Chinese is Easy!

Chinese people are normally shocked when they hear a foreigner speaking Chinese. Many of them will tell me that it's the hardest language in the world. I tend to disagree for a couple reasons.

First, there is no such thing as the hardest language. I could learn French in a year, but it would take me at least three or four to even be functional in Japanese. A speaker of Chinese, on the other hand, could get Japanese down relatively quickly and toil for years trying to figure out when to use the subjunctive in French.

Second, Chinese isn't unfathomably hard. For example, vocabulary acquisition is a lot faster in Chinese than other non-European languages.

The other day I was fed up with my bug infestation (gnats) and marched to the supermarket to buy pesticides, forgetting to bring my dictionary. I searched in vain and realized I was going to have to ask someone for help finding it. After contemplating what the Chinese for pesticide might be, I asked the stock boy for "kill bug medicine"(杀虫药). He didn't hesitate and took me straight to the Raid shelf. Sure enough, the Raid cannister had "kill bug medicine" written on it in big characters.

You might be thinking to yourself, "well pesticide means 'bug killer' in Latin too." But what ESL student knows Latin?

This happens all the time in Chinese. A very basic example is the word foreigner. Who knows the root of that in English? 外国人, Chinese for foreigner, literally translated is 'outside country person.' Virtually every word can be broken down like this, making learning vocab incredibly easy.

Another example of relative ease is the grammar. There are no conjugations, no plurals, no declensions, no annoying irregular verbs and tenses. Every sentence is subject-verb-object or occasionally object-subject-verb. You don't even invert word order in interrogative sentences. You toss on a modal particle "ma" and then you're done. Sometimes you don't even have to put a subject in. "Do you want to eat lunch?" would be translated as, "Eat lunch ma?"

Another thing that people often imagine would be hard are the tones. The tones themselves aren't particular hard to get used to if you actually try, and even if you don't it may not make a difference. People who don't speak perfectly standard Mandarin (and hardly anybody does) often mess up the tones habitually because they're different in their native dialect (most Chinese dialects are more like languages). Furthermore, most Chinese will be able to figure from context. Horse, yell at, weed, and mother are all pronounced the same with different tones. If I said, "I miss my horse," "I miss yell at," or "I miss weed," a Chinese person would immediately think I said, "I miss my mother." (Unless he knew about my drug and equestrian predilections.)

So if Chinese is so easy, why does it still take so long to learn (2200 classroom hours according to the US Department of State)? I've given a lot of thought to this recently and realized that a lot of time is wasted on learning to write characters, which a waste of time because everyone uses computers now. This reason obviously isn't the only one and I'd like to hear some of your thoughts.

Note: Since blogger.com was blocked in anticipation of June Fourth, I have had trouble getting back on this blog. When I used tor, it wouldn't let me make posts. Now using a proxy seems okay, but slower.

New Blog

I've started working on a group blog with Charles Custer, a recent Brown graduate living in Harbin. He's been running great posts on Ai Weiwei's search for truth in the rubble of Sichuan schools. I'll keep my political commentary, which has probably been boring for most of you anyway, contained to that blog, chinageeks. For those of you interested in that dry stuff, you can check it out. Charles updates it frequently. I'll keep my posts here more focused on less political things that will probably be of more interest to the three of you who still check this.

Another First/Largest for China

Today, I saw this story on the cover page of the Jinghua Times, a Beijing daily:

China to Build Largest Transfer Station in Asia

While it's great that Beijing's adding more subway lines, is a transfer station actually something to brag about much less make front page news?

As I noted a couple weeks ago, the largest anything is often viewed as something that should a source of pride for the Chinese people (or so the people behind the building of it hope). But here is a case where size is objectively a bad thing. This transfer station will only involve the meeting of three lines. Three lines meet often on other subways without requiring such a large transfer point. A subway transfer point shouldn't be tiny, but anyone who's been in Xizhimen, Dongzhimen, Guomao or any of the many other ten-minute-long transfers in Beijing knows that larger is not better. I wonder when the Beijing city planners are going to stop trying to make things bigger and simply make them convenient.


Note: Sorry you have all been missing out on the riveting details of my life and my profound insights over the last couple weeks. I'm working on a time-consuming project, so posts will continue to be sporadic until that's over.

五毛党 Fifty Cent Party

Contrary to the title, this post has nothing to do with the cool American rapper who I'm going to get down with on my birfday.

The wumaodang, or fifty cent party (link blocked in China), are a group of Chinese probably numbering in the thousands who go onto Internet chat rooms and BBS pages to write posts that support the communist party. They get paid fifty cents for each post that criticizes other subversive netizens.

Today, as I was wandering around tianya, an Internet portal, I saw that some Chinese internet users abbreviate the term wumaodang 'wmd,' probably to avoid the censors. I don't think the Chinese are aware what this means in English, but I thought it was pretty funny since my sophomore year policy debate topic was on WMDs, a/k/a weapons of mass destruction.

我今天发现有些中国网民会把五毛党写成wmd。英文里也有这个简称：WMD就是大规模销毁武器的意思。中国网民实在太厉害了。

中国的新角色

Here is the translation of Monday's post.

我同事帮我翻译的这篇我前天发表的文章。

新兴势力

“今天，2009年4月2日，” 《观察家报》的蒂莫西·哥顿·阿什（Timothy Garton Ash）在伦敦G20峰会的开幕日上说道，“将是一个历史性的日子，在全球金融危机的影响下，中国已然成为了21世纪的新力量。”认同中国的领袖地位的显然不止阿什一个。《华盛顿邮报》评论道：“中国在上周的G20峰会上的积极表现向世界宣布——中国的领导人们想在世界经济新秩序的建立中扮演更重要的角色。”就连G20峰会上的座位安排都反映出了中国在世界上的新地位：胡锦涛就坐在主持人——英国首相布朗旁边。

早在G20峰会认可中国的新国际地位的数月之前，美国前国务卿兹比格涅夫·布热津斯基（Zbigniew Brzezinzski）就提出了所谓G2组合——即美国和中国的组合——作为21世纪主要的全球决策者。一些经济学家预测，中国将在2012年超过危机重重地日本，成为世界经济的第二。

牺牲环境换取经济发展？

然而，尽管世界认可了中国的新经济地位，在许多全球问题上如环境保护等，它还没有被完全认可。美国芝加哥全球事务委员会最近所做的一个研究显示，尽管公众的呼声不断高涨，在东亚及东南亚地区的六个国家看来，中国在政治、经济以及文化吸引力等方面影响力仍不及日本和美国。美国乔治·华盛顿大学的一名中国政治专家大卫·沙姆宝（David Shambaugh）说：“（中国）缺乏全球范围的军事威慑力，软实力也有限，外交触角尽管现在已经伸向全球，但在中东和拉美等地区，它的外交做的并不够。”

同时，许多西方国家抱怨道，在二十世纪九十年代，中国的经济高歌猛进、迅速腾飞，随之而来的却是大量的环境问题：二氧化碳排放上升，煤炭的消耗量剧增，化学肥料流入澜沧江等流经其他国家的河水中。九十年代末，西方国家急切呼吁中国加强改善其环保上的种种问题，而中国领导人却因为怕经济增长放缓而及不情愿地实施了新的环保措施。美国和欧洲的许多政客都要求对中国出口的高污染产品增收关税。

其实，这一问题主要是其他人如何看待中国的问题，而不在于中国本身。但是如果中国不努力改变它在世界眼中，尤其是在西方国家（对中国的支持率最低）眼中的形象的话，它与这些国家之间的贸易往来和文化交流都会受到限制，而中国的出口业对西方国家相当依赖。布什政府的糟糕形象（拒绝签定《京都议定书》也是原因之一）就使美国的软实力大打折扣。

环保在于美国，更在于中国

十年前，《京都议定书》没能在环保问题上达成全球一致，十年后，今年12月的哥本哈根会议成了众人眼中拯救全球变暖的最后机会。“八年来，美国在气候变化问题上无动于衷，”《卫报》的一篇文章写到，“美国的领导路线的正确与否将是拯救全球变暖的唯一希望。”《卫报》并不是唯一一个对哥本哈根会议寄予厚望的媒体，几十家杂志、报纸和政府都迫切希望奥巴马政府能做出正确的决定。

但是这些盼望的眼神是不是应该关注一下太平洋的对岸呢？两年前，《纽约时报》的托马斯·弗里德曼（Thomas Friedman）就写到，如果没有中国和印度的合作，西方这些以服务业为主的国家为减少温室气体排放的努力都会付诸流水。实际上，中国的污染伤害的是中国人民。世界银行估计，2007年中国约有75万人死于环境污染引起的病因，这是在南京大屠杀中遇害的人数的2.5倍。

中国在行动

当中国逐渐认识到环境污染带来的众多问题加之来自国际各方面的压力，中国开始采取措施。中国在减少温室气体以及碳元素的排放这一问题上已经采取了大刀阔斧的改革措施。它的第十一个五年计划，即从2005年到2010年，制定的目标是利用风能发电达到五千兆瓦，也就是说每年风能发电要增加28%。而各省制定的风能发电计划显示中国可能会大幅度超额完成任务。世界上范围最广的一项太阳能照明计划目前正在中国偏僻的西部省区得到实施。西部地区只有一部分人能接触到电能，很多人最常用的是煤，也就是世界上最肮脏的能源。中国政府对汽车尾气排放的规定比美国还要严格。在上海等一些城市，给汽车上牌照非常昂贵，这里的汽车尾气污染也没有洛杉矶严重。

全中国的私人企业在政府投资和补助的优惠政策的帮助下也为环境问题的改善作出了巨大的贡献。大连易世达能源公司发明了一项技术，不但能减少水泥企业产生的污染，还能将污染物转变为能源，从而减少煤的消耗。在长沙，资产达数十亿的远大空调集团率先开创了一项无需排放破坏臭氧层的氟氯烃就能调节室温的新技术。就在去年秋天，瓦伦·布费（Warren Buffet）用超过两亿美元的投资向世界宣告了他对“绿色中国”的信心。布费投资的中国汽车公司比亚迪（BYD）目前正在生产纯电动轿车，购买该车型的顾客将收到8800美元的政府补贴。

中国政府用这些积极的策略向中国人民显示了积极面对污染问题的决心。在12月的哥本哈根会议上，中国将利用这一契机向世界展现它的环保决心，同时摆脱“世界工厂”这一外号，真正成为世界大舞台的主角。

China's Number 1 Again!

If you've ever been to China, you know that they're obsessed with having the largest this or the oldest that. This often results in strange titles. Tiananmen Square is the largest city-center public square in the world. Xinghai Square in Dalian is the largest non-city-center square in Asia. The giant TV screen outside my office building is Asia's largest skyscreen (whatever that means).

Today, China edged out Cuba for another superlative: most journalists in prison with a total of 28 (story here). Cuba wins for most journalists in jail per capita (24 in jail with a total population of only 11 million!), but they will soon be freed because Barack is letting Hyman Roth go to Havana to build casinos.

I don't know the names of all of these reporters but one of them, Shi Tao, is in jail thanks in part to Yahoo! In 2004 Shi Tao sent an email containing a directive regualting reports on the 15th Anniversary of Tiananmen Square. The directive, which came down from a high level in the government, said that no one would be allowed to mention the event and that the human rights activists who returned to commemorate the anniversary were to be ignored. The police asked Yahoo! to help, and being a good American, freedom-loving company, they gave them access to Shi Tao's account. Shi Tao has now spent five years in prison and won't be released until 2014. (The Chinese police must not have realized that that is the 25th anniversary of June 4th.)

In other news, Pirate Bay has been found guilty (surprised?). I am completely unaffected. Now Google China, another one of those red, white, and blue internet companies, lets you download music for free just like on Baidu (the largest search engine in China).

Also, in reference to my post yesterday, tommorrow is Earth Day and there is a cool environment conference that has attracted many big names like Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, and Kenneth Lieberthal, Brookings's China environment guy. Anyone in Beijing should try to make it there, although you'll need a press pass or some other invite from an attending company.

China's Copenhagen Opportunity

I co-wrote this article last week. The final article was in Chinese so hopefully sounded prettier and not so choppy.

Rising Power

“Today, 2 April 2009,” declared the Observer’s Timothy Garton Ash on the opening day of the G-20 summit in London, “may yet be marked as the day on which, through the catalyst of a global economic crisis, China definitively emerged as a 21st-century world power.” Garton Ash was not alone in seeing China as a world power. The Wall Street Journal contended that, “China sent a strong signal with its active role in last week's summit of the Group of 20 industrialized and developing economies: The country's leaders intend to play a greater part in shaping the global economy.” Even the seating arrangement at the G-20 revealed China’s new position in the world: Hu Jintao was right next to the summit's host, Gordon Brown, Prime Minister of the UK.

Months before the G-20 confirmed China’s new international standing, Zbigniew Brzezinzski, former US Secretary of State, proposed the formation of a G2—a group of the US and China that would be the major global decision-making body for the 21^st Century. With some economists predicting that China will overtake a crumbling Japan in 2012 as the world’s second-largest economy, it is probable that this bilateral relationship will be the most important one for the next several decades at least.

Not Quite There Yet

But despite its new-found economic status, China is still not a major player in many global issues, and it is not valued in its own neighborhood, East and Southeast Asia. A recent study by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs indicated that despite growing public support, China still falls behind Japan and the US in terms of political, economic and cultural appeal among six East and Southeast Asian nations. According to David Shambaugh, a Chinese politics expert at George Washington University in DC, “[China] has no global military reach, its soft power is limited, and its diplomatic reach, while now global, is still limited in areas such as the Middle East and Latin America.”

More unsettling were the results of a recent University of Maryland and BBC Globescan poll of mainly Western countries’ attitudes toward China. Only 39% of the people polled in all 21 countries thought that China’s influence on the world was positive. (The US only had a 40% positive rating, Japan had 57% and Russia 30%.) This perception is mainly the result of misunderstandings about issues like Tibet and the Chinese government’s control of society, and a general fear of an unknown, rising power. Many other people in countries like Japan or Germany may resent being replaced as economic leaders.

For the most part, this perception problem is simply that—a problem with the way others see China and not necessarily a problem with China itself. But if China does not make attempts to bolster its image, especially in Western countries (where it received the lowest support) upon which its export industry relies heavily, dealings with these countries will become strained. The unpopularity of the Bush administration, due to the president's cavalier attitude on issues like Iraq and the Kyoto Accords, sapped America’s soft power and many leaders who sided with Bush have since been voted out of office. China could avoid Bush’s mistakes this year.

Progress on Pollution?

Ten years after the Kyoto accords failed at achieving a global consensus on environmental protection, many view the Copenhagen Conference this December as the last chance to stop global warming. “After eight years of U.S. inaction on climate change,” wrote the Guardian, “American leadership offers the only hope of success.” The Guardian is not alone in its desperate-sounding anticipation of Copenhagen. Dozens of magazines and newspapers and governments are also pinning their hopes on the new Obama administration.

But are they looking on the wrong side of the Pacific? Two years ago, Thomas Friedman of the New York Times wrote that without the cooperation of China and India, carbon emission-reduction efforts in the service-based economies of the West would be meaningless. In fact, those harmed by China’s pollution most are China’s people. The World Bank has estimated that 750,000 people, or 2.5 times the number of Chinese people who were murdered in the Rape of Nanjing, died from pollution-related causes in 2007.

China has already begun taking bold steps in reducing carbon and green-house gas emissions. China’s 11th Five Year Plan, from 2005 to 2010, has set a target of creating five gigawatts (GW) of wind generation capacity – meaning 28% growth annually. One of the world’s most extensive solar-lighting initiatives is currently being carried out in China’s remote western provinces where access to electricity is limited and people normally use coal, the dirtiest source of energy. The government has also implemented more strict emissions regulations on cars than the United States. Cities like Shanghai, where it’s incredibly expensive to buy a license-plate, don’t have as much car-related pollution as Los Angeles.

The private sector, with the help of government investment and subsidies, is also making massive contributions to environmental improvement throughout the country. Dalian East Energy Company invented technology that not only reduces pollution from cement factories; it can convert the excess pollution into energy, further reducing the consumption of coal. In Changsha, Broad Air-conditioning, a multi-billion dollar company, has pioneered technology that cools the indoors without releasing the ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons that traditional units spew. And just last fall, Warren Buffet showed his faith in the future of a green China by investing over 200 million dollars in BYD, a Chinese company that is producing fully battery-powered cars. Buyers of the car will be rewarded with an 8,800 USD government-paid subsidy. (The final price tag is still a cost-prohibitively high 22,000 USD.)

With these progressive initiatives, the government has shown the Chinese people that it is confronting pollution problems head-on. This December by leading the charge in Copenhagen, China has a unique opportunity to show this commitment to environmental protection to the world and, at the same time, to move beyond the moniker, ‘the world’s factory,’ and become one of the major players in the entire international system.

Hu Yaobang

Today is the twentieth anniversary of the death of Hu Yaobang, purged general secretary of the CPC. Hu Yaobang left the ranks of the communist leadership in 1987 blamed for student protests that Deng Xiaoping feared could lead to the undoing of the Party's power. After the Party put on what many people viewed as a unfittingly small state funeral, students filled up Tiananmen Square to show their respect for a great leader. They didn't leave until June 4th when tanks and soldiers drove them out.

This year has already seen dozens of stories (here, here and here, among others) from the Western media on the danger this anniversary might pose, but I would be very surprised if anything happens. The students who protested twenty years ago lived in a much poorer, much more restricted China. There was no internet. College graduates were forced to accept government-assigned jobs. Students lived 12 to a room in horrible conditions and ate barely edible food three meals a day. The party, after raising hundreds of millions out of poverty and allowing more personal freedoms, now enjoys much more support from students and population at large. Even those elements that are pushing for more freedom probably would not risk incurring the Party's wrath by demonstrating on this occasion. Many people remain ignorant about the event and a large number of those who are aware believe that the government did what it had to in order to maintain national stability.

There are millions of people with legitimate grievances against the government, but it will take a seismic event, not just the echoes of one, to spur them to the level of civil disobedience that the students reached twenty years ago.

Human Rights in China

I normally stay away from talking about human rights in China but this story has too many gems to pass up.

According to Xinhua, the Chinese government has released its first ever Human Rights Action Plan. A senior Chinese official, Wang Chen, praised this achievement yesterday in a speech that began, "The human rights conditions are at the best in the history of China." Obviously, these conditions are so good that the government had to issue a 50-page report on how to make them better. Wang said 'practicability and feasibility constituted the most distinctive features of the action plan.' Note for non-Chinese speakers: In Chinese, the word "feasible" refers to things that can be done without pissing too many important people off.

Here are some of the higlights of the report:

One of the most truthful statements I've ever seen in a CPC-issued report: "China has a long road ahead in its efforts to improve its human rights situation." Of course, this is just giving them an excuse to zheteng.

"Through varied and vivid activities after class, students will receive education in human rights from first-hand experiences." Here is a potential first-hand experience: "Hello students. This afternoon, we're going to play the Abu Ghraib game instead playing badminton. Take off all your clothes and make a human pyramid right now!"
Free Cold Stone for the one who posts best idea for a first-hand human rights learning experience.

"China will take an active part in international cooperation in an effort to create an environment favorable for human existence and sustainable development and build a resource-conserving and environment-friendly society to guarantee the public's environmental rights." According to the Beijing government, the Air Pollution Index yesterday was 75, or unhealthy. According to an unofficial report that includes smaller, less visible particles that actually cause respiratory maladies, it was 139, or unsafe for sensitive groups. LA occasionally posts an API over 50. Good luck on this one Human Rights Action Plan Team.

"Respecting [last year's Sichuan] earthquake victims. Registering the names of people who died or disappeared in the earthquake and made [sic] them known to the public." So far two people have been scouring the disaster zone compiling names of the dead. One of them, Tan Zuoren, is in jail for "subverting state security" and the other, Ai Weiwei, has had his blog blatantly censored. Ai is still free because he's one of the most famous artists in the country, and his arrest would attract too much attention.

If you're really bored and in for a laugh at the party's expense, flip through the report, there are many more classic lines throughout the whole thing.

Note: The quotations are from an official translation. My English is not that bad.

Metaphors

"Metaphors are dangerous. Love begins with a metaphor." -Milan Kundera

I did not fall in love with Amy Tan when I came across this metaphor yesterday in an article in last year's China issue from National Geographic:

"I viewed it with the awe of a child who has just seen a fairy-tale place jump out of a book."

According to Orwell, a metaphor is supposed to add depth to our understanding of a person's feelings, to "assist thoughts by evoking a visual image." This can also be done by comparing the person's experience or feelings to a situation that would have resonance with most readers. How many people have seen a fairy-tale place jump out of a book?

Yesterday, I was reading a powerful and concise short story by Stuart Dybek, Flames. To describe standing in line to wait for a lice inspection in grade school, Dybek produced this simile: "It felt like a cross between an air-raid drill and going to Confession." You don't have to have experienced either of those things to immediately know that Dybek's talking about a situation characterized by nervousness, fear, slight guilt, embarrassment, a little humiliation and ultimately a feeling of not wanting to be doing what one is doing.

Dybek elicited four or five feelings while Amy Tan just left me wondering what a child feels like when an imaginary world suddenly springs to life. I haven't read anything else by Amy Tan, although after reading this article, I'm not inclined to seek her fiction out. If her other works are not riddled with similarly impotent metaphors, I'd be interested to know.

Bus TV

There are over ten thousand buses in circulation in Beijing and the surrounding suburbs. Each bus is equipped with at least two flat-screen televisions, which amounts to at least ten million rmb for the whole system's TVs if they paid Haier the absurdly cheap price of 100 rmb/TV (1/5 of retail for the approximately three-year old model). I often wonder why a bus whose windows are so shoddy that they let the rain in even when fully closed needs a flat screen TV.

My first answer is propaganda. Force bored commuters to watch state-run CCTV (China Central Television) news every day and eventually they'll buy the party line. But today's broadcast didn't seem to uphold that position. First, there was traffic news telling you where to avoid jams. This is incredibly useful when you're on a bus with a predetermined route from which it will not deviate. Then there was a story about an American 20-something who started a bakery in a hutong. (His Chinese was very good.) The story failed to give the location of his shop. Then there was another human interest[1] story about a 97-year old Australian who jumped from an airplane. Fascinating.

I figured out the point of Bus TV: show tons of bad news stories that are lacking any detail or fact that could be useful or important so that when a real news story happens people will be so anesthetized they won't notice that it has an effect on them. Okay, this theory is far-fetched and the biggest problem is that it's too ingenious. The people at the propaganda department are some of the dumbest people in the government. They couldn't have come up with this.

And then another story took me back to my original theory: propaganda. The broadcaster, whose movie-preview voice gave an ominous tone to the whole thing, went through every Obama cabinet member's salary and the income they receive from outside the government. First, I would like to point out that the 200gs most of these people make from the taxpayers is pennies compared to the seven figures they could be making in the private sector. Most Chinese don't know this, of course, and it's downright shocking that these high-level government officials get paid the big bucks from outside sources in addition to their government salary during a major recession.

What should really blow Chinese people's minds, however, is the source of the story's information. Uncle Sam makes publicly available all the details of each of his employee's income.[2] When Uncle Wen (Jiabao) was giving his first online chat with netizens earlier this year, outrage over government officials' wealth compelled him to say, “We need to promote transparency of government affairs and also need to make public officials’ assets.” China ranks 80th worldwide in transparency and one of the top three countries where you are expected to bribe someone when doing business. Every other week, zealous netizens reveal some corrupt official who's been getting rich off bribes.

So what exactly was the point of showing how much money the American government officials make? Does CCTV actually think that Chinese people aren't aware of how much money influences politics here? Are they trying to convince people that America is more corrupt than China? Earlier this year, the CCTV-owned Mandarin hotel building went up in flames, to the delight of many Chinese. Perhaps it was because they were sick of the unavoidable media outlet treating them like ignorant little children.


[1] If 'human interest' means 'human beings would be actually interested in watching this story,' I suppose this doesn't qualify.
[2] If he didn't, the New York Times would.

Qingming Festival

Ancestor worship is a tradition that goes back to pre-recorded history in China. Confucianism's emphasis on filial piety also probably encouraged this practice. Feasts for the ancestors are often laid out in one's home and on special holidays like Qingming Festival (which is this weekend) people will go to cemeteries and saomu (扫墓), or sweep their ancestors graves. I've been told that actual sweeping is no longer involved and most people just leave flowers on the gravestone.

After decades of attacking traditional culture as bourgeois and reviling it a source of weakness for the Chinese nation, the Communist Party decided to make Qingming an official holiday last year. I know people who flew home as far as Henan and Hubei to saomu. The past couple of nights, my alley has been filled with people burning paper money for their ancestors to use in the afterlife. For people like me who often think traditional Chinese culture died sometime between the late 60s and mid-70s, this is evidence to the contrary. Mao tried to get rid of Confucius and other bad traditional elements, but did not succeed.

The ancestors must be smiling down on us, because the past three days have been the nicest of the year. I'm going outside to celebrate.

People from a different place

This was first written as an email to a friend that I decided to edit and post.

什么叫外地人呢？
看它的汉字结构应该能看明白:“外”是外边的意思，“地”指的是地方，所以意思就是从外地来的人。但说到外地人的含义，就没那么简单了。我发现外地人是贬义词。你问一个北京人，“中国人为什么随地吐痰呢？”他们会这样说：“这是因为外地人素质不高。”这不是事实（北京人也会吐痰），而是一种歧视外地人的说法。但这是什么样的歧视呢？我原来想是某种地理歧视。住在北京的上海人虽然算是来自外地的，但是不会被鄙视为外地人。所以我觉得这可不是一种地理歧视。一说“外地人”这个词，北京人就会立刻联想到农民工、服务员那样的人，而不会想到在一家百强公司工作的河南人。外地人这个词所带来的歧视味道好像跟地理、地方没啥关系。
那么,跟什么有关系呢？中国人能分人素质高低。我们美国人没有这种分别，这不是因为我们都有素质，而是因为我们觉得人的素质不好评价，素质高低分起来不容易。素质一般情况下指人们的文化水平，他们所接受过的教育。（其实受教育程度不非要和素质成正比，现实中也有高学历的人做出低素质的事情的例子。）博士的素质非常高，小学没毕业的人素质非常低。所以北京人歧视外地人的原因是因为北京人认为他们的素质低。

但我们还没说到底呢。

人怎么能够提高素质水平呢？多学习，多接受教育。外地人都那么笨，提高素质水平原来就这么容易，他们怎么还是素质那么低呢？上学要花钱。外地人都没什么钱，可以算得上现代社会的“无产阶级”。他们不是不想学，而是没办法上学。这都说明北京人看不起外地人是因为外地人没有钱，也就是说这是一种“阶级歧视”。

“在阶级社会中，每个人都在一定的经济地位中生活，各种思想无不打上阶级的烙印。”

虽然今年新中国庆祝六十周年，但是阶级的烙印还没消失。

Update:我发现美国人会歧视外地人，我们会把他们叫做hick(土老冒儿).这也是因为我们城市人觉得他们没接受过教育。不过，这个现象在美国没有在中国那么明显。北京人每天都接触很多外地人，但在美国这些hicks很少去城市。这也不是说美国在这方面比中国好。我只是想让大家都弄清楚这种歧视概念根源于哪儿。

Many Beijingers refer to some people as waidiren. Literally, this means someone from a place outside of Beijing. But what it actually means is a bit more complicated. If you ask a Beijinger, "Why do Chinese people spit all over the place," he'll probably answer you: "It's not people from Beijing, it's waidiren. They're not quality people." My neighbor blames most of the bathroom problems we've been having lately on the waidiren who are building a house nearby. If you're talking about someone from Shanghai, the wealthiest city in China, with a Beijinger, they're probably not thinking of that person the same way they think of waidiren, despite the fact that a person from Shanghai is obviously from out of town. When a Beijing thinks of waidiren, migrant workers and waiters at low-end restaurants immediately come to mind. The word waidiren, as it is used commonly in Beijing, does not refer to all people from outside Beijing.

Then how can we tell who is a waidiren? It seems that the term actually refers to the person's level of education. Educated people who make money and work at big companies are generally not thought of as waidiren. The discrimination contained in the term waidiren is therefore socioeconomic, since education is a privilege of the middle class, rather than simply geographic. Discrimination of any sort is obviously somewhat upsetting, but class based discrimination in a communist country is even more disconcerting.

"In a class society, everyone lives as a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of a class." -Mao Zedong

The brands haven't faded even as New China celebrates its sixtieth anniversary.

Yinyang & Qigong

Recently I've been interested in Qigong, a therapeutic form of exercise that has been practiced (like everything else here) for 5000 years. Rather than simply saying "exercise is good for your health," and leave it at that, the practitioners of qigong delve deeper with their physiological theory. And this is where yinyang comes in.

Like most people, I have only a vague notion of yinyang, and it comes mainly from obscure references in Kung Fu (Season 1 is incredible). A book my friend gave me on qigong goes into yin and yang, their relationship and how that effects the body.

It is difficult to define what yin and yang are, so I'll give a few examples of what things are classified as yin and yang respectively. Night, rain, the cold, and not moving are yin while day, clear skies, heat, and activity are all yang.

I used to think that the relation between yin and yang was one of opposites with the yang being all good things and the yin being bad, but heat is obviously not good. In fact, the yin and the yang are supposed to be always balanced. Their relationship has four natures:

1) Antagonism or Opposition （对立）-This is characterized by yin and yang constraining and struggling with each other.
2) Interdependence （依存）-Without yin there would be no yang and vice versa.
3) Waxing and waning （消长）-As the amount of yin exceeds equilibrium quantity, yang will reduce to compensate.
4) Transformation （转化）-Under certain conditions, yang can become yin. This is different from (3) because it is not accompanied by automatic counterbalancing. Transformation normally results in illness.

Understanding whether one's illness is caused by excess yang or too little yin determines how to treat it. Finally I've figured out why Chinese people always tell me to avoid spicy food when I have a certain type of sickness, called shanghuo上火. Spicy food is yang-natured and when you shanghuo you already have too much yang, so should avoid eating anything that would make the imbalance more severe.

Qigong provides a means of exercise that keeps the body in balance as long as it is practiced properly. Qigong is still widely practiced and I see about thirty or so 60+ year olds doing it every morning in Huangchenggen Park. There are no statistics to back me up, but I think that activities like qigong and taiji contribute to Chinese people's longevity. (Although the average life expectancy puts China behind 102 countries. Macau, HK and Singapore are at the top, however.)

You can check back with me in 60 years to see if I'm right, provided I keep it up.

Youtube is back!

Youtube has returned to the Middle Kingdom, so I'll celebrate with a non-China post.

Where the Wild Things Are, the movie, is coming! This is a convergence of many of my personal interests:

1) Who doesn't love fantasy stories with monsters? It was books like this that sparked my interest in different worlds. This may be a contributing factor to why I'm in a country where sticking burning hot cups on your back is considered normal medical practice.

2) Spike Jonze is directing. Being John Malkovich and Adaptation were two of the most creative and interesting movies of the 90s, it will be great to see Jonze behind the lens of another movie that mixes fantasy and reality.

3) Arcade fire is doing the music. This band may be more concerned with putting as many musicians as possible on a stage (or in an elevator) and proving that they can play six instruments each than putting it all together to make coherent music, but they still can produce some interesting sounds.

Release date for Mainland China has not yet been announced.

Obama in China

Yesterday, I bought a copy of Barack's autobiography, Dreams of My Father, for about three bucks. There may be something wrong with buying an illegal copy of the president's book, but I couldn't afford the 20 dollar real imported version. I haven't started reading the book, but it looks like someone just scanned it into a computer page-by-page and then formatted it poorly and printed it out on thin paper using pretty weak ink. It's readable. I imagine not much of my 3 bucks will make it back to the poor bastard who stood over a scanner for hours digitizing the thing.

Barack never really got much love from the Chinese, who would prefer a stable, predictable president (Mao said always go with the Republicans), rather than an unknown liberal who might grill them over human rights. On top of this, China remained one of the few countries where Bush's approval rating was higher than America (in fact it was over 50% positive). A country that's okay with Bush couldn't be too excited about a new president talking about 'change.'

One of the best things that's happened since Barack's election is my ability to deal with the "American" question here. I've heard many Chinese say: "you don't look American." More than a dozen have thought I look Iranian. Now I just shoot back, "What's an American look like, anyway? Does our president look American?" Another wonderful thing is debunking decades of anti-American propaganda. Since 1949, the CCP has portrayed America as a horribly segregated, racist country where blacks are oppressed and have no hope. We still have a long way to go before racism fades and people stop making juvenile movies like "Crash" and start trying to get at the roots of black/white inequality. But whenever a Chinese person asks (as happened to me just yesterday during a failed haircut attempt), "Aren't black people all second-class citizens over there?", it's great to be able to respond, "Is our president a second-class citizen?"

Excitement over Barack still hasn't picked up, and while I don't agree with many of his policies, and he's obviously waffling on the banks, the utter lack of enthusiasm for such an historic election has been somewhat disconcerting. To combat the malaise, I bought two Obama/Hope T-shirts made in Guangzhou and I've been wearing them around. Chinese people always comment on it and often I get a chance to proselytize. Barack fever may never sweep China, but after seeing his address to the Iranians, I believe that a similar PR strategy could work incredibly well here too. A couple weeks ago, Wen Jiabao, the Premier, addressed netizens in what was an obviously coordinated series of silly pre-picked questions (how much do you sleep everday?). Still the event was a huge success. If Barack wants to get on the Chinese people's good side (and considering their fear of the dollar's stability, he should), a similar youtube-conversation, although freer than Wen's, could go a long way. Now we just have to wait for youtube to be unblocked.

Youtube is Blocked!

I noticed something odd when I tried to watch a harmless music video. When I switched to my browser that was running out of Germany (a country full of the most responsible netizens you can find), I had no problem accessing Youtube, which means it was blocked. Apparently the reason for the blockage is this video of Chinese soldiers beating the hell out of Tibetans last year. Xinhua has reported that the video is faked by the Dalai Lama, a/k/a the Tibetan John Carpenter. Obviously a fake video is a threat to internal stability. To be perfectly honest, this video wouldn't convert a single Chinese person to the Dalai Lama's cause even if it were run on a non-stop loop on Chinese Central TV for days on end. You don't stay in power for 60 years without being cautious.

The Great Firewall gets a lot of publicity outside of China, and most Chinese internet users are aware of its existence. Surprisingly, it's very easy to circumvent, but that's not the point. This site teaches you (in Chinese!) how to jump the wall and rock on in the free world (at least online). This site is not blocked. So what's the point? According to James Fallows of the Atlantic (annual subscription for under 50 bucks, do it now!), as long as the government makes it slightly difficult to get to that information, only people with a bone to pick with the government already will bother to hop over the firewall and bathe in the soothing, unfiltered waters of freedom.

I agree with Fallows's conclusion, but would also add that the internet has created much more access to information than the government would like and people like all the Chinese blogs on my blogroll routinely criticize the government online without being blocked or facing retribution. (That much cannot be said for Zan Aizong, whose blog is blocked and he is prevented from leaving the country.)

Currently Ai Weiwei, former artist and now full-time activist, is roiling the government over its negligence in building supervision of Sichuan schools that collapsed killing thousands of students.

I think in the end the Great Firewall, like the Great Wall itself will fail. People won't put up with it forever. The only question is: "when?"

Security Guard Marries American Woman

A few weeks ago, Cai Xiaohua, a 35 year old security guard with no high school education married 26 year old Daphne, a native of New Jersey. Xiaohua worked at the gate of the school where Daphne taught English. The relationship began with Daphne entering the guard house and demanding to talk to him. When her Chinese wasn't good enough, they would communicate by drawing pictures. They are currently on their honeymoon. (Full story in Chinese)

This story has appeared around the country and is unusual not just because of the differences in the couple's backgrounds, but also because of their sexes. Of the 58,000 foreign-Chinese marriages that took place here last year, I would guess (hard statistics on this were surprisingly hard to track down) that more than 40,000 of them involve a foreign man, who is probably old, bad-looking, dorky, or rich, and a Chinese woman. I've only ever seen three or four couples in which the woman was foreign in my two years in Beijing, but I've seen hundreds the other way around.

The netizens' reactions to this news item were mostly positive (here in Chinese):

"What a badass [the security guard is]!"

"What a lucky couple!"

"What a pretty bride!"

"I wish you luck!"

Compare these congratulatory statements to the reaction netizens have to a foreign man marrying a foreign woman. (These from a post about Zhang Ziyi and her boyfriend via lostlaowai blog.)

“She is so cheap in the Chinese people’s minds. She’s dead to the Chinese people and should leave China forever.”

“Women who marry foreign devils should be hung.”

“She is shameless and cheap. He will leave her soon. Can’t she find a Chinese man to please her? After the foreign devils f- her she will be useless.”

“After the foreigner tastes her snatch they will know she has a decaying one!”

“The old man just wants to have sex with her.”

“Zhang Ziyi is just a high level prostitute that only likes foreign d--k!”

It is disturbing to see that the nationalist overtones also bear strongly sexist ones too. It is okay for Chinese men to marry foreign women but not the other way around. Many people say that a lot of the rage Chinese netizens express for foreigners comes from both racism and an inferiority/superiority complex.

Interestingly enough, the only negative comments I found on the Security Guard/American Woman story seem to support this theory:

"What happens when she finds out his d--k isn't long enough?"

"What a brave girl. It would be like a Chinese moving to Africa and marrying an African."

"He wouldn't dare marry an African."

"They'll get divorced after she realizes that their sexual relations aren't harmonious."

One of the main reasons the Chinese-as-husband marriages are acceptable is the general view of women, not just in China of course, as being weaker. For the last two centuries, many Chinese have felt that their homeland is the woman to the West's man, and for some, reminders of that imbalanced relationship can provoke visceral reactions. When foreign men marry Chinese women, it reminds the angry youth, the majority of whom are boys, of foreign exploitation. The act of Western men stealing innocent Chinese women away expresses what many Chinese perceive as Western superiority over their own country in a concrete, physical and sexual way. A Chinese man marrying a foreign women, therefore, is role reversal. The Chinese man is the strong, dominant person in the relationship, and the West is put in its place. Under this framework, Chinese women are expected to eschew the advances of Western men while Chinese men are free to do whatever they want.

Given the number of Chinese women who still marry foreigners, however, it is clear that this mindset has not taken over mainstream Chinese thought. But as the angry youths' voices grow louder, it will be interesting to see how this nationalist-tainted form of sexism continues to develop.

Three Things

I am sick today, so I will keep the post brief.

1) I attended a lecture given by two French-language authors, one from Haiti and one from Madagascar. The Alliance Francaise (the French Cultural Center) paid for the two authors to come and give free speeches in China with funds from the French government. The two men occasionally bump into colonialism in their works and had harsh words for the French government. When will the American Cultural Center follow suit and send Noam Chomsky to Beijing so I can see him before he passes away?

The author from Madagascar said that the authoritarian regime on that island country receives military supplies from China. I haven't been able to confirm this, but given the government's involvement with Sudan, Burma, Zimbabwe and Sri Lanka, I wouldn't be surprised.

2) This is how I feel occasionally as an expat in China. If anyone knows what the knight is doing in the frame at the end, please let me know.

3) I am learning how to whistle so I can properly pronounce "fish" and "go" in Chinese. Tips would be appreciated.

Zhang Yimou and History

In my last post, I made a fleeting reference to Zhang Yimou being a sellout. This, as many things in China seem to, has to do with history. Most Americans are familiar with Zhang Yimou through Hero, a movie that would not have been released in the US without the help of Quentin Tarantino, an interesting, but less talented director than Zhang (I often wonder how Zhang Yimou feels about that).

After Tian Zhuangzhuang released Blue Kite overseas to critical acclaim, he was blacklisted. The government banned him from directing for nearly a decade. Blue Kite is one of the best movies made about the Cultural Revolution that I've seen (perhaps second only to Zhang Yimou's To Live). When Zhang Yimou's own picture on that subject was subsequently banned, he must have surely feared that what happened to Tian, his film school classmate, would also happen to him. He escaped the directing ban by shying away from politically-sensitive topics, but years later, he would address them head-on, only with a different bent.

Since Hero is the most watched of Zhang Yimou's movies in America, I'll assume you've seen it and I won't care if I spoil the ending (people who took Chinese History knew the ending anyway). The soon-to-be emperor whom Jet Li is planning on assassinating, Qin Shihuang, is credited with uniting China under one dynasty after centuries of petty squabbles between small, weaker kingdoms. (Qin China looked like this.) After conquering all the various local rulers, Qin Shihuang imposed a strict legalist code that overturned the Confucian system and resulted in the draconian suppression of his opponents. The Qin dynasty was so harsh and repressive that it only lasted 14 years. In Hero, Jet Li chooses not to assassinate Qin Shihuang (at this point he was not called Qin Shihuang yet) because he remembers those two characters， 天下 (everything under heaven), that took Tony Leung an absurdly long time to write (I'm pretty sure 天下 was only seven strokes even in 200 BC). Viewing the unification of China as more important than anything else, Jet Li leaves the blood thirsty tyrant alone. It is pointless to speculate about what history would be like if the assassin had succeeded (would the glorious Han have emerged and ushered in a golden age?).

You are probably wondering, so what? How does this make Zhang Yimou a sellout? Before he started considering himself made of the same stuff as Sun Wukong, the fabled Monkey King, a recent Chinese leader liked to imagine that he was the reincarnation of Qin Shihuang. His real name was Mao.

Note: Chen Kaige, another classmate of Zhang's and Tian's, directed a good version of the same assassination attempt starring Zhang's ex-girlfriend Gong Li. It's not a kung fu movie. The Emperor and the Assassin.

Chuck Norris sues, Gong Li kicks ass

When I saw this headline, I thought it must be from the Onion: "Chuck Norris Sues, Says Tears No Cancer Cure." The joke all American college students have heard has made its way into a book entitled The Truth About Chuck Norris.

"Chuck Norris's tears can cure cancer. Too bad he never cries."

Apparently, Chuck Norris thought this was believeable enough to harm his image and worthy of a lawsuit. When I was studying Chinese in Beijing a couple years ago, we had a lesson to remind us that America is the most litigious society in the world. The text talked about the McDonalds' coffee burning incident and gave other examples of how ridiculous Americans are when it comes to going to court. I, the neophyte that I was, wondered why Chinese people don't go to court and my teacher recommended Zhang Yimou's (pre-sellout) movie, the Story of Qiuju . Plot summary: An official kicks Qiuju's husband in the groin, possibly causing damage to his reproductive organs (one hell of a kick!), and then she spends the rest of the movie attempting to get payment for this barbarous act. The normally ravishingly beautiful Gong Li kicks ass as the stubborn, determined Qiuju.

My teacher's point was that going through the courts can be a long, convoluted process that sometimes leaves you worse off than you were before. This was a topic at the UN Human Rights hearing on China this year. When people seek redress for wrongs committed by government officials, they often end up in "black jails" that exist outside the law. They have no rights to have their cases heard and can be detained for an indefinite period of time.

So, for now, I'll gladly accept Chinese people's criticisms of American frivolity.

Note: Chinese law has indeed been getting better. Recently women won the right to sue their husbands' mistresses for damages. I don't know what this says about infidelity, but it sounds like progress. (Here for details)

折腾(zhe1teng)

A few months ago, I learned a new Chinese word from Hu Jintao （胡总). In a speech on how to face the current crisis, Hu said (according to his interpreter): "Don't sway back and forth, don't relax our efforts, and don't zheteng." The interpreter had no idea how to translate this on the spot so I looked for the paper edition. According to danwei, the official translation rendered zheteng into English as "don't get sidetracked." Get sidetracked from what? nciku.com translates zheteng as "to spend freely; to squander" Throw these translations into the speech and they make even less sense than "don't get sidetracked."

Xi Jinping, Hu Jintao's heir apparent, used zheteng in a speech when he was in Mexico last month:

“有些吃饱了没事干的外国人，对我们的事情指手画脚。中国一不输出革命，二不输出 饥饿和贫困，三不去折腾你们，还有什么好说的.”

“There are some foreigners who had eaten their fill and had nothing better to do, pointing their fingers at our affairs. China does not, first, export revolution; second, export poverty and hunger; or third, zheteng you. What else is there to say?”

Now zheteng is a transitive verb, making "get sidetracked" no longer a possibile translation. I was satisfied with the China Digital Times' translation: "cause trouble for you." But then I saw this translation (vulgar) of both transitive and intransitive uses of zheteng, which would fit both Xi Jinping's and Hu Zong's speeches perfectly.

Sometimes it takes a couple months to learn even a common Chinese word.

Hutong Companions

As a foreigner living in a hutong, a traditional alleyway made up of one-storey brick structures, I am not a path breaker. These ancient buildings, some of which date back many centuries (mine's at least 81 years old as my next door neighbor attests), have hosted several China hands. Peter Hessler, formerly the New Yorker's China correspondent, wrote Oracle Bones while living in Ju'er Hutong. Hessler's successor, Evan, keeps his blog from Mianhua Hutong. Michael Meyer (not the funny guy or the murderer) penned the Last Days of Old Beijing in the 800 year-old Dashilan'r business district. Jeremiah, proprietor of the Granite Studio, updates his Chinese history blog from a hutong somewhere near Dongsi. I'm in good company.

Every morning, I cling to my covers and summon the courage to get out of bed. I sleep under two comforters. The small space heater, kept closer to the bed than fire safety enthusiasts would recommend, is useless. My bedroom's air is harsh, cold and when I'm in a good mood, refreshing. After I boldly step forward into the freezing air, the most interesting challenge of hutong-living comes: the daily constitutional. The public toilet is a place of social interaction. Mr. Yin, a sixty-year-old recent retiree, who was born in the year Ox, seems to time his daily bowel movements to coordinate with mine. The bathroom designer somehow forgot to put dividers between the toilets, which has made me more closely acquainted with some of my neighbors than I was expecting.

Squatting, newspaper in hand and cigarette in mouth, a feat I'm somewhat envious of, Mr. Yin tells me that he's found a marriage prospect for me. "I'm already fine on that front," I reply, to no avail. "Chinese girls make better wives than your American girls, you know." My girlfriend being Chinese-American doesn't sidetrack the rant. "They're quiet, obedient, and good homemakers, ya know," he informs me as a gust of wind blows through the bathroom, my naked butt unprotected. Suddenly, a muscle in my left leg, which I believe is called the soleus, begins to remind me that I was not made for squat toilets and I take my leave. These toilet talks, surprisingly, have been pretty enjoyable so far. I've learned the courtyard kids' names (which I immediately forgot) and occasionally someone decides to sing. And I can forget about the cold.

Friday the 13th

Today is the second Friday the 13th in 2009, and so I've decided to learn about unlucky numbers in China. 13 is not considered to be especially lucky or unlucky although, thanks to contact with Western countries, I've been in buildings that skip from floor 12 straight to 15 (14 containing the unlucky number 4).

The Chinese number 4 is considered unlucky because of its similarity in pronunciation with the word for death. Although 4 is pronounced fourth tone and death is third tone, it seems that Chinese don't take any chances and try to avoid the number at all costs. When newspaper stands sell phone numbers, they have a big board and cross out the ones that have already been sold. The numbers with fours are always the last to go, and I know one person who bought a phone number with four fours for fifteen rmb (roughly $2) less than my four-free number.

But the number four also pops up in many good things, which has been perplexing to me. There are the Four Beauties of Ancient China, the Four Classic Novels of Chinese Literature, the Four Great Inventions of Ancient China, and chengyu(in chinese), ancient Chinese idioms that are almost all made up of four characters. It turns out that despite its pronunciation, the number four also represents a very important concept throughout Chinese history: harmony. Something composed of four characters is completely balanced because of the square (or four-sided) nature of Chinese characters. You don't have to be able to read 卸磨杀驴(xie4mo4sha1lv2 killing the donkey as soon as it's left the mill-getting rid of someone as soon as they've outlived their usefulness), to see the balance in the four characters.

Even phrases that aren't standard chengyu always try to fit into four characters. Hu Jintao's ambiguous concept 'harmonious society' is 和谐社会, four characters, in Chinese. (For more information on 'harmonious society and the grass mud horse see CDT. Note: obscene and blocked in China.) There's an interesting reference to the Chinese musical conception of harmony here at NPR (via Granite Studio). Excerpt:

"The idea of harmony as a combination of different chords and notes was a foreign notion.
Today, China's rulers once again espouse a "harmonious society." Of course, not everyone buys into this orthodoxy, even at the risk of being branded a dissonant dissident."

Liang Jingyu(in Chinese), an architect I heard give a lecture the other day, explained his thoughts on harmonious society: It's not about singing with the same voice, “it's about each voice singing on its own but still sounding pleasant." (声音不一样,但放在一起他们还不刺耳，my translation)

I found there's even double harmony in the bathroom as I took my morning constitutional (on a public squat toilet):

来也匆匆
去也冲冲

"If you're a-rushin' when you pop a squat,
Please be a-flushin' when you leave the pot."

Caveat

Samuel P Huntington wrote that after the end of the Cold War "the great divisions among humankind...will be cultural." He went on to put most of his emphasis on the struggle between the West and Islam. Nearly a decade later, after 9/11 awakened Americans to the clear and present danger that terrorism posed, the Economist hailed Huntington's words as prescient, saying his theories were "cruel and sweeping, but nonetheless accurate."

The "Islam" that carried out the attacks on September 11 was a form of religion as perverse and distant from its true precepts as the form of Christianity that engaged in the crusades. The only difference is that the crusades represented the majority opinion of Christendom, while bin Laden is not a spokesman for the Muslim world. When writing about any culture (even your own), as I am doing with this blog, it is always important to avoid making cruel and sweeping generalizations. (Chinese do it to us too.)

Here I am reminded of a blog entry written by a friend of a friend on his trip to China. In it he mentions an encounter with waitresses who covered their mouths while they laughed (full entry). He said that they were "physically acting out saving face." Face is indeed a unique concept of importance in China that makes it different from ideas like honor or respect, but nonetheless, what was going on here was not 'saving face.'

The Chinese have a saying "Don't show your teeth when you laugh" (笑不露齿). To many Chinese, a woman baring her teeth when she laughs is uneducated and being impolite. While this is clearly not an American practice, it has nothing to do with face and by imagining it to be so one exhibits an ignorance both of the practice of mouth covering（捂嘴）and face, which should not be used as a blanket answer for everything the foreigner does not understand. I don't know how many foreigners have told me that they were given wrong directions because the Chinese person didn't want to lose face by saying they didn't know the way.

I am afraid that in the course of this blog, I will be guilty of generalizations (although hopefully note as grotesque as Huntington's), and in those cases, I hope you (尤其是我的中国网友）will correct me. The true Twenty-first Century conflict is a "clash of definitions," as Edward Said called it. I hope that this blog can add to the definition of "China" without creating more misunderstanding (although as an American, Said would say that I am incapable of defining an Eastern culture).

With that in mind, take my comments on China with a grain of salt, and when I mess up, just laugh and set me straight.

Blog Name

There seems to have been some confusion on the name of the blog and the BMW logo on the side. "Don't touch me" was the first thing I thought when I got onto the overcrowded bus in Beijing. Since this is a blog about learning about and adapting to new situations, emphasizing the adjustment process required to overcome the average American's need for personal space seemed appropriate.

"Don't touch me" (别摸我) comes from a scene in the funny heist flick, Crazy Stone, which is often compared to Guy Ritchie's films. In this scene（in Chinese)， one of the character's car runs into another's car. The second car is a BMW. “你没看见么？别摸我！” "Didn't you see," the BMW driver says, "BMW is an acronym for 'Don't touch me!'" (In Hanyu Pinyin, the official Chinese romanization system, 'Don't touch me' is spelled bie mo wo, hence BMW.) This expression quickly swept the nation as one of Will Farrel's non sequiturs do in America. I came to China just after this movie came out and this was the first Chinese pop culture reference I ever learned. This movie is worth a look for anyone interested in good, plot-based humor (unlike Family Guy), and it gives you a good look at the grimy side of modern China.

Crazy Racer, a sequel to Crazy Stone in the way that Snatch was a sequel to Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels (i.e., same director and cast, similar plot, but different characters), just recently came out, and I will review it here when I see it.

The Chinese part of the blog name is Three Wells Alley, my address. The thing called "Palace Museum" is the Forbidden City, which is right smack dab in the middle of Beijing.

Note: The links to the two movies will take you to imdb, which still has the annoying habit of flipping the order of Chinese and Japanese names. The director's name is 宁浩 Ning Hao, not Hao Ning.

Two Meetings

As everyone in China knows, the National People's Congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference are gathering for their 2009 session, known as the "Two Meetings." These two political organizations are often called rubber-stamps, but here is something interesting to read that might combat that myth.

Yesterday Southern Metropolis Daily (one of the best papers in the country) interviewed Shen Jilan, the only member of the NPC to attend ever meeting to date. "In 55 years," she said, "I've never once voted 'no.' I'm very supportive of the Chinese Communist Party. If you're going to be a representative, you have to do what the Party says (听党的话)."(via 道路blocked on the mainland) Perhaps the sarcasm was lost in translation.

For a better account of improvements in the Two Meetings check out Evan's post.

When major political meetings like this are held in Beijing, parts of the city shut down. Since I live right around the corner from Tian'anmen Square, it's been all but impossible to catch a cab and the crowds for the normally packed daily flag-raising have shrunk dramatically. (I was going regularly the weeks before the Meetings, so I can tell the crowds aren't scared away by the cold weather.)

Fortunately, the old folks pay no heed to this political nonsense and were out doing Tai Chi like normal.

First Post

It seems very unlikely that anyone who is not personally acquainted with me will stumble across this blog, which begs the question: "Why are you writing it?"

First, since all of you are my friends and I don't email you as often as I should, you can see what is going on in my life, even if we have been out of touch for sometime. For those lucky few who I email regularly, this blog will supplement our correspondence and save me the time of writing the same thing multiple times to different people.

Second, I am constantly thinking about things that are only tangentially related to each other. My thoughts are like two logs floating in the Atlantic. They're in the same ocean, but they most likely won't run into each other. This is probabaly google's fault. I hope to synthesize these disparate thoughts for the benefit of humankind.

Third, while there are already a lot of great voices out there (see blogroll), I hope that I will be able to put in my two cents, and maybe every once in a while, contribute something to your understanding of China, or at least your understanding of the lone foreigner living in Three Wells Alley.