05.21.08
Posted in Chinese Nationalism, Internet and Media, The Second Tier, USA, Wenchuan Earthquake at 20:02 by SHTig
Chinese netizens express overwhelming thanks and appreciation to the Bushes and the United States
Today George W. Bush and his wife are very popular people in China. That’s not something you’ll read very often. And all it took them was a short trip from Pennsylvania Avenue down to the Chinese Embassay in Washington, to mourn the vicitms and sign a book of condolensces in memory of the Sichuan earthquake victims.
To see the American president bow his head in mourning (吊唁) to the victims plays exceedingly well to a prestige conscious culture that has felt slighted lately. So far, nearly 1800 comments have been posted to this story (in Chinese).
The comments are very interesting – I’d say 90% of them are positive toward President Bush, his wife, and Americans! This is unlike what one usually finds in the Chinese Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in Wenchuan Earthquake at 19:04 by Nator
In writing this post, I do not wish to bring down the wrath of the Chinese blogosphere. I do not mean any disrespect by my comments. I am merely pointing out what I have observed since the awful earthquake last week.
The day it happened, there was a bit of buzz in Beijing, mostly because of the minor earthquake/aftershocks in this area that led many to evacuate their office buildings. I had a 4pm business meeting at China World Hotel (Guomao), but by the time I arrived, it was business as usual there. Later that night, on the subway ride home, I did not hear any conversations about the earthquake. In conversations with friends and family, I spceulated that hundreds, if not thousands, of people must have died, if the quake really was as strong as we were hearing. But the immensity of the disaster didn’t seem to sink in here for several days–not really until the weekend. The peak came a full week after the disaster on Monday, when the three-day official mourning period started.
When I mentioned this to some friends here, many speculated that the earthquake damaged communications systems so much that no one was able to really understand the full extent of the damage for several days. I find this unlikely… Read the rest of this entry »
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05.20.08
Posted in Internet and Media, Wenchuan Earthquake at 22:13 by Mul
In an impressive show of solidarity, and taking their cue from mainland newspapers, many Chinese websites (and Chinese language foreign websites) are switching to black and white only homepages in remembrance of the earthquake victims. I think this is a nice tribute to the victims of the earthquake. Here’s a few screen captures from People’s Daily, Baidu, Google, Yahoo, QQ and even Ctrip joins in with a black and white logo.
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Posted in Wenchuan Earthquake at 17:01 by SHTig
Robert Vance of the China Teaching Web wrote a well considered article, suggesting that Japan’s generous support in China’s earthquake disaster and recovery may turn the tide in favor of positive Chinese-Japanese relations from hereon. I’d like to think he’s right, but doubt it. This touching picture of a Japanese schoolgirl and accompanying story have not gotten much attention on the Chinese blogosphere, and to the extent comments have been made about this and similar stories, they are virtually silent about Japan, but rather just remarks of “Chinese unite”. This could be interpreted as passive acknowledgement disguised as public ambivalence (a step forward), or as just ignoring the story and wanting to post “go China comments”. But at least I haven’t seen direct Japan bashing as a result. So maybe Mr. Vance’s theory is correct, but I still think the good will of the Japanese government and people during this disaster will be forgotten in China in very short order. Here’s hoping I’m wrong.
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Posted in Law and Order, The Second Tier, Wenchuan Earthquake at 13:46 by SHTig
There has been regular information online and television about how to adopt an earthquake orphan. According to this explanation, the Adoption Law of the PRC (收养法) clearly stipulates 4 conditions: the adopter must not have any children, must be able to raise and educate the adoptee, must not be ill or deemed medically unfit to adopt a child and must be at least 30 years of age. An additional stipulation is that if an unmarried man wants to adopt a female orphan, the age difference between the two must be 40 years or greater. (Go ahead, imagine all the dirty-old-men scenarios that could exist around this loophole.)
Orphans are Like Puppies
As for the the comments to this explanation, I’m sure they are well intentioned, but to me they read like requests for a free puppy. Post after post there is a similar theme – ‘I think the law should be amended because I already have a child but want another child of his/her age. , or ‘I want to raise a baby, under 2 years old (the same age as my son/daughter, the same/opposite sex as my son/daughter). Here is my email, please contact me”. Many, many of these comments are confessions from mothers saying that Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in Chinese Nationalism, Internet and Media, USA, Wenchuan Earthquake at 02:10 by SHTig
The American government donated $500,000 to the China Red Cross. Seems like “the helping hand of a friend”, as the US Embassy’s Beijing website called it. But the Chinese bloggers view it differently. Let’s review the comments (in translation) on one blog responding to America’s ‘pultry’ donation. As you read the comments, keep in mind that the $500,000 donation was from the US government and does not represent American corporate or individual donations. I’m not translating all comments as some were deleted, were redundant, or were just posts of “ditto” to earlier comments.
#2 (Guangdong Province) – America is trash. F*ck all American women.
#3 – They’re helping us Chinese? Americans are real crooks. Everyone let’s take action, put forth your effort to help the injured people in the Sichuan earthquake!
#7 – Everyone unite! Whether America donates or not is their business, but we must help.
#9 – America, f*ck your ancestors, a people born as dogs and raised as wolves, a dogsh!t people.
#10 – commenter posted news that McDonald’s is donating 1,000,000 RMB, and that the Read the rest of this entry »
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05.19.08
Posted in Internet and Media, Manners, The Second Tier, Wenchuan Earthquake at 00:22 by SHTig
A few days ago I reported on China’s earthquake donation effort. Little did I know then that the donation effort would blow up into a full fledged attention grabbing event. I’ve had CCTV1 on for the past few hours. A program just ended where company after company made very conspicuous donations (putting huge packages of money into boxes). This was interrupted by songs and kind words, but the focus of the program was to broadcast the companies that were giving the most. For the record, Tianjin Rongcheng United Steel donated the most, having pledged RMB 30,000,000. This was already the largest corporate donation made but during this live program on CCTV1, as the Tianjin Steel person was putting all that cash into the box, he spoke up to say “I’m now deciding on the spot to raise this amount to RMB 100,000,000.” The company had originally donated 10,000,000 before raising it, to stay ahead of the Jones’, errr, Wangs’. The person (a director of the company) was an orphan from the Tangshan Earthquake 32 years ago.
I have to say, I have never observed anything like what is happening in China with this donation effort. It is becoming nearly as big a focus as the earthquake. From the Read the rest of this entry »
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05.18.08
Posted in Environment, Internet and Media, The Second Tier, Wenchuan Earthquake at 20:01 by SHTig
Sina.com is now reporting that the Wenchuan, Sichuan earthquake measured 8.0 on the Richter Scale. No wonder they could feel it in Beijing and Thailand. The China State Council has ordered that from May 19-21 all flags be flown at half mast.
SHTig Update at11:45pm PRC time (5.18): CNN is reporting on the 3 days of mourning that will begin in China tomorrow. CCTV1 has reported that when the mourning period begins at 2:28pm (1 week after the earthquake), everyone should observe 3 minutes of silence. People should stop work, classes should stop, traffic should stop. This is an interesting time to be in China and observe the country’s response to the calamity. 加油中国!
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Posted in Internet and Media, Wenchuan Earthquake at 13:25 by SHTig
This is a bittersweet story that has emerged from the Sichuan earthquake tragedy (see video in Chinese). When a house collapsed on a mother and her 3 to 4 month old infant, the mother protected the baby’s body with hers by kneeling prostrate over the baby. When rescuers arrived 5 days later, on May 17, they found the mother had been crushed to death, but that the baby was sleeping peacefully – alive. Shortly thereafter they found the mother’s cellphone, where she had written the text message to her baby that read “My dear baby, if you live, you must remember that I love you.”
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05.15.08
Posted in Rumors, USA, Wenchuan Earthquake at 20:21 by SHTig
This article (没有证据表明中国四川大地震是美国的地球物理武器的作用, “No proof that America’s global geophysical weapons are the cause of the earthquake in Sichuan, China”) is all over the Chinese blogs. Despite the title, its thesis is that you need to open your mind to accept the possibility that the US is using unconventional weapon technology to make the cyclone in Myanmar (Burma), the snowstorm of February 2008 in China, and now the earthquake of May 2008 in Sichuan China. It postulates that only an advanced country like the US would be able to pull something like this off (though noting that dispersted Soviet scientists could do it too, and could be used by states like India, but ultimately concludes that it was the US). The article says it’s easy to understand why the US would want this – the earthquake would destroy Chengdu’s Xichang Satellite Launch Center, destroy Chengdu’s Aircraft Corporate, destroy the weapons program in Tibet and cause unrest in Tibet, would destroy many plants located in Sichuan, and would lower the global price of oil (by reducing China’s demand), would weaken China’s relations with Southeast Asian neighbors, etc.
SH Tig Adds: Update of 16May2008 – I see Sina took that article down. It is still findable elsewhere if you use the above Chinese characters in your search string.
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