Quote of the Day

"Driving BMWs and drinking polluted water is the bitter irony of our modernization."

-Zhou Shengxian, China's Minister of Environmental Protection

20 Years After...

"Tell the world, they said to us."

This June 4th will mark the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre/"incident".  And honestly, I can't believe this happened in my lifetime.

Anyways, look for China to up its censorship efforts in the coming months while coverage of the anniversary picks up.  And further, any time there's an anniversary like this (or any other event that protesters may try to use as a stage) China will lock down Tiananmen Square too--a couple weeks ago I had a friend visit Beijing and she couldn't even see the square because the military set up a 2-block buffer zone around it during the National Congress.

Drinking and Ruling

Day and night he drank strong liquor. Everyone from the aristocratic high officials to his own lowly clerks and retainers saw that Shen did not carry out his. duties. Everyone who came wanted to speak with him about it, but when they arrived Shen always offered them a cup of strong liquor. When, after a short while, they said they had something to say, he offered them more. Only once they were drunk did they leave, having spent the whole time unable to bring up the subject.

-Han Dynasty chancellor Cao Shen

Found that on Froginawall.net

Das Kapital: Coming Soon to an Opera Near You!

Well, it's not really an opera, per se. It will, apparently, take elements both from Broadway musicals and Las Vegas shows as well. But yes, it will be about Marx's ever-popular 1,000 page treatise on Communism. And no, they're not going to be taking any "artistic liberties".

The show, whatever type of show it ends up being, will be directed by He Nian, and will be thoroughly vetted by Zhang Jun, an economics professor at Fudan University, before it's released to the proles. The story, actually adapted from a Manga comic about Marx's masterpiece, will revolve around a company where the workers come to realize that they're being taken advantage of by their boss. This inevitably divides the factory into different factions, with some continuing to work while others rebel or take to collective bargaining efforts. In the end, of course, they all learn to embrace Marx's theory of surplus value.

A German troupe tried something similar three years ago--they even gave out volumes of The Collected Works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels at their shows--but it ultimately failed because (surprise, surprise) it was deemed to be too boring. According to He, however, this rendition will be "fun to watch".

It's not quite clear whether the show's 2010 debut will be in Shanghai or Beijing, but if you ask me, it'll be worth seeing either way.

Dirty Dirty China

Another video showing just how shitty working conditions are in China. The only thing worse than this is this 6-part mini-series by VBS TV on Linfen, the "world's most polluted town".

The Legend of the Grass Mud Horse

Reinforcements have arrived for Chinese netizens in their fight against the censorship efforts of the government...in the form of a mythical creature known only as the "Grass Mud Horse" (草泥马/cǎonǐmǎ). Originally conceived some two months ago by some anonymous party, the video has now drawn over 1.5 million hits on YouTube--and spawned countless other spinoffs, including t-shirts, dolls and other follow-ups like this cartoon rap.

Those of you with a basic knowledge of Chinese (or at least Chinese swear words) will quickly recognize that "caonima" is a homonym for "F*** your mother". The video, however, expands on the concept and tells of how these "fun-loving and nimble" horses fight to keep a horde of river crabs (河蟹/héxiè, a homonym for "harmony", the Chinese euphemism for censorship) out of their home territory, the Ma Le Desert (马勒戈壁/mǎlègēbì, a homonym for "Your Mother's C***").

The entire thing is simply meant to poke fun at the government's continued efforts to censor the internet, but according to Xiao Qiang, a professor of journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, the Grass Mud Horse “has become an icon of resistance to censorship.”

The expression and cartoon videos may seem like a juvenile response to an unreasonable rule. But the fact that the vast online population has joined the chorus, from serious scholars to usually politically apathetic urban white-collar workers, shows how strongly this expression resonates.

Cui Weiping, a prominent blogger and professor at the Beijing Film Academy, adds,

As for “Grass Mud Horse”, I applaud the one who invented such a pun. Its underlining tone is: I know you do not allow me to say certain things...So, I say “Grass Mud Horse”, not "f*** your mom". What is “Grass Mud Horse”? It always works hard in harsh conditions. See, it is from the vast grassland. I like it. I love it. This whole thing is too far away from you [the government], out of your jurisdiction. Oh well, why are you always staring at me? Am I not perfectly fine? I am innocent. I have not been snatched away by some crooked folks. I have not been put under their control. And I am not vulgar. Why do you have to worry so much about me?

I am singing a cute children’s song – I AM A GRASS MUD HORSE!

Update: Apparently there are two CaoNiMa's, MaLe and GeBi.  And their offspring is called FaKeNiMa (NiMa sounds like "your mother" in Chinese).  More from Shanghaiist .

ap·pre·ci·ate

One of the things that I appreciate about Canada is daylight savings time. (The "spring forward" part of it anyways.) The end of winter is always kinda nebulous, and that extra hour really kicks it into spring...there's always a kind of a "worst is over" kind of feeling.

But anyways, there is no daylight savings time in China. In fact, there's no time changing anywhere anytime in this Country. Physically, China is almost 4 time zones wide . But the entire thing runs under Beijing time. It makes things a little more uniform, but it also makes for a couple weird quirks.

For one, when I visited Yunnan (2 time zones away) in February, the sun rose at around 7:30 every day...that was nice.  You could wake up at a reasonable time every day at daybreak and feel like a champion.

On the other hand though, 3 hours makes things a real hassle if you live in the westernmost parts of China.  Xinjiang, the province in the NW corner of the country, has actually adopted an unofficial "Xinjiang time", three hours behind Beijing time.  So if you're ever traveling around there and booking train tickets or whatnot, you really got double check and be sure whether the time you're getting quoted is in Beijing or Xinjiang time.  (P.S. Xinjiang also kind of wants out of China so the whole "having our own time zone" thing is also another way to shove it in the government's face.)

Better City, Better Life

417 days to go until the 2010 Shanghai Expo, and I saw this today switching lines on the Metro:

Basically they've dressed guy up in an "Haibao " costume (the official Expo mascot and 2nd cousin of Towelie) and they've got others standing around with signs reminding/teaching/hammering it into people's heads that you should stand on the right side of escalators and pass on the left.  Sounds stupid, but don't forget, "education programs" did help Beijing out with its pre-Olympic spitting problem.

Anyways, here's the latest and greatest on the Expo a year and a bit out:

• China says confident [sic] US will be in 2010 Expo: America's participation in the event has been in doubt for a while.  "U.S. organizers have been struggling to raise the $61 million needed for a pavilion at the event — a problem compounded because American law prohibits government funding of such events, which must instead be privately financed."


• Taiwan pavilion's placement at World Expo could re-spark controversy: Taiwan's going to have two pavilions representing Taipei at the Expo, but just to make sure everyone knows that the "renegade province" is still a part of China, event organizers are going to put a Taiwan section in the Chinese exhibition too.  Seems to me that if Taiwan can have its own Olympic team, China could just let this one go.
  
  
• Most of the pavilion designs are up on the official website now...check them out here.  Denmark's entry looks like it'll be cool; the Dutch one looks like it might just be a huge orange-themed dollhouse.  Britain's is a floating orb, while Italy's looks like Beijing's Water Cube.  Poland's just looks like origami.

No Can Do

So yeah, learning Chinese is hard, but so is learning English.  That's why, in the 17th century, they invented Pidgin English.  Basically a bastardized form of English with a limited vocabulary and a more flexible syntax, it was used by traders to get their point across.  Then the Chinese stopped using it because they realized people were making fun of them for using it.  Not surprising if you've seen what Pidgin English looks like (via Shanghaiist):

Chinese Pidgin English (there are all types of Pidgin English depending on where it was used) did, however have the unintended and somewhat amusing reverse effect of creating some now-common English phrases, such as:

好久不见: word for word, "long time no see"

看见: word for word, "look-see"

不能做: word for word, "no can do"

不行: word for word, "no-go"

那去: word for word, "where to?"

Turns out the Chinese have been teaching you Engrish speakers your own language for years.

Ranguage Difficruties

So I'm back in school part-time now (at Jiaotong University) to take some serious Chinese classes, and the more I learn, the more I'm amused by the construction of certain Chinese words/phrases. Some are amusing, some are just great in how much sense they make. I've gone through a few of these before, but here are a couple more examples for you guys:

出租车: taxi | literally, "hired out car"
安排: organize/plan | literally, "peaceful rows"
中国: China | literally, "central country"
长鼻王: a brand of egg rolls called Pinocchio | literally, "long-nose king"
牛仔裤: jeans | literally, "cowboy pants"
味精: MSG | literally, "essence of flavour"

Some of the slang is pretty funny too:  

做飞机: roll a J | literally, to make an airplane

我飞了: I'm high... | literally, "I'm flying"

Which leads me to my current favourite:

pangcha (I don't know the characters): Techno music. As in, pangchapangchapangchapangchapanchga... say it a few times and you'll get it.

The construction of certain Chinese characters is pretty cool too. Loyalty, for example, is 忠, which is actually a compound character: the top half means "centre" (same as in 中国), and the bottom half is "heart". Pretty fitting if you ask me.