Walking the Path

Last week I wrote a post on Lost Laowai wondering about how China defined terrorism. I wondered why China wasn’t declaring the Kuming bus bombings a terrorist act even if it was done by someone with a local grievance. When I wrote it I was just thinking out loud, but then last night I discovered this post on Shanghaiist. It looks like the Turkestan Islamic Party, a terror group (if it’s really a political party would be illegal in China) claimed responsibility in a Youtube video for last week’s Kuming bus bombing as well as the bus bombing incident in Shanghai in May.

Maybe I am being to skeptical about this, but like the blogger behind The New Dominion I don’t really buy it. Why is this group making a claim to the Shanghai bus bombing two months after it happened? The police also said that while both the events in Kuming and Shanghai were intentional, they didn’t appear to be terrorist acts. Nothing has been reported about the TIP’s video in official state media — I’ve seen reports of it on Hong Kong TV though (I haven’t checked CNN or the BBC).

The second question I have is who is the audience this group is trying to reach? The two Youtube videos I’ve seen from the group are all in Arabic Uyghur without Chinese or English subtitles. The fact that there is no Chinese subtitles in the videos make me think that these videos are aimed at people in the Middle East. I don’t if the group’s goal is to get funding for their cause or to reach out to other militant groups such as Al Qaeda. But I don’t think the videos are for Chinese viewers.

I haven’t heard that these videos were posted on Chinese websites. I am sure if they were site censors would probably take them home, but again the group went to Youtube an international site (the videos appeared on the Japanese version) not a Chinese one. So is this group trying to terrorize Chinese or the world? I would assume it’s the Chinese, but the way they are going about it make me doubt the group’s aims. Either that or their media relations plan is screwy.

I’m going to keep watching and blogging on this.

J.

Update: The New Dominion is reporting that the video is in Uyghur not Arabic (see the comment below). Their site is also saying the video has been reported by Xinhua and AFP.

Anyone who wants to learn more about the young Chinese nationalists that were behind much of the anti-CNN backlash around the time of March’s T1bet riots should read Evan Osnos’ piece in this week’s New Yorker. It paints an interesting and far account of some of China’s young conservatives in Shanghai. If anyone who is wondering who the next generation of Chinese leaders are going to be it’s these guys.
Enjoy

J.

I’m sure by now you’ve heard about the earthquake that hit Sichuan today. It was so big that we even felt it in Shanghai.

When it happened I was sitting at my desk working on my computer. I felt a little dizzy and I thought it was just from some eating some bad food at lunch. Only when my colleagues rushed by saying in Shanghainese that something had happened did I know it wasn’t just me. Within a minute my Twitter Feed jumped to life with people asking if anyone else felt the earthquake in Beijing. It was then that I knew something was up. A few minutes later we evacuated the building.

But we were given the all clear 15 minutes later. When I got back to my desk I was able to follow everything on Twitter and answer questions from different colleagues as the people on my feed fed information on the earthquake from all over the country. And we were able to help each other and filter out rumours. People who had access to televisions were able to keep people like me, who were in offices and working, up-to-date with the latest developments.

I can really tell that Twitter is coming into it’s own in China. Today really proves it, especially since the Chinese media did not release news right away and there is very limited access to foreign news sources such as CNN — I’m lucky in in that I have a satellite dish that gives me foreign programs but it’s on the fritz at the moment. Twitter filled the gap for me today and thanks to crowd sourcing I think that it’s pretty accurate. Two articles on the situation can be found on Danwei and China Herald.

As much as I feel happy for the role that Twitter played in the event, I fill sorry for all those dead and injured in the quake. My heart and prayers go out to them.

J.

Update (May 17th 2008): I sent a note to Jesse Brown, the host of CBC Radio’s Search Engine about Twittering the earthquake. They featured me on their blog here and here.

In my last post, I mentioned I was reading Duncan Hewitt’s Getting Rich First. Today I found out that Thomas Crampton posted a video of an interview he did with Hewitt recently. Hewitt spoke about the Internet, angry teenagers and censorship. The video is worth watching for those who have read the book as well as those who haven’t.

Enjoy

J.

Last weekend, while I was at the Shanghai International Literary Festival I picked up Duncan Hewitt’s Getting Rich First: Life in a Changing China. I’ve been ill over the last week so I’ve had lots of time to go through it.

Hewitt’s first two chapters cover the demolition of old and ancient buildings in Beijing and Shanghai. The fact that he covers this movement is nothing new. Hewitt explains the situation that most of these homes are ancient cultural treasures — Western modeled ones in the sense of Shanghai and Chinese ones in the Sense of Beijing. He doesn’t stop there though.

Hewitt really injects humanity into the people here. He shows that people aren’t really just trying to save some old buildings, but a sense of community that has developed in Shanghainese lane communities and Beijing hutongs. This sense of community can’t survive in modern apartment buildings because the individual units put up divisions that isolate people from their communities in ways that don’t allow them to connect the same way as in the old buildings — even if its the same people.

It’s an interesting idea that holds people to these old buildings. You think a lack of private space and bad facilities would make people want to leave but instead it keeps them together and makes people want to save the buildings because they help to create the residents’ sense of community.

One of the last signs of China’s ancient community?

(Image from Greg Girard’s Phantom Shanghai)

I guess it’s just another idea that us Westerners have trouble getting our head around. We think that with our single-family detached homes that we have the only viable attempt at creating a community because we have a balance between private and public space. But once again the Chinese show us there are other ways to do things.

J.

Earlier this week, Shanghaiist had this great post about how a guy from Chongqing got stuck with the same Chinese name as Hong Kong actor Andy Lau (Liu Dehua). This supposedly caused the guy’s business partner to split with him over the fact that having the same as Andy Lau nobody would take him seriously and his girlfriends would always get scolded because everyone would compare their boyfriend to the real Liu Dehua. But then it turns out later in the story that the guy’s name came about because of an error:

“What’s really ironic is that Liu Dehua isn’t his real name. In fact, his name ought to be Liu Jianhua, because the siblings in his generation all have “Jian” as the middle character. So how did he end up being “Dehua”? Because, someone in a bumble-fuck township government office in Chongqing municipality probably wrote his name wrong. If you stab yourself in the eye and squint long enough, the characters for Jian (?) and De (?) look kinda similar. Or maybe you have to be illiterate, and then stab yourself in the eye. Anyway, the title of the article says that Liu now suffers from depression, and he feels like he’s going to have to go back home and officially change his name.”

When I got my first resident permit in Shanghai, the public security official mispronounced my last name as “Guose” and gave me the same Chinese name as Tom Cruise (ironically we share the same birthday and so does TV tabloid godfather, Geraldo). But this didn’t help my prospects or personal for the three years that I had it. So in late 2006, I changed it to my current Chinese name.

J.

Last Sunday, I saw a documentary on the Discovery Channel’s Asian Gateway program entitled Bad Kids. It was about the military-style schools that have risen up in China in response to the number of badly behaved (more like holy terrors from what I saw) Chinese children that have appeared in the last few years.

After watching for about 10 minutes I was sort of suspicious of the show’s premise that these children’s bad behaviour came from the new opportunities that China’s economy gave them. If you look at the way the parents treat them not allowing them to be children and instead study all the time. If the child gets 80% on a test, it’s not good enough. He should have got 90% or 100%. When you’re parents give you nothing but negative praise, of course you’re gonna rebel.

Brendan John Worrell in a column in China Daily agrees with me:

“Here it is common for children as young as six to be assigned several hours of homework each night. Then they are sent to extra classes on the weekends, to learn English or music, math or calligraphy. Before these children have even had a chance to be kids, they are competing academically with their peers.

American mental health professional Dr Gregory Mavrides who has lived and worked in China for several years says, “In America, any parent would dance for joy upon finding that their child was reading anything, even the television listings in the daily newspaper, let alone a magazine or work of fiction. In China, children are often physically scolded by their parents, and, in some areas, their teachers, if and when they are caught reading anything other than assigned textbooks. In this context, there is simply no psychic energy left over for doing anything other than preparing for the next exam.”

Compounding the situation is the continuing family planning policy, where most elementary and middle school students have no siblings to talk to when the pressure gets too much. In such situations friends become increasingly important, yet they too are under similar strains and are not equipped to offer practical emotional advice.”

According to Worrell the central government seems to be seeing children’s mental states as a potential problem too and are placing mental health professionals in schools. This is a good start, but it’s not a solution. The amount of homework has to be less (this is happening in some places and school is starting later).  But most importantly change needs to happen at home. Stop the cram-classes let kids be kids and have fun. Otherwise the rebels will just get worse over time.  One of the major problems for China right now is innovation. If children are stuck in a ridge structure of classes and studying with no free time to think or play how can they be creative?

Time to play will give Chinese children time to be creative and that can only help the country.

J.

I had a great time in Guangzhou with Winnie visiting her family. I ate a lot, shopped and slept a lot — most of all I learned a lot about Cantonese culture that I didn’t know before. Here are some things I learned about life in what I call the Cantonese Administrative Region or the CAR.

1. The CAR doesn’t look towards Beijing for direction instead it looks south to Hong Kong: You’d think that this is pretty obvious and I had a suspicion that it might be the case last time I was there. However, last time I was there I stayed in a hotel so my interaction around aspects of daily life such as watching TV or eating a regular meal was limited. This time I stayed in Winnie’s parents’ home so I was able to watch TV with them and eat regular meals. I noticed that her family only watched Cantonese-language channels from either HK or Guangzhou. They also speak fluent Mandarin, but they find the Cantonese-language programming much more interesting. I have to say that I agree the programs were much more creative than the state-run CCTV channels. I also noticed that when the government wanted to thank people for their patience during the recent weather problems, they chose to cut into the news broadcasts on the HK channels and not on the Mandarin-language stations.
2. They may speak the same language but the priorities of HK and Guangzhou are sometimes miles apart: One of the biggest things that I noticed while watching TV in Guangzhou is that the Guangzhou stations focused on the snow storm and its effect on the city, which was a major one. That makes sense in a way, it was a major event for the country with significant local effects. What’s surprising is the event also had a major effect on HK as well but instead they decided to focus on the Edison Chen sex scandal on the front page of all its major newspapers (Coverage from Shanghaiist and the event’s Wikipedia entry can be found here and here; A comparison of the front pages of GZ and HK newspapers is here; Fallout from the way the HK Police handled the event here). I can see the reason why they cover the event — it’s local and sex sells — but it disgusts me that the only place with a truly free press in China resorts to using that press as a platform for tabloid media.
3. If you’re on a crowded bus in Guangzhou and the driver takes a short-cut everybody will be pissed even if they’re not missing their stop: This happened to us on the Lunar New Year’s Eve. I was happy about it cause the road was jammed but almost everyone on the bus was complaining. I could see it as a problem but since nobody missed their stop what’s there to whine about?
4. Great food and amazing service: I’ve mentioned this before but I need to say it again: Guangzhou has amazing food and the service people are some of the best in China. That just made me fall in love with the region even more.

So those are my thoughts. I can’t wait to go back again.

J.

It snowed yesterday here in Shanghai for the first time in about three years. I still see snow on the roof tops and some of the cars, but there isn’t as much as three years ago when I lived around East China Normal University (I’m a former student there) and I saw students building snowmen. The reason the headline to this post says “the first time ever” is that if you listen/read/watch state media here they seem to say that whatever major weather event is happening that season, it’s the biggest typhoon/highest temperature/coldest temperature/most snow that the Shanghai has seen in 10 years. This might seem like a cynical view, but hey I’m from Canada 2cm of snow on the ground doesn’t seem like a lot to me. Yes it’s beautiful and cleans up the dirtier parts of the city for a day or two, but it’s not worth it for the state media to talk about it like it’s a crisis. People seem to get a long just fine here (on a more serious note, temperatures just as cold as Shanghai are being experienced in Guangzhou and Shenzhen but without the snow — I don’t think Southern China is not prepared for snow).

In fact, they seem to treat it like rain, which I find the funniest thing. Watching people walk along in umbrellas during snowfalls is something I find strange, but then again people here think I am strange for abandoning the umbrella and just putting on my toque (knit cap to non-Canadians), scarf and gloves and walking through it. They keep thinking I’ll catch a cold.

For a great photo from Xujiahui Park, take a look at Shanghai Scrap.

J.

Update: I spoke to Winnie this evening. She went home to Guangzhou yesterday for the Spring Festival holiday (I’ll be joining her on Saturday). China is undergoing a major cold snap right now and that means more snow in a lot of areas. That snow is blocking the railways which means a lot of the migrant workers in Guangzhou are stuck in the city and can’t get home. So the city is extremely crowded. It’s also quite cold for this time of year as well. Hopefully things will improve weatherwise by the time I arrive.

Update II: According to CNN International there are 100,000 train passengers stuck in Guangzhou. It looks like there will be more snow in Shanghai today (CNN is quoting 25mm) but it should be done by the weekend.

Josh at Cup of Cha has a great piece on the anger of the common Chinese man especially the fist fights and beatings that you can sometimes see in the streets.  This is usually accompanied by a large crowd who don’t do anything but simply watch.

For a foreigner, this usually means stay away. You don’t want to get caught in the middle as everyone will automatically forget what they’re doing and as the Chinese unfortunate sense of strong nationalism kicks in turn against you.

As you’d expect a great conversation has been started in the comment section. Including a post by a guy called nichtich trying to explain why Chinese people react the way they do:

“OK, I’m Chinese, and I’ll try to explain that.
Fist fighting on streets is not about honor or anger so to speak. I think the sence of power is more relevent here. As you already noticed, fist fights rarely come when two men fight each other evenly. It’s more like a group of men beating one or a man beat women/elderly or even a group of girls beat another girl. Why is that? It shows power. It means “I’m without honor, I don’t play fair”, which is more scary.
Common Chinese people, or the “laobaixing”, don’t have the tradition to stand up for one another. When they see some thugs beat someother man, they will watch it, and learns who’s the thug that you should avoid and what to do to avoid get caught by any thug, but not rise up against the thug.
Whether it’s unique to chinese or not, i don’t know. But I think it’s more or less common in country with dictatorship ruling. It’s all about power. Not only goverment have more power than people, some people have more than others. And on the lowest level of the power ladder, it needs constant demostrating to assure others your position.”

I can say that after getting caught in one of these fights last summer  — where my physical safety wasn’t harmed — I’m not so much afraid for my safety as I am for my dignity and now that I look back on my encounter maybe being scammed out of money.

J.