In a blog post titled Chongqing American TV drama, Han Han says he spent last night constantly refreshing the home page of the People’s Daily website, hoping to see some official announcement that would clarify what has happened to Wang Lijun, former mob busting top cop of Chongqing city.

This morning, Li Yinhe, the mild mannered sociologist best known for her fiercely liberal views on sexual freedom, posted a short note that purports to be an open letter from Wang Lijun. Below is a rough translation of Li Yinhe’s posting; the same letter is being circulated in JPG format on Weibo.

I have no way of verifying the authenticity of this letter, and in China I tend to believe that everything is fake until proved genuine. As my Danwei colleague Joel Martinsen put it, “I say 50-50 it’s as fake as Bo Yibo’s last words.”

But the letter certainly represents a view of Bo Xilai that seems to be held by many Chinese people who write on the Internet and post to Weibo.

Update: As I was publishing this, Li Yinhe’s blog post was deleted.

________________________________

Li Yinhe’s note:
I don’t know the whole situation so I cannot judge it, but I am just putting Wang Lijun’s own one-sided statement out there.

My open letter to the whole world:



When everyone sees this letter, I’ll either be dead or have lost my freedom. I want to explain to the whole world the reasons behind my actions. In short: I don’t want to see the Party’s biggest hypocrite Bo Xilai carry on performing: When such evil officials ruling the state, it will lead to calamity for China and disaster for our nation.


Bo Xilai’s “Singing Red Songs” is a farce, a show designed specifically to gain him entrance to the Standing Committee. This is Bo Xilai’s “Cultural Revolution”! He is a despot who makes arbitrary decisions, hateful and ruthless. If you going along with him you’ll prosper, go against him and you’ll perish. He always forces his subordinates to use any means possible to do all kinds of unspeakable things on his behalf. If you don’t comply you are dealt with ruthlessly. He treats people like chewing gum: after a little chew, he just throws you away, and he doesn’t care whose fit you ender up under.

He is really the capo di tutti capi. He has taken over the Party, the people and the whole city of Chongqing, and turned it into his personal fiefdom. His personality is such that he will not give up the goal of become the top mob boss of China and to achieve this goal he is willing to do anything.


Bo Xilai has the reputation of being honest and upright, but he is actually corrupt to the core, conniving at his family members getting outrageously rich. I have documented these matters, and have already submitted reports to the relevant parties and I also ask that friends abroad help to circulate this letter to the world. I also hope to one day use these materials to publish a book.


Bo Xilai has ruthlessly fought his way to the top, as you can see from his struggling against his own father in the Cultural Revolution, and the way he has treated his brothers and sisters, and his ex-wife. I was willing to risk my life on his behalf, and he treated me worse than he’d treat a dog. When I first refused to his dirty work, he had my driver and other people taken away, as a threat to me. 


Well, a gentleman prefers death over humiliation! I am not a hero; I am willing to give my sweat and blood for the people, but I am no longer quietly cry while working under the thumb of such an evil man. Everybody’s got to die, I am willing to use my life to expose the Bo Xilai. For the sake of ridding the Chinese system of this scourge on the people, this brazen careerist, I am willing to sacrifice everything! 


Wang Lijun

February 3, 2012

Links and sources
See comprehensive list of links at bottom of earlier Danwei post: Vacation style medical treatment

Image from Weibo - outside the U.S. Consulate

On Thursday February 2, Chongqing’s Information Office announced that Wang Lijun (王立军)，the triad-busting police chief who has been working under Bo Xilai to crack down on gang crimes in Chongqing would be given a new portfolio in charge of economic affairs in place of his public security post.

Early on February 8, photos began circulating on Weibo showing a large police presence around the American consulate in Chengdu.

Soon after that, people on Twitter and Sina Weibo began speculating that Wang Lijun had sought refuge inside the U.S. consulate and was intending to defect.

Then at 11:06 am, the Chongqing Information Office published the following announcement on their Sina Weibo account:

According to reports, because of long term overwork, a state of anxiety and indisposition, Vice Mayor Wang Lijun has agreed to accept vacation style medical treatment.

The announcement did nothing to end the speculation on the Internet, with some commentators believing that something did happen at the U.S. Consulate and others believing that Wang has fallen into political troubles. Phoenix TV’s iFeng website has set up a special page about Wang Lijun from which the graphic above was taken.

“Vacation style medical treatment” is a translation of the Chinese 休假试治疗 (xiūjiàshì zhìliáo). Some of the noteworthy wags who tweeted on Weibo about “vacation style medical treatment” are real estate boss Pan Shiyi and media figure Hong Huang, tech business star Li Kaifu and former lawyer of Chongqing mob boss Li Zhuang, who offered his assistance to the “patient”.

Update – February 10: The Global Times reports:

China’s foreign ministry Thursday confirmed that former Chongqing police chief Wang Lijun had visited the US consulate in Southwest China and stayed there for a day, according to a statement released Thursday via the Xinhua News Agency.

“Chongqing’s vice mayor Wang Lijun entered the US consulate in Chengdu on Monday, and left a day later. Related departments are still investigating this incident,” the statement said, without elaboration…

…”Wang Lijun did request a meeting at the US Consulate General in Chengdu earlier this week in his capacity as vice mayor. The meeting was scheduled, our folks met with him, … he later left the consulate of his own volition,” Victoria Nuland, a spokeswoman for the US State Department, told the press on Wednesday.

Links and sources
China Geeks: High-Level Defection or Convenient Vacation?
The Guardian: China’s anti-gang police chief placed on ‘stress leave’, China’s gang-busting police chief switched to new duties
The Age: China power play: anti-corruption officials vanish
South China Morning Post: Power struggle set to intensify
U.S. State Department: Press briefing where spokeswoman Victoria Nuland answers questions about Wang Lijun
China Media Project: Wang Lijun and “peaceful Chongqing”, Hong Kong coverage of Wang Lijun, Wang Lijun in China’s news pages
Inside-Out China: Wang Lijun, Bo Xilai, and the US Consulate: What Happened
Siweiluozi’s blog: Wang Lijun, Episode One
The New York Times: Gang-Busting Cop Is One for the History Books in China
Chongqing government Weibo announcement: 据悉，王立军副市长因长期超负荷工作，精神高度紧张，身体严重不适，经同意，现正在接受休假式的治疗
Xinhua / QQ: 重庆副市长王立军超负荷工作 接受休假式治疗

Mandarin pronunciation
Vacation style medical treatment – 休假试治疗 xiūjiàshì zhìliáo – play the recording below for Mandarin pronunciation:

Below is a selection of salaries in the survey; all numbers refer to monthly salaries in yuan:

Junior secretary: 2,500 – 3,500
Executive secretary / PA: 13,000 – 21,000
Accountant: 10,000 – 15,000+
Finance director: 65,000+
Quality control manager: 14,000 – 24,000
HR manager: 20,000 – 35,000+
Translator: 8,000 – 18,000+
News editor: 5,000 – 8,500
Web editor: 6,000 – 19,000+
IT Progammer: 5,000 – 9,000
CEO advertising agency: 70,000 – 100,000
Regional sales manager: 26,000 – 36,000+
Mechanical engineer: 10,000 – 16,000
Senior architect: 25,000 – 45,000

You can get the whole survey in a PDF on Gemini’s website.

Salary related plugs
If you’re looking for a job, there are some good openings right now on Danwei Jobs, or you might want to consider a Master’s Program in Contemporary Development of China at Beijing Normal University, a long time Danwei advertiser.

Han Han (韩寒) closed out 2011 with a trio of overtly political blog posts in which he laid out his views on revolution, democracy, and freedom. Critics and supporters alike were surprised by the conservative stance exhibited in the three essays, which seemed to be at odds with Han Han’s track record of championing the rights of the general public against the selfish interests of the wealthy and corrupt. Nationalist-leaning commentator Liu Yang (刘仰) even suggested that the essays were written at the behest of democracy advocates and foreign interest groups in an attempt to step back from their open advocacy of a color revolution in China while laying the groundwork for further meddling in the future.^[1]

While Liu Yang’s argument received little mainstream attention, another ghostwriting charge sparked the giant flame war that consumed Chinese social media during the Spring Festival holiday week and culminated in a lawsuit.

According to Mai Tian (麦田), a blogger and tech entrepreneur, it was an earlier transition away from personal issues and petty flame-wars and toward social commentary that led him to suspect that Han Han the high school dropout race car driver wasn’t the blog’s real author.^[2] Mai Tian bolstered his argument with schedule data that purported to show that many of Han Han’s posts had been made during or shortly before races. Critics countered that Han Han did not necessarily need to be in a state of zen detachment the night before a race, and Mai Tian’s data collapsed when other critics pointed out he had failed to account for schedule alterations.^[3]

Han Han’s early replies were entertaining in their earnestness and snarky vulgarity. He provided a straightforward account of his blog-writing habits to explain how he could post in between race events, and then flipped Mai Tian’s reasoning around to cast aspersions on his sexual prowess. He offered a 20 million yuan purse and the copyrights to his entire oeuvre as a reward anyone giving conclusive proof of having ghostwritten for him. And, perhaps unwisely, he took a few potshots at Fang Zhouzi (方舟子), who up until that point had needled Han Han for a few minor writing mistakes but had otherwise shown no great interest in the argument.

http://btlajiao.com

Going up against Fang Zhouzi is a risky thing. A science writer better known for his work exposing academic fraud and intellectual dishonesty, Fang Zhouzi is a tenacious opponent who has an arsenal of online debating tactics at his fingertips. He brings up questions one by one, beginning with minor points that might seem trivial to explain or brush aside, and then when his target takes the bait, he charges in with more evidence showing a pattern of deceit. This technique, which he employed successfully in 2010 to reveal Tang Jun’s worthless diploma^[4] as well as in a more recent campaign to completely discredit Luo Yonghao (罗永浩), a popular internet personality who had insulted his wife, is how he went to work on Han Han.

Concentrating on Han Han’s early work, he raised questions about two essays written for the New Concept writing contest, a first step to national popularity for a number of young writers, including Guo Jingming (郭敬明) and Zhang Yueran (张悦然). Han Han’s participation in the contest was marked by a procedural irregularity: he apparently failed to receive a mailed notification of the second round of the contest and was called in the following day to sit for a special essay topic. Had strings been pulled? Was his first-round essay a fake? The notion that Han Han’s entire literary career might have been built on a lie served as a good starting point. Fang Zhouzi set about picking apart the essay, “Seeing a Doctor” (求医). Here’s one point, which appears to contradict the notion that Han Han wasn’t much of a reader, especially of foreign books:

“Seeing a Doctor” quotes lines from Turgenev’s Father and Sons and Smoke, as well as referencing Freud’s The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (in English) to support the notion that misreading a name is intended as an insult. “Seeing a Doctor” cites details from two of Turgenev’s novels; having them at one’s fingertips requires one not only to have read the novels but to be fully familiar with them. Clearly, there’s no way it was written by Han Han.^[5]

An unwarranted conclusion, according to the findings of Vivo, a textual sleuth (and Han Han foe) who tracked down both Turgenev references to a footnote in The Psychopathology of Everyday Life; the 1988 edition of the Chinese translation includes the title in English on the cover.^[6]

Han Han himself wrote up several posts that explained the circumstances behind the composition of the controversial pieces and sent sarcastic barbs back at Fang Zhouzi. His father, Han Renjun (韩仁均), contributed a few blog posts as well. Fang Zhouzi seized on details in these accounts and played the role of cross-examiner to attack the credibility of Han Han and his father by pointing out inconsistencies in their “testimony” (口供), and then went further: the setting is more consistent with the late 70s than mid 90s, and the symptoms described point to hepatitis rather than the scabies ultimately diagnosed. Therefore, Han Renjun (who as it happens published a few short essays under the name “Han Han” before turning it over to his newborn son) is the true author.

Eventually Han Han announced he was preparing to sue Fang Zhouzi for impugning his reputation, and had gathered a thousand manuscript pages to demonstrate that he alone had written his books and essays, Han Han pledged to bring out a facsimile volume of the original manuscript of his debut novel, Triple Door (三重门), for the low-low price of 10 RMB. Other writers voiced concerns about the difficulty of proving authorship. Even the presence of a manuscript isn’t totally convincing: it could easily have been copied off of someone else’s original work.

Arguing against Fang Zhouzi’s allegations were Han Han’s supporters, who included Lu Jinbo (路金波), his friend and publisher, along with other publishers, authors, journalists, and fans. Lending their support were Fang Zhouzi’s many enemies, whose numbers tend to cut across normal political lines. Fang Zhouzi’s support for GM food, skepticism about traditional Chinese medicine, and fraud-busting attacks on scientists like Xiao Chuanguo (肖传国) have won him a place on the nationalist left’s “Traitor’s List”, but he’s also frequently at odds with the Southern Media Group and other outlets that are seen by the left as pawns of western cultural values. On Fang Zhouzi’s side were other journalists, prominent commentators like Muzi Mei (木子美), and Han Han detractors, many of whom felt that the young author’s reputation and influence had been inflated far beyond what is normal or healthy for Chinese society.^[7]

In the eyes of the Pro-Fang side, the Pro-Han side is a “consortium” (财团) that includes Lu Jinbo’s publishing empire, the Sina social media platform, the Southern Media Group, and Shanghai’s censors, who Fang Zhouzi says slapped a media ban on the controversy. Other critics argued that the conspiracy goes deeper than that, because Lu Jinbo is not Han Han’s sole publisher. One poster on a lengthy Tianya thread devoted to the controversy declared that China’s major authors have either remained silent or come out in support of Han Han because they are scared of being blacklisted by a coterie of publishers whose influence extends throughout the industry.^[8] Conspiracy theorists see publishing as a huge packaging scam in which piles of rejected manuscripts are paired with authors whose brand image is more marketable.^[9]

Indeed, Han Han has a marketable brand image, and his work is carefully packaged and promoted for the media and the general public. It’s a framing that has set him up as an iconoclast, a spokesperson for the 1980s generation, and someone who speaks the truths that everyone else is afraid to mention. Even those who appreciate his populist appeal may find him a lightweight rather than a “public intellectual,” and attempts to paint him as a latterday Lu Xun (鲁迅) are more than a little ridiculous. But rethinking the relative importance of Han Han as a voice in contemporary social debate does not mean he has to be utterly demolished, or in the words of critic Peng Xiaoyun (彭晓芸), that he is a “malignant cancer on society”.^[10] On the other hand, even taken in aggregate it’s hard to see how Fang Zhouzi’s analyses contain anything libelous.

Fang Zhouzi has not set out the conditions under which he would be convinced that Han Han had in fact authored all of the work he claims to have written. However, in one microblog post he mentioned his willingness to engage in a “face-to-face confrontation, open debate, or live writing competition.”^[11] How that would resolve the issue is unclear, but the proposal recalls another online debate, in 2006, when the philosopher Li Ming (黎鸣) challenged Fang to a duel to the death over the Four Color Theorem and refused to back down.^[12]

Fang Zhouzi’s arguments seem to rely on the unspoken assumptions that everyone’s memory is perfect, so any discrepancies are clearly lies, and every utterance, whether earnest or joking, braggadocio or self-deprecation, is meant to be taken at face value. Fang Zhouzi gets a lot of mileage out of a claim by Zhou Xiaoyun (周筱赟) that Han Han hasn’t read much since he was eighteen, implying that Han Han’s book aversion was a lifetime trait.^[13] Even a letter produced by Han Renjun in which the young Han Han requests a list of books is brushed aside: “What do they want to show by making these letters public? That Han Han was well-read as a high school freshman? Buying those books doesn’t mean reading them, and reading them doesn’t mean understanding them.”^[14] The assembled evidence is a little reminiscent of the approach taken by truthers and creationists, the kind of distorted logic that Fang Zhouzi has dismantled time and time again. At times, it’s hard to shake the feeling that he’s really just taking the piss:

First look at the form of address. The first letter uses “father” (父亲, fùqīn). This is naturally not a problem in a letter, but in the second letter the form of address turns into “Dad” (爸爸, bàba). When an ordinary person writes to their parents, the form of address is fixed, but in Han Han’s two letters, written just 20 days apart (the first is undated but according to the postmark it was sent on May 11, 1999; the second is dated May 30), the form of address for his father changes. He’s a genius, so you can’t expect him to have an ordinary person’s habits.

Then look at the signature. The signature on the first letter is “Your son, Han Han”; the signature on the second letter is “Your son, Han.” When an ordinary person writes a letter home, the signature is fixed as well, but Han Han’s changes in letters written 20 days apart. And when an ordinary person writes a letter, he won’t sign his own surname, but in the first letter, there’s a complete surname and given name. The same old refrain: he’s a genius, so you can’t expect him to have an ordinary person’s habits.^[15]

As in the best flame wars, Han Han PK Fang Zhouzi has been a comedy goldmine. Quick wit, outrageous accusations, dodgy amateur textual analysis, passionate debaters falling prey to the simplest of conversational gambits – if I was a conspiracy theorist I’d wonder whether Sina had engineered the whole thing to keep people refreshing their microblog feeds over the long holiday.

A few examples:

• Publishing veteran Zhang Fang (张放) became a laughingstock due to an analysis of Triple Door in which he mis-identified an English-language pop song as a translation of classical poetry, and expressed amazement at the author’s quotation of another arcane classical reference to “spring green” without realizing it was a homophone for “I’m a big stupid ass.”^[16]
• The illustrations in this post come from a series of amusing dramatizations of the debate drawn by Rebel Pepper (变态辣椒), a satirical online cartoonist. The strip at right illustrates the Zhang Fang debacle ^[17]. One further up the page mocks Fang’s stubborn insistence on incontrovertible proof.^[18]
  One of the most impressive is “Ghostwriter Terminator,” which sends Fang Zhouzi on a trip into the past to gather first-hand evidence of Han Han’s chicanery. Discovering to his surprise that Han Han doesn’t show any literary or athletic inclinations whatsoever, Fang Zhouzi decides to train him, and in the process develops a fondness for the boy. With his commitment to the mission in jeopardy, Peng Xiaoyun shows up…^[19]

@biantailajiao http://btlajiao.com

• It was probably inevitable that someone would write up an analysis of the fraud perpetrated by Lu Xun:
  

  In “Remembering Mr. Zhou Shuren,” Fujino Genkurou (that is, the Mr. Fujino that Lu Xun once mentioned) writes, “Mr. Zhou was not tall. He had a round face and looked like a clever man.” I have seen many paintings and photos of Lu Xun, and there’s no way his face would be called “round.” The average height of a Japanese man around the second world war was 1.6 meters. Baidu Baike records Lu Xun’s height as 1.61 meters, taller than the average Japanese man. How would he be considered “not tall?” Could there be such a difference in Lu Xun’s appearance between the time he was a student in Japan (age 24-25) and later on? Or was the Lu Xun who studied medicine at Sendai not the later literary giant Lu Xun? The question of Lu Xun’s degree fraud deserves looking into.^[20]

In my opinion, the funniest moment was probably unintentional. An anonymous microblogger claimed to have been hired by Fang Zhouzi as a ghostwriter and shadow moderator, and posted a signed contract as proof. It was clearly a photoshop job, but when Fang asked Sina moderators to delete the post, he was told he needed to provide proof that the contract was fake. Outraged, he posted, “So I don’t know myself whether the signature and contract are genuine?”

The following posts (in Chinese) are recommended for further reading:

• Immusoul (土摩托, aka science writer Yuan Yue 袁越) posted a measured assessment of  Han Han’s behavior in “A Few Words on Han Han” (说说韩寒);
• Ma Boyong (马伯庸), a humor novelist, examined Mai Tian’s initial allegations as classic conspiracy theorizing in “How ‘Man-Made Han Han’ Builds a Conspiracy Theory” (《从<人造韩寒>看如何构筑阴谋论》);
• tombkeeper wrote up a thought-provoking look at how Fang Zhouzi’s attack on Han Han differs from his previous fraud-busting efforts in a blog post that takes its title from a line by Tang dynasty poet Liu Zongyuan (柳宗元) that happens to include the characters Zhou and Han (孤舟蓑笠翁，独钓寒江雪);
• The China Daily published a lengthy piece on the issues involved in the lawsuit: War of words set for showdown.

Corrections

2012.02.02: The article originally said that Han Han was offering a reward of 10 million yuan, not 20 million. It also originally implied that Han Han himself had claimed not to have been much of a reader in high school. It provided the wrong transcription for the name of Zhou Xiaoyun.

Notes:

Image at top from 21st Century Business Herald (21世纪经济报道), The Han-Fang Fight: Who has gotten lost? (“韩方之争”：谁在迷失？). 

1. ^[1] Liu Yang (刘仰): Color Revolutions and Democratic Freedom (辞旧迎新《韩三文》：花儿革命与民主自由). ↩
2. ^[2] Later, Mai Tian expanded his doubts to encompass Han Han’s entire body of work: The mystifying thing about Han Han is that he wrote the astonishing Triple Door when he was sixteen, but the totally ordinary 1988 the age of nearly thirty. Isn’t it peculiar for an author’s writing skill to decline rather than advance over the space of more than a decade? Other than Han Han, where in the world can you find an author like this? ↩
3. ^[3] See ESWN’s translation. ↩
4. ^[4] Danwei.org: Faked credentials, a ghost-written autobiography, and a diploma mill. ↩
5. ^[5] Fang Zhouzi (方舟子): Analysis of “Genius” Han Han’s “Seeing a Doctor” (“天才”韩寒作品《求医》分析). ↩
6. ^[6] Vivo, 2012.01.27, 18:32, 2012.01.27, 19:11. ↩
7. ^[7] The English-language Global Times calls Han Han a “god-like opinion-leader” in the Feb 1 editorial “Challenge to Han Han is improving public debate,” which portrays the controversy as one of clashing opinions and curiously does not refer to authorship issue at all. ↩
8. ^[8] Qi Dafu (祁大夫): “Let me explain the behavior of the big-name microbloggers” (我给你们解释一下大V们的表现吧). ↩
9. ^[9] For example, in “A plagiarism gang behind Triple Door!” (《三重门》背后有团伙涉嫌抄袭！) Zhao Youbin (赵幼兵) claims that a sheaf of manuscripts submitted to a publisher in 1993 turned up later as part of Han Han’s Triple Door and Hong Ying’s Daughter of the River. ↩
10. ^[10] Peng Xiaoyun (彭晓芸): “Han Han hijacked for the literary road” (被“绑架”上文人之路的韩寒). ↩
11. ^[11] Fang Zhouzi (方舟子), 2012.01.27. ↩
12. ^[12] Danwei.org: A theorem, a crank, and a duel to the death. ↩
13. ^[13] Zhou Xiaoyun wrote, “In 2009 I said Han Han was a modern Lu Xun. I need to read to be enlightened, but reading Han Han never reads, yet he can speak like a Lu Xun or a Hu Shi. Han Han is a genius,” and “Actually, starting from the age of 18, Han Han did not read any books. His thoughts are entirely innate.” Zhou retracted this claim once Han Han posted about his reading habits as a student. See Fang Zhouzi (方舟子), The literary ability of “genius” Han Han (“天才”韩寒的文史水平). ↩
14. ^[14] Fang Zhouzi (方舟子): 2012.01.29. ↩
15. ^[15] Fang Zhouzi (方舟子): Han Han’s two strange letters (两封奇怪的韩寒家书). ↩
16. ^[16] Zhang Fang subsequently deleted his analysis and offered a non-apology. The pertinent parts of the original piece can still be found on Han Han’s blog:  In answer to spring green (答春绿). ↩
17. ^[17] Zhang Fang comic by @biantailajiao: 2012.01.28, 12:56. ↩
18. ^[18] Cartoon by @biantailajiao: 2012.01.27 ↩
19. ^[19] Ghostwriter Terminator comic by @biantailajiao: 2012.01.29, 21:43. ↩
20. ^[20] Fang Chigui (方尺规) via Han Han’s blog: Casting Doubt on Lu Xun (质疑鲁迅). ↩

Ken Fletcher is a British resident of Liuzhou in Guangxi Province where the panic buying is taking place. He sent this report to Danwei on January 27.

Yizhou is a small city in Hechi Prefecture in the north west of Guangxi. It is a sleepy sort of place which has yet to benefit from the development being carried out elsewhere in Guangxi. It is popular with the locals in summer as it lies in beautiful karst scenery similar to that of Yangshuo, but definitely much less touristy. There are many riverside fish restaurants, but most popular are the boat rides along the Longjiang River, some of which drop you off at “minority villages’ where you can partake in mock marriage ceremonies. I’ve been “married” there more than once. Never saw the girls again. The first village I visited was actually built as a movie set and no one really lived there.

Apart from that, nothing much really happens there, although in 2008, it made international newspapers when twenty people were killed in a chemical factory explosion.

Now it has hit the headlines again. On January 15 2012, alerted by the discovery of hundreds of dead fish in cages in a reservoir on the river, local authorities tested the water and discovered cadmium levels higher than the permitted safety level. Cadmium is a highly toxic heavy metal used in batteries, electroplating and in some industrial paints. Exposure can lead to kidney failure or cancer.

On Thursday January 19, the Hechi government issued a statement saying that the cadmium level at Luodong Hydropower Station at the river’s lower reaches was 0.0247 mlligrams per litre, three times higher than the official limit. Other reports also mentioned that arsenic levels were above permitted levels.

The authorities warned local residents not to drink the water and ordered dams to be opened to dilute the chemicals and hopefully bring levels back to normal. They began dosing the river with dissolved aluminium chloride in an attempt to neutralise the contaminants. At the same time, they started digging wells and arranging other alternative water sources. Investigations later revealed that the pollution was caused by a discharge by Guangxi Jinhe Mining Company, which operates upstream.

Longjiang river in happier days

After flowing past Yizhou, the river meanders west before joining the much bigger Liujiang river which then flows south to the first major city in its path — Liuzhou, Guangxi’s industrial centre. The river loops through the city centre and is the venue for international water sports events etc. Thereafter, it flows south east, eventually joining the Pearl River. Several years ago, it was possible to take a ferry from Liuzhou to Guangzhou, but no longer.

The news from Yizhou also trickled down to Liuzhou over the Chinese New Year weekend and Monday’s New Years Day. I first read about an outbreak of panic buying of bottled water on Tuesday January 24 but I visited the city’s three largest supermarkets that day and saw no sign of anything unusual.

By Thursday, the news had reached the wire services and appeared on the BBC news site. By then, people really were panic buying and they still are.

This morning (Friday 27), I visited the two largest supermarkets in the city centre. Nancheng department store had completely run out of bottled water but in Lianhua Century Market, people were queuing up with stacks of boxes of bottled water piled up in their trolleys. My local corner shop, also operated by Lianhua, is completely out of water, too.

It is only today that the local media are beginning to report anything about this, perhaps out of their usual reluctance to print bad news, or perhaps because everyone is still on holiday. Liuzhou authorities are saying that pollutant levels in the Liujiang are well within safety limits and urging people to behave calmly. At the same time they say they are monitoring bottled water supplies and trying to ensure that there are no illegal price hikes as happened in March of last year when people idiotically began panic buying salt to supposedly prevent radiation poisoning in the wake of the Japanese nuclear accident.

There is a long tradition of swimming in the Liujiang. Every day, no matter how cold, elderly men and women can be seen slowly swim long distances up and down the river, trailing their clothes behind them in floating boxes. Today, when I walked by the riverside, there were none. And I don’t suppose the locals will be buying much fish this week. Me, I’m sticking to beer.

Update: At 23:36 on Friday January 27 2012, Liuzhou officials sent this message to all cell phones in the city.

Don’t worry about your tap water. It’s safe. If it becomes necessary to control the water supply, we will give 24 hours notice via the media.
温馨提示：只要水龙头拧开出的水，必定是合标的安全用水，请大家放心使用
在控制供水之前24小时，将通过新闻媒体提醒您储存好备用水。【代柳州市应急指挥部信息发布组发】

Links and sources:
Liuzhou Laowai blog
BBC News: River pollution sparks panic water buying in China city
Reuters: China cadmium spill threatens drinking water for millions
Xinhua: River contamination causes panic buying of bottled water in Liuzhou, China’s Guangxi

Now that I’m married, though, I have the opportunity – nay, the obligation – to “return home” with my wife and celebrate the holiday in the Chinese way.

The Li family home is in Kedong, a small town that’s more or less halfway between Harbin and the Russian border. It was once a collection of pingfang – traditional Chinese one-storey houses – but those are increasingly being replaced with modern apartment buildings. Nowadays, if you stood in the center of Kedong, you might even feel like you were in a city. But it’s just an illusion; the apartment buildings give way to farmland within a few blocks in any direction.

The Lis take Spring Festival traditions more seriously than most, or so Mr. Li – my father-in-law – tells me. They also are one of the few families who still lives in a pingfang. Their tiny courtyard home lies along a narrow alley of similar homes that are surrounded on all sides by modern apartments, a sort of architectural foreshadowing. The demolition of the Li home is discussed in terms of when it will happen, not if.

Life in a pingfang in the winter – at least one as far north as Kedong, where the winter temperature hovers between -20 and -30 Celcius before windchill – revolves around the kang. Part bed, part couch and part heater, the kang is an elevated platform large enough to seat or sleep a family. Usually, it takes up most of the room it’s in, and it is heated with an electric mat (although historically kangs were heated by stoking a fire or coals underneath them). In the Li household and others like it, the kang is everything in winter because the kang is warm. It is the bed most of the family sleeps on, the couch everyone lounges on while watching TV, and the surface we sit on as we eat meals off of the kangzhuo, a stunted table designed to elevate dishes a foot or so above the kang.

Generally, winter activities this far north consist of eating, drinking, and watching TV. There’s no farm work to be done in the winter, and it’s too cold to do much of anything else anyway. Aside from occasional trips to the bathroom (which is a shack and a bucket outside, by the way; most pingfang don’t have plumbing beyond a tap or two for water) it might be possible to spend an entire winter without leaving the kang.

Spring Festival comes with certain obligations, though. In the Li family, the most important is the tradition of paying respect to the family’s (male) ancestors. On the morning of the day before Spring Festival, as his son glued a red and gold Spring Festival couplet to the door of the house and then the gate of the courtyard, Mr. Li washed his hands carefully and pulled scrolls out of a corner. These scrolls, it turns out, are likely at least 200 years old – they go back ten generations – and have been inscribed with the names of every one of Mr. Li’s male ancestors. After affixing them to the wall, Li taped on a 100 RMB note and then, reflecting on my presence perhaps, added a US $100 note above it.

Paying respect to the ancestors

In front of the scrolls, I helped Mr. Li move a desk, which he cleaned dutifully before beginning the construction of an altar of sorts. He lit candles and incense, and then placed a variety of food offerings: fish, tofu, noodles, mantou, apples, and even a couple cans of Harbin beer. Some of the food was dotted with red ink – purely because red is an auspicious color, I was told. Having finished this tribute the ancestors, we then sat down for a big Spring Festival lunch, which began with Mr. Li adding and a small cup of baijiu to the altar and burning it off. Then we tucked in ourselves at a table near the altar, consuming a variety of dishes including fish (auspicious because the word for “fish” sounds like “surplus” and suggests prosperity in the new year) and pig trotters (auspicious because they’re used for digging and suggest that the family will ‘dig up’ wealth in the new year).

Because Kedong is a small town, the Lis are a big family, and almost all of them live here, family members drop in and out of the house constantly and seemingly at random. Depending on the time they arrive, they are immediately urged by my mother-in-law to eat something (if it’s mealtime) or get on the kang (if it’s not). Generally, there is no purpose to these visits beyond just being together, and throughout the day people drop in to say hello, share a smoke, and see what’s going on.

On Sunday night, though, it was just my wife’s parents, her brother, and I sitting on the kang, wrapping dumplings and watching CCTV’s Spring Festival Gala. This variety show, now in its thirtieth year, has become a ubiquitous feature of Spring Festival celebrations in the PRC. I’m told that it was once something to look forward to, but these days it seems to be more of an obligation than a form of entertainment, like a drunk uncle everyone must put up with for the sake of the holidays. So we sat around grumbling about the boring skits and lame songs, filling dumplings with meat and vegetables. Two of the dumplings were also packed with hidden coins: whoever finds a coin when eating the dumplings will be blessed with good luck in the new year.

When the dumplings were ready, we headed into the courtyard to burn paper money for the ancestors and light firecrackers and fireworks. My brother-in-law held the long cardboard tubes and fired small explosives into the night sky; all I could think about was how little we had paid for the fireworks and how close the nearest hospital was. Luckily for everyone, there were no accidents. In fact, it turns out serious accidents are surprisingly rare given the sheer number of explosives available on evert street corner in China during the Spring Festival period. So we stood in the freezing night air, safely admiring the show for a couple minutes before running inside to eat dumplings. But not before giving a bowl to the ancestors first, of course.

My brother-in-law and father-in-law bit into the dumplings with the two coins early in the proceedings, but we spent the next hour or so drinking and eating dumplings on the kang, watching the CCTV Gala. It proved to be as boring as ever – they get worse and worse every year, my mother-in-law remarked the next day – and before long nearly everyone had fallen asleep. Shortly before midnight, my wife and I repaired to the house’s other bed to sleep ourselves. I figured this to be a futile gesture; cities like Beijing erupt in a blaze of noisy explosions at midnight to mark the new year, making sleep impossible. But here in Kedong, staying up until midnight isn’t considered important, and the first moments of the new Dragon were year met only with the chilly silence of the winter night.

The new year comes with more traditions, but it’s clear that here, chuxi – New Year’s Eve – is the real holiday. On the second day of the new year, the whole extended family will gather for a meal in this small home to “see off” the ancestors as the altar is dismantled and the scrolls are packed away until next year. After that, people will begin to trickle back to their lives in the cities, my wife and I included. In the meantime, though, the elder men pass the time playing Mahjong and drinking baijiu.

The rest of us do whatever we want, more or less. My wife and I went out to meet up with friends and climb a hill just outside the town. Calling this experience brisk would be an understatement – it was around -20 C and windy – but it was a clear day, the air was clean, and the countryside covered with a crisp layer of fresh snow. Spring Festival doesn’t really herald the coming of spring this far north, but I couldn’t help but feel that it really was a new year.

Yang Shubin looked the part: fat and rich. At nightclubs, he would say he ran a power station and buy expensive drinks. Women quickly swarmed around the flashy businessman who offered double the regular price for an evening’s company and would sometimes even bring gifts. When the long nights drew to an end, Yang had no trouble persuading a girl to leave with him.

They probably thought themselves fortunate to land such a generous customer. After all, becoming mistress to a wealthy businessman is the ultimate career move for a karaoke girl in China. On returning to his apartment, therefore, they would have been surprised to find a woman already at the home: 20-year old Ji Hongzhie, Yang’s girlfriend — and partner-in-crime.

With the help of a pair of childhood friends from Heilongjiang, Wu Hongye and Zhang Yulian, they would tie the woman to a chair, then beat her with sticks and iron bars, demanding bank details. Yang liked to slap their bare flesh with a spatula while his girlfriend needled their breasts, arms and legs. Later, after withdrawing the cash — the amounts ranging from 60,000 to 500,000 yuan — they would force some victims to call their colleagues to persuade them to come over to the trap.

The bodies would later be chopped up, boiled and fed through a meat-mincing machine. Large bones would be crushed up with clamps, and added to the meaty paste which the gang would dump in drains or trash cans outside hotels and restaurants. Between 1998 and 2004, they made about 2 million yuan this way but, despite staying on the move, decamping from Shenzhen to Zhejiang, there were worries about getting caught.

In Guangzhou in 2001, one pair of sisters, kept captive for 13 days, spotted axes, saws, tape and garbage bags through a doorway. Realizing the TV had been on the same channel for hours — suggesting the apartment was empty — the two struggled loose and escaped. One had been so brutally tortured she needed breast implants.

After barely evading capture on that occasion, the gang’s luck was running out. The following year, in the northern city of Jilin, a resident of an apartment complex investigating a blocked pipe found mangled body parts. Arrest warrants were issued but all four of the gang members escaped on September 11, 2002 — then vanished. For nearly a decade, it seemed as if they had gotten away with murder, slipping into China’s migrant population without even a trail of public outrage or scrutiny.

But Harbin policeman Xu Jianguo did not forget. Having grown up in the same neighborhood as both the head gang members, Yang and Wu, Xu had a personal interest in seeing the case through to the end. And in 2007, the Harbin Public Security Bureau learned it had gotten hot again: Yang’s family was reported to have moved abruptly, en masse, whereabouts unknown. An intensive investigation eventually led Xu, now with his own dedicated task force, to Baotou in Inner Mongolia, and the busy family home of one Wang Xuekai. Wang shared his quarters with 11 others, including brother Wang Xueli, Xueli’s girlfriend Ma Haiyan and Wangxue Guo — all, it was to emerge, expertly forged identities. On November 3, 2011, an armed team raided the property and arrested the gang of four; a month later, with the world focused on a peasant uprising in Wukan, their capture was publicly announced.

Almost ten years after their last victims — two prostitutes robbed of 160,000 yuan — were found stuffed down a drain, Yang Shubin’s kill team were discovered playing happy families, running a successful foot massage parlour and billiard room. The Harbin police view the case as both a major success — and an unprecedented case in recent history.

But the case is not unprecedented.

“China has a serial killer problem,” Beijing criminologist Professor Peng Weimin (a pseudonym at his request) told me over a two-hour dinner of dumplings in Beijing. Sipping from his beer, small flecks of grey in his donnish black hair, Peng reeled off a series of anecdotes concerning various killers from the past. He knew the details of some cases, but often he was able to offer just outlines: prostitutes that washed up on a river bank in Shenzhen, tales from a north-eastern city where dozens of schoolchildren never came home.

Some of the serial killers whose crimes have been documented in the Chinese media and academic journals include the below (note that some of these are taken from yeshi (野史- unverified popular histories).

Tu Guiwu, a loan shark who stabbed and dismembered eight in Chengdu;
Chen Yongfeng, sentenced to death at the age of just 20 for murdering 10 people and throwing their body parts in a river over three months in 2003;
Li Zhanguo, a multiple sodomist who killed at least 11 between 1991 and 1995, exclusively targeting male villagers with severe learning difficulties;
Wu Jianchen, another serial rapist from Hebei responsible for 15 murders in 1993;
Huang Yong, a pederast who killed either 17 or 25 teenage boys between 2001 and 2003;
Chen Zhengping, arrested in Henan in 2002 for the deaths of at least 42, including children, after lacing rice balls at a rival snack bar with rat poison;
Peng Maiji, who used a meat cleaver to murder 77 in Shanxi, Jiangsu, Anhui and Henan, executed in 2000;
Wang Qiang, executed in 2003 for the murders of 45;
Li Shangxi, Yang Mingjin and Li Shangkuan, a Guanxi trio who committed 26 murders together between 1981 and 1989;
Yang Xinhai, the “Monster Killer” perhaps the most famous Chinese serial killer and mass murderer.

Monster Killer Yang Xinhai

In 2006, after an hour-long, closed trial, Yang Xinhai was convicted of killing 65 men, women and children (the highest tally of victims of a single killer in the US, by contrast, is 48).

Yang Xinhai was an intelligent but introverted child, born into desperate poverty in Henan, who dropped out of school and began drifting through Shanxi, Shaanxi and Hebei taking work as an occasional labourer.

Aged 20, Yang Xinhai did his first stretch of prison time for theft; eight years later, he served three years of a five-year sentence for attempted rape, before being released in 1999. At some point in those three years, Yang Xinhai went from being a sullen petty criminal to an all-out maniac.

Nothing quite explains the escalation or intensity of Yang Xinhai’s actions after he got out of jail – he bicycled around Henan, Hebei, Anhui and Shandong breaking into homes at night and murdering the occupants, often whole families – his biggest single “kill” was five. He used hammers, shovels and axes to bludgeon and chop his victims. Sometimes he had sex with the women’s bodies.

The Chinese press cited the usual factors behind his going amok: greed, irrational hatred of women – his girlfriend supposedly broke up with him — and “revenge against society.” Commercial gain, girl trouble or a kind of all-purpose societal rage are habitually used to explain away otherwise-unfathomable crimes such as Yang Xinhai’s; there is, experts shake their heads, no method to the madness. Indeed, it was only a random spot-check at a nightclub in Cangzhou that caught him. Yang, whose details were on file from previous convictions, was wanted in four provinces for mass murder. Yet it took a background check for the cops to realize they had the country’s most-wanted non-political criminal in their cells.

“There used to be strict hukou [household registration] regulations which forbade people from flowing around,” said Professor Peng. “It doesn’t work like that anymore these days: people can go anywhere they want, which means police don’t have effective control of who’s in their district doing what.”

Allowing free-flow of labor to modernize industry has also enabled predators — and victims — to roam the provinces as anonymous hired hands and has helped create the kind of society that enables those who reject it to strike back the hardest.

“When I killed people I had a desire [to kill more]. This inspired me to kill more,” Yang confessed. “I don’t care whether they deserve to live or not. It is none of my concern… I have no desire to be part of society. Society is not my concern.”

***

Beijing, considered one of the world’s safest cities, provides no refuge from serial killers.

Li Pingping - taxi driver and murderer of prostitutes

There’s Li Pingping, a Beijing taxi driver who killed his former boss and family in 1995 and a further four prostitutes with the bad luck to catch his cab between 2002 and 2003. He was apparently angry that they out-earned him.

14 prostitutes operating near the Great Wall Sheraton were also killed by Beijing-born Hua Ruizhou in 2003.

In May 2011, Song Jinghua was executed for killing nine in a bizarre bid to avenge his brother, who was caught and executed for another murder after, Song suspected, his girlfriend tipped off police. Song was only caught in 2007 when a neighbour spotted him trying to conceal a human head.

“And in the 1990s, there was another guy who was especially killing prostitutes in Shijingshan district in Beijing,” added Peng. “It originally started because he used to have sex-workers as neighbours. They annoyed him by coming home late and making too much noise.”

***

A long day’s drive southwest of Beijing and or northwest from Shanghai, Henan is China’s least celebrated, most populous province. Henan is a by-word for criminality. It’s hard to exaggerate the contempt in which the central-eastern province is held by outsiders. If hearsay is to be believed, Henan is to blame for virtually every thief, grafter and deadbeat the country has ever had to offer. It also may be the serial-killer capital of China.

According to Professor Peng, “Henan alone has several cases. Recently, there was one guy who killed six well-off men. He had a homicide charge hanging over him originally, so he had to escape. What he did was ride a scooter-taxi around, taking passengers and killing some. The murders were for money. There are also serial child killers. There was one who put up a wooden rocking-horse in his backyard to lure kids there and kill them. He was convicted of killing six, although the bodies found in his yard amounted to more than 10.”

Another pair of killers from Henan fled the province in 2003 after one, Shen Changying, stabbed a man to death. He and his brother Shen Chanping, 22, went north to Hubei, where they abducted and robbed a prostitute, killed her and dismembered the body. The next potential victim, Li Chunling, 23, persuaded them to spare her in exchange for luring more potential marks back to the apartment. Li Chunling was made to kill the woman she brought back before things got even more twisted: the pair of killers removed the girl’s kidney and ate it, before dissolving her body in sulfuric acid. The robbery-cannibalism continued across Shanxi, Anhui and Inner Mongolia, recruiting more female accomplices as bait before one of them finally escaped and went to police, who caught the brothers in the act of dissolving pieces of their latest victim.

In 2005, they were sentenced to death for the murders of 11 women, all picked up in KTV bars and “hair salons,” while their three female accomplices received between 3 and 20 years’ imprisonment.

***

More recently, in September 2011, Chinese journalists began arriving in the city of Luoyang in Henan. The story they were following was grim, if familiar: Gangs selling “hogwash” or “gutter” oil, recycled from restaurant drains, had been busted with 100 tons of the stuff in Shandong, Zhejiang and Henan. Authorities were touting it as a major safety initiative but many suspected there was more to the official version.

After crusading local television journalist Li Xiang, who broke the story, let his Weibo followers know he was “following illegal cooking oil dens closely,” he was found dead – stabbed 13 times outside his apartment in the early hours of a Sunday morning. The police insisted this was nothing more than an unfortunate coincidence. Rather than being silenced by shadowy interests, Li Xiang was simply the victim of a botched mugging: two local ruffians were subsequently charged with robbery and murder.

Ji Xuguang, a reporter with Southern Metropolis Daily, one of China’s most progressive newspapers, was also in town to see if, like the gutter-oil story, there was more to Luoyang and Li’s death than its ongoing Civilized City campaign would have him believe.

In fact, there was something going on but it had nothing to do with Li Xiang. Police had received information from the relative of a woman who claimed to have escaped from an “underground sex dungeon.” Five other women had also been held captive, tortured and raped; two were now dead, though at whose hands is somewhat disputed.

Their gaoler was Li Hao, 34, a former fireman and employee at the technological supervision bureau in Luoyang who had spent the past 22 months cruising karaoke bars in Luoyang picking up victims, while his wife thought he was working as a part-time night watchman.

The women were kept in a remarkably sophisticated underground prison four meters under a rented basement behind seven iron doors, fed enough to keep them weak and given access to laptops for entertainment. Li Hao killed one, allegedly with the connivance of one of his prisoners — a kind of Stockholm Syndrome apparently pervaded the dungeon, with detainees competing for Li Hao’s attention — and another girl was put to death for “disobedience.”

After Li Hao was caught fleeing, the police hoped to deal with the matter quietly. But Ji Xuguang, working for a powerful media organization outside their jurisdiction, had inconveniently got hold of the story. Ji Xuguang was stopped and questioned closely by police (though not, he stressed to me when I spoke to him over the phone, arrested or “detained,” as the New York Times later suggested) and warned he was infringing upon potential “state secrets” – a catch-all term often used to harass or persecute reporters who publish unfavorable stories.

Ji Xuguang exited the province and published.

The alleged serial rapist-murderer Li Hao suffered full and swift consequences: after a week, the Guangzhou Daily reported Li Hao was “fired from [his] inspection team under the Bureau of Quality and Technical Supervision of Luoyang”; he was stripped of his Party membership and will be put on trial. All four police under whose auspices the crimes took place were dismissed. Controversially, the women he’d held were also detained and even accused of conspiracy to commit murder.

Although Li Hao’s acts don’t quite fit the definition of “serial killer” espoused by some experts (which requires three separate murders), kidnapping six and killing two doesn’t seem a bad place to start. How does someone get away kidnapping and killing – in a supposedly authoritarian regime – for so long, without anyone noticing?

When I asked Professor Peng this question, he resignedly admitted, “They were hookers. Their status was low, so no one cared.”

***

Targeting sex workers and migrants and staying on the move is the formula that many of China’s serial killers use with considerable success. Lackadaisical cross-provincial law enforcement is one of the two biggest flaws in China’s policing system (the other is press censorship, which keeps crimes from being exposed and tracked in the media).

“Regarding crimes committed in other places, the police will avoid getting involved as much as possible,” said Peng. “Solving other police forces’ cases won’t contribute to their performance assessment… the slogan “Homicides must be solved” is talking about cases in one’s own district. You’ll be blamed for failing to solve them, and [you won't get credit] for cases in other places. Assisting others is not their responsibility.”

Of course, a culture of local police looking after their own is hardly exclusive to China. But it gets worse: “It can be tricky when police actually catch criminals from other places. They can’t be sent to the local reformatory because they don’t belong there. They can’t be sent back to their hometowns because of the costs.” These might include train tickets, accommodation or hospitality for their opposite numbers in the public security bureau. With rare exceptions, such costs fall on the arresting division.

The result is cops dealing with crime by focusing on local criminals and deploying scarecrow tactics — creating the illusion of a heavy security presence in the community via “flashing police lights and CCTV cameras” — to deter migrant criminals from settling in their areas. The obvious solution would be an autonomous, state-run centralized bureau of criminal investigation – like the FBI.

“Currently, when a homicide occurs, a central investigation team will be set up by the Crime Investigation Bureau [CIB] under the Ministry of Public Security and sent to the location where the major investigation started, organising and supervising the case’s solution,” Peng said, outlining the official view: “In the US, states are independent from each other so it’s necessary to coordinate them but in China, the policy issued from the central government will be passed down and carried out thoroughly to the bottom of the system, so there’s no need for such a coordinating system.”

Certainly, China’s police are evolving. There are a few forensics labs in major cities and a nationwide database that registers suspects and fugitives from across the country — the same one that caught Yang, the “Monster Killer”. The centralized CIB employs veteran policemen as well as scientific and academic staff like forensics specialists and lie-detection experts. But it often serves a political end. The official line towards crimes like murder since 1983 is “the heavier, the faster, the better,” was softened in 2009 to “heavy and light punishment combined.”

The CIB is normally brought in to deal with cases that threaten public stability — for example, the notorious 2010 school stabbings by Zheng Mingsheng — and answer to ministerial ends. In the case of Zheng the school stabber, the ministries for education and public security jockeyed with each other to issue sterner denunciations and assurances over future security, against the advice of experts, who warned that propaganda slogans were worthless against “big, unpredictable cases committed by nobodies.”

Meanwhile out in the sticks, where the mountains remain high and the emperor is still far away, statewide policies are frequently ignored. The Ministry of Public Security issued police forces with new directives in 2003 to warn the public of potential serial killers after the much-publicized case of a child-murderer from Henan (again!), the main feature of which was a spectacularly inept police investigation:

Huang Yong, rapist and killer of teenage boys

Huang Yong was a 27-year-old former PLA soldier turned migrant worker who’d ended up alone in his parents’ home in Dahuang village, Pingyu County, a tumbledown abode of ramshackle brick houses, barely surviving trees and rubble-strewn yards. While most Henan youths had headed east looking for work, Huang stayed behind while his parents worked in the city and sent money home, which Huang used to support his habit — hanging around Internet cafes in Pingyu city, offering advice to teenage boys who’d drop by after school to play computer games. In September 2001, the family of one raised the alarm after their son didn‘t come home. Both police and, later, the schools involved refused to offer help finding them.

“The police kept quiet in case of social panic, so other parents weren’t aware and couldn’t take precautions,” Peng said. “More and more kids went missing.” One escaped with bruises around his neck and went to authorities with his story; apparently convinced it was a prank, they sent him home. A week later, Huang Yong was arrested.

To this day, the official number of victims is fiercely disputed among local villagers, who also claim Huang kept victims’ genitals in a jar and became murderous after his girlfriend had an abortion and left him. The authorities say Huang watched too “many kung-fu and violent films” and haven’t deviated from the initial figure of 17 victims: all boys, all chosen, according to the court, because females were “less heroic” and older men “more vigilant.” But a year after Huang was tried and executed, a group of grieving parents visited the late killer’s residence during the annual Tomb-Sweeping Festival and uncovered more remains in his abandoned yard. Some have been petitioning Beijing for justice since before even Huang’s arrest, receiving only harassment and attempted bribes for their troubles.

The new edict, ordering officials to warn of potential murderers in the community, should have prevented the public from being kept ignorant of future investigations. But three years later, Ministry of Public Security spokesman Wu Heping was facing the cameras in Beijing and telling reporters much the same story. The location was different but the modus operandi of both police and killer was almost exactly the same: 33-year-old Gong Runbo, a convicted rapist who’d been trolling internet cafes in Heilongjiang Province looking for impressionable kids much like Huang. Over 10 pairs of children’s shoes were allegedly later found in Gong’s abode but police say there was only evidence enough to charge him with six deaths.

“Six kids may have died for our failings,” Wu admitted. The police had known someone was abducting children but kept it quiet, in disobedience of the 2003 directive. And the Ministry knew who the blame lay with: “Despite the government’s ban on minors in Internet bars,” Wu chafed, “Gong was taking these kids in and out without being confronted or reported by the local cafe.”

***

2003 was a bumper year for serial killers. Yang Xinhai the Monster Killer’s capture coincided with two other major cases. Huang Yong, the aforementioned killer of 17 or 25 teenage boys was arrested, and so was another pair of killers: 43-year old Ma Yong and his 20-year-old female accomplice Duan Zhiqun who were arrested in Buji, Longgang District near Shenzhen for the murder of 12 female migrants picked up in labour markets, dismembered and dumped in a local river.

The official reason given for the murders of a dozen desperate workers was textbook China: The victims “had mobile phones” and “looked physically weak”. The killers “were motivated by money,” Xu, a Buji government spokesman, said.

If murdering migrants for money doesn’t seem to make sense, consider another deeply troubling case from 2009 in Shenzhen. The “special economic zone” is principally famed for its preferential policies to attract foreign investment and promote domestic entrepreneurialism, but Shenzhen is fast catching up with Henan in being known for its serial killers. According to one sociologist, “Shenzhen’s most special trait is its people’s high mobility and mutual strangeness… which means many social norms go unobserved here.”

The remark referred to a series of child kidnappings and murders that haunted the boom city in 2008 and 2009. According to the Global Times,

Shenzhen, one of the richest cities in China, is now haunted by kidnappings. Deputy Police Chief Shen Shaobao was quoted by the Guangdong and Shanghai media stating in a July press release that the city averaged 44 kidnapping cases a month in the first quarter. A total 52 kidnapping cases were reported in the first 20 days of April.

Child kidnappings are old news in China – 190 children disappear every day, mostly, it is believed, to trafficking gangs, though no-one really has any idea how many simply fall prey to independent, transient abductors. The victims’ families are normally poor, rural and illiterate. Their cases are dealt with perfunctorily — if at all — by overworked or uninterested police forces and there’s very little parents can do for their missing offspring.

In the Shenzhen cases, though, the families were well-to-do — and vocal in their distress. Despite their protests, which were covered in the media, the police were as dozy and unforthcoming as ever, an attitude which compounded the pain and even exacerbated the problem.

“I wish the police had publicized the cases,” one bereaved father told the Southern Metropolis Daily, adding that, had he only known of the existence of the kidnappings, he might have been able to prevent his own son’s disappearance.

Wang Weilan, a reporter who covered the case for the Global Times, witnessed first-hand the authorities’ stonewalling of inquiries. “The police refused to give any information,” she told me. “They either said, ‘It’s still under investigation,’ or ‘I know nothing about that. The leader in charge isn’t here’ or ‘Give us a fax about your questions’ and then they totally ignored the fax.” Chinese government bureaus are possibly the only ones that still routinely direct official inquiries to be delivered via fax, a neat trick that abrogates any responsibility for answering.

Keeping a lid on rumours – sometimes called “fake news” — is something of an obsession in China, where the dissemination of incorrect information is actually a crime that can land an unwary gossip in jail. The culture of secrecy and the prevalence of fake news effectively feed off each other. In 1997, Shanghai was awash with talk of a woman-hating murderer on a motorcycle; the killer was targeting girls with long hair and bludgeoning them to death with a hammer; he was taunting authorities with letters, boasting of his deeds — he had killed ten, they said, and wouldn’t stop until 100 were dead; a police chief tasked with stopping him had already resigned in despair.

While Shanghainese women rushed to get haircuts, the city’s media stayed stubbornly silent. Finally, as panic mounted, the police abruptly announced they had got their man: a migrant worker called Wei Guangxiu had been arrested and charged with attacking 13 middle-aged women and one elderly man. For the public, though, the story didn’t end there. “The rumors have poisoned and bewitched people’s minds,” a senior officer afterwards lamented. He was right: most people suspected Wei was a scapegoat.

“Local police, for the sake of regional peace, sometimes fail to do inform the public,” said Professor Peng, who added Beijing that technically directs them to do just the opposite. “The reason partly comes from public pressure too. The public reckon the police are incompetent if there’s any case they can’t solve… the public’s petition channel is far less developed than in the West and media is still the major pressure that the police face.”

“Social stability” — maintaining a grip on power as well as public perception– trumps concerns such as public safety. The scarcity of reliable information in Shenzhen even extended until after the inevitable guilty verdicts were handed down. “The court wanted to be very careful about the verdict,” Wang Weilan said. “People were very angry about the cases: They had to consider [that] anger.”

While the relaxation of the hukou system has enabled people to disappear and be disappeared, the country’s economic explosion has placed a desperate strain on social tensions; the sprawling disparity between the have-nots and the have-a-lots has never been greater. “Shenzhen is a city of migrant workers and successful people,” Weilan noted. “The former is desperate, the latter is established… When they share the same city, problems occur.” The city’s population of nine million has a GDP per capita of around $13,000, the highest in China (the average is $7,544). “Many people in Shenzhen come to the city as first-generation immigrants,” she added. “They don’t have roots here and thus have fewer conventional constraints. The criminals are more reckless.”

In society, those who choose children as their victims are considered the lowest caste of criminal, despised even by their own kind. In China, crimes against children are arguably even more sensitive. There is a traditionally filial culture, where offspring are expected to provide for older generations and the country’s family-planning policy can mean an only child is a family’s sole source of survival. Yet even in this most sensitive of areas, the police cut a swathe of incompetence.

Still, victims’ families are at least promised swift justice. With a conviction rate of 98% (according to Criminal Justice in China: a History by Klaus Mühlhahn, Harvard University Press, 2009), an arrest is tantamount to a death sentence. The sentence is carried out almost as swiftly as it is handed down, usually within three months; Huang Yong was convicted of 17 murders less than a month after being arrested and executed 15 days later (“the heavier, the faster, the better”). Cheaper, too: while the average Death Row inmate costs the great state of Texas $2.3 million in legal and incarceration bills to incarcerate and then execute, for example, the taxpayer goes relatively unburdened in China.

So villains are quickly scrubbed off the face of the earth, and with them goes any chance of understanding what made them turn to serial murder. In one example Professor Peng gave of how determined authorities in China are to keep civilian expertise at bay, Li Meijin, a University of Public Security expert, eventually had to submit her questionnaire to the police for Qiu Jinhua, a Shaanxi serial killer of 11, via a contact at the People’s Daily.

***

After the 2003 execution of Yang Xinhai, the People’s Daily offered some reassuring news for the reading public: the Ministry of Public Security had called a “special meeting… ordering police around the country [to] try harder to deal with severe crimes involving murder [and] kidnapping.”

Eight years later in 2011, the propaganda department was hard at work on the Luoyang sex slaves case, issuing a September 22 order to local media in Henan to desist reporting on it. It was a busy month for them: the US-based China Digital Times revealed more directives hushing up a series of “vicious murder cases” in Guiyang County in Hunan — and an even juicier story that wouldn’t see the light of day, back (once again) in Henan.

The townsfolk of Fangyuan, an isolated “no man’s land” (according to a now-deleted Southern Metropolitan article) awoke one morning “shocked” after discovering a neighbour had been arrested and charged with being a serial cannibal; Xiao Lansheng had stayed up just the night before playing cards with them. In his spare time, Xiao Lansheng is alleged to have raped, butchered and turned into medicinal wine the bodies of “at least” five 12-year-old schoolgirls. Hair, a human skull and female underwear were found at his property, a former Buddhist nunnery later used as living quarters for 1970s “educated youth,” and accessible only via a dirt road.

Here “he distilled their hearts to make baijiu and squeezed oil from their hands and feet.” Another reports claimed he “invited friends and family to eat them, saying they were exotic animals hunted from the mountain.” A media blackout was quickly imposed.

Awkward questions, rumors and the all-consuming concern for public face: It is these concerns, not marauding murderers or public safety, not vulnerable women or missing children, which keep officials awake at night –and the bogeymen safe in their beds.

Update:
As this story was being edited, China added yet another serial killer to its expanding list. a massive manhunt is currently underway for former cop Zeng Kaigui — with 13,000 officers, two helicopters, road blocks and a massive publicity campaign keeping citizens aware of the danger.

That sounds like a proper serial-killer investigation, so what’s changed? Nothing — in the system — but the circumstances are exceptional. Firstly, the police have the culprit positively identified; not only that, he’s one of their own, a former PLA military policeman gone tonto. That’s a major embarrassment (with potential consequences for local authorities) where it’s better to lose some face now than risk your neck further down the line. Second, his most recent crime was almost impossible to cover up: a 200,000-yuan bank heist in downtown Nanjing that ended with a fatal shooting.

But Zeng Kaigui has been on the radar since as far back as 1995, and performing robbery-murders since 2004. There’s a sense this is a last-resort tactic, presumably sanctioned at a very high provincial level, as police officers in different provinces have upped his bounty substantially. The China Daily says “Numerous police forces are now offering rewards for his arrest, including Chongqing – 100,000 yuan($15,800), Nanjing – 150,000 yuan and Ma’anshan, Anhui province, 200,000 yuan. State media have suggested that Zeng is some kind of Chinese Rambo, “a marksman… skilled at avoiding surveillance,” adept at disguise, having been on the run for years, and who communicates only via grunts and body language. Last time anything like this happened was November, when a quartet of four (underage, unthreatening) soldiers in Jilin stole a rifle, hoping to pull off a few bank jobs then skip the country, but got tracked down and shot dead within a day. The story was completely buried in China —
there was no initial danger to social stability, not enough to the public, and the army is shrouded in so much hyper-sensitivity, even the names of regiments are state secrets. With Zeng, the factors have changed; the priorities remain the same.

The author Robert Foyle Hunwick can be reach on foylehunwick -at- gmail.com.

Links and sources
Time magazine: Blood in the Streets by Matthew Forney
South China Morning Post magazine: Dead Reckoning, by Didi Kirsten Tatlow (not available elsewhere online, download these PDFs 1, 2, 3)
Global Times: Schoolchild murders haunt boom city by Wang Weilan
China Geeks: Living with Dead Hearts (documentary film in production about child kidnappings)
Ynet.com: 实拍10人碎尸命案抓捕 杀人魔王肢解小姐堵下水道
My 399.com: 终极对决———“9·11”杀人碎尸案追踪系列二
Sina special on Monster Killer Yang Xinhai: 杨新海杀67人强奸23被判死刑
Wenku: 掰一掰中国的连环杀手
Douban: 档案一. 中华人民共和国最早的连环杀手之一
Baidu Baike: 白宝山
Jinling Ziyi blog: 东北二王千里追击，“东北二王”杀人案件全剖析
Shen Xinyun’s blog: 广西李尚昆，杨名金犯罪团伙-1989, 保定连环杀人恶魔吴建臣-1993
Sina: 黄勇狱中接受采访：作为杀手我不相信任何人，平舆特大杀人案犯黄勇自述一个杀手的心路历程, 河南平舆特大系列杀人案
Netease: 杀死分尸6幼童 连环杀手宫润伯的人生裂变
Sina: 北京破获出租车司机杀害卖淫女特大碎尸案

You can find both species in the Illustrated Guide to Wild Birds of Beijing (北京野鸟图鉴) published in 2000. The book contains photos and descriptions of 276 species, but Li says he and his fellow bird watchers reckon there are now 430 species in the city and the surrounding countryside if you include migrants that only come for the summer.

At the Olympic Forest Park north of the Bird’s Nest Olympic stadium, a pair of graduate students have spent the better part of two years observing birds for an ongoing study. Xing Shuang began the study as an undergraduate project funded for one year with a small stipend (basically bus fare to get to the park) by her college Beijing Forestry University. She was later joined by Cheng Wendu, an avian ecology student at the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Zoology. Cheng says they have recorded 160 bird species in the park so far.

The Chinese nuthatch - occasionally seen in Beijing's Olympic Forest Park

It’s an impressive number. Cheng credits the figure to the park being designed with an ecological purpose: “They used native [plant] species, the area of the park is quite large, and the landscape is diversified. There are marshlands, grasslands, woodlands, and the lake is an open water area.”
Birds they have spotted even include species that are normally restricted to mature woodlands, such as nuthatches.

Birds are the most visible of Beijing’s wild animals and by many accounts, the wild animal population of the city and its environs has been growing over the last decade, despite breakneck construction and the expansion of the city to beyond its sixth ring road.

This may be due in part to the success of the massive reforestation project begun in September 2000, known as the Beijing Tianjin Anti Dust Storm Project (京津防沙尘暴工程). In a 2005 interview with the Beijing Times, then head of the National Forestry Bureau Wang Zhibao said that a massive sandstorm that hit Beijing on April 5, 2000 provided the impetus for the project:


Wang Zhibao: On April 5, 2000, the sand storm was so severe that you could barely see a person standing ten or twenty meters from you. At that time I was head of the National Forestry Bureau. That day I was attending study sessions at the Party School. Some comrades asked me, “As leader of the responsible department, how do you feel?” 
I replied “If we did not have such a big sand storm, we could not get focus people’s attention, so the chance to undertake a massive project to remedy the problem has arrived.”
Journalist: So bad turned to good. What did you do after that?

Wang Zhibao: After I returned, I organized a comprehensive study, and presented the results to the State Council on April 27. In the beginning of May, leaders from the State Council made an inpection tour of the sources of the sand storms in the Beijing Tianjin area. After that, they decided to push forward with the Beijing Tianjin Anti Dust Storm Project. There are sand storm belts all over the country, but … it was decided to first tackle the area around the capital, and then use the experience to extend the project nationwide.

The initial plan spanned 74 surrounding counties and included tree planting (manually and by broadcasting seeds from airplanes), management of grasslands and water courses, and the relocation of around 500,000 inhabitants farming on eroded land.

According to a 2010 Xinhua report, after ten years the project had successfully successfully managed 1.3 billion mu of grasslands and 11,800 square kilometers of rivers and wetlands, relocated 170,000 people and reforested 90.02 million mu (14.82 million acres or 364, 298 square kilometers).

These newly planted trees have supplied a habitat for a host of local wildlife while holding down ground near the desert’s edge. Speaking to me at her offices at the National Academy of Sciences, Dr. Xie Yan, China Project Director for the Wildlife Conservation Society and Secretary-General for the International Zoological Association, said that the creation of nearby nature preservation areas and some of the more eco-friendly parks that now surround Beijing have also played a major part in the improvements of the last decade.

Hog badger

“I think you actually record more bird species than ten years ago,” Xie said, describing net gains for local wildlife over the past ten years — with some caveats. She said the ecosystem surrounding Beijing had improved largely due to reforestation projects. She ticked off a list of mammalian species that could now be more easily found in the area: leopard cats (pictured at top of article), hog badgers, macaque monkeys and weasels among them.

Asked if any species served as ecological bellwethers, Xie pointed to the song of the cuckoo: “Whenever you can hear that sound, that means the forest is okay.” For wetlands, she said, the bellwether species are migrating birds such as mandarin ducks, swans, geese, cranes and herons.

Xie also gave much of the credit for the return of such species to the Beijing area to the establishment of nature-oriented eco-parks, or jiaoye gongyuan (郊野公园). But she said pollution remains a serious problem, as do the city’s further expansion and the relative isolation of reforested areas. If those green patches could be connected to make one large habitat, she said, animal populations would increase.

Xie also said that public knowledge of how to treat animals encountered in the wild or at home is wanting. Few Beijingers have been taught not to bother wildlife, or that feeding animals can condition them to expect food from humans and increase the odds of interspecies conflict.

The students Xing and Cheng working in the Olympic Forest Park are also looking at effects of people on bird life. This may prove key to the park’s ecological balance: their findings indicate that as the number of tourists has increased, the number of birds has declined. But perhaps the most important factor, Cheng said, is how parks in Beijing are managed:

Mandarin duck - a bellwether species

“Every park in Beijing is under intense human maintenance. They cut grass and shrubs to make it tidy,” Cheng said. These methods and others, like covering large areas with a single species of plant, are common to parks built with people in mind but run counter to the nature of an eco-park. The result, he said, is a landscape so pristine that it resembles less and less the natural habitats of the birds the park was built for. Over the two years of observation Cheng and Xing Shuang have seen the number of species and their populations decrease; Mandarin ducks wintering at the park, one of the bellwether species mentioned by Xie, have fallen from a peak of around 200, probably thanks to subway construction around the park’s water area.

“The problem isn’t just in Beijing, because the birds migrate. Other parks in northeast China, southeast China, they all play a part,” he said. Though wary of discussing exact numbers before the study had been published, Cheng was straightforward in his assessment, and less optimistic than other observers: “It’s very obvious the bird numbers are declining dramatically these [two] years.”

Cheng said some species that used to be more common in the city, such as rooks, have disappeared and been replaced by carrion birds. Meanwhile changes in how buildings are designed have put Beijing’s swallows and swifts in a tough spot: the awnings and eaves of older buildings they once relied on for nesting nooks have been replaced by the sleek facades of high rise apartments and office buildings. As Beijing sprawls outward, the marshlands that the birds rely on for nest-building materials are retreating, Cheng said. The city is expanding and restructuring into a landscape that is increasingly inhospitable to its airborne residents.

But it’s not all bad news. Aside from the reforestation projects, and the eco-parks, environmental awareness is becoming more widespread, and there are more and more grass roots organizations such as the Beijing Bird Watching Society, which now has more than 200 members (100 yuan per year), and holds birding activities every weekend.

The society has been around informally since 2003, but was finally recognized as a government registered organization in 2007. Head of the society Fu Jianping became a bird watcher while serving as a magazine editor in the late 1990s. In order to find someone to write about bird watching for her magazine, Fu went birding herself. She stumbled upon a massive flock of heron that had made their breeding grounds on a riverside cliff. “That first time I saw so many of them there, and during their mating season their feathers are all very beautiful. I think that sight from across the river shocked me, deeply,” Fu said. She was instantly hooked on bird watching.

Azure-winged magpie - year round Beijing resident

Fu said the Bird Watching Society’s weekend outings to parks in Beijing typically draw a mix of 20 to 30 members and non-members, with the latter welcome to participate free of charge. Full members do enjoy some perks, such outings to forests further afield. For the group’s last big trip it traveled to Taiwan for a peek at the island’s birds over the National Day holiday.

Fu said the group hopes to encourage locals to take an interest in watching birds rather than swinging them in cages at waist height while on strolls. Members give lectures at schools about conservation and local bird species. They are also trying to help Beijing’s displaced swifts and swallows by constructing bird houses to hang around places like Houhai, where the species often breed. The sentiment echoes Xie’s hopes for a more ecologically-minded citizenry; one that knows how to treat animals in the wild and respects nature in an urban setting.

“I think if people are willing to spend more time in nature and learn more about wildlife, it will really make their lives different,” Xie said. “Because a society like this, in concrete… in my view it’s not really life.”

Links and sources:
2005 Beijing Times interview with National Forestry Bureau head: 防沙尘暴肆虐北京 京津地区将“生态移民”50万
2010 Xinhua report on reforestation project: 京津风沙源治理工程启动10年来沙尘天气明显减少Map of Beijing eco parks
—-

Beijing Birdwatching Society
Home page, English info page
E-mail: beijingbws@163.com, beijingbws@yahoo.com.cn, cbw_2004@163.com
Phone: 1343 638 0443
—-

Park recommendations from local birders
Northern Beijing
• Olympic Forest Park: ideal for ducks, bittern and reed warblers during the summer.
• Botanical Garden: home to the Chinese nuthatch, and good for birds in winter.
• Summer Palace and Old Summer Palace: popular with ducks in spring and autumn, also hosts warblers, swifts and buntings.
Southern Beijing
• Temple of Heaven: come during winter to try and spot a long-eared owl.
Further afield
• Baihe Canyon in Miyun County, northwest of Beijng: home to the ibis-bill, a highly sought-after species among some UK birders.
• Chenjiapu valley (wild Great Wall hikes, pheasants, azure-winged magpies, black kites)
—-

Books and recommended reading:
• Illustrated Guide to Wild Birds of Beijing (北京野鸟图鉴)
Sometimes available on Dangdang, otherwise search Taobao.com for second hand copies
• Biodiversity Atlas of China (中国生物多样性) by Xie Yan
Official Wildlife Conservation Society China page for book, book for sale here
• Field Guide to the Birds of China (中国鸟类野外手册) by John Ramsay MacKinnon, Karen Phillipps, He Fenqi
English version, Chinese version (with English bird names)
• A Field Guide to the Mammals of China by Federico Gemma, Andrew T. Smith, Xie Yan, Robert S. Hoffmann, Darrin Lunde, John MacKinnon, Don E. Wilson, W. Chris Wozencraft
On Amazon
• Wildlife Conservation in China: Preserving the Habitat of China’s Wild West by Richard B. Harris
Preview and ebook, physical copy
• Chinese Species Information Service (中国物种信息服务) by Wildlife Conservation Society China
Online in Chinese
—-

Earlier on Danwei
Wild leopard cats of Beijing
Disappearing swifts of Beijing
Wild leopards of Beijing, Another wild leopard in Beijing?
Hog badgers and weasels of Beijing, Hog badger in Yanqing
The snakes of Beijing – a short field guide
The crows of Beijing
Wild deers of Beijing

In California, SPRIE asked a comprehensive set of questions to students at a Palo Alto high school. In Beijing, Danwei worked with high school student Florence Feng to survey students at Beijing high schools. All participants were born between 1993 and 1995. There were 41 female students and 30 males, 27 of them from Beijing, 44 from Palo Alto. The students in Beijing and Palo Alto were drawn from some of the best schools in each city. It’s a small sample size, and these results reflect the habits of children of well off families in both countries – the survey does not in any way represent the average high school student in China or the U.S., but rather students from a similar demographic in each country.

A selection of the survey results is presented below.

Brands
What devices do these students use, and what brands do they favor?

Computers- Apple strong in Palo Alto, weak in Beijing 

Computer brands

Most of the students use computers: Only 2 out of 27 students surveyed in Beijing  and 1 of 44 in Palo Alto said they did not use a laptop or desktop computer. In laptop and PC usage and brands, Apple dominates Palo Alto, but not Beijing.  Almost all Palo Alto students use Apple computers, whilst only 7 out of 27 Beijing students use Apple. Full results below (percentages rounded off)

Palo Alto
Acer 1%
Dell: 2%
Sony: 2%
Unknown: 2%
HP: 6%
Apple: 87%

Beijing
Alienware: 4%
Sony: 4%
Fujitsu: 4%
Dell: 12.5%
IBM 12.5%
Apple: 29%
Lenovo: 34%

Tablets – it’s iPad or nothing and much more popular in Beijing 

Do you use a tablet? (iPad only)

As far as tablet usage, a much higher proportion of Beijing students said they had iPads compared to Palo Alto students. The only brand mentioned by students in both locations was the Apple iPad.

Palo Alto
16% use iPad, 84% do not (no other tablet brand mentioned)

Beijing
56% use iPad, 44% do not (no other tablet brand mentioned)

Mobile phones – iPhone dominates

Apple’s iPhone dominated both Palo Alto and Beijing. Almost all students in Beijing and Palo Alto use mobile phones. According to students in both cities, the average age at which they got their first mobile phone was 12. Apple’s iPhone is easily the most popular phone in each city, although the iPhone has real competition in Beijing, but not, it seems, in Palo Alto.

None of the students in Palo Alto had a Nokia, while none of the students in Beijing had a Blackberry. Other brands have only a minority presence.

Palo Alto

Blackberry: 2.5%
ENV: 2.5%
Motorola: 2.5%
Sprint: 2.5%
Verizon: 2.5
LG: 4%
AT&T: 5%
Pantech: 7.5%
Samsung: 12.5%
Apple: 50%

Beijing 

Nokia: 4%
Sharp: 4%
Sony Ericsson: 4%
Fujitsu: 4%
Hitachi: 4%
Huawei: 4%
Motorola: 7%
Samsung: 8%
HTC 8%
Apple: 53%

Usage habits

How are students using their digital devices, and how much time do they spend using them? And how do they use them to stay connected to friends and family?

Digital communications – Beijing kids use social networks to communicate with teachers

In answer to the question “When you do not see your parents face to face, what is your usual method of communicating with them?”, both Beijing and Palo Alto students said by phone. But in answer the question “When you do not see your teachers face to face, what is your usual method of communicating with them?”, a large percentage of Beijing students said they used social networking sites and other electronic means aside from email, whereas most Palo Alto students communicated with their teacher via e-mail.

In Palo Alto, texting and social networks were the most common communication channels for friends (about half of the respondents text, and a third use social networks), whereas in Beijing texting was the only method used by a significant number of students, while not one of them mentioned social networking.

How do you communicate with your teacher?

 Communicating with teachers: 

Palo Alto

Texting: 3%
Other: 3%
Email: 94%

Beijing

Instant messaging: 5%
Other: 10%
Phone – voice call: 25%
Texting: 30%
Social Networking sites: 30%

Web surfing habits

During the weekend, Beijing students and Palo Alto students spend about the same amount of time web surfing. However, Palo Alto students spend more time surfing the web during the weekdays. Palo Alto students spend more time on their mobile phones sending text messages and emailing than Beijing students.

However, Beijing students spend more time using their phones for instant messaging and web browsing. This tallies with results from other surveys in China; for example, according to the Chinese state Internet survey organization  CNNIC, many mobile manufacturers install these commonly used applications in their mobile phones as standard software, and in the first half year of 2010, mobile instant messaging was the application with the highest permeability among mobile phone internet applications (61.5% usage rate).

Net friends – common in Beijing but not Palo Alto 

Do you have friends you only know through the internet?

In answer the question “Do you have friends that you know only over the Internet?”,  90% of Beijing students said yes, while 78% of Palo Alto students said no.

Minutes per day on digital media

One of most dramatic difference was in how many minutes per week they used the devices. Palo Alto students used their mobile phones and computers more frequently than Beijing students in almost every area, although these devices are clearly an integral part of the daily lives of students from both cities.

Florence Feng organized the Beijing component of the survey; Lucy March and Inhwa Chung contributed to this report; image at top of post by Jonah M. Kessel.

In an article on The China Beat, Rea says Qian “might be called the best Chinese writer you’ve never heard of”.

The book includes translations by Rea, as well as Dennis T. Hu, Nathan K. Mao, Yiran Mao, and Philip F. Williams and an introduction to Qian and his work.

In the China Beat post linked above, Rea provides a short biography of Qian:

One hundred years ago today, Qian was born into a scholarly family in Wuxi, Jiangsu province. Tutored in the classics from a young age, he went on to become modern China’s “foremost man of letters,” in Ronald Egan’s words, accumulating encyclopedic knowledge of Chinese and Western literatures, and putting it to use in his scholarship and creative writing.

A graduate of Tsinghua University, Qian studied European literature at Oxford and the Sorbonne before returning with his family to China in 1938 after the outbreak of war with Japan.

While teaching at various universities in southwestern China and Shanghai during the war, Qian composed a collection of essays, Written in the Margins of Life (1941); a collection of short stories, Human, Beast, and Ghost (1946); and a novel, Fortress Besieged (serialized, 1946-1947), as well as occasional poems and reviews, and a major work of poetry criticism. In 1949 he was recruited to teach at his alma mater in Beijing, and he remained in China after the communist takeover, having turned down several job offers from abroad. In 1953, he transferred to a literary research institute based at Beijing University, which in 1977 became part of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Qian Zhongshu’s fate in New China was, to a certain degree, similar to that of many Chinese intellectuals. He stopped creative writing, and his research was repeatedly interrupted by political campaigns. Unusually, due to his linguistic prowess, he was assigned to an elite group tasked with translating Mao’s poetry into English. He and his wife, the scholar-writer Yang Jiang, nevertheless suffered ideological criticism and, during the Cultural Revolution, were sent to rural Henan province for “re-education” and “reform” through agricultural labor. During the cultural thaw after Mao’s death, both resumed publishing and had their long-forgotten works “rediscovered” by the Chinese public.

This biography obscures the talent and self-possession that makes Qian’s literary and scholarly output during periods of war and political turmoil so remarkable. Widely read in modern and classical Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Greek, and Latin, Qian pioneered a new model of comparative literature that drew out resonances in cross-cultural patterns of figurative language.

Below is a chapter from Humans, Beasts, and Ghosts, reproduced with permission from the publisher:

The Devil Pays a Nighttime Visit to Mr. Qian Zhongshu

“You and I should have met long ago,” he said, taking the chair closest to the brazier.
“I’m the Devil. You’ve been tempted and tested by me before.”

“But you’re a conscientious fellow!” A sympathetic smile crossed his face as he spoke. “Even though you’ve fallen into my traps before, you haven’t recognized me. When you’ve succumbed to my temptations, you’ve only seen me as a lovable woman, a faithful friend, or a pursuable ideal. You’ve never been able to tell that it’s me. Only those who have been able to resist my temptations, such as Jesus Christ, have recognized me for who I am. But we were destined to meet today. A family was holding a commemorative vegetarian banquet involving sacrifices to spirits and ghosts, and they invited me to sit in the place of honor. I was tied up with that engagement for most of the evening and had a few too many drinks, so my vision got blurry, and while making my way back to my dark dwelling I entered your room by mistake. Electric lights in the interior provinces are a travesty — your house is as dark as Hell! But it’s colder here than where I live. There, sulfuric fires burn from morning to night, which of course would be unthinkable for you here — I hear the price of coal has gone up again.”

Recovering from my surprise, it occurred to me that I should fulfill my duty as host. I addressed my guest, “It’s an honor to receive your midnight visit. You darken my humble dwelling!2 I only regret that I’m the only one here to receive you, and I apologize for not having prepared a better welcome! Are you cold? Excuse me a moment while I wake the servant to prepare tea and add coal to the fire.”

“No need for that,” he said, staying me with the utmost politeness. “I can only sit for a minute, and then I’ll be on my way. Besides, let me tell you . . .” His expression became serious, yet intimate and sincere, like a patient reporting to his doctor that he is impotent, “. . . fire can’t warm me up anyway. When I was young I wreaked havoc in Heaven by trying to usurp God’s position. I didn’t succeed, however, and ended up being cast down to suffer in the frozen depths of Hell ^[1] — much like how in your mortal realm the Russian tyrant exiled members of the Revolutionary Party to the Siberian tundra. The cold air has driven all the warmth in my body into my heart, making me cold-blooded amid the heat. I once sat on a heated brick bed for three days and nights, but my bottom remained as cold as a pitch-black winter night . . .”

Surprised, I interrupted him, asking, “Didn’t Barbey d’Aurevilly also once say—”
“Yes,” he replied with a chuckle. “In the fifth story in Les Diaboliques he mentions my unwarmable bottom. This is why one abhors celebrity! As soon as you become famous you have no more secrets to speak of. All your private affairs get publicized by interviewers and reporters, and just like that you’re deprived of your material for an autobiography or a confessional^[2] Should I decide to write an account of myself in the future, I’ll have to make up some new facts.”

“Wouldn’t that run counter to the purpose of an autobiography?” I asked.

He laughed again. “I never imagined that your knowledge and insight would be as pedestrian as a newspaper editorial. This is the age of the new biographical literature. Writing biographies of others is also a type of self-expression, so there’s no reason not to insert your own views or write about others as a way of showing yourself off. Conversely, autobiographers invariably don’t have much of a ‘self ’ to write about, so they gratify themselves by rendering a likeness that their own wife and child wouldn’t recognize.4 Or they ramble on about irrelevant matters, noting the friends they’ve made and recounting anecdotes about other people. So if you want to learn about a person, you should read biographies he’s written of others, and if you want to learn about other people, you should read his autobiography. Autobiography is biography.”

I couldn’t help being impressed by this, and I inquired politely, “Would you permit me to quote that line of yours in the future?”

“Why not?” he replied. “Just be sure to use the formula ‘as my friend so-and-so says.’ ”

I was delighted, and replied modestly. “You think too well of me! Am I worthy to be your friend?”

His response dashed my hopes. “It’s not that I think well of you and am calling you my friend; it’s that you are attending to me and claiming that I’m your friend. When you quote the ancients in your writing, you should avoid using quotation marks to show that the words have been used before, but when you quote a contemporary, you always have to say ‘my friend’ — this is the only way to solicit friends.”

Despite his frank talk, I plied him with a few more courtesies. “Many thanks for your excellent advice! I never expected you would also be such a writing expert too. You already surprised and impressed me just now with your mention of Les Diaboliques.”

His reply was almost sympathetic. “No wonder other people say you can’t escape your class consciousness. You think I’m unworthy to read books, don’t you? I may be from the lowest stratum of society — Hell — but my aspirations have always aimed upward. I’ve done a fair amount of reading in my day, especially of popular magazines and brochures, and the like. That’s why Goethe praised my spirit of progress and my ability to roll along with what the newspapers call the ‘great wheel of the age.’^[3] I knew you were a man who enjoys literature, so I mentioned a few famous literary works to demonstrate that I have similar interests and expertise. Conversely, had you been a prolific writer who opposed book reading, naturally I’d change my tune and tell you that I, too, considered it unnecessary to read books . . . yours excepted. Reading your books, after all, makes me feel that life is too short — how could I have the energy to read ancient tomes? I discuss inventions with scientists, archaeology with historians, and international affairs with politicians. At art exhibitions I talk about connoisseurship and at banquets I talk about the culinary arts. But that’s not all. Sometimes I instead talk politics with scientists and art with archaeologists; after all, they don’t understand a word I say and I’m happy to let them pass off my phrases as their own. When you play the zither to an ox, you don’t need to pick a good tune! At tea parties I usually discuss cooking on the chance that the hostess will pick up on my comments and — who knows—perhaps invite me to taste her own cooking a few days later. Having muddled by like this for tens of thousands of years I’ve gained something of a reputation in this world. Dante praised me as a refined thinker and Goethe spoke of me as worldly and knowledgeable^[4]. One should be proud to have attained my status! But not me.

On the contrary, I’ve grown more and more humble, often reproaching myself that, ‘I’m nothing but an underworld ghost!’^[5] Like people who belittle themselves as ‘country folk,’ I worry that empty words are not enough to express my modesty, so I use my body as a symbol. A rich man’s gigantic sack of a belly signifies that he has ‘plenty in the bag,’ while a thinker’s bowed head and back arched into the shape of a question mark signifies his tendency to ask questions about everything. That’s why . . .”

As he spoke, he extended his right hoof for me to see the extremely high heel on his leather shoe, “. . . the shape of my legs is so incredibly inconvenient ^[6] — it symbolizes my modesty and ‘inferiority.’ I invented foot binding and high heels because I sometimes need to conceal my deformities, especially when I transform into a woman.”

I couldn’t help asking, “Some people who have gazed upon your elegant countenance have said that the towering horns on your head look a bit like — ”

“That’s right,” he cut in, “sometimes I take on the appearance of a bull^[7]. This of course is also symbolic. Since bulls are often used for sacrifices, I manifest a spirit of ‘Who will go to Hell if not me?’ Furthermore, mortals love to ‘blow their own bullhorn,’ but a bull certainly can’t blow itself — at least its biological structure won’t permit it to do so. So, my bull shape is indeed a symbol of modesty. When it comes to false courtesy, I can’t compete with you scholars and men of letters. The cocky ones, instead of refusing your flattery, will accept it as if you owed them a debt, regretting only that you didn’t pay them back with interest. False modesty takes other forms too. Some will respond to your praise with protestations that they are embarrassed and unworthy, like a bribe-taking superior who, finding the bribe too small, returns it intact so that his subordinates will double it and send it again. Lender and superior alike maintain that praiseworthy people still exist in this world—at the very least they themselves. But my modesty could not be more sincere. In my view, if I have nothing to be proud of, how could other people be proud of me? Having always been cursed by others, I completely lack such vanity.

However, although I’m not a writer, many literary works have come about because of me. On that score, I’m more like . . .” He spoke without a trace of embarrassment — the nerve! The only color on his black face was reflected from the burning red coals in the brazier. “. . . a beautiful woman who doesn’t actually write poems herself but inspires countless love-struck poets to use their broken hearts—no! — their broken throats to sing her praises. Byron and Shelley, for instance, both wrote poems inspired by me^[8]. The packs of lies one often finds in newspapers and magazines also owe to my influence.”

“I’m impressed you have the energy,” I remarked. “Newspapers around the globe are talking about nothing but war. At a time like this, shouldn’t you be busy putting your destructive arts to work on massacres and invasions? How did you find the time in your busy schedule to come chat with me?”

“You mean to send me on my way, don’t you?” he asked. “Well, I should be leaving. I forget that nighttime is when you mortals rest. We’ve chatted our fill today, but I still want to set you straight on a few things. You do me wrong by saying I’m involved in war. I have a peaceful disposition and absolutely oppose the use of military force. In my view, everything can be resolved with treaties. Just look, for instance, how civilized Dr. Faustus and I were when he swore a blood oath sealing the contract to sell me his soul!^[9] I used to be inclined to violence, but after my coup failed and I was expelled from Heaven I took my underlings’ advice and accepted that a battle of wits is better than a battle of strength^[10]. Since then, I’ve substituted temptation for fighting. As you know, I’m in the soul business. God selects a portion of mankind’s souls and the rest fall to me. Who could have guessed that during these past few decades business would be so light I’d be supping on underworld wind? In the past, human souls could be divided into the good and the bad. God would keep the good souls, and I would buy and sell the bad ones. The mid-nineteenth century, however, suddenly saw a great transformation. Apart from a small minority, almost no humans had souls, and those who did were all good people who fell under God’s domain. Soldiers have souls, for example, but their souls ascend directly to Heaven, so nothing is left for me. Modern psychologists promote ‘soulless psychology,’ a field that would never have emerged in ancient times, when everyone had souls. Now, even if there are a few souls left over from the ones God has selected, they’re usually smelly and filthy. If they don’t reek of laboratory medicine they’re either covered in a layer of dust from old books or stink of money. I’m of a fastidious temperament, and I refuse to pick up leftovers from the rubbish heap. Bad people exist in the modern era too, of course, but they’re so bad they have no personality or character; they’re as inert as inorganic matter and as efficient as machines. Even poets disappoint me. They go on and on about baring their souls, but once they’ve finished baring them nothing is left over for me. You think I’m busy, but I’m so idle I’m going stir-crazy. I, too, am one of the unemployed — a sacrificial object of modern material and mechanized civilization. Plus, I’m burdened with heavy family responsibilities: I have seven million offspring to support^[11]. I do still have social engagements, of course—someone of my level of prestige always does. Tonight I came from a dinner. In times like these I don’t have to worry for lack of dinner invitations; I just find it depressing that people don’t let one use one’s talents to earn a meal.”

He said no more. His loneliness filled the air, reducing the warmth of the brazier. I was about to ask him about my own soul when he abruptly stood up and announced he was off. Wishing me a good night, he said that we might have a chance to meet again. I opened the door and saw him out. The boundless darkness of the night awaited him in silence. He stepped outside and melted into it, like a raindrop returning to the sea.

You can buy Humans, Beasts and Ghosts from Columbia University Press or Amazon.
Wikipedia has an entry devoted to Qian, including some good links

Notes

1. ^[1] Book 1 of John Milton’s Paradise Lost describes how the Devil was demoted for having rebelled and created a disturbance in Heaven. Canto 34 in Dante’s Inferno says that the Devil suffers in ice. ↩
2. ^[2] Garçon and Vinchon’s Le diable, for example, collects a number of popular tales about the Devil. ↩
3. ^[3] In the “Witch’s Kitchen” section in part 1 of Goethe’s Faust, the witch blames the Devil for changing his form and the Devil replies that since world civilization constantly renews itself, he changes to keep up with it. ↩
4. ^[4]
   In canto 27 in The Inferno the Devil calls himself a logician. In the “Study” section in part 1 of Faust, the Devil says that although he is not omniscient, he is quite experienced and knowledgeable. ↩
5. ^[5] Both Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “The Devil’s Thoughts” and Robert Southey’s “The Devil’s Walk” describe the Devil using politeness and modesty to cover up his pride. ↩
6. ^[6] On the Devil’s lame foot, see Alain-René Lesage’s Le diable boiteux and Daniel Defoe’s The Political History of the Devil, part 2, chap. 4. ↩
7. ^[7] Regarding the Devil’s frequent manifestation in the form of a bull, Psalms 106 in the Old Testament says that the heretics made a bull statue, which they worshipped. In later eras it was said that the Devil appeared in the form of a goat, which Defoe describes in detail. ↩
8. ^[8] The preface to Southey’s long poem “The Vision of Judgement” says that Byron and Shelley were both demonic poets. ↩
9. ^[9] Christopher Marlowe’s The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus records that Faustus pricked his arm and wrote the entire contract in blood. ↩
10. ^[10] See Paradise Lost, book 2. ↩
11. ^[11] Johann Weyer’s De praestigiis daemonum records that the number of little devils totals 7,405,926. ↩

Jinbao Street screams wealth. Jinbao (金宝) means “gold and treasure” and the name is apt:

The Hong Kong Jockey club squats in the middle of the street, surrounded by stores that sell Bentleys and Ferraris with price tags in the millions (please refer to our previous research for more about the cars and background to Jinbao Street). Private drivers in expensive cars roll up to five-star hotels to pick up their customers. During lunch hour, men and women in designer suits come out from their offices suites and descend upon the street which is lined with stores offering luxury goods.

We asked sales staff at nearly all the stores on Jinbao Street what their most expensive and cheapest items were and for comments about their customer demographics. Some were more talkative than others.

The most expensive item on the whole street is a Pagani sports car that sells at 26 million yuan. Other products with outrageous price tags include:

• A password-protected cabinet with a price tag of 5 million yuan;
• A diamond encrusted watch for 6.6 million yuan;
• A medicinal fungus for 200,000 yuan;
• Men’ suits for a million yuan;
• A cell phone for  840,000 yuan.

Not far from the Hong Kong Jockey Club is Jinbao Place, a seven-story mall. This self-described “Palace of Global Luxury” is on most afternoons almost completely devoid of customers, save for the few who are grabbing a latte at Esquire’s Coffee, or sitting down for lunch at the Dadong Peking Duck restaurant.

Salespeople we spoke to at Jinbao Palace were almost never busy with a customer, and some said that they had not had a transaction in months. Still, it seems there are enough people who can drop tens of thousands or even millions of yuan on an impulse to keep the stores on Jinbao Street open.

Who are these people?

A recent McKinsey report titled “Understanding China’s Growing Love for Luxury” found that 73% of China’s luxury consumers are under 45, and 45% are younger than 35, which corresponds with the typical age range of customers on Jinbao Street, according to sales staff we interviewed. Many of the sales staff said their customers were from Shanxi; Inner Mongolia, Northeast China, Shandong and Shaanxi were also mentioned. Although the Jinbao Palace Mall seems to have more women shopping and window shopping, many of the sales staff said men were the main customers.

The following is a list of descriptions, prices and anecdotal information about the stores on Jinbao Street (see also Luxury cars of Golden Treasure Street for information about luxury cars sold on the street).

Orchard Farmer
A well-known dried fruit and nut chain store.
Cheapest item: Torreya nuts, 9.8 yuan / 1 jin (500 grams)
Most expensive: 302 yuan / 1 jin
Sell about 100,000 yuan of goods per month.

Good Neighbor Convenience Store (好邻居）
Cheapest item: 1.5 yuan (bottled water)
Most expensive item: 1,000 yuan (liquor)

Casajolie
Home furnishings
Cheapest item: 1,000 yuan for flooring, several thousand for a bathtub.
Most expensive item:  6,000 yuan for flooring; 350,000 yuan for a bathtub.

Time (时光)
Home furnishings
Cheapest item: 27,000 yuan, a watch winder.
Most expensive: 5 million yuan, a password-protected cabinet.
Customers range from age 30-60, most of them are men.
Sell about 10 million yuan of goods per year.

Convenience Store （便民商店）
Cheapest item: 0.5 yuan(meat snack)
Most expensive: 70 yuan (a pack of cigarettes)

Millennium Wine Cellar
Cheapest item: Over 80 yuan (liquor), 3 yuan (pack of cigarettes)
Most expensive item: Over 1,000 yuan (liquor), 60 yuan (pack of cigarettes)
The store owner told us that customers prefer Chinese cigarette brands to foreign brands.

Parmigian
Watches
Cheapest item: 164,000 yuan
Most expensive: 6.6 million yuan (diamond men’s watch)
They have at most five customers per day, from age 18 and up, and from all around China.

FFF Automobile - image by Inhwa Chung

Starck by Warendorf
Home furnishings
Cheapest item: 500,000 yuan
Most expensive: 1.5 million yuan
Many customers per day, some from as far away as Macau.
Most popular item is a glass kitchen counter, of which they typically sell ten a year.

Very-Grass
A medicinal fungus popular in traditional Chinese medicine.
Cheapest item: 10,000 yuan
Most expensive: 200,000 yuan
They claimed to have many customers per day, but couldn’t tell us how much they sold in a month.

Dtiga
Authorized Apple product reseller
Cheapest computer: 7,600 yuan
Most expensive computer: 18,000 yuan
An used iPhone costs 5,999 yuan for 16GB; the storekeeper told us that 32GB iPhones are sold out all over China. They will start selling the 4GS iPhone at the end of the year.
Customers are of all ages, including students. They have 50-60 customers a day.

Iran Carpet Company
Cheapest item: 1,500 yuan
Most expensive item: 270,000 yuan
They sell two to three items per month.
Most customers are male, usually “bosses or managers” (老板) aged 30-40.

Orlov
Diamonds
Cheapest item: 1,000 yuan
Most expensive item: Several hundred thousand yuan
Customers are mostly female and come from everywhere.

Marco Bruno
Brand suit rental
Cheapest item: 3,000 yuan
Most expensive item: 10,000 yuan
Most customers are men aged 20-40 looking for wedding tuxedos. About ten shoppers a day, most of whom are just passing through during their lunch hour.

JINBAO PALACE
Luxury shopping mall containing 49 stores.
Cheapest stores: (on average) Siu (cheapest item: a shirt for 1,000 yuan) and Beprine (women’s clothing – 1,000 yuan).
Most expensive store: He Sheng Jewelry (和生珠宝 ) had the most expensive item (a jade necklace for 3.8 million yuan); Omega on average has the most expensive items (including a 1 million yuan diamond watch).
The average customer at Jinbao Palace is 30-40, usually a Chinese male from all over China.

These are stores in Jinbao Palace:

Burberry - image by Inhwa Chung

Burberry
Men’s and women’s clothing / accessories
Cheapest item: 1,000 yuan (card holder)
Most expensive item: 60,000 yuan (clothing); 20,000 (bag); 4,000 (scarf)
They sell 100-200 items per month; customers range from age 20-50.

Bottega Veneta
Men’s and women’s clothing / accessories
Cheapest item: 1,340 yuan (keychain)
Most expensive item: 340,000 yuan (bag)
They typically sell 500 items per month; customers range from age 20-50.

Cornelani
Formal men’s clothing
Cheapest item: 1,000 yuan (tie)
Most expensive item: 130,000 yuan (suit)
Typically sell 700,000 -800,000 yuan per month. Most customers are from Shanxi and Erduosi (Inner Momgolia).

Pal Zileri
Formal men’s clothing
Cheapest Item: 1,000 yuan (tie)
Most expensive item: 130,000 yuan (suit)
Prices go up in the wintertime, when they usually sell more products.

Kilton
Men’s clothing
Cheapest item: 128 yuan (socks)
Most expensive item: 1 million yuan
Typically sell about 500,000 yuan per month.

Canali
Formal men’s clothing
Cheapest Item: 100 yuan (socks)
Most expensive item: 60,000 yuan
Typically sell 1 million yuan of goods per month.

Gucci
Men’s and women’s clothing / accessories
Cheapest Item: 1,000 yuan (key chain)
Most expensive item: 40,000 yuan (accessories), 70,000 yuan (clothing)

Vertu
Luxury cellphones with concierge service
Cheapest item: 39,500 yuan
Most expensive item: 840,000 yuan

Omega
Watches
Cheapest item: 20,000 yuan
Most expensive item: 1 million yuan
Typically sell 3 million yuan per month.

Giada
Women’s clothing
Cheapest Item: 1,000 yuan (belt)
Most expensive item: 200,000 yuan (leather jacket)

Bilacioni
Men’s and women’s clothing, specializing in Italian furs.
Cheapest Item: 2,000 yuan (belt)
Most expensive item: 60,000 yuan (fur coat)
They sell less than 10 products a month; customers range from age 30-50.

Autason
Formal men’s clothing
Cheapest item: 1,000 yuan
Most expensive item: 200,000 yuan
Customers range from age 30-50.

Ilaria
Women’s clothing
Cheapest Item: 3,000 yuan (blouse)
Most expensive item: 300,000 yuan
Customers are in their 30’s, and are mostly from Northeast China and Xi’an.

The Swank
Men’s and women’s clothing / accessories
Cheapest Item: 120 yuan (very small item)
Most expensive item: 200,000 yuan (leather jacket)
Customers are from all around China.

High Quality Suit Care (优凯高级西服护理)
Suit care
Services costs 100-800 yuan

Ludwig Reiter
Men’s and women’s accessories (mostly shoes / bags)
Cheapest item: 300 yuan (shoe shine), cheapest shoes 2,000 yuan
Most expensive item: 110,000 yuan (shoes)
Customers range from age 40-50 mostly from Shanxi.

Artiloli
Men’s and women’s shoes
Cheapest item: 2,000 yuan (belt)
Most expensive item: 200,000 yuan (bag)
Customers are age 30 and up.

Siu
Clothing and Jewelry
Cheapest Item: 1,000 yuan (shirt)
Most expensive item: 15,000 yuan
Typically sell 30 -50 items per month, sometimes more. Customers are age 25 and up.

Ublcount
Men’s clothing and accessories
Cheapest item: 600 yuan (purse)
Most expensive item: 60,000 yuan (marten fur coat)
They sell less than 10 items per month. Customers range from age 30-40

Hesheng Jewelry (和生珠宝)
Jewelry and jade
Cheapest Item: 8,000 yuan (bracelet)
Most expensive item: 3.8 million yuan (necklace)
Customers mostly from Northeast China and Shanxi.

Beprine
Women’s clothing
Cheapest item: 1,000 yuan
Most expensive item: 15,000 yuan
They typically sell about 5 items in a month. Customers range from age 30-40; most of them are actresses and they usually rent the dresses.

Samsung
Home electronics (TVs and fridges)
Cheapest item: 15,000 yuan
Most expensive item: 20,000 yuan
They initially sold 50,000 yuan per month, but have not sold anything in a while. The sales person said that very famous people shop there so she couldn’t tell us about them.

Gts High Quality Cashmere (Gts高档羊绒)
Women’s clothing
Cheapest item: 100 yuan (gloves – on sale)
Most expensive item: several million yuan
Customers are age 30 and up.
Usually there are no customers during the summer, because they sell winter clothing.

La Belleza Salon（部丽莎美发沙龙)
Hair salon
Cheapest service: 80 yuan (shampoo and styling)
Most expensive service: 980 yuan (perm)

Yuming Jewelry (嶎明珠宝)
Jade
Cheapest item: 1,000 yuan (popular with younger customers)
Most expensive item: 1 million yuan
Customers range from age 30-40.

Anshangte Salon (安上特美容院)
Japanese style massage salon
Cheapest service: 280 yuan (facial massage), 320 yuan (full body)
Most expensive: 5,000 yuan (facial), 1,080 yuan (full body)

Juva
Massage salon
Cheapest service: 600 yuan
Most expensive service: 6,800 yuan for five sessions of laser treatment; also offers botox.
Customers are of all ages “because they all want to be pretty.”

Bailigong Cinema (百丽宫影城)
Movie theater
Price range: 60-70 yuan

Tanya
Women’s dresses and bags
Cheapest Item: 2,800 yuan (shirt)
Most expensive item: 20,000 yuan
Customers range from age 30-40.
Most customers are friends of the boss, mostly actresses.
Need notification two weeks in advance.
Had Hermes bags on display that belonged to the boss.

Polardeck
Home accessories
Cheapest Item: 3,000 yuan
Most expensive item: 200,000 yuan (wolf skin rug).
Customers are mostly from Shandong province.

Run Bao Xuan (润宝轩)
Jade
Cheapest Item: 30,000 yuan
Most expensive item: 100,000 yuan
Typically sell 1 million yuan per month.

Written and Researched by Lucy March and Inhwa Chung, all images by Inhwa Chung.

Below is a brief Q&A with Liu, followed by an excerpt from his new book. You can buy the book on Amazon and iTunes.

JG: Can you explain how you came up with the idea for this book?
LJ: I have two inspirations to write the book. One is my new born son, the other one is actually a Chinese saying.

Living in China, watching my son growing so fast, I’m just as anxious as a lot of people to know where China is going. I believe, to better guess where China is going, I have to know where it came from. The other inspiration is a Chinese saying, “At 40, one should be no longer confused.” This was said by Confucius, an ancient Chinese philosopher, over 2500 years ago to review his own life.

Today, most Chinese still measure their lives with these Confucius’ benchmarks. A few years before my 40th birthday, I was still confused about many things, the history of my own country was one of them. So I decided to write this book.

I first looked into Chinese history for self-education, and realized how much of an information overload it can be to most people. With this condensed comic book, I hope that it has made it easier for readers to connect the dots of China’s past and to see its compelling relevance today.

Why you decided to publish it for iPad and Kindle?
So far, they are the only major platforms that allow me to reach a global audience instantly.

Is it easy to publish in this way? What are the advantages compared to traditional publishing?
Both Apple and Amazon have clear terms and steps for digital publishing. It takes some time and effort, but manageable. For comic books like mine, it’s a bit more complicated, since it involves lots of images and specific layout. There are many benefits of digital book publishing:

For readers:
Instant delivery
Easy to carry around
Cheaper than print copies

For me:
Instant worldwide distribution
No need for warehouse and inventory management

Are you expecting to make money from this book, or is it mostly for fun?
It’s my long term hobby, and to me, it’s more of a meaningful thing.

How long have you been drawing comics and what first inspired you to do it?
I started to draw for fun when I was a kid. When I went to primary school, I signed up for an after-school program, where I spent 2 years just learning how to draw goldfish tails, using a Chinese paint brush.

In my first job at Beijing Scene, an independent English newspaper, I did some cartoons and illustrations. Since 1997, I’ve running a design firm, where I’m lucky to keep my hobby by drawing for some projects.

The reason I chose comic format for this book is that comic is entertaining, personal and emotional. It can make a very complicated topic easy to understand.

What is your day job?
My full time job is to run a creative agency to help help our clients to tell their brand stories, and I’ve been doing that for 14 years.

Now I need something more challenging and I decide to tell the story of my country, China, in comic format, in my spare time. One way to put it: I did what I had to do, so now I can do what I like to do.

You have been interacting with foreigners in China since the mid 1990s. Do you think knowledge of China amongst foreigners has improved over this time?
Actually I met my first foreign friend in China in late 80s. I believe the interest in China is growing over the decades, giving the chance to improve the knowledge of China among westerners.

There are a lot more English books about China, mostly written by westerners, reflecting western logic and rationale. In many of these books, China will either save the world by driving global economic growth, or rule the world so everyone has to live in its shadow. When I read these books, I find both sides’ arguments convincing, based on the facts they gathered.

But there is a strong feeling that something were left unsaid, at least for a Chinese person like me, who grew up with Chinese legends, tales, arts, crafts, symbols, propaganda and tragedies.

I hope my book can contribute to improving the perception of one aspect of China, which is that, China has always been very busy with its own problems. It doesn’t have extra energy to either save the world, or rule the world.

Anything else you’d like to add?
The book is a visual guide to understanding China and its long history. The value of the book is that, the readers can get a solid grip on China’s history in 3 days. It’s for people who do not have time to go through tons of history books, especially for business people who really want to understand China, Chinese culture and Chinese people.

I hope, after reading the book, the readers will understand China’s historical context, understand what China is, and be informed.

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