Dr Norman is outraged that members of a Chinese delegation were able to push him, hit him with an umbrella and rip a Tibetan flag from his grasp.He was protesting as Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping arrived at Parliament greeted by a few dozen pro-China supporters.

Some of the group, believed to be Chinese security, took exception to Dr Norman waving a Tibetan flag and calling for democracy.The MP brushed away attempts to have an umbrella placed in front of him, then clashed with security guards as they pulled the flag from his grasp and threw it on the ground.

He yelled they could suppress freedom of speech in China, but not in New Zealand.

The treatment Russel Norman has received today on the parliament ground is absolutely appalling.  It is no more than a shameless attempt of silencing a dissentient on the land where it suppose to have a freedom of speech. I acknowledge that entourage members do have a duty of protecting VIPs, however, after seeing the unedited footage of the incident, it is clear that the response from Chinese entourage is disproportionate.  Norman had neither had any physical contact with anyone nor vocally provoked such response - well unless "free Tibet" counts as a provocation.

However, I'm not really surprised on how Chinese entourage responded.  The novel yet extremely childish way of using umbrella to cover things that Chinese officials do not want to see is not new.  The first time that such practice brought to the attention of international media is on the 20th anniversary of Tian'anmen Massacre, where plain cloth officers used umbrella to block foreign journalists from filming on Tian’anmen Square.  Since then plain cloth with umbrella has become somewhat a standard practice in any occasion where there is a potential of protests.

What shocked me is how Chinese government is exporting such censorship practice to a foreign country with little or no hesitation.  I’m not a fan of green party, but I applaud the fact  that they never abused their parliamentary privileges – they protested peacefully on every occasion where a Chinese official is visiting. I also have to say that a lone protestor, sometimes also need to confront with a large pro-Chinese crowd, is stirring but also looked a bit stupid.  But don’t get me wrong, they have the right to be stupid, New Zealand didn’t take their right to be stupid away from them, so why should Chinese have such right?

Seeing that Chinese entourage used same way of covering up people as they did back in their own country, is a solid reminder that we simply cannot ignore the pain of others in a country on another hemisphere, just like we cannot let a criminal run loose til the date that he is actually hurting YOU.

Google has been under constant cyber attack from China. Operation Aurora was a large scale one and attracted wide media coverage, but hacking of individual accounts has been going on for quite a while. Many Chinese human right activists and foreign journalists stationed in China have the experience that their gmail account is secretly redirected to another account.

Even worse, Google's four year in China has also been subject to varies accusations made by Chinese state media. China's State Broadcaster, CCTV, once accused Google of "spreading unhealthy information to the country's teenagers", but Chinese netizens have soon discovered that the person ("victim") interviewed in the programme is nothing but a CCTV intern.

I'm not against censorship, but the Chinese authority has a long history of abusing this tool for communist party's own good. In an environment where there is no independent media, Internet neutrality is vital for people to access unbiased and factual information. Not in China. The dispute between Google and Chinese authority has been going on for more than two month now, but even the Chinese authority are unable to specify which Law Google has violated - What they want Google and other Chinese websites to do cannot be put under public eyes.

What Google have done today is nothing more than corrects the mistake it has made 4 years ago, but it has created a far greater impact today than if it had never entered the Chinese market. By taking this simple but definitive act of defiance, Google has told the world that money cannot buy everything, and Chinese government cannot hold its own 1.4 billion people to ransom and use it to ask  the western world to obey.

And for that, I applaud Google's courageous decision.  I also want to see other foreign internet companies in China, especially Microsoft and its search engine bing are reacting to this news. Will they also do the right thing, or continuing act like Marx has described – capitalists will do everything to maximise the profit.

In the past three month I have visited a total of 8 Chinese provinces/multiplicities. My original motive for this travel was to see as much as possible of my home country before I suddenly find myself no longer a student. Unlike many kiwis, I don't like to do OEs as travel isn't really on my favourite list.

However, people, have become another important attraction for me. I was warmly welcomed by my friends online, especially those from twitter in every stage of my travel; some even kindly offered me free accommodations. They come from a variety of background: university students, white-collar workers, social activists whom have spent time in Chinese jails and government officers who are living in a very affluent life.

China is a land full of opportunities. The country is like a giant construction site and everything is played in fast-forward motion - I experienced this in Shanghai, literally. I was circling around Shanghai for about 2 weeks, visiting surrounding cities. Two weeks later, when I get back to Shanghai, I nearly got lost as I was troubling to find the very same accommodation I lived two weeks ago - everything around has changed, business were closed for some kind of redevelopment.

However, this incredible speed comes at a hefty price. Every person I have met, regardless of whether they are pro communist party or not, admit that this country cannot continue on this road forever, both socially and economically. Chinese society has become a kind of jungle, where the strongest survive and become affluent in every way, leaving very little physical and social resources for the poor and less fortunate ones.

This itself isn't wrong, however, relative strength of a person isn't decided he or her ability and skills, but money, power, and guanxi. This left the socially and economically disadvantage group very little opportunity to succeed, making the gaps bigger and bigger as time goes by.

Anyway, enough for the political side.  If you have a few thousand NZ$ floating around, China is a good place to go. It offers you pretty much everything you can imagine at a very modest price. My budget was about #3,000. The only problem is time, China is huge - I was only able to experience a slice of China - Panda, Great Wall, Terracotta Army and Shanghai in three month's time, there are a lot of place I want to go but couldn't find enough time and money.

I'm planning to stay in the country for about 3 month.For most of the time I'll be staying in my hometown , however, I'm also planning to visit number of Chinese cities including Shanghai and Beijing.

I'll be arriving in Shanghai sometime tomorrow morning (2oth) and visiting  cities like Nanjing and Hangzhou in the surrouding area for two weeks before I get to my hometown, Chengdu. So, anyone who would like to buy me a meal, the time to contact me is now :)

I don't think I'll be able to access the Internet for quite a while, I don't have a laptop, and I heard that the Great Firewall of China is now more capable than any other internet censorship system existed in this world. However, I can assure you that this is not the last post of 2009, if I have time and access  then I may update while on the go.

If anyone wants to find me, just leave a message to my email or here, I'll get back to you as soon as possible, but do expect delays.

See you in China:)

But before I go, there are still exams I have to do.

So, the plan is I'll be leaving on 20th November. Before I get home I'll be having a stopover in Shanghai for about 2 weeks. During the period I'll be visiting cities around the area, most likely Hangzhou and Nanjing. Schedule for Beijing is still not yet decided, I'm trying to arrange a trip to North Korea, if it is possible to get into Kim's Realm , Beijing would be part of that trip.

There are several other places like Xinjiang and Taiwan on my list but not planned yet. I highly doubt I'll be able to go as my wallet would unlikely to allow me to do so.

I'll be on my own for most of the time in China, so anyone who would like to buy me a lunch or dinner  will be  much appreciated :)

But I was more interested in the role of Chinese government in regard to leaders like the Dalai Lama and Mrs Kadeer.  Kadeer was not a well-known figure before the unrest in Xinjiang in July this year, before that if you refer that name to a Chinese, he or she is more likely to have very little or no knowledge on who she is.

People sometimes joke that Chinese government regularly award two awards that are even more important than the Nobel, namely GFW's Web Choice award and Chinese Government Recommended Award - if you know a website is blocked by the Great Firewall of China, you know it's a website worth to visit. Similarily, if Chinese government blames someone, you know he or she is worth to listen to.

A state like China needs enemies - if you go back in history, at any point of time, Chinese government always propoganda at least one enemy of the state to its people - the Dalai Lama, oversea chinese democracy movement, "oversea anti-chinese forces" and so on.  This is a bit like Bush administration, it's the only way to divert people's attention.

However, for the speech itself, I was in fact quite disappointed. It was a good introduction for her positions on some issues, but nothing else was there but more of a blame game.  I still think that her popularity is largely due to the help for the communist government, in real life, she's no way near the Dalai Lama.

One curious Chinese bloger wondered, how many days in a year are outlawed by "local laws"? He worte a script and found out that, out of 366 days, 11 of them will result the censorship notice on the search result page, these are:

* 13 January
* 31 May
* 4 June
* 13 June
* 20 June
* 25 June
* 30 June
* 5 July
* 19 September
* 13 Octorber
* 18 December

The rationale behind some of these censored dates are quite obvious, like 4 June is the date symbolises Tiananmen Square Massacre and the recent riots in China's Uyghur dominated Xinjiang Region started on 5 July.

However, even as a politically minded Chinese, I don't quite get why the rest of dates are considered "sensitive". I checked Wikipedia, there are some past events related to China, however, most of them are quite normal and can be hardly considered as sensitive events.

But that's only half of the sentence, what Chinese government really meant is "so stop accusing us". I'm not judging which side has the moral high ground, but I want to point it out that, as that famous "hurt our feelings" remark, I suspect this Chinese version of human rights report is also intended for domestic consumption, rather than a serious attempt to "help" U.S. on human rights record. If that is true, then I have serious doubts on the intelligence of whoever is behind this - making the accuser look bad doesn't mean the accusations made are invalid and the  accused can walk free.

The Chinese report is quite fun to read, and the best thing is, there's an english version, unlike those lazy bums in the States who didn't bother to translate their report.   Highly recommended if you got an hour to kill.

CCTV New building

My deepest condolences to the family of the firefighter who died on his duty, but it's also extremely fortunate that Mandarin Oriental Hotel (owned by cctv) is not completed yet so it's likely that nobody was actually inside the building.

But no sympathy for CCTV though, it deserves this, and with little bit of guilt, I was kind of hoping that  the main building also catches the fire.

And I was amazed on how fast the social network like Twitter responded to this news. Pictures of the building on fire were already widely circulated less than half an hour after the fire, and official media were busy reporting another fire in Australia ... another prove to show that even the State thinks foreign lives are more valuable than Chinese.

As the Herald reported today, Fonterra confirms that it has sent Sanlu an European Union "provisional statement" on health effects of melamine, the file states a safe level of concentration below 20mg/kg . I blogged this  in my Chinese blog month ago, but forgot to mention it here:)

This changes the whole situation a bit though, what I knew was an "EU standards", not "provisional statement". One of the reasons why Sanlu kept selling tainted milk powders even after contaminants were discovered, is because that its boss, Tian Wenhua was confident that the "standard"  provided by Fonterra shows there's a safe level, so Sanlu mixed good powders with bad ones to keep the concentration of melamine in individual packaging below that level. To this date the evidence shows that they really did well to control the concentration of melamine below 10mg/kg for products after August.

As reported by Chinese media, Fonterra directors did not "reject" the whole idea of the controlling measures - this tells me Fonterra not just knew the contamination, but also did not try to stop production of melamine contaminated milk.

Now this directly contradicts to what Fonterra said today:

" ... However, he (Andrew Ferrier) said Fonterra was "vividly clear" to Sanlu that the only acceptable level of melamine was zero"

Really? So what happened between August and September? They dodgy Chinese did all without Fonterra's knowledge? Well, we are talking about common sense here, if you got a 43% stake in  a large company, and you know it is in trouble, will you keep your eyes shut on your investment?

I still maintain my position, although none of Fonterra directors faced court in China, they should at least face investigations here at home.

There aren't many of celebrations happen in New Zealand and the weather isn't spring-like at all, but luckily, this year's new year's day coincides with Auckland anniversary, which means that I can spent the new year's day to do what ever people are suppose to do in new year ... I don't know really, my family tend to keep it very simple by just gather family friends and dine together on New Year's day.

What you do isn't that important anyway, the important thing is to maintain that cultural tie with your root.

I understand for many, last year was "a year of chaos", financial crisis, earthquake in China ... I think the best thing to have in new year is not necessarily a bank account with a substantial total, but a healthy body and peace for every family members and friends.  The earthquake in My home province, Sichuan taught me that I should cherish whatever I got at the moment and every moment I have with my family - you just don't know how lucky you really are.

My heart is with all the people who lost their loved ones in the earthquake, as I understand, most of them will spend this new year in temporary housing, with worries that aftershock that may strike anytime.

I always believe that to domestic market, CC's CCTV (lots of CCs, if you can guess what the first two Cs stand for:)) strongly  reassembles a lot of characteristics of the telescreen. Xinwen Lianbo would be an obvious example, every night at 7, if you want to watch TV, that's pretty much the only thing available as it is simulcasted in every major Chinese TV channel.

So will this new channel become an International Edition of the telescreen? I don't know, aren't we already got CCTV 9?

I tried to watch CCTV 9 a while but it's just got too boring eventually, BBC WORLD offers a much wider perspective, more up to date news. What CCTV 9 really amused me is that, no matter what kind of news programme you are watching (like "Asia Today", "World Wide Watch", or "BizChina"); no matter what happened to the World,  the headline almost always stay the same, usually involving a high ranking government official or communist party boss meet foreign visitors, or their words on various issues.

Clearly, to be a respected and trusted world new channel, you must got both global perspective and an editorial independence. Global perspective ... can be possible but I don't expect it from CCTV, but editorial independence? I guess we got another hundred year to wait.

Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions.

Most of us should have no problem with this kind expression, but let me remind you that in Asia, there's a hyper-sensitive country with fragile feelings, which its regime still insists that communism is the only way forward

China's state television, CCTV actually broadcasted Obama's inauguration live on its news channel. If my memory serves me right, this is the first time they have done such thing, and I think CCTV should be praised for that.

However, its hyper-sensitivity eventually kicked in. The live pictures were cut moments after Obama mentioned "Communism". The relative paragraph in Obama's speech is also removed in the "full text" of the speech published on most Chinese websites.

Even as a Chinese, I have great difficulty of understanding where this hyper-sensitivity comes from. When he mentions communism, he clearly means Soviet Union. Well, we all know China is more of a capitalist country anyway. If Ministry of Truth has problem on how Obama weights communism and facism as kind of the same thing ... if you can read Chinese,have a look on how Minitrue finds an "appropriate place" for the CCP.

Despite the hyper-sensitivity thing, I think Chinese media generally did well this time. Yes they removed parts from the "full text" of the Obama's speech, but most of them were forced to do so. But look at the brighter side, Obama's remark made to the public airwave tells me that Live pictures on CCTV probably are in fact, live pictures and not delayed - now that's quite rare, especially for political events.

The whole list can be found here(in Chinese).

The interesting thing about this list is that it covered majority of the most popular websites in China. Google was ranked number one "vulgar" site, followed by Baidu and Sina. I'm very confident that every Chinese netizen have visited at least one of such vulgar websites, myself included. So after being diagnosed as psychotic under the Chinese guideline because I need to work on my computer for too long,  I'm now also officially a vulgar and unhealthy person because I have visited at least 75% of the websites listed.

Most of the Chinese netizens are very familiar with such Internet Cleansing campaign as it was repeated many times in the past decade. Despite that most of the cleansing was justified under the banner of "please think of the children"(which itself is a logical fallacy) ,it's usually the adult internet users who are most affected.

Have these campaigns worked, anyway? Well, the funny thing is, thanks to the new Xinhua Search engine, an official search engine intended to censor vulgar information,  if you know the right keyword, you can find as many "vulgar" information as you can expect to find in most commercial websites. I can list you an endless list of examples of vulgar information that can be found on Chinese official news websites like the Xinhua Net: this, this, this ,or this, and the list goes on,  and yet they were never criticised by anyone.

It's a common sense that it is impossible to censor out all those "unhealthy" stuffs if somebody really wants to find them, as there is a market for it.

As a regular user of the most vulgar website (Google), I cannot recall not even once that Google returns me "unhealthy" information, unless I deliberately searched for it (I admit it, haha) - not to mention Google has a optional filter that censors images and texts, which is very effective in my opinion. Therefore it is hard for me not jump to the conclusion that the accusation of search engines means that creators of the list, themselves deliberately searched "vulgar" information in order to produce the list.

So now who's unhealthy and vulgar?

In my idea, protect the future generation probably wasn't the original purpose of all those internet cleansing campaigns, and the campaigns themselves, are kind of the ridiculous - find me another country on this planet which labels the absolutely majority of its netizen population as "internet addicted" and "vulgar"?

Most of the Chinese parents, including mine, are not as tech-savvy as their children, some don't even use the internet, TV and newspaper are still their major sources of information, which are still largely controlled by the state. Strangely, they are in fact the targeted audience of such campaign.

So it's not surprising that I have met too many Chinese parents who didn't hesitate to use corporal punishment to their children just because they logged onto the Internet without parents' knowledge, because deeply in their mind, the word "internet" means "evil". Sounds shocking but luckily, as the post 80's generation are gradually becoming parents themselves, use of such corporal punishment are now less common.

However, for the older generation, although their children are now grown up and corporal punishment won't work on them any more, but bear in mind that they are now the most powerful generation in China, in 40-50s(or even older), financially stable; and as they usually have the directorial positions in organisations or their work places, this group is also potentially a powerful political force.

Now the long demonisation of the Internet is starting to make sense to me.

The herald has a report on the reaction from Fonterra, New Zealand's biggest company which had 43% share of the Sanlu Company. The prosecutors of this case also disclosed more details on the case, here's my translation of  the summary, and the original is here (in Chinese).

• While sick babies appeared as early as in march last year, Chairwomen of Sanlu only learnt the problem with their product in May, and nobody knew the actual cause (melamine) . Sanlu product was sent away  for inspection on July 24. To keep the issue secret, the inspector was informed by Sanlu that the samples they received are "some raw materials".
• An emergency meeting was held on 1 August, hours after Sanlu received the report back the inspector.  Fonterra claims this is the first time that the issue has come under their attention. News from the Chinese side seems to confirm the claim, however, with one thing missing in the herald report: although Fonterra wanted a product recall, their directors "did not reject" the proposal of not to recall openly but to do it in secret.
• Chairwoman of Sanlu, Tian Wen Hua, made a report to local government a day after the emergency meeting, but had no clear response.
• First Chinese media report on the link between kidney stones and Sanlu products, published on September 9. As Herald reported earlier,   New Zealand Ambassador to China was instructed to act on the issue on September 8.

You know the rest.

I think it's becoming more and more clear that New Zealand government played a big part of making the scandal public, and NZ officials' should be praised for their effort.

However,  there's also more evidence pointing out that there was indeed a cover up at some level, possibly between Sanlu and Hebei Provincial government. And I have to say, if Fonterra really tried hard to make the recall happen as they claimed before,  there's no reason why the total public recall shouldn't happen in Augest. I'm still very suspicious of the Fonterra's involvement in the cover up.

I think its time to go off topic a bit. What I usually do in my Chinese blog is to dig up some video clips from youtube, and introduce them here. I tend to turn my attention to the ads on TV ... for no apparent reasons.

------

First one is a promo from National Geographic Channel Australia. If you watch other versions of the channel, the chance is, you have never seen the following clip before as it is for the Australian version only.

This is the most beautiful, in fact, most elegant piece of art I've ever seen on all the television channels you can get in New Zealand. But sadly, as a lot of wonderful things in New Zealand, this promo is also made in Aussie.

Second one is an ad of gorilla drumming and trying to sell you ... Cadbury Chocolate.

I understand this "gorilla campaign" débuted in the United Kingdom some time in 2007, and New Zealanders saw this ad on their tellies a year later. The ad was a huge success in the UK and it was so prominent, there is even a Wikipedia article for it. In New Zealand, the ad helped the song in the ad (Phil Collins, "In the Air Tonight") re-enter the NZ singles chart and briefly reached #1.

However, I am still having difficulty of understanding how this ad is suppose to work. What's the connection between a gorilla drumming and chocolates? This ad appeared on TV many times but I still cannot recall which brand the ad is for before the brand name appears at the end.

Third one is a Kiwi classic - "we don't know how lucky we are". I doubt if there is need for me to introduce this song to New Zealand audiences.

This is a remake version as no original version is available on youtube at the moment. Sadly, again, as a lot of good things in New Zealand, they are either made in Australia, or become Australian later like John Clarke.

The last one is an example of how not to do your TV ads. It's in Chinese so I'll explain it a bit later.

If you were suspecting your computer crashed like how a video tape jams a player, you are far from alone. It's in Chinese, and there are basically three parts:

恒源祥，北京奥运会赞助商，龙龙龙！

Heng Yuan Xiang, sponsor of the Beijing Olympics, dragon dragon dragon !

First part is the brand name, second part is very self explanatory. The phrase has been repeated 12 times in the ad, and only the last part is different in every loop. Like in the example, the ad went on to read every Chinese zodiac animal three times in every 'loop". Hardly innovative, but highly annoying. When this ad first appeared on Chinese TV, most people I know got up from their couch and had a very close inspection of their TV just to make sure it is still working.

There were also people who went further and called their local TV Stations, besought the station to take off the ad. I wasn't in China at the time but I understand for the business, it was a huge campaign and the ad appeared in almost all channels.

However, I do like to talk about it a bit. My original post was trying to make fun out of  this "hurt feelings" phenomena to make the topic looks less serious -  as I do in pretty much every political issue. I did express a bit of my opinion but it was quite blur and was largely undetected by translators.

By publishing that post, I hoped that  my fellow countrymen can have their own opinion on these four questions:

• Did those countries really hurt their feelings?
• Why more than 1/5 of the world are such "culprits"?
• Is there any country that has genuinely hurt their feelings not on the map?
• Or is there something wrong with that kind of diplomatic expression?

I don't mind how they would be positioned on the political spectrum, as long as they start to think themselves, not to just follow what's being said in People's Daily or Global Times, then I'm happy.

It wasn't just a pointless internet research to kill some time, I got many previously unknown facts to me out of it. The biggest "feeling hurter" of Chinese people's feelings for the last century, which is Russia in my opinion, despite the fact that it has accommodated the Dalai Lama's visits before, was not on the map. The phrase was never used on Russia even in the worst times between the two countries.

Instead, it's the countries like Nauru or St Lucia, which most ordinary Chinese would have great difficulty of finding them on a world map that have hurt the "Chinese people's feelings".

It was also discovered that meet the Dalai Lama does not necessarily "hurt Chinese People's feelings". It is highly circumstantial - Sarkozy suffered a storm of Chinese criticisms for having a conversation with the Dalai Lama; but the Polish president did that too, and hosted the Sarkozy - Dalai Lama meeting on Polish soil, and yet still got away with it.

Compare with that, Iceland and Jordan, hurt Chinese people's feeling by allowing the visit of former vice president of Republic of China Lien Chan in the late 90s. Needless to say, he later turned out to be an "old and great friend" of Hu's.

The reflections of my findings I gathered from China-related blogsphere were surprisingly diverse - as long as my fellow countrymen start to think themselves rather than just follow what's being said in the People's Daily or the Global Times, then I'm happy that my effort is worth something.

Most people seem to agree with me on the fact that the vast majority of the "hurt feelings" incidents happened after 1970s is as the result of China opening up itself to the world  - the famous economic reform（改革开放）started in 1978 by Deng Xiaoping.

However, some attributed that fact to Mao's death in 1976, suggesting that his departure left Chinese people's feelings unprotected and vulnerable to the outside world, and the economic reform has severely undermined the interests of ordinary Chinese people.

Some Chinese netizens were equally surprised as myself to discover that countries like Australia, South Korea or Russia were not the map. Equally, other people were surprised to find countries like Albania ("the only shining beckon of communism in the sea of Soviet revisionism/Capitalist Europe? [I'm not quite sure]") in the list. What do these facts mean is up to their own interpretation.

It also raised discussions about the phrase "hurt Chinese people's feelings" itself. I always regarded it as a very absurd and childish thing to say on the diplomatic stage.  Countries don't hurt each other's feelings - they speak with 'carrot and stick'(at least for now). You don't say somebody hurts your feelings when he attacked you
with a stick, you either fight back (... well, if you are powerful enough) or just get over with it.  Put yourself in a 'weak' position and make yourself sounds like the "justified" side does not do anything good but only fuels unhealthy hate and revenge thoughts among the general public as people discover that crying for "hurt feelings" won't solve anything.

And even worse, repeated use of the phrase diminishes the power of the "real" feelings of the Chinese people. The value of Chinese people's feelings deflates every time the phrase is being used - it looks less important in the foreign eyes as the feelings can be "hurt" repeatedly with no apparent consequences.

There are people who do feel that their feelings have been genuinely hurt by the countries I listed, and made a good use of my map by keeping it for future "revenge".

However, for most of the Chinese who remain apolitical for most of the their life, the expression is just something demonstrating the total
disconnect between the State's affairs and real people's life. What's the point to care who's been hurting me lately? I don't run the country, and I never had a say on anything even regarding of my own feelings.

What do you think? Any different thoughts? I would love to hear it from you.

But as the author of the book "The rape of Nanking"  Iris Chang notes, she fears that: "this reversion in human social evolution, would be reduced to a footnote of history, treated like a harmless glitch in a computer program that might or might not again cause a problem, unless someone forced the world to remember it." The facts of this massacre are still largely unnoticed in rest of the world.

Remembering a historical atrocity is to remember the full picture of it, not just the hate involved. There were also people who cared, who did something to try to stop the tragedy, and we are forever graceful for them. John Rabe, despite of his Nazi Party member stuatus, saved at least 100,000 Chinese lives in Nanking Safety Zone.  John Magee, an American missionary who risked his life to secretly film the masscre in Nanking,  just wannted the world to know that should do something.

Lest we forget.

But if the is named  "Chinese democracy" ... well, the word "democracy" itself is enough to draw attention from the most sensitive government in the world, the Chinese government.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang was asked by BBC China correspondent, James Reynolds about the music, he replied:

"According to my knowledge, a lot of people don't like this kind of music - because it's too noisy, and too loud. James, I think you are a mature adult, aren't you?"

Actually I would agree the first bit, Classic and country music are far more gentle than rock, that's why I liked them rather than rock. But I just find it hard to believe that a foreign ministry spokesman, who frequently attacks others "hurt the feelings of Chinese people", to label rock lovers as "immature".

I don't think this smug, ignorant spokesman would never realise how many "immature" people out there who loved the band for more than two decades.

This sure adds to my collection of jokes from Chinese Foreign ministry. I have chinese blog entry on their laughable comments on human rights, if my collection accumulates to a reasonable level, I'll translate them to English or maybe create a hall of fame for them.

The stamp is a parody of the tainted milk scandal in China. Chinese characters in the picture means "this blog does not contain melamine. Approved by General Administration Responsible to Grant Quality Supervision Exemption(a parody of China’s General Administration of Quality Supervision).

Related news(Chinese): To restore consumer confidence, a "no melamine was found in this product" sticker is added to the cover of all dairy products produced before September 18th.