posted
I'm not so sure. Historically, in China, religion has shown the greatest sudden growth during periods of instability between dynasties.
Barring that (in which case, who knows what a modern civil war would entail), we're looking at a grinding war between the secularism that development and education brings versus a "return to mean" as the CCP relaxes controls*. China will probably hits a point between the more religious Taiwan and the less religious Hong Kong.
* I'm not particularly sure this will even happen in the way that liberals hope.
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posted
Interesting point, haven't heard too much about this either
quote:As a sample of what I mean, let me try this question on you (this is one I used to preface a speech at Chatham House in London two weeks ago): Can you name an atrocity that happened in East Asia in the 1930s that, on a one-day, one-decision basis, probably ranks as the worst atrocity in history? ... What is beyond question is that even many China specialists at U.S. universities have never heard of the Huang He massacre, for instance. Yet it was truly an enormous atrocity. On Encyclopedia Britannica's numbers, between 500,000 and 900,000 people died after Chinese Nationalist forces under Chiang Kai Shek destroyed the Yellow River's dikes near Kaifeng. The move was undertaken to try to slow the advance of Japanese troops during the Sino-Japanese War.
quote:I was very disappointed when I read this story about the US ambassador in Beijing taking part in the so-called “Jasmine” protests last Sunday. This is very bad news for Chinese supporters of democracy (yet again).
First of all, let’s be serious. The idea that the ambassador didn’t know what was going on is an insult to intelligence, his appearing on camera lying to a Chinese passer-by only makes things worse…
…Don’t American politicians understand that democracy can only win if it is seen as homegrown? What would happen if the French ambassador was seen joining a protest for, say, the health reform in the US, would this help further the Democrats’ agenda? Does this kind of action help the millions of real, anonymous Chinese who hope for a more open system? Certainly not.
If the Middle Eastern protests have shown anything, its that the United States can best promote democracy* by not making it look like they're allied with dissident movements. This works directly against that.
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quote:A study casts new light on the world's most important bilateral relationship
NEARLY three-quarters of Americans wish China would "just hurry up and overtake America already," according to a new survey by The Economist Simulation Unit, published on April 1st. Constant worrying about exactly when the superpower will fall into second place is causing anxiety throughout American society, the survey found. "Will it be 2015? 2020? 2025? I wish it would just happen, and then we could all stop agonising about it and get back to dentistry," said Adam Barnes, a dentist from Iowa. The report examines in detail the relationship between the two countries and finds that in some important fields, China has already surpassed America. A summary of the findings is presented below.
posted
China finally made a pseudo-official statement about their detention of artist and activist Ai Weiwei in an editorial in the state-run newspaper.
quote:Ai Weiwei ... has been close to the red line of Chinese law. As long as Ai Weiwei continuously marches forward, he will inevitably touch the red line one day... Ai Weiwei will be judged by history, but he will pay a price for his special choice
Weiwei was detained while trying to board a flight from Hong Kong to Taiwan on Sunday and has not been heard from since.
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posted
As the Telegraph article says, he was detained in Beijing, not in Hong Kong. If the latter occurred, it would be a pretty big scandal.
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posted
My mistake: he was arrested in Beijing trying to board a flight to Hong Kong, from where he was to fly to Taiwan. The official reason is he failed to file the proper paperwork for the second leg of the trip.
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quote:3D Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy beat Avatar and Lust, Caution as it smashed records as the highest 3D debut in Hong Kong and reclaimed its crown as the highest-grossing Category III film opening.
quote:PG Lips: Chinese tea plantation seeks virgins to pick leaves with their MOUTHS
It is billed as the most refined tea in the world, and possibly with some justification – the leaves are picked by a group of virgins using just their lips.
The leaves, gathered on lush mountainsides in central China, must be in their first flush and are dropped into baskets hanging from the pickers’ necks.
Legend has it that the leaves used to be picked by fairies with their mouths. When boiling water is poured on the leaves, fairies ascend amid the steam into the sky.
Now new pickers are being sought, with adverts in Gushi, Henan province, specifying that ‘applicants must be virgins’ and offering payment of £50 a day, a fortune in China.
They must also have at least a C-cup bra size – virginity and curviness are believed to promote well-being and purity.
The local job advert, which has caused controversy in the area, read: 'Lip tea is hiring full-time tea-leaf pickers.
'A prospective employee has to be a woman with no sexual experience, a bra size of at least a C cup, and no scar or wound visible on her body with a uniform.'
But this method has come under fire as being a practice that objectifies and disrespects females, claims the firm denies.
The recruitment is rigorous - the company looks for the 'purest', 'cleanest' and 'strongest' virgins as they are the key to the tea’s success.
Li Yong, a spokesman for the Jiuhua plantation, said: 'It is much harder work than it looks.
'They have to cleanse themselves completely before they start working and perform a special exercise programme to build up their necks and lips.
'It’s a long standing tradition - it is a tradition we do not want to lose so need to pass on to new employees. We are currently recruiting 10 C cup virgin tea pickers.
The girls are not allowed to touch the tea leaves with their hands at any point and all the picking has to be done through the lips.
The leaves are put into the baskets which are called Chaliuqing and have to made from the freshest willow twigs and also not touched by hand.
Mr Li confirmed the recruitment information was true. He also said an upcoming tea culture festival would include a performance of virgins picking tea leaves with their lips.
'We are hiring 10 girls to perform the traditional ritual to pass on interest in the tradition and keep it alive. We will auction off the tea leaves that they pick,' Mr Li added.
The so-called 'lip tea' comes from a legend that tea leaves used to be picked by fairies with their mouths.
When boiling water is poured on to these tea leaves, fairies will ascend amidst steam into the sky.
Tea made from these leaves has a refreshing aroma and taste and can even cure diseases and aid weight loss, claims the firm.
Last century some Chinese tea sellers experimented with the idea of ‘tea in front of breasts’, involving a group of 16-year-old virgins started picking tea and sleeping with it on their breasts during the night.
The next day it was thought the tea leaves would have picked up enough of the virgins scent to have health and wellbeing benefits.
posted
Sadly, the international adoption thing is pretty common from what I have read. Getting a real orphan is a lot harder than it seems.
I don't think I want to eat watermelons that explode- even if the govt says the chemicals used to make them are perfectly safe.
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
Seems to be the case that its even happening to watermelons that ARENT used with chemicals.
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quote:The safeguarding of journalists' legal rights is once again in the spotlight following two separate cases where reporters were threatened and abused while investigating potential government scandals.
Local police in Xianghe county, Hebei Province, refused to protect reporters from the Xinhua News Agency when they were threatened on Sunday while investigating a case involving the transfer of more than 24 hectares of farmland.
Interesting since Xinhua is explicitly an arm of the central government and is strongly suspected to play a role in gathering intelligence, bypassing the local governments.
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quote:Cisco, the maker of Internet routing gear, customized its technology to help China track members of the Falun Gong spiritual movement, according to a federal lawsuit filed last week by members of the movement.
The lawsuit, which relies on internal sales materials, also said that Cisco had tried to market its equipment to the Chinese government by using inflammatory language that stemmed from the Maoist Cultural Revolution.
quote:The lawsuit challenges Cisco’s assertion that it did not help design the firewall system or customize technology that it sold to meet government surveillance and censorship requirements.
quote:The lawsuit states that other documents lay out design suggestions to the Chinese Ministry of Public Security on how to pursue dissidents effectively.
quote:MalcolmMoore: Wikileaks China docs include embassy cables from June 3, 5, 1989.
I am so interested in those.
Apparently, these have been released.
quote:Wikileaks: no bloodshed inside Tiananmen Square, cables claim
Secret cables from the United States embassy in Beijing have shown there was no bloodshed inside Tiananmen Square when China put down student pro-democracy demonstrations 22 years ago.
quote:The testimony contradicts the reports of several journalists who were in Beijing at the time, who described soldiers "charging" into unarmed civilians and suggests the death toll on the night may be far lower than the thousands previously thought. In 2009, James Miles, who was the BBC correspondent in Beijing at the time, admitted that he had "conveyed the wrong impression" and that "there was no massacre on Tiananmen Square. Protesters who were still in the square when the army reached it were allowed to leave after negotiations with martial law troops [ ...] There was no Tiananmen Square massacre, but there was a Beijing massacre".
posted
Yeah, that there was no bloodshed in Tiananmen itself has been well known basically since the event. The false belief there was entered popular culture at some point, probably because there was considerable violence against protesters throughout Beijing.
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Blayne Bradley
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posted
quote:Originally posted by Mucus:
quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade:
quote:MalcolmMoore: Wikileaks China docs include embassy cables from June 3, 5, 1989.
I am so interested in those.
Apparently, these have been released.
quote:Wikileaks: no bloodshed inside Tiananmen Square, cables claim
Secret cables from the United States embassy in Beijing have shown there was no bloodshed inside Tiananmen Square when China put down student pro-democracy demonstrations 22 years ago.
quote:The testimony contradicts the reports of several journalists who were in Beijing at the time, who described soldiers "charging" into unarmed civilians and suggests the death toll on the night may be far lower than the thousands previously thought. In 2009, James Miles, who was the BBC correspondent in Beijing at the time, admitted that he had "conveyed the wrong impression" and that "there was no massacre on Tiananmen Square. Protesters who were still in the square when the army reached it were allowed to leave after negotiations with martial law troops [ ...] There was no Tiananmen Square massacre, but there was a Beijing massacre".
Holy shit is this true? This isn't some sort of conspiracy gotcha sarcasm/prank/joke directed at me is it?
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quote:Holy shit is this true? This isn't some sort of conspiracy gotcha sarcasm/prank/joke directed at me is it?
Yes? As I said, it isn't news, just some extra detail, plus hopefully it'll break through the popular consciousness. I'm surprised you weren't aware.
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quote:Originally posted by Blayne Bradley: Holy shit is this true? This isn't some sort of conspiracy gotcha sarcasm/prank/joke directed at me is it?
Well. As I said, its not entirely new news, but I wouldn't exactly call it well known either. Certain parties have elected to play up the "Tiananmen Square Massacre" angle and I think that has established itself very well. It's always good to have additional reliable (relatively reliable) sources and it's always interesting to know who knew what and when.
Another would be Liu Xiaobo's (of Nobel Prize fame) account:
quote:In September 1989, the Chinese government arranged an interview in which I told about what I personally witnessed and went through on Tiananmen Square on the early morning of June 4, 1989. ... I knew clearly that nobody died when Tiananmen Square was cleared. But the purpose of this interview would not be clarify the facts, which will only be exploited as the tools and methods of the government's political goals. If I did that interview, I would be a willing government tool and thus suffer bad social impact. At the time, the whole world believed that the martial-law troops had carried out a massacre right on Tiananmen Square. Some June 4th participants who became overseas exiles were trying to establish heroic images for themselves and therefore they distorted the facts, they lied and they exaggerated the blood flowing like rivers on Tiananmen Square (Wuer Kaixi, Chai Ling, Li Lu and others were all like that).
posted
But you're not disputing there were deaths outside Tiananmen, right? The killings of protestors/rebels occurred, just not in the place where most people think they occurred.
quote:Derek Williams and I were driven in a pair of army jeeps right through the square, almost along its full length, and into the Forbidden City. Dawn was just breaking. There were hundreds of troops in the square ... But we saw no bodies, injured people, ambulances or medical personnel—in short, nothing to even suggest, let alone prove, that a "massacre" had recently occurred in that place... some have found it uncomfortable that all this conforms with what the Chinese government has always claimed, perhaps with a bit of sophistry: that there was no "massacre in Tiananmen Square." But there's no question many people were killed by the army that night around Tiananmen Square, and on the way to it — mostly in the western part of Beijing. Maybe, for some, comfort can be taken in the fact that the government denies that, too.
quote:Originally posted by SenojRetep: But you're not disputing there were deaths outside Tiananmen, right?
You, who precisely?
I don't think there has been any dispute in thread on the fact that there were deaths. As for James Miles and Malcolm Moore, their dispute is with the Western popular culture account while Liu Xiaobo's is specifically with the activists he names and the popular pressure that he felt.
There will probably be some wrangling (elsewhere) over casualty estimates that assumed deaths from both inside the square and outside as well.
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quote:Beijing police said they had released the 54-year-old "because of his good attitude in confessing his crimes" and a chronic illness, Xinhua news agency reported.
quote:Beijing to Shanghai Railway: diary of a 4h 48m journey China opens its 820-mile Beijing-Shanghai high speed rail link to the public this week ahead of schedule, just three years after construction began. Our China Correspondent, Peter Foster, was given an advance preview and details the journey. ... There’s something about trains that lend themselves to fact-spotting. Here’s one for you: China has laid more high-speed rail track in the past decade than all new rail installed in Western countries combined over the past half-century. Or what about this mind-boggler? According to the World Bank, the amount of freight hauled on China’s railways increased in 2010 by an amount equivalent to the entire freight carried by Britain, France, Germany and Poland. The Beijing-Shanghai link is expected to free up older tracks to carry an additional 50m tons of freight every year.
Hot damn.
quote: China built this Shanghai-Beijing line in 39 months (ahead of schedule) at a cost £21.4bn, making it China’s most expensive engineering megaproject, surpassing even the Three Gorges Dam (£19.8bn). China is still investing £70bn a year in its railways while Britain wonders if it can find less than half that amount between now and 2032.
posted
That high speed rail really is neat, I seem to recall however some frustration with tickets prices and manual laborers complaining they won't be able to afford the commute back home, but they'll have the privilege of watching everybody else.
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posted
Hmmm, in general, I think the prices are reasonable and very competitive when compared to the short-haul airlines that they are competing with and putting out of business.
When it comes to labourers not being able to afford the fares, I think that has more to do with the general principle of "life sucks when you're poor." When you occupy roughly the same economic niche as American's illegal Mexican immigrants, high speed train tickets are more of a symptom then a problem.
On that note, missed this earlier too:
quote:Chinese officials stole $120 billion, fled mainly to US
Thousands of corrupt Chinese government officials have stolen more than $120bn (£74bn) and fled overseas, mainly to the US, according to a report released by China's central bank. ... The study said corruption inside China was severe enough to threaten the nation's economic and political stability.
quote:The public, however, has not been in the mood to forgive anyone. A user-created poll on Weibo asking people their opinion of the way the accident has been handled has already accrued over 55,000 responses, and they are not good:
Are you satisfied with the way the Chinese government has handled the Wenzhou accident?
Very dissastisfied, [the government has] simply shown disrespect for human life. – 93%, 51,779 votes Dissatisfied, the emergency response has been poor. – 4%, 2,003 votes Decent, it’s been about average, they saved a few people – 1%, 592 votes Satisfied, but I’m just satisfied with the way our countrymen saved themselves [i.e., satisfied with the people's response but not the government's] – 2%, 855 votes Satisfied, the government is doing a good job. – 1%, 290 votes Another poll on Weibo asked people whether they felt the disaster was “natural” [in this case, they just mean unavoidable] or man-made. 98% — nearly 18,000 voters so far — chose “man-made.”
posted
Ai Wei Wei isn't slowing down at all since his release. I'm very impressed, but very concerned for him. He is facing down a very powerful entity, and while he does have so many Chinese sympathizers, and that provides protection, when push comes to shove, so many people like Ai have lost their lives or disappeared, never to be seen again.
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posted
Ai Weiwei is a pretty interesting figure, but while he attracts a lot of international attention, I'm not sure how influential actual sympathy for him in China can be. I think he might be too polarising a figure to really work the politics in favour of himself, the equivalent of an American anti-war protestor burning a flag versus the tightrope of "we support the troops, but ..."
That said, I'm glad he's there pushing boundaries.
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posted
I have a pet theory that generally all of China's good (at least net good) revolutionaries (Sun Yat Sen, Chiang Kai Shek, Lu Xun, Confucious, Ai Wei Wei) all have facial hair of some kind. While their truly bad ones do not (Mao, Hong Xiu Quan, etc)
The ones who don't quite fit that mold are Deng Xiao Ping, (though I'm still on the fence about him), Zhou En Lai, and Peng De Huai.
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I just read Peng's wikipedia page, I've been thinking a lot about cultural changes I observed in Beijing last summer as well as my experiences in Hong Kong and Taiwan.
I feel like Chinese culture, especially in the mainland has changed enormously. I guess I can't quite get a grip on whether this is a good or bad thing. Change happens to all, but there is just so much about traditional Chinese culture I miss.
I wonder though if that's no different than say American culture which also changes in many place and in many regions.
I don't feel all cultural norms are equally valuable though, so perhaps that is what gets me. While I'm fine with say the novelty of seeing a foreigner fading away, I do miss the traditional Chinese politeness which was almost unfailing.
Literary idioms, are disappearing, though there is a recent development in the youth culture called, "martian speech" where people talking online, intentionally use old archaic literary forms in their writings, and attempt to outdo each other. I think that's fun, though I am nowhere near literate enough to participate in it.
I miss the effects of religion there. Even just the knowledge of what religion was in China is gone. So many people there have no idea of some of the aesthetic concepts that went into their historic sites. Even their monks are less well read.
But on the other hand, the modern Chinese populace is much more cognizant of recent history than the previous 2-3 generations ever were. Time was nobody said a thing against the Communist party, in public or in private even. Today that's just silly.
I don't know, I wish I had the words to describe this, but there was in China a place with 6,000 years of ideas, cultures, concepts, beliefs, developments, that permeated the entire country. Mysteries one had to travel to discover, secrets enough that one could do nothing but travel in China and you could not uncover even 10% of them.
Then Mao happened, and it's all gone, never to return, we don't even know what was lost. How can we know about what we don't know? All there are are shadows and specters of what once was there, but there is still so much that is wonderful about China, so maybe it's best we just stick with that. But there is still Taiwan, which while also changing, still retains so much of that mentality that is gone, and still disappearing even there.
I guess I wish I could have the past, preserved somehow, while still traveling into the future. It's impossible, and yet it's what I want.
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Blayne Bradley
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posted
quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: I have a pet theory that generally all of China's good (at least net good) revolutionaries (Sun Yat Sen, Chiang Kai Shek, Lu Xun, Confucious, Ai Wei Wei) all have facial hair of some kind. While their truly bad ones do not (Mao, Hong Xiu Quan, etc)
The ones who don't quite fit that mold are Deng Xiao Ping, (though I'm still on the fence about him), Zhou En Lai, and Peng De Huai.
Deng's only official title was President of the National Bridge players association Bridge players tell me this makes perfect sense, you need to be a political genius to understand Chinese bridge rules.
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Hmmm, I was thinking about your post, and it seems that I get hung up on relatively simple questions like, "what is traditional Chinese culture?"
Even "what is Chinese culture?" is difficult when we consider minorities (such as Deng Xiaopeng being Hakka) which may exist, have been assimilated, or have simply left China proper. It sometimes feels to me that the degree of differences between regions of China is more akin to that of Europe than America, with the vast differences in living standards, dialects, and foods. So the valid comparison might be less to American culture and more to say European culture.
Then there's the historical element. I admire the role Buddhism has in moderating Chinese society, but is it Chinese or Indian? The usual answer is that Chinese Buddhism has been in China long enough, but then we're down to weighing how long things like fundamentalist Christianity has been in China and whether that is long enough.
And looking back at the examples, do I actually consider the popularity of taking photos with foreigners a cultural thing or just a symptom of unfamiliarity? When I was in Istanbul and people from European tourists to presumably Turkish schoolgirls were taking pictures with us, is that cultural?
Or when looking at politeness, the thing I like a lot about Cantonese is the brutal slang, straightforward talk, and the lack of hypocritical political correctness. That isn't an across-the-board rule though, you do have the passive aggressive round-about speech in more formal occasions or in the mainland, but what is more polite?
Some random thoughts I guess.
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Hmmm, I was thinking about your post, and it seems that I get hung up on relatively simple questions like, "what is traditional Chinese culture?"
Even "what is Chinese culture?" is difficult when we consider minorities (such as Deng Xiaopeng being Hakka) which may exist, have been assimilated, or have simply left China proper. It sometimes feels to me that the degree of differences between regions of China is more akin to that of Europe than America, with the vast differences in living standards, dialects, and foods. So the valid comparison might be less to American culture and more to say European culture.
Then there's the historical element. I admire the role Buddhism has in moderating Chinese society, but is it Chinese or Indian? The usual answer is that Chinese Buddhism has been in China long enough, but then we're down to weighing how long things like fundamentalist Christianity has been in China and whether that is long enough.
And looking back at the examples, do I actually consider the popularity of taking photos with foreigners a cultural thing or just a symptom of unfamiliarity? When I was in Istanbul and people from European tourists to presumably Turkish schoolgirls were taking pictures with us, is that cultural?
Or when looking at politeness, the thing I like a lot about Cantonese is the brutal slang, straightforward talk, and the lack of hypocritical political correctness. That isn't an across-the-board rule though, you do have the passive aggressive round-about speech in more formal occasions or in the mainland, but what is more polite?
Some random thoughts I guess.
Nailing down traditional Chinese culture is about as easy as nailing down Jello. I guess what is really eating me is that many of these cultural mores have flat out disappeared, or are in the processing of dying.
Have you ever seen the movie King of Masks? While his art isn't really in danger of dying, many people know how to perform with paper masks, but his family, and millions like it all had legacies of things like that, that defined them, and they were beautiful things. Those things were all taken away, and so pointlessly.
The South Chinese are definitely more blunt, brutally honest, and that is refreshing, I don't want to see that go either, though there are many ex-pats who do. Yet this departure from politeness in Beijing for example hasn't been a natural progression, nor has it been replaced by a more useful cultural practice, rather it's easier to be a jerk to people. Being polite and dignified take a lot of effort and time to get right, who wants to even try anymore? Well, I do.
As a missionary in Taiwan, I thrived on that particular custom. Many of companions were pulling their hair out because they hated that the Taiwanese would not tell it to you straight, almost ever. But to me, they *were* being completely honest, you just had to stop plugging in American interpretations to those very Asian statements. When you stopped trying to pry the truth out, suddenly conversations were a real treat.
I don't really know how to describe the difference, but if you ever get the chance, go visit the slightly rural areas of Taiwan. Tai Nan, Nan Tou, Miao Li, Xin Zhu. There's this microcosm of a lost China that is still there to a large degree. You look at the Chinese food being served and you think, "Bwuh?! I had no idea!" You go to the miaos and think, "Holy crap, there are sooooo many people here." Of course most of them are doing it just cuz they don't really want to, it's just expected to be done.
When you help them, they hang on to you like you were gold coins. It's completely normal for them to go way out of their way to see you, they don't even think it's a big deal. In Beijing though, it just feels so much less intimate. They are still Chinese, and very friendly, funny, but something big is missing.
I'm back to rambling again, I think I just need to get myself a job over there and then I will stop missing it so durn much.
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Blayne Bradley
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posted
I finally found that documentary I've been looking for for a long time now.
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
Bridge players tell me this makes perfect sense, you need to be a political genius to understand Chinese bridge rules.
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
Yet this departure from politeness in Beijing for example hasn't been a natural progression, nor has it been replaced by a more useful cultural practice, rather it's easier to be a jerk to people. Being polite and dignified take a lot of effort and time to get right, who wants to even try anymore? Well, I do.
