She worked at the hotel as a manager, but someone wanted to hire her as a "mamma-san"; she declined even though she wouldn't have to do anything except manage the girls.

One time, she said, a rich client wanted two girls to go with him and when they got back to his place there were over 10 people there. The two girls cried, both under 20 years old. They didn't know what they were getting themselves into.

Another time a rich client from Hong Kong looked at my masseuse and wanted her to be his mistress. He already had three girls and wanted a boy and thought this woman would bear him a son. He tried to get her friend to trick her, by saying she had a job for her in Hong Kong managing a store. She wised-up and declined.

She said even though we are in the 21st century, women in China are still treated with no respect. Her parents didn't encourage her to study too hard and thus was ineligible for the gaokao or college entrance exams. They expect her to save her wages to give them and that hard-earned money is passed onto the sons in the family for them to play with girls or go out and have fun.

That's not all -- after women are married, they have no place, as they live with their new family and have to look after their in-laws.

Then she said the other day a man in his 70s came in to get a massage. While she massaged his legs, he kept asking her to massage him higher and higher up his leg... it got to the point where it was obvious he wanted an extra service not listed on the menu at the door.

She tried to diffuse the situation by saying he should get his wife to massage him there, but he said she had passed away already. Then she suggested he get a prostitute instead, but he kept trying to get her to massage him there and she refused.

Which is why, she said, she was going to get out of the business altogether and head to Shanghai to start a cha can ting or a Hong Kong-style diner.

After listening to her long string of stories for two hours, we wish her luck in her new endeavour and she finds the happiness she deserves.

Imagining Imperial Life

2010-06-08T09:54:00.001-07:00

I took my friend to the Forbidden City this afternoon and on the whole not much has changed.

There are still the crowds that hang around within the two gates before having to pay the 60RMB ($8.78) admission to go through the rest of the giant compound.

And individuals will approach you, asking if you want to have a private tour, but it's best to just wander on your own.

The previous times I've been there, I usually power through it without wandering much to the sides of the palace grounds. However, that's where there are a few gems if you take the time to look room by room.

Some house beautiful jade carvings from the Three States period, or even Qin Dynasty, colourful cloisonne vases, or clocks clearly influenced by the Europeans in the 17th century. There was a wooden head carved with the beautiful and graceful face of the Bodhisattva, and a chest of drawers in wood with an intricate carving made to hold calligraphy scrolls for the Emperor Qianlong who liked to write calligraphy.

These were only a fraction of the beautiful items that were used by emperors, concubines, officials and staff. What happened to the rest of them?

The areas in the Forbidden City that have the majority of visitors seem to have the most renovations in terms of fresh coats of paint that are at the point of gaudiness; how does a new paint job make a palace from the 1400s look old? Nevertheless, the further you wander from the main path, the more you see the original albeit worn down paint depicting various scenes on the outside hallway ceilings.

It's also annoying that most of the items like furniture and other interior decoration have been emptied out of the main rooms; as my friend remarked, it was like seeing the shell of the building and made it difficult to imagine what palace life was like.

The one or two rooms you could look inside were difficult to see into because the windows were smudged with finger prints and the items inside were covered in a thick layer of dust. Would it hurt to clean the windows regularly and dust off the artifacts?

However, the upkeep is better than what it used to be when I first came to Beijing in 1985, when things were pretty much left out in the open to be exposed to the natural elements.

While there seems to be more museum staff on hand, many of them are young people probably hired to boost employment numbers, but they seem to be more preoccupied with playing on their cellphones than telling people not to take flash pictures.

At 4:30pm, a major announcement was blared from the loudspeakers saying that the Forbidden City would close in 30 minutes. We were already towards the end of it, but we wandered in the various small rooms that probably housed concubines. One of them showed pictures of the life of Pu Yi, the last emperor, including his baby and wedding pictures. We wanted to linger a bit longer, but a woman shooed us out wanting to lock up this room even though there was still 15 minutes to closing.

Seems like the staff here are eager to get out of work at 5pm...

The Truth Behind the News

2010-06-07T07:46:00.001-07:00

We may have a number of preconceptions about Chinese state media, and some of them were confirmed when details of a lecture given by a senior Xinhua News Agency official at Tianjin Foreign Studies University last month were leaked by a journalism student who was there.

Xia Lin's presentation, entitled, "Understanding Journalistic Protocols for Covering Breaking News", uncovered what really happened behind the scenes.

For example, in 2003, Yang Yiwei was China's first astronaut in space. But there were some flaws in the capsule's design so that when he entered the earth's atmosphere, the G-forces he endured were so extreme on his body that he later reported that his organs felt like they were being torn apart.

Xia said the experience caused Yang's lip to split open so that when workers opened the capsule, they were shocked to see his face covered in blood. However, they were undaunted and just quickly wiped his face and closed the capsule again for the cameras to roll so that China's newest hero could emerge appearing unscathed but pale.

Then when it came to reporting last July's riots in Urumqi, Xinjiang, Xia explained that Xinhua covered up the extent of the violence in the region. He said the reporters saw lots of evidence of Uyghurs killing Han Chinese but didn't play this up too much in their reports for fear it would cause further unrest in the rest of the country. He said that Uyghurs had set fire to a bus, killing everyone on board, and they also raped women and decapitated children.

"Under those circumstances, it would have exacerbated ethnic conflicts if more photos were released," he said.

He added that the reporters also did some intelligence gathering that never makes the front pages of newspapers. They snuck into hospitals and took pictures of the victims who were mostly Han Chinese. It was these secretive reports that President Hu Jintao read and apparently decided then to cut short his visit to Italy for the G8 summit to return home to take control of the situation.

These confidential reports are not uncommon; those Xinhua reporters chosen for their political background and work track record will routinely write two reports, one for mass consumption, and another for senior leaders, that give a more accurate picture of the situation. This can range from the unhygienic state of restaurants along Guijie in Beijing to the aforementioned Urumqi riots.

An adjunct professor at University of California, Berkeley Xiao Qiang, who regularly reports on Chinese media and how stories are reported there, says Xia's lecture is "basically telling these students that journalism in China is a big show, it's fabricated, but in the end it's all justified for the higher purpose of stability," he said.

However, soon after they were put up, the postings of Xia's lecture were quickly deleted, for fear of further exposing the truth.

But more importantly, has anything happened to Xia?

Picture of the Day: Toying with Nostalgia

2010-06-06T09:05:00.001-07:00

At Panjiayuan, the antique flea market, there are stalls upon stalls selling all kinds of things, from paintings and silk scarves, jade bracelets and embroidery, chopsticks and silk pouches, leather-bound boxes and Chairman Mao statues.

But there's one that catches a lot of attention because of the memories it invokes -- toys.

They're in the shape of robots, jack-in-the-box, a menagerie of animals, rockets and houses.

These toys made of tin are from the 1960s to as late as the 1990s, and with a twist of the key they come alive in a variety of ways.

Little drummer boys in red uniforms and blue beefeater hats march slowly banging their drums, while a cat runs on a wheel, then rolls on its side before getting back up again and continuing on its way. Two men play a fierce game of table tennis, and a small fish swims in front before the big fish catches up behind him and swallows him whole.

Many people come by this stall and are nostalgic about their childhoods, and some want to buy back their youth.

However it will cost you -- while some are only 30RMB ($4.39), some are priced upwards to 120RMB ($17.57) -- probably 10 times the original price.

What is old is new again...

Lots of Room for Improvement

2010-06-05T08:56:00.001-07:00

When Brian McKenna was the chef at Blu Lobster, the western fine-dining restaurant at the Shangri-La in Beijing a few years ago, I was wowed by the molecular gastronomic feast he presented. Dishes were deconstructed, refreshing liquids presented in test tubes. It made dining an unforgettable experience.

So when he left to set up his own restaurant, there was a lot of expectation and anticipation for something great. It was supposed to have opened in time for the Olympics, but that came and went, and then it was supposed to open in April but that month came and went.

Finally it was expected to open in mid-May so I tried to make a reservation for the end of the month. However I was told over the phone that the restaurant was "full". How about the week after? Full. I couldn't get a reservation until two weeks later, which was today. A friend of mine told me this was strange as she had gotten word that the place wasn't open until last week.

What was going on? Was it eventually going to open?

ROOMBeijing was definitely open tonight, and it's located on the third floor of the Yintai Centre in Guomao, a slick shopping center and office space that's filled with brand-name boutiques like Hermes, Giorgio Armani and Ermenegildo Zegna, but have no customers.

The dining area is a strange mix of sophistication and off-beat art. The white tables are brightened up by comfortable chairs of various colours, and then there is modern art everywhere, including a giant mural of orchids, some of which stick out in 3D. Behind and above where we sat were the creations of a Korean artist, who had sculptures of dogs and a baby boy in a dog suit complete with a penis. We were told by one of the wait staff that the child was modeled after McKenna himself... probably a hint of his enfant terrible inner child?

To the side was an open galley kitchen, and and above that tons of wine bottles stuffed in rectangular holes. That seemed like the only sophisticated part of the restaurant.

Then we were handed the menu, which was actually a set menu at 300RMB ($43.92) per person. We were told that the restaurant still hadn't officially opened yet, so we were stuck with a parade of courses that were served "family style", a concept that was apparently the first in Beijing for a western restaurant. Right.

Even before we finished perusing the menu the starters were given to us, a bowl of delicious olives marinated in olive oil and lemon, babaganoush, bread sticks, seasoned cashews and banana chips.

Then we were served a mixed salad complete with chopped tomatoes, watermelon, pineapple and beets, topped with a poached egg. We also had a small plate of salmon marinated with beets which was not particularly interesting in terms of flavours.

However, we were then presented a whole roasted chicken which would be sliced up for us in the kitchen, and it was delicious, though it reminded us of Cantonese soy chicken. Nevertheless, the accompanying fries generously sprinkled with paprika were good, and a small salad. It also came with glutinous rice that was cooked in the same sauce as the chicken. That also sounds like another Cantonese dish...

Then the lamb chops came -- only two, for three people -- with a small pot of Irish lamb stew with thinly sliced pieces of lamb with carrots and potatoes. The lamb chop portion was soon rectified, when another one came naked on a plate. The lamb chops were nice and juicy, though not much flavour, in retrospect.

During this time service was pretty good, constantly filling our glasses with water... only after I had insisted on "ordinary water" and not the bottled kind which was 50RMB ($7.32) for a small bottle, and it wasn't even Evian either.

After our dishes were cleared, we were treated to a bizarre dessert of "spaghetti" made of white chocolate with a raspberry sorbet garnished with various berries like blackberry and blueberry. However, the "spaghetti" was very difficult to not only put on our plates but eat as well, and it didn't taste like white chocolate either. It was a sad attempt at being innovative.

We were also presented with a "fruit tree", a silver tree with branches sticking out that were decorated with cubes of fruit like strawberries, watermelon, pineapple, apple, dragon fruit and cantaloupe. We could dip them into sauces of strawberry, mango and vanilla mixed with sugar. However, it was difficult to get the fruit with forks; you had to use your hands which was not quite hygienic.

Dry ice emanated from the "pot" and after it dissipated in the air, it continued to gurgle which was a strange noise to have at the table.

We seemed to be the only table that had practically finished our fruit tree; others that were not finished were taken back into the kitchen. Did that mean that we were eating someone else's recycled fruit tree with a few more fruits added?

ROOMBeijing's motto is "Creating food with atmosphere". We saw a strange atmosphere, but not much creativity in the food. After all the hype, expectation and anticipation, the restaurant definitely fell short. It seems like too much effort was put into details other than the food itself.

Dinner for three including a 10 percent service charge was 990RMB ($144.95).

Apparently the full menu of some 40 items will be served soon. Who knows when that will actually happen...

ROOMBeijing
Floor 3, Yintai Centre
2 Jianguomen Wai Dajie
Beijing
8517 2033

A Strange Day at the Square

2010-06-04T09:12:00.001-07:00

Today I made my annual pilgrimage to Tiananmen Square to mark June 4.

Last year it was completely blocked off as it was the 20th anniversary so I was curious to see what would happen this year.

After a minor security check of putting our bags through a scanner and a brief wanding, we could go into the square.

And instead of an atmosphere of contemplation and grandeur, it was more like one of celebration and noise.

There were two long rectangular screens that are permanently mounted on granite stands that are carved, each broadcasting the same images provided by CCTV. Some of them were of raindrops collecting in a giant lotus leaf, the Great Wall, a bird's eye view of the China pavilion at the Shanghai Expo, Beijing Capital International Airport, and the National Stadium or the Bird's Nest.

And the people in the square were an odd bunch, mostly huddled in groups with red umbrellas that said something like "Capital Volunteers", harking back to the Beijing Olympics when neighbourhood watch groups hung out in street corners on the look out for anything suspicious.

But here they were, wearing their own "uniforms" of different coloured shirts and all carrying the same red umbrella.

Was this a fabrication to make it look like the square was "busy" and business as usual to foreigners?

If it was, it was a feeble attempt because they didn't seem like they wanted to be there, crouching on the ground or chatting with friends.

The bizarre atmosphere just made it all the more outrageous since a brutal anniversary happened here 21 years ago. It was as if they were trying very hard to negate the past, in the hopes that people would not remember.

But we still do.

We will not forget those people who lived near the square who tried to stop the tanks from entering, and we will not forget the students who were trying to tell the government they had enough of the corruption and wanted justice.

China may want its people to forget with these fancy distractions, but we will not be misguided in what we saw.

We will not forget.

The Need for Plan B

2010-06-03T07:48:00.001-07:00

Lester Brown is more concerned about the existence of civilization than the planet. The founder and president of Earth Policy Institute based in Washington DC, he previously worked in the United States government in agriculture and also pioneered sustainable development, a buzzword we freely use these days.

And on his trip to Beijing, Brown just released his Plan B 4.0, suggestions on how to keep civilization going. Plan A, Brown says, is business as usual and that is no longer an option even though we are still on this path.

He strongly urges Plan B because he has studied why earlier civilizations collapsed and discovered that most of them did due to food shortages.

And in the 21st century, Brown points out three reasons for imminent food shortages which could lead to the end of civilization:

1. Population growth -- The planet has 80 million more people every year, or about 216,000 people per day.

2. Rising affluence -- People are aiming to be upwardly mobile and with more wealth, they consume more agriculturally-intensive things like livestock which require more grain or soybean meal.

3. Converting grain into fuel (ethanol) -- Only in the last few years are we seeing grain that used to be for consumption now being turned into fuel. Food and energy economies used to be separate but now are inextricably linked on the world market.

Then Brown points to three supply factors that affect food shortages:

1. Spreading water shortages -- We need 4 litres of water a day to live, but crops need 2,000 litres. Half of the world's population are seeing their water tables dropping significantly, such as China and India. When food production is increased, the faster the water is depleted. For example, some 130 million Chinese are facing over pumping of water, so water shortages are imminent.

2. Melting ice sheets -- If they all melted, that would lead to a 7-metre rise in the sea level; even a 1-metre rise would see areas like Bangladesh and the Mekong delta, both rice-growing regions under water, along with 19 others. Brown says there is a projection of a 2-metre rise of the sea level this century.

3. Melting mountains and glaciers -- This is the 19th consecutive year of melting glaciers, with the greatest concern on the Himalayas and Tibetan Plateau, as the majority of the rivers in Asia flow from these areas. And as China and India are the world's leaders in rice production, the melting of these glaciers will be their greatest threat to their food security.

Brown notes other factors like soil erosion and loss of arable land, but the three above-mentioned are his top concerns.

What solutions does he have in mind?

He believes it is important to keep the world population under 8 billion, eradicate poverty, and restore natural support systems like forests; but so far we have not reversed any of these.

In any event, he is seeing some bright spots, like China moving quickly in wind power generation, with a plan to build seven wind mega complexes which could yield 130,000 megawatts, or 130 less coal-fired power plants.

He is also heartened to see that in the US there are grassroots campaigns to oppose the building of coal-fired power plants and this has now grown to close existing coal-fire power plants.

There are other measures governments can take such as raising taxes on fossil fuels.

Another point he makes is that we need to redefine "security". After two World Wars and a Cold War, security is still defined in military terms, but really the threat now is water shortages, population growth and glaciers melting.

He also strongly believes developing countries like China should not look to emulate what the West has done for the past two centuries and instead design an economy that is relevant to today. These countries should also design cities for people, not cars; he thinks there is a blind desire to imitate, but believes China has the capability to rethink how it wants to develop.

Hopefully China is listening -- but time is of the essence.

Brown may sound like he is predicting the end of the world, but he believes as more people become aware and educated about what needs to be done, not only will they get involved, but also push their governments to make a more concerted effort to save civilization as we know it.

Fact of the Day: Chinese Cities with Populations Over 1 Million

2010-06-02T08:11:00.001-07:00

For many of us in the West, a city with a population of over one million is considered pretty big, as towns may only have a few thousand people.

But in China, what may be considered a town already has over a million people in it. And according to Demographia, there are some 60 of them in the Middle Kingdom, including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Chongqing.

For example it says Beijing has a population of 12.4 million, but most statistics say 17 million. That's because it is calculating the urban area population, and there are still a few million out in the rural areas. Demographia's definition of urban area population is "a continuously built up landmass of urban development", or "the lighted area that can be observed from an airplane at night".

Using these numbers, Chinfographics has come up with an interesting visual presentation of of all these Chinese cities, contrasted with other metropolises like New York (21.3 million), Paris (10.5 million), Sydney (3.7 million) and Amsterdam (1.1 million).

Of course omitting people in rural areas would probably bump up the Chinese numbers significantly and there would most certainly be more than 60 cities.

In any event, 60 or more cities in China with more than one million people is mind-boggling.

Looking for Love

2010-06-01T07:28:00.001-07:00

Most of the local Chinese women I know are in their mid to late 20s, and many of them have marriage on their minds.

Some are getting a lot of pressure from their parents to get married, while others put this pressure on themselves, as they don't want to be a shengnu, or a "left-over woman".

After breaking up with her boyfriend last year, one 26 year old I know is determined to find a man this year. However, so far she has gone on a few disastrous blind dates.

On one she met a very skinny tall man who told her during the course of their date that he was scared of his mother. This was because she constantly nagged him while he was growing up, and so during their dinner date, he asked my friend to order whatever she wanted on the menu.

Should a guy reveal his fear of women on a first date?

Then she went on another date, with four other chaperones, two of which were children. They went out for lunch, and then her date took the group to the outskirts of Beijing to go fishing. Fishing? On a first date? With so many other people?

As a result, she wasn't comfortable with him, and she felt that he was trying hard to be her gege, or older brother, than a date.

Many men here either feel insecure and think they need to play this role, or they watch a lot of romantic movies and assume this is what women want.

However, women these days don't want an older male sibling, but a friend.

As young women become more capable of looking after themselves financially, young men feel at a loss as to how to demonstrate their manliness, especially when they don't have a thick wallet or many assets to prove it.

Meanwhile I heard of a 28-year old woman, with a Master's degree, works in a public relations company and speaks good English. She has never had a boyfriend before and is now looking for the love of her life. Her mother in Tianjin is also helping her find this Mr. Right online and asking her network of friends.

The other day she went to get a health check and found out her height was taller than she thought. So she immediately contacted her mother to update her vital statistics, in case a few centimetres would make a big difference in finding a man.

She is desperate to get married, but with her good job and academic background, it may be hard for her to find a guy with equal or better qualifications. Women are discouraged (or they discourage themselves) from pursuing a doctorate degree for fears that appearing too smart will make it almost impossible for them to nab a guy!

Then there are those who are not particularly pretty and know it, and have decided it doesn't matter if they get married or not. They are focused on their careers and either ignore their parents' pressure to get married, or they aren't concerned.

As one explained to me, she thinks it's too much trouble to find the right guy, and spend the rest of her life with this person. And then having to save up so much money for an apartment...

Nevertheless, this desperation to get married will just exacerbate the problem. For those who have had no relationship experience at all will not understand or know if a particular man suits them or not and because of pressure may marry the wrong person, or find rejection harder to deal with.

Another 28-year-old friend I know contacted me recently, excitedly telling me that she had found Mr. Right. She said that he is currently studying physics at Chinese University in Hong Kong and she would visit him later in June. But when did they meet? Less than a month ago through a mutual friend.

I asked her, are you sure about this? She said, "We are very serious about this," referring to their relationship. While both may have the best intentions, knowing someone for three weeks does not necessarily mean you know this is the right person for you.

That's why Chinese parents really need to lay off the pressure, as they think that at their age they were already married with children. However, in this generation, it is normal for couples to get hitched and have babies later.

They also need to understand that as their children are mostly living outside of their hometowns, that their social circle may be smaller and thus harder to meet new people.

Meanwhile, men want to find women who aren't too demanding, who are willing to fulfill traditional housewife roles and somewhat pretty would help.

One man in his late 30s complained to me that Beijing women or those who live in the capital expect boyfriends to buy them designer clothes and bags, a car and an apartment before they will even consider marriage. It's a pretty tall order to fill, not to mention very materialistic.

As a result, many men on a budget are looking to Vietnam for wives. There are even "wedding tours" for Chinese men to go to Vietnam, pick out a wife, get married there and then eventually bring them back to China once their immigration papers are set.

This giant disconnect between what women want and what men want will only increase. Love is not enough in China anymore. And that's hard to find already.

The Unfortunate Life of a Cog

2010-05-31T09:17:00.001-07:00

The recent spate of suicides and suicide attempts at the Foxconn factory in South China have raised serious concerns not only about work-place environments, but also the psychological state of young people.

Foxconn Technology Group is a Taiwan-owned company, the largest final assembling supplier in the global electronics industry. Its workers assemble iPhones and iPads for Apple, and computers for Dell and HP among others.

And because it manufacturers so many of these products, the company runs its production line in a very regimented system. Workers live in dormitories in the compound where they live four to six to a room, mostly with coworkers they don't know. And there can be hundreds of thousands of workers in one factory, almost like a small city, with all these people focused on one thing -- assembling goods day and night.

Their basic salary is so low (800 RMB/$117 a month) that they must work overtime in order to earn more money; but that means working longer hours on a daily basis.

Some critics think it's the strict work environment that makes it unbearable for people to work there, leading to them wanting to end their lives. However, others believe each case is different, with a number of different circumstances they are going through.

Perhaps some of these young people had naive hopes of becoming successful in the big city of Shenzhen; perhaps some felt too much financial pressure to send back more money to their parents; perhaps they had just ended a relationship and were unable to handle the heartbreak.

Most of these workers are in their late teens and early twenties, away from home for the first time and immediately faced with the reality of trying to figure out how to navigate themselves in the real world. Many have been sheltered or lived in rural areas and haven't developed the street smarts and mental toughness needed to survive in the city.

And it is believed the ones who cannot handle the pressure or adjust to life in the big city decide that no life is better than having one.

Statistically, China claims to have 12 suicides per 100,000 people. With Foxconn having about 800,000 employees and so far 10 deaths this year, its suicide rate is less than 1 per 100,000.

The company is at its wits' end trying to end this bad publicity, by inviting the media to tour the factory grounds and installing nets everywhere to save people from suicide attempts by jumping. However, it went overboard when it tried to get employees to promise not to kill themselves so that it wouldn't have to pay extra compensation to loved ones if they did.

Nevertheless, these suicides highlight the plight of young people -- not those who have university degrees and office jobs -- but those with not much education and hope to live a better life than their parents. Which is why they choose to abandon the fields and head to the city, only to find a factory job that treats them like cogs in a machine.

Some of them may not know which is worse, tilling the same fields previous generations have done, or work like a machine in an urban setting where the disparity between the rich and poor is blatant.

It's hard to say what the solutions should be, as it's not necessarily the company's responsibility to help employees adjust to city life. But at the same time, it could perhaps offer more outlets for frustration or creativity, such as sports and arts-related activities in order to make friends. A higher basic wage would also be beneficial, though it would eat into the company's bottom line.

Foxconn has already hired more psychologists and counselors, but are employees really going to share their feelings to these people who will probably report it to the company managers?

By the same token, young people who come to the city have to have a reality check and realize what they are getting themselves into. Factory work is no glamorous job, but it can help people give some kind of financial support or give them the work experience they need to move on.

Picture of the Day: Artistic Messages

2010-05-30T07:40:00.000-07:00

Wandering around the 798 Art District, you don't have to go into galleries to see art -- you can see it outdoors too.

The first of the pieces I spotted was this car parked among real ones.

It's a model of a BMW sports car... with a distinctive Great Wall touch.

Is it supposed to be a foreign car with Chinese characteristics? Or the Chinese invasion of the auto industry?

Next up is an iconic image of Lei Feng, a young man who the Communist Party of China has upheld as a model worker for his selfless devotion for society (whether fabricated or not).

When you look up close, it's actually made up of hundreds of Polaroid photographs of young people, probably an ironic take on Lei Feng, as kids in the 1980s and 1990s have a different view of their lives -- to have fun and for the most part, be selfish, thanks in part to the one-child policy producing "little emperors and empresses".

The next piece I saw was what people outside of China would immediately identify as Jesus on the cross. But the atheist Chinese take on this religious image is of a "Man at Work" or "工作中". If you think of it that way, he is working hard to rid humanity of its sins...

And finally, this statue of two workers a la 1950s style holding up a giant wad of 100 RMB bills. The money is even bound together with the long strip of paper that bank tellers use to bind 100 of the 100 RMB bills to equal bricks of 100,000 RMB ($14,638) in cash.

Early in the establishment of new China after 1949, workers were passionate about building a new country, or so the propaganda says. They proudly raised their hammers, scythes, wrenches and whatever other tools they had, united in their goal.

These blue-collar workers are still united in a goal -- but now it's money.

The Colour of Change

2010-05-28T22:13:00.001-07:00

The other day I went out to the 798 Art District to check out an exhibition at the UCCA or Ullens Center for Contemporary Art. On Thursdays it's free and it's a good thing I went there when it was free admission because there wasn't much to see.

Each successive time I go to this area, my feelings for the place become more disappointed. Granted it was a weekday, but there were more empty shop and gallery spaces, and constant demolitions of old buildings. The beauty of the place in the beginning was the old munitions factory itself; but now people thought a gentrified neighbourhood would make it even cooler. Not.

Nevertheless, I made my way to the UCCA and at the entrance the gallery, which houses an excellent collection of Chinese art from the 1980s onwards, was in the midst of preparing for the next exhibition. As a result, only the current exhibition was on show, called Feelings are facts by Olafur Eliasson and Ma Yansong.

This is the first collaboration between the Danish-Icelandic artist and Chinese architect. From the brochure it seems that Eliasson likes to experiment with light, colour and natural phenomena like fog and waves to see how they interact with people and influence our perception of our environment.

This led to Feelings are facts, conceived by Eliasson and then executed by Ma.

Visitors enter a low-ceiling room which is filled with smoke made by fog machines. It's a strange experience, going into this kind of an environment that is smoky and can be uncomfortable. At the same time, there are very intense colours in different parts of the room that gradually change different colours. One side is deep fuchsia, another dark blue to purple, lime green to yellow.

You can't see anything in front of you except colour. The effect is to try to bathe the visitors within colour and make them see things differently, or not?

While I understand the concept, it doesn't seem to have translated well in execution, as it's an almost unbearable experience walking in the smoke-filled space for more than five minutes.

And then, that was it. The entire exhibition. One room.

As it was drizzling outside, I didn't have much enthusiasm for wandering in the other galleries; one or two of my usual favourites were also busy getting ready for their next show so there wasn't anything else to see.

It's disappointing to see an area I was fond of three years ago lose its charm so quickly and become a pathetic version of itself.

That's the same with places like Houhai and Nanluoguxiang; once the local government gets involved, "development" makes these spots lose that element which made them so appealing in the first place.

It's a sad commentary on how the government and greedy landlords have no concept of how gentrification is a tourism buster.

Shanghai Past and Present

2010-05-27T08:52:00.001-07:00

Last night I went to the Bookworm to listen to well-known photojournalist Heung Shing Liu (HS Liu), who went to China in 1976 where his first assignment was to cover the death of Chairman Mao.

Liu had an interesting upbringing -- he was born in Hong Kong in 1951 to mainland Chinese parents, but after three years his parents had no faith in the education system there and took him back to China in Fujian Province.

He returned to Hong Kong for secondary school and later emigrated to the United States. He studied political science and journalism at New York City's Hunter College. It was in his last year there that he was introduced to photography in a course taught by Life photographer Gjon Mili.

After graduation he became Mili's apprentice and then joined Time where he went to China for five years, then later was based in Los Angeles, New Delhi, Seoul and Moscow.

These days Liu has become more of an editor than photographer.

Two years ago he came out with a large tome of photographs called China: Portrait of a Country. The book visually chronicles the People's Republic since 1949.

And then after the Olympics came and gone, Liu was asked by the Shanghai Corporate Pavilion organizers (actually the Shanghai State Assets Bureau) to produce a book for the Expo, called Shanghai: A History of Photographs.

He along with Karen Smith went through tons and tons of images, going through archives, libraries, company archives including Shanghai newspapers. Liu noted that most newspapers lost most of their old photos due to the Cultural Revolution except for the Jie Fang Daily, which was a Communist paper.

Travel was a big part of Liu's mission, as he even went to London, to the headquarters of Jardine Matheson and spotted the engraving capturing the Treaty of Nanking in 1842, which led to the opening of five treaty ports in China after the Opium War (Canton, now Guangzhou; Amoy, now Xiamen; Ningbo, Foochow, now Fuzhou, and Shanghai).

And that is how Liu and Smith decided to start their pictorial history of Shanghai, as the west played a big role in the development of the then walled city and small port. At the time there were only 60,000 people there, but as Shanghai grew, more people from outlying areas migrated to the city.

Smith also points out that if you research the history of Shanghai, a lot of it is in English and that it's usually the victors who write the history, thus perpetuating a lot of myths about Shanghai.

Opium trade was outlawed in 1917 so big trading companies like Jardine had to switch to cotton and silk. What was interesting is that Smith showed a picture of an early 20th century image of a silk factory that employed Chinese girls who weren't thrilled with their work. This was then contrasted with a photo of a factory girl of today who has the same disinterested look on her face.

Later Liu showed a picture of a Chinese model dressed in a Christian Dior white blouse and black skirt, looking confident, towering over ordinary people in frumpy clothing who cannot help but stare at her, like the face of the future.

Then in the next image shows the same model stuck in between a bed and a wall of stuff piled up, including luggage and boxes. This was the place she shared with her parents and there was hardly any room to move let alone sit.

When Liu first went to Shanghai in 1976, everything was shut down by 8pm. He remembers the taste of the water, how disgusting it was, and having to bathe in the same water that left a smell on your skin. But he also remembers finding a restaurant that made fantastic ox-tail soup, and having to bring Grand Marnier for souffles.

He observes that Beijing has the Chinese imperialist culture that dares to think big, as evident from much of the architecture. However, Shanghainese, for Liu, are maritime sailors who emigrated to different countries. They don't think big, but are very detail oriented.

Liu adds that for a long time, Shanghai was held back from developing, as Deng Xiaoping wanted to see how his experiment in Shenzhen was doing. It wasn't until the mid-1990s was Shanghai allowed to develop economically. And again it was held back until the successful execution of the Beijing Olympics before putting all-out efforts on the Shanghai Expo.

While some of these measures may have been politically motivated, it seems Shanghai can't be restrained much longer, a major municipality that calls its own shots and continues to have that interesting allure as the most westernized city in China.

Note: The first two photographs were taken by Liu.

Friends Central

2010-05-26T07:37:00.001-07:00

When I first came to China, many young Chinese asked me if I watched the show Friends. I had to confess that I didn't watch it regularly, much to their dismay, as they download the episodes and watch them online or buy the DVD set of all the seasons.

And so it should be of no surprise that a cafe inspired by the hit TV show has opened in Chaowai SOHO.

On the sixth floor of a nondescript office building is "Friends Cafe", but the outside looks almost the same as Central Perk, the coffee house in the comedy series that starred Courtenay Cox, Jennifer Aniston, and David Schwimmer. It has the wooden panelling on the outside in forest green, complete with a bike rack, supposedly for Phoebe's bike. There's even a stool with a guitar next to it for impromptu performances.

And inside this Central Perk looks very similar to the original, though smaller due to space constraints. There's a bar filled with bottles, and a small prep kitchen to the side, while customers sit in sofas or bar stools. There's even the famous giant orange couch facing a giant-screen TV showing... Friends episodes with Chinese and English subtitles.

So we sat, on the orange couch... watching Friends. It was quite surreal.

The owner, surnamed Du, a young 30-something Chinese, recently opened Friends Cafe in April and already word has spread quickly about the place. He was very keen to point out that realizing his dream of opening up a place like this was not necessarily going to make him money, which is why he uses the next door space as a mini grocery store to keep things afloat.

Du said that when he started watching Friends, he immediately loved the show and doesn't have a particular favourite character. For him, this venture was a labour of love, making sure the colour used in the interior and the fabric and the couches all looked as close as possible to the coffee house in the show.

And so he gets a kick when people come in, thrilled to find the place very similar to their favourite show, bringing back memories of episodes and how they used to watch the show to learn English and American pop culture.

On the table are some blank notebooks where customers can write comments. Many of them say the are happy to be in the cafe, or talk about what true friendship is. There were even people from Greece, France and Spain who wrote in the books.

The cafe offers mostly drinks, including coffee, cappuccino, milk tea, fruit teas, juice and smoothies at moderate prices.

Friends Cafe seems like a novelty place and its location may not bring in regulars so it remains to be seen if the cafe will catch on.

But for now it's interesting to note that perhaps finally, Friends fans have a place to gather... with friends.

Friends Cafe
Building A, 6/F
Chaowai SOHO
6B Chaowai Dajie
Chaoyang

A True Friend of China Part 2

2010-05-25T09:11:00.001-07:00

Professor Jerome Cohen had so much to say that his comments had to be continued in this blog post.

When asked about the recent spate of attacks in kindergartens and primary schools in China, Cohen said that people who kill or maim many children are not normal people. "They have reached a level of frustration where they feel a sense of unfairness and injustice," he explained.

While 17 percent of the Chinese population have some kind of mental illness, many of them are involved in crime. Premier Wen Jiabao spoke publicly about the kindergarten killings saying there needs to be more mechanisms set up to resolve disputes, as the petitioning system is not allowed so people feel like they have no where to plead their case.

Cohen cites the case of Yang Jia, the young man who walked into the Zhabei District police station in Shanghai last year and killed six policemen. It turns out he had had a long festering grievance with the police who had accused him of stealing a bicycle. The frustration may have been too much for him and resulted in him eventually developing mental issues before resorting to violence. Despite his heinous crime, many people flocked to the courthouse to attend Yang's trial to support him, though he was convicted of murder and executed.

In this case, Cohen explains that Yang should have been acquitted of all charges due to his mental condition and sent to a mental institution. "But instead, his mother was locked up in a mental institution so that she couldn't testify on the evolution of his mental health," he says.

As for the second disappearance of human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng, Cohen is very disappointed at how this incident is still unresolved while the authorities make a "ridiculous succession of excuses."

Cohen admires Gao for taking on the system, as do many young lawyers who look up to him. But now with his disappearance yet again, it sends a chilling message to lawyers, especially those interested in human rights or even criminal law that they should not mess with the system. For Cohen, this is a black mark on China's reputation, and the situation with Gao is a "sad commentary of the Chinese system."

Gao's case led to Cohen's concern about the oppression of lawyers which is impacting the number of them who are keen on going into criminal law. For those lawyers interested in having a stable, lucrative career usually go into corporate law, but even then businessmen can get tangled in criminal cases which can involve human rights and corruption.

What is interesting to Cohen is that the few who do take on criminal law are either motivated by religion; earnestly believe in human rights ideology called fazhi (法治) or rule of law; while others hope by doing their bit they can change the Chinese legal system into a more western and democratic one.

As for the petitioning system, Cohen says people use it for a variety of things that do not necessarily fall into the legal category. Nevertheless, he thinks it is crucial to have some kind of informal outlet that is properly administered for non-legal situations and cases. While Cohen says the government has done a lot more ideologically in terms of "socialist human rights" in heightening the legal awareness of the public, at the same time it has done much to frustrate people when they actually try to go through the system.

In looking at his over 50 years in dealing with China in some capacity, Cohen has seen great strides but also setbacks. As a zhengyou, or "true friend of China", he hopes to help the country better administer the rule of law. And one cannot help but admire his optimism and dedication in this on-going and long-term goal.

A True Friend of China Part 1

2010-05-24T09:42:00.001-07:00

Jerome Cohen is a noted law professor at New York University School of Law and an expert in Chinese law. Now 80, he has worked in cases involving China for 50 years, starting first in 1959 when he learned Chinese thanks to a Rockefeller Foundation four-year grant. As he could not enter China at the time, the closest he got to the mainland was Hong Kong where he interviewed Chinese refugee claimants trying to escape from the Great Leap Forward.

Then in 1972 he was able to come to China for the first time and had a four-hour dinner with Zhou Enlai. "He did a lot of research on people he talked to otherwise it would be a boring dinner," recalled Cohen in a gravelly voice. "He thought I had written so many books on Chinese law that I knew more about Chinese law than the Chinese."

It is probably this relationship with the then premier that has made Cohen a zhenghou (诤友) to China, or someone who is a good friend who tells the truth.

That's because he writes a biweekly column in Hong Kong's South China Morning Post criticizing China's dealings with specific legal cases, hardly holding back in pointing out what is blatantly done wrong and what is written in the constitution or in the law (or not yet addressed in the law).

He will also chastise Taiwan in these columns, and what's interesting is that the current President Ma Ying-jeou is a former student of Cohen, along with former vice-president Annette Lu.

Cohen believes that China is making attempts at legal reforms, such as in the state secrets act and criminal system as well as capital punishment; however he says there are "conflicting currents", as the Communist Party still has a strong grip on legal institutions in the country.

Nevertheless, he takes the long-term view. "In 1972 it was hard to find law professors in China," he says. "They were healthier than people like me because they had been working in the fields [due to the persecutions during the Cultural Revolution]. So they were intimidated by [ideological] campaigns and wouldn't say anything."

However today, Cohen points out there are some 630 legal schools and departments, many of them staffed with law reformers who want to try to change the system, albeit gradually.

He says as outsiders, we hardly know much about how the Chinese legal system works. While there are internal studies, Cohen says, they are not released for wider consumption or study.

Then he compared two state secret cases, the Stern Hu one involving Rio Tinto, and then Xue Feng. We know that in the Stern Hu case, he was originally charged with stealing state secrets, but due to media and diplomatic pressure, the charges were reduced to commercial secrets; in the end Hu was convicted of accepting bribes and was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

However, the Xue Feng case is little known, and one that Cohen is working on. Xue is a Chinese-born American citizen who was also charged with stealing state secrets where he was trying to get more information on oil databases for his employer. He was locked up in the fall of 2007, finally had his trial last July, but until today there is still no verdict. Cohen points out the last legal basis for an extension was on March 18. "Don't worry we did it legally," is the reassurance the defense team has received.

Cohen says once someone is charged with something related to violating state secrets, it can be hard to get lawyer and hard for the lawyer to get access to the client.

Nevertheless, Cohen points out that foreign nationals are allowed to have monthly consular visits, and in Xue's case, Ambassador Jon Huntsman has personally visited Xue twice, and his deputy five times. US President Barack Obama has even personally brought up Xue's case with President Hu Jintao during his trip to China in November.

Despite having consular access, the ironic thing is that these diplomats are not allowed to discuss the case with the defendant. "These visits are monitored by a translator who will report back if anything remotely related to the case is brought up," explains Cohen. "This denies the significance of the consular visit."

Why Hu's case was pretty much swiftly over and done with while Xue is still languishing in jail without a verdict is due to media exposure. Whether Hu wanted it or not, the reports about his detainment and then subsequent trial were closely followed by foreign media, which probably helped him, as there was more public scrutiny of the case and China's legal system.

But in Xue's situation, while he wanted to go to the media, his wife did not want to publicize the fact that her husband was in jail, fearing there would be repercussions affecting their parents and children. As a result, Cohen says, for a long time there was no pressure. But now because there are more media reports about the case, things are moving ahead, though at a snail's pace.

A fundamental problem about these kinds of cases is that there is no clear definition of what a state secret is and the defense lawyer has to accept the charge.

An area seeing some kinds of reforms, says Cohen, is capital punishment. China is now reviewing more death sentences at the supreme court level, and this has resulted in hundreds more judges added to look over these cases; he points out that these judges may not necessarily have the proper training or knowledge in dealing with these situations. Nevertheless, he hopes that with changes in capital punishment, this may also lead to other legal reforms further down the system.

While the government is trying to improve trial procedures, Cohen suggests that the Chinese judicial system should separate the judgment and punishment, as in many countries. That way the lawyer can argue that his client is innocent, but then if found guilty, can plea for a shorter sentence.

Despite what Cohen is seeing on the ground in terms of law reformers trying to change the system and the government doing its bit albeit slowly, the law professor adds that no one in the standing Politburo is interested in legal rights.

He points out that senior government official Zhou Yongkang has made a frank recognition that the serious unrest seen in cases in China need institutional responses from the police and courts; though Cohen adds there was no mention of defense lawyers. Cohen is pessimistic about any changes until 2012, when President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao step down.

Li Keqiang, expected to replace Wen, is the first graduate of Peking University's law school, but Cohen says his record shows little regard for the legal system. Another rising star, Bo Xilai has intimidated defense lawyers with the corruption cases in Chongqing, giving people little confidence in the legal system.

"Somewhere someday a feisty leader will have the foresight to reform the system," Cohen hopes.

He says the Chinese government wants to be recognized on the world stage with its soft power, but it can't do this unless it has the administration of justice handled properly. This has resulted in such people as Lai Changxing from being extradited back to China from Canada, for fears that he will not be treated properly in the legal system.

Cohen adds China is entitled to its own way of development, but with the current situation now where the government has a strong hand in the judicial system, it is impossible for it to be autonomous, as well as other systems. He says the government is doing studies on how a more independent legal system would work in China, but the Party would have to reach a decision -- and if it decides to have a more autonomous legal system that would mean the Party's power would shrink. And the way things are going now with rule by consensus, the government is becoming more conservative, and trying to get its grips on all avenues for power.

An Aristocratic Dining Experience

2010-05-23T10:01:00.001-07:00

When I take Bus 107 westwards, I always pass by this restaurant called Nei Fu Dishes and it prompted enough curiosity to finally check it out with a friend.

It's actually called Wuyutai Nei Fu Dishes (吴裕泰内府菜) and it is only a few stops away from Dongzhimen Wai Dajie, practically walking distance from where I live.

Once you step inside, you immediately sense it's aiming to be considered a high-class establishment, with a group of young women in nicely-designed costumes who politely welcome you. The interior decor gives a grand impression, with European-style chandeliers, long tables with tall chairs, and booth areas decorated with curtains where we were seated.

Front and centre is a large raised stage, framed with a wooden carving all around the top and bottom; however, from where we were sitting, all we could see was a thick black granite pillar that obstructed our view. A guzheng, or zither that looked rather dusty was lying on the table off to the side, which prompted the possibility of entertainment while dining.

Meanwhile, we were handed a massive menu that was a good attempt at trying to compete with Da Dong. The long rectangular tome featured large pictures, though the photographs were not nearly as well styled as Da Dong's; but the prices were competitive and some dishes came in small, medium and large sizes.

The restaurant specializes in tea-flavoured dishes, possibly due to its link with the chain of Wuyutai teashops all over the city? This was not confirmed, but a strong hunch, as there was a small tea shop at the entrance.

After we ordered, the entertainment soon began despite having only a handful of tables occupied, with a man dressed to the nines in a Peking Opera costume and singing renowned performer Mei Lanfang's favourite songs complete with the hand gestures he standardized.

A woman dressed in a red qipao complete with black pumps was the emcee and came on stage to explain what each part of the costume was and its significance. While it was a good education, it didn't seem like much of the audience were interested.

Nevertheless, our food soon arrived, a cold appetizer of baby octopus marinated in a sauce of vinegar and chillis that was slightly spicy and crunchy. This soon followed with pea shoots stir-fried with garlic, and one of the restaurant's signature dishes, jinzhong cha jiuxiang furou, a variation of the dongpo rou dish, or braised pork belly. While the meat was honestly not melt-in-your-mouth, the flavour was still delicious and went well with the buckwheat steamed bread we put it in like mini sandwiches.

We also ordered pork ribs that were roasted and covered in a number of ingredients including red and green chillis, peanuts, preserved vegetables and black beans. The server duly removed the bones making it easier to eat, though it was quite a spicy adventure and we couldn't finish but took home later.

This was complemented with a bowl of Family Wu buckwheat noodles called wujia kuqiao mian, served in a deceptively spicy sauce topped with peanuts. At first it didn't seem that spicy, but then your tongue slowly became numb from the Sichuan peppercorns in the broth. Nevertheless, the noodles were delicious and hearty.

Meanwhile, the entertainment continued on stage, with a woman lying on her back and balancing and spinning a number of objects on her feet, like a ceramic planter, a circular rug and a table. Although she wore a halter-top outfit, a modern take on the usual qipao, and Cirque du Soleil-esque music, it wasn't quite enough to take these acrobatic tricks to another level.

Diners didn't seem to notice the man throwing giant ceramic planters in the air and then balancing them on his head either; it's just kind of sad these people are performing quite amateur stunts that don't get much respect these days. The man who performed the changing faces or bian lian routine also seemed new at the job, constantly turning his back to the audience to adjust his costume and hardly changing his face throughout his act until towards the end.

As the last performer, the emcee herself performed a few operatic numbers that were lively, and it seemed like she lived for the stage.

In the end we were pleased with the food, though a bit too spicy, but wished we didn't have to be subjected to the entertainment...

Wuyutai Neifu Dishes 吴裕泰内府菜
144 Dongzhimen Nei Dajie
Dongcheng District
6401 2228

Sleepwear as Outerwear Finally Explained

2010-05-22T09:13:00.001-07:00

After night falls, it's not unusual to see the odd person -- young or old -- wearing pajamas down the street here.

I used see it periodically in fashion-conscious Hong Kong, where a woman in cotton flannels with cartoon characters on them would pop into the neighbourhood 7-11 for something. But most people in the cosmopolitan city wouldn't be caught dead in their jammies.

However in Beijing and Shanghai, this is can be a common sight, and for westerners living here it's a strange observation.

Why do these people do it? Why do they prefer to stroll down the street (sometimes even in their curlers) wearing their sleepwear for all to see?

Finally there is an answer.

Earlier this week, Gao Yubing wrote an article for the New York Times, explaining the phenomenon.

First Gao complains about how Shanghai residents have been warned not to wear their pajamas in public, and there are even volunteer "pajama police" making sure people are properly dressed and if they are caught in their nighties, they will be asked to go home and change.

However, not many people outside of China understand the significance of pajamas.

Pajamas -- not the sexy sleepwear you find at Victoria's secret, but loose-fitting, non-revealing PJs made of cotton or polyester -- have been popular in Shanghai since the late 1970s, when Deng Xiaoping, then China's leader, sought to modernize the economy and society by "opening up" to the outside world. The Chinese adopted Western pajamas without fully understanding their context. Most of us had never had any dedicated sleepwear other than old T-shirts and pants. And we thought pajamas were a symbol of wealth and coolness.

Although they were a kind of status symbol, Gao does explain that as the Chinese are pragmatic people, they don't want to have to change back into their other clothes just to get a snack or something down the street.

Besides, adds Gao, as a retiree told a reporter, "Pajamas are also a type of clothes. It's comfortable and it's not big deal since everyone wears them outside."

It's so refreshing to see Chinese people being so no-nonsense about sleepwear when westerners think it is intimate apparel only found between the covers...

The Price of Innocence

2010-05-20T08:03:00.001-07:00

There was a bizarre story a few weeks ago when a man who was supposedly murdered turned up alive in Zhaolou village in Henan Province on April 30. This resulted in the man who was accused of murdering him, Zhao Zuohai, 57, being set free after spending 11 years behind bars for a crime he did not commit.

In 1997, Zhao was involved in a fight with another villager, Zhao Zhenshang, who later disappeared fearing retaliation. Two years later a headless body was found and was believed to be that of Zhao Zhenshang. Zhao Zuohai was arrested and confessed to the murder.

After he was convicted, Zhao was sentenced to life in prison and then his wife remarried; two of his four children were adopted, and the other two left home to be migrant workers.

However, after he was released, Zhao said the police forced him into giving a "confession", beat him up during interrogations and tortured him in order to stay awake for 30 days.

For the miscarriage of justice, Zhao received 650,000RMB ($95,206) in compensation and an official apology. He also received another 16,000RMB ($2,343) from various legal bodies directly or indirectly involved in the case

Meanwhile two of the police officers who allegedly tortured Zhao have been detained and a third is at large.

And now the chief judge who ruled on the case has been put on leave pending an investigation.

Chief Judge Hu Ye was suspended from duty at the Higher People's Court of Henan Province, and three other judges involved in Zhao's wrongful conviction have also reportedly been suspended from duty at the Intermediate People's Court in Shangqiu City.

But are all this enough justice? Enough for taking away the productive life of a farmer who wasted his life in prison and in the meantime lost his wife and family?

If you calculate 650,000RMB into 11 years, Zhao only gets 162RMB ($23.72) per day.

Surely his life is worth much more than that, considering all the mental anguish he's gone through, losing his wife and family in the process.

Since the government plays an active role in handing down convictions, perhaps it could also think again about how much it owes Zhao for being labeled a murderer when he was in fact, an innocent man.

Who's to blame now?

The Many Faces of Chopin

2010-05-19T08:01:00.001-07:00

I just got back from the Mei Lan Fang Grand Theater at Chegongzhuang subway station on the west side of town, where there was a concert called "Different Faces of Chopin".

There are celebrations around the world this year to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the composer's birth. Beijing has already held several concerts, but this one was definitely heads and shoulders above the others in terms of creativity.

I'd read about it in the Time Out magazine and wasn't able to get tickets online so I just showed up at the venue a few minutes beforehand. There were many scalpers on hand wanting to get rid of tickets.

"You don't want to go?" I asked one as I bought his ticket off him for face value.

"Oh I have some other things to attend to," he said, constantly looking around to make sure no one was watching our transaction, though it was very obvious.

The theater is a large glass modern structure, but inside it has fancy chandeliers and a bright red wall featuring wood inlaid with gold of scenes from Peking Opera. The staff are courteous and showed me straight to my seat on the mezzanine level, a giant comfy red leather chair in the front row of a box area.

The event began with speeches from the Chinese and Polish ministers of Culture, with their speeches translated into English and Chinese.

Then on three screens there were projections of Chopin's portrait, with his music on top as a pianist played one of the Polish composer's pieces.

He was then joined by the vocal group Camerata Silesia, 22 members who sing Chopin's works in a capella. Again the screens behind them featured traditional drawings or paintings, and even photographs with modern graphics drawn or moving on top to create a visual as well as audio concert.

They were very lively and sang very well, though not singing words per se, but making it very accessible to everyone.

After performing a number of songs, they left the stage and then the Andrzej Jagodzinski Jazz Trio came on. Jagodzinski was at the piano, along with a bass player and a guy on the drums. They also did their own jazz take on Chopin, performing about four pieces; at times their music didn't seem classical at all, and made Chopin very modern.

The trio exited the stage at the same time the Polish Ensemble came on and performed mostly folk music to demonstrate Chopin's rustic roots, especially in his mazurkas. At some points, two dancers in traditional costume danced on the stage to add to the visual feast.

It was at this period in the program that the graphics started getting slightly childish, with line drawings of a face, a fish, a flower, a sun, a person, and a house superimposed on pictures of delicate lace. I wondered what the Chinese audience thought of this, if they had the impression it wasn't a very polished artistic presentation...

Nevertheless, in the end, all the performers came on stage and performed one last piece together which got a warm round of applause. However, I can't understand why the middle-aged couple sitting right behind me had to talk all the way through the concert. If you need to talk about something, go outside! There were also numerous camera flashes going off too...

Regardless, it was a memorable concert not just for the multimedia presentation, but also the interesting interpretations of Chopin's pieces. By giving his music a modern twist, Chopin becomes more relevant today and in the future.

Someone's to Blame

2010-05-18T07:24:00.001-07:00

Yesterday I wrote about the China Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) saying over 2.2 million Chinese youths die from respiratory diseases and such due to indoor air pollution.

However, the CDC released an announcement soon after the media wrote about it, saying that a false report was released about this in a press conference that was not presented by the CDC, and the center has not released any kind of data about indoor pollution.

So where did this "report" come from, that was originally reported by the China News Service?

It turns out the number was released by an air filter manufacturer, according to He Jiukun, an official from the environment department of the CDC.

Song Guangsheng, director of the National Indoor Environment Test Center, also dismissed the number.

"Statistics from the World Health Organization show that the annual deaths from indoor air pollution is about 2.6 million globally," he said.

"No institutes in China have done such research yet. Even the 110,000 death figure we commonly acknowledge was a result based on research by the WHO."

So China hasn't even conducted research on possible deaths from indoor air pollution... maybe because it doesn't even know that this problem could exist or that it doesn't want to measure it for fear of the repercussions it could have on the real estate/furniture sector?

In the meantime it's a relief to know the numbers aren't 2.2 million... for now...

Fact of the Day: 2 Million Die from Indoor Pollution

2010-05-17T06:34:00.001-07:00

A strange and shocking statistic has popped up today, saying that more than two million young Chinese die from indoor pollution, more than half of them are under the age of five.

The China Center for Disease Control and Prevention released the statistic in a study, and said that indoor pollution levels can be five to 10 times higher than the country's outdoor air.

The indoor pollution causes respiratory diseases that kill 2.2 million young people each year, and about a million of them are under five years old.

Apparently the study cites formaldehyde, benzene, ammonia and radon as the indoor pollutants. Formaldehyde can be found in new furniture in China, which is slowly released into the air over several years. The chemical can be found in things like particle board, plywood, and furniture coverings and cushions using materials like PVC.

Long-term exposure to these indoor pollutants can result in a number of health problems, from respiratory diseases, mental impairment and even cancer. Young children, fetuses in utero and the elderly are most at risk.

Is anything safe in China anymore?

Say What You Mean

2010-05-16T07:57:00.001-07:00

Vice President Xi Jinping, who is expected to lead China from 2012, is breathing some fresh air into the Chinese Communist Party -- by urging government officials to get rid of "empty words" and political jargon in speeches and documents, according to the Xinhua News Agency.

When many government officials make speeches, it's more about length than substance; they seem to be filled with platitudes and not much else.

Earlier this week, Xi urged over 900 officials and students at the Central Committee's Party School to study party theory and also learn from ancient Chinese literature to simplify their writing.

He said that the content of the speeches or documents should have "substance" and that "unhealthy writing" could lead to inefficiency.

That's because a lot of time is spent trying to figure out what things like the "theory of the three represents" and "scientific outlook on development" means and how they relates to their own situation or applies to a certain issue.

The "three represents" is a saying from Jiang Zemin, about open party membership, while the latter is from President Hu Jintao, promoting sustainable economic development that doesn't have much to do with science.

Perhaps this is Xi's way of trying to show that he is concerned about being more in touch with the masses again, and make it easier for the public to understand what the government is saying.

If officials really do follow up on his suggestion, this could lead to a revolution of sorts in terms of government transparency -- for once governments at all levels will have to really say what they mean.

And this could mean officials giving record-setting short speeches! Perhaps this also means no more TV shots of party members falling asleep either. Drat.

People Watching at the Third Ring Road

2010-05-15T21:29:00.001-07:00

Crossing the Third Ring Road on the east side of Beijing can be a drag. There is a long wait at the intersection -- at least five minutes -- and at times the bus driver will simply shut off the ignition it's that long. Being stuck there during rush hour can be an eternity.

So there are people who take advantage of the situation. Men and women, young and middle-aged, will walk along the idling cars and stick pamphlets or flyers in the car windows or door handles, creating more trash on the streets. Some men carry giant maps of China rolled up on their shoulders trying to sell them along with odd artifacts. Who sits on the road waiting for the light to turn green and then thinks, "Oh! I need a map of China! And there's a guy I can buy it from!"

Last night I saw an old man begging. He seemed to have come from the rural areas, wearing simple cotton clothing and going car to car, bowing and asking for money; but he didn't seem to be getting much luck.

My friend told me he had seen a Buddhist monk and nun doing the rounds as well, asking for donations and in return getting a card with a blessing printed on it. Who knows if they are legit or not...

Strange things happen at these intersections. You can see a lot because there's always a wait...

Strange Bureaucratic Rules

2010-05-13T07:59:00.001-07:00

Changing money here into US dollars can be a frustrating experience for those uninitiated in the world of Chinese bureaucracy.

It turns out that a person can only exchange a maximum of $500 a day, but perhaps those with guanxi can increase that daily limit to a significantly higher number.

But for us plebians, this is the amount.

The other day I took my 3,420RMB ($500) to the Bank of China. I had to fill out a simple form that included my address and telephone number. Then the teller looked at my passport, entered a few of my details into the computer and a few signatures later, got my five Benjamins.

Yesterday I got to the Bank of China too late and it had just closed, but next door China Merchants Bank was still open. I happen to have an account there and thought the process may be even easier.

However, I was completely wrong.

The teller, granted she was being very meticulous, pointed out that in my computer file showed that my passport number was different and wondered why. I had no answer for her and she corrected it, adding more details about my passport into the electronic file.

She kept asking me if I wanted $500 and I said yes, wondering why so many confirmations.

Then she asked me what the American money was for.

Why did I have to tell her? She explained that she had to write down the reason for the foreign currency exchange.

I later told a Chinese friend about this and she just explained it was because China Merchants Bank doesn't usually service foreigners so the teller was asking more questions, whereas Bank of China is more specifically geared towards foreigners, which is used to doing more foreign exchange.

She gave the analogy that all Chinese banks have a slice of pie and are not allowed to take someone else's slice, or compete for customers. For example, Agricultural Bank of China is focused on farmers and rural areas, China Merchants Bank for entrepreneurs, Bank of Communications for telecom clients, and so on.

This explains why there are so many banks in business in China, and this analogy extends to all kinds of state-owned enterprises, like steel, cars, aviation, power, telecommunications and media.

Most of these state-owned enterprises are bloated businesses, wasting a lot of money on personnel they don't really need, or not concerned about being more efficient because there is no need to compete.

And with that comes the top-heavy bureaucracy.

My friend reminded me that in order to quit her job from a state-owned newspaper, she had to get 20 signatures. Yes, 20. And many of these senior people, most past retirement age and held honorary positions, only periodically came to the office.

Why someone needs 20 signatures to quit is ridiculous.

The only explanation is TIC -- this is China.

The Need to Understand Why

2010-05-12T09:01:00.001-07:00

Another random school attack happened today in a private kindergarten in Linchang Village, Shaanxi Province, where seven children and two adults were killed by a man wielding a kitchen cleaver. After committing his bloody crime, Wu Huanming, 48, went home and killed himself. His motive is unclear.

This is the fifth attack on school children in the past three months, with at least 15 killed and dozens injured. These violent and deadly acts are increasing parents' fears and anger that not enough is being done to protect their children.

While security is supposedly being stepped up in schools, particularly at school gates, by having more adults manning the area, that is not directly addressing the issue at hand.

Dahe Bao, a prominent newspaper in Henan Province published a strong editorial on its website, blaming the misbehaviour of officials for causing these attacks.

"After being treated unfairly or being bullied by the authorities, and unable to take revenge on those government departments that are safeguarded by state security forces, killers have to let out their hatred and anger on weaker people, and campuses have become the first choice," said the editorial, with the byline of Shi Chuan.

The paper also criticized the government's attempts to censor news of the recent school attacks, possibly in a bid to downplay any perception of dysfunction in Chinese society. There were unconfirmed reports that the propaganda office forbid domestic media from continuing further coverage of the previous attacks, or exploring why these attacks were occurring.

"Any effort that attempts to maintain social stability by silencing public media is outrageously wrong," it said. "It is undeniable that the media's coverage on these incidents of bloodshed may 'inspire' potential killers, but it will educate more people by raising awareness of self-protection and spur the authorities, and this is the role that media should play in the society."

The government seems to be wanting to sweep these incidents under the carpet and not asking why this is happening and try to prevent these horrific attacks from happening again.

Whenever accidents occur such as the ones in mines or a spate of attacks like these, China does not conduct any thorough investigations or public inquiries to understand why these things happen and what recommendations should be made to avoid the same thing from occurring.

At the same time, the government is further squeezing the existence of civil society groups, like non-governmental organizations or NGOs from doing their work in China.

On Monday AIDS activist Wan Yanhai fled to the United States with his family because he could not handle the pressure government bureaus were putting on him. Tax authorities visited him to make sure his books were correct, and even the fire department came to inspect the offices, in any way to find fault with Wan's operations.

Wan, a former health official, began his work by exposing the outbreak of AIDS in Henan Province in the 1990s because poor people were selling their blood and were infected with dirty needles. He has been advocating for greater AIDS awareness and prevention since.

Then in recent years house churches are being shut down because they are not specifically government approved. The authorities pressure landlords into not renting spaces to these religious groups, who then resort to conducting services in parks and are publicly disrupted by the police.

By clamping down on a civil society, people have fewer places to turn to for help, resources or fulfill spiritual needs. It seems that all the government wants people to do is consume, consume, consume and live in a material world.

Many people are buying into that, particularly young people. But sooner or later they will be wanting more -- more than just the latest designer bag or expensive food. They may ask what is the meaning of life? What are we doing here? And they may be at a loss to understand or accept the situation. Then what?

Whether the government likes it or not, it needs to allow civil society to grow and fill in the holes the authorities don't have services for. Otherwise there may be more random senseless attacks like the one today.

Final Close of the Fiery Chapter

2010-05-11T08:28:00.001-07:00

On February 9, 2009 we all watched in shock when the new building next to the CCTV tower was on fire. People gathered near it and on the bridge going over it, filming and photographing the raging inferno.

Later a video someone took from a nearby building showed that it was indeed the massive fireworks that started the fire on the roof. That building, which was completely gutted, was supposed to house the Mandarin Oriental hotel which was set to open within weeks.

Many people lost their jobs with the hotel because of the fire.

It was very clear from the beginning that some executives from CCTV had wanted to organize a fireworks party to mark the end of the Spring Festival, and some how managed to get Grade A fireworks that were used in the Beijing Olympics and hired some people to set them off.

However, who was to blame? Was it the person who pushed the button? Was it the person who organized the party? Was it the people who prevented police from stopping them from what they were doing because it was illegal to set off such powerful fireworks in a high-density area?

Surely it wouldn't be too difficult to figure out who was responsible and then prosecute them.

But it took until over a year later to finally punish who was responsible for a building that should be a complete write-off, but instead the government is trying to salvage it despite concerns for structural safety.

On Monday, the Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People's Court sentenced 20 people for between three to seven years.

Most of the blame fell on Xu Wei, CCTV's former construction chief who pleaded guilty to ordering the illegal fireworks display and got seven years in prison for it.

The 19 others were handed sentences ranging from three to six-and-a-half years for getting industrial-grade fireworks and setting them off without the property safety permits. These people included staff from CCTV and two construction companies responsible for fire prevention and security during the fireworks display.

The government was probably hoping the length of time it took to prosecute people would allow the whole fiasco to fade. But the ugly reminder of the burned-out structure is still here, which had cost 5 billion RMB ($731 million) to build.

How they are going to salvage the building is still a mystery, as even the architects from OMA said it should be torn down.

But the government will forge ahead in trying to renovate the building, perhaps later realize it's not safe and then finally tear it down. Many buildings in China are built and then torn down in order to boost GDP figures. Maybe that's what's happening here to keep unemployment figures down?

A Xinjiang Favourite

2010-05-10T09:00:00.001-07:00

To sample some of the best regional cuisine in Beijing, you have to go to the provincial liaison offices that are spread all over the city. These compounds have not only offices where these bureaucrats try to curry favour with Beijing, but also hotels and restaurants.

The other day a Uyghur friend took me to a Xinjiang restaurant in the district office for Bazhou (巴州), which is in the middle of the giant region near the desert.

Located in Haidian District, near the universities, the restaurant can be hard to find as it's off a major street and down a series of alleys. However, the nearest landmark is the old Beijing TV tower or laobeijing dianshi ta (老北京电视塔), which apparently many taxi drivers know.

An impressive arch greets visitors to the compound, with two giant soldiers on horseback and Uyghur script on the left column, Chinese on the right.

The restaurant is in a building and once you enter and turn right, it's down the corridor to a home-style kind of restaurant, complete with checkered tablecloths.

This particular place is famous for its yogurt and we got a bowl each. For freshly-made yogurt, it had a wonderfully smooth texture and just a small spoonful of sugar was needed to sweeten it.

We also ordered liang pi, thick yellow noodles made from rice in a spicy chilli sauce, topped with finely sliced cucumber. This was a favourite dish and we later on ordered another.

The highlight was the dapanji, or "big plate chicken". It was a giant platter filled with chopped chicken, potatoes, dried red chillis, green peppers, garlic, and thick noodles to soak up the spicy sauce.

This dish was perfect for chilli heads, and so it was a touch too spicy for me. Nevertheless, the chicken and in particular the potatoes were fantastic, cooked just right.

Dumplings were also a must. These are giant dumplings that require more than one bite to finish. We had minced mutton with onions and spices, and the other was pumpkin, that wasn't too sweet.

As if that wasn't enough, we also ordered the lamb pilaf, featuring roasted lamb stir-fried with thinly sliced carrots and rice. It wasn't too oily which was a pleasant surprise. But by this time I was too full to eat more, having filled up with spicy chicken.

But my friend insisted on finishing with dessert and we had a small serving of walnut cake cut into four pieces that thankfully weren't too sweet.

I practically waddled out of the restaurant after we were finished the dinner, which only cost 187RMB ($27.38) for four.

Hopefully we can find this restaurant again on our own... as long as we can find the TV tower...

Playing by its Own Rules

2010-05-09T08:37:00.001-07:00

On paper, China's laws guarantees people the access to lawyers if they need to be defended in court.

Whether or not your defense lawyer is good, is another story.

However, now the government is being picky about who lawyers can defend after it permanently disbarred two for trying to defend members of the Falun Gong.

The Beijing Bureau of Justice said Tang Jitian, 42, and Liu Wei, 33, had their licenses revoked for "disrupting order in the court and interfering with proper litigation procedure," according to a notice on the bureau's website.

They were accused of walking out of the court proceedings when Liu and Tang say they were filmed illegally in court and protested to the judge, but their protestations were ignored. The bureau says they failed to follow the judge's instructions.

Although Liu has yet to receive an official notice from the bureau, she plans to appeal, but doesn't expect much change.

"I don't think there is much hope. If the government acts illegally, it acts illegally all the way through," she said in an interview with Reuters.

"We will try every avenue. If we don't succeed, we'll have to accept it. But I believe someday, there will be a reversal."

Liu and Tang belong to a loose group of lawyers who are walking a fine line when they take on provoking cases in order to challenge Chinese laws and official decisions.

There were already only a few lawyers willing to represent Falun Gong practitioners, especially after they were outlawed by the government in 1999 when they managed to surreptitiously form a giant protest at Zhongnanhai, the Communist Party's headquarters in downtown Beijing, shocking senior government officials.

The legal system in China does not follow the rule of law -- it isn't decided independently by judges who have seen the evidence and heard the arguments for an against -- but by the government that decides who is guilty and who isn't.

And now it wants to further manipulate the system by barring lawyers from defending people who by law must have access to a lawyer.

How is this in any way legally progressive? For a country that is eager to be accepted on the world stage for its economic might, it sure is insecure when it comes to the law. It seems to have more to hide than defend.

Picture of the Day: Empty Campaign Slogans

2010-05-08T09:02:00.001-07:00

These posters in various sizes and colours are all over Chaoyang District, which is on the east side of Beijing.

It shows a cartoon girl called Luo Baby jumping up for joy and exclaiming, "Civilized Chaoyang with Magnificent Me!"

Why does the district government feel compelled to spend taxpayer dollars on these silly posters that make no sense? And why didn't they hire an English proofreader to tell them the translation doesn't work either?

What qualifies Luo Baby to be magnificent anyway?

Apparently the district website talks about this campaign, but fails to explain the aim of it and how long it will last.

It's just a 21st century version of Chinese propaganda slogans that used to be written on brick walls in Mao's days, but now complete with cartoon figures and vague messages.

There were similar posters up before and during the Olympics about how Beijing was striving to be civilized and harmonious.

And two years later the government still feels compelled to continue shoving the message down our throats. But how can anyone take a cartoon girl seriously, especially when her name is Luo Baby?

Unless the government is catering to anime fans out there...

Anxious for World Praise

2010-05-06T08:56:00.001-07:00

The 2010 Shanghai Expo opened to great fanfare on the evening of April 30, complete with a massive fireworks display and many state leaders in attendance, the most prominent of whom was French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who is desperate to win political points with China now that Sino-French relations are back on track.

During the live broadcast, President Hu Jintao and his wife dressed in a fuchsia suit, stood in front of a massive blazing red background as they greeted state leaders one by one for a photo op. Couldn't someone have told Mrs Hu to wear something more appropriate colour-wise?

There was a lot of news about how more money was spent on the Expo than on the Beijing Olympics -- $45 billion versus $40 billion. While both numbers are mind-boggling, most of the money was spent on infrastructure in both cities and hopefully Shanghai will be an improved city after the six-month event.

However, the biggest challenge now is dealing with the hordes of people on the site.

The first three days were horrific for organizers, with massive lineups. There were reports that people had to wait four hours to get into the UK pavilion, probably because of its unique building, made of flexible rods each containing seeds. The rods move with the breeze like a giant fluff ball from far away. Afterwards the pavilion will be dismantled and the seeds distributed to schools and universities across China to study.

The opening three days were also a headache because they were the May Day holiday, the only three days people have off... until the October National Day holiday, when there will be another crush of people. Then there is also the pride factor of having been one of the first few hundred thousand people to have visited the Expo.

Apparently Chinese state media are not allowed to report on the negative aspects of the Expo, and so the are left to report on how Shanghai residents will benefit from the Expo, rather than those who were forced off their land to make way for this event; how people made friends while waiting in line; what constitutes a mascot; and how passports are the hot items at the exposition.

The New York Times had a field day with its article on Chinglish in Shanghai, how the city is trying to fix the translations on signs to avoid embarrassment. The slide show is all the more amusing. It's a reminder of how Beijing was trying to spruce itself up before the Games two years earlier.

And speaking of the Olympics, the pavilion for Beijing was already panned because the capital couldn't think of any other way to present itself than to revive the five Olympics mascots, Bei Bei, Jing Jing, Huan Huan, Ying Ying and Ni Ni to work their magic again. The theme of the Expo is "Better City, Better Life", about looking forward to the future of cities, rather than back. Besides, there are hardly any traces of Olympic fever in Beijing anymore. Whoever thought of bringing back the Olympics mascots should be sacked.

Then there was criticism in the Chinese media about how the United States didn't put much effort into its pavilion, as US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton having to push it through at the last minute, because the US had just missed the deadline on confirming its participation.

She had to drum up sponsors as since 1991 the country's presence in expositions can only rely on corporate and private funding. This again puzzled the Chinese, who believe these pavilions are a matter of national pride and no cost should be spared to present a good image of the country.

Then for most people in developed countries, they have lost interest in expos and with one happening practically every other year it's hard to keep track.

China is so anxious to showcase itself to the world, but the audience doesn't know what to make of it. On the one hand they hear reports of China's rise on the global stage, and yet on the other they hear about the severe measures it takes on curbing human rights and freedoms for the sake of national security, sending chills down their backs.

While it is unfair to measure up China according to western values, how else can you define it relative to what you already know?

Which is why China is so anxious for the Expo to be a success and hope its negative aspects will be forgotten.

Now if they can only figure out how to ease the massive lineups for everything, that will be a great accomplishment in itself.

The Last Farmer

2010-05-05T07:51:00.001-07:00

The Lius who we stayed with when we hiked up the Great Wall live a simple life.

Liu senior goes to bed around 8pm and wakes up at 4:30am and starts hiking up part of the same route we went to tend to his fields. It's a series of terraced plots only a few metres in width. He grows corn and at the moment, the corn has already been harvested, but he has cleared the plots of the dried up stalks and will probably move them down to be composted. He also raises several plump chickens and roosters, feeding them corn meal twice a day.

He has lived in this farmhouse all his life, his family having lived here for around six generations, back to the Qing Dynasty. Apart from possessing a mobile phone, installing electricity at home, a freezer and a few modern toys for his grandson, everything else seems old and worn.

As there is no running water, there is a giant vat where they use water to wash their hands, faces and to cook with. I'm not sure where the water comes from, but it was safe enough to drink. Liu senior would use the small plastic red ladle and put some water in the enamel basin and use a bar of soap to wash his hands crusted with dirt, then splash his face and run his wet fingers through his hair. He would then dry himself off with a hand towel hanging on the rack holding the basin.

He has probably never had a proper bath or shower before.

Over dinner we talked about the differences between country and city life. While Liu's wife claimed she preferred more excitement, Beijing was too much for her, with so many people and cars. She said she only came into the capital whenever she needed to do errands there, which sounded rare. Liu senior hasn't been in Beijing in over 10 years.

Liu senior is 60 years old, but tilling the fields has made him look older, but his body is as fit as a 25 year old. His only vice is smoking, which he does quite often, and beers with guests. He can't handle baijiu, or Chinese spirits.

The Lius obviously live a very frugal life and they are representative of the rest of the village here, and perhaps many other rural areas in China, where some are much better off, others worse.

It is this sector of people that the Chinese government is depending on to spend their hard-earned money to increase domestic consumption.

However much the Lius have scrimped and saved, they are not going to be splashing out on refrigerators, microwaves or tractors anytime soon. They have other things to save for, including the dreaded possibility of medical costs, not only for them but also for their family should anyone get sick.

Liu senior likes to think that it's safe to raise a child on a farm, but the reality is that his grandson, although only three years old, will be academically behind his urban peers. In China, parents with children his age in the city are already stressed out in getting accepted into the right kindergarten that will help them onto the path of a good university.

There's no such pressure here on the farm, where there isn't even alarm over the child's dirty hands and clothes.

The Lius live a life completely different from people in the city, and yet they are only a few hours' drive apart from each other.

The differences are so stark after 30 years of reform and opening up, and they will probably become even more pronounced in the future.

Liu senior probably knows he will be the last generation to live on this farm, as his son now has a hostel and restaurant.

Regardless, Liu senior must be pleased with how his family has developed and hopefully they will continue to have some kind of link to the land they have depended on for generations.

The Great Wall Adventure Part 3

2010-05-04T08:44:00.001-07:00

Since we took so long to get to Jinshanling, we thought we would hike back from Simatai to Jinshanling before going home.

But after the arduous hike in the wee hours to the watchtower and back, I didn't think I would be able to hike another 8K and suggested we get back to Beijing instead.

Our gracious hostess Mrs Liu told us how to get back home -- by catching the 9am bus to Miyun (密云) which would cost 6RMB ($0.87) each, then the 980 bus back to Beijing for about 10RMB each.

Liu senior charges between 200-300RMB ($29.29-$43.94) per person to stay overnight and we gave him a bit more, making him a bit embarrassed by the extra cash. But they really had been hospitable and not to mention energetic guides.

Before we left, I took some pictures of her with her naughty grandson, who was awake and precocious as ever, pulling on her ear. She and her grandson led us down the paved roadway that led to her son's restaurant and hostel, the Dongpo Family Hostel.

It has opened for a few years and business is relatively good, with hikers coming down the wall and eating at the restaurant, or even staying overnight.

When we arrived, a young Chinese couple had just finished breakfast and were about to go on their hike.

We chatted with Liu and his wife for a bit, and she proudly showed us their guest book filled comments from people from all over the world, including the United States, Canada, Greece, France and the UK.

We also added our comments, particularly about "Super Geezer" and then Liu's wife took us back on the road towards the entrance to Simatai. Being handed over from one person to another felt like we were refugees fleeing to safety and they were our trusted contacts.

Walking along the "wall" next to a reservoir was not the same as what we had experienced earlier in the morning.

The path was clear and neat, with signs periodically saying, "Be civilized visitor, set up the ecosystem scenery together!" (sic), or "Appreciate the Great Wall lovely view, do not forget the fire is heartless" (sic).

It was already 8:30am and groups of people were starting their climb up, with hikers of all ages from kids to the elderly. I didn't know how far they were going, but I doubted them would go far.

At the bottom we found the parking lot where we waited for the bus to Miyun.

A young man tried to take advantage of my being an out-of-towner by trying to persuade me to get a ride in his car than wait for the bus, but I held my ground.

Around 8:50am the bus arrived and we got on. It was like one of those travel coaches, though a bit run down inside. A woman collected our money and just after 9am the bus made several stops along the way for over an hour, and I pitied those who had to stand for an hour on the bus.

Then we heard the woman announce it was the stop for the 980 bus and we made our way out. We walked another 50 metres before seeing a giant line of people climbing onto one of two buses that filled up quickly and left.

We got onto the third bus in line around 10:40am and again got a seat. This bus wound its way around Miyun before heading onto the highway. It seemed like Miyun was like a suburb, with pretty uniform streets, things looking relatively orderly, apartments a few years old. The place also had its own public transportation system with small buses that didn't seem to adequately serve its customers.

The bus passed a giant outdoor fruit market, the stalls covered with large umbrellas, and the public health bureau of Miyun, an official-looking building furnished with lions to guard the gate. The middle of the city has the "Great Wall Roundabout", complete with the Chinese characters (长城环岛) sculpted from bushes.

Finally we got onto the highway, but our bus had trouble shifting gears and I prayed it wouldn't break down. Thankfully it didn't, and eventually made it to the bus terminus at Dongzhimen Wai at around 12:30pm.

Walking out onto the streets of Beijing and back into my apartment for a shower in 48 hours was a surreal experience. In the early morning we had hiked up a hill, eaten breakfast in a simple farmhouse with no running water, and now we were back in civilization where cars were constantly honking and people everywhere.

As we waited at an intersection to cross the street, a man approached us with a card. "Mutianyu?" he asked, pointing to the card that said Beijing to Mutianyu (慕田峪), another part of the Great Wall.

I said no thanks and we cross the street.

He had no idea where we had just been.

The Great Wall Adventure Part 2

2010-05-03T08:41:00.000-07:00

Sleeping on a kang is a trying experience for the uninitiated. It's basically a rock hard flat surface on which a bedding is put on top as the mattress. Then each person has their own pillow, not the fluffy, feathery kind, but filled with beans, and a quilt to keep warm.

It was only in the middle of the night did I realize that I should use an extra quilt as another mattress layer and use yet another quilt (there were many in this room) as a softer pillow option. Sleeping on your side on a kang is virtually impossible too so you have to sleep on your back.

And then on top of that, knowing you have to wake up at 4am makes it even harder to fall asleep. We could only sleep very lightly, hearing the sounds of the farm around us, including an early wake-up call from a rooster at 3am.

At 4am on the dot, we got a rap on the window from Liu senior. We quickly got dressed, went to the outhouse for a pee, and then with two flashlights, headed out in the darkness to the highest watchtower on the Great Wall in the area called 望京楼 (wang 4 jing4 lou 2), or tower with the view of Beijing, because on a clear day you can see the capital very clearly.

However, in the dark I could see there were clouds in the sky covering the moon which made a clear view of the sunrise questionable. But we headed up anyway.

Liu senior led the way, hands behind his back, one hand holding a flashlight to show us the way. He offered to take my two bottles of water, putting them in his coat pockets. "If you need a drink of water, just tell me," he said.

We first crossed the other farmhouses in the area, their dogs barking at us; we ignored them and continued. I asked Liu senior about the paved road we walked on, and he said it was constructed a year ago thanks to the local government.

But then we broke away from the path and started walking up past terraced plots, then we started hitting a dirt trail covered with rough pebbles that got steeper. Once I thought we would get relief from the incline, Liu senior would change direction and continue up the steep path. "Are you tired?" he asked. I politely replied I was OK and drank some water.

The sky started to get a bit lighter and I worried we wouldn't get up there in time. "How much longer?" I asked. He replied 20 minutes more and pointed up to the brick building towering over us. However, we were now approaching the steepest part of the hike and I started to fatigue, the only one of the three to breathe heavily from the cardio workout. I also began feeling dizzy, and then remembered that we hadn't eaten anything and yet here we had been hiking for over an hour.

Our climb got steeper, now having to use the nearby trees as support, as rocks loosened from the ground and at times made it hard for me to get my footing. By now dawn was coming and we didn't need the flashlights, but I was getting more and more tired and unused to the almost literal climbing we had to do towards the end. My friend had to help me up in the last stretch.

Once we were standing at the top, it was an amazing sight. Far out in the distance was the farmhouse we had come from, and it felt like we were practically on top of the world with no one else around except the three of us. Liu senior warned us to be careful as we wandered around the watchtower (it is closed inside), as it is practically on a cliff. He crouched down at the base of the tower and lit his morning cigarette.

From our view, we could see the wall stretching over the hills like a giant fin on a dragon's back. Imagine being one of those peasants recruited to build the wall, hauling up those giant stone bricks and mortar, or the soldiers who had to hike up there to their stations to be on the lookout for invaders.

The wall here is the real thing, unlike the part fixed up at Badaling or even Mutianyu; here the bricks are rough. Though it looks like some fresh mortar from a few years ago was applied to the brick tower to ensure they stayed in place, it pretty much looks like the original.

"The sun is coming out!" Liu senior exclaimed at around 5:30am, and we watched in the east as the sun struggled to shine through the thick layer of cloud. Nonetheless, it created a dramatic picture of perspective, with the layers of mountains getting progressively lighter in distance like a watercolour.

It was also wonderful seeing the wall during the spring, with cherry and peach blossoms in bloom.

After taking a number of pictures, and soaking in the amazing view, before 6am we made our way back down the same way we went up.

This time we had to keep our balance going down especially the steep part, and definitely relying on the trees as support. At times it meant sitting down and then extending our legs to reach the next part of the ground, or making calculated slides down the dirt path. Liu senior led the way. How he made is way without the need to balance was bewildering. He even carried our empty water bottles for us, while we used whatever was nearby to hold onto for support.

I continued taking pictures around us, and when we got towards the bottom of the hill I looked back at the watchtower, amazed that we had just climbed up so high.

Soon we reached the plots of land and the farmhouses, the chickens and roosters stirring, farmers carrying giant batches of dead cornstalks and dumping them in a pile, a mule waking up, and dogs barking.

When we made it back to the farmhouse, Liu senior's wife was already cooking breakfast for us at 7am. As I ate a meal of tofu sheets with cucumber, stir-fried cabbage with pork fat, peanuts and potato julienne stir-fried with dried chilis and rice, I couldn't help constantly looking up at the watchtower we had gone up to and marveling at the feat we had accomplished.

I really had climbed the Great Wall and was a bona fide Chinese.

The Great Wall Adventure Part 1

2010-05-02T06:41:00.001-07:00

Yesterday my friend and I made plans to hike the Great Wall from Jinshanling to Simatai to a farmer's house to stay overnight and then hike up early in the morning to the highest watch tower in the area to catch the sunrise before heading back to Beijing.

However, the best-laid plans can go awry.

We started off relatively late, around 12:30pm and tried to catch a bus going to Chengde, a city in Hebei Province that borders Beijing, as Jinshanling is along the way.

Two buses going to Chengde flew past us as they were already full so we rushed over to get the next one.

Turns out there was no rush because most of the people had already gotten on the two previous minibuses and so we sat there for over an hour waiting as a group of guys tried to drum up business. Some prospective customers who were interested in going to Chengde were turned off by the price (85RMB/$12.45). The men kept shouting "Chengde" until they were hoarse and it didn't bring much results until finally we headed off, still trying to get more customers along the way and managed to snag about three more.

Then traffic was very heavy -- we were going in the same direction as where the 2010 Beijing Auto Show is being held until today and car fans were rushing to Shunyi to the International Exhibition Center. As a result we crawled along Jingmi road until we finally got onto the highway. By now it was 3:30pm and this was leaving us less time to hike on the wall.

While we were on the road, one of the guys hustling business in a purple shirt, sat across from us and either kept calling his friend or his friend kept calling him, constantly updating each other on where they were. It got very annoying until all of a sudden our bus was pulled to the side of the road and stopped.

The next thing I saw in the window was the guy in the purple shirt and the driver had run across the highway to a coach that had also stopped on the highway -- not even on the right side -- and they switched positions with the coach driver. It was so bizarre not to mention dangerous.

Finally around 5pm we arrived at the Jinshanling Tourist area and rest stop and we got off; the rest of the passengers were given a 15 minute-break before getting back on the bus. We went to the restrooms and then got more water and asked the woman working at the cashier if there were small vans that would take us to the base of the wall at Jinshanling because our friend had told us that was how he got there.

She said there were none and we asked another clerk working at the tourist desk. There are no vans, he confirmed, unless we wanted to walk another 5km to the spot. "You either need to drive there on your own or ask the bus to drop you off there," he said, uncomfortably dressed in a military-like uniform complete with a sash across his chest that said he was from the tourist information desk. We wondered why there weren't any bus lines that specifically went to this area so that it wasn't so difficult for those without cars (the vast majority) to get there.

Nevertheless, it was a bizarre situation to be in, not really knowing where we are and what to do since it was getting late.

We then called Liu Hanqiang, our contact who helped us arrange our farmhouse stay with his father. He eventually came to pick us up in a small van driven by his friend, as he himself only had a motorcycle.

Sitting in the front were two young girls around four or five years old who chatted and sang non-stop amongst themselves making for amusing entertainment. We drove down an unpaved narrow path that winded around a stream and lots of trees and boulders. Finally there was a crudely-paved road and then we saw the small village in sight on a hill and were let off.

We met Liu's father, a farmer with a weather-worn face. My friend affectionately calls him "Super Geezer" as he has no trouble hiking up the hill -- with his hands behind his back -- and doesn't need a drop of water either.

His wife made us a simple meal of scrambled eggs with tomatoes, crushed cucumbers with garlic and vinegar, dense tofu and cucumber julienne, and stir-friend green peppers with mostly fatty pork. Oh yes and peanuts roasted with peppercorns.

The elder Liu insisted on drinking beer with me and luckily brought out two small glasses. Every time he took a sip he wanted us to clink glasses and after two bottles, he probably drank one and a half of them.

Liu's son, a precocious three-year-old, also joined us, and wasn't too shy once we said hello.

Apart from growing corn, Liu senior raised chickens and they would wander around the yard, as free range as you can get. Apparently their kungpao chicken is the best, but I didn't get to sample any this time around.

Even though it was only 8:30pm, we had to try to get some sleep as Liu senior would wake us up at 4am to take us to the highest watch tower in the area.

We settled in a new "wing" of the home that was added two months ago. There was a long bed called a kang, that is heated in the winter by an outdoor fire, with bedding on top. However, the bed was so hard, and the pillows filled with beans that it was practically impossible to fall asleep.

Oh and did I mention there was no running water and an outhouse for a bathroom?

We were kind of roughing it, but the air was clean and quiet setting. Best of all was the amazing scenery of the Great Wall right in front of the house.

Time Reveals the Power of Influence

2010-04-30T20:53:00.001-07:00

Time magazine has released the results of its 2010 Time 100 Poll. Some 200 nominations were made and people were asked to cast their votes online.

Mir-Hossein Mousavi, Iran's opposition leader, was in top spot with 1,492,879 votes, followed by blogger, writer and racecar driver Han Han with 873,220. Guess his fans must be pretty pleased with the outcome.

Interestingly, the next Chinese on the list is human rights activist Liu Xiaobo who is currently jailed for 11 years for "inciting subversion of state power." He's just below singer Susan Boyle, but three spots up from talk-show host Conan O'Brien.

US President Barack Obama is No. 21, and his wife Michelle is No. 37. She is just in front of satirist Stephen Colbert.

Then it isn't until No. 50 do we see Chongqing Party chief Bo Xilai, and then at a lowly No. 138 is Vice Premier Wang Qishan. Interestingly, Wang beat out US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner at No. 143.

Random Attacks Send Frightening Message

2010-04-30T06:06:00.001-07:00

A series of copycat killings, where men have attacked elementary-school children with knives and a hammer are creating fear among parents and people around the country.

Over a month ago on March 23, Zheng Minsheng, 42, attacked children in the school yard with a knife in the southeastern city of Nanping, killing eight students. Initial reports said he was mentally ill, but some media said he was not mentally unstable.

Legal expert He Weifang, a former Peking University law professor and civil rights advocate, said Zheng's trial was over unusually swiftly.

Coincidentally he was executed on Wednesday, the same day as an attack in Leizhou, Guangdong, where 33-year-old Chen Kanging broke into a primary school and wounded 15 children and a teacher with a knife. Apparently Chen was a former teacher (not at that school) who had been on sick leave since 2006 for mental problems.

Then yesterday in Taixing, Jiangsu Province, an unemployed man called Xu Yuyuan, 47, stormed a classroom and with a 20-cm long knife, wounded 29 children and a teacher. Two teachers and a security guard failed to stop him. So far no motive has been given.

Apparently Xu had been an insurance salesman until he was fired in 2001 and has not had a job since.

And then today, 45-year old farmer Wang Yonglai wielding a hammer broke down the gates of a school with his motorcycle in Weifang, Shandong Province. He tried to attack children using the hammer and struck the teacher who tried to block him. He then grabbed two children and doused himself with gasoline and tried to light himself on fire. Two teachers managed to rescue the children before he set himself alight and died.

While the Chinese media and authorities are quick to blame these incidents on mental illness, it also shows the desperation of people who feel they have no hope with the ever-increasing gap between the rich and the poor, the lack of social services and social injustice.

Nevertheless, there is also the serious problem of mental illness in China, how it is mostly left untreated due to the stigma attached to having psychological issues.

In a Telegraph article from April last year, Huang Yueqin, director of the National Center for Mental Health estimates there are over 100 million Chinese with mental illness.

The report says only recently has the Chinese government recognized the scale of the problem.

"The government did not pay attention to the public's mental health over the past 50 years, and did not invest much in treatment or care," Huang says.

"However, the current five-year plan (for 2007-2012) has included mental illness treatment as a major field of research, which is a big step forward," she said.

While Beijing will build six new mental health clinics to treat 150,000 people in the city, where as there are currently only 6,900 psychiatric beds, there needs to be more qualified people to treat the patients.

Huang says because psychiatry was outlawed during the Cultural Revolution, from the late 1960s, Maoist thought attributed any mental illness to an incorrect appreciation of the class struggle. Apparently many mentally-ill patients were taken from hospitals and sent to labour camps because of their "counterrevolutionary" behaviour.

As a result, currently the entire country has only 4,000 qualified psychiatrists and 15,000 doctors working in psychiatric hospitals. "There is no psychiatry, psychology or psychotherapy students in medical school," explains Huang. "You need to qualify as a doctor first, and then subscribe to a course in mental treatment."

While she claims there is no link between mental illness and the growing wealth disparity, one has to wonder why there is such a spate of attacks that are happening one after another.

Each of the individual attackers' motives may be different, but it seems all are taking extreme measures -- attacking and killing innocent people -- in order to draw attention to their plight.

They are trying to say something, which is beyond our comprehension.

Haibao Versus Gumby

2010-04-29T07:31:00.001-07:00

Just days before the 2010 Shanghai Expo is set to start, an uproar has erupted about how many things are plagiarized, causing embarassment for the organizers.

First off is that Haibao, the blue official mascot, who seems to have a resemblance to Gumby, the green clay character who has a series of adventures with his friends in toyland.

An NPR reporter by the name of Louisa Lim gained instant fame after she accused the organizers at a recent press conference for plagiarizing Gumby.

The designer of Haibao, Wu Yongjian had said that the creature is inspired by the Chinese character for person or people called ren (人）with a cowlick on top. For some foreigners, though, one look at Haibao immediately reminded them of Gumby.

Then there's the China pavilion.

It's this giant red temple-like structure whose roof is an inverted pyramid and stands on four pillars that seems to tower everything else nearby. Called 'The Crown of the East", it seems very ... square and rigid, red and imposing. Sound familiar?

However, critics claim its design is very similar to the Japan pavilion designed by Tadao Ando that was presented at the 1992 Expo in Seville, Spain.

Ni Yang, a deputy chief designer who is also the deputy dean of the Architectural Design Institute at South China University told the Guangzhou-based New Express newspaper was interviewed by a media outlet from Guangdong denied the accusation.

"There are several differences between his and my work," Ni said, referring to Ando's design. "His work was for the purpose of decoration, but mine is a building. The style of the pavilion is widely used in architecture design, so that is not the creation of Tadao Ando."

Another architect, Cui Tong, who is chief designer at the Institute of Architecture Design and Research at the China Academy of Sciences said the design of the pavilion is inspired by a traditional Chinese style, suggesting that the plagiarism accusations are being pointed in the wrong direction.

And finally... the theme song for the Expo, "Right Here Waiting for you 2010" which was sung by a number of artists, including martial arts whiz/actor/singer Jackie Chan, was found to be practically identical to a Japanese song called "Stay the Way You Are" sung by Mayo Okamoto released in 1997.

On this count organizers went beet red as the song was immediately pulled off the airwaves last week citing copyright concerns and has not been heard of since.

While it's great that Shanghai is hosting this Exposition, one would assume the organizers would try to put a bit more effort into striving for originality.

After all, isn't that what the Expo is about?

Picture of the Day: Creative License Plates

2010-04-28T08:46:00.001-07:00

Just before and during the Beijing Olympics, draconian measures were taken to ease traffic congestion.

It was very simple -- license plates ending in odd numbers were allowed on the roads on one day, even the next, which kept 50 percent of the cars off the streets.

It was also extremely easy for police to crack down on offenders.

While car owners complained about the restrictions, they loved having no traffic when it was their time to drive, and hated commuting in public transit otherwise. It also significantly helped clear the air.

There were calls to keep some kind of driving restriction in place after the Games, so the municipal government came up with a strange regulation so that at any given time 20 percent of cars are off the roads. That means drivers can't use their cars one day during the weekday. The rules are as follows:

Monday 1 & 6
Tuesday 2 & 7
Wednesday 3 & 8
Thursday 4 & 9
Friday 5 & 0

So for example on Monday, license plates ending with either a "1" or a "6" are not allowed on the roads.

On weekends it's a free for all, which means traffic can get really bad in the evenings.

So today on my way to the office I spied a car that had a license plate with "1" as the last digit, but if you look more closely, there is a faint outline of what looks like glue to make the shape of a "4".

Someone is trying to get away with driving their car everyday... have the authorities caught on to this yet?

Municipal Magnificence

2010-04-27T07:03:00.001-07:00

The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) says in a new report that Beijing is the top Chinese city for its living environment, and that it is well on its way to becoming a "world city."

Somehow the Chinese capital trumped Shanghai and Hong Kong for its "living environment."

The report defines "living environment" as shopping, recreational, and educational facilities, as well as environment.

While Beijing lost to Hong Kong in terms of shopping (shouldn't Shanghai be second, not Beijing?), the Chinese capital also lost to Macau in terms of recreational facilities. So recreation means gambling?

Beijing also got top marks for its transportation which surely raises eyebrows, as Hong Kong and Shanghai seem to have better public transit systems. On Saturday around 6pm, I was stuck in a traffic jam with cars inching along on Dongzhimenwai Dajie to get home. How is that good transport? I put it down to all 4 million cars on the road at the same time, as there are no vehicle restrictions on weekends.

It should be of no surprise that Beijing didn't do well in the "green" category.

And finally in terms of "city competitiveness", Hong Kong was first, followed by Shenzhen, Shanghai, Beijing, Taipei, Guangzhou, Tianjin, Kaohsiung, Dalian and Qingdao.

With the criteria listed above, how could Beijing have come out on top overall?

It either edged the other cities out just by a point of two, or the report results were rigged.

You be the judge.

Finally Shuffled Out

2010-04-26T17:27:00.001-07:00

Over the weekend, the New York Times reported that Wang Lequan, the Party Secretary in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region had been replaced with his counterpart from Hunan Province, Zhang Chunxian. Wang, 65, was appointed as deputy secretary of the political and legislative affairs committee of the Chinese Communist Party's central committee.

Wang had governed Xinjiang for 15 years, and with Hu's support, ruled with an iron fist that culimated in the riots in Urumqi on July 5 last year. He was known as the "stability secretary" as he claimed stability was the top priority... at all costs. So it's interesting to find him replaced just months before the first anniversary of the riots.

However, his exceptionally long tenure also resulted in cronyism by Wang and his cohorts.

Tom Cliff from the Australian National University's Contemporary China Centre writes that during that time Wang replaced cadres from his home province of Shandong in top positions of prefecture-level governments throughout Xinjiang.

One example which now has the status of legend among the Han community tells how he forced farmers near Korla to purchase greenhouse construction materials from his brother Wang Leyi's company rather than obtaining them locally. The materials were shipped out from Shandong and ended up costing twice as much as the local equivalent. He then ordered his cronies in the prefectural government to legislate that each greenhouse must be a minimum acreage which was 6-10 times greater than what the farmers could afford to finance a bank loan for, and for the Bank of China to grant the loans with no questions asked.

Consequently, the farmers all went bust, the bank lost out and the price of winter vegetables in the nearby city of Korla was pushed even higher. For the people of Korla, this was a tangible example of official corruption, greed and incompetence directly affecting their own standard of living, as well as their own inability to do anything about it.

According to Cliff, there was hardly any media attention about this partly because of the Shandong clique, but also because exposing it could threaten stability.

Meanwhile, Han Chinese living in Xinjiang feel they are dealing with the greatest inconveniences and restrictions on freedom than anywhere else in the country, and yet the authorities cannot guarantee their safety on the street.

Although Wang has been replaced, Zhang is not necessarily an expert in dealing with ethnic unrest. He has, however, been successful at economic development, which gives a hint of what's to come -- a resentment of a different kind.

Seems like the Chinese government is hardly interested in tackling the fundamental issue at hand, which is allowing Uyghurs to practice their cultural traditions without government interference.

10 Years of Music

2010-04-25T08:05:00.001-07:00

The China Philharmonic Orchestra is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year and is marking the occasion with three concerts, the first of which was tonight at the Poly Theater.

And Lang Lang was invited to perform, which resulted in sold-out tickets, and a practically full house complete with video cameras recording the event for CCTV.

I managed to get a great seat -- four rows from the stage, on the left side.

Audiences can be notorious about sitting in seats that aren't theirs and as I sat there waiting for the concert to start, a girl accused me of sitting in the wrong seat and so I moved out, only to realize I was sitting in the right place all along and pointed this out to her. She didn't even apologize for the misplaced accusation, but I wasn't about to let that bother me too much.

Conductor Yu Long has returned for the concert too, as he is now based in Shanghai. He looked the same, with the slick back hair, rotund figure filling out a tuxedo with tails.

The program began with Tchaikovsky's Polonaise, a rousing and energetic performance with plenty of percussion and playfulness.

Then the grand piano was rolled out and so did Lang Lang, resplendent in a shiny charcoal suit with a dark shirt that had a shiny detail on the front. He continues to have a spiky hairdo and appearing gracious in front of the adoring audience.

Before he began, the composer of Piano Concerto No. 1 in B flat minor, Op. 23 came out. The bald man in his 50s surnamed Chen was dressed in what looked like a leather Chinese jacket and pants. He quickly explained that he was the composer of the Olympics song You and Me to which he received warm applause.

He then said that he had spent some 30 years in France, and 20 in China and while he was thrilled the young Lang Lang was playing his piece that debuted in New York's Carnegie Hall in February, he wasn't sure if the pianist was ready to bare his soul for music. However, he was pleasantly surprised that the artist has matured and understands his work.

And as it was the 10th anniversary, he expressed his honour at his work being chosen for this event and hoped that the audience would enjoy it.

This was the first time I saw Lang relying on the music to perform, but it didn't hinder him in any way. It started off sounding Japanesey, similar to the soundtrack to Lost in Translation, with light background sound that was very reflective and restrained that eventually crescendoed into a dramatic climax and then like a wave eventually receded into the distance. It was like soundtrack music that was very contemporary and yet with strong Asian touches.

When the performance was over, Yu and Lang called the composer to come back onto the stage and finally after several rounds of applause, Lang returned to the piano and gave an encore of Bach's Precipitato from Sonata No. 7 in B flat Major. I'm actually quite familiar with this piece, as it is one that Canadian pianist Glenn Gould had recorded. Lang broke loose, playing it with his signature dramatic flourishes which of course scored him even more points from the appreciative crowd.

After a 15-minutes intermission, the last piece, again Tchaikovsky's Francesca da Rimini, Op. 32 was performed. It required a full orchestra again, complete with percussion and was also full of energy and towards the end, the entire orchestra was silent save for a violinist, viola player and cellist, which gradually added the rest of the orchestra for an exciting finish.

There was lots of kudos for Yu, who has pretty much made the China Philharmonic what it is today. Not only his musical knowledge, but also his passion have led the orchestra to perform some interesting pieces and even taking the group to Rome to perform for the Pope.

Lang is obviously the next generation's musical leader and hopefully he will also inspire others to develop China's music scene and especially nurture its own musicians and composers to give a voice to the country today.

Testing Patience for Food

2010-04-24T07:58:00.001-07:00

China is trying to build up its tertiary industry, mostly related to the service sector. And from what I can see in the hospitality industry here, much needs to be done.

Restaurants that don't have any foreign management or direction have no concept of what good service is.

And when I look at service, it's not just the wait staff, but the entire dining experience from the moment you walk through the door to the time you leave.

In general many restaurants have decent wait staff who greet patrons when they come in, seat them as quickly as possible and give them menus. Sometimes as you start to read the menus they are standing right by you waiting to take your order which is a bit too eager, but the right idea.

However, the next step is the kitchen. There is no coordination in the kitchen in terms of getting dishes out on time or in sequence. Sometimes a main course will arrive before the appetizers or cold dishes do. Most of the time if there is more than one person eating, one person gets their dish first and almost finishes eating it before the second or third person gets their order. How can that be? Isn't there any concept that if people are eating together at a table they should be receiving their orders at around the same time?

There's a restaurant just across from my office called "Relax" in green letters. However, despite the cavernous setting with high ceilings, exposed brick and pipes, and trendy background music, this place is hardly stress-free.

They have a number of dishes on the menu, and for those wanting a set lunch on a budget, there is a selection of about four or five dishes for 28RMB ($4.09) and for 2RMB more, you can have coffee, tea or a soft drink.

Over a week ago I went there and ordered the barbecue pork dish with a few vegetables, rice, a bowl of soup and a small vegetable appetizer. I did get the soup (lukewarm) and the appetizer but then waited and waited... over 20 minutes for the barbecue pork. I asked the waitress to check up on my order and it wasn't until then did she tell me that they were still roasting the pork so would I like to eat something else instead?

Why is there no communication between the kitchen and the waitstaff? And why isn't the barbecue pork already prepared before the lunch time rush?

So I changed my order to chicken instead and that took another 10 minutes... even though the chicken was served cold. Why does it have to take so long?

I gave the restaurant another shot today and tried to order the barbecue pork again. I told the waitress that last time it wasn't available, but she told me it was.

After having my soup (this time hot) and appetizer, I waited, and waited... another 20 minutes went by and I asked her to check my order. She decided to complete other tasks before telling me the kitchen was almost finished roasting the pork and it would take another five to six minutes.

I checked my watch. Ten minutes later I hounded her again and she said one minute more.

She was lucky it arrived 30 seconds later or I would have walked out.

The wait staff and kitchen need to be trained to understand that people want their food quickly, especially during lunchtime. That's mostly because of time, but also because people's blood sugar levels are low and they easily get irritable.

It's all fine and great for restaurants to have the staff all stand in front of the restaurant in the mornings or before dinner service and chant slogans or do exercises, but what about giving them training on what makes good service? Good food is only part of it, the other is service.

Perhaps when China starts instituting tips in restaurants will we start seeing good service. Until then, it's "服务员!!! Fuwuyuan!!!"

Crackdown on Monks and Porn

2010-04-23T08:15:00.001-07:00

The Associated Press have reported that the Tibetan monks who were the first responders to the quake-hit victims in Yushu have been told to leave.

This was relayed from a phone call, saying they had better leave otherwise there would be "trouble".

They were the ones who first arrived, pulled out survivors, pitched tents and gave food and water to people. And as I blogged on Wednesday, they were noticeably absent from the proceedings to mark the one-week anniversary of the earthquake on China Central Television's special programming.

But now something even more bizarre is happening.

Qinghai officials are now promising to have a province-wide crackdown on pornography to make sure harmful literature does not hamper relief efforts.

Huh?

A notice issued from Qinghai's anti-pornography and illegal publications office ordered officials to "fully understand the significance of maintaining an orderly publication market in the quake relief effort" and to step up on cracking down on pornographic and illegal publications, China National Radio reported Wednesday.

The office also said officials should watch out for "lawbreakers who use illegal publications to disturb people's hearts and disrupt the relief effort". The officials are also supposed to crack down on any rumours that may be spread through the Internet and cellphones.

How could anyone near the quake-hit area be concerned with porn at this time? Most people would be more anxious about saving lives and focusing on reconstruction than some dirty pictures.

Perhaps they really want to try to prevent any dissent or complaints from being circulated online and via text messages.

Why not focus on relief efforts? Actions speak louder than words.

Picture of the Day: Spring Flowers

2010-04-22T07:42:00.001-07:00

There are signs that spring has arrived in Beijing, but you wouldn't know it from the weather.

This past week has been pretty depressing with overcast skies and light showers.... or was that precipitation meant for southwest China to alleviate the drought there? Maybe the scientists who are shooting those rockets with silver iodide to force clouds to rain are hitting them in the wrong place...

Nevertheless, the cherry blossoms are out, fluffing up the skinny branches with bright pink candy-floss like flowers, and magnolias are coming out too.

Now if only the weather would cooperate and bring the sunshine back! This time last year we were already wearing T-shirts and jean jackets...

A Show of Remembrance

2010-04-21T07:01:00.001-07:00

At the crack of dawn this morning, Tiananmen Square held a special flag-raising ceremony to mark the one-week anniversary of the Yushu earthquake. Hundreds of people turned out, reminiscent of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake.

Today was designated as a day of mourning and China Central Television (CCTV) showed images of officials dressed in black with white flowers on their left chests bowed in silence for three minutes.

"我们在一起" or "We are together" was the slogan of this morning's program, the anchors dressed in black suits and there were constant images of soldiers conducting relief work, but curiously, no shots of the Tibetan monks who were actually the first on the scene to try to help quake victims.

There were also shots of people watching last night's CCTV fund-raising show that had a backdrop of hands clasped together coming out of the rubble. The program included children from the quake-hit area in Beijing and still in dirty clothes putting on a brave face in front of senior officials who clapped. These officials then went up one by one each holding a big brown envelope and dropping them into a box, supposedly for donations.

And there were comments from overseas Chinese in various parts of the world, from Thailand and the United States to the UK and France, all showing their support for earthquake relief.

Just like Sichuan almost two years ago, the Chinese government was anxious to show it cared about the victims with these formal and ritualistic actions.

But unlike Sichuan where most of the people are Han, in Yushu, 97 percent of the population are Tibetan.

The Dalai Lama had requested permission to go to the quake-hit area to comfort the victims in their own language and culture.

However he was politely denied by the Chinese government, despite it saying it fully respected local religious beliefs and customs, and was offering counseling.

Hundreds of Tibetan students have been recruited as translators as many of the survivors do not speak Putonghua.

Do these people really feel they are a part of China? The government is eager to conduct its propaganda exercises through its quake relief efforts. Will it work? The government has to make sure it meets the needs of the people and show that it is culturally sensitive. It would win big political points by allowing the Dalai Lama into the area, but this will probably never happen and the people probably know not to request his presence either.

The government plans to rebuild Yushu into an eco-tourism town, which seems strange considering there was no tourism there in the first place. Is this an opportunity to cash in on grief?

Profiles of Outliers

2010-04-20T07:16:00.001-07:00

I just finished reading Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers: The Story of Success where he talks about how people become successful. It's not just because someone is particularly smart -- but actually a series of factors that makes them fortunate, such as the time in which they are born, their ethnicity, the geographic location, or a series of opportunities they grab which lead to the next one.

For example, many Jews became successful lawyers in the 1960s because before then, law was mostly an old boy's club where lawsuits were a last resort and most disputes were settled in a gentlemanly way. That left the Jewish lawyers to do the "dirty work", gaining experience at fighting in the courtroom.

By the 1970s, corporate lawsuits became more common, and after so many years of experience, these Jewish lawyers became in high demand and now have become some of the wealthiest through their hard work. The other common point is that they were all children of immigrant parents who worked in the garment industry.

There is also the theory of 10,000 hours. If someone practices piano, or plays hockey or plays in a band (like the Beatles) for 10,000 hours, that plus talent will make them successful. It was found that even those with mediocre talent could not advance despite practicing as many hours as someone who was gifted.

Then there is the rice paddy theory, that Asians, particularly those in south China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Japan, are particularly adept at numbers and are successful because they grow rice.

Growing rice is no easy feat -- it requires paddies that are completely level and the rice planted at the right time, with just the right amount of water. It is also back-breaking and manual work tending to these seedlings, as too many weeds could deprive a rice seedling of its nutrients and space to grow.

And if rice farmers are industrious enough, they can harvest bigger crops and more during the year. When winter comes, rice farmers don't hibernate like the farmers in Europe in the 19th century, but instead use the time to make bamboo baskets or hats, repair dikes or repair the home. Some made tofu or caught snakes and sold them as a delicacy.

Also, the counting system in the above-mentioned countries and cities is much easier to learn than in Western ones. In Chinese, each number is one syllable, whereas in English, there can be more than one like "seven". Then when counting above 10, it's much easier in Chinese with "11" being "10-one". As a result, that makes addition and subtraction much easier to manage.

At the end of the chapter, Gladwell says working in a rice paddy is 10 to 20 times more labour-intensive than working on an equivalent-sized corn or wheat field, with some estimates at the annual workload of wet rice farmers in Asia at 3,000 hours a year.

So it is believed that this culture of working hard year-round has been passed on in the DNA of Asians to today. In the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) tests, Asian students perform very well. And the ones from Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan are on top. What do they have in common? A culture of rice paddies.

Gladwell does wonder whether those in Northern China which is predominantly wheat-growing if they would do just as well as southerners, but so far there is no data yet to suggest what the results would be. Another question would be how if any impact the communist government system had any effect on Chinese productivity and learning habits.

Any guesses?

Monetarily Changing the Neighbourhood

2010-04-19T06:28:00.001-07:00

I just read the other day that Nanluoguxiang 南罗鼓巷, one of my favourite places to check out periodically is becoming a ghost town after greedy landlords decided to jack up rents -- in a bid to become obscenely rich.

Only last month I was there to meet up with a friend visiting from Shanghai, and already the place had changed again, now featuring a number of tacky boutiques selling just about anything in the hopes a customer will buy something. That's not how business works.

We met up in a restaurant called Fish Nation, which offers fish and chips so I was shocked to read that the place had shut down recently. That's because the landlord for Fish Nation was demanding a 400 percent rent increase from 150,000RMB to 600,000RMB ($21,961 to $87,844). While business is good there, particularly on weekends, the restaurant owners in no way can pay such a high rent.

A similar thing happened to the Indian restaurant Birch Masala which I had visited over a year and a half ago. They decided to move to Ritan Park to escape the escalating rent.

Where do landlords get the idea they can charge exorbitant rents?

When I first visited the hutong, it was a wonderful mix of Chinese and western, of traditional life with enterprising boutiques. Progressively every few months, the place kept changing, with more storefronts added, no matter how small, selling hot dogs and yogurt, Mao matchboxes and tie-dye clothing.

The place had a wonderful bohemian feel to it, as the cheap rents allowed young people to start arts and crafts businesses or small eateries without too much risk.

But now, some say many of the landlords are becoming too greedy.

Dominic Johnson-Hill, owner of Plastered T-shirts, wrote on his blog, "its much like the landlords are committing suicide going for the highest possible price only to ruin the street's feel and then the rents go down again [sic]."

So maybe Nanluoguxiang is in flux again, and this is only temporary. But it's disheartening when greedy landlords can only dream of dollar signs in their eyes.

Cheap Hutong Eats

2010-04-18T07:45:00.000-07:00

A friend and his girlfriend went to check out some eateries mentioned in a Chinese magazine and after their taste test, they recommended two in particular.

One was a restaurant that specialized in oysters and clams cooked in the half shell with toppings, while the other was a nearby dessert place tucked in an alley.

The two eateries are in Dongsisitiao, a short taxi ride from Dongsishitiao.

My friend and I walked into the Dongsisitiao hutong and on our right we found 蚝酷 hao (2) ku (4), which sounds like "how cool", but literally means "oysters cool".

The restaurant with red Chinese doors is pretty much no-nonsense, with three rooms, a spacious main dining area and then two smoking areas in the back.

At first we were seated in one of the smoking areas and the smoke was so intense that we had to give up the table despite a lineup of eager diners behind us. Nevertheless, about 20 minutes later we finally got a table, around 7:30pm and had already decided what we'd get since I had been studying the menu, trying to make out what it said as it was all in Chinese.

The oysters and clams come in orders of a dozen and you can choose from four different toppings... garlic, chili peppers, pepper and vegetarian. We were forewarned that vegetarian wasn't good so I ordered oysters half a dozen with garlic, the other half with peppers, along with a dozen clams with garlic.

We also ordered some appetizers, like seaweed, a nice mix of crushed garlic, a dash of chili peppers and salt; soft tofu simply dressed with sesame oil and green onions served cold; roughly chopped cucumbers with vinegar and garlic; and a dish featuring shan yao (山药), or Chinese yam, a white fiberous yam dressed with a sweet osmanthus sauce that was nice and light. This last dish seemed to be a favourite at every other table.

Luckily we didn't have to wait long for the appetizers as we got hungry watching other customers eat. Another great thing about this place is that a big bottle of Yanjing beer was only 5RMB ($0.73).

Not long after the cold dishes arrived did the clams come in a stainless steel tray, the juices in the shell still bubbling away. These giant clams were plump and completely covered in chopped garlic. Seems like someone had the unenviable task of chopping garlic all day everyday... Nevertheless, these clams were delicious, big, meaty and not too overwhelmed by the garlic.

Then our oysters arrived in very thick shells. The oysters were a good size and while eating them some had the tingly feeling in the mouth thanks to the zinc content. While cooking them with garlic wouldn't be my first choice, it was still an interesting taste.

We had also been told to stay away from the roasted chicken wings, and since there wasn't much else on the menu to try, we ordered another round of clams which we somehow managed to finish.

Each dozen of clams and oysters were 48RMB ($7) each, and the appetizers ranging from 8RMB to 12RMB, the bill came to 187RMB ($27.40) for two.

Then we came out of Dongsisitiao hutong, crossed the street and wandered south in search of a very narrow alley where the dessert place was.

Thanks to its bright signage on the main street we soon found it and it was a cute destination, complete with drawings on the wall and subway maps of various cities, like Rome, Tokyo, Hong Kong, London, Cairo and Paris.

There are savoury dishes here too like Cantonese steamed rolls with different fillings, but we tried the strawberry and coconut sago which were mediocre. The place's specialty is (双皮奶) shuangpi nai, or double-boiled milk that becomes a custard. We ordered the one with red bean on top and it was served cold, but hot would have been better. The texture of the custard was good, not sweet, and went well with the red bean. Our bill came to 26RMB ($3.80) and after all that eating and restaurant hopping we were definitely full and waddled out of the area, satiated and hope to come back again for more.

Hao Ku
No. 82 Dongsisitiao
Dongsibeijie Dong
6400 1172

Quake Exposes Vulnerability

2010-04-16T07:33:00.001-07:00

Rescue efforts are still continuing in Yushu County, Qinghai Province where the 7.1-magnitude earthquake hit on Wednesday morning before 8am.

So far at least 617 are dead, and some 10,000 injured, and over 100,000 homeless.

Chinese state media are showing constant images of trucks and planes carrying rescue workers, sniffer dogs, tents, first aid and food to quake survivors, where temperatures overnight are below zero.

The earthquake happened just before school started, and there are reports that 11 schools have collapsed, killing 66 students so far. It eerily echoes what happened almost two years ago in Sichuan, where we still don't know the exact number of students who died there and who was responsible for constructing the shoddily-built schools.

Apparently a 2009 report surveyed schools in Qinghai and found most of them were built before 2001, which means they do not meet current government earthquake resistance standards.

What's also interesting is that soon after the earthquake hit in Yushu, the Tibetan monks there immediately came out to help the community. They were actually the first responders to the quake and tried to help people even though many of their monasteries were hit badly.

Yushu is not one of the areas that saw riots in 2008; it is very much a Tibetan town with 97 percent of people there being Tibetan. However, the government's 2006 policy of pushing Tibetan nomads to give up their nomadic lifestyle and herds and live in permanent structures with no obvious forms of income may bring up bitterness again with the collapsed buildings everywhere.

The Chinese government is keen to show Tibetans that they are handling this situation well. President Hu Jintao cut short his visit to Latin America, while Premier Wen Jiabao postponed his trip to southeast Asia to visit the quake-hit area. He promised the government would rebuild Yushu.

While the slogan, "Fight the earthquake. Stage a rescue effort and rebuild our home," seems heroic, the reality is that relief efforts will be difficult in this place which doesn't have much good infrastructure. Basic medicine and medical supplies are scarce. Some of the injured have been sent to Xian hospitals.

And the food people are getting? Instant noodles. While convenient, they are hardly nutritional. Or is a certain company benefiting from guanxi?

There are lots of pictures of people going through the rubble with their bare hands, or poking at the giant mound of debris with a stick. The heavy machinery should have arrived by now and hopefully more people will be found alive.

However, rescuers are also having to contend with freezing temperatures and concerns of the thin air because Yushu is 3,700 metres above sea level. Rescue workers haven't had time to acclimatize to the atmosphere and aren't able to deal with the lack of oxygen very well, neither can the sniffer dogs.

It's too bad these natural disasters quickly expose the vulnerability of China. The country is so eager and proud to show off its wealth and modern infrastructure, particularly in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. But the images of collapsed buildings and desperation only reveal how far China still has to go.

Word of the Day: Mammary Men

2010-04-15T07:21:00.001-07:00

Men like to assess women by their mammary assets, or their bottoms, and have a preference for one or the other.

But there is another kind of man called 奶嘴男 nai(3) zui(3) nan(2) which means "nipple man".

These men -- or boys -- are like Peter Pan, unwilling to grow up, and even after they marry they look at their wives as an extension of their mothers.

And while we're on the subject of men needing maternal comfort, there's a group of people called "school lingerers", people who have already graduated but still hang out or even continue to live on university and college campuses.

Yang Ming, an advertising design graduate at Dezhou University, Shandong Province, graduated last July. But three months later despite getting a job, she decided to move back to her campus to live with a former classmate who is studying for the National Entrance Exam for Graduate Students.

Apparently the university opens up 100 dorms for graduates who want to study for this exam.

"My salary is enough to pay the rent on a place near my company. But I feel people in the community are not easy to communicate with, and so sophisticated compared with simple students in the university," Yang said.

Despite the longer commute to work, she says she prefers it, at least until her roommate finishes the exam.

Another former student from Hebei University, Chen Hongying, rents a place near her alma mater to take advantage of the school's facilities, particularly the canteen for breakfast and lunch.

"I feel so comfortable and secure walking on the campus I am familiar with," she said. "My two former classmates have been admitted to grad school, and I usually eat with them in the cafeteria. If I stayed at home, I could not imagine what my neighbours would think of me. Maybe they would wonder why I have graduated but am still at home," Chen added.

According to the China News Service, the number of school lingerers in Beijing, Guangzhou and Zhengzhou is in the tens of thousands.

Tang Haibo, vice director of the psychological health center at Central South University in Changsha, Hunan Province says the phenomenon of school lingerers reflects these young people's inability to adapt to new environments.

"After stepping out, the change makes them recall the quiet life on campus and they want to escape from society. They show they are dependent on universities and seek to continue living in an ivory tower," he said.

"But if they indulge in this sense of security the campus provides for them, they will become a frog in a wall, never catching the opportunity to adapt to society."

Apart from living away from home, life in a university campus is very similar to high school, as many professors will care for the students like children. Things are very inexpensive and practically everything is provided for, even though they may not be of a high standard.

For most fresh graduates in China, the transition to real life is a big shock to them, because unlike most kids in North America, they have had exposure to work through summer jobs or part-time jobs.

Reality can be cruel, but it's a rite of passage everyone must go through. Even for nipple men.

High-Speed Overload

2010-04-14T08:32:00.001-07:00

China is already showing signs of overcapacity -- as evidenced by the number of investigations countries are making on allegations of the Middle Kingdom dumping products around the world for cheap due to government subsidies.

And now overcapacity is rearing its ugly head back home.

The country is currently building a number of high-speed railway networks, not only as a kind of economic stimulus to create jobs, but also to create more domestic consumption.

However, many people who ride the rails are complaining because of the high ticket prices that are many times what the slower trains cost, despite cutting times down in some cases significantly.

Nevertheless, when it came to the Beijing-Fuzhou route, with Fuzhou being in Fujian Province, the route was not economically feasible and shut down as of yesterday -- after only two months of operations.

The trip, which also made stops at Hangzhou, Taizhou, Wenzhou and Tianjin, took 16 hours, which was only three hours less than the slower train.

Also the price for the most expensive ticket was 1,185RMB ($173) for a lower berth in a soft seat carriage and 1,055RMB ($154) for an upper berth, compared with about 600RMB ($87) for the same seat on the slower train.

It turns out the high-speed train couldn't compete with the existing air route, which is 1,610RMB ($235) and the flight definitely takes less than 16 hours. That's because airlines realized they would have to slash prices in order to compete with the train. But with no more competition, does this mean higher air fares again?

Some people wondered why the train was shut down permanently and didn't try to compete more effectively with airline tickets in terms of prices. Others felt closing the newly-built rail line was a complete waste of resources.

What is outrageous is that there doesn't seem to have been any feasibility study conducted to see if such a line was needed, and instead the government, probably provincial, went ahead and built it just to boost GDP growth.

Imagine all that steel, technology, and not to mention migrant workers' physical labour to build the rail line, only to have it shut down in two months?

This is a sign of overcapacity in the most extreme sense.

But it may not be the last.

Powerful Lining their Pockets

2010-04-13T08:24:00.000-07:00

China's largest pension fund called the Social Security Fund is going aggressively for better returns and is now planning to invest overseas and in private equities.

The fund currently has 776.5 billion RMB ($113.74 billion) and is expected to have 2 trillion RMB by 2015.

It's not the overseas investments that are interesting, but the private equities.

These are not private equity companies that are overseas, but in China, investing overseas.

And the people behind these private equity companies are mostly taizdang or "princelings", the sons or daughters of senior Communist Party officials who take advantage of state-directed policies.

A fascinating story by the Financial Times talks about these princelings and their rise through private equity firms. In 2009, private equity deals in China were worth $3.6 billion, accounting for one-third of all transactions in the Asia-Pacific region, says data from Thomson Reuters.

There are people like Winston Wen, Premier Wen Jiabao's son who is with New Horizon Capital; George Li, the son of Li Ruihuan, a senior leader in the 1980s until 2003; Wilson Feng, the son-in-law of Wu Bangguo, the country's top legislator; and Li Tong, the daughter of Li Changchun, in charge of propaganda and media.

These people seem to live a strange existence. According to the FT article, princelings live very low-key lives where Internet searches of them are practically blocked. Most live in luxurious gated communities in Beijing and have holiday homes around the world. Their spouses are almost never seen in public, while those who venture out tend to have cars with military or paramilitary license plates that allow them to ignore traffic regulations or be stopped by the police.

And a number of these princelings now own or run private equity firms that are closely affiliated with many state-owned enterprises.

"In the past, the best option for these people with 'background' was to go to the high-paying western investment banks but now the economic strength has shifted," says a person in the private equity industry, asking not to be named due to the sensitivity of the topic. "Now they're saying to the foreigners, 'Hey, I'm in the driving seat, I have the deals -- so you give me your money and I'll invest it myself and take a big cut'."

Which brings us back to the first sentence in this story. When the Social Security Fund invests in private equity companies here, these princelings will further enhance their power and pockets -- with taxpayer money.

It seems that money in China goes around and around -- usually to the privileged few who grab some for themselves before passing the money onto others.

In the end one wonders if the taxpayers themselves will ever benefit as much as the ones who had the money earlier.

Not That Free

2010-04-12T08:14:00.001-07:00

Ikea in Beijing has had to switch to paper cups after people took the white porcelain cups, thinking they were free.

The food and drink at the cafeteria upstairs are nothing to rave about, but they help refuel people's appetites to shop.

And patrons who are members of the "Ikea Family" or VIP card are entitled to unlimited cups of coffee and other drinks at self-serve counters.

However, the Swedish retailer had to switch to paper cups as of last week.

"The nice cups were just taken away. We had nothing to do with it, it was simply a management decision," an unidentified member of Ikea's staff told the Legal Mirror.

"We often see customers drinking coffee, then putting the cup in their bags, still full. We go up to them, telling them to stop, and they tell us they thought the cups were free to take," the employee added.

One would have thought that by now, Ikea customers, most of whom are university educated and upwardly mobile wouldn't do such a crass thing as taking the cup with them.

But it looks like this is the case.

Perhaps that explains why the place is so popular -- making several trips there in order to get a full set of coffee cups...

Trying Their Luck in Beijing

2010-04-11T07:15:00.001-07:00

Expatriates in Beijing are a curious lot.

They come from all over the world and are either searching to fulfill their craving for things Chinese or China, looking for a way to fast-track their careers, or to go someplace exotic to brag about back home.

And their jobs run the gamut, from working in embassies or multinational corporations, to local companies, starting their own businesses or juggling several part-time jobs. One Austrian guy I met had just finished working in Shunyi on a Saturday where he's the skating coach for figure skating and hockey, and had been on the ice for 10 hours. He does that a few days a week, and then for the rest of the week does quality control for an import/export firm.

Another is quite fluent in Chinese, talking in rapid-fire Mandarin and is now setting up his own Chinese-language school for expats who want mostly private lessons, while an American woman has set up her own bakery to make delicious cupcakes and is hand delivering them all by herself.

Also along the entrepreneurial spirit is a Hong Kong man who offers nude yoga for men... who are mostly gay.

Many expats I meet have basic Chinese language skills, or hardly any and have constantly used local friends as a crutch to help communicate the most basic requests. These foreigners also tend to hang around western-dominated areas so that they can speak English with ease. It's shocking to discover they have lived here many more years than I and still haven't made much of an effort to learn the language.

Then there are those (mostly guys) who are practically fluent, have local girlfriends and eat practically everything the locals do, riding buses, rather than taxis, thus cutting their expenses to a fraction.

There's also a lot of extra money to be made as "the foreigner". A recent article talked about how non-Chinese are recruited to be present at business meetings even though the entire proceedings are conducted in Chinese. Some companies are able to clinch contracts based on the fact that a foreigner was in the room. What does the foreigner get? A cool 2,000 to 3,000RMB ($293-$440) for a few hours of wearing business attire and not saying anything.

The same goes for exhibitions, where cities, especially ones that are not Beijing, Shanghai or Guangzhou, try to make their events look international by getting non-Chinese to show up and look around the stalls for a few thousand renminbi. Transportation included.

It's curious having foreigners trotted out when necessary as if they are performing monkeys. But that's the current state of things.

Hopefully eventually companies will know that it's not the foreign face that makes a difference, but the quality of the goods and services rendered.

Nevertheless, there's always something here for foreigners to do which is why they keep coming.

Official Exploits Exposed

2010-04-09T08:17:00.001-07:00

Another official has been caught with his pants down -- not in the act, but in his ambition of bedding 800 women, and detailed his many hundred trysts in a diary that his wife found and turned into police.

She also discovered some sex videos he made.

Sounds like a divorce is in the works. And will he get tested for AIDS and STDs?

The 47-year-old department head from Anqing in Anhui Province is only named by the pseudonym Wang Cheng. In 2003 he wrote in his diary that he wanted to bed at least 56 women a year, as well as maintain two mistresses from "respectable families."

As a result he calculated for that year alone he would need 100,000 yuan ($14,600) in bribes, about five times his annual salary.

And as he got promoted, he received more bribes and bedded more women.

Businessmen who tried to curry favor with Wang found out about his love for sex and supplied him with many prostitutes.

Wang admitted he spent hundreds of thousands of yuan on sex, and even buying several apartments that were given to his mistresses as gifts.

In his diaries, he claims to have slept with at least 500 women and the goal was to have sex with "600 to 800."

But unfortunately his sexual ambitions will be put on hold for now.

It seems that officialdom and sex go hand-in-hand. In fact most Chinese men in positions of power expect women to perform sexual favours in the hopes of promotions or possible monetary gain. And if women want to survive in his male-dominated environment, they those blessed with good looks tend to take this route to quickly enrich themselves.

Most of these men are in their late 40s and older, who think nothing wrong of being married, having a child and yet still having women on the side.

They either see these extra-curricular activities as a status symbol or just a part of doing business.

Hopefully the next generation will end to these unspoken immoral practices. However, if their salaries don't rise much more in the next few years, they too could get caught up in the cycle and corruption and licentiousness will never end in China.

Seeking Solace, Not Solitude

2010-04-08T07:46:00.001-07:00

It was sad to find out that Gao Zhisheng has given up his fight to maintain rule of law in China, and instead wants to live a quiet life in the hopes of being reunited with his family in the United States.

The AP reported that in a face-to-face interview, Gao had lost a considerable amount of weight and teared up when thinking of his wife, son and daughter separated from him. "I don't have the capacity to persevere," he said. "On the one hand, it's my past experiences. It's also that these experiences greatly hurt my loved ones. This ultimate choice of mine, after a process of deep and careful thought, is to seek the goal of peace and calm."

It hit him hard when he returned home for the first time earlier this week and saw the shoes they left behind.

"I completely lost control of my emotions, because to me these are the three dearest people in the world and now, we're like a kite with a broken string," he said.

Gao, 44, didn't want to talk about his detention or where he was held for over a year.

He instead focused on what seemed like his enlightenment and desire to better himself.

"You know that past life of mine was abnormal, and I need to give up that former life," he said. "I hope I can become part of the peaceful life of the big family."

He later added, "You know the main basis for choosing to give up is for the sake of family feelings," he said. "I hope I can reunite with them. My children need me by their side growing up."

It is understandable that after all the harassment, physical and mental torture, and detainment Gao has gone through, that he would much rather lead a quiet life and be with his family.

However, with them in the US, one wonders how he will get there; maybe he will have to agree to a life of exile. And perhaps he is hoping with his new reformed self and good behaviour that this may happen eventually.

For those watching the fight for justice in China on the sidelines, it must be disappointing to hear the once feisty lawyer give up his battle against the government and try to live a normal life again.

Perhaps his statements are meant to serve as a warning to others who think they can challenge the government through the law -- that they will have to endure what he has gone through and that in the end it's not worth it.

Or perhaps it has made them even more determined to fight for justice, even if it means being forcibly separated from the ones you love.

Blogging the Public Voice

2010-04-07T07:37:00.001-07:00

A 27-year-old blogger, writer and race car driver named Han Han was nominated to Time Magazine's 100 most influential people in the world this year.

In the online poll he is topping the other Chinese compatriots on the list that includes Vice Premier Wang Qishan, Chongqing Communist Party Secretary Bo Xilai, Baidu CEO Robin Li and human rights activist Liu Xiaobo. Other notable figures include US President Barack Obama, US Secretary Hillary Clinton, Olympic skater Kim Yu-na, and two-time Grammy winner Lady Gaga.

Han is an interesting and prolific figure blessed with good looks and a high-flying lifestyle. He apparently dropped out of high school in Shanghai and penned a novel based around his experiences, "sparking a debate about the quality of the country's rigid education system," according to Time magazine.

But he is best known for his blog which can be very critical of the government; this is ironic considering his father was the front-page editor of a local party paper, while his mother worked at the social service bureau helping the needy, fostering Han's support for the underdog.

"I may not deserve such a title of being 'influential.' My efforts to improve the fate of those who devote themselves to the cultural sector of this country, to raise their status, and to lift the level of freedom of China's cultural sector, have yielded little gains. I feel I'm weak," Han told a national paper.

Despite his humbleness, he has struck a chord with his blog, which has more than 300 million hits, the largest following of a personal blog in China.

Almost a year ago when the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology ordered all PC makers to install a software called Green Dam to filter out pornography by July 1 last year, Han criticized it, saying the excuse of protecting children from pornography wasn't a strong enough reason to warrant such an action.

Then last month when the sex diary of Han Feng, the tobacco bureau chief in Laibin, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region was exposed online, the young blogger wrote sarcastically online, calling web users to be merciful to the man, implying that there are many more officials who are more corrupt and evil than him who have yet to be uncovered.

Some critics like Bai Ye, a Chinese literary critic, think Han is too young and not mature enough to represent all young Chinese.

"The media has created an inaccurate impression of Han, who has been hyped as a representative of young Chinese people."

Another, 56-year-old Sun Hong who is a retired editor, says Han's opinions resonate with foreigners because he is aligned with their views. He is also influential to young people because he has a rebellious spirit and has the freedom to pursue whatever he wants.

Han is merely speaking out what many others think but dare not say aloud.

In a New York Times profile, Han dismissed party officials for their lack of intelligence ad relevance to the people.

"Their lives are nothing like ours," he said. "The only thing they have in common with young people is that like us, they too have girlfriends in their 20s, although theirs are on the side."

Touche.

After his writings became pointed and would affect his parents' jobs, he suggested they retire and he financially look after them. He is also careful not to name names despite his blog being "harmonized", a euphemism for censorship.

Regardless, most of his readers know what he's talking about and are nodding their heads in agreement.

He makes them feel heard and noted.

Nuptial Theatrics

2010-04-06T07:12:00.001-07:00

My friend and I were at the Hilton Hotel when we saw some staff setting up wedding decorations for the marble staircase in the lobby.

It turns out they were hanging up long sheets of red organza up to the ceiling to create a dramatic draping effect, complete with red candles lining the staircase.

What was strange was that this intimate ceremony was being presented right in the hotel lobby rather than in a banquet room.

However, the couple didn't seem to mind acting out their milestone event in front of family, friends and strangers.

It turns out the groom was Chinese, though he had a Japanese look, especially with his rock-star hair and the bride was Japanese, with a doll-like face complete with a tiara and long veil.

At first the groom walked down from the top of the stairs to the half-way point carrying a bouquet. And then there was a blast of dry ice creating a smoky effect for the bride to make her entrance. She too walked down the stairs accompanied by a man who didn't seem to look like her father.

Nevertheless, when they both made it to this middle landing, the groom bowed to them and then promptly got down on one knee and offered the bouquet to his bride. She in turn awkwardly shook his hand to get up.

All their choreographed actions were read out in Mandarin and Japanese, with the audience clapping in between. After they exchanged vows in their native languages, a hotel representative appeared with the rings. When they put the rings on, they both held up their hands to show their new marital status which seemed cheesy at best.

They signed their marriage certificate which was then held up to show the audience, and then they finally kissed to the delight of everyone, as it wasn't the shy embarrassing peck on the cheek.

It also seemed like the bride was pregnant... and the couple looked very young.

Hope their marriage isn't just theatrics, but the real deal, as the divorce rate for young people in their 20s in China is about 50 percent.

An Imperial Visit by Subway

2010-04-04T23:30:00.001-07:00

On Saturday we checked out the Summer Palace, as my friend who's visiting has never been, and my last visit was in the summer of 2007.

Instead of having to take a taxi or bus, we took the subway Line 4 there which was very convenient.

In what used to be on the outskirts of the city, the Summer Palace has become included into the city proper thanks to this new subway line, potentially bringing with it many more tourists.

In over half an hour we got to Beigongmen station, the second last stop on Line 4 which took us to the back of the Summer Palace.

This was a bit strange, as you usually start out from the east side, walk along the covered walkway and then proceed to climb up the stairs to the various Buddha shrines and then to the back where there is a sad-looking Suzhou Street, a pathetic attempt to look like there is a bustling atmosphere, but instead there are calligraphy and tea shops, and photography studio with well-worn Qing Dynasty costumes with hardly any customers.

So this time we did it backwards, which was alright for first timers, but strange for someone like myself who had done it the other way a few times before.

Nevertheless, it was easier on the legs going down instead of up.

An introductory plaque explains that the Summer Palace was built in 1750 and then destroyed by the Allied forces in 1860. Restorations began 28 years later and now the Chinese government is trying to upkeep the place.

We encountered a number of children with pants that had slits at the back for easy washroom access; my friend was in awe but also disgust at the same time and tried to photograph each one we saw. There were also a number of pine trees that naturally stripped themselves of their bark in patches that seemed very artistic in colour and shape.

Luckily the place wasn't too crowded, the weather was not too hot and the sun was shining.

Nevertheless, my friend remarked on how badly kept the grounds were -- paint peeling off the sides of walls, the heads of buddhas that cover the walls of a shrine were pulled off and not replaced, and chipped or broken tiles not fixed.

While I explained that it was difficult to maintain a place this size, it would not be surprising if it was discovered not all the money budgeted for restoration was properly used.

There weren't many staff policing the palace grounds, only in the Buddhist shrines, with women shrieking at people not to take photographs, of which several violate the rule every few minutes with flashes going off.

On the other hand, there were areas that had definitely been restored with fresh paint, creating a jarring experience. One had to wonder if these buildlings were being properly restored, or these were just quick and thoughtless efforts to make a place look good for VIP guests.

Every few metres there seemed to be a souvenir shop, each selling the same things, from Buddhist bead bracelets in a variety of styles and colours to postcards with pictures taken ages ago, to cloisionne bracelets and trinkets.

However, the views beyond the imperial yellow-tiled roofs looking down onto the East Lake were fabulous -- there were lots of covered paddle boats dotting the lake.

After checking out the Marble Boat, where the Empress Dowager Cixi spent her money on instead of reinforcing her navy, we wandered down a path towards the back of the palace and returned to the subway again without much trouble.

Picture of the Day: Baby Manchu

2010-04-04T03:20:00.001-07:00

Spring has finally arrived with warmer temperatures which meant we could finally shed those sleeping-bag down jackets.

Yesterday I took a friend who is visiting to see the Summer Palace and we saw a number of cute kids.

This is one of them, who was quite friendly. After waving to him a few times he would give a big laugh and a smile.

Although he was bundled up, his best accessory was the silk cap complete with a fake queue at the back.

The Chinese government seems to delight in capitalizing on its imperialist history despite the negative connotations...

Hardly a Solution

2010-04-02T02:44:00.001-07:00

It was interesting to find that as of April 1, Beijing started imposing higher parking fees, doubling them in the downtown core in a bid to ease traffic congestion.

Some 13 zones have increased fees to 10RMB ($1.50) an hour, and give parking attendants the power to charge 15RMB per hour to those cars parked for extended periods.

The 13 zones will affect some 70,000 car owners who park their vehicles in underground parking lots of office buildings and shopping malls.

While it's refreshing to see the municipal government take action in making car owners think twice about driving, the reality is, if they can afford a car, they can probably pay for parking too.

And that's what Jia Yuanhua, a professor of traffic and transportation at Beijing Jiaotong University says. He explains the new government initiatives are like building dams downstream, which would eventually overflow and break down. He insisted that the government should have a clear set of traffic control policities, isntead of "telling citizens to buy cars on the one hand, then raising parking feels on the other, which makes people not know what to do."

However, some drivers have already come up with some creative solutions, including hiring someone to sit in his car to avoid parking fees.

"Doing so is much cheaper than paying the parking fee, and it keeps my car safe. If I have to waste money, I'll waste it wisely!"

Cheaper to hire someone than to park the car? Something is wrong here...

Hopes Dry Up in Drought

2010-04-02T02:21:00.001-07:00

Yesterday morning I was running on the treadmill at the gym watching the television screen above.

The ongoing seven-month drought in Southwest China is a depressing storyline. There are stark images of riverbeds and lakebeds barren and cracked up, even fish caught in the dried-up mud.

People haven't had tap water in months and have to trudge many kilometers to wells that have some water left at the very bottom. Even children have to help out carrying several kilograms of water once or twice a day, walking over hilly terrain.

And there are some who collect muddy water and wait for it to settle before using it to wash their faces and feet before giving it to the livestock to drink.

There was one story where a small CCTV crew followed behind a truck filled will boxes of Wahaha water in Guizhou. It had a red banner with white words saying it was helping with drought relief.

The truck eventually arrives at a school in Guizhou Province and the students clapped when the vehicle stopped in the school yard. The kids formed a line, transferring the boxes one by one onto a pile. I had assumed that each child would get a box. I was wrong -- their names were called out and each child received two 350ml bottles of water. It was unclear in the story if all the bottles of water were handed out, or if the children could get more bottles later.

Nevertheless, there were the shots of smiling happy children clutching their two precious bottles of water.

Another story showed a highschool student who saved extra water in a two-litre bottle and then trudged a long distance into the hills to give the water to an old woman who lived in a remote area. The girl handed the water to the aged woman, who just grabbed it without much thanks and then promptly poured it into her water basin and gave back the empty bottle to the student.

While the girl was doing a good deed, it was strange to see the old woman seeming ungrateful for the liquid relief.

The bigger question is, what is the government doing about the drought? Tens of millions of people are directly affected, and not only do they not have enough water to drink, but can hardly grow any crops to subsist, let alone feed themselves.

The army has come into some areas and set up pipes and wells, but this is only a short-term measure. Is this climate change at its worst, or is it natural resources horribly mismanaged?

The government cannot keep trucking water into these areas. There needs to be rain despite the government's efforts in cloud seeding. This either shows China cannot manipulate the weather, or it refuses to cooperate, after tinkering with it for years.

Meanwhile the controversial North-South water diversion project is meant to pipe water from the Yangzte to the parched northern areas including Beijing and Tianjin.

Construction has already started on the $62 billion project, but some experts say this is going to create greater havoc. Again China is manipulating Mother Nature, who can and will be a force to reckon with. And who will suffer for it later?

Chinese media often say the country is battling the drought, but it seems to be losing rather than winning the fight.

Sad Remembrance

2010-04-01T08:22:00.001-07:00

Seven years ago today artist Leslie Cheung Kwok-wing (張國榮) committed suicide after jumping off the top floor of the Mandarin Oriental hotel in Central, Hong Kong.

It was such a shock to hear the news, and probably still is for some to remember such a talented person who was having a tortuous battle with severe depression.

A friend of mine sent me Chinese and English newspapers from Hong Kong covering his death, featuring pages and pages of pictures and stories chronicling his life and people trying to process why Cheung wanted to end his life.

Some wondered if it was because maybe he was diagnosed with AIDS, or terminal cancer, but eventually his partner Tong confirmed he had severe depression and had tried to commit suicide a year earlier in 2002.

There was a huge outpouring of grief from Chinese communities around the world and despite the fear of SARS at the time, there was a massive turnout for Cheung's memorial service, showing the strength of his star power.

A profile of him in Wikipedia notes his sad childhood, as his parents constantly fought and eventually divorced.

He also had a miserable time going to school in England, despite his parents' best intentions for him. It was then that he worked as a bartender at a relative's restaurant and began singing there.

When he returned to Hong Kong he began performing and recording, at first not successfully. But after changing record companies and meeting Anita Mui, Cheung's career started to take off.

He will be remembered not only for his beautiful voice, but also his good looks and acting talent.

Farewell My Concubine not only propelled Cheung to success as an actor, but also helped Chinese movies become more mainstream, as it won the Golden Palm award at the Cannes Film Festival, a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film and an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Film and Best Cinematography.

He was also memorable in Wong Kar-wai's 1997 movie, Happy Together. Cheung starred in the movie with Tony Leung Chiu-wai, and they played a gay couple that have a tumultuous relationship as they travel in Argentina.

One will never know or understand what inner demons Cheung was fighting against, but hopefully now he is in peace.

And his legions of fans will never forget him.

Working for the Company Off Hours

2010-03-31T07:35:00.001-07:00

When you take a taxi, or go to a restaurant or buy something in China, you can get a receipt called fapiao (发票). It's not the regular bill that lists the items you bought or ordered, but a somewhat official looking document with a red printed stamp that only says the total amount of money spent and in most cases it says who the fapiao is addressed to. And if you're feeling lucky, you can scratch off a silver box that's sort of like a lottery. I have never figured out how that worked.

In my last workplace I was allowed to claim taxi fees as long as I handed in fapiao equal to the amount decided in my contract. That meant making sure I got a taxi receipt every time I took a cab.

I had to paste the fapiao onto pieces of paper which made it kind of like a primary school assignment complete with glue stick. Then I filled out a form with signatures and a few days later got the cash back.

In my current office, there are no such reimbursements.

Instead, the company here benefits at the expense of its employees, where they are expected to collect fapiao. I asked one of my colleagues what this was for, but she wouldn't give me a straight answer except that the monetary amount of the fapiao collected would be given back to the company in terms of subsidies or tax deductions, something like that. The mystery continues.

These fapiao could be almost any kind of receipts except for restaurants, and aside from taxi fapiao, had to be addressed to the company's formal name. Up until a month ago, all the Chinese employees were expected to turn in 2,000 yuan ($293) of fapiao -- bear in mind that they only make around 3,000 yuan a month in salary. Now after the Spring Festival, some of them have received slight raises and these days they have to turn in 2,500 yuan in fapiao.

If the government is looking for a way to boost domestic consumption, this is the way to do it. The staff here have to spend their hard-earned money so that their employer can get tax breaks or subsidies.

Those who live with their parents or husbands and wives can get access to their fapiao; those living on their own have to try to get these official receipts from everything they buy, including supermarkets and department stores.

And if employees don't turn in the 2,500 yuan in fapiao, they can't get their full salary.

Apart from the low wages, it sounds like the staff are getting an even shorter end of the stick.

The fapiao are collected so that the government knows the companies in question are paying their taxes, as every fapiao issued costs the company 5 percent in services charges. Which is why companies are reluctant to give them out so easily, and be able to declare less income, and thus less taxes.

Strange accounting methods, but it seems like that's how money goes around in China.

The Reality of Depressed Wages

2010-03-30T07:51:00.001-07:00

The other day I had lunch with a young colleague Xiao Zhu in her mid-20s with a masters degree.

She had just finished watching woju, the Snail House drama that she found very interesting to watch.

In it, two sisters try to scrape together money to buy an apartment in a fictional Chinese city, supposedly Shanghai. The older one manages to buy a place, but it is far out in the suburbs, so far it is practically in the next province.

Meanwhile the younger pretty sister flirts with an official in the hopes of getting money from him, and they end up having an affair. His wife knows about it, and he reasons that he is not cheating on her because she knows about it.

The ending is tragic. The wife finds out where the mistress lives and discovers she lives in a luxury apartment complete with all the furniture the wife had been hoping to buy, but considered too expensive. She and the pregnant mistress fight, causing the latter to have a miscarriage.

And when the official hears this news on the phone in the car, he has a car accident and dies.

He had fallen in love with his mistress and promised to look after her and her baby by arranging for them to go to the United States complete with a place to live in. However, only one person gets to make a new life, not three.

The true-to-life drama made Xiao Zhu very depressed.

"It's not the farmers who have a hard life now," she said. "It's people like me."

She went on to explain that children born in the post-80s had unrealistic burdens placed on them.

Even though many of them are university educated, they cannot get good-paying jobs. They prefer to be in the city, but renting an apartment can be expensive, leaving them little savings.

While her mother is still working and has a good danwei, or work unit benefits left over from the previous generation, Xiao Zhu is concerned she will have to financially support her father as her parents divorced when she was young.

The odd thing is that her older sister has married well, doing lots of travel; I asked her if she could stay with her older sister to save on rent, but she declined, only saying it was not convenient.

Meanwhile she will have barely enough to support herself. So how can she even afford to buy an apartment? Even if she and her boyfriend get married, they still can't afford a place with their own money.

"Having a home is such an important cultural aspect of a Chinese family," Xiao Zhu said. "If you don't have a home, you don't have a place to live. When you rent, you are constantly moving. This is not a place you call your own home."

This is the dilemma of all young people in China today.

While they are considered the hope of the future, the next generation have too much pressure hoisted on them.

Their salaries are artificially depressed by the government to keep exports low, making it very difficult for them to earn better wages to save enough money for a down payment.

While I tried to encourage Xiao Zhu to focus on her career and that the money would come later, she could only think about never being able to afford an apartment, followed by having to financially look after her aging parents...

Hope isn't enough to lift their spirits from their predicament -- money can solve most of their problems, which is a frustrating message to send to young people who have no hope of earning more in the near future.

Problems? What Problems?

2010-03-29T07:11:00.001-07:00

Reporters in China have one of the most dangerous occupations in the country since getting on the wrong side with censors can effectively end your media career.

They have to attend regular "training sessions" which are effectively Marxism lectures stressing how news organizations must prioritize their work in terms of the Party first, the people second.

With that in mind, the government, or rather the Publicity Bureau, better known as the Propaganda Department effectively controls the media in terms of what they can and cannot write. The rumour goes that only phone calls are made to avoid leaving a paper trace, but apparently Liu Shunyan, director of the Publicity Department of the Communist Party of China recently faxed a list of topics banned from coverage to all major newspapers, television and radio stations, and news websites.

They are:

Yuan revaluation
Corruption and problems in Xinjiang
Corruption and problems in Tibet
Deaths of four children and sickened more than 70 others in Shanxi from hepatitis B vaccines
The difficulties faced by students in finding jobs after graduation
Food safety
The rising price of cooking oil
US criticism of China
High medical fees
Disparity of wealth
Reform of the registration or hukou system
Forecasts of appointments for Communist Party leaders
Expansion of autonomy at universities
The collapse of school buildings in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake and delays in reconstruction
The beating death of a steel plant president in Jilin Province
Collusion between police and gangsters in Chongqing
The rising real estate prices and housing shortage
Real estate developers trying to increase land prices

An official at a Chinese newspaper said, "Most of the subjects that people are interested in have been banned. We don't know what to report on."

Really, the topics mentioned above are the ones that the public wants answers to and now the media can't even try to help people find the truth.

With media bans like this one which is considered to be even more extensive than before the 2008 Olympics, combined with Google's ongoing joust with the government, foreign companies frustrated at the lack of progress in penetrating the Chinese market, and people wanting to have the domain name .cn must register in person, has only made things worse for everyone all round.

By further controlling the Internet in China, it will eventually become shut off from the rest of the world and the country will have one big intranet.

The media bans and further Internet controls are just making it harder for people to find the truth in China; but it makes those more determined even more so, who hopefully will be a more powerful force demanding to know what is really going on.

Successful Contact

2010-03-28T07:06:00.001-07:00

We can all breathe a sigh of relief now... Reuters managed to track down human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng who is currently at a Buddhist retreat in Wutai mountain, in Shanxi Province.

He is apparently well and did not answer too many questions by cell phone in a strained interview that Reuters hinted he might be under police surveillance.

"I want to live a quiet life for a while," said Gao. Asked if he planned to join his family in the United States, Gao replied, "It's not that easy."

Apparently he had been released half a year ago and went to this mountain retreat.

One of Gao's colleagues, Li Heping, confirmed it was him, though he too could not get much more information from Gao either.

Perhaps some reporters are going to try to confirm his actual location, but in the meantime this ends the curious round about way the government has been dealing with Gao's case that raised international concerns.

It's strange why the government didn't explain where Gao was six months ago, and why he was allowed to go to this mountain retreat or was he forced there?

How long does Gao have to be there and will he return to his law practice in some capacity? Or has the government succeeded in shutting up one more dissenting voice?

There are more questions than answers. But at least we now know he is alive.

Fact of the Day: Car Accident Stats

2010-03-27T08:37:00.001-07:00

In my almost three years I am very lucky to say I have yet to be in a car accident, let alone witness a horrific one (knock on wood).

Nevertheless, with over 1,000 new cars on the road in Beijing everyday, one has to wonder how many accidents the city has and then multiply it by the whole country.

As most people only started driving a few years ago, it's almost as if most of them are like teenagers in the West who just got their driver's license.

But in reality most people here either passed the test or they paid someone to do it for them.

With those frightening thoughts, here are the latest statistics from the National Bureau of Statistics:

2008 saw 265,000 traffic accidents across the country, killing 73,000 lives, injuring 305,000, and causing direct property losses of 1.01 billion RMB ($147.919 million).
2009 saw 238,000 car accidents, claiming 68,000 lives, injuring 275,000 and resulting in direct property losses of 910 million RMB ($133.257 million).

Hopefully 2010 will bring those numbers down further...

Almost an Epidemic

2010-03-26T08:13:00.001-07:00

On Wednesday The New England Journal of Medicine released a study that shows China topping the world diabetes count, with twice as many people with the disease than originally estimated.

The study said 92.4 million Chinese are afflicted with Type-2 diabetes mostly caused by high-calorie diets and sedentary lifestyles. Earlier studies had thought the number was 43.2 million, while India is projected to have 50.8 million.

Probably the most frightening part of the survey is that most of the people in China do not know they have the disease and have not gotten tested.

"This study shows that the global burden of diabetes is far larger than previously estimated," said David Whiting, a disease tracker with the Brussels-based International Diabetes Federation. "It's a wake-up call for governments and policy-makers to take action on diabetes."

However, one wonders what China will do about the situation in the immediate future, as the country will lose $558 billion of national income due to diabetes and heart disease from 2005 to 2015, the World Health Organization and the World Economic Forum said in a 2008 report.

"The aging of the population, urbanization, nutritional changes, and decreasing levels of physical activity, with a consequent epidemic of obesity, have probably contributed to the rapid increase in the diabetes burden in the Chinese population," said Yang Wenjing, head of endocrinology at the China-Japan Friendship Hospital in Beijing.

So while doctors agree and are concerned it's a massive problem, what can be done?

Education, education, education.

It's very surprising how the government does not use its own media effectively to educate the public about health care, from what a healthy diet consists of to the benefits of exercise to how they can avoid catching viruses mostly from proper hygiene practices.

And now with diabetes fast becoming an epidemic, it is an ideal opportunity for the government to tell people through the media what diabetes is, what the symptoms are and to be tested that could be subsidized.

With all this education, the government can be promoting preventive medicine, thus cutting down on health care costs for everyone.

A local friend told me that even in Chinese newspapers, there are hardly any public service announcements or articles explaining to people how to maintain healthy lifestyles or tips on healthy eating or exercise.

It is in the government's best interests to have a healthy population, thus a productive population... which could result in even better GDP figures.

Seems pretty obvious that it makes sense to promote healthy lifestyles, don't you?

But it seems political rhetoric is paramount, not people's lives.

Heart-Pounding Health Care

2010-03-25T08:04:00.001-07:00

Almost two weeks ago, one of my foreign colleagues, an Indian man in his late 50s, checked into Peking Union Medical College Hospital in Wangfujing complaining of chest pains.

It turned out he had a heart attack and after further tests and examinations, it was found that three of his arteries were blocked, one of them for a long time. The doctors suggested he add stents in his arteries. However, when the doctors performed the procedure, what they originally thought were only 2mm stents needed turned out to be 9mm and the operation took longer than expected so only one artery was opened up.

One of my colleagues went to visit him on the weekend. Most locals consider Peking Union one of the best hospitals in Beijing, but it seemed to be dreary and dirty, as the washrooms had no soap and there was lots of dust in the hallways. Also, the cardiac unit only allowed one visitor per patient. This was reinforced by only giving one pair of slippers to the visitor who had to remove his shoes at the entrance of the unit. My friend asked why this was the policy, but got no better explanation from the nurse than that it would avoid exciting the patient too much. Right.

Nevertheless, he seemed in good spirits and was resting in order to prepare for the second operation, assuming the health insurance company would work things out with the hospital.

It turns out not.

Although he has already paid some 30,000RMB ($4,393) up until now, he must pay 200,000RMB ($29,290) for the second procedure, or at least 100,000RMB up front.

Otherwise the doctor isn't rolling you into the operation room.

While $29,000 is probably relatively inexpensive for a heart procedure, it's a lot of money for people in China to have in their bank accounts, let alone most foreigners here who don't earn that much money.

The situation makes one quickly realize why there is no domestic consumption in China beyond what average people really need -- because they may need to pay for a 200,000 RMB procedure one day and must save every cent, or mao and jiao for it.

It is also a stark reminder not to ever get seriously sick in China -- a great motivator to exercise regularly and eat right -- and definitely be careful crossing the street.

New Wheels to Ride In

2010-03-24T07:22:00.001-07:00

During the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the media were transported around in new buses, either from the media centre to the venues, or from the media centre to the media village or hotels scattered around the city.

And now almost two years later this giant fleet of buses are finally being used in the city.

A few weeks ago the bus transport system started replacing a number of aging buses with these new ones. For example the 117 bus I usually take to work used to be a long accordion bus that seemed to groan and feel as if its engine was about to go kaput at any moment.

Now the 117 buses are these former Olympics buses and they run more frequently too so they aren't too packed at any one time. There are less seats than the accordion buses, but there is also room for a wheelchair if and when the public transport system decides it will take the extra minute to load up a disabled person.

While this is all great, why did it take so long to refit these buses? They don't look too much different from the media buses except for adding the coin collection box and electronic card swiping system.

Perhaps it's just good to say better later than never?

Word of the Day: Hacker

2010-03-24T07:16:00.001-07:00

With a lot of talk about Google and hacking, it's interesting to note that the word hacker in Chinese is 黑客 hei (1) ke (4) or literally "black guest", and that's basically what hackers do... illegally get into your account or system.

It's neat to find the Chinese characters perfectly describe the word and sound like it in English.

And so for fans of The Matrix, the movie is 黑客帝国, heikediguo or "hacker kingdom".

Continuing to Take a Virtual Stand

2010-03-23T07:46:00.001-07:00

The chess game between Google and the Chinese government continues with the search engine giant making its latest move, saying it isn't pulling out of the country, but its URL google.cn suspended and so users are directed to google.com.hk.

Despite Google saying that its search results weren't filtered, they may all be listed, but when you try to click on them, as it says, "This page not found". That's because the Chinese government is still actively censoring the results. So basically Google is back where it was before.

This morning the Xinhua News Agency accused Google of politicizing the issue -- censorship -- and reiterated that if Google wanted to continue doing business in China it had to follow Chinese law.

In an editorial called "Google Don't Politicize Yourself", it says that China has continued its reform and opening up policies for three decades and "its stance for keeping the door open remains unchanged."

Which "door" is this editorial referring to? The door to enter China or the door to do business in China?

It goes on to say:

However, regulation on the Internet is a sovereign issue. The Chinese government regulates the Internet according to laws and will improve its regulation step by step according to its own needs. It is a pure internal affair.

Regrettably, Google's recent behaviors show that the company not just aims at expanding business in China, but is playing an active role in exporting culture, value and ideas.

It is unfair for Google to impose its own value and yardsticks on Internet regulation to China, which has its own time-honored tradition, culture and value.

Whenever a company comes into a country, it does export culture, values and ideas. For example, drinking coffee is not a Chinese habit. But this has changed in recent years, as more young Chinese people head to Starbucks for a latte or cappuccino. And with it comes the coffee culture of kicking back, hanging out with friends or sitting in the shop reading a book.

It's very similar with Google.

If China was like almost every other country that basically allows most things to be seen on the Internet, we wouldn't be discussing this issue.

But because the Chinese government has an inherent need to censor online content, its sophisticated filtering system and policing on the Internet make it one of the most controlling ones in the world. The government claims it's to protect children from pornography, but from trying out the search results, it appears to be blocking more than just dirty pictures.

Censorship prevents its own people from getting access to information they not only want but need to know. Nineteen-eighty-nine is only one of them.

It's interesting to see Google make this move as one wonders how many more cards it has left to play before it physically leaves the country, if that is in the contingency plan.

More importantly, this ongoing dispute between Google and China has made foreign companies think twice about doing business here. For example now, companies in hi-tech industries are expected to hand over their technology in order to continue doing business here. Before Chinese people and companies would find ways to steal intellectual property from foreign companies and then build something similar. But now the government is outright demanding that these commodities be given to China.

How is that a level playing field?

The myth of one billion customers in China in the 1980s quickly evaporated; foreign companies here have quickly realized that this is not true. Nevertheless many continue to try to forge their way into the market, and now they are encountering more obstacles put out by the Chinese government which is conducting its own kind of protectionism -- an act it claims it abhors.

Google's stand is admirable its latest one that definitely wins PR points.

"We very much hope that the Chinese government respects our decision," David Drummond, Google's chief legal officer wrote in a blog post, "though we are well aware that it could at any time block access to our services."

Loyal Google users here are pleased that the company continues to take a strong stand, and it has even inspired some in Hong Kong to stand up to China when it tries to meddle in the former British colony's affairs.

While the Chinese government has stated in black in white what the rules are, it's hard not to support Google in its bid to push for greater freedom in Chinese cyberspace.

Sandy Precautions

2010-03-22T07:34:00.001-07:00

The sandstorm subsided yesterday, but it came back again this morning, though not as severe as Saturday when the sky was yellow.

Today the sky looked overcast, but slightly fuzzy which is why I dug out a surgical mask to wear to work.

At the bus stop only a few people wore masks, and one woman had a bright fuchsia veil wrapped around her head to protect her from the sand. Several people put hands over their mouths in a feeble attempt to protect their mouths and noses from getting sand in them.

The current sandstorm has covered 16 Chinese provinces, originating from Mongolia and has spread down to Taiwan, Japan, and now South Korea.

On Saturday the pollution was so bad in the Chinese capital that the Beijing Meteorological Bureau ranked the air quality at level 5 which is the most hazardous pollution level.

Today it wasn't so bad, but still pretty nasty out there.

The sandstorms have also gone as far south as Hong Kong which recorded its worst pollution levels today, ranging from 450 to 500, when a reading of 100 is already considered bad.

With Beijing, at least there is some wind, but in Hong Kong, residents there are stuck breathing the smog-filled air.

While I haven't seen sandstorms of this magnitude in the almost three years I have lived here, they are a sure sign that the Chinese government's battle against desertification isn't very effective. While the government likes to boast about how many trees it has planted every year, there are not enough efforts made to fight deforestation and drought.

Southwest China is suffering its worst drought in 40 years and some are blaming it on the local governments' desire for short term monetary gains by selling forests to foresters who leave hillsides bare. While there are efforts to replant trees, they aren't growing properly or have roots deep enough to hold the land together. And will anyone be punished for leaving millions of people without enough water to sustain themselves, let alone their crops?

In the meantime we may another day of sand blowing in Beijing before it subsides. We hope.

Where is Gao Zhisheng?

2010-03-21T06:36:00.001-07:00

Where is Gao Zhisheng?

If anyone knows, please let us know.

He's a self-taught human rights lawyer, who in 2001 was named by the Ministry of Justice as one of China's top 10 lawyers.

But since February 4, 2009 he has "disappeared" and the Chinese government will not explain where he is.

In between the stubborn silence there are bits of conflicting reports from the authorities who either don't have their stories straight or wish to put human rights groups and journalists on a wild goose chase.

Last September they told his brother he was "missing", which was meant to mean that he was dead or badly beaten he couldn't be shown in public; another said Gao was where he should be -- in Urumqi working, but none of his family members have heard from him in Xinjiang. And most recently Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said that Gao has been charged with subversion without going into detail.

Jerome Cohen, a China law expert and part of Gao's international pro bono legal team has co-written an op-ed demanding the Chinese government show Gao to prove his existence.

Perhaps, given the Chinese government's flagrant disregard of its own law, a call for his release seems pointless. So, we instead also ask the government to do something much easier — produce Mr. Gao to an impartial observer, such as an official from the United Nations or the International Committee of the Red Cross, to verify his well-being, provide details of Mr. Gao's alleged conviction for "subversion," and provide family access.

What has Gao done? Yes he has ruffled feathers, but he is doing according to Chinese law. He has stood up for the rights of migrant workers and even Falun Gong members. He is only doing it because he sees people's rights infringed upon and uses the law to help them.

What did he get in return? He was interrogated by the police, beaten and tortured. He wrote the account and published it, talking about being sexually assaulted, including toothpicks in his genitals and electric shocks.

His family has suffered too. His teenage daughter was so mentally distraught having police following her everywhere that she couldn't even bear going to school anymore.

That's when his wife had enough. Without Gao's knowledge, she took their two children and they made a perilous escape out of the country through Thailand to the United States where they are now.

A month after that Gao disappeared.

So where is he?

Journalists have been told flat out not to ask about him anymore.

The other day after several questions about Gao, Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said, "I will not answer you," adding "so I hope you will give up such efforts."

The wrong words to say to dogged reporters.

The questions will continue.