Attacking by oblique means and stealthy feints since 2007
Pathetic. But it led Jonathan White at The Beijinger to contact me about my a photo I took on a better day for Chinese soccer, when the national team beat Qatar in the 2004 Asian Cup.
Here are some additional photos from that glorious victory over a nation with less than one tenth the population of Beijing.
Reading “Why Chinese Mothers are Superior” makes one’s head spin.
The thousands of comments are even better: some expressing admiration, but most in shock that a Yale professor, or any sane person, actually believes in this sort of parenting. Instead of the Chinese patriots who overwhelm the comments sections of other China-related articles, this time we hear from Chinese-American and other Asian American grown-ups who endured this kind of childhood. Unsurprsingly, most didn’t enjoy it too much.
SHtig pointed out recently that the nflchina.com website has badly misaligned the team logos and their corresponding links. It seems that the rectangle of space for each link is slightly wider than the actual logo. As long as you’re a Bills, “Dolphines”, or Patriots fan, you won’t have a problem finding your team. After that it gets messy. SHTig’s beloved Ravens logo links to the Jets page, and you have to click on the Bengals logo to get to the Ravens page.
It’s worst for the AFC North, where most of the logos link to a division rival. Same for the Titans (link goes to Colts) and Jets (link goes to Pats).
Soon the alignment is so far off that the Packers link is the last one in the row, even though there are five logos remaining. In what is nothing short of a national (football league) humiliation, the Vikings and the entire NFC West have been pushed to the next “line” on the page, in the space marked by the red dots below. (This would have seemed fitting until the Seahawks beat the Saints just a few hours ago.)
The site has news and photos from the most recent playoff games, so surely they have someone who can tweak the site a bit. Come on, NFL: Fix your site, make America proud, and make this post irrelevant as soon as possible.
Arrived at Hankou train station this morning. The plaza and roads in front of the station are a mess, though the new facade, designed to look like old European buildings in the concession area, is an improvement over the old Social Realist look.
Spent at least half an hour in the taxi from the train station to Jianghan Lu, by far the longest that trip has ever taken. Total cost: 21 RMB.
Cheap taxi fare was the third sign I was back in Wuhan. The first was getting into the taxi, revealing to the driver that I was American, and listening to him go on and on about war, North Korea, Jews, American Indians, and the NBA. (Yes, his favorite team is the Rockets.) The second was watching two separate shouting/shoving matches between pedestrians and police during. The driver explained that in hot climates, people have hot tempers. Even in December, when its comfortably cool.
I checked into the hotel, cleaned up, and headed straight to my favorite hot and dry noodle shop, which is in an alley behind the People’s Paradise shopping center on Zhongshan Dadao. Excellent as always, as were the mianwo.
After that we walked back toward the Wanda shopping center. At one point a pigeon crapped from a ledge several floors above, missing me by inches and a fraction of a second. I thought how lucky I had been, but I would have happily endured a pigeon attack instead of what I saw next. Inside the Wanda area we noticed a few people standing around and staring at one of the shops. It was obvious something interesting had just happened. We walked closer and saw this:
It appeared that a man had raised himself up to the the glass plates, perhaps to wash them, and then fallen through. You can see a glimpse of him holding his head. The glass is well supported from below and don’t look like they’d just fall on their own accord. What appears to be a hydraulic lift is just to his left.
Here you can see part of the shattered glass that hasn’t yet fallen. (Also, the woman in front, with her skin-tight jeans, leather everything else, and thousand yard stare as she walks through the disaster area, was sign number four that I was back in Wuhan.)
This shows the that the injured man, and whoever is attending to him, are directly below the remaining section of glass. The man wasn’t exactly young, either — he looked to be in his fifties. And even though he was bleeding a bit (note the small red spot just in front of the coil of rope to his left), his most serious injuries likely came from the fall itself (during which he lost a shoe) rather than from the broken glass. He seemed dazed but somewhat conscious.
We gawked a bit with the others and were starting to walk away when we shouting. We ran back just in time to see a huge chunk of shattered glass fall down, right where he had been less than a minute earlier. The hunk of glass was probably three feet long and fell pointed side down, like a giant icicle.
This set off a panic, as the Wanda attendants realized how dangerous the situation was, and how close they had come to a real disaster. Several groups of reinforcements ran up and cordon off the danger zone and get control of the situation. Meanwhile short woman with the white hair was retelling others how she had kept telling the mall attendants to move the injured man out from under the glass.
All this before 10:30 in the morning!
Just saw this for the first time, though I’m told it has been around for years:
Going by the common Chinese designations, China is the “dragon” and Japan is the “bug”. We will eat you and make you disappear.
But you are what you eat, and China does consume much of Japan’s fashion, entertainment, and popular culture. (It also draws heavily from Korea, itself raised on a heavy diet of “bugs”.)
And, of course, the dragon needs the bug. After all, you eat to survive. (An angry dragon would just breathe fire and burn the bug to a crisp.) Hard to imagine where China would be without all the technology and direct investment from Japan.
Anyway, it’s a clever little animation, despite the ugliness behind its intent.
I was sorting through some old papers over the weekend and came across the card for Grand Profit International Travel Agency.
I used their services several times, back when it was difficult and expensive to get an F visa in Beijing. The same visa bought in Hong Kong was cheap and easy to get, and I am always up for a trip down to HK. Here’s the price list on the back of the card (from around 2005):
Beijing has become the better option in recent years, as the HK places got more expensive and less reliable. Trader’s Link is probably the best-known agency in Beijing; it’s still expensive, but generally reliable. The only trick now is to time your visa renewal with a China entry, due to the policy of making all F visa holders leave the country once every year, regardless of how much time is left on one’s visa.
I talked to the new manager at Traders Link on my last visit; he said the place is run by the Public Security Bureau. A bit surprising, but it does explain the ever-growing number of meaningless gestures required in the application. (My favorite part of that procedure is having to stand in front of the reception desk as they photograph me with the company logo behind me to prove that I actually came into the office.)
I witnessed my first authentic Chinese fire drill when riding out of my apartment complex this morning. The basic form was the same as I have seen back home: A white Volkswagen Jetta was stopped in the intersection where the street meets the side road of the Third Ring Road. The driver got out, followed by the front seat passenger and then a back seat passenger. Each of them walked around the car and re-entered in a different seat. The car then drove away.
But just like the “Chinese food” in America that bears little resemblance to the wide range of fare available here, a real Chinese drill is a far more nuanced and complex performance in its homeland:
It seems the rest of the world is has barely scratched the surface in terms of understanding this part of Chinese culture.
Whenever you read about the latest corruption case in China, what immediately springs to mind when you think about how the money was spent? I asked ODB, and here’s what he came up with:
Think of your own list, then read this article from from the Wall Street Journal’s China Realtime Report:
On trial is the head of a finance company who stands accused of bribing bank officials in return for more than 700 million yuan, or more than $100 million, in loans for fake mortgages and small businesses, according to Chinese media reports.
The 30-year-old head of the Beijing Huading Credit Security Company, Hu Yi, allegedly paid officials at the Beijing Rural Commercial Bank to help him apply for loans with fake names and businesses from the end of 2007 to February 2009. A total of 18 people are on trial, eight of them senior bank officials.
The official allegedly used the money to gamble in Macau, invest in mines and buy calligraphy and paintings, most of which turned out to be fake, according to the Legal Mirror. Only half of the total 708 embezzled yuan was recovered, the Chinese reports said.
Bonus points if you guessed that the expensive paintings and cultural artifacts were fake.
The first NMA video I saw was their reenactment of the Tiger Woods car crash. Nine months later, the Steven Slater video came out, showing a whole new level of sophistication:
The combination of the yappy, Taiwanese-accented newsreaders, the bizarre stories chosen for coverage, and the overwrought emotions on the digital “actors” is irresistible. Hire some English-speaking anchors, and NMA will surely become the next TMZ, no? I just hope they keep their subtly Chinese perspective on America’s celebrity, gossip, and entertainment news.
Text I just received from ODB, who’s at the Beijing airport getting ready to fly to Shenzhen:
7:10pm: Sitting on the plane for over an hour now. Pilot’s last message: “Ladies and gentlemen, we have finally been cleared for takeoff. However, the car that was supposed to push us back has disappeared. I will try to contact the tower.”
UPDATE 7:15:
Last message: “Ladies and gentlemen, the tow truck arrived and disappeared again. This is not an organized airport. I apologize.”
UPDATE 7:20:
All announcements are in very good English. Chinese versions are toned down… Last message was English only.
UPDATE 7:24:
We are finally moving. I guess they found the missing truck. Just one hour late…
UPDATE FROM SZ: The flight was almost two hours delayed. I spent 5 hours on the plane, only 3 hours of which in the air… It is July and the weather in SZ is better than Beijing…
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