Posts Tagged ‘China’

not bad, but just that.

It's weekend so I didn't mind to spent pretty much whole night to watch the Olympics opening ceremony.

I didn't expected a lot out of Director Zhang Yimou（张艺谋）,so I must say it was better than I expected.

It got lots of things in it, Four Great Inventions of ancient China, the great voyage of Zheng He, teachings from "Analects" ... etc.

I don't know, non-chinese may think them as very interesting, but at least I think, the performance lacked "real substances", just 2008 people wearing ancient chinese dress or tai-chi suit running around - without a objective.

TV ONE didn't prepare well for the live coverage, it lacked commentaries. Even I found it difficult to understand what are all those people running around suppose to mean; for people who have little or knowledge on Chinese history, I imagine there is no possibility that they well ever understand any parts of the ceremony.

What I liked was the first theme - use of drums to count down.  Great light effect, very majestic, yet it is still closely linked to Chinese culture - well, if my memory serves me right, drumming in the night, or dusk traditionally is a gesture of sending the deceased on the final journey, the road to burial.

Anyway, it's not too bad  though, TV ONE should have highlights today, have look if you got time, or here.

19th Anniversary

Trust me, nothing happened on this site, honest.(click to enlarge)

19 years ago today, nothing happened on Tian An Men Square.

In China, people are still not allowed to discuss this issue freely and openly. Many netizens refer this day as the "G-spot" of the Chinese government, if you touch it without permission, all sorts of strange reactions appear.

Sometimes the reaction from government just gets ridiculously ridiculous:even the Chinese phrase of the date " June the 4th" in is banned in some chinese search engines.

This kind of government is either suffering from total lack of self-confidence, or really did something bad 19 years ago. I suspect the latter is the case, although some facts of Tiananmen Square Massacre are still on hot debate.

By the way, the cartoon is also banned in China, which is kind of ... pathetic. If you never seen this episode of The Simpsons, the plot can be found here.

Please help China’s earthquake victims

The 7.8 magnitude earthquake in Sichuan Province, China has so far killed 20,000 people in the area, with millions affected.

This death toll is expected to reach 50,000 in near future as more bodies recovered from under the rubbles.

Those who survived are in urgent need of clean water, food, proper shelter and medicines or they may soon facing new disasters like starvation and diseases.

Sichuan is my home province. I have many friends and relatives live in the area. All of them survived, but for some, their houses, their possessions, everything they had have been lost. They are tramatised and don't know how to live through.

I cannot imagine the mental suffers people who lost their family members, their friends, their beloved ones are now having.

A lot of schools collapsed in the earthquake. Hundreds of students are still stranded under tons of rubbles. For one town, 80% of young generation might be lost in this disaster. I cannot imagine what enormous amount of courage would required to help those parents to live through this hard time.

Even a big country like China cannot cope a natural disaster in this scale. There is a shortage of tents, clean water, and transport equipment to get those aids to the people affected. Lightweight rescue tools such as hammer and jack are also in desperate shortage.

We have the power to help.

We may not have the ability to resurge those who passed away in this very unfortunate natural disaster, but we can help by reduce amount of the unneccessary death after the disaster simply just because there is lack of clean water or food.

With your donation, we can provide the people affected food and clean water to help them survive through possibly hardest time of their lives.

Most importantly, our help give them hope. They will know that they are not alone, people around the world care about them, and want help them to live on, to rebuild their home, their once a peaceful town in  beautiful mountain valleys.

This appeal is also very personal. I've been to many of the towns destoryed in this earthquake many times before: the region was my usual summer camp ground. Please take my word, the people there were the friendliest and kindest locals I've never seen in other parts of China and the World. I really don't know what they have done to deserve such a punishment.

Red Cross New Zealand and around the world are now taking donations. If you are reading this from New Zealand, please visit here to make a donation(select campaign "China Earthquake"). If you are reading in other parts of the World, please contact your local Red Cross, Red Crescent or Red Crystal to ask the details on how to make a donation to help china earthquake victims or visit their website.

There is a chinese proverb says something like "a picture's worth a thousand words".If all I said cannot persuade you to help them, I think you should have a look this photo (warning: shock picture)before you turn down my appeal.

Earthquake in China

As you may know, a powerful earthquake measured 7.8 on richter scale hit Sichuan, south-western province of China early yesterday. The earthquake was felt from Beijing to as far as Pakistan’s northland region and Bangkok, Thailand.

The latest death toll is at least 10,000 people are feared dead.

I have some close relatives and many friends in the Chengdu City, provincial capital of Sichuan Province and surrounding regions. The city is just located about 100 km away from the epicentre. I’m still unable to contact most of them at the moment due to heavy destruction of telecommunication equipment in the area.

The city government has confirmed that at least 300 people have died. From the ones I’m able to contact, I understand that most of 5 million+ Chengdu people in the city were too afraid to go home, they have spent last night on the street, with occasional heavy rains.

In towns close to the epicentre, which I have visited most of them before, thousands of people have died. In one county alone, up to 5,000 people are feared dead.

And the authority is still struggling to reach the epicentre, towns in Wenchuan County. I’ve been to the region before, I still remember clearly that during my visit I have to be on the car for a whole day to travel just 450km in this mountainous region .

There are at least 60,000 people live just right on the epicentre and we still know nothing about their situation because all the road are blocked and the heavy rain prevented helicopters to reach the region.

I pray for the god to show mercy on those people.

insult to Chinese people?

CNN was recently hot on Chinese agenda, for allegedly "insulting the Chinese people".

I heard a lot of about this last week, however, as I was straggling with my assignments, I really did not have time to find out what Mr Jack Cafferty, the CNN commentator said about Chinese.

Then I found transcipt, which I verified its source to make sure it is exactly how it happened. The alleged insult took place in CNN's "The Situation Room", when host Wolf Blitzer asked a question about American's relationship with China to CNN political commentator, Jack Cafferty.

The controversial conversation, is as below:

BLITZER: One of the arguments that some of the pro-China elements is making, Jack, is that this is a very different China today than existed 10 years ago, certainly 20 or 30 years ago. This communist regime today is almost like a capitalist regime. They’re a huge economic superpower and that we have a lot at stake in maintaining this economic relationship with China.

CAFFERTY: Well, I don’t know if China is any different, but our relationship with China is certainly different. We’re in hawk to the Chinese up to our eyeballs because of the war in Iraq, for one thing. They’re holding hundreds of billions of dollars worth of our paper. We also are running hundred of billions of dollars worth of trade deficits with them, as we continue to import their junk with the lead paint on them and the poisoned pet food and export, you know, jobs to places where you can pay workers a dollar a month to turn out the stuff that we’re buying from Wal-Mart.

So I think our relationship with China has certainly changed. I think they’re basically the same bunch of goons and thugs they’ve been for the last 50 years.

The word "they" in the highlighted sentence was intrepreted as "Chinese people" in Chinese news reports. I doubt this, for simple reasons. Blitzer's question clearly defined the word "China" as the "communist regime", and Cafferty was talking about economical issues, although what he said was very extremist, I just cannot the reason why the last "they" word should be interpreted as anything else but Chinese government.

This "insult" angered many Chinese saying that they will boycott CNN. However, I don't really know how they are planning to boycott CNN, since they cannot watch CNN in their Cable TV anyway.

Although I don't feel offended about this, I believe Mr Cafferty should still apologise as his comments were really ambiguous, which he properly did, he apologised to those who "interpreted the comments in this way."

There is a trouble commonly seen across western media on how to properly refer a country called China, or Chinese government. In most cases, we refer American government as "Washington" or "the White House", British government as" the Downing Street", there is no ambiguity.

However, because of the complexicity of Chinese issues (Taiwan, Tibet ...), the word "China" can have different meanings in people with different political stands. Some of possible intrepretations on the word "China" I can think of:

• People's Republic of China's de facto controlled area, i.e. mainland China plus Hong Kong and Macau --- pro-independence people from Taiwan would interprete the word in this way.
• Republic of China, i.e. Taiwan --- likely interpretation by pro-unification people from Taiwan
• Mainland China only --- Some Hong Kong and Macau people would interprete the word in this way.
• Mainland China + Hong Kong + Macau + Taiwan --- offical interpretation of the word "China", by the PRC Government, Most people from PRC would interprete the word in this way too.

... and no need to mention, pro-independence tibetans interprete the word as the Han culture dominanted area of PRC, i.e. exclude Tibet.

The word "Chinese" can cause even more trouble. Oh, and the phrase "mainland China" I used includes Tibet, because it is a fact at this moment, and if you discuss Tibet seperately, you'll find that there are just unlimited number of possible interpretations.

If you are a journalist reading this, I strongly suggest you that next time when reporting on the issues relating to "China", don't forget to be more specific on what "China" you are really taking about, refer to their full names such as "PRC government" or "mainland Chinese people", otherwise when you wake up one day you may just find yourself under hails of criticisms and even death threats made by extremists from one or both side of the Taiwan Strait.

About ... free trade deal with China

Aunty Helen Clarke is in U.K.. Yesterday she appeared on Hardtalk, BBC's flagship interview programme. It's only 30 minutes long, but a lot of issues were discussed, from republican movement to carbon neutral, and also hot on the agenda, the free trade deal agreement. Read more