12.19.07
Posted in Health, The Second Tier, Wuhan at 19:41 by Nator
Wuhan has once again found its way into the China Daily’s “Odd News” section:
A school in Wuhan, Hubei Province, has sparked controversy after it requested more than 30 students to undergo cosmetic surgery before graduation.
The surgery was for double-fold eyelids, breast enlargement and the removal of moles.
It was to make the students, most of them girls, more attractive and therefore stand a better chance of gaining employment.
Many of the students want to be airline cabin attendants after graduation.
Residents complained the school was focusing too much on the appearance of students instead of improving the quality of its teachers. But the school said it was important to improve the appearance of students when considering the tough employment market.
This school was only playing the game like everyone else. I’d bet many of the students would have had the surgery done anyway, for the same reasons.
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12.17.07
Posted in Media/Internet, Sports, Technology, USA, Wuhan at 22:24 by Mul
As many of you already know, the elite computer gaming team from Chicago, the Chicago Chimera, won the inaugural World Final of the Championship Gaming Series. The Chimera beat the Carolina Core in a Counter-Strike: Source match and took home the $500,000 first prize. Chicago took down teams from Stockholm and Birmingham on its way to the crown.
In most circumstances, I’d be quite excited (and mighty proud) when a Chicago sports team wins a championship event. Alas, this win was tainted as the team from China, the Wuhan Dragons, were unable to participate in the event due to visa issues. As any person worth their salt knows, the Wuhaners (or any team from China for that matter) would have dominated any Counter-Strike match. Heck, the police in China even use CS for training.
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Posted in Environment, Industry, The Second Tier, Wuhan at 19:47 by Nator
Interesting news from Reuters:
A cluster of cities in central China has been designated the country’s latest experimental zone, this one for energy saving and environmentally friendly programmes, state media reported on Monday.
The Hunan cities of Changsha, Zhuzhou and Xiangtan — late chairman Mao Zedong’s hometown — as well as the Hubei capital of Wuhan, will be targeted to lead China’s drive to make its breakneck economic growth more environmentally sustainable. Read the rest of this entry »
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12.16.07
Posted in Health, Rumors, The Second Tier at 18:56 by Nator
Today my girlfriend received an SMS from a friend, a grad student at one of China’s top universities here in Beijing:
最近少出去少在外面吃东西！一伙新疆感染爱滋病毒的人在全国部分城市通过竹签挑破自己皮肤沾血来传染给他人。把血滴到食物里！事情被证实是真的。已有部分大学生感染，不管怎样小心吧！尽量不要外出！最好用自己的碗筷，预防为好！
Roughly translated:
Avoid going out and eating outside in the next few days! A man with AIDS from Xinjiang has been going around to cities all over the country and spreading the disease by pricking himself with a bamboo stick and then dripping blood into other people’s food! This is not a hoax. Some university students have already been infected, so please be careful! Don’t go out unless you have to, and if you eat out, bring your own eating utensils!
Apparently Xinjiangers, already widely maligned as the “Thieves of China“, aren’t satisfied with just pickpocketing anymore. Now at least one is traveling across the country and dropping his AIDS into the food of unsuspecting students–mostly Han students, no doubt.
I didn’t know that one could get AIDS from eating a drop or two of AIDS-infected blood–unless it’s super AIDS, in which case all bets are off. At least we now know that bringing your own sanitized bowl and chopsticks will kill the super AIDS, though.
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12.15.07
Posted in Beijing, Laowai, Technology at 12:53 by ODB
It was a nice beautiful Saturday morning, the was sun was shining, I was on my second cup of coffee reading the news, girlfriend still asleep, my quiet time… and then I had to get myself blacklisted…
Read the rest of this entry »
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12.14.07
Posted in Beijing, The Second Tier, Travel/Tourism at 19:02 by Nator
A recent City Weekend article, “Culture of Complaint“, investigates the constant whining among expats in China. I’m as big a whiner as the next person, but the topic of the first complaint is what caught my eye:
After a three hour drive along an unfinished road in a rattling “mianbao che,” Anna Grace Carter and her husband finally reached their new home-a cement block building located on a dirt road off an empty highway in Zunyi, Guizhou province.
“The first six months I hated it and wanted to go home,” Carter admits. “I tried to like it. I pretended I liked it.” Despite the fact her apartment didn’t lack for amenities, she wasn’t used to the “squatty potty” and certainly not ready for the crushing isolation that comes with being one of a handful of foreigners in town.
I was lucky enough to visit Zunyi on a bicycle trip last February with SHTig and ODB. We loved it! It’s a great little city in northern Guizhou, famous in ChiCom lore as the site of the 1935 Zunyi Conference, where Mao stepped forward as the supreme leader of the Communists in China. Read more about the Zunyi Conference here.
Zunyi sits along a river in a mountainous area with beautiful scenery and clean air. It’s a major destination for Party-sponsored tours and conferences, and as a result it feels like a prosperous place, unlike most of the rest of Guizhou. We spent Chinese New Year’s Day there, watching a lion dance from while sipping freshly brewed coffee at a Dicos overlooking a town square. It was certainly not the place for Ms. Carter, though:
Coming to China was not Carter’s idea. Her husband, who had been fascinated by Chinese culture and kung fu movies for years, decided to make the move when Anna was unable to find work in Italy. Neither of them spoke a word of Chinese…
Now happily ensconced in Beijing, Carter, whose dream job is to be a presenter on CCTV9, finds that she complains much less. “In Zunyi people stared at me and treated me like an alien, not like a person,” says Carter, who would even avoid going out because of the pressure.
Anyway, if you have the chance to go there, whether for a day or a year, I highly recommend Zunyi.
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12.12.07
Posted in Law and Order, Manners, Travel/Tourism, USA at 20:37 by Mul
China and the United States signed a memorandum of understanding on December 12th agreeing to grant U.S. tourist visas to Chinese tour groups. At present, Chinese visitors to the United States are restricted to work or student visas. Chinese overseas travel has boomed in recent years and many U.S. states and businesses eager for Chinese tourism dollars have been exerting pressure on the U.S. federal government to ease travel restrictions.
Concerned that Chinese travelers abroad are beginning to earn themselves a bit of a reputation, the Spiritual Civilization Steering Committee of the Communist Party of China Central Committee has decided to take a proactive approach. Last year, the committee launched an educational campaign to prevent Chinese travelers from, in the words of the China Daily, “disgracing” the country. Here’s a list of the 4 “do’s” and 9 “don’ts” for Chinese travelers.
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12.10.07
Posted in Beijing, Travel/Tourism at 21:52 by Mul
The Sunday New York Times gives their version of a 36-hour weekend itinerary for Beijing. Personally, I don’t have any huge argument with it: Beihai Park, Tiananmen Square/Forbidden City, roast duck at Dadong, a drink at a bar in the Drum and Bell Tower neighborhood, the Imperial Academy, jazz at Centro in the Kerry Centre Shangri-la or rock at D-22 in Haidian district and, finally, shopping for “antiques” at the Panjiayuan flea market. The Times gives a few hotel suggestions: the Grand Hyatt and two courtyard hotels, the Hotel Côté Cour SL and the Bamboo Garden.
My weekend trip itinerary would not be incredibly different. I would consider adding in a walk down Nan Luo Gu Xiang (also, head over to www.nlgx.org for an outstanding map of the neighborhood), “cultural” shopping on Liulichang, the Summer Palace, and perhaps a stop at the Urban Planning Museum located a hair south of Tiananmen Square.
My big question marks are with their dinner recommendations: dinner at Kong Yiji (Zhejiang cuisine) and Pure Lotus (vegetarian food). First, the vegetarian restaurants are at best a novelty, even for true vegetarians, who can do just as well at regular restaurants in China. Second, why recommend Zhejiang cuisine for a visitor to the North? For a first time visitor to Beijing, how about dumplings? Or a courtyard restaurant such as Hua Jia Yi Yuan on Gui Jie?
All in all, though, a strong effort.
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12.08.07
Posted in Beijing, Food, McDonald's in China at 16:12 by uncleronald
A few weeks ago I noted the new peach pie at McDonald’s. Thankfully, the “limited time offer” is over, I suspect due to weak sales. One employee told me it had stopped on December 3. I still don’t understand why they don’t bring back the apple pie–on two separate occasions recently I heard customers request it.
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12.07.07
Posted in Environment, Health, Industry, Media/Internet at 03:00 by Mul
The reputation of Chinese food and product safety has experienced a slight setback the past several months. There have been well-publicized cases of exports involving tainted seafood, lead paint- and GHB-coated toys and even the mysterious death of a Korean diplomat in Beijing linked to unsafe food. At first, the Chinese government definatly insisted that food and product safety issues are isolated, exaggerated by the paranoid and biased international media or even trumped up due to trade protectionism.
Well, it turns out there may have been something to the international outcry over product safety. The New York Times (via Xinhua) reports today that the government announced it demolished 2,800 rural food facilities, closed down 47,000 illegal food factories and shut down over 300 drug and medical equipment factories. Not so isolated, by my measure.
According to the Times article, new legislation is in the works that will inflict the death penalty on those responsible for products that harm or kill large numbers of people. Presumably, this means the executives of companies that knowingly sell shoddy products. They did not need to wait for the new legislation to punish Cao Wenzhuang, the former head of the pharmaceutical registration department of the State Food and Drug Administration. He was sentenced to death in July for accepting bribes from drug companies for fast-tracking approval of their drugs.
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