REFLECTIONS IN A CHINESE EYE

Cantonese in China protest over language loss fears

BEIJING (Reuters) - Hundreds of people took to the streets of the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou over the weekend to demand the government halt efforts to push aside the local Cantonese language, state media said on Monday.

The protest on Sunday was prompted by plans to switch most programing on Guangzhou television stations to the country's official language, Mandarin, feeding fears that the government wants to phase out Cantonese in official settings, reports said.

Some newspapers in Hong Kong, where Cantonese remains the main language of government, education and the man in the street, said demonstrators numbered more than 10,000, with participants singing and giving impassioned speeches in Cantonese.

The Global Times, a popular Chinese tabloid run by Communist Party mouthpiece the People's Daily, said the protest was peaceful and dispersed after a few hours.

"I stand for multiculturalism, and I strongly oppose the government's plan to promote Putonghua with administrative means," the report quoted one demonstrator as saying, referring to another name for the Mandarin Chinese language.

Beijing has promoted Mandarin for decades to unite a nation with thousands of dialects and numerous minority languages.

Read more at The Washington Post

Final round of China's 5th Japanese speech contest held in Tokyo

TOKYO, July 26 (Xinhua) -- Sixteen students from 16 Chinese universities took part in the final round of "The 5th China Japanese Speech Contest", which was held in Tokyo Monday.

Bai Yinlian, a student of Jilin University in China's northeastern Jilin Province, stood out and took the first place. Bai told Xinhua after the awarding ceremony that she learned more about the differences between the mindsets of the Chinese culture and Japanese one through the contest.

The event, initiated in 2006, has been jointly organized by institutes including Nikkei and China Education Association For International Exchange (CEAIE).

Lin Zuoping, deputy secretary general of the CEAIE, said the activity attracted more than 8,400 participants from some 190 universities in the country.

Lin said the popularity of the event and the participants' outstanding performance helped realize the goal of the activity, which was to strengthen the exchange and understanding between the teenagers and youths of the two countries.

The themes for this year were "the Chinese culture that I want to introduce to Japanese people" and "My solution to environmental protection."

"The event is conducive to the promotion of the Japanese in China, and with such themes, Japanese people can also learn Chinese culture," he said, "and that is interesting."

XINHUANET

Understanding Chinese Pinyin

Simply put, pinyin is a way to take the many thousands of ideograms that make up the Chinese language and put them into a more accessible Romanized format (read: use letters us Laowai are familiar with, as opposed to the random lines that Chinese seem to have no problem with)

This system was introduced in the 1950s, and was officially adopted by the People’s Republic of China in 1979. Since, it has also been recognized by the International Organization of Standardization (ISO). It is important to note that this is strictly a method of Romanizing standard Mandarin, and not the local dialects of Chinese (specifically Cantonese, which is spoken in Hong Kong).

Pinyin breaks down into three parts: tones, initials and finals. For information on tones, please visit our Guide to Chinese Tones. The other two are covered here.

Introduction

Simply put, pinyin is a way to take the many thousands of ideograms that make up the Chinese language and put them into a more accessible Romanized format (read: use letters us Laowai are familiar with, as opposed to the random lines that Chinese seem to have no problem with)

This system was introduced in the 1950s, and was officially adopted by the People’s Republic of China in 1979. Since, it has also been recognized by the International Organization of Standardization (ISO). It is important to note that this is strictly a method of Romanizing standard Mandarin, and not the local dialects of Chinese (specifically Cantonese, which is spoken in Hong Kong).

Pinyin breaks down into three parts: tones, initials and finals. For information on tones, please visit our Guide to Chinese Tones. The other two are covered here:

Read more at Lost Laowai

10 Ways to Support English Language Learning With The New York Times

Many people don’t realize that The New York Times can be quite accessible for English Language Learners. Due to its focus on current events and news, using The Times to learn vocabulary and practice reading can be much more inviting and rewarding than a textbook. And NYTimes.com has some extra tools and features that are particularly useful for language learning.

Here are 10 ideas for using The Times to teach and learn the English language.

1. Look It Up — An easy way to get ELL’s started with The Times: Use the “look up” function, which allows users to instantly access the definition of any word in an article on NYTimes.com. Read the first four paragraphs of the entry Big Fancy Words in the After Deadline blog to learn about this function. As the blog explains, simply double click on any word in a full Times article (it doesn’t work on article summaries, headlines or blog posts) and then click on the question mark icon that appears. You’ll be linked to not only a dictionary definition (which includes an audio pronunciation of the word), but also to other related reference work entries.

Explore a new word from an NYTimes.com or New York Times Global Edition article every day, and track the words you learn using our Vocabulary Log–you can use the “look up” feature to fill in the dictionary definition section. Challenge yourself, too, to use every new word in conversation and/or writing each day.

More advanced readers of English may want to try the Learning Network’s Word of the Day feature and our ideas for developing vocabulary and construing meaning.

2. Ifs, Ands and Buts — The little words are sometimes the hardest! Start reading a NYTimes.com news article and you won’t get far before you see articles and prepositions like “a,” “the,” “in,” “on” and “at.” They are easy to read and understand in context, but when it comes time to write, these little words can create big problems for non-native speakers. The Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) is a useful resource for English language learning and writing skills–its ESL Instructors and Students section is especially useful for ELL’s. Take a look at How to Use Articles and Prepositions for Time and Place. Then test your understanding: Have a partner take out all of the articles and prepositions from several Times articles, and see whether you can fill them in correctly.

Parts of speech in general can be confusing to many English language learners. For a fun overview of the challenges of the language, see Ben Yagoda’s guest entry for the Times Magazine’s On Language column.

Read more at  The New York Times

Alleged 'rat-f**k' outburst tarnishes Aussie PM Kevin Rudd's China-friendly image

THE China-friendly image of Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has been tarnished by claims he branded the Chinese "f**kers" at the Copenhagen Climate Summit.

The ABC quotes today in the June edition of the Quarterly Essay, journalist David Marr as saying Mr Rudd remarked to a group of journalists and aides during the December 2009 summit that: "Those Chinese f**kers are trying to rat-f**k us."

The angry tirade reportedly came after tense negotiations with the Chinese, who are one of Australia's most important trading partners, over a binding agreement on reducing carbon emissions.

Mandarin-speaker Rudd - who has often spoken of his love for Beijing, where he worked as a diplomat in the 1980s - believed that the Chinese were frustrating efforts pursued by him and other countries, including the US, to negotiate an agreement.

It is not the first time he has been accused of bad-tempered outbursts. Last year he slammed lawmakers from his own Labor party as "f**kers" after they complained he had slashed their generous entitlements.

Meanwhile the Government's relationship with another Asian neighbour remains strained after Australia decided to take Japan to the International Court of Justice over its "scientific whaling" program, with Japanese officials telling the ABC today it was a political stunt.

news.com.au

Killing Children - An Act of War Against China’s Collective Future

In Hanzhong, Shannxi, a mother-and-son team rented a rural property to open a private kindergarten for 20 children. One day the son found a snake inside and killed it. This disturbed the property owner, 48-year-old Wu Huanming, who had been suffering from a variety of diseases and had grown increasingly superstitious in recent years. Blaming the snake killing for the ineffectiveness of his medical treatment, Wu went into a frenzy. On the morning of May 12, Wu entered the kindergarten carrying a meat cleaver and hacked to death seven children, along with the mother-and-son proprietors, wounding another 11 children in the process. Wu committed suicide afterward.

Hanzhong police provided these details at a press conference a day after the killing, according to Xi’an Morning Post.  At first glance, it looked like another malignant but isolated crime. In fact, it was only the latest in a series of mass attacks on young children in different provinces of China that occurred between March 23 and May 12. Beijing police said last Wednesday they successfully interdicted seven criminal attempts targeting schools and kindergartens in that city alone.

All over China, people winced. Why are young children being slaughtered? Such massive attacks on children did not happen even in the Cultural Revolution, the most violent period of Communist China. And now China is experiencing unprecedented prosperity.

Despite the apparent similarities in actions and targets, there is no universal explanation of motive. Among the killers besides Wu Huanming were a doctor who could not find a job and, at age 42, had a history of failed relationships, a 40-year-old villager who had suffered mental illness for five years, a 31-year-old school teacher on sick leave for four years; a 46-year-old unemployed man with debts resulting from multi-level marketing, and a 45-year-old villager whose newly-built house faced demolition.

Two of the six suspects were said to have suffered mental illness, prompting concerns about China’s lack of mental health care. But insanity can hardly explain the other four cases.

Most of the suspects lived at the bottom of the society, leading observers to blame their anger and desperation on the wealth gap. The Internet is abuzz with questions about whether China’s economy should be characterized as that of a “rich state, poor people.” But even this does not explain why children were repeatedly targeted.

Chinese cherish children as the promise of their future and their defense against death. Though rare stories exist about “exchanging [dead] children to eat” (“易子而食”),  those were from disastrous periods of war and famine, when desperation was all there was. Has China today entered such a period of extreme disaster?

Harming children on a mass scale did not start this year. As early as 2004, long before the Sanlu milk scandal, there was the “dark-heart milk powder” incident in which counterfeit milk powder caused the deaths of 13 babies and permanent disablement of 171 others. It outraged the entire nation that someone would target babies to make a profit. That incident reflected a moral decay in China, but no one could have foreseen that child-harming would escalate to the raw violence seen this year.

In one of the six recent school attacks, 45-year-old Wang Yonglai was an even-tempered Shandong villager and a long-time party member. On the morning of April 30, Wang carried a hammer to the village’s elementary school, and pounded five preschool children on their heads. Wang then poured gasoline on himself, grabbed two children into his arms, and lit himself on fire. While Wang burned to death, the two children were pulled to safety by teachers.

Read more at Inside-Out China  http://www.insideoutchina.com/

Terminology For A Fast-Changing China

Some of the biggest challenges involved in writing and teaching about contemporary China are linguistic and terminological. I don’t mean the obvious challenges of learning Chinese and then trying to keep one’s language skills from getting rusty. Yes, those can be considerable (though perhaps more so than gaining and maintaining a mastery of English if it isn’t your native tongue, for while characters and tones are tricky, so is the grammar and spelling of the language I grew up speaking). The challenges I have in mind are different: namely, figuring out whether some common words, acronyms and phrases habitually used to describe general phenomena can apply to today’s shape-shifting and rule-defying PRC.

One terminological issue I encounter most frequently--which I deal with in my new book, China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know, a primer in question-and-answer format--has to do with the middle word in the name of the organization that governs the PRC: the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). (For an excerpt of the book on Forbes.com, see "A Primer On China.")

Read more at Forbes - The China Traker

Is your Chinese hao bu hao?

BEIJING - A new test to assess the ability of foreigners to speak Chinese will be introduced as part of efforts to promote the language.

Zhao Hongtao, director of the Oral Chinese Proficiency Test Commission based in North China's Tianjin, told China Daily on Tuesday that the test will start on a trial basis in eight provinces and municipalities in June.

"The trial tests we conducted in Tianjin and Shanghai last year attracted about 5,000 foreigners," he said.

He expected a huge demand for the test as an increasing number of foreigners are able to speak fluent Chinese.

Known as HKC (hanyu kouyu ceshi), the computer-based test will be held twice a year, in June and December, in Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin and Chongqing municipalities, Shandong, Fujian, Jiangsu and Hubei provinces and the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region.

Read more at China Daily

Is it worth learning Mandarin Chinese?

This seemingly perennial question of the real value of learning Chinese never fails to generate a lot of activity in LinkedIn discussions. This discussion started in the China Law Blog LinkedIn group inspired me to share my views.

Let's rephrase the question. Is it worth the five years of intense full time study to gain fluency? In short, it depends on your situation and your goals.

Here is my longer answer.

Each person must determine his/her own cost-benefit ratio for learning a new language, such as Chinese. Results will vary. Unlike the benefits of learning a truly international language such as English or even Spanish (with regard to South America and select areas in the southern United States), the overwhelming majority of the value in speaking and reading Chinese tends to occur in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Contrary to what some may believe, the overwhelming majority of China is not set up for English speakers in much the same way Miami is for Spanish speakers. Just as not being able to speak English in Chicago is a handicap, not being able to speak Chinese in China is also a disadvantage. However unless you plan to reside in one of these regions, it is likely not worth it for the majority of students. Needless to say if you have a deep love of the language, culture and literature of China, you will find the time and energy to study Chinese no matter where you live.

Read more at China Manufacturing

Confucius Institutes enhance China's int'l image

NEW YORK -- "Soft power", as defined by author and political analyst Joseph Nye, is a nation's ability to entice others through the use of positive cultural engagement. Utilizing soft power, one might convince others to "want what you want," Nye wrote in 2004.

Students perform a traditional Chinese ethnic dance in a competition of Chinese proficiency for non-Chinese college students in New York last weekend. [Wu Kaixiang / Xinhua News Agency]

As America's power wanes on a variety of fronts, China is taking action to match its own increasing wealth with greater soft power. In 2007, Hu Jintao told the 17th Communist Party Congress that China must work on enhancing its cultural capital.

"Culture has become a more and more important source of national cohesion and creativity and a factor of growing significance in the competition in overall national strength," Hu said.

The Beijing Olympics was widely regarded as a successful attempt to introduce Chinese culture to the rest of the world. In a less showy manner, the government is aiming to accomplish much more by establishing language centers called Confucius Institutes in 87 countries.

Read more at China Daily

The Knock-On Effect Of Global English

Already, people in rural India are tutoring U.S. students in math and science.

At any given time there are 2 billion people learning English. It's a humongous market--one that a San Francisco company called GlobalEnglish is tapping into with great momentum.

Chief Executive Deepak Desai explains the phenomenon in socio-cultural terms: "There has never, in the history of mankind, been a language like English. There are more people speaking it on a daily basis whose first language is not English. The only comparable language is Latin during the Roman Empire, when it was a trade language."

The company is called GlobalEnglish because it is not American, British or Australian English. "English has become global," says Desai. English is dominant, he explains, first because hundreds of ministries of education have adopted English as the standard second language for their curriculums. Second, English is an open source language. "There are hundreds of thousands of words in its vocabulary, and less than 25% of them have Anglo-Saxon roots," adds Desai.

Read more at Forbes

Are China's language problems due to English or politics?

China Central Television (CCTV) made headlines recently with its announcement that anchors were no longer allowed to use English acronyms. On air, the NBA is now to be called “meiguo zhiye lanqiu sai” (美国职业篮球赛), F1 is to be called “yiji fangchenshi saiche jinbiao sai” (一级方程式赛车锦标赛) , and the G8 is to be called “baguo fenghui” (八国峰会) to name a few of the new tongue twisting names. This news sparked a debate among the media and academics about the cause of the linguistic degradation in China and whether the Chinese language should be better protected.

Translators Association of China (中国翻译协会) recently expressed their concern about the Chinese language becoming “impure” due to the penetration of foreign languages into daily life. However, a recent article on QQ.com questions whether the invasion of these "barbarian" languages is the real threat to the Chinese language, or whether people should look closer to home to find the source of the problem.

Read more at CNN Go

English acronyms “ban” draws fire

Hangzhou’s Morning Express, a commercial spin-off of the official Zhejiang Daily [view on the China Media Map], reported on April 6 that the State Administration of Radio Film and Television (SARFT), China’s top broadcast authority, had banned the use of English-language acronyms in television and radio broadcasts.

The news quickly spread through the Web, and the official English-language China Daily, a newspaper for foreign consumption published by the State Council Information Office, reported on April 10 that “Chinese people, both ordinary viewers and linguists, are split over the matter.” The paper, which reported that a “heated debate is underway,” said the action had been taken to “alleviate the concern [that] too many English abbreviations have mixed with Chinese and soiled the purity of the Chinese language and Chinese culture.”

On April 15, SARFT deputy inspector Gao Changli said the notice from his ministry had been “misunderstood.” The intention, he said, was not to ban certain language usages, but rather to standardize the practice.

“[We] don’t rule out alien culture,” Gao was quoted as saying.

Read more at China Media Project

Slang phrase guide speaks volumes about language

Eveline Chao has published the book not only to create an interest in Manderin, but also for people to discover Chinese culture. Wang Jing / China Daily

It's the type of book that would make sailors blush, but don't go buying it for grandma. Welcome to the book of Chinese slang.

With chapter titles ranging from "Internet Slang" to "Behaving Badly", Eveline Chao's "Niubi - The Real Chinese You Were Never Taught in School", has got Chinese learners and citizens alike speaking in a more colorful, and sometimes more coarse, vernacular.

More than three years in the making, Chao's book, published late last year, catalogs the underbelly of the Chinese language.

With phrases from "suo tou wugui", a Chinese expression for cowards meaning "turtle with its head in the shell", to "se lang", meaning "color wolf", an expression used to describe an overly aggressive male, to the downright dirty, the book offers adult readers a way to "spice up" their everyday dialogue.

"The key to learning any language well is to create real interest. If you're just taking Mandarin to earn a college credit, you won't take it very seriously," she said. "These kinds of words help make the language much more fun."

Read more at China Daily

Confucius Institute debuts

UB site to become part of worldwide, Chinese-sponsored network

A new institute at the University at Buffalo will offer Western New York a dose of Chinese language and culture.

UB on Friday celebrated the grand opening of its Confucius Institute, part of a growing network of institutes sponsored worldwide by a Chinese organization.

"Our primary goal is to encourage more people in Western New York to study Chinese and gain a fuller understanding and appreciation for Chinese history and culture," said Kristin Stapleton, director of UB's Asian Studies Program. "One important way we will accomplish this is by promoting Chinese language learning in schools across the region."

With China's rise as an economic power, many Americans have become interested in learning the language and culture, particularly for the potential business opportunities.

Universities worldwide applied for grants from the Chinese Language Council International — representing a dozen state ministries and commissions — which has provided funds to launch about 300 of these language and learning centers across the globe.

Read more at Buffalo News

The Rise of ‘Globish’

Today’s idea: The worldwide dialect of the third millennium will be a simplified English stripped of its Anglo-American cultural baggage, a writer predicts. Think “English + Microsoft = Globish.”

Language | In The Guardian, Robert McCrum writes of his forthcoming book “Globish: How the English Language Became the World’s Language.” Jean-Paul Nerriere, the French technocrat who coined the term, thinks English’s cultural influence will actually be less pronounced than in the past as non-native speakers in India, China and Africa adapt the new “globish” to their own purposes.

Winston Churchill, for one, might have been surprised. Mr. McCrum says his work on the book made clear that only recently had English become “decaffeinated,” less a conveyor of cultural values than modernizing linguistic tool of the Internet age:

Did Churchill see English’s finest hour?

Read more at The New York Times

Confucius to Their Enemies: China’s Investment in Public Diplomacy

Anyone who doubts the value of money spent on competition in the world of ideas – a key aspect of public diplomacy – needs to take a look at what the Chinese are doing in this field. Aspiring to promote their own model of governance, in opposition to that of the United States and the West, the Chinese are investing heavily in making friends overseas. Indeed, there is a real danger of the United States being out-done, for reasons of limited resources and a lack of strategy. The Chinese have both in spades.

According to The Washington Times, Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN), ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has asked Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to account for the fact that China has been able to open 60 cultural centers – so-called Confucius Centers – hosted at universities across the country, such as the University of Minnesota. The centers endow chairs in Chinese language and culture studies and partner with existing university programs, creating hubs for Chinese cultural and political influence. China has established Confucius Centers in many Asian countries, making a Chinese presence felt in a way the United States simply does not. They also allow China convenient covers for “minders” of Chinese exchange student populations in the United States and elsewhere.

Read more at The Heritage Foundation

China to push Pak case for nuke deal with US

NEW DELHI: As the US blew hot and cold on a civilian nuclear deal for Pakistan, China is all set to emerge as a strong backer for the idea.

Pakistan wants a civilian nuclear deal in a bid to get parity with India. Though the US did not reject the idea outright, it did say that a nuclear deal was not on the cards right now. On Thursday, the Obama administration reiterated this position. "We are focused on Pakistan’s energy needs, but, as we said last week, right now that does not include civilian nuclear energy," assistant secretary of state for public affairs P J Crowley told reporters. Earlier US secretary of state Hillary Clinton put matters in perspective by saying that a civil nuclear deal like India’s does not happen "easily or quickly."

The US position hasn’t discouraged Islamabad from stepping up efforts to secure a nuclear deal. And these efforts are now reportedly geared towards Beijing. According to a report in a Pakistani newspaper, China would back Pakistan at the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington on a civilian nuclear deal and also on other areas. The status and safety

of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is also expected to emerge as an area of discussion.

Read more at The Economic Times

India-China relations: Smiling tigers, hidden daggers

Be it computer hacking or creating tension on undemarcated borders, China just smiles and quietly postpones the matter to be taken up in the next meeting.

THE CHINESE government is pursuing a plan for global supremacy of China. Of course, at the Asian level they did think that India was a potential rival and, therefore, they fought a shadow bxing that has been going on till today. Pakistan is China's protege. China gives weapon system, arms and ammunition and even money to Pakistan so that the latter keeps on needling India every now and then. Thus China will be free to concentrate on her plan of global supremacy.

HACKING OF COMPUTERS

 The Chinese specialists have launched a cyber war against India and it has been going on for quite a few years. In the present scenario, the secret data of newest defence plans like SHAKTI of the Indian Artillery were compromised. Now the Indian scientists and cyber experts are not sure what to rely upon and what to discard. Many other important areas of the Indian defence have now fallen into grey areas.

Read more at  merinews

China's minority languages face threat of extinction

BEIJING (Reuters Life!) - From Mongolian to Manchu, Bouyei, Blang and U, China reverberates with a cacophony of languages and dialects. But the sounds of its 1.3 billion people are in danger of becoming dramatically less diverse.

The country's rapidly developing economy and a central government supported Mandarin promotion campaign is pushing some of these tongues to the brink of extinction, and Beijing must do more to help save them, their speakers say.

China has 56 officially recognized ethnic groups, and over 100 of their languages are in danger of dying out, according to the United Nations.

Yet more than 90 percent of China's population are the dominant Han, and a few of the largest groups, like the Muslim Hui, are so well integrated that they only speak Chinese.

This leaves many of the languages of the smallest groups, like the traditionally shamanistic Hezhen, Oroqen and Ewenki peoples who live in China's remote northeast, marginalized and under threat.

"I can only understand it a little and say a few everyday expressions. My children don't understand it at all. They only learn Chinese," said Du Mei, an Ewenki from Inner Mongolia.

"There are about 30,000 Ewenki and our language is on the verge of extinction. I often talk about the need here to speed up efforts to protect it," she told Reuters on the sidelines of the on-going annual meeting of parliament, where she is a delegate.

"The government must do more to protect minority languages, and record them. The pace has not been fast enough."

Complete article at REUTERS INDIA

Someone Call a Language Cop! China’s New War on English

With more and more publications mixing Chinese with English, measures and regulations should be adopted to avoid English invading Chinese, suggested Huang Youyi, director of the China International Publishing Group. “If we don’t pay attention and don’t take measures to stop the expansion of mingling Chinese and English, Chinese won’t be a pure language in a couple of years,” said Huang[.]

“In the long run, Chinese will lose its role as an independent linguistic system for passing on information and expressing human feelings.” Huang was referring to a popular phenomenon in China, in which English words are interwoven in articles and conversations. (China Daily)

Is Chinese under fire? Should something be done about it? Should China emulate French or Québécois language laws?

OK, I think we can all agree that China should not study the French on this issue, and as far as that language they speak in Québéc is concerned, well, best to leave that alone. All that aside, certainly the practices bemoaned by Huang are commonplace. Pick up any scholarly article on trade, for example, and you will definitely find it chock full of “English” acronyms, such as WTO, UN, ASEAN and GATT. To be completely accurate, these are acronyms that use Roman letters, and not English words per se, but close enough.

Leaving aside the greater issue, what about this use of acronyms? Unfortunately, these shortcuts are really useful for technical subjects, such as science, trade, law and international relations. Who wants to write “the General Agreement on Tarriffs and Trade” when “GATT” will suffice? We all have carpal tunnel syndrome (or Blackberry thumbs) at this point, so we desperately need to pace ourselves at the keyboard.

Therefore it makes sense to use “WTO,” three keystrokes, instead of “世界贸易组织,” six keystrokes (actually more than six, once you factor in a menu-driven Chinese character input system). We’re all busy, Mr. Huang, give us a break here! When commonly accepted nicknames and shortcuts exist in Chinese, then absolutely, let’s use them. But if we are going to replace a three-letter acronym with a long, formal name, count me out.

Complete article at china/divide.

Tune in to Chinese station, but not in Houston

Owners of radio program insist they’re reaching market, but aren’t

GALVESTON — China Radio International bought “a pig in a poke” when it leased a Galveston radio station in January that network officials mistakenly believed broadcast to the Houston market, according to a former China Radio International employee.

“It was the dumbest thing they could have ever done,” said Mark Shorey, a consultant at CRI headquarters in Beijing before his resignation last month . “CRI believes that they are broadcasting in Houston and continue to announce this fact on the air and on their Web site.”

Shorey, who has 20 years of experience in radio, said he resigned from CRI, which is run by the Chinese government, Feb. 12 over a policy dispute after five months at the network. He declined to discuss the nature of the dispute.

Attempts to reach CRI officials in Beijing and CRI's Washington bureau were unsuccessful.

View complete article at chron.

At Mekong's Source In China, Past And Present Collide

The Mekong River, one of the world's longest waterways, has a long and turbulent history. From its source in China's central highlands, it passes through six countries as it makes its way to the South China Sea — a journey of nearly 3,000 miles. In a five-part series, NPR's Southeast Asia correspondent Michael Sullivan journeys the length of the river and tells the story of the people who live along its banks.

He begins his trip high on the Tibetan plateau in the mountains of China's Qinghai province.

It's a long way to the source of the Mekong: a three-day journey by four-wheel drive from the nearest airport in the city of Xining, about 825 miles southwest of Beijing, and then another day on horseback.

But early on, I met some travelers whose journey made mine seem easy.

Step, Step, Slide

Two young Buddhist monks on a pilgrimage to the Tibetan city of Lhasa — the first of several groups I'll come across on this road — will walk and slide on their chests, protected by leather aprons, all the way. Their hands are strapped to wooden blocks covered in a thin sheet of metal, as they fling themselves to the pavement — and closer to their goal.

Christopher Brown for NPR

Tibetan prayer flags hang from a bridge crossing the Mekong River at sunrise. The river is known in Tibetan as the Dzachu, or "river of rocks," and in Chinese as the Lancang Jiang, or "turbulent river."

Tibetan prayer flags hang from a bridge crossing the Mekong River at sunrise. The river is known in Tibetan as the Dzachu, or "river of rocks," and in Chinese as the Lancang Jiang, or "turbulent river."

It's more than 400 miles from their monastery to Lhasa. Their journey, one of the monks says, will take six months.

It will be hard, he says, but worth it: a chance to pray at the Jokhang Temple in Lhasa — considered by most Tibetans to be the most sacred and important temple — and accumulate merit and good karma along the way.

View complete article at NPR

Orwellian China

Last year, in the middle of a ruinous financial crisis that wracked the US (and accentuated China’s rise in the world), some dramatic ownership changes were announced at an iconic American media network.

The Onion news network, best known for its completely over-the-top satire, said it was being sold to “a syndicate of industrious China-men from the deepest heart of the Orient.” The look-and-feel of the website — and much of its editorial content — was changed drastically to serve the heavy-handedly propagandist and commercial interests of the new owners. Article after article, and ‘news clip’ after ‘news clip’ sang unsubtle paeans to China, and mocked America’s ‘decline’.

For all its excessive, exuberant exaggeration, this package was, as works of satire go, fiendishly funny. Yet, it cut very close to the bone for down-and-out Americans looking on from afar at a rising China, with all its comical idiosyncrasies— and cultural stereotypes— intact.

View article at  DNA

In English-Crazy China, 8D World Teaches Kids To Speak In Virtual Worlds; Lands A Deal With CCTV

In China, learning spoken English is giving rise to a huge and growing market. For instance, in addition to English classes in public schools, parents send their children to about 50,000 for-profit training schools around the country, where English is the most popular subject. Instead of American Idol, on CCTV, the national government-owned TV network, they have the Star of Outlook English Talent Competition. This is possibly the largest nationwide competition in China. Last year, 400,000 students between the ages of 6 and 14 took part in it.

View article at Tech Crunch.