REFLECTIONS IN A CHINESE EYE

How Do You Say 'Badonkadonk' in Chinese?

Feb 8 2012, 3:09 PM ET The story of OMG! Meiyu, Jessica Beinecke's wildly popular web video series for Chinese who want to learn American slang.

That language shapes culture and vice versa seems intuitive and axiomatic. Language and educational exchanges have always been a defining feature of the U.S.-China relationship. Regular people-to-people exchanges, including the State Department's "100,000 Strong" initiative started under President Obama, have been important to the bilateral relationship because of persistent and often serious mutual distrust. The experience of teaching English in China was perhaps most memorably captured in Peter Hessler's book Rivertown. Like Hessler and many Americans since, I too was once an English teacher in China, attempting to dissect the ingenuity of Jay-Z and explicating Hamlet's neurosis to my students. Though I can't say they fully understood the significance of H.O.V.A and To Be or Not to Be (I'm still not sure I do either), I hope they at least learned something about the diversity of America.

Given that experience, I was delighted to discover that, in the age of YouTube and social media, American English lessons have been taken to another level. Meet Jessica Beinecke, a Voice of America journalist who decided that she could leverage all the web 2.0 tools at her disposal to create a show that taught Chinese youth American slang. It's shot with only a webcam and was exclusively on Chinese Youku until recently migrating to YouTube. A profile in the Washington Post describes the show:

Read more at The Atlantic

Chinese artist’s ‘ugly’ doll photos metaphor for Chinese people’s anguish; exhibit in NYC

NEW YORK — Liu Xia is a forbidden artist whose work is censored in her native China. The photographer, who is under house arrest, uses life-like dolls as metaphors for the pain and suffering of the Chinese people.

Liu knows what it is to work in an oppressed society. Her husband is Liu Xiaobo, the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize winner jailed in 2009 for 11 years for urging democratic reform in China.

But Liu’s photographs are not about her husband, said Guy Sorman, a friend of the couple and curator of an exhibition of her works opening at Columbia University on Thursday evening.

“This is not about politics first. It’s about art first. Her husband is his own story. She is a major Chinese artist who happens to be the wife of Liu Xiaobo,” Sorman said in a telephone interview from Paris.

The 25 photos were spirited out of China just before Liu was placed under house arrest at the end of 2010 after her husband was awarded the Nobel prize.

Read more at The Washington Post

The Boxer Rebellion and the U.S. Navy, 1900-1901

DEPARTMENT OF THE NAVY -- NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND

• Selected Documents of the Boxer Rebellion
• Bibliography on the Boxer Rebellion
• Battle Streamer: China Relief Expedition 1900-1901
• Lieutenant Commander George H. Rose, USNR (1880-1932)
• Medal: China Relief Expedition
• Navy Medal of Honor: Boxer Rebellion 1900

The origins of anti-Western attitudes in China are difficult to trace, but widespread dislike by the population at large goes back to at least the Opium War between Britain and China (1839-1842). These feelings worsened over the course of the 19th century as Western colonial powers, as well as Russia and Japan, negotiated for, leased, and even seized portions of the Chinese Empire. Following the 1895 Sino-Japanese War, several European powers secured territorial and commercial concessions from China, including the 1897 seizure of Kiaochow and Tsingtao by Imperial Germany. This intervention precipitated a new wave of even bolder efforts to force concessions from China, further exacerbating tensions.

Anti-foreign sentiment resulted in the rapid growth of a Chinese secret society (which had existed for centuries) known as the I Ho Ch'uan (Righteous Harmonious Fists), but referred to by the Westerners as `Boxers.' The Boxers called for the expulsion of the `foreign devils' and their Chinese Christian converts. The society stressed the ritualistic use of the martial arts and traditional Chinese weapons. Anti-foreign incidents, including the burning of homes and businesses, increased dramatically in 1898 and 1899, and was primarily directed at Chinese Christians. The number of killings by the Boxers continued to grow, and on 30 December 1899 included a British missionary. Western governments lodged strong protests with the Chinese Dowager Empress, Tzu Hsi. She responded on 11 January 1900, with a declaration that the Boxers represented a segment of Chinese society, and should not be labeled a criminal organization. Her unenthusiastic support for the Chinese Army's attempts at quelling the violence and the influence of Boxer sympathizers at the Imperial court, led Western governments to deploy military forces on the Chinese coast to protect their citizens and interests.

By spring 1900, Boxer violence was virtually unchecked by Chinese authorities. On 30 May, the foreign ministers at Peking (today known as Beijing, but at the time referred to as Pekin) called for troops to protect the legations at Peking. Four hundred and thirty Sailors and Marines (including fifty-six Americans from USS Oregon and USS Newark) from eight countries arrived at the legations on 31 May and 4 June. On 9 June, the Boxers began attacking foreign property in Peking, and the senior foreign minister, Great Britain's Sir Claude MacDonald, requested a sizable relief force just before the telegraph lines were cut.

Read moe at The Boxer Rebellion and the U.S. Navy

 

Happy Chinese workers spell the end of affordable tech

By Jason Perlow | February 2, 2012, 12:41pm PST

Summary: Human and worker rights reforms in China would have serious negative consequences for the efficiency and cost of the gadget supply chain.

Recent coverage in the media over worker conditions in the Chinese factories which manufacture Apple’s products have “exposed” much of what all of us in the technology industry already knew but were unwilling to accept — that China is the most powerful engine of production for the technology industry, and that the blood, sweat and tears of Chinese workers is what fuels that hungry engine, at a tremendous cost to human rights.

Also See: The dark side of shiny Apple products (CBS News)

I really don’t want to focus on the Apple side of this problem because the concern is an industry-wide problem. Apple was targeted because they are the largest and most powerful consumer electronics company in the world, but their situation is not unique.

The outsourced manufacturing subcontractors that Apple uses such as Hon Hai Precision Industry (Foxconn) are used industry-wide, by some of the largest players in technology.

Foxconn’s clientele reads like a celebrity tech roster that includes Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Intel, Lenovo, IBM, Cisco/Linksys, Netgear, Microsoft, Sharp, Sony, Motorola, Asus, Acer and Vizio.

And on Foxconn’s celebrity clientele list I will also include the second and third place tablet runners and e-reader champions Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Yes, your Kindles and Nooks are also made by the very same companies with the same awful working conditions.

As much as I think the Android crowd would love to claim moral superiority to Apple as it relates to the production of their toys, it can’t.

So we should cut to the chase that Apple is absolutely not unique in having products made by workers which are paid far below that of Americans, that work unbelievably long hours in sweatshops using child labor under conditions that rival that of the worst factories during the industrial revolution in America and Europe of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

Read more at ZDNet

China Considers Offering Aid in Europe’s Debt Crisis

Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, left, with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, who is on a three-day visit to China.By KEITH BRADSHER and LIZ ALDERMAN

HONG KONG — Premier Wen Jiabao said Thursday that China would consider working with the International Monetary Fund to help shore up Europe’s finances. But he left unclear whether China was willing to drop conditions that so far have made its proposed help unappealing to European nations.

While Chinese leaders have pledged not to link political demands to financial investments, they have sought concessions, such as getting the European Union to relax trade strictures against low-cost Chinese goods. Mr. Wen’s comments came at a Beijing news conference after he met with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany on the first day of her three-day visit to China.

Mrs. Merkel is the first of several European leaders scheduled to visit China this month, as China’s huge holdings of foreign exchange reserves have begun to give it financial influence that could potentially rival Washington’s.

Mr. Wen said that Chinese officials were studying whether the country should be “involving itself more” in helping Europe solve its debt troubles by investing in the region’s two big rescue packages: the existing European Financial Stability Facility and the planned European Stability Mechanism. China’s contributions could be channeled through the I.M.F., he said.

Lending money to the I.M.F. to, in turn, relend to Europe would effectively transfer more of the risk of any European debt default to the I.M.F. China has previously made clear that it would need to buffer the risk of lending more money to Europe.

Russia in December embraced the lending approach now being mulled by China, but Moscow was willing to lend the I.M.F. only $20 billion — an amount of limited help as Europe tries to expand its bailout funds by hundreds of billions of dollars.

Britain has also said it would consider sending more money to the I.M.F. to help with Europe’s troubles — but only after the Europeans demonstrated they were finally taking bold steps to stem the contagion.

China had $3.18 trillion in foreign exchange reserves at the end of December, dwarfing the reserves of every other country and potentially giving it the financial firepower to make a significant contribution.

Read more at The New York Times

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