Bear's Blog New Zealand (Beta)

A Chinese struggles to protect his property (updated!)

UPDATE:(28 March) The Houseowner's blog is closed by its BSP without any prior notices, but the house is still standing.

UPDATE: (25 March) After the house owner putted up another banner " The country [China] respects and protects human right", all media have been silenced and online discussions were forced to end as a result of increasing control.

There is now no way for me to receive latest situations. The nail house is still there but I doubt it can survive through the night today.

UPDATE: (6.00pm Beijing Time, 24 March) The house is still safe, confirmed by various bloggers. It's another nightfall in China now.

UPDATE: (4.40pm Beijing Time, 24 March) All chinese media received a notice from State Council media bureau requesting removal of all reports and posts related to this issue online. There is no way for me to hear latest news now. Fate of this house is still unknown.

UPDATE: (23 March) the court has said it will not pull down the two-story building today.(Shanghai Daily)

A house or an Island? A real ' house' in Chonqqing, China.*

"No one in China will sleep tonight, at least all members of my family." - A Chinese Netizen, 22 March.

"No man is an island, but his house may be" - The Independent, South Africa

A picture can say thousands of words.

Chongqing residents Yang Wu and his wife Wu Ping are now the most famous public figures in China. They are the owner of that house, or should I call it an island?

Pictures of this sometimes referred as "9th wonder of the world", were uploaded online by netizens around early March, and immediately become the most viewed picture in the China.

A house or an Island?From different point of view.

The property developer wants to acquire their and surrounded land to start a commercial plaza project, but cannot agree claims from Yang Wu, that his 210 sq2 and two-storey building worth about 20 million Yuan (approx. $NZ 3.7 million). He demanded the compensation or a new house of same area and close location.

Yang Wu and his wife has been deal with the developer for more than 2 years and still cannot come to a settlement.

The problem is, it is a common knowledge in China that all property developers are having close relationship of local governments, and sometimes the local government even depends on developers to maintain its taxation and ... possibly bribes.

That's also why property disputes are so rife in China, so many of them are illegal and also usually involves unfair treatment from the government. Another recent case is a property owner killed 2 government employees because they want the owner to give up his house immediately to give way for a commercial project.

Despite the fact that this old house is a private property of Yang Wu, and that the new development project have absolutely no whatsoever relationship with public interest, after the house went under the public light, the local court ordered the owner to tear down the house before 23 March or it will be torn down by force.

The deadline passed already.

Since the house has been seiged by developer's wide and steep trench, no one lives in there. After the court decision that has caused a wide spread anger in China, owner of the house, Yang Wu, moved back to the house with stored gas supplies, food, drink water that I believe is enough for him to stay there about a week.

A Chinese netizen's view on the courage of Yang Wu.

Chinese media described this holdout house as a "stubborn nail house"（钉子户）,because it's like a nail that cannot easily be removed from wood.

“I just want my lawful right to be respected,” Yang Wu said, “It is unfair to order us to tear down the house before a settlement is reached.” He waves Chinese national flag on the “Island” and putted up a banner, says “Citizens’ private property right is inviolable.” – A sentence directly from the Chinese Constitution.

Most people thought that the house will be demolished right on clock at 12am, 23 March. This court decision has sparked wide anger through Netizens.

Hours before the final deadline, some people in Chongqing were starting to gather outside the building site, shouting, screaming and even singing the Internationale, no police was at the scene but the situation was quite intense.

People not live in Chongqing were gathered in major online discussion forums and BBS in China, posting their anger and trying to stop the house to being tear down by force. This even cause some servers to crash - the highest peak I observed were about 2 posts a second, and there are reports say that some websites' pageview were millions higher than usual.

A local television in Shanghai broadcasted live pictures from the scene, but stopped for less than half an hours, after received 'pressure' from government. Other Medias said nothing about this before the deadline, but it doesn't matter anyway.

Some netizens volunteered to go to the scene and report the latest situation. All 'official media' were totally discarded by people.

China's first private property law was just passed a month ago and is to be effective on October the 1st this year. Most netizens cares about the fate of this house as it is an indicator that whether the government really willing to protect people's property or just another useless law passed.

Even some netizens believe they are witnessing an important chapter of history in China. They think the house should be treated as a monument of Chinese struggle to get protection of their property, a monument of democratic and civic rights movement in China ... if it can survive from a court decision. People cliams if anyone dear to tear down the house without a mutual agreement with the owner, they will lose all confidence to the communist government.

"China is sleepless tonight", a netizen said, it was 3am local time but he still does not want go to bed. He was too afraid that those 'bad people' will tear down the house while everyone is sleeping.

Possibly because the strong public voice present, bulldozers at the building did not operate after the passing of deadline. But there will be another night again, and again. Who knows what will happen? People cannot to stay awake every night.

*all photos in the post were from cat898 and and were used in a good faith. Copyright license of this blog doesn't apply to those photos.

--------------------

This story is also on:

The Telegraph, United Kingdom
France24, France
The New Zealand Herald, New Zealand
The Independent, South Africa
Daily Times, Pakistan
BBC NEWS, United Kingdom

....

And much more to come.

Daylight Saving time ended.

I personally strongly oppose to the extension of Daylight Saving Time (DST).

New Zealand was in what GMT +11 time zone before, if my memory serves me right. There was never a shortage of people request extension of DST, government listened, and extented the summer.

Eventually the DST overruled the normal time i.e the DST time period is far longer than normal time. What we should do then? Move the whole timezone forward.

The same situation seems to happening again, and take my word, we will eventually move New Zealand's timezone again, possibly to the another side of international date line, which isn't a bad thing in some means as it gives you an extra day...

But the weather last week across the country proved one thing: we can't change the rules of nature, and the nature won't run as the way we hoped. When summer ends, it means that.

If some people want enjoy summer everyday, I have a simple solution: when the sun comes up you wake up, when the sun goes down, that should put you into sleepy bed as well.

Oh sorry, did I forget your night life?

However, I support to move DST forward few weeks.

Principles of economics, translated

A hilarious clip about basic principles of economics shown by my lecturer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVp8UGjECt4

And here's a proper paper version:

http://www.improb.com/airchives/paperair/volume9/v9i2/mankiw.html

I still believe economics is a subject that you should learn from life, not class: it holds just too many things constant but in real life, people are in fact influenced by those 'many things'.

How economics explain this? "People are influenced by incentives."

Em… an interesting test

Though it's based on American politics but the result is still reasonable for me ... sure I support labour and democrats.

You are a Social Liberal (73% permissive) and an... Economic Liberal (30% permissive) You are best described as a:Democrat Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid Also: The OkCupid Dating Persona Test

a disgusting New Zealand Chinese news website

There is a Chinese version of this post in Bear's Blog China>>>>>>>
这篇日志在Bear's Blog China有中文版本>>>>>>>

Most Chinese media in New Zealand don't have much 'real journalism'. You don't expect to see first hand news except news happened inside the Chinese community. For news across the country what most Chinese media do is to translate English version into Chinese version.

But sadly most time you cannot expect  'word to word' translations because opinions and the way those media view the news story were added (and I believe that’s not very consistent with usual copyright agreements)Here is just a case about what kind of things a Chinese media is really thinking about:

Original news: Korean bus crash victim recovering, plans to stay in NZ - New Zealand Herald

A young Korean tourist who lost her arm in a bus crash last month plans to stay in New Zealand permanently.

Kuy-ri Suk, 19, was one of three people whose right arms were amputated after the bus carrying 15 tourists rolled on State Highway 1 near Tokoroa, on February 10...

...Her family had decided to establish a new home in Hamilton, in order to support her through the rehabilitation process...

When translated into Chinese, the title goes like this:

韩国少女看来只能用右手臂换取留身份在新西兰 (Korean girl gave up her right arm as the only way to get Premanent Residency in New Zealand.) - skykiwi.com

I sent a email immediately to protest this title , and there were also number of comments at end of the news page questioning whether the editor still 'has any humanity left'.

But what really disgusted me is the reply made by seems another editor of the site:

"...对于你提到的文章，事实是个无奈的选择，如果你是成年人，我相信你应该理解这个标题的意思。如果告诉你 用钱，或者其他来换取任何人的手臂，我相信这个事情很难办到。因为谁也不会去答应这样的交换，可是残酷的事实已经发生了，有点补偿难道你不需要吗？..."

Translation:

"...about the news item you have questioned, if you are an adult, you should understand the real meaning of the title. It is a fact that not many people will give up his right arm in exchange for money and other things. However as the incident happened already, don't you think there should be some forms of compensation?..."

"……我们也是本着还原新闻本质的观点出发，尽量想让大家去看到事件的真相。另外，good news is not a news。这就是我们的想法，对于你的批评我们会尽力改正，同时在看到你的这封信后，我已经及时更改了相应的题目。……"

Translation:

"... We were acted the way that restores the true stories behind the news in order to let our readers to see them. And we also think that "Good news is not a news". However, according to your complaint, we have changed the problem title immediately..."

That's it, no apologies at all. However the editor changed the title and also deleted all the comments that were questioning his humanity.

I have no interest to talk about his customer service style. It's for you to judge a customer service person that replies something like "if you are an adult you should understand the real meaning of the title" to an experienced Chinese writer and currently a Chinese columnist.

But what really amused me is that they don't even truly understand what they have done, or just acted like they don't know any thing about it. I believe any normal person would not reply something like "... We were acted the way that restores the true stories behind the news..." when dealing issues of this kind. So there are only two possibilities left: this interpreter/editor is either speaker of Martian language, or he really does not have any humanity left...

Skykiwi.com is one of the most famous Chinese news website in New Zealand. Mainstream media such as New Zealand Herald reference its Chinese community news frequently. I am hugely disappointed about the way skykiwi.com has acted and considering to make a formal complaint to related authority and boycott this website.

First week at Uni.

Not too bad, atually.

Though I still don't quite understand how I changed myself from Biological Sciences to Planning, as those two are 99% unrelated, first week was quite happy to be there.

We went Town Hall this Thursday for a presentation about Planning in Auckland City, hosted by the deputy mayor, Bruce Hucker, i.e. the one who's quoting "Business class travel is worth it". The presentation went bit bored but the inner decorations, and the town hall, the building itself is quite elegant.

Lecture classes are OK, except the speed of teaching which I may still need bit time to cope with that. However I can see the studio class must be very bored in the future: a whole day in one classroom, doing what lecturers called the "team work".

Also the homeworks have increased as well, everyday there are articles to read, and in the future there is also some field works that may require people go there in their own time.

It's the first week, but I still have four years to go....