REFLECTIONS IN A CHINESE EYE

The Secret History of the Mongols

Igor De Rachewiltz (editor and translator)

Timothy May

Between 1971 and 1985, Igor de Rachewiltz published his translation of The Secret History of the Mongols (henceforth SHM) in eleven volumes of Papers on Far Eastern History. In addition to being a much easier read than the King James English used in Francis W. Cleaves’ translation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), it was accompanied by extensive footnotes commenting not only on the translation but also various aspects of Mongolian culture. While several other translations of the Secret History have emerged, none equaled Rachewiltz’s translation in terms of annotation or in the quality of the translation, although some approached it.

Unfortunately, using Rachewiltz’s original translation was often unwieldy due to it being published in 11 installments over a span of 14 years. Even for those who copied it and kept it in one volume or a folder, there was still the problem of ensuring a correct citation of proper volume and year. Thus it is not only with great pleasure, but also great relief to announce the publication of Igor de Rachewiltz’s translation of The Secret History of the Mongolsin Brill’s Inner Asian Library series.

Rachewiltz’s new edition of The Secret History of the Mongols is a substantial addition to the scholarship of the Mongol Empire, not only in terms of finally being published in a book format, but also the improvements to the translation. Consisting of 1347 pages in addition to 127 pages of front matter, it is truly a monumental work.

This edition, begun in 1987, includes an even smoother translation than previous editions and made a few passages more lucid than previously had been the case. Thus, without question, this translation of The Secret History of the Mongols remains the best, not only in terms of quality of translation, but also in terms of readability for the non-specialist. Yet, the improved translation is only the tip of the iceberg.

The introduction alone is a boon to the historiography of the Mongol Empire. In addition to discussing the origins and history behind SHM, Rachewiltz discusses the sizeable scholarship which has emerged on SHM, including not only other translations but studies on the work and its role in folklore, historical studies, as well as literature. Indeed, the introduction alone would have been a worthy monograph and a substantial contribution to scholarship.

This edition of The Secret History of the Mongols includes a series of photographs as well as two maps and a genealogical table of Chinggis Khan. One map is of modern Mongolia with its present day boundaries. However, as it is meant to depict Mongolia in 1200, the names of the various tribes of Mongolia and the neighboring realms have also been included. This is particularly useful for illustrating the localities of the tribes as well as many of the locations mentioned in SHMin a modern context. The second map is one of Eurasia in the thirteenth century. In addition to the names of the various regions, Rachewiltz has also included geographic names and those of various ethnicities used by the Mongols. Hence for Tibet, Rachewiltz has included Töböt, Sarta’ul for Khwârazm, and Bolar for the Volga Bulgars, etc.

As SHM has been rather arbitrarily divided into chapters, Rachewiltz has included a summary of the chapters. The summary is particularly useful; in addition to being a summation of the events of the chapter, Rachewiltz also succinctly summarizes the paragraphs (or verses if one may) comprising that chapter. Thus one now has a quick reference to guide one’s research. Finally, a chapter and paragraph concordance has been provided listing the paragraphs included in each chapter. It should be noted that the SHM was translated from Chinese texts. These were used to teach Chinese to translate Mongolian during the Ming period, with the Mongolian language represented phonetically through Chinese characters. In some manuscripts, SHM was divided into 12 chapters with others with 15 chapters. Prof. Rachewiltz has used the 12 chapter division of the 177 paragraphs for his organization of The Secret History of the Mongols.

The translation itself consists of 220 pages. The commentary on the translation is much more expansive, spanning 823 pages. While the text of the translation alters slightly from his previous translation, the commentary is, as one would suspect, much more comprehensive than Rachewiltz’s prior translation. Indeed, his discussion of the chapters, Rachewiltz cites the arguments and thoughts of other scholars. While competent and confident in his own translation, Rachewiltz is realistic in that he brings forth other possible interpretations of vague or problematic paragraphs. As such, the commentary is not so much a commentary on SHM but rather a compendium of research of the work.

Read more at http://www.deremilitari.org/REVIEWS/Rachewiltz_Mongols.htm

China migrant unrest exposes generation faultline

(Reuters) - In a backstreet pool hall in southern China's factory belt, young migrant workers gather around the tables, their eyes flitting between the worn green baize and the anti-riot police patrolling the grimy alleys.

The police search cars at roadblocks just outside in Dadun, an urban village in the city of Zengcheng, where sweatshops make so many millions of blue jeans that the city promotes itself as the "jeans capital of the world".

"Are you a plainclothes policeman?", one spiky haired migrant sitting on a moped outside the pool hall jokingly asks a visitor.

Weeks after workers rioted in anger over the manhandling of a 20-year-old pregnant migrant hawking wares on the street, resentment simmers and authorities are taking few chances. For three days, the migrants trashed and torched government offices, police vehicles and cars -- local symbols of authority -- before security forces overwhelmed them.

For a nation that will absorb hundreds of millions of rural migrants into cities over the coming decades, the riots that Wang inspired left an acrid taste of what could go wrong if the government mismanages this huge shift.

The ruling Communist Party, which celebrates its 90th anniversary on Friday, fought to power on the back of restive peasants. Now young migrants from the villages are making greater demands to be heard and respected in the cities.

"They look down on the outsiders, so we let them know we won't be bullied anymore," said a lanky 19-year-old migrant worker in Dadun, one of the many factory towns and villages that as made the Pearl River Delta, "the workshop of the world" in Guangdong province next to Hong Kong.

"People have been waiting a long time for a chance to get them back, they (security guards) discriminate against us," he said as he watched his friends hammer away on a street fighter video game called Killer in a games parlor.

Interviews with dozens of migrants in Dadun and other nearby factory neighborhoods revealed raw resentment of harassment and shakedowns from public security teams and local security guards.

Such treatment has gone on for years, they say, even as their material conditions have improved, especially in the past two years as a tightening labor market lifted wages.

But like a ripple of strikes across Guangdong last year, the Dadun riot revealed a younger new generation of migrants still impatient with their lot in cities that can treat them as burdens or threats, not the residents they want to become.

"The police treat you differently if you're a migrant," said Fang Wuping, a migrant worker in Dongguan, the vast manufacturing zone next to Zengcheng.

"I can understand why they have to keep an eye out here" he added, describing a recent bout of detention by wary police.

But when you're singled out as a criminal like that, you get angry and think, 'What gives you the right?'"

This generation does not share the self-sacrificing ethos of their farmer parents. They are jacked into the World Wide Web, they text like their cohorts elsewhere in the world, and their walks through the streets of Chinese cities are a direct education in the gaps in income and privilege that irk them.

Nowadays when migrant workers finish work at factories across southern China's manufacturing belt, they slip into bleached jeans, bright T-shirts, and sequin-covered blouses that are a gaudy renunciation of rural dullness.

They disdain the plain blue jackets and canvas shoes their farmer-migrant parents usually wore and sport tattoos and dyed hair, proclaiming that this generation yearns for a future far from the villages where they were born.

"Our mentality is different from our parents'. We don't save money like they did," said Li Bin, a 20-year-old worker in Dongguan, who sported a mullet haircut and an earring.

"We spend it as we make it, spend it on ourselves -- restaurants, the Internet, karaoke. But in their time, people were simpler. They were saving money so they could come home."

"I'd never go back to farming," cut in Li's friend, Fang Wuping. "If you threatened to kill me, I wouldn't. If you're a farmer, people despise you, look down on you," he said.

China has 153 million rural migrants working outside their hometowns. By 2009, 58.4 percent of rural migrants were born in 1980 or after, and ninety percent of this "new generation" have barely ever farmed, a National Bureau of Statistics survey found.

Read more at REUTERS

Comprehensive social security crucial for China's balanced development: ADB

 

Haruhiko Kuroda, president of Asian Development Bank (ADB), gives a speech at the 12th China Development Forum in Beijing, capital of China, on March 20, 2011. (Photo: Xinhuanet/Xiong Tong)

 

BEIJING, March 20 (Xinhuanet) -- Constructing a comprehensive social security system is vital for removing increasing imbalance between social and economic development in China, according to the chief of Asian Development Bank (ADB) Sunday.

"China has experienced unprecedentedly rapid development of economy over the last few years," President of Asian Development Bank Haruhiko Kuroda said in his speech at the China Development Forum 2011.

"However," Kuroda said, "accompanying with economical achievements are some social problems that we can’t ignore, such as the obvious regional economic imbalance between coastal and inland areas, expanding inequalities in society and increasing aging population."

Kuroda noted if the imbalance between economic and social development can't be removed timely, it would influence the economic growth of underdeveloped areas and its residents, and strain the social relations.

Read more at Xinhuanet

The Ultimate Expert Gift Guide

The perfect gift is so hard to find, and it is so subjective. That's why we chose to get some help, and called on a handful of experts to tell us their ideal gift this holiday season. Then we asked them to tell us for something a little more realistic—but only a little. (Our photo props are from Lane Crawford Home.)

Hong Kong watch auctioneer Carson Chan has accumulated a collection of 40 wristwatches in the span of 13 years. He can't decide his favorite, but when asked what he'd choose to give a close male friend this holiday season, he knows the answer right away: the SHW. HB.H-01. The serial code name belongs to the newest model from Shanghai Watch, launched in 2009. The Chinese manufacturer is still not well-known internationally, but it has been making watches since 1955, and claims Zhou Enlai and Mao Zedong among its former customers. With the SHW. HB.H-01, it has created one of the first China-made tourbillions tourbillon—a complex watch mechanism that helps counter the effect of gravity by constantly turning the escapement wheel, responsible for the "ticking" in the clock. (The tourbillon was originally designed for pocket watches, which, because they were usually held in the same upright position, were particularly badly affected by gravity pulling on the mechanism in one direction.)

The SHW. HB.H-01 retails for about 138,000 Hong Kong dollars (US$17,802)—still pricey but certainly a lot less than the top tier tourbillons, such as those from Patek Philippe or Rolex. It comes in two limited-edition models—each with 100 pieces made—and features a 40-millimeter round case in either 18 karat white gold with a black alligator leather strap, or rose gold with a brown strap. Mr. Chan himself wears a rose gold version.

For a woman's watch, the auctioneer says he'd go for something altogether different. The Swarovski D:Light—Mr. Chan recently gave one to his wife—is as flamboyant as the Shanghai Watch is functional. From a distance, the Swarovski model is camouflaged as a crystal bangle. But press a small button on the side, and the crystal face lights up to display the time in digital format. For about HK$12,000, it comes in a stainless steel case with blue-lit numbers, or a rose gold case with numbers that light up in red. The stainless steel model is the best-seller.

Read more at The Wall Street Journal

China-inspired charity aims to sex-down society

This will solve all our problems

A new charity, SaferMedia, has been launched to combat the menace of the sexualisation of society.

Its demands for cleaning up the internet are likely to be fed into an official government review of sexualisation in childhood later this year

Around 70 delegates from a range of concerned organisations met in the Grand Committee Room at Westminster for the launch on Monday. Speakers included Pamela Paul, author of Pornified, John Woods, a consultant psychotherapist at the Portman Clinic and Nola Leach, chief executive of Christian charity CARE.

The message put forward was broadly unaminous. Pornography, speakers claimed, is harmful in and of itself. It harms relationships by leading men to objectify women, and by acting as a massive drain on time available for commitment. It was the enemy of intimacy, creating unsustainable expectations of female sexuality. This was even before one took account of the effects of porn addiction.

More perniciously, pornography - or the "pornification" of culture - was directly harmful to children. Sexual predators use it to groom, to erode boundaries and to normalise the abnormal. Even without this threat pornography is harmful, with children frequently and accidentally exposed to wholly inappropriate material, such as bestiality and child abuse, speakers explained.

Speakers were also fairly unanimous on the nature of the threat. "Sexualisation" - of culture in general, and young people in particular - is the key, and is happening through a number of vectors. First the internet, which was was "affordable, accessible and anonymous", and had rapidly proliferated material that was far more pernicious than anything previously seen. That alone was enough for several contributors to argue that governments were applying pre-internet standards to the internet age.

Read more at The Register

Heterosexual HIV spread in China 'aggravated by unprotected sex, drugs'

Researchers at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health have examined the burden of HIV and sexually transmitted disease among male clients of the commercial sex industry in China's Sichuan province.

Since 2007, heterosexual transmission has replaced injecting drug use as the primary transmission mode of all HIV infections in China.

"We found a large burden of syphilis infection coupled with high-risk sexual and substance use behaviors among male clients of sex workers," said Cui Yang.

"Without effective interventions to prevent HIV transmission to the male client population, the current epidemic may expand into the general population," he added.

Blood test results indicated that HIV prevalence was 1.5 percent; 5.3 percent were positive for syphilis and 8.7 percent positive for HCV.

Read more at SIFY

China's Economic Growth Isn't Matched by Social Gains, UN Says in Report

China’s unprecedented economic growth over the past 40 years hasn’t produced comparable improvements in the health and education of its people, a United Nations report on global development said.

China, while first in economic expansion since 1970, ranks 79th out of 135 nations in increasing life expectancy and adding years of schooling in that period, according to the UN’s Human Development Report 2010 released today in New York.

“The economy grew at a phenomenal 8 percent a year for three decades, and monetary poverty measures fell more than 80 percent between 1981 and 2005,” the report said. “Yet this success was not matched by performance in other dimensions of human development.”

The gap, according to the UN analysis, stems from China’s “single minded pursuit of economic growth,” often at the expense of delivery of social services.

“Slow progress was associated with decentralizing the financing of basic services without providing adequate national support or increasing the fees levied on families,” the report said. “Public social services deteriorated and in some places even collapsed.”

Meet made-in-China Facebook, Twitter

|Facebook

Facebook and Twitter cannot be accessed in China as the government has not permitted their use fearing they would spread easily among the net savvy youth

BEIJING: As social networking websites Facebook and Twitter stand banned in China, their indigenous versions have hooked millions of Chinese users.

Kaixin001.com, translated in English as the 'happy network' is China's Facebook-style website that already has about 90 million users.

Then there is Twitter's Chinese clone Weibo which is used by 40 million people, a media report in the official news agency said.

"I start my day of work by reading the latest web postings from my friends," said Cecilia Jiao, 27, a news editor in Beijing said. "I'm used to it, just like many others," she told state run Xinhua news agency.

These websites are increasingly popular in China, where many of the nation's 420 million "netizens" embrace social media as a trendy way to interact with friends and keep up on the day's news, the report said.

Facebook and Twitter cannot be accessed in China as the government has not permitted their use fearing they would spread easily among the net savvy youth and may pose a potential political threat to the one party system.

Kaixin001.com has netted 90 million users by September since it began in 2008 and the figure is increasing by 100,000 per day.

Read more: Meet made-in-China Facebook, Twitter - The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/social-media/Meet-made-in-China-Facebook-Twitter/articleshow/6851506.cms#ixzz149A0GoBm

Amazon's Kindle offers access to banned sites in China

Amazon's Kindle devices are selling in China because the e-reader allows users to log on to banned sites such as Twitter and Facebook, reports say.

The device bypasses the infamous Great Firewall, making it popular on the so-called grey market according to the South China Morning Post.

Officially the Kindle is not available in mainland China.

But a quick search of Chinese auction site Taobao reveals hundreds of them on offer.

Facebook dream

The device sells for between 1200 (£112) and 3500 (£327) yuan.

Chinese bloggers told the paper they were surprised to get access to sites banned by the Chinese authorities.

"I still can't believe it. I casually tried getting to Twitter and what a surprise, I got there,"

Read more at BBC

文章翻译：“You set a good example:” A Red Guard apology

He explained why he was more able to repent than Red Guards who had beaten people and why he dared to be different from them.  Whether or not to apologize is a major question.   How you set the implied meaning of the apology is also a major question.

“You set a good example:” A Red Guard apology
By Wang Youqin (王友琴)

I’ve seen a few letters recently that have to do with things which happened 44 years ago.  Several middle school students who were Red Guards in 1966 wrote them to apologize to the teachers they “struggled against” at the time.  Since I am a researcher of history, I thought it would be a good idea to write about it and let the world know. 

One side of the story concerns the teacher Cheng Bi (程璧) who is 86 this year.  She was in charge of Beijing Foreign Languages School during the Cultural Revolution, and just like so many others in education, Ms. Cheng first had her responsibilities revoked and later was imprisoned in the school.  She suffered insults and was savagely beaten.  They shaved half of her scalp to give a “yin-yang head.”

I conducted an investigation on this.  In August of 1966, the Red Guards from Beijing Foreign Languages School beat to death a kindergarten worker named Liu Guilan (刘桂兰) in the auditorium with wooden sticks, belts, and water pipes.  Those under persecution were called “demons and monsters” [牛鬼蛇神] back then and were the ones forced to carry her body away.  Ms. Cheng and Director of Instruction Yao Shuxi (姚淑禧) each grabbed a leg and dragged her away.  Yao Shuxi was beaten many times herself.  One night five different groups of Red Guards attacked her.  She was found in the ladies latrine with a rope around her neck as she dangled from a sewer pipe after “having committed suicide.” 

Another side of the story concerns eight Red Guards from Beijing Foreign Languages School in 1966.  They were teenagers 44 years ago, so now they are all about 60.  They have apologized to Ms. Cheng Bi and repented of the violence and persecution they perpetrated that year. 

A massive wave of violence started by the Red Guards in Beijing swept throughout the country in August of 1966.  They beat 1772 people to death in in Beijing alone (according to a December 20, 1980 report in Beijing Daily).  The number of people who suffered and the savagery which was used was unprecedented.  The victims were [politically] rehabilitated around 1979 and families of the deceased received 420 yuan in “compensation.”  What are those perpetrators of the violence from that year thinking now?  Do they admit to their failures?  Are they willing to apologize to the victims?  Can they repent?  Many people aren’t so sure. 

I have not investigated these people myself, so I have no way of knowing how representative the eight who apologized are in comparison to the whole population of Red Guards.  However, I am convinced that this action is worthy of praise. 

The first letter was written by Shen Xiaoke (申小珂):

Read more at infzm

China’s Blood-Stained Property Map

China’s property sector, with its forced evictions and sometimes bloody confrontations, has long been described as something akin to a war zone. Now a team of online volunteers, led by an anonymous Chinese blogger, has launched a map-based project that brings that simile into stark relief.

Called “the Blood-Stained Housing Map,” the project uses Google Maps to plot violent housing evictions and land grabs across the country. The result bears an eerie, and sobering, resemblance to the Guardian’s own Google Maps chart showing deaths recorded in the Wikileaks Iraq war logs.

Google Maps

Blood-Stained Housing Map, revised version

The project actually consists of two maps: a “revised” version edited by the founder that shows only verified cases (above), and an “open” version [] that anyone can add to or edit.

A graphic Wikipedia of land-grab thuggery, the open version, which launched Oct. 8, has so far attracted more than 340,000 views and just over 90 contributions (below). Users have used a variety of icons to delineate different types of property-related violence: Volcanoes for mass protests, beds for when property owners were killed, and flames for when those resisting eviction lit themselves on fire. (Other icons appear to have been randomly selected.

Read more at ChinaRealTimeReport

Divorcing Their Husbands To Get Land: One Route To Empowerment In China (Part 1)

Earlier this year 16 women in a village in Guangxi Province in south west China divorced their husbands. Reason: Their land had been sold for urban development but they were being denied compensation because they had moved out of the village after they got married. The women wanted their land back—or at least money so they could get more—and divorce was a way to get it.

Of the 3.4 billion people who live on less than $2 a day, three-fourths are in rural areas. And while it’s women who typically work in the fields, only a tiny 1% of the world’s women own land, says the International Center for Research on Women. When men earn money, they tend to spend it on alcohol, sex and gambling. When women earn money, research shows, they spend it on food, medicines and education for their kids and families. This four-part series explores economic empowerment of women through the stories of women in China, Ghana, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

“Economic empowerment is about access to economic assets and that includes land,” says Tim Hanstad, president of the Rural Development Institute in Seattle, which works to secure land rights for women.

The land in dispute here, near the capital city of Guangxi, was swallowed up for urban development under the principle of eminent domain. “These expropriations are the biggest source of local government revenue in China and on average make up 40% of annual revenue for the [provincial] governments,” says Hanstad.

The law in China states that all land owners need to be compensated. But this particular village modified that to say that since the women had married out of the village, they no longer had rights to the land or compensation for it. The women appealed to the court of law but the Supreme Court of the province instructed the local courts to not hear the case.

Read more at FORBES

84 Ways To Know If You're Chinese...

If you check off 100%, you should not be living in Canada/USA because you are too Chinese. However, if you check off less than 42 items (50%), you are a fruit (banana: yellow on the outside but white inside). If you only say yes to 20 items, Canada owes you a medal .... so proud to be a Canadian/American.

1. You unwrap Christmas gifts very carefully, so you can save and reuse the
wrapping and especially those bows) next year.
2. You only buy Christmas cards after Christmas, when they are 50% off.
3. When there is a sale on toilet paper, you buy 100 rolls and store them in
your closet or in the bedroom of an adult child who has moved out.
4. You have a vinyl table cloth on your kitchen table.
5. Your stove is covered with aluminum foil.
6. Your kitchen has a sticky film of grease over it.
7. You have stuff in the freezer since the beginning of time.
8. You use the dishwasher as a dish rack.
9. You have never used your dishwasher.
10. You keep a Thermos of hot water available at all times.
11. You boil water and put it in the refrigerator.
12. You eat all meals in the kitchen.
13. You save grocery bags, tin foil, and tin containers.
14. You use grocery bags to hold garbage.
15. You always leave your shoes at the door.
16. You have a piano in your living room.
17. Your parents know how to launch nasal projectiles.
18. You iron your own shirts.
19. You play a musical instrument.
20. You pick your teeth at the dinner table (but you cover your mouth).
21. You twirl your pen around your fingers.
22. You hate to waste food...
a. Even if you're totally full, if someone says they're going to throw away the leftovers on the
table, you'll finish them.
b. You have Tupperware in your fridge with three bites of rice or one leftover chicken wing.
23. You don't own any real Tupperware--only a cupboard full of used but
carefully rinsed margarine tubs, takeout containers, and jam jars.
24. You also use the jam jars as drinking glasses.
25. You've eaten a red bean popsicle

Read more at Garrick's Place of Stuff

The Philippines–South/North Korea-ASEAN—Within Orbit of US–China Power Rivalry

LOOKING at US-China political-diplomatic-military maneuverings in East Asia in past months, it is logical to conclude that both are playing a subtle, yet deadly, power game to gain new areas of influence and enhance their socio-economic leverage. This global contest is taking place on many fronts, in particular:

(1) Intensified confrontations between South and North Korea.
(2) Claims over the Spratly and Paracel Islands.
(3) Control of the China Sea for "innocent passage" of commercial shipping.
(4) Non-proliferation and/or control of nuclear weapons.
(5) Defense of Taiwan.
(6) Contest for untapped oil/gas/energy resources.
(7) Access to seaports/logistics hubs in the Indian Ocean.
(8) Valuation of the yuan versus the US dollar.
(9) Disputes between China and India re nuclear capabilities, maritime security, and border confrontations where the US has vital interests.
(10) Market share of exports.

Pivotal roles of US and China

With the suspension of the "Six-Party Talks" on North Korea in which US and China play pivotal roles, the uncertainties (read deterioration) of Asia-Pacific stability and a final peaceful settlement on the Korean peninsula may be seen to have exacerbated.

Given the long-lasting, unsettled Korean conflicts as being within the top priorities of American, South/North Korean, Chinese, Japanese, and Russian leaders (who are all represented in the "Six-Party Talks"), we are seeing at this time the moves of the US and China to strengthen their respective positions.

Of special significance to Asia-Pacific observers is the on-going visitations of high officials. In Beijing, President Hu Jintao was reported by Associated Press (09 September) as: "Trying to smooth over recently rocky relations before he visits Washington.

Read more at MB

Princess Diana- Bra and panties take away please.

This has all gone sideways. ‘Feel romance the Royal British way’ is gonna get a Chinese woman more whips than a runaway slave.

To mark the anniversary of Diana’s death Jealousy International launched a billboard campaign all across China showing Princess Diana in a bra and knickers.

The British government will be asking the Chinese take away this piece of bad taste.

News Media Images

China's Got Talent Displays Inspiring, Toe-Tapping Skill

   

China's Got Talent, the Chinese version of the TV show that helped make Britain's Susan Boyle a singing star, has drawn attention to a very special kind of talent.

Liu Wei's arms were amputated after he was electrocuted during a childhood game of hide and seek. Yet, the 23-year-old can still play the piano beautifully- with his toes.

"Whatever other people do with their hands, I do with my feet. It's just that," says Liu. "Nobody ever decreed that to play the piano you must use your hands."

China's Got Talent has been a hit since its launch in July and has also featured disabled modern dancers and break-dancing migrant workers. The Dragon TV program is drawing attention to the challenges facing the disabled and otherwise disadvantaged in China. There has been some skepticism among viewers about whether all the participants' stories are genuine. However, there is no doubting that Wei's is an extraordinary talent. -Frances Perraudin

Read more: http://newsfeed.time.com/2010/08/27/chinas-got-talent-displays-inspiring-toe-tapping-skill/#ixzz0xopUbmVa

Buffett and Gates due in China

 

Warren Buffett(L) and Bill Gates are due in China to press the wealthy to donate more

BEIJING — Bill Gates and Warren Buffett -- who persuaded 40 US billionaires to donate a fortune to charity -- will meet a select group of wealthy individuals in China next month, a spokesperson said Tuesday.

Microsoft mogul Gates and investment guru Buffett launched a project in June called "The Giving Pledge" aimed at convincing billionaires across the United States to give up most of their money -- 50 percent or more -- to a good cause.

Just six weeks later, 40 wealthy individuals and their families -- including CNN founder Ted Turner and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg -- pledged to hand over more than half of their fortunes.

Read more at Google hosted news

Taiwanese mark Ghost Month with colorful ceremony

KEELUNG, Taiwan — Thousands of Taiwanese lit small paper homes and scattered them onto the placid waters of the South China Sea early Tuesday, part of an annual rite meant to placate the souls of the dead during the island's colorful Ghost Month observances.

Every year Taiwanese honor wandering ghosts in the hope they will cease to haunt the living. Chinese tradition — embraced by most Taiwanese — holds that the gates of the nether world open once every 12 months and ghosts walk the earth freely for 30 days.

Those who treat them well — showing their obeisance by burning models of items the ghosts might covet — are assured a year of peace and prosperity.

This year's observance in the gritty northern port city of Keelung began with a three-hour parade featuring lion dances and traditional music.

Thousands of Taiwanese marched through the city streets, holding banners aloft with elaborately written family names and chanting ritual prayers.

Wu Hou-jing, a representative of the Wu family association, said the event was meant to bring peace to the souls of people who had perished in both land and sea battles in the area.

Read more and view photos at Google hosted news

Li Yinhe: Should University Student Mistresses be Punished?

By Alex Taggart

Li Yinhe’s latest blog post is about her position on the introduction of rules at Chongqing Normal University and Southwest Normal University that ban students from having one-night stands and being mistresses, an issue that has provoked a debate on sexual freedom, human rights, and the involvement of the authorities in people’s private lives. She argues that whilst from a legal standpoint people’s extra-marital affairs are their own dirty business, Chinese people should use the power of shame to prevent people from having affairs.

Translation

Recently, a certain university learned that a female student was a mistress, and planned to take disciplinary action, provoking much debate.

If a female student becomes someone’s mistress, it is certainly wrong on a moral level. Even if she is not a mistress, and just a normal lover, it’s still morally wrong, because she has ruined someone else’s family and marriage. This is essentially different to her having a relationship with and living with a single person; pre-marital cohabitation may contravene normal societal conventions, but on a moral level, it is not much of a problem.

The question is whether or not the university should take disciplinary action. The issue of how to deal with the violation of marital morality has been a focal point of debate in recent decades. Before Reform and Opening, extra-marital sex was punished quite severely, with administrative demerits and punishments that would [negatively] affect promotions and pay rises. It is said that during the Cultural Revolution there existed the crime of ‘breaking a family’, which specifically punished extra-marital sex. Since Reform and Opening, this crime no longer exists, work units no longer control the private lives of their workers, and the administrative punishment of this sort of immoral behaviour is no longer carried out. In 2000, when marriage law was amended, there were still those who strongly advocated the use of judicial powers to control extra-marital sex, but after the issue was debated in legal and social scientific circles, they ultimately abandoned this attempt. One reason for this was that studies conducted in Western countries showed an extra-marital sex rate of around 40 per cent. The proportion of extra-marital sex in China was a little lower, but it was still at roughly 16 per cent. If the target of a law renders 16 per cent of the population guilty, then even if it does become legislation, it will exist in name only; there is not enough police power to investigate these kinds of cases and to carry out this kind of punishment

Read more at China Geeks

Chinese People

 

    Chinese People

Why the Pigeon Couldn’t Fly

After a few calls to bike shops, it became clear: No one wanted to put the Flying Pigeon together.

I bought the big black city bicycle, a classic from China imported via a shop in Los Angeles, as a gift for my wife’s 30th birthday in early May. Yet as June loomed, it still sat unassembled in its rectangular box in my living room.

Josef Bray-Ali, the West Coast shop owner who sold me the bike for $599 (the special saddle was an extra $70, and the shipping was $80), had warned that it would be hard to put together — “You need someone good” — but I figured finding a skilled mechanic in New York City would be no problem. In this bike-friendly city, how hard could it be to find someone who could build a simple machine that hundreds of millions of Chinese have been riding since Mao’s day?

“No, oh no, no,” said a mechanic at one downtown shop that Mr. Bray-Ali had recommended. It was the spring rush, the mechanic told me, and he was too busy. He recommended finding a shop in Chinatown on the notion that someone Chinese might be better equipped and knowledgeable.

“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” said Chung Pai, the Chinese-American owner of Landmark Vintage Bicycles on the Lower East Side. The bike is notorious, he said, because the nonstandard parts are hard to come by. That might have explained the reaction I got from shops: some said they would do it, only to turn it down later when I called back to confirm.

I had thought the gift would be both romantic (we had recently spent time in China) and practical (she could more comfortably bike in her work clothes), but the big brown box was neither.

I began to worry that the bike’s charm — its easygoing ride and springy seat, like a Barcalounger on two wheels, and that moniker — had overwhelmed my street sense. Had I fallen into the increasingly familiar trap of putting bicycling form ahead of bicycling function?

The classic look of the Flying Pigeon, whose design emulates midcentury British bicycles, is certainly part of its appeal.

“It’s the style that attracts people,” said Ian Cunningham, a former art director for Brooks Brothers who has been importing Flying Pigeons from Tianjin, China, for three years. “They’re the iconic bike.” He said the bikes sold far better in Manhattan (form) than in Brooklyn (function; or, perhaps, form of a pared-down variety).

Mr. Cunningham said he currently had a waiting list of 40 people — that’s why I went to Los Angeles in the first place — and was expecting two shipping containers packed with 500 bicycles to arrive by early July. He said that he and his fiancée, Victoria, planned to open the city’s first dedicated Flying Pigeon shop on Canal Street in the fall.

So where are all those people getting their Pigeons put together? Mr. Cunningham recommended Toga in Chelsea, Bike Works on the Lower East Side, or a “master mechanic” named Dennis Healy at 504 Canal Street.

But before I had the chance to call them, my partner in the Spokes column, Sean Patrick Farrell, who had worked as a bicycle mechanic for 10 years, said he would give it a try.

Read more and view photos at The New York Times

Is China Really Changing?

Investment banker Robert Lawrence Kuhn sees China moving toward democracy, a particularly Chinese form of democracy. Why devaluing the yuan makes sense. Big challenge: the largest planned migration in history.

ROBERT LAWRENCE KUHN, an international investment banker, corporate strategist and author, has spent much of the past two decades trying to understand how China's leaders think.

By his reckoning, he has visited that nation more than 100 times and interviewed hundreds of its top political figures, bureaucrats and technocrats.

In the past few years, he has been on a self-financed China Odyssey to some 40 cities in 20 provinces on the mainland. The result is How China's Leaders Think, a 546-page book published this year by Wiley, that looks at reforms taking place in today's China and what they mean for the U.S. and other countries.

The 65-year-old Kuhn has written or edited more than 25 books, including a 710-page biography of China's former president—The Man Who Changed China: The Life and Legacy of Jiang Zemin (Crown, 2005). It was the first biography of a living Chinese leader to be published on the mainland and a bestseller; more than 1.1 million copies of the Chinese translation were purchased.

A former investment banker and mergers and acquisitions specialist who sold his company to Citigroup in 2001 and a commentator on the government-owned China Central Television (CCTV) network, Kuhn is an advisor to BNP Paribas and counsels multinational corporations on their strategies, structures and relationships with China. A graduate of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management, Kuhn also holds a Ph.D. in brain research from UCLA.

Barron's spoke by phone with the peripatetic Kuhn while he was in Shanghai. To learn his views on the world's most populous country, read on.

Barron's: You were educated as a brain scientist and have worked as an investment banker and merger specialist. How did you suddenly end up writing about Chinese politics?

Kuhn: It wasn't sudden. In early 1989, as an investment banker and a scientist, I was invited by China's State Science and Technology Commission to advise on reform. Then came the suppression of student demonstrators in Tiananmen Square and I, like many foreigners, refused to return to China. But in the summer of 1990, I invited a Chinese government scientist to a conference I was co-chairing at UCLA on creativity in large organizations. During a break, several of us confronted him about Tiananmen and he said something remarkable. He agreed that China was moving backward, but he argued that it was more our fault than his, because by turning our backs on China, we in the West were abandoning domestic reformers. His appeal touched me and changed my life.

Read more at Barron's

Facebook, “Must Die” (in China)

The inside information of Facebook to enter China came in mid-April 2010, said that the earliest will be within three months. Then followed by a Chinese headhunter company said that Facebook already commissioned them to recruit the relevant General Manager in China, mainly in charge of the gaming business. On the surface, according to various sources Facebook is really going to enter China. These speculations on the king of the SNS industry created heated discussions all over the world. Netizens are especially curious about which Chinese name Facebook will use. Should it be “Lianpu” (脸谱) (types of facial makeup in Chinese operas), or slightly pictophoneic characters “Mianshu” (面熟) (first character means face, second character is a homophonic pun of the Chinese character “book” and it means familiar, together familiar face), or should it just follow what Google did phonetically translate the name to “Feisibuke” (“非死不可”) a very inauspicious term which means “must die”? But more importantly, now this temporary name seems to suggest the bleak future of Facebook entering China.

Difficult for traditional SNS to walk on the road of China

On the surface, Facebook entering China is a logical thing. Figures showed that Facebook’s page views for the first time surpassed Yahoo in February this year and has become the most popular network platform. However in China, as of early December 2009, the number of registered users of Kaixin001 (www.kaixin001.com) was close to 70 million, with over 2 billion page views and more than 20 million users logging in each day.

SNS’s future looked bright but this is only because of being popular. Although many companies put up advertisements, it seems that the investment is not as effective as imagined. Just as Facebook found helplessly that although it has reached 193 billion page views (December 2009 data), the click rate of the ads on the pages was very low. In December 2009, users’ time spent on the site for Facebook already surpassed Yahoo, reached 116 million minutes, users spent average of 247 minutes on the site monthly. However, these amazing numbers which attracted advertisers just cannot bring immediate value for the investments.

There has long been Shanzhai version of Faceook in China. Renren and Kaixin001 etc Chinese SNS were the earliest pioneers; actually both are imitating the Facebook model. In China, SNS also cannot solve the profit problem. Especially Kaixin001, in the beginning was almost like Facebook’s twin also inherited the difficult situation, and even more serious. So called white-collar platform network, Kaixin001 accumulated user base with MSN users in the beginning, going in the right direction but was not popular enough, only relying on web game plug-ins was difficult to trap the already busy white-collar group. And after Tencent SNS platform used similar plug-ins and successfully opened up grass-root market, Kaixin001 had a transformation, but because still unclear about the users’ faces, the problem of profiting still could not be resolved. After all, Tencent’s success is because the users’ consumption habits, while Kaixin001 has not trained their users with the habits, profiting by adding advertisements also could not be accepted by the users.

Model is unchanged, while the user group is completely different from Facebook in the U.S. if it continues to follow the traditional SNS model, then it’s just like recreating the problematic Kaixin001 in 2008.

Read more at China Hush

 

Who’ll Stay At China’s Gucci Hotel?

Elisabetta Gucci Plans To Open 40 Luxury Hotels In Next 15 Years, Eying China Location Next Year

Elisabetta Gucci recently completed construction of her first five-star hotel in Dubai, announcing plans to open a China location in 2011

The Chinese luxury hotel market is a contentious and already crowded place, with the world’s top hoteliers battling it out with local upstarts and Hong Kong transplants, fighting a still nascent domestic travel industry, overcapacity and anemic occupancy rates, and a post-financial-crisis inbound tourism slump. Despite the obvious difficulties — and despite having to deal with issues, such as poor brand recognition, that aren’t as much of a problem in other parts of the world — hoteliers continue to invest heavily in the China market. In the last few months alone, we’ve seen new five-star hotels spring up not only in wealthier cities like Hangzhou and Shanghai, but also in lesser-known markets like Guilin, Nanjing and Yangzhou, and major chains like the Ritz-Carlton, the Four Seasons, and Shangri-La have recently announced major expansion plans expected to last well over a decade.

Recently, Elisabetta Gucci — the daughter of the fashion designer Paolo Gucci — announced that she intends to open 40 new five-star hotels globally over the course of the next 15 years, with plans to open a Dubai location at the end of this year and a location in China next year. While details on the China hotel are vague, according to Reuters, the Elisabetta Gucci hotel “experience” hinges heavily on branding and design, both inside and out:

Read more at Jing Daily

China's Lost Girls

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