I’ve had enough of this!

I want to speak really good English, like a really good native speaker.

Who can help me then? There is no way I can marry a native English-speaking woman now. Well, I’m talking (writing, to be precise) as though I can easily find one who is also interested in me!

I’m not the sort of guys women can have a crush on at first glance. People have to get to know me a lot before they can like me very much. Smacks of boasting then.

Now back to the topic of learning to speak a foreign language that your spouse speaks. If you’re lucky enough to have one and you don’t speak like a native speaker of that foreign language, you are wasting such a good opportunity and even your life!

But, I cannot justifiably blame you for that too much. It’s a human weakness. Me for one. I’ve been in Beijing for more than six years and I’ve never been to the Great Wall here though I’ve been to Qinghuangdao and sometimes I got really close to the city’s section of the Wall. I always think that if I really want to go to, say Badaling, I can do that on any weekend and so I don’t do it.

The most immediate reason why I can’t marry a native English-speaking woman is that I’ve already got married with and want to keep at my side the best woman in the world. But, she doesn’t speak English. It would be wonderful if she spoke English as a native tongue!

There must be a work-around, though.

Yep, a language exchange partner!

I’ve spoken Chinese for almost 30 years (I don’t remember when I started to speak it) and grew up in an area where Standard Chinese is spoken. My favorite books are ancient and modern Chinese classics. I can teach you some Dongbeihua  if you like, though.

So, anyone interested in my offer -  be my language exchange partner?

In this world where people are connected via visible and invisible networks. Our mutual help will be very easy, via Skype, MSN, or QQ, or even recordings (e.g. I record my translation lessons for some visually impaired students who want to be translators).

For more about me and my contact info, click here.

CCTV is torn between two roles: it wants to be a Party and Government mouthpiece while wanting to be viewed as an unbiased and trusted source of information.

And the CFA-run soccer industry has produced a Chinese national men football team that has never scored a single win against their South Korean counterpart in formal matches for more than two decades since the 1978 Bangkok Asian Games. This should be impossible considering the probability law. However, it’s a hard fact and it can only mean the Chinese team is really, truly, and wholly incompetent. No excuses or pretexts allowed.

In the past, when I felt like upgrading my WP software, I had to download a new .zip file, unpacked it, and then uploaded them to my server to override old files before I ran the upgrade file.

It sounds a little complicated. But it’s marvelously easy and bug-free compared to Discuz!, a popular BBS and community software package in China. For Discuz!, upgrading to new version entails what version you’re going to upgrade from. This means that there is no way you can upgrade your Version 1 directly to Version 3 and Version 2 is a must go-between. For WP, just upload the latest files to replace old ones, run the upgrade file. After one or two minutes, all done. Just enjoy blogging with the latest software. After I ran into serious trouble trying to upgrade my Hongloumeng BBS, I’ve never tried to upgrade it and dread thinking about it. I love software applications designed for fools.

* My other two blogs are one in Chinese and one about Chinese literature (I even thought about trying my hand at creating some literary works there!).

After having linked to the post in his blog, justrecently read my May 3, 2008 post about whether Chinese fenqings can think for themselves and followed it with a post that focuses on freedom of speech in China.

He said that it’s okay for Chinese people to exercise their freedom of speech to foreign countries and foreign people. But doing so inside China is dangerous and carries imprisonment as Hu Jia has suffered.

It’s true, but it is only half-true.

Because people around me and everyone I know personally haven’t shown any signs that they oppose the Chinese government’s policies on Tibet and the Beijing Olympic Games, I had to google for a long time to find those people who have been put in prison because of their verbal opposition to the policies. Though I haven’t found anyone who have suffered the ordeals Hu Jia has, I did find a guy who is verbally against the hosting of the Games on economic grounds and thinks that the economic resources should be saved for primary education in poor Chinese areas and another who thinks China should abolish all preferential policies towards minorities and put every Chinese citizen on an equal footing. Whether these two people are now behind the bars, I have no way to know.

However, I did find others who were jailed just because what they said ruffled the feathers of local Party bosses or their employers.

“Freedom of speech” is a citizen right enshrined in the Chinese Constitution, though China is far from being a country governed by its Constitution – the biggest violator of the Constitution is the Chinese governments and the Party.

Article 35. Freedom of speech, press, assembly

Citizens of the People’s Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration. (Source)

But, this doesn’t mean China is still like what it was more than three decades ago, when a single disrespectful murmur against the Party and the Government resulted in the loss of freedom with or without a verdict of “anti-Revolution”.

Freedom of speech is being exercised in China, though to a limited extent. This explains why the reports about the jailed people are run by private websites and even websites whose URLs end with gov.cn. In those reports, their writers did not mince their words to save the faces of the governments. This means that freedom of speech is a citizen right recognized by the public opinions, the Party and the Government.

Then, why those prisoners?

China is now in a changing process that has at least lasted three decades and will continue. Its economy has become capitalistic and its society’s values and interests are diversified like any Western country. And, the Chinese people is not one with only one voice.

But, though its economy has long become capitalistically democratic, its Government hasn’t changed that much and continues its monopoly on the State’s political power. It only wants to share this power with trusted people outside of the Government, not those (e.g. Hu Jia) who want to replace the Government leadership with a non-Party-led one. Exercising the freedom of speech in areas other than challenges to the Government’s grip on political power is encouraging. That’s why China has been a largely successful economy and society.

Most Chinese people don’t want drastic government leadership change. They think they need a strong Central Government empowered to govern its 1.3bn people who live in a vast country literally divided into population groups, classes and regions sharply different from each other in terms of social and economic development stages.

Even under its One-Party rule, China’s local provinces are more than willing to fight the Central Government’s policies and rules for their provincial interests. China would be doomed, if its government was organized in the Western way, which is only good for well-developed countries with a strong middle class living in an economically balanced society. A strong middle class means stability in a country because it doesn’t want revolutions or upheavals. China doesn’t have that blessing.

China does not need yet another Revolution to start all over again. It needs a non-disruptive path leading to democracy based on an economically, socially, and politically sound society. This is exactly what China has been trying to build since 1949. China doesn’t like the kind of democracy in Thailand where coups are routine in changes of government leadership.

This process is an interactive, changing one. China should be viewed as and  actually is a country in change for the better.

You will be hopelessly wrong, if you think China is a fundamentalistic “Communist” country as how you may look at it through Cold-War glasses. It’s a capitalistic one with strong government control. That is about it.

When the Chinese say someone else has shanghai le tamen de ganqing (伤害了他们的感情) and this expression is translated as they “have gotten their feelings hurt”, something is missing to native English speakers – the part of it that makes this expression really meanful to the Chinese.

How important is ganqing to the Chinese? If ganqing between Chinese people is hurt, it doesn’t simply make the victim “feel bad”. It makes him extremely disheartened. The victim interprets the hurt as a denial of all previously established rapport over a long and maybe very difficult time together and his past efforts to look after the inflicter’s well-being – it’s how you feel when a friend of yours betrays you, who you think you’re a loyal friend with and who you’ve always believed is a loyal friend with you, too, until the infliction occurs.

After ganqing is totally lost between two Chinese people, nothing else that matters in this relationship survives – either a romantic one or a long-time friendship.

*This post was inspired by Austin Ramzy, an Iowa, U.S.-grown,  Harbin, China-educated, and thus presumably Mandarin-speaking reporterHong Kong-born bastard writing for The Times, who again does his subtle China-bashing in the magazine’s blog.

Views from our balcony windows include…

…a dozen of persimmon trees bearing fruits. We’ve seen the fruits turn from green to yellow to orange since we moved here.

The balcony faces a high school campus with the persimmon trees…

… that’s is beyond a wall.

And across the campus and a street, I can see people getting on and off  buses every day, when I don’t have to commute to my office.

My old neighborhood

My new neighborhood

It’s been over a month since I moved to this new two-bedroom apartment in Daxing on July 19, one day before the Olympic traffic restriction sets in.  I’d worried about whether removers could drive their van to my neighborhood if the restriction bit. It’s just two blocks away from the Bird’s Nest, which faces the Water Cube across a street. Too close to the Olympic center to be overlooked in the traffic control. So my wife and I planned a removal date to beat the restriction.

The apartment is located near an expressway and very close to downtown Daxing. It’s within walking distance to my wife’s hospital and two hours away from my office in Chaoyang.  The good news is that I don’t have to commute to and fro every day to work – I can work from home and only commute to my office when necessary.

The apartment has only one balcony, which faces south and where I can hang out quilts and pillows in the sun. This was impossible for the past four years at the Yayuncun apartment we shared with three or four other people (The tenants in the room next to mine came and went while I lived there for four solid years). The shared balcony faces north and is too crowded, neglected and therefore too dusty and dirty to accommodate large quilts.

My mother-in-law and her mother is coming to visit us tomorrow. It’s been two years and a half since they last saw my wife  at our wedding in January 2006.

Even idiots could see Tiger Zhou (周老虎)’s photos didn’t look right. But experts and witnesses bet their heads that the photos showed a  real South China tiger.

The fuss started on October 12, 2007  when Shaanxi’s forestry bureau published digital and film photos of what it believed was a South China tiger taken by hunter Zhou Zhenglong ("Tiger Zhou"). The cyberworld, South China tiger experts and China Academy of Sciences (CAS) experts were quick to identify something wrong with the photos.

Zhou now says everything was false. But you can be sure some heads will get rolling because they were bet.

Things like big-footed modern-day barbarians and this time "lost Amazon tribe" are around in media reports. I don’t believe they are true or completely true even though they might appear in "mainstream" media outlets or are re-run in other equally "authoritative" ones.

We have to develop a sense of humor and have our own judgment when being inundated by  information. I had no proof they were just cooked up. But, the picture didn’t look to me more real than Hollywood movies. Also, I don’t believe there are any areas where non-barbarian humans cannot reach on Earth, especially where there are trees in the Amazon and where there are more than 90-percent-naked tribesmen.

Here is what we now know about the photo now - it’s a hoax and it’s half-truth. The tribe has been known from 1910.

The scenes and stories of the rescuers, survivors, the bereaved, and victims now broadcast almost 24 hours a day on TV are encouraging, heartening, and heartrending.

A rescuer pulled tens of kids out of danger before he finally reached his daughter and found her dead already, who was one of those kids trapped and had called out to him for help. He didn’t try to save her first because if he did he had to stride over other kids before reaching her.

A young mother was found dead with her nipple sucked by her young baby. She formed a protective body posture to keep her baby safe.

A teacher who has lost her loved ones takes care of her students.

A woman wiped clean her husband’s hand, who died for the lives of four of his students.

Two elite police officers as advance team members tasked with finding a path leading to the epicenter were killed by falling rocks. (Later reports showed that this was not what happened. All the officers are sound and safe.)

…

My nerves are not strong enough to endure such scenes and stories without feeling completely shaken or being reduced to tears.

I can only pray for the survival of the people who suffer in the quake-hit areas and for the safety and health of the people who risk their own lives to save others.

God bless China.