An exploration of virtual experiences and environments in and about China.
Real China’s tagline reads (according to Babelfish translation): "According to of ブログ name, the Chinese truth is introduced."
Of interest I found:
Folklorists, historians, and anthropologists of the future will have a huge new source of self-generated firsthand reports of folk customs around China, complete with photos and pretty soon, audio and video. Poking around Tianya trying to understand a bit more about some of the big forums, I came across this lively, descriptive Feb. 27 post titled [Chaoshan] Hometown Great Pig Contest. A rough translation of the post, followed by photos and selected comments:
Guanlong, Denghai [in Guangdong province] has the custom of an annual "Great Pig Contest." This contest is a folk ceremony for celebrating an abundant year, similar to praying for a bumper harvest and prosperity. But the spectacle and grandeur of this ceremony is rarely seen in these parts, and in addition the Great Pig Contest promotes growth.
On the 18th day of the first month of the lunar calendar, the site of Denghai’s Great Pig Contest is quite a spectacle. All one can see is over 500 flayed-open fat pigs, each spread on a wooden frame about 1 meter in height. Looking in that direction, one sees a field of snow white. These porcine offerings have their heads held high and their mouths stuffed with tangerines. They look as if they’re leaping forward, presenting a scene of vigor and high spirits. Attached to each wooden frame is a red label reading, " so-and-so fortune and respect" so that each family can identify its own offering. People are milling about, each wanting to be submerged in the center of the crowd, and only bits and pieces can be seen of even the tallest. Shouts echo through the crowd as people try to locate one another.
Every year the largest pig is put forth in the front row with its weight displayed. They’re generally about 1000 jin or more. In addition to labeling it with the family name, the biggest ones were also wearing big red flowers!
These huge pigs have all been raised since last spring. There’s a very rigorous process for keeping them fat and healthy. It’s said that every year the Great Pig Contest takes place on the 17th and 18th of the first lunar month, and that it’s organized on a rotating basis by different family lineages. And as it’s at the beginning of the year, this kind of contest can not only enliven the farmers’ enthusiasm for production and fill the new year with hope, it also increases the atmosphere of joyous celebration.
So lively! My spouse’s family does this too, we call it "Displaying Pigs and Sheep," sometime around the new year. It’s a shame I’ve been unable to see it for many years!
May I ask, what do they do with all the pigs after the contest? If the weather’s a bit hot, wouldn’t the pig flesh start to stink?
Is it interesting? It makes me feel I’ve entered a slaughterhouse. What a strange folk custom!
It’s really a problem, what to do with all that pork.
For those animal rights people, have you never eaten meat before? Who are you kidding?
I wonder how Muslims would feel if they saw this…
Second Life has no Chinese port yet. Welcome to HipiHi, a China-produced and Chinese language version of Second Life.
There’s been some buzz about it over at Second Life Insider, and at various blogs in Virtual China: LaoBai has written a post about it, and a Chinese blogger who reports heavily on Second Life was hired by them just recently.
Screenshots and a demo clip (where you can watch the female commentator’s avatar change into a more provocative outfit as her first task, get it here) reveal a rather unoriginal take on Second Life, though their website claims that they will later provide Flash & cell phone interfaces to the virtual world.
They’re still in private beta right now, so there is time yet for them to define themselves as merely more than a "Chinese Second Life."
They’re hiring too, in Beijing, if you’re interested.
A very smart, balanced, readable report, "How Much Inequality can China Stand?" has just been issued by Nick Young at China Development Brief. The report relies on Chinese scholarly and government data to give a succinct summary of some of the key areas of inequality in China today: gender, income (including intra-rural inequality), access to basic services and social protections such as education and health care, exposure to "externalities" such as the effects of urban congestion and pollution, environment and proximity to pollution, and land use deals.
The report argues that market forces are unlikely to create greater income convergence in the short-term, that state involvement is necessary and that it does exist:
…the predominantly urban NGOs that have emerged over the last decade, the “public intellectuals” who have voiced their concerns and the more adventurous media that have reported those concerns, by no means constitute a coordinated, united or oppositional force. There are, to be sure, some angry individuals who denounce abuses in ways that invite confrontation with the authorities. But the characteristic form of civil society advocacy in China is to call on government leaders to “pay more attention” to this or that social issue, to “hear the voice” of this or that social group, and/or to consult more extensively with NGOs, intellectuals, and the general public….The central government has recently introduced a number of social, economic and fiscal policy measures to alleviate rural hardship. It is too soon to judge the effect of these palliatives but they do at least appear designed to address what was, by the turn of the century, beginning to look like a crisis in the countryside.
Jay Dautcher alerted me to the current number one video on Google Video. It’s been seen over 280,000 times, almost 100,000 of those in the last 24 hours. It’s a 77 minute video called The Rape of Nanking (Nightmare in Nanking), originally produced in English by a Dr. Rhawn Joseph and his Brainmind organization, and now voiced over in Mandarin. Dr. Joseph seems to have a fascination with the strange and macabre, and has produced such bizarre "classics" as Hitler’s Diaries, the Face and Pyramids of Mars, Alpha and Omega Antichrist, and a series of Brain Mind lectures. You can find the English version of Nanking Nightmare in several parts on Youtube, where it has been viewed 135,000 times in the last 3 months. The promo for the video has quotes such as this:
We had fun killing Chinese. We
caught some innocent Chinese and either buried them alive, or pushed
them into a fire, or beat them to death with clubs. When they were half
dead we pushed them into ditches and burned them, torturing them to
death. Everyone gets his entertainment this way. Its like killing dogs
and cats." –Asahi Shimbun, Japanese soldier, describing Japanese
atrocities during the Rape of Nanking.
This year is the 70th anniversary of the massacre. A quick Baidu search turns up a groundswell of attention in the last week or so for the film. For instance, China Youth Daily editor Qiu Haiping wrote an impassioned post on his blog on Feb 22, rallying Chinese viewers to see the film and to show it to their children as well. It was immediately reposted at forums, such as here at Tianya on the same day. Some comments on the Tianya repost:
The Americans see Sino-Japanese relations warming up
so they deliberately put out this film. Bush says to Japan,
look, you’ve got so much hatred with China,
China is not going to let it go. Just be good and let me piss on you.
That evil American government, there’s nothing they won’t think of.
The best teacher for Chinese youth’s anti-Japanese education is Japan itself! The Chinese government has actually been suppressing anti-Japanese sentiment inside China. In 2005, the explosion of anti-Japanese demonstrations was led by the Internet’s development in China. Thanks to the Internet, which has allowed us to understand more truths, and led us to throw away those ridiculous fantasies!
Actually, those Chinese who are familiar with the Japanese atrocities all hold a strong desire for revenge, and hope that China will punish Japan for it one day. Many Chinese don’t want to see any more propaganda from Chinese officials about "Sino-Japanese friendship." We are looking for an excuse for the second Sino-Japanese war. The short-sightedness, bullying and shameless nature of the Japanese are an opportunity for Chinese to get revenge!…
Watch this movie not to make us remember hate, not to make us take revenge, but to make us study history, so that both countries can peacefully coexist.
No matter what the U.S. does, they’re still different from Japan because they are still human. The Japanese will always be beasts.
Check out the great article on Tao Ran’s Beijing military hospital Internet addiction clinic in the Washington Post yesterday. It’s the best inside description I’ve seen yet. One thing it does is highlight the pressure Chinese kids are under to perform academically in middle and high school, the pressure Chinese parents feel to ensure their children’s future success, and the perception that the Internet is only about entertainment and not about learning. An excerpt:
Among the milder cases are those of Yu Bo, 21, from Inner Mongolia, and
Li Yanjiang, 15, from Hebei province. Both said that they used to spend
four to five hours a week online and their daily lives weren’t affected
but that their parents wanted them to cut their computer usage to zero
so they could study. Yu said he agreed to come because he wanted to
train himself. Li said it was because he just wanted to "get away from
my parents."
Another boy was sent by his parents because he wasn’t interested in school and didn’t "have a goal." Now, with the help of a clinic counselor, "he’s mapped out a life plan from now until he’s 84." For some kids the problem is not what they’re doing online, or that they’re addicted to games, but that they are doing anything at all unrelated to studies. And of course, they come from wealthy families. As this comment on an earlier Virtual China post (see below) says: This guys are all in rich family. The reason is the bad education. In
China,15-18 students have to spend at least 9 hours in classroom
everyday (in grade 3,it will increase to 10-12 hours). NO time to playing
basketball/football. if you do something else you will be criticized by
teachers and parents
According to a report I wrote on Chinese young people and education, based on 2005 Chinese educational data,
Ninety-one percent of the Chinese population attends the compulsory six years of primary school and three of junior middle school. At the end of junior middle school students participate in their first major academic hurdle— senior middle school entrance examinations—which weed out about 70% of students from the academic track. Those that don’t end their education here will enter non-degree specialized, vocational, or technical senior high schools. Those who enter academic senior secondary schools spend their time feverishly preparing for the national college entrance examinations that will place them in either 2–3-year junior colleges or 4-year universities. Ultimately, only 7% of those who graduate from junior middle school will attend 4-year universities. Over 60% will end their education at senior high school, without going on to college.
(via China Digital Times)
See also TV Clip on Internet Addicts
It’s hard to take care of the public commons with a population 4 times the size of the U.S. This is especially obvious when you have hundreds of millions people mixing and milling across the country, going home, and taking vacations during their Spring Festival holidays. Often times it’s not the big issues that make a difference, but the
small things that can make daily life and public spaces habitable–or
not. In this spirit, Moobol/Molive.com has a post on Not Forgetting the Small Things During Spring Festival Travels." 小处不可随便" probably has a better English translation, but for now I’ll go with "don’t forget the small things." [Update: or perhaps, "don't forget the little places."]
The story behind the phrase "小处不可随便" "Don’t forget the small things" is also interesting. According to Baidu Knows, a famous KMT official got tired of people peeing around the premises and wrote a sign saying “不可随处小便” "Random Urinating Not Allowed." His calligraphy was so prized that someone stole the sign, cut it into individual characters, and rearranged it into "小处不可随便" "Don’t forget the small things." [Update: Literally, "don't be too casual in small places"]. This has evolved into referring to things that deface little corners of public space, like littering, spitting, and random parking.
Happy New Year! 新年快乐！ 恭喜发财！
Moobol/Molive (photo credits: qazzaq321) presents a glimpse at a rural Chinese New Year (or rather, the cooking done the night before):
More to come! Link to original post.
Was going over my photos from fieldwork done at Microsoft Research Asia last summer and found these photos my friend Neema and I took when we were at the Beijing railway station. We had just asked the counter in one of the waiting rooms about our schedule, and here is a photo of his copy of the schedule:
Computerization? Printing press? Nope.
It was, I believe, written on the back of some soft-card packaging (cigarettes would be my guess).
Jay Dautcher writes: I typed http://www.google.cn.com/ into the URL by accident, check out what
you get - Shenzhen call girls!
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