Danwei - Media, Advertising, and Urban Life in China

The Mouse looms over Shanghai

suggest@danwei.org (Joel Martinsen) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:35:17 +0700

Xinhua Daily Telegraph
November 5, 2009

Disney is coming to Shanghai.

The Shanghai government announced yesterday that its proposal for a Disney theme park in the city had been approved by the central government. Today's Xinhua Daily Telegraph announced the news with a front-page cover image of a woman pedaling down a street in rural Pudong, where the project will be located.

An inset photo shows a reporter taking a shot of a village committee notice concerning land rights for the project.

A flashy graphic that Xinhua prepared for its feature on the Disney story ran on the cover of a number of papers, including Taiyuan's San Jin City News (above right), Ningbo's Southeast Business, and the Jinan Evening News.

According to the Los Angeles Times:

Disney and the Shanghai municipal government jointly submitted plans in January to build a $3.59-billion park to open as early as 2014. It would be the entertainment giant's fourth theme park outside the U.S., after Paris, Tokyo and Hong Kong -- and the first in mainland China, the fastest-growing mass market in the world.

The Chinese central government approved a broad agreement, outlining the legal and financial framework for the park. The decision clears the way for Disney and Shanghai to work out detailed plans for building and operating the park, addressing such issues as subway and road access to the park as well as finances.

Links and Sources

New York Times: China Approves Disney Theme Park in Shanghai
Los Angeles Times: China OKs Disney theme park plans

Tags: Disney, San Jin City News, Shanghai, Xinhua Daily Telegraph

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Danwei Canteen: Chestnut Chicken Stew

suggest@danwei.org (Eric Mu) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 15:51:03 +0700

Our new series, Danwei Canteen is a quick guide to traditional Chinese food as it's prepared where the cuisine was born: in Chinese rural areas and villages. We'll accompany the food with originally recorded music from parks and villages, and new interpretations of Chinese folk songs and the traditional repertoire. The video is also on Tudou for faster loading in China, and on Youtube.

In the first episode, Li Zhongqing from Anhui prepares Chestnut Chicken Stew. The music is:
- Performance by an anonymous lap steel guitar player in Ritan Park
- Anhui Opera song 'The Emperor's Female Son-Law' sung by Wu Fei
- Anhui Opera song 'Tianxianpei' performed on guzheng, or Chinese zither, by Wu Fei

Ingredients

• A whole chicken with skin, liver and heart
• Peeled chestnuts: seven ounces (200 grams)
• Salt: a spoonful
• Green Onion, pepper, ginger
• Five cloves of garlic
• Peanut oil: three spoonfuls (two for frying the garlic etc.; one for the chicken)
• Soybean paste: a spoonful

Tags: cooking, cuisine, Danwei Canteen, food, music

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A centenarian monk reads the newspaper

suggest@danwei.org (Joel Martinsen) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 15:49:48 +0700

Daily Sunshine
November 4, 2009

Today's Daily Sunshine, a Shenzhen-based commercial paper, talked to the former abbot of Hongfa Temple ahead of his 103rd birthday on the 21st day of the 9th lunar month (November 7 this year).

Master Benhuan (本焕), born in Hubei in 1907, has been a monk for 81 years and is currently director of the Shenzhen Buddhist Association. He told the newspaper that he still rises at 4:18 every morning, naps from 12 to 1:48 every afternoon, and goes to sleep at 9 every night. He plans to retire when he turns 120, and is counting on living another thirty years after that.

One of Benhuan's daily pleasures is reading the newspaper:

On the day of the interview, the reporter watched in silence outside the abbot's chamber. For several hours, an endless stream of people flowed in for blessings, and from time to time someone would rush up to Master Benhuan and ask for an adhistana blessing, or for a prayer for wealth or a promotion. The din continued inside the four square meter abbot's cell until around nine, newspaper time, when Benhuan was able to enjoy a brief moment to himself.

"Today's paper talks about relations between Australia and China...." An assistant carrying a copy of Reference News drew close to Master Benhuan's ear and read the newspaper cover to cover. This was the daily "newspaper lesson," a practice that he was said to have carried on for decades. Reference News was an old friend.

This reporter also ran across an eighty-year-old man who had come up the mountain especially to read a newspaper to the old monk. He had already clipped out some stories, and the old monk listened with rapt attention.

Reading the headlines

"Bo Xilai is fighting the mafia in Chongqing, and they say he's going to drive them out." Holding a copy of the Hong Kong Commercial Daily, the old man spoke into Benhuan's ear while the old monk listened intently in silence. "Impressive," he responded softly, his attention unwavering. Then with his right hand he picked up a magnifying glass from the table and drew close to the newspaper to inspect the magnified headline. Then, as if by some unspoken agreement, the old man took back the newspaper and continued to read, while the old monk continued to listen. The old man made a deliberate pause after every critical point for the old monk to nod his head knowingly.

When he heard that a suspected gang member was also a representative at the municipal People's Congress, Master Benhuan gestured forcefully with his right index finger and exclaimed, "That's not an easy problem to solve. It's not simple. It's got to have the strong support of the central government." The old man nodded his head, and for a moment, harmony filled the abbot's cell.

As an impressively old monk who occupies an important position at an influential Buddhist temple in Shenzhen, Master Benhuan turns up in the news fairly frequently. He was last seen in July after he sued a businessman over a 1.2 million-yuan debt.

Links and Sources

Daily Sunshine (Chinese): Modern urban people must learn to "let things go"
New Express (Chinese): 102-year-old monk sues old friend over 1.2 million yuan debt
Shanghai Daily: Shenzhen monk sues businessman over unpaid loan

Tags: Benhuan, Buddhism, Daily Sunshine, Hongfa Temple, Reference News, Shenzhen, temples

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Giant Mao Zedong stands alone in the autumn cold

suggest@danwei.org (Joel Martinsen) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 12:34:57 +0700

Xiaoxiang Morning Post
November 2, 2009

November 3, 2009

A giant statue of a young Mao Zedong emerged from scaffolding in Changsha this week.

Standing on Juzi Island in the middle of Xiang River, the statue and its flowing hair were revealed to the world for the first time through an image splashed on the cover of yesterday's Xiaoxiang Morning Herald (far left).

In today's issue, the paper followed up with an article on the statue's design process. It spoke with Xie Liwen, a professor at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts who was on the creative team:

Now that workmen have taken down the scaffolding and the statue has revealed its face, many locals are surprised at the "smart, stylish long hair," because the Mao statues with which everyone is most familiar either have the leader waving to the people or standing impressively dressed in an overcoat. Other poses are relatively rare.

"This design isn't all that strange. The Mao statues people typically see are mostly of him standing and waving, or else fairly formal and serious. During the creation of this statue of a seated, young Mao Zedong, we were particularly concerned with differentiating it from past images," said Xie Liwen.

The design of the seated, young Mao statue was hatched in 2006. "Our first concern was uniqueness and artistry," said Xie. He said that at the suggestion Li Ming, president of the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts and another lead designer, they collected images of Mao at different stages of his life, ultimately selecting Mao at 32. "That was the year he wrote 'Changsha,' and besides, we wanted the design to capture the expansive abandon of the poem."

To properly recreate Mao Zedong's true image, the creative team repeatedly consulted historical materials and produced drafts that they sent off for Mao Zedong's daughter-in-law Shao Hua to review. "Shao Hua was quite pleased with the design," said Xie. Unfortunately, Shao passed away last year and was unable to see the completed statue for herself.
[...]
The poem "Changsha" describes what Mao Zedong saw while standing on Juzi Island looking at Yuelu Mountain. But perceptive locals noticed that the newly revealed Mao statue is facing toward the southeast, with his back toward the mountain. Why?

Xie explained that the southeast orientation was selected primarily for artistic reasons: "The light is better facing the southeast, and it has a stronger sense of shape." Xie said that they performed a special survey of Juzi Island and its surroundings to address the orientation issue, and after considering multiple factors, they ultimately decided that the statue should face the southeast.

For the torso of the young Mao Zedong statue, the creative team chose the form of a mountain: "It expresses Mao's magnificence, and also shows that he came out of Shaoshan."

The statue measures 32 meters high and 83 by 41 meters on the ground. It is constructed out of granite quarried in Fujian Province.

Links and Sources

Xiaoxiang Morning Herald (Chinese): Young Mao Zedong statue emerges on Juzi Island, Why does this Mao Zedong statue have long, stylish hair?
Maoist Wiki: Poems by Mao Zedong

Tags: art, Changsha, Mao Zedong, statues, Xiaoxiang Morning Herald

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Middle school kidnapping plot busted in Jilin

suggest@danwei.org (Joel Martinsen) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 15:55:19 +0700

City Evening News
November 2, 2009

Two teenage girls from rural Siping in Jilin Province conspired with a 19-year-old high school dropout who was working in a bar, to sell local middle school girls into prostitution.

Zhao and Dong, both fourteen years old, tricked five middle-school students into coming with them to the city of Gongzhuling, where they held them for 68 hours before they were discovered by police.

Zhao and Zou, the 19-year-old, hatched the unsuccessful moneymaking scheme online. "I wanted to take them off to be working girls. They'd sell their bodies and we'd make money," Zou later confessed to police.

Here's how things went down, according to a report in the City Evening News:

On October 15, Zhao called up Zou and arranged for him to rent a car to pick up a few girls from Gujiazi. She and Dong would meet him there. At 10 am on the 16th, Zou rented a Songhuajiang mini-van and arrived at the gate to Middle School #2 in the Liaohe rural administration district. When classes let out at 11, Zhao had five of her classmates get in the car by telling them that it was her birthday and she was taking them to lunch. She first said that they were going to eat in Lishu, but when they got there she said they would go on to the city of Gongzhuling. Zou lied to a friend, saying that his girlfriend was in town but had no place to stay. He borrowed a key and took them to his friend's place. At 6 that evening, Zou went out to ask around but was unable to find any place to "take in" the girls, so he returned after buying some things to eat.

After supper on the 16th, one girl said that she wanted to go home, and the other girls began to agitate for hiring a cab home. The suspects placated them by saying they'd be sent home the following day. After the argument, Zhao dragged the girl who first suggested going home into the next room and beat her with a belt.

The article goes on to describe more beatings at the hands of Zhao and Dong over the next two days. Zou was apparently prepared to take the girls back home on the morning of the 17th after he was unable to sell them into prostitution.

Parents of the missing girls notified police on the afternoon of the 17th, and the girls were rescued at 7 am on the 19th after a 39-hour investigation.

The happy conclusion:

On the morning of the 19th, parents of the five kidnapped girls came to the police station bearing two banners. Practically every parent called out through tears, "If the police hadn't rescued them in time, who knows what would have happened to our kids. At the critical moment, the people's police came through!" As they were taking their children home, the parents tried to press a stack of cash on the officers in charge of the case, but the police politely declined.

A more banal threat to secondary education appeared in the sidebar of today's paper: the eight "unwritten rules" that govern elementary and middle schools. The article, cribbed from a CCTV report, pairs a rule enacted to make education more fair or to reduce student stress with circumstances that actually exist in many parts of the country:

No matriculation tests; parents compete for spots in schools
Entrance exams may be prohibited, but there are lots of other ways to jockey for access to the best schools;
School selection fees have disappeared in name only; parents make "voluntary" donations;
Mathematics Olympiad stopped; "Hope Cup" takes its place
Zhejiang's Department of Education put a stop to the extracurricular, competition-focused math program in primary schools, but the drive to gain awards has kept supplemental math classes alive;
No promotion-based rankings; schools still compete for top honors
Schools aren't supposed to compare advancement rates;
"Key classes" prohibited; "innovative classes" keep cropping up
According to Ministry of Education rules, compulsory grade levels are not supposed to be divided into ordinary classes and "experimental classes," "accelerated classes," "innovative classes," and so forth. Many schools continue to divide up their student body, but they're more circumspect about the terminology used;
No make-up classes on holidays; Classes are still made-up, but in a separate location;
Teachers may not conduct paid tutoring; Swap classes and teach
Teachers tutor but aren't often called out on it. They're only catering to market demand;
No full-time test prep classes; Entire classes change locations.

Links and Sources

City Evening News (Chinese): Two 14-year-old girls kidnap 5 junior high girls, Eight unwritten rules for primary and secondary schools

Tags: City Evening News, kidnapping, prostitution, school

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Chinese and American netizens clash in cyberspace

suggest@danwei.org (Jeremy Goldkorn) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 15:47:09 +0700

A recent and very well-received speech by Kaiser Kuo at the University of Nebraska - Lincoln on Sino-American relations and the Internet.

Tags: Internet, Kaiser Kuo, U.S.A.

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Those damned English experts

suggest@danwei.org (Joel Martinsen) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 12:45:46 +0700

Discreet airport transit

The Beijing Subway system recently issued a bilingual safety manual for riders on the Airport Express line. Zhai Hua, a blogger who posts on cross-cultural issues, noted several types of problems with the booklet:

Typos: From the title, "Passenter Safety Tips," to "swiping the card gentaally";
Infelicitous translations: "do not attack door" (不要扒门: "Do Not Force Door"), "Please ask for the working staff of station for help if need," and "Waiting as your line No." (按线候车, apparently an instruction to stand as directed by yellow lines on the floor);
Mystifying cover design: A shapely woman silhouetted over a pink heart.

On October 30, the Beijing Youth Daily summarized Zhai's blog post and asked the subway company for an explanation:

A representative of the subway company said that some controversial translations, apart from obvious spelling errors, required expert assessment. "There are multiple translations for ditie (地铁), including 'metro' and 'subway,' and you can't say any particular one is wrong." The representative said that the operating company was responsible for printing the manual, and that he would handle the matter after looking into it further. As for the controversy over the cover image, that was a case of difference of opinion.

"Experts" could conceivably argue over whether to use "metro" or "subway," if the city hadn't already decided on the latter, but many of the errors in the pamphlet are indefensible.

Zhai notes that few years ago, an "expert" was cited in defense of Shanghai's use of "model unit" as a translation of 文明单位, an honor bestowed on organizations that meet certain standards of excellence. Zhai and other Internet commentators felt that the city's translation captured none of the meaning of the original and could be misinterpreted as referring to a promotional apartment unit in a new development.

The city's response to Xinmin Online:

Selection of "model units" in Shanghai is undertaken by the Shanghai Municipal Civilization Office, and the city government issues "model unit" plaques. The English translation is attested by the authority of an expert in English linguistics and has been in use for many years. It is authoritative and will continue to be used in the future.

Other parts of the country use "civilized unit," a translation that has its own problems. Yet when pressed, they would probably be able to justify the choice by appealing to the judgment of an expert.

Links and Sources

Zhai Hua's blog (Chinese): Don't blame the "experts" for Chinglish, Airport express handbook contains flabbergasting English translations
Beijing Youth Daily (Chinese): Airport express handbook contains flabbergasting English translations
Earlier on Danwei: Ministry of Communication Problems

Tags: Beijing Youth Daily, Chinglish, translation, Zhai Hua

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Beijing: Marketing Services Assistant for PR firm

suggest@danwei.org (Jeremy Goldkorn) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 18:13:39 +0700

Marketing Services Assistant, Weber Shandwick Asia Pacific

Job Description:

Weber Shandwick, the world’s leading global public relations firm, seeks an assistant for its Asia Pacific marketing team. Based in Beijing, this early-career position demands a versatile communicator who has a strong background in, and knowledge of, multi-media communication channels. Working closely with our senior marketing services team, the successful candidate will be responsible for compiling reports and newsletters, managing web content and tracking media activity. Excellence in English language is essential.

Requirements:

* University degree
* Native-level English ability with excellent oral and written communication skills
* Digital video editing skills desirable
* Experience in desktop publishing and graphic design desirable
* Experience and an interest using popular online platforms
* Competency with Microsoft Office Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook
* A self-starter who is extremely well-organized and motivated
* Conversational Mandarin ability is an advantage

Please submit an English cover letter and resume or CV to tmgingrich@webershandwick.com to be considered.

Tags: PR, public relations

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Hospitals in Sichuan to go smoke-free

suggest@danwei.org (Joel Martinsen) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 16:29:31 +0700

Chengdu Evening News
October 30, 2009

Come 2012, medical facilities in Sichuan will require you to step outside for your smoke break.

Today's Chengdu Evening News announced the start of an anti-smoking campaign intended to bring the province in line with the WHO's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. Twenty percent of the province's hospitals should go smoke-free by the end of this year, 50% by the end of 2010, and the rest by the end of 2011.

Conspicuous "no smoking" signs will go up, ash trays will be removed from conference rooms, and cigarette ads will be barred from hospital shops. Additionally, smoking will be incorporated into performance reviews for medical staff and their employers.

Some statistics provided by the newspaper:

Percentage of doctors in Sichuan who smoke: 16.89% (33.9% of male doctors and 13.8% of female doctors);
Average number of cigarettes smoked per day by male doctors who smoke: 12;
Percentage of doctors aged 60-69 who smoke: over 50%;
Percentage of doctors who have smoked in front of patients: 4.3%.

The money quote:

Professor Li Jing, head of the Huaxi Hospital Mental Health Center's Substance Dependence Department at Sichuan University, told this reporter yesterday...that although doctors may be more knowledgeable about medical matters than ordinary people, some doctors who smoke are insufficiently aware of how unhealthy smoking is, and believe that smoking is not very harmful.

Links and Sources

Chengdu Evening News (Chinese): No-smoking order takes effect throughout Sichuan

Tags: Chengdu Evening News, health, hospitals, smoking

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Xujun Eberlein's Apologies Forthcoming

suggest@danwei.org (Alice Xin Liu) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 16:25:31 +0700

Hong Kong's Blacksmith Books has published a short story collection by Xujun Eberlein. Below is an introduction to the book by Pete Spurrier, of Blacksmith, followed by an extract from the book.

Introduction to Apologies Forthcoming

by Pete Spurrier

It was some decade. The universities were closed. Students were at war. Poetry was banned. And the word “love,” unless applied to Mao, was expressly forbidden. Artists were denounced, and many opted for suicide. This is the time – its madness, its passion, its complexity – that Xujun Eberlein brings to life in Apologies Forthcoming, her moving collection of short stories about those who lived during and after China’s Cultural Revolution.

This book won the third annual Tartt Fiction Award when it first appeared in the United States, and an Asian edition has been published in Hong Kong.

Xujun is “a fresh voice in American fiction, a Chinese writer with a remarkably shrewd, interesting tongue” according to Jay Parini. But the stories here are based on true experience. Born in Chongqing, Xujun was sent to the countryside after leaving high school, and emigrated to the US in 1988. She blogs about current affairs at Insideout China.

“My big sister died at the age of 16 as a Red Guard,” she says. “She was both a participant and a victim of the Cultural Revolution, but foremost she was my dear sister. Her death planted in me a ‘Cultural Revolution complex.’ For three decades after her death in 1968, I couldn’t bear to look back at that summer, yet the wound in my heart was never healed. It was only after 9/11 that I finally began to write a memoir piece about her. I cried constantly when I was writing and revising it. This non-fiction piece, titled Swimming with Mao, was later published in Walrus in 2006. The story Feathers in this collection is a fictionalized account of that same incident, from a different angle by a more distant narrator. That story then became the first of a bunch featuring young protagonists of the time.”

Asia Times said: “Eberlein’s collection is a reminder of all the great stories that could and should be written in China today. Unfortunately, exile continues to be the home of China’s most honest and moving narratives.” Fittingly, few bookstores in China will agree to stock the book. But the publisher fulfils mail orders to China free of charge. Below is an extract from the first story in the collection.

Men Don’t Apologize; extract

by Xujun Eberlein

Each time a prospective suitor swerved away from Ou Hong, her father couldn’t help but remind her to warm the hues of her face a little. He would clumsily jest, “Have they borrowed your rice and repaid with chaff?” And he always got the rebuttal, “Where do you think I got my hues from?” Those words choked off the even-tempered old man, once an eloquent teacher of Marxist-Leninist doctrine. He would quietly lament the metamorphosis of his sweet little girl, while she did what she pleased.

Ou Hong’s mother had died shortly after the end of the Cultural Revolution. As if she could not manage the tremendous relief of waking up from a decade-long nightmare, her nerves just snapped like a string drawn too taut. Ou Hong was a freshman then, and her mother’s last words were like a prophecy, that she, Ou Hong, would find a suitor among neighborhood boys, someone she was familiar with from childhood. The unsaid words: someone who wouldn’t mind her aloofness and chronic sarcasm.

No one knew if the mother had a particular boy in mind, and Ou Hong took the prophecy as no more than a loving mother’s kind wish. Four years passed and when graduation time came, Ou Hong was the only girl in her Mechanical Engineering class who had not been paired. On a campus of mostly male students she dated few, and never for very long. She departed university with the crown of “cold-eyed princess.”

Then, in the spring, on her first day of work at the Bus Factory, she ran into a neighbor from childhood, to whom she hadn’t uttered a word for 16 years, though she had seen him on TV and around home sometimes.

She was passing workers crowded around two TV cameramen inside the factory’s gate, when a strangely familiar voice glued her feet to the ground. It came from a young man wearing a gray-striped Western suit, elegantly unbuttoned. His thin lips moved swiftly over a microphone while the overflowing light from his enthusiastic eyes swept through the audience. The mannerisms were his trademark as the host of the popular TV program, Focal Interview. He cast a look on Ou Hong before she could lurch away.

“Hey, look who’s here,” he turned off the microphone and said, “mountains don’t circle but waters do.” His long, girlish eyelashes flapped, as he contemplated the white dress-shirt tucked into her red jeans.

“What a white swan,” he eulogized.

“Was I an ugly duckling before?” Ou Hong said. Immediately she bit her lip.

“No, no, I was,” he said, in the charming self-deprecating tone that had made him adorable to his massive female audience. His voice and smile tore open every little detail of that autumn day in her childhood. She could hear — with a sharp clarity — her own flustered and exasperated voice shrieking, “One day! One day . . .” and see him bouncing backward, turning with a sinister smile, then disappearing around a corner of the wall.

What had she tried to say that day? As they stood face to face once again, 16 years condensed into 16 seconds. She felt on the verge of recovering those words, before they slipped away like water — shapeless, with nothing to grip. One day what? All these years of time were like beach sand, layer over layer, with unspoken words buried beneath, till unearthing became hopeless, yet she could not give up digging.

His lilting voice encroached, “What are you doing here anyway, white swan?”

She strutted away without another word. Her heart churned with anger as she sped to the Administration Building. Didn’t he remember anything? How could he speak to her with such a casual intimacy?

Chen Yiping was the neighbor boy’s name, and the Political Institute was their neighborhood. The last time she spoke to him was 1966. He was ten. She was eight, until then a spoiled little princess pampered by her father’s colleagues and students.

The Political Institute’s function was to educate the Nationalist army’s ex-generals, who surrendered, or fled unsuccessfully, when the victory of the Chinese Communists became inevitable in 1949. Ou Hong’s father was the president of the Institute. He wore a four-pocket navy cadre uniform and lectured on revolutionary theory in a dignified manner, and those ex-generals were knocked out with admiration. His ability and excellent work even received recognition from Chairman Mao himself; the Great Leader received him in the People’s Hall in Beijing and shook hands with him, a rare honor.

The Institute, located on the south side of the city, was housed in what was once the American Embassy, taken over by the new government after the American imperialists “ran away with their tails between their legs,” as the popular song “Socialism is Good” goes. In the garden-like Institute, Ou Hong’s family had the entire second floor of a beautiful Western-style, two-story beige house, while two families of her father’s subordinates shared the downstairs, one of these the Chen family.

That day in early fall of 1966 was an ordinary day; the sky was blue, the clouds were white, and the bird songs were jubilant. Ou Hong returned home from her elementary school uncertain whether she should be happy or upset about the classes stopping. Yiping slid down from a mulberry tree right in front of her, his lips purpled by the ripe berries.

“Brother,” she said, “You scared me!” Girls and boys didn’t talk at school, but in one’s own yard the rules were relaxed.

“Who’s your brother!” The boy hooted, surprising her in a big way. Yiping was nicknamed by his schoolmates as a “sissy” and had never raised his voice at her or anyone before.

“Did you eat the wrong medicine this morning?” she teased.

“Your Pa ate the wrong medicine.” The boy backed up a step and announced, “The revolutionary situation is grand, and is getting better and better. Your Pa is a loser, my Pa is in power now!”

“What do you mean?” Ou Hong said.

Yiping backed another step and ran away.

Puzzled, she walked to her father’s office building. Long and dense green vines of ivy coated the walls; in front was a goldfish pond with stone rails. Pink lotus flowers bloomed graciously in the pond. She dallied at her favorite mossy-rimmed pool from which a dragonhead spurted water, but a surge of collective shouting from inside the building washed over her like a wave. Scampering through the front gate, she climbed up the rosewood stairs to the third floor, where the President’s Office was located. She stood stunned at the wide open door: the usually neat and roomy office was a total mess, white papers with black and red print scattered everywhere. Her father was nowhere to be seen.

Another sharp wave of shouts erupted from the first floor. Ou Hong ran downstairs. Standing behind rows upon rows of sitting people, she saw her father on his knees in the center of the stage, the same stage where he would give long speeches and receive loud applause from the same crowd he faced now. Uncle Chen, her father’s amiable subordinate, the kind neighbor of her family, the caring father of her playmate Yiping, pressed her father’s head down till it almost touched the floor, his other hand holding a tall, pointy dunce cap made of cardboard. On the paper cap’s surface was a column of hand-written, black ink characters, each bigger than the one above: Capitalist Roader Ou.

“Put the cap on your head!” Uncle Chen ordered. Kneeling prone, her father raised unsteady hands over his head and put on the dunce cap.

“Tell us you are a capitalist roader!”

“I am a capitalist roader.” The small voice did not sound like her father’s at all.

“Louder!”

“I am a capitalist roader!”

“You are a monster and demon!”

“I am a monster and demon. . . .”

As the revolutionary masses burst into loud bellowing – “Bombard capitalist roaders!” and “Burn the monsters and demons!” – Ou Hong sprinted through the meeting hall’s passageway, blasting up to the stage, swirling white papers around her. Bending over, she butted her head into Uncle Chen’s unsuspecting stomach, staggering the big man. Her shriek echoed in the meeting hall, “I won’t let you bully my Papa!”

Uncle Chen caught his balance: “Little Hong, children are not allowed here. Revolution is a grownup matter.”

She kicked him in the shins and screamed, “You are a monster and demon! My Papa is a good man!”

At that moment her father twisted his head toward her, struggling to look up from the floor with bloodshot eyes. “Get out, go home!” His husky voice was muffled, with nothing remaining of his usual dignified bearing. When she did not obey, Uncle Chen nodded to a thick-waisted woman who came up and pulled her out of the meeting hall, as Ou Hong kicked and cursed with the few dirty words she knew.

Once out the door, the woman whispered, “Go home; you’ll only make things worse for your father.” Her voice was surprisingly concerned, which was what made Ou Hong obey.

The upset girl ran into Yiping again. The boy kept a few feet from her and said:

“Yay, what did I say?”

“You are wrong! Your father is wrong! My Papa is not a capitalist roader!”

“He is too!” the boy clapped his hands and sang:

“Your Pa is a loser,

My Pa is a winner!”

As he sang, he jumped up and down on a pile of coal against his kitchen wall. Ou Hong said hurriedly, “Listen to me, Yiping, one day you—” Before her next word was out, pa! a charcoal briquette hit her forehead. The briquette shattered into thousands of particles, blacking her cheeks and blinding her eyes.

Compared to the episodes that followed later, the pain caused by the charcoal was really nothing. However, this was her first experience with humiliation, and the anguish, confusion and frustration had hit enormously. She kept rubbing her eyes, wanting to speak, as if completing the interrupted sentence was the most important thing at that moment, as if it was a lifebuoy for her sunken body, “One day, one day—” Her words broke to sobbing, as Yiping ran away in victory.

Tags: Blacksmith Books, Inside-Out China, Pete Spurrier, Xujun Eberlein

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Chinese bloggers conference

suggest@danwei.org (Jeremy Goldkorn) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 19:03:37 +0700

The best annual Internet event in China, the China Blogger Conference, is next weekend in Lianzhou, a small mountain town in western Guangdong Province.

If you want to sign up for it, go to this page. 100 yuan a person, not including hotel.

If you can't or are too lazy to read Chinese and are a journalist or active blogger, send an email to jeremy -at- danwei.org if you want to attend.

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TIME's Austin Ramzy on GDP growth, the Global Media Summit and the TIME China blog

suggest@danwei.org (Alice Xin Liu) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 16:30:03 +0700

Ramzy in Sichuan during the earthquake. Photo by Ian Teh

Austin Ramzy has been reporting for TIME for 6 years, starting in Hong Kong and moving to Beijing in 2007. Since then he has covered the Hong Kong Chief Executive election in 2007, the Beijing Olympics, Wenchuan earthquake and the Xinjiang riots.

Working in regional journalism in the US before moving to Hong Kong, Ramzy has a Bachelor degree in East Asian Studies from Middlebury College and a Masters in Journalism from Berkeley. He was in Harbin for a term during his university days.

His most recent articles in TIME includes ones on the Global Media Summit, China and Russia
seeking an oil pact, China's 3rd Quarter GDP rise and the economy and Censorship at the Frankfurt Book Fair. Ramzy was also the main contributor to TIME China's blog, which recently stopped operating.

Danwei asks Ramzy questions about his reporting background, the stories that he has written from Beijing (above), and why TIME closed down the TIME China blog.

Danwei: How long have you been covering China affairs for TIME? Did your methods of working change when you moved from Hong Kong to Beijing? Did any new difficulties arise or was Beijing a easier place to be a China journalist?
Austin Ramzy: I started as an intern at TIME Asia in 2003. I was eventually hired full-time and worked four years as a reporter-researcher. That's TIME-speak for a fact checker who is sometimes uncaged to write book reviews, obituaries, short pieces based on reporting from stringers in the field and occasionally even cover stories. The opportunities to cover China from that job were somewhat limited. I did write about Hong Kong politics, but only made a few reporting trips to the mainland.

When I moved to Beijing in the summer of 2007 someone I interviewed often told me that reporters used to sit in Hong Kong trying to figure out what was happening in Beijing, now they go to Beijing to figure out what is happening in Hong Kong. This city has become an important place for journalism, not just for covering China but global issues as well. The variety of interesting people and stories you can find in Beijing more than make up for the difficulties of living and working here.

Danwei: Where do you look when you look for stories? How much of it is already decided for you by TIME?
AR: I search as broadly as I can for stories. That includes domestic and foreign media, blogs and websites, academic journals and conversations with sources. I would estimate that about half of what I do comes from my own ideas and half is assigned by editors.

Danwei: Taking a story that we recently linked to, about the World Media Summit in Beijing. Was there anything genuine about the conference and safeguarding foreign media rights? David Bandurski said it was a bit like the Communists holding court, would you agree?
AR: The World Media Summit story was assigned by an editor as the event was winding up, so I wasn't able to attend in person. What I wrote was based on the speeches that were presented at the event. Was there anything genuine about safeguarding foreign media rights? Hu Jintao made that pledge, which is similar to what the government has been saying for the past few years. I'm not so cynical as to think there was nothing genuine about that pledge, but I think the commitment is limited. China has become an easier place for foreign journalists to work, but the reporting rules are often ignored by local officials when you're in the field. Like many regulations in China, the protections for journalists look good on paper but are easily cast aside when they conflict with the interests of people in power.

David Bandurski is a keen observer of Chinese media and foreign coverage of China, and I quoted some of his comments in my piece. His message that you shouldn't ignore your fundamental responsibilities in a quest for access is important. That said, I think he may have been a bit harsh in that piece. Some of the speeches given by foreign media executives did include requests for China to be more open and fair with access to information. They were couched in polite language because they had to be. That's the only way to get the message across in that environment.

Danwei: You also recently wrote about the astonishing 3rd Quarter GDP growth (8.9%). If you could give us one, what would your predictions for the Chinese economy over the next year or more be?
AR: I think China's recent growth has been uneven and possibly a bit exaggerated, but it isn't completely a mirage. I think in the next year there could be some stumbles as the government is forced to manage the bad debt produced as a result of this year's lending binge and also tries to control the overcapacity produced by poorly targeted investment. There is still an unhealthy reliance on exports, and foreign demand is unlikely to return for a long time. The government still hasn't done enough to make consumption a pillar of the economy. But despite all those obstacles, I think China is in a pretty good position to maintain moderate economic expansion next year, though probably short of double-digit growth.

Danwei: Could you tell us why the TIME China blog got closed down and what did you get out of writing a blog on TIME that is pertinent to reporting on China?
AR: I don't know all the reasons why the China Blog was shut down. I don't think it ever ranked very high among TIME blogs in terms of traffic. If we had managed to sustain a large volume of posts or attract a big readership the blog would have probably survived.

Blogs are useful because they allow a connection with readers that you don't get writing at a big magazine. When I started at small newspapers I would come to work most days to find my voice mail jammed with messages from readers. Usually they were related to what an idiot I was, and occasionally to what a genius I was. But I never lacked a sense of what people thought about my work. As I moved to bigger publications that connection seemed to fade, but blogs are a way to revive that. As you noted on Danwei, the China Blog's comment section was lacking. I wish it could have been more of a reasoned dialogue rather than ranting from various entrenched viewpoints, but sometimes there were insightful comments.

The blog was a good format for covering breaking stories and writing about quirky or personal stuff that wouldn't qualify for a magazine or web story. I live in a courtyard that is divided among 20 laobaixing families. I wrote a story about the neighborhood ahead of the Olympics that ran in the US edition of TIME, but there's a lot of other stuff that wouldn't make it into print. On the blog I wrote about my toilet overflowing and flooding the courtyard, my neighbor creeping in one night with a butcher knife because he thought I was being robbed, another neighbor getting wasted at a dinner party, declaring our courtyard a "harmonious society" and then puking. I found it all interesting and entertaining, but I could see where some readers might find it too personal and self-indulgent.

Danwei: Do you find reading Chinese and English blogs, Twitter and other digitalized information useful for your story needs?
AR: Yes, without a doubt. When I first started reporting the go-to resources were the clips morgue and library card catalogs. It's hard to imagine how anything was possible. There are of course limitations to digital resources. There is still no substitute for being there, especially when you have a breaking event like the Sichuan earthquake. But the Internet opens up a lot of possibilities.

Danwei: In the face of the changing media landscape, where digital and new media is on the rise, would you say that going to journalist school (as you did) is still crucial and road-paving?
AR: I don't think going to journalism school was ever critical. It was useful to me, and there are j-school grads at a fair number of Chinese publications and foreign outlets covering China. Of course, most of my classmates aren't even involved in journalism any more. Part of the difficulty is that journalism is in tremendous flux right now, and a lot of jobs are disappearing, especially at traditional media outlets. So it's hard for j-schools to know what to teach. My advice to people considering j-school right now is to think very carefully about what you hope to get out of it. You could just end up with a lot of debt.

Danwei: Can you imagine a situation where you would dislike reporting from China? What would it be?
AR: I once interviewed an executive in Beijing who said China is a place where nothing is permitted and everything is possible. That's an exaggeration on both ends, of course. But it says a lot about the rewards and frustrations one finds working here. I experience things I dislike about reporting in China on a regular basis. I also experience minor victories and moments of satisfaction. All in all I can't think of anywhere I'd rather be working.

Tags: Austin Ramzy, blogging, Hong Kong, TIME, Wenchuan earthquake, Xinjiang riots

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Zhang Yimou's new film: the Coen brothers filtered through northeastern folk entertainment

suggest@danwei.org (Joel Martinsen) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 16:29:59 +0700

Hefei Evening Post
October 29, 2009

Today's Hefei Evening News features an image of the glittering high-rises that will go up in place of a declining commercial district.

The urban renewal project will displace 2,500 households, but they'll be able to move back eventually: "National Day two years from now will be the day for displaced households to move back home," said Hu Mingwen, vice-secretary of Yaohai District.

The paper also offers a bit more information about Zhang Yimou's new film, Three Shots (三枪), his first in three years, set to premiere on December 11:

Zhang Yimou's Three Shots is adapted from the Coen brothers' Blood Simple, with the setting changed to ancient China. However, a source in the audience for the "rough cut" screening yesterday said that Three Shots was basically a combination of "northeastern errenzhuan" and My Own Swordsman, "with Xiao Shenyang speaking instead of singing." The first fifth of the film is a comedy, and then it turns into a thriller. Three Shots continues the Zhang Yimou cinematographic style, with colors so rich and vibrant that outside scenes resemble paintings. Interiors feature actors in lush, eye-catching costumes.

Three Shots calls itself a comic thriller, but the comedy section only makes up one-fifth of the film and it remains to be seen how its laughs will test out with audiences. One member of yesterday's audience told this reporter that the first fifth of the film did have lots of laughs, the best of which came during a cameo by Zhao Benshan. A group of men and women suspected of improper activities were hauled out of an inn and forced to squat at the base of a wall. Then Uncle Benshan, decked out in period costume, walked casually over and said in all seriousness, "Our chief task now is to gain a grip on behavior problems." At this, all of the cinema heads in the audience erupted in laughter.

The film stars Xiao Shenyang a student of Zhao Benshan's who found national popularity for his performance in a skit during the previous Spring Festival Gala. According to the paper, producer Zhang Weiping said the actor was chosen "because he came cheap."

Links and Sources

Hefei Evening News (Chinese): Zhang Yimou nervous over rough cut of Three Shots, Hefei's former "vegetable basket" to be transformed

Tags: Hefei Evening Post, Xiao Shenyang, Zhang Yimou

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Shenzhen: Art Designer and Editor needed for trade magazine

suggest@danwei.org (Jeremy Goldkorn) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 12:58:35 +0700

This is a recruitment advertisement. Please contact the advertiser directly if you are interested. See all job ads.

Find Your Future in Furniture!
Art Designer and Editor Needed For Trade Magazine

Creative art designer and professional editor/copy editor both needed for top Chinese language furniture trade magazine in Shenzhen. Must be a native Chinese speaker. Knowledge of furniture industry, interior design a plus, but not a must. Relocation expenses paid if needed. Salary negotiable depending on experience.

Contact: cbingbing01@yahoo.com with resume.

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Painted plagiarism of a push-up photograph

suggest@danwei.org (Joel Martinsen) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 11:50:44 +0700

Here's an oil painting done by Li Yueliang (李跃亮) in 2003. It was shown at a recent exhibition of sports art held alongside the National Games in Jinan:

Li Yueliang's 2003 painting, When I Was Young (我小时候)

Here's an earlier photograph taken by Hu Wugong (胡武功) in 1996:

Hu Wugong's 1996 photo, Push-Ups (俯卧撑)

A member of the Professional Photographers of America identified the plagiarism in a short post submitted to the Fengniao website:

At the Seventh Chinese Sports Art Exhibition held recently in Jinan, Shandong Province, the oil painting When I Was Young by an artist named Li Yueliang from Zhejiang Province caught my attention, as familiar framing, characters, and setting all appeared before my eyes. Wasn't this "Push-Ups," a photograph taken by Hu Wugong in the 1990s? Hu is the chairman of the Shaanxi Province Photographers Association and a professor at the Xi'an University of Architecture and Technology. His photograph was taken in the Minleyuan slums in Xi'an in 1996. More than a decade later, how had it turned into an oil painting on display at a national art exhibition?

So I called up Hu Wugong to ask whether he had assigned rights, and he answered in the negative. He also sent me the original, and I put the photograph next to the painting and discovered that apart from the artist and date, everything else about the two pieces was identical. The painter's skill at copying was extraordinary — no detail seemed to escape his notice. He merely substituted pigments for silver salts to clone a photograph with brush-strokes. We all know that for painter and photographer alike, the achievement of an artistic work should be a result of involvement in life, and a painter cut off from the world, appropriating the results of someone else's involvement in life and using a copy as his own original work is incredibly sad, ridiculous, and shameful! Such shameful plagiarism should be criticized and wiped out by us all.

I urge my colleagues in the world of photography and fine art to open up a discussion for people to air their opinions, so that this phenomenon does not spread, desecrating art!

Via Wang Xiaofeng, who presents the two images with a snide remark about how easy it is to simulate an oil painting using Photoshop.

Links and Sources

Fengniao (Chinese): Another painting-photo plagiarism scandal

Tags: art, Fengniao, photography, plagiarism

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Tilting at the Customs Administration over confiscated books

suggest@danwei.org (Joel Martinsen) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 18:27:20 +0700

You've taken a trip to Hong Kong and are returning with a stack of reading material that you can't normally find on the mainland. To your dismay, the customs agent seizes your books, but won't tell you why. What do you do? Sue!

Southern Weekly reported last week on a professor who is suing a customs office in Guangzhou over the confiscation of seven books he brought back from Hong Kong.

Most of the books that Feng Chongyi had confiscated by the Tianhe Terminal Customs Office were written by mainland authors and did not violate national laws or regulations. But the heart of his complaint is more general: there is no publicly-available index of banned books, and no clear public standard of what constitutes illicit printed material. Feng argues that this violates Chinese law.

Feng's lawsuit mirrors an earlier attempt by the Fujian-based author Chen Xiwo to retrieve twelve copies of the Taiwan edition of his novella collection Book of Offenses from Fuzhou customs officials. Southern Weekly summarizes his case, in which the appeals court found that his book "disseminated pornography" and deserved to be confiscated.

The article also digs up an interesting older case in which Zhu Yuantao, a Beijing-based lawyer who won a fleeting victory over the Beijing Airport Customs Office.

In 2002, Zhu returned from a trip to Hong Kong with a copy of Gao Hua's account of the Yan'an Rectification Campaign, which customs agents seized as a banned book. He sued, lost, and then won on appeal in the Beijing Municipal People's High Court, which said that in the absence of a clear, public standard for banned publications, the confiscation of his book lacked a legal basis.

However, two months later the court revised its decision to uphold the seizure, and subsequent lawsuits over confiscated books have never been successful. Perhaps authorities are nervous that making the customs blacklist public would set an unfortunate precedent for information control in other areas — domestic media and publishing, for example, where unwritten rules abound.

It's an illuminating article, and its first line is particularly interesting in what it reveals about Southern Weekly's intended readership.

When Customs Confiscates Books, Where is the Evidence?

by Yang Zheng / SW

Many people have had the following experience: they bring back certain books from overseas, but when they pass through Chinese customs, the books get confiscated as illegal printed material. Most people simply accept this, but noted academic Feng Chongyi has chosen to go to court.

Feng, who carries a Chinese passport, is currently an associate professor and deputy director of the China Research Center at the University of Technology, Syndey, as well as an adjunct professor at Nankai University.

A secret list of banned books

On the morning of June 5, customs officials confiscated some of Feng Chongyi's books during an inspection at the Tianhe Terminal customs as he was crossing from Hong Kong into Guangzhou. The confiscated titles were scholarly books he had purchased in Hong Kong and included Deconstruction and Construction,* Lin Mu Remembers,* and Hu Yaobang and China's Political Reformation.* The customs inspection record classified the confiscated books as suspected illicit printed material.

Feng explained to customs agents that these were legal publications from legitimate Hong Kong publishers, and that most had been authored or edited by mainland scholars of contemporary Chinese history who, for one reason or another, had to publish in Hong Kong or Taiwan. Additionally, they were vital to his own research.

Two hours later, communication failed. Feng pressed the customs agent: who had deemed them "illicit printed material"? Which books belonged to that category? Was it legal for customs to censor books? Where could the public find out details about the "ban"?

The customs agent explained that books belonging to the "banned category" were determined by the "relevant departments" and known inside customs. Southern Weekly learned from sources within customs that major inspection rooms at the border have a copy of a list of banned printed materials; when a suspicious book is discovered, agents can enter the title into a computer to locate a match. But the ban list is kept secret even from customs agents in other departments, not to mention the general public.

A month and a half later, Feng returned to the Tianhe Terminal and managed to retrieve four books, but seven others remained confiscated.

Yuan Fusheng, editor of the culture section of Changsha's Xiaoxiang Morning Post Weekly, had a similar experience. At the end of July, he was invited to the Hong Kong Book Fair, where he picked up four books, including Refusing to Forget* and Forty-Eight Techniques of Edo.* They were confiscated when he passed through customs in Guangzhou. Yuan explained to the customs agents that Refusing to Forget had previously been published on the mainland in 1999 by Shantou University Press in a print run so small it was now difficult to obtain, so it was a legal publication. Yet customs confiscated it anyway.

Can secret internal rules be a basis for enforcing the law?

After communication proved unsuccessful, Feng Chongyi sued the Tianhe Terminal Customs Office in Guangzhou Intermediate Court to force it to reverse its seizure decision and to apologize.

The case opened on October 14 with several major points of contention: Did customs have any legal basis for confiscating books? What specific standard did customs use for determining banned books? Was this a public standard?

Feng argued that customs had exceeded the bounds of its authority in censoring books based on content. The power granted to customs by the government as mentioned in Article 2 of the Customs Law does not include the power to censor the contents of published material. Feng also noted that customs had not publicized a specific standard or list of banned books to let the public know what printed materials are prohibited.

The Tianhe Terminal Customs Office argued that the seven books it confiscated contained material that was clearly prohibited by law or administrative regulations, and therefore fell under the prohibited publications laid out in the Measures for the Supervision of the Import of Printed and Audio-Visual Materials Through PRC Customs and the List of Articles Prohibited From Import and Export by Customs of the PRC. The confiscation was legitimate.

However, Feng said that the confiscation receipt he received from customs did not inform him of the prohibitions his books had violated. He believed that the receipt drawn up by the Tianhe Terminal Customs Office lacked a factual basis for the ban on imports, and its actions violated the basic principle of "evidence-based actions." Therefore, according to Administrative Procedure Law, the specific administrative action should be canceled [Article 54].

Feng also said that the Administrative Punishment Law stipulates that "administrative punishments follow the principle of fairness and openness."[Article 4] Although the List of Articles Prohibited From Import and Export does provide a definition of printed material banned from entering China — materials that are "harmful to China's politics, economy, culture and morality" — there ought to be a publicly-available list of banned items, or else the public has no way to adhere to the law. At present, customs confiscates "banned books" according to a secret, internal rule, a practice that violates basic legal principles in a rule of law country, for "what the law does not prohibit is not a crime." China's current legal framework does not support this kind of overreach of authority.

Award-winning domestic work deemed a "pornographic book" by customs

What befell Fujian author Chen Xiwo was even stranger. In December 2007, a publishing house in Taiwan issued a traditional-character edition of Chen's Book of Offenses and sent him twelve copies.

Fuzhou Customs seized the books, calling the traditional edition a pornographic book.

Chen Xiwo asked customs, "What factual and legal evidence do you have for deeming Book of Offenses a pornographic book?" Fuzhou Cutoms replied, "Customs supervision of the inspection of printed materials is specialized and confidential, and specific evidence cannot be disclosed. Customs has always acted this way."

Prior to its publication in Taiwan, Book of Offenses had actually been published by the People's Literature Publishing House. Of particular note is the fact that all of the the ten stories in the traditional character edition had been openly published in well-known literary magazines on the mainland: People's Literature, Harvest, Flower City, and Tianya. Seven of them had been nominated for awards, including the Chinese Literature Media Award and the Hundred Flowers Literature Award of Fujian Province.

At the beginning of 2008, Chen took Fuzhou Customs to court.

To his disappointment, he lost both the original suit and his appeal, and his collection Book of Offenses was determined to have "disseminated pornography." Moreover, both the Fuzhou Intermediate Court and the Fujian High Court did not make public their verdict because of "state secrets."

In an interview with Southern Weekly, Chen Xiwo said that although he lost his suit, he will continue to appeal. In August, he sent a letter to the National People's Congress in the hope that his experience will be instructive in revising the State Secrets Law.

Beijing High Court once said that customs had no basis to ban books

The outcome of Feng Chongyi's lawsuit is hard to predict, and Chen Xiwo has already lost his case. However, Zhu Yuantao, a lawyer who was once in the same situation, won a similar case.

Seven years ago, Zhu, a lawyer in Beijing, returned from Hong Kong with How the Red Sun Rose: The Rectification Movement in Yan'an,* which was confiscated at Beijing Airport customs. He sued in Beijing Second Intermediate Court, and the case was called the first lawsuit over customs confiscation of printed material.

Zhu was unsuccessful in the first trial, so he appealed to Beijing's High Court, which stated in its decision that the Capital Airport Customs Office had acted in the absence of proper evidence and had violated the fundamental principle of "evidence-based actions." It found in favor of Zhu and ordered the office to rescind its seizure decision.

In addition to handing Zhu an unexpected victory, the Beijing High Court ascertained one other critical fact: in its handling of import and export of printed material, the General Administration of Customs had never acted according to Customs Law and other laws and regulations to publicize a list of prohibited printed materials; instead, it had relied solely on a list hosted on its internal network.

Zhu said that with the final court decision in hand, he ought to have been able to retrieve his copy of How the Red Sun Rose from the Capital Airport Customs Office. However, two months later the Beijing High Court revised its decision to support the confiscation of the book.

Now, seven years later, the list of banned printed materials has yet to be made public.

Professor Wei Yongzheng of the Communication University of China, a scholar of media law, noted that in light of customs' vague and imprecise rules, people have reason to demand a specific standard from the government, or even a list of prohibited articles.

He said that customs clearly does not follow stringent procedures in its inspection of books. Although proper paperwork showing review by professional staff and approval by the leadership may exist, and although reports may even be made to the General Administration of Customs, determining the legal status of the contents of published material, an intangible product, involves many specialized issues that are beyond the capacity of ordinary customs agents.

He also said that practical restrictions on publications with harmful content, and prohibitions on illegal abuse of press freedoms, are shared by every country in the world, and the Chinese government is a signatory to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Yet these restrictions must adhere to legal principles. The public power to implement those restrictions is endowed by the law, so restriction standards and the particular items involved must be clearly defined in the law, and must also be made public. And where the law does not prohibit it, citizens have the freedom to act. Chinese law clearly stipulates that all laws and statutes must be made public, and internal documents that have not been publicized cannot be used as a basis for sanctions.

Notes

解构与建设 by Zhang Boshu (张博树), a professor of philosophy at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
烛尽梦犹虚--胡耀邦助手林牧回忆录: Lin Mu (林牧) was Hu Yaobang's secretary during his time in Shaanxi.
胡耀邦与中国政治改革: Reflections on Hu Yaobang by twelve senior communist party officials including Li Rui. Edited by Zhang Boshu.
拒绝遗忘 by Qian Liqun (钱理群), a Peking University professor. Oxford University Press (Hong Kong) edition of a work previously and subsequently published on the mainland.
江户四十八手 by Shirakura Yoshihiko (白倉敬彥), a catalogue of erotic ukiyo-e prints.
红太阳是怎样升起的 by Gao Hua (高华), a professor of history at Nanjing University.

Links and Sources

Southern Weekly (Chinese): Where's the evidence when customs confiscates books? (available via 21Pinglun)
Democracy & Law via Hunan Lawyer Online (Chinese): Beijing Municipal People's High Court rules to cancel confiscation order (2003.09.16)
Customs Administration (Chinese): Customs Order #43: List of Articles Prohibited From Import and Export by Customs of the PRC (English)
PRC Central Government (Chinese): Customs Order #161: Measures for the Supervision of the Import of Printed and Audio-Visual Materials Through PRC Customs
Shenzhen Customs: Customs Law of the People's Republic of China
Front page image from nipic
Earlier on Danwei: Customs protects Fujian author from his own work

Tags: censorship, Chen Xiwo, customs, Feng Chongyi, Southern Weekly, Zhu Yuantao

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"I don't want to be compared! We are different!"

suggest@danwei.org (Ralph Jennings) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 17:03:37 +0700

Ralph Jennings is a journalist and long time resident of China. He currently lives in Taipei. From mid-2000 to 2006, he had an advice column in the 21st Century weekly newspaper in which he answered letters from thousands of students and young professionals. Below is a letter from the archive, with an introduction by Jennings.

A mother can be trouble enough. She insists on study over play. She’s always hounding the kid to pass some test. She censors dates and mates. But add to that a failure, minor as it may be, that sparks Mom’s sense of do-die-or-be-killed competition: My child must beat others at school and it’s the child’s fault if she falls behind. Cinderella tells the story vividly.

Student letters to a foreign agony uncle

Dear Ralph,

I'm a girl in senior middle school grade two. In junior middle school I did very well in my studies. But when I entered senior middle school I began to taste the bitterness of failing. A girl who was not as good as me in junior middle school surpassed me. I was very sad. My mother often scolded me. She couldn't understand me. All she knows how to do is scold and satirize me. I can't stand her, so when I return home I don't want to talk to her. She never wants to encourage me. When I do a good job, she only says, "Don't be so proud. Do you think you really did that well? Think of (insert name), she did better than you." When I do something bad, she says, "What are you doing? Think of (insert name), she is always better than you." I don't want to be compared! We are different persons! All she does is reduce my self confidence. I had an open-heart talk with her. But she just said coldly, "When you grow up, you will know that I did good for you. I don't want you to be proud." Am I proud? Never. I just want to give myself confidence. You may think she is just strict with me. She isn't. She never forces me to do anything. She just thought I wasn't so good, but she never helps me. My mother was my idol. She was beautiful and intelligent. When I was young, I could tell my friends proudly, "My mother is an undergraduate!" But now she has turned into a vulgar woman. I can't communicate with her. I don't want to go near her. What should I do?

Cinderella, Shanxi

April 2002

Tags: agony uncle, mom, Ralph Jennings

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Laptop rhythm in a Post-It office

suggest@danwei.org (Joel Martinsen) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 15:47:07 +0700

This amusing ad for one of Lenovo's ThinkPad line of laptops was put up on Youku a few days ago.

Tags: Lenovo, viral ad, Youku

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Scaffolding collapses in Zhuhai

suggest@danwei.org (Joel Martinsen) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 15:45:56 +0700

Zhujiang Evening News
October 28, 2009

In Zhuhai yesterday morning, metal scaffolding peeled off the side of a building, crushing seven cars and injuring two workmen.

Zhujiang Evening News devoted most of its front page to a large photo of the accident site, and covered the incident in detail inside:

"It was a sharp sound, like a child shouting," said a cook at a neighboring restaurant who had come out when he heard the sound to see the scaffolding slumping downward. It was about 10:30 in the morning, and the entire process lasted just a few seconds.

"There was so much dust!" said Mr. Zhou, a guard in the area. He rushed over when he saw the situation and then called the police. Soon after, he saw the two workmen get rescued. "The building has been there for years. It's now being renovated for the opening of the Longfa Hotel, and it's been under construction for about two months."

"It's got nothing to do with us," said a middle-aged man instructing service staff at the Longfa Seafood Pavilion just across the street. Though his clothing was clean, his shoes were covered in dust. He said that he was a manager at Longfa, but that the incident at the building had "nothing to do" with Longfa, nor did he know the purpose of the renovations. "It probably collapsed when they were taking down the scaffolding." For quite some time, the attention of the man and his companions was held by the building where the accident had occurred.

Only two workmen were in the area at the time of the collapse. Mr. Huang, who was on the second level of the scaffolding, jumped off when he noticed bars bending but ended up getting crushed by falling bars and breaking his pelvis. Mr. Li was on the ground and ran toward the building when the scaffolding started to fall. He escaped with minor injuries.

Construction methods are being blamed:

"I put up the scaffolding," said Mr. Li. He said that at first, the steel rods attaching the scaffolding to the building were the same as what made up the scaffolding itself, but a few days ago when the time came to install window glass, someone suggested exchanging the steel rods for cables. He had objected: "There's no way those would be able to handle as much as steel rods. But they've already swapped most of them out."

An employee of the Xiangzhou District Safety Supervision Bureau said that their initial investigation had found that the incident was related to the way the scaffolding was attached to the building wall, but hidden causes had not been ruled out because access was still impossible, so a specific reason awaited further investigation. "The building used to be a workshop, and Longfa wants to turn it into a hotel."

The newspaper also reports that proper permits were not obtained for the work on the building, so the authorities have not yet been able to locate anyone in charge of the renovations.

Links and Sources

Zhujiang Evening News (Chinese): Eight-storey scaffold collapses

Tags: accidents, construction, Zhujiang Evening News

This article is from Danwei.org.

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Emily Xu's translation of Tyrannicide Brief

suggest@danwei.org (Alice Xin Liu) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:00:53 +0700

Geoffrey Robertson is a well-known human rights lawyer whose reputation extends around the world. He has written numerous books about his occupation and the latest, Tyrannicide Brief, is a historical account about putting King Charles I on trial in England in 1649, a King who everyone regarded as having the divine right to rule.

Robertson relates this to modern cases such as that of Sadam Hussein and talks about the lawyer, John Cooke of Oxford and Inns of Court, who devised the idea that the King was guilty of "tyranny" for oppressing his people despite the divine right to rule.

The book was translated into Chinese by Emily Xu. Danwei wrote to the translator for an account of her landing the translation deal as well as how she felt about the book. Xu's answers were in English.

Danwei: Did you find the subject matter of the novel easy to relate to?
Emily Xu: Indeed. First of all, it's a non-fiction book rather than a novel. That's why I was so impressed because the story had really happened in the UK. All the trials and events had sources. This is the strength of truth. Secondly, the social conditions described by the book are strikingly similar to today's China, and this inspires many readers to reflect upon many of China's own problems, especially in the spotlight of the 60th anniversary of the PRC. But on the whole this is a book about a brave lawyer who pursued his conscience and challenged tyranny and carried forward the spirit of the law. Nowadays, there are many examples of this at an international level.

Danwei: What about it drew you to the novel?
EX: I should thank my mentor, Professor Ying Chan at the University of Hong Kong. She gave me the book on a windy winter night when I was doing some freelancing work for JMSC. The book is a 17th century British drama. During the turbulent times, people argued vehemently about the re-establishment of government and society; the destiny of individuals intertwined with the tide of history. The book also depicts the trajectory of growth of an ordinary lawyer and legal education in UK.

All these factors enlightened me and made me think about myself as a law student. I did not practice as a lawyer after I graduated from law school because I was not sure what we, the new generation, could do within the legal system. The book has a practical significance about legal ethics and law reform in China, the establishment of a national health service, legal assistance, social welfare system etc.

The legal pioneers in The Tyrannicide Brief inspired me to follow my own conscience. As long as we understand the difficulty of progress in a civil society, we should try and come up with some practical solutions.

Danwei: Are there things in the novel you didn't like because it was far-fetched for Chinese readers?
EX: I think the religious part of the book may be kind-of far-fetched for Chinese readers because most of us have been brought up as atheists and some Chinese people tend to be wary about such "irrational" beliefs. So I guess it might be difficult for them to understand Cooke's motivation to prosecute the King. As far as I'm concerned, Cooke's contribution to the development of the law and of history is not limited to his devising a lawful means to end the impunity of a tyrant, but more about the legal reform that he launched in Ireland afterward. I don't think the trial of the King is the highest point of his career. His decent qualities as a lawyer should also be noted.

Danwei: Do you have a new project at the moment?
EX: Not at the moment. I've finished all my freelancing projects and moved to London last weekend. Actually I am planning on my own Grand Tour. What is interesting is that I am the same age as John Cooke when he started his Grand Tour more than 370 years ago. I will keep writing and researching, but it would be more personal.

Danwei: How do you think Chinese readers have reacted to the book?
EX: The book sells well and there are some interesting book reviews. From the feedback I've received, I'm quite happy that most of the readers find the book stimulating and enlightening. They were impressed by the detailed depiction of the trial of the King and the trial of the "tyrannicides" 360 years ago. Chinese People don't know much about the trial of the "Gang of Four" 29 years ago. As Geoffrey said in the book, "memories became self-protectingly selective" in UK. I agree that this is also the truth in China today.

Tags: Emily Xu, Geoffrey Robertson, King Charles I, translation

This article is from Danwei.org.

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Taiwan to open memorial museum for 228 incident

suggest@danwei.org (Danwei Picks) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 12:10:36 +0700

Taipei Times reports. The museum will be open for memorials in 2010.

Link picked by Danwei.org

World Bank: China's economy to grow 8.4% this year

suggest@danwei.org (Danwei Picks) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 11:52:46 +0700

The New York Times reports:

The bank now expects the Chinese economy to grow 8.4 percent this year, according to its latest quarterly review of the country, up from the 7.2 percent it forecast in June. It predicts growth of 8.7 percent next year.

The new 2009 estimate is just shy of the 8.5 percent being projected by the International Monetary Fund, which likewise raised its forecast for China and the rest of Asia last week, and also echoes recent upward revisions by economists at several private banks.

AFP also has a report, via The Telegraph.

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Hundreds protest after man died in Kunming

suggest@danwei.org (Danwei Picks) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 11:46:23 +0700

ChinaSMACK has a translation of a story about a man in Kunming beaten to death by the Chengguan.

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Soong Mei-ling and Christianity

suggest@danwei.org (Danwei Picks) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 11:23:39 +0700

Biographer Hannah Pakula has written an biography of Soong Mei-ling. The New York Times has an extract about her religious upbringing:

Religion had made Charlie Soong's life. The Methodist Church had educated him and given him a place in the world. This was not necessarily the case with his third daughter. Required to live up to the behavior of her three older siblings, May-ling found daily prayers "tiresome" and "hated the long sermons" in church on Sunday. Family prayers were little better, and she often pled thirst in order to slip out of the room. "I used to think Faith, Belief, Immortality were more or less imaginary," she wrote in 1934. "I believed in the world seen, not the world unseen. I could not accept things just because they had always been accepted. In other words, a religion good enough for my fathers did not necessarily appeal to me."

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On silk farming in Wuzhen

suggest@danwei.org (Danwei Picks) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 11:13:29 +0700

David at Randomwire posts on his visit and witnessing of cocoons boiled and silk extracted, with photos.

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Actor fakes multiple illnesses in commercials

suggest@danwei.org (Danwei Picks) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 11:12:29 +0700

ESWN presents reports and videos featuring xiangsheng actor Hou Yaohua, who has promoted dodgy medicines in ten television commercials.

At the China Daily as well.

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Follow-ups to Wen Jiabao's DPRK trip

suggest@danwei.org (Danwei Picks) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 11:06:56 +0700

Adam Cathcart rounds up some reactions to various episodes of the Premier's recent visit to Pyongyang, including this classic, noisy Arriflex camera one North Korean journalist used to film the proceedings.

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Obama's Shenzhen-based brother publishes novel

suggest@danwei.org (Danwei Picks) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 14:52:39 +0700

This report from Reuters does not say where the novel will be published.

U.S. President Barack Obama's half-brother made a rare appearance on Wednesday in southern China, his home for seven years, to launch a novel he says draws on his painful childhood under an abusive father.

Mark Okoth Obama Ndesandjo -- who had the same, late, father as the U.S. President -- has kept a low public profile since reports surfaced last year that he was living and working in the southern Chinese capitalist and manufacturing haven of Shenzhen...

... After repeatedly shunning media attention, Ndesandjo's first major public appearance to launch his debut novel comes less than two weeks before the U.S. president travels to China for the first time.

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Han Han: metrosexual and carefully groomed

suggest@danwei.org (Danwei Picks) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 11:39:02 +0700

TIME's Simon Elegant interviews Han Han:

"It's stupid to try to evaluate one's own works," he says, lacing his answer with frequent expletives. "If you are too humble, people won't take you seriously; and if you think too highly of yourself, it's not good for you either." As for other writers, Han flaps a manicured hand: "I don't do this kind of comparison. And frankly, I don't think your readers will be interested in Chinese literature at all."

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Disney theme park approved for Shanghai

suggest@danwei.org (Danwei Picks) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 10:03:21 +0700

From The New York Times:

After a courtship of about 20 years, the Walt Disney Company has won approval from the central government of China to build a Disneyland-style theme park in Shanghai, Robert A. Iger, Disney’s chief executive, said Tuesday...

...Analysts estimate the initial park — not including hotels and resort infrastructure — will cost $3.5 billion, making it one of the largest-ever foreign investments in China.

The initial resort, with a mix of shopping areas, hotels and a Magic Kingdom-style theme park, will sprawl across 1,000 acres of the city’s Pudong district — with the theme park occupying about 100 of those acres ... It is expected to open in five or six years.

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Julia Lovell on Lu Xun

suggest@danwei.org (Danwei Picks) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 09:30:49 +0700

On The China Beat:

[A]n excerpt from the introduction of Julia Lovell’s forthcoming translation of Lu Xun’s fiction. Lovell examines the uses (and abuses) of Lu Xun’s writings by Mao Zedong in the decades after the author’s death, pointing out the ways in which the CCP smoothed over rough edges and ignored inconvenient truths as it disseminated Lu Xun’s work for the Chinese public to study.

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Saturday football club

suggest@danwei.org (Danwei Picks) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 11:58:34 +0700

A video set to music with no narration of a bunch of Chinese children playing football in Beijing, by China-Files.com (link to Italian language website with Vimeo video player).

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GAPP suspends World of Warcraft approval;Ministry of Culture peeved

suggest@danwei.org (Danwei Picks) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 11:46:21 +0700

GAPP has suspended approval for World of Warcraft, Blizzard's wildly popular online game whose Chinese operation Netease recently took over from The9. Reuters reports:

Citing "gross violations" of regulations, the General Administration of Press and Publication said it had halted and returned NetEase's application to operate "Burning Crusades" -- the latest version of the game licensed from Activision.

The regulatory body posted a statement on its Web site that demanded the NetEase affiliate company that operates World of Warcraft to suspend charging users to play the game, and disallow new account registrations.

This is turning into a major inter-ministry spat: the Ministry of Culture, which previously approved Netease's application, now says that GAPP exceeded its authority by interfering into the operation of World of Warcraft.

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Inside Ai Weiwei's head

suggest@danwei.org (Danwei Picks) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 11:42:34 +0700

China Geeks has a scan of a letter from Ai Weiwei's German doctors about his brain damage and threat to life, although with the conclusion that he will fully recover.

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The seventh Taiwan Gay Parade

suggest@danwei.org (Danwei Picks) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 10:46:22 +0700

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