Think You Have What It Takes to Be the China Online Guide?
What sort of information do we want the new Guide to provide?
Well, we're looking for someone to create a bridge back to China for the Chinese diaspora. The site should inform readers about contemporary China, including the arts, pop culture and the nation’s rapid development. It should also help those growing up away from China learn about the roots of the culture, such as family life, mythology and religion. Content should primarily provide deep background and reference on Chinese culture and current events. Although the site is not primarily a history site, articles on China’s rich past will naturally be included. Since news services operating within China deal with censorship, there is some call to cover major news and put it in context.
What sort of person are we looking for to be the new Guide to China Online?
Our ideal candidate:
- A journalist or author who has written extensively on the country
- A professor who has specific experience teaching about China and has been published in this field
China: Want to Score Like David Beckham?
Certainly one of the more amusing intellectual property stories to come out of China in recent months:
A DODGY Chinese company has plastered David Beckham's name on condoms, claiming users will score with the ladies like he does on the soccer pitch. And the Beckham prophylactics, which are not endorsed by the LA Galaxy star, are now the biggest-selling brand in China.
But Britain's The Sun newspaper reports Chinese Galaxy fans want them banned.
"We do not want Beckham to think the Chinese people are disrespecting him. We love him here," one said.
Beckham's publicity people wisely issued this simple statement: "The Condoms are not an official brand." (From NEWS.com.au)
China: Southern Snows Cause National Power and Transport Crisis
As you may have read in the news, southern China has been badly hit by a rash of unusual snow storms, the worst in at least thirty years.
Local authorities were unprepared to deal with the aftermath of the storms, with snow deep as a foot in regions where snow is so rare, there is no equipment for clearing or salting roads. Deaths have been reported in some southern cities where, used to somewhat balmier weather, apartment buildings have no heating.
The situation is made all the more catastrophic by the fact that hundreds of millions of Chinese living in cities on the coast, from migrant workers to white collar professionals, are trying to go back to their home towns and villages for the Chinese New Year, which starts next week.
Snow has left nearly 30 million people across southern China without power and millions more trampling and elbowing their way onto the few trains and buses still in service.
In Guangzhou, the capital of a major manufacturing region, hundreds of thousands of workers are sleeping outside the train station in temporary structures.
Although authorities were clearly unprepared for this unusual weather, they've been mobilizing anyone and everyone to pitch and try to restore power and clear snow-logged roads. The Guardian reports some 500,000 army troops have been drafted to, among other things, shovel snow.
More snow is expected to fall in the coming days.
Olympic Althetes Concerned About Beijing's Air Pollution
Should I run behind a bus and breathe in the exhaust? Should I train on the highway during rush hour? Is there any way to acclimate myself to pollution?
Randy Wilber, an exercise physiologist for the US Olympic Committee, has answered these questions with a resounding "No." Wilber is advising American Olympians not to arrive in Beijing until the last possible moment, the New York Times reports.
Athletes may also wear special air filtration masks every moment they are not competing. Chinese authorities have vowed the skies will be blue by the time the first Olympians arrive in Beijing, and plan to close factories and limit car traffic during the Games, but some Olympic teams aren't taking any chances. On a typical day, air pollution exceeds the World Health Organization's standard for safety by as much as five times.
One thing's for sure: the Olympics will be a welcome respite for this Beijing resident, who on some days finds herself breathless and wheezing after just running across the street!
Henan Fossil 'Greatest Discovery Since Peking Man!'
"An almost complete human skull fossil that could date back 100,000 years has been unearthed in China with state media hailing it as the greatest discovery since Peking Man," Reuters reported this week.
The fossil, discovered in Henan Province, could be as much as 100,000 years old. A fossil dubbed "Peking Man," discovered near Beijing in the 1920s, was 250,000 to 400,000 years old.
Peking Man vanished in 1941, while en route to the United States for safekeeping after Japan invaded China during the Second World War.
Chinese Internet Users Up 53%
China seems on the way to surpassing the US in all things--cars, carbon dioxide emissions, consumption--and now soon, the internet.
According to the Wall Street Journal:
China's total number of Internet users rose 53% to 210 million at the end of 2007 from 137 million at the end of 2006, the state-owned China Internet Network Information Center said. The center said the number of Internet users rose from 162 million at the end of June. China is now just five million users short of surpassing the U.S. as the world's largest Internet market, according to the center. It said about 16% of the Chinese population now has access to the Internet, compared with a global average of 19%.
But, as an article in PC World explains, China is a lot less wired than it should be:
While the new statistics may seem impressive, it highlights how Internet usage in the country still lags behind mobile phone use, and how even greater usage could be spurred by more access through wireless devices. "China's admittedly impressive user statistics hide an important fact: only a fraction of those users have regular access to a PC," said David Wolf, CEO of Wolf Group Asia, a Beijing-based technology consultancy.
The PC World article rightly notes that internet tools like blogs and BBS have helped create a national, public conversation that has never before existed in China, where official censorship and state ownership of the traditional media stifle speech. Not that the Chinese internet is exactly free either.
UK Prime Minister Visits China
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown stressed climate change and economic cooperation during his visit to China this week. Virgin's Sir Richard Branson was among the 25 UK business leaders who made the trip.
Malawi Drops Ties With Taiwan
Elementary School Girl Lambasted for Comments About "Yellow and Violent" Website
To: the Chinese internet public
Explain me this.
A Chinese elementary student, Zhang Shufan, told a CCTV reporter that the last time she went on the internet, she was unexpectedly greeted by a pop-up window with “erotic and violent” images (i.e., an advertisement for a porn site). For that admission, Zhang incurred the wrath of thousands of netizens.
Many accused her of lying. A cartoon spoof of a sobbing, bare-shouldered Zhang Shufan circulated the Internet. An anonymous user posted her grades, academic awards, birthday, and even the name of the hospital where she was born.
The controversy seemed to hinge on the girl’s credibility. From the EastSouthNorthWest blog:
Several days later, a post titled
That post contained the screen capture of the searches for Zhang Shufan. This included the 1 minute 26 second video clip from
as well as a short essay titled which said: "I'm perplexed as to how a single web page could be both yellow and violent? How does a lolita (namely, a cute girl under 15 years of age) know what is yellow and violent? Poor lolita, this interview will change her whole life”… …Since Zhang is an excellent student, some netizen thought: "She faced the CCTV reporter and lied to a national audience without blinking. Isn't she accountable for what she said? If she is lying when she is so young, how far will she go when she grows old? For children, academic grades are important. But if her thinking and morals are rotten, then academic grades are useless no matter how good they are."
Perhaps there is something about the word "yellow" (黄) that I don't understand...
Protests in China
The Shanghaiist writes about a man in Hubei Province who was killed for using his cameraphone to record a protest against a municipal waste dump:
Wei Wenhua, a manager at a local government-owned construction company with no apparent connection to the protest, was driving through the area when he stopped to get a better look. At this point he took out his camera phone and began recording the incident. Once the chengguan noticed his presence, he was yanked out of his vehicle and then brutally beaten unconscious over a period of ten minutes. He was carted off, along with other injured protesters, and died en route to the hospital.
Although they don’t frequently make the international news, mass protests are common in China, and are generally tolerated by the Chinese government--so long as the gripe remains with local authorities.
Shanghai residents were also out protesting this week, this time against a maglev train.