5/16/2008
New Olympics Blog
In yet another sign of the China-centered media hoopla certain to accompany this summer's Olympic Games, The New York Times started a blog last week, "Rings: The 2008 Olympics." The blog will draw on reporters from a variety of desks and bureaus, though much of the early coverage has been done by Jeff Z. Klein (who keeps the Times' blogs on soccer and hockey) and sports columnist George Vecsey (who promises future China reading recommendations). So far, about half the blog's posts have centered on athletic news--a good reminder after the torch relay, protests, and other Olympics-related coverage of recent months, that the Olympics are also an athletic competition.
5/15/2008
More Links for Reading on the Earthquake
1. This BBC “Day in History” piece gives a feel for how the 1976 earthquake was covered.
2. Shanghaiist, which has had coherent as-it-happened coverage since Monday, has a feature of side-by-side Youtube clips of coverage from Al Jazeera, AP, and others. The Al Jazeera report, by Melissa Chan, receives a well-deserved nod from Shanghaiist. (You can view more of Chan’s reports for Al Jazeera here, here, and here. They are filled with unique footage.)
3. Wieland Wagner’s opinion piece for Der Spiegel contrasts Wen Jiabao’s megaphone-amplified voice (the prime minister has been touring disaster areas to comfort victims) with the political voicelessness of the Chinese people.
4. The Far Eastern Review sums up the role of new technologies in spreading the quake’s stories (mentioning, in particular, the continued crisis at the quake’s epicenter in Wenchuan; for more on Wenchuan, see here). For information on how the story is being covered by domestic media, keep tabs through China Media Project’s promised on-going analysis.
5. On the web: The Opposite End of China encourages nationalist netizens to turn their energies against the Westboro Baptist Church (which has, in its style, posted a notice that the earthquake is God’s judgment against China), Blogging for China posts several firsthand accounts from Sichuan, and EastSouthNorthWest offers one of the most complete photo galleries on the web (many of these are quite graphic). Another photo gallery can be found here.
2. Shanghaiist, which has had coherent as-it-happened coverage since Monday, has a feature of side-by-side Youtube clips of coverage from Al Jazeera, AP, and others. The Al Jazeera report, by Melissa Chan, receives a well-deserved nod from Shanghaiist. (You can view more of Chan’s reports for Al Jazeera here, here, and here. They are filled with unique footage.)
3. Wieland Wagner’s opinion piece for Der Spiegel contrasts Wen Jiabao’s megaphone-amplified voice (the prime minister has been touring disaster areas to comfort victims) with the political voicelessness of the Chinese people.
4. The Far Eastern Review sums up the role of new technologies in spreading the quake’s stories (mentioning, in particular, the continued crisis at the quake’s epicenter in Wenchuan; for more on Wenchuan, see here). For information on how the story is being covered by domestic media, keep tabs through China Media Project’s promised on-going analysis.
5. On the web: The Opposite End of China encourages nationalist netizens to turn their energies against the Westboro Baptist Church (which has, in its style, posted a notice that the earthquake is God’s judgment against China), Blogging for China posts several firsthand accounts from Sichuan, and EastSouthNorthWest offers one of the most complete photo galleries on the web (many of these are quite graphic). Another photo gallery can be found here.
5/14/2008
Earthquake Coverage, Possible Action
There is an enormous amount of worthy coverage of the earthquake. If you have suggestions for other recommended reading, please post a comment.
1. Some of the best coverage in the United States is coming from NPR, who had Melissa Block and Robert Siegel in Sichuan to cover other stories at the time of the quake. At NPR, you can see photos, listen to and read the coverage of rural areas, and even hear Melissa Block, who was mid-interview when the earthquake struck, narrating what she saw from the street.
2. Rebecca MacKinnon posted a short piece with links to a variety of websites posting information from people in Sichuan.
3. Peter Hessler’s moving essay in The New Yorker includes notes and updates from his former students (some of whom he has written about in both his books).
4. The continuation of the torch relay’s domestic legs following the earthquake has touched off debate and anger in China. This AFP report gives more detail.
5. Melinda Liu’s oddly prescient mention of the 1976 earthquake in an article on the crisis in Myanmar raises questions about the relationship between (badly-managed) natural disasters and regime change.
6. China Media Project director Qian Gang (author of a book on the Tangshan earthquake) has written a statement urging all media to continue to focus on the rescue efforts, rather than rushing to contextualize and criticize.
In terms of giving to help those in need, many blogs have mentioned various charities, the most common being the Red Cross Society of China.
1. Rich Brubaker at Crossroads (the blog’s subtitle is “a review of corporate social responsibility in China”) has several posts recommending charities, as well as laying out which charities donors should give to for short-term versus mid- or long-range needs.
2. Many of the collections are being taken up by local organizations. For instance, here at UCI the Chinese Students and Scholars Association will be collecting donations directly (for those in the area, they will be on Ring Road in front of the bookstore on Thursday and Friday from 8-5). Your most direct or convenient route to giving may be a local organization or charity who will then send the funds on to an organization working in China (for example, the UCI association is collecting on behalf of Red Cross of China).
3. In the coming days, organizations like the American Institute of Philanthropy or Charity Navigator may publish recommendations for charities to give to (both have recent pieces on giving for Myanmar).
1. Some of the best coverage in the United States is coming from NPR, who had Melissa Block and Robert Siegel in Sichuan to cover other stories at the time of the quake. At NPR, you can see photos, listen to and read the coverage of rural areas, and even hear Melissa Block, who was mid-interview when the earthquake struck, narrating what she saw from the street.
2. Rebecca MacKinnon posted a short piece with links to a variety of websites posting information from people in Sichuan.
3. Peter Hessler’s moving essay in The New Yorker includes notes and updates from his former students (some of whom he has written about in both his books).
4. The continuation of the torch relay’s domestic legs following the earthquake has touched off debate and anger in China. This AFP report gives more detail.
5. Melinda Liu’s oddly prescient mention of the 1976 earthquake in an article on the crisis in Myanmar raises questions about the relationship between (badly-managed) natural disasters and regime change.
6. China Media Project director Qian Gang (author of a book on the Tangshan earthquake) has written a statement urging all media to continue to focus on the rescue efforts, rather than rushing to contextualize and criticize.
In terms of giving to help those in need, many blogs have mentioned various charities, the most common being the Red Cross Society of China.
1. Rich Brubaker at Crossroads (the blog’s subtitle is “a review of corporate social responsibility in China”) has several posts recommending charities, as well as laying out which charities donors should give to for short-term versus mid- or long-range needs.
2. Many of the collections are being taken up by local organizations. For instance, here at UCI the Chinese Students and Scholars Association will be collecting donations directly (for those in the area, they will be on Ring Road in front of the bookstore on Thursday and Friday from 8-5). Your most direct or convenient route to giving may be a local organization or charity who will then send the funds on to an organization working in China (for example, the UCI association is collecting on behalf of Red Cross of China).
3. In the coming days, organizations like the American Institute of Philanthropy or Charity Navigator may publish recommendations for charities to give to (both have recent pieces on giving for Myanmar).
A Look Back at the Tangshan Earthquake and the Montreal Olympics
Like many of the audience in
Excerpt from the end of Chapter 6, 梁丽娟，《何振梁与奥林匹克 》[Liang Lijuan, He Zhenliang and Olympism] (
[…] After Comrade Xiaoping returned to supervise their work and the situation had just started to straighten out and show some positive prospects, things suddenly collapsed again.
At the time the table tennis athlete Zhuang Zedong had already been officially appointed as the Director of the Sports Commission and authority over the entire Sports Commission was systematically held in the hands of people who shared his way of thinking. The former high jumper Ni Zhiqin became the head of the International Department. All the slogans raised by Zhuang Zedong and his buddies were in opposition to the methods advocated by Premier Zhou and Xiaoping, about whom they said that their tactics “worshipped foreign things and toadied to foreign powers” and were “capitulationism.” Everything was criticized and negated, sometimes to a laughably absurd degree. For example, they regarded referees as expressions of “capitalist privilege;” they didn’t assign places in competitions and there was no separation into first, second, or third; and they even twisted the spirit of “friendship first” so that no competitions reported scores and recorded points; and so on. In sum, the more “left” everything was, the better it was. […]
The management of the Sports Commission by Zhuang Zedong and his buddies was also absurd. At the time the newly-elected president of FIFA, Joao Marie Havelange, accepted an invitation to visit
[…] When would the Cultural Revolution finally come to an end, when would normal living conditions finally return to the nation and to his own home? Although they wanted Zhenliang to abandon the sports diplomacy that he had done for so many years, he could not bear to leave it, but those intolerable difficulties often made him just want to go back to school to teach or to the Foreign Affairs Ministry that had wanted him in the past. However, transferring posts was not something that an individual could solve, and although he often wanted to do it, he was ultimately unable to make it happen. During that time there were unbearable days when “you can’t do what you want to do, can’t go where you want to go.” He sometimes truly felt that the days wore on like years.
The 1976 Olympic Games were in
During the Olympics, the
At the end of September 1976, the Ministry of Education borrowed Zhenliang as a adviser to their delegation to the UNESCO session in
When Zhenliang came back from the UNESCO session he heard the irrefutable news that the “Gang of Four” had fallen from power. Everyone felt as if they had experienced liberation. […]
The ten years of the Cultural Revolution were finally over, and the great mountain pressing on our heads was finally pushed off. Although the best years of our lives, which had been wasted, were gone forever and could never be regained, it was worth celebrating that although we had passed through all kinds of torment, no one in the family had lost an arm or a leg, we were all mentally sound, we could still use the rest of our lives to do many things. We have a photo album at home with photos of children from small to big. In the front section there are so many happy ones, but at the end are some taken during these ten years. Everyone in these photos wears a dull expression and a forced smile. Going through the hardship of these years, we all forgot how - or were unable to - laugh. The record of this photo album abruptly stops at this point - there is nothing pasted after it. Let us end let this period of heartbreaking history here, and in the future our family will write again of a new life.
After our beautiful country had once again been restored to order, life turned over a new page. The sun shone again on every corner of the land, laughter again filled our warm home. Zhenliang hoisted the sails, put out to sea, and sliced through the waves on behalf the development of Chinese sports, so that
5/13/2008
The Sichuan Earthquake: View from Taiwan
Here in Taiwan people are following the news of the horrific Sichuan earthquake with deep sympathy and concern. This is especially true for those of us who lived through the 921 earthquake nearly nine years ago (September 21, 1999), which was also an inland quake, albeit not nearly as devastating. Here are some thoughts being expressed at this time:
1. How are our fellow countrymen doing? As of this posting, two deaths among Taiwanese in Sichuan have been reported, and over one hundred more are still missing. Those who have reestablished contact with friends and loved ones are providing moving first-hand accounts of the suffering, while some who have experience dealing with the aftermaths of earthquakes are doing what they can to help the Sichuan people to cope.
2. What can we do to assist? People remember the dark days in the aftermath of the 921 earthquake, and this has prompted an outpouring of money and relief supplies, including blankets, tents, etc. In Taiwan, the earthquake was especially hard on disadvantaged groups living in the mountains, especially Aborigines. This may also be the case in Sichuan.
3. When can our people go? Some religious and philanthropic groups are already on the way, but Taiwan's experienced crack rescue teams are still waiting for permission to enter stricken areas. Whether or not cross-Strait politics will rear its ugly head remains to be seen.
4. Will this have any impact on the Olympics? Some are also wondering what will happen to the scaled-down torch relay (now doubling as a fund-raising drive), especially when the torch arrives in Chengdu on June 18.
5. What will the long-term repercussions be? It took many long years to rebuild after 921, and the relief and reconstruction efforts put huge pressure on the KMT government. There were also unfortunate instances of inefficiency, and even corruption, with some analysts noting that the earthquake may have been one factor contributing to the KMT's loss of power just six months later.
All in all, people are deeply grieved by the terrible suffering, and hope that conditions will improve as soon as is humanly possible.
5/12/2008
China Around the World: Japan
The China Beat editors would like to introduce a new feature: China Around the World. We have asked scholars, journalists, and graduate students working outside China and the US to tell us how China is being covered in the local media they read. This is the first installment--from Japan.
By James Farrer
My knowledge of Japanese media coverage of China is largely limited to print media, and mostly as a regular consumer of the major liberal daily Asahi Shimbun. Despite this relatively narrow window, several features of Asahi's China coverage strike me as noteworthy.
One obvious difference with American newspaper reporting is a far greater focus on historical features. During the past year, Asahi ran an excellent series on turning points East Asian history, that included essays on Japan's colonial expansion in Korea, Taiwan, China and other parts of Asia. One series of articles compared the way these events were described in Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese and PRC textbooks. In general the articles were insightful and well-documented and did not back away from Japan's historic aggression in Asia. At the same time, they discussed subjects that would not have been covered by Americans including the lives of Japanese in former colonial possessions.
These progressive elements aside, Asahi, also chases the scandalous China stories that other major Japanese outlets chase. This bias towards dramatic and/or violent events is not so different from the West, particularly US television, but the proximity and greater human resources of Japanese media in China mean that headline events there produce a huge volume of reporting in Japanese media outlets.
This year these media circuses included the Tibet riots, and the "frozen dumpling" incident in which Chinese-manufactured frozen dumplings were found to have agricultural poisons on the surface of the packages. The dumpling incident, in particular, was front page news for days, even though no fatalities were involved.
The cumulative effect of this kind of reporting is to portray China as a scary and unreliable neighbor (and also one with a great deal of ill-will toward Japan). To some extent this front-page coverage is balanced by a large quantity of more careful and neutral daily reporting, but it is these big "incidents" that seem to leave the greatest mark on public consciousness.
One minor, though progressive, feature of Asahi's China coverage, is a regular Sunday column by a Chinese columnist based in Japan for over 20 years, Mo Bangfu, who writes short breezy essays on China-centered issues. This column is significant, because in a country with a relatively small immigrant population, a regular column by an ethnic Chinese r
esident of Japan is perhaps a small sign of the opening up of Japanese media not only to overseas perspectives, but the perspectives of foreigners living in Japan.
While we are at it, I would like to comment on media reporting on China on the other side of the planet. I am a regular consumer of the German magazine Spiegel. I find Spiegel China reporting to be a bit like Newsweek and Time on steroids, with alarmist reports of impending economic collapse, alternating with hyperbolic stories of China's march to global domination. Despite the occasional positive story, the tone is generally very skeptical of China's social progress. For example, the story this week reads "China Inc. is running out of air," warning German firms in particular not to rely too much on the China market.
James Farrer is an associate professor of sociology at Sophia University in Tokyo and author of Opening Up: Youth Sex Culture and Market Reform in Shanghai.
By James Farrer
My knowledge of Japanese media coverage of China is largely limited to print media, and mostly as a regular consumer of the major liberal daily Asahi Shimbun. Despite this relatively narrow window, several features of Asahi's China coverage strike me as noteworthy.
One obvious difference with American newspaper reporting is a far greater focus on historical features. During the past year, Asahi ran an excellent series on turning points East Asian history, that included essays on Japan's colonial expansion in Korea, Taiwan, China and other parts of Asia. One series of articles compared the way these events were described in Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese and PRC textbooks. In general the articles were insightful and well-documented and did not back away from Japan's historic aggression in Asia. At the same time, they discussed subjects that would not have been covered by Americans including the lives of Japanese in former colonial possessions.
These progressive elements aside, Asahi, also chases the scandalous China stories that other major Japanese outlets chase. This bias towards dramatic and/or violent events is not so different from the West, particularly US television, but the proximity and greater human resources of Japanese media in China mean that headline events there produce a huge volume of reporting in Japanese media outlets.
This year these media circuses included the Tibet riots, and the "frozen dumpling" incident in which Chinese-manufactured frozen dumplings were found to have agricultural poisons on the surface of the packages. The dumpling incident, in particular, was front page news for days, even though no fatalities were involved.
The cumulative effect of this kind of reporting is to portray China as a scary and unreliable neighbor (and also one with a great deal of ill-will toward Japan). To some extent this front-page coverage is balanced by a large quantity of more careful and neutral daily reporting, but it is these big "incidents" that seem to leave the greatest mark on public consciousness.
One minor, though progressive, feature of Asahi's China coverage, is a regular Sunday column by a Chinese columnist based in Japan for over 20 years, Mo Bangfu, who writes short breezy essays on China-centered issues. This column is significant, because in a country with a relatively small immigrant population, a regular column by an ethnic Chinese r
esident of Japan is perhaps a small sign of the opening up of Japanese media not only to overseas perspectives, but the perspectives of foreigners living in Japan.While we are at it, I would like to comment on media reporting on China on the other side of the planet. I am a regular consumer of the German magazine Spiegel. I find Spiegel China reporting to be a bit like Newsweek and Time on steroids, with alarmist reports of impending economic collapse, alternating with hyperbolic stories of China's march to global domination. Despite the occasional positive story, the tone is generally very skeptical of China's social progress. For example, the story this week reads "China Inc. is running out of air," warning German firms in particular not to rely too much on the China market.
James Farrer is an associate professor of sociology at Sophia University in Tokyo and author of Opening Up: Youth Sex Culture and Market Reform in Shanghai.
5/11/2008
All the Cheese in China
If you pay any attention to developments in Chinese publishing, even if only casually, you have probably come across one or more stories by now about counterfeit sequels to and unauthorized spin-offs to the Harry Potter series. And as I mentioned in my recent post about Wolf Totem, that book, too, has inspired fake Chinese sequels (Wolf King of the Plains, for example, and not just one but two books unoriginally called Wolf Totem 2, both allegedly but neither actually by Jiang Rong) and spin-offs (a series of novels about Tibetan Mastiffs that have become best-sellers in their own right, plus non-fiction works about the practical value of following the “way of the wolf”).
I first became aware of the book’s impact on a 2002 visit to the great Jifeng Books branch located in a Shanghai subway station, which is among my favorite places to go when in the city to browse the shelves, buy new texts, and check out publishing trends. “Oh,” I thought, when my eye caught a Chinese edition of the management guide, “so they’ve decided to translate that, have they?” But no sooner had the words formed than I saw five or six other books that riffed on the title. I thought this strange, and then soon after returning to the U.S. enjoyed reading a lively July 2007 piece by Sheila Melvin in the International Herald Tribune, “Chinese Smile and Say ‘Cheese,’” that was devoted to “the cheese phenomenon” in the PRC. Melvin said that no fewer than “50 copycat versions” and plays on the title of the original had appeared in China, including ones like I Won’t Move Your Cheese and Who Dared to Move My Cheese? Strangest of all, perhaps, was one with the unlikely title of Attractive and Alluring Cheese (“cheese” entering the lexicon for “profit,” while “moving cheese” signified change).
The Chinese cheese-moving story doesn’t end there, however, for the book’s title has also inspired newspaper articles. People’s Daily, for example, ran a piece not long ago on American complaints about China’s economic rise called “Who Moved Americans’ Cheese?” And Beijing Daily News played on the term in an article about revised versions of one of the best-loved Chinese novels of all time, Journey to the West (also called The Monkey King, something that the author Wolf King of the Plains might have had in mind, or Monkey, for short): 谁动了我们的《西游记》(Who Moved Our “Journey to the West”)？
One of the curious features of this situation is how insignificant the actual food product in question, cheese, is in China. (Living in Shanghai in the mid-1980s, it was a rare thing to be able to find any variety for sale, though we sometimes managed to get a chunk of fairly strange Mongolian cheese or some canned cheese from New Zealand. Now, the situation is quite different and many more varieties—and higher quality ones!—but it is still hardly a central part of the diet of most Chinese.) This is something Melvin noted as an irony in her article, even quoting a publisher in China who joked about the temptation to change the title of the original to “Who Moved My Pickled Cabbage?”
And yet, isn’t it possible at least that it is precisely the exoticness of the “cheese” in the title that adds to the book’s cachet, as a provider of wisdom coming from afar? If so, this would just be a West-to-East variant of an East-to-West how-to guide phenomenon that has grown to curious proportions, shows no sign of going away, and depends in part on the “exoticness” involved (in this case its link to ancient China). I mean, of course, what might be called the “Sun Tzu Fever,” which has led to a dizzying number of English language websites, books, and newspaper articles that use allusions to Sun Tzu’s The Art of War to help Western readers understand a current issue (like John McCain’s campaign strategy), succeed in business (without trying too hard), or win at video and computer games.
Note: I link to Danwei.org pieces at various points in this and my previous post on Wolf Totem, but this is not enough credit to give--the site is simply invaluable to anyone trying to keep track of what is being written, talked about, and published in the PRC.
But the most intriguing case, to me at least, of a book that not only became a bestseller in China but also gave birth to a plethora of linked titles is Who Moved My Cheese? This work, which offers suggestions on coping with change in the workplace and in life, sold an enormous number of copies when first published in the United States. And it inspired some spin-offs, such as Nobody Moved Your Cheese! But in China, it did much more than that, giving birth to a whole subgenre and having its title make its way into popular discourse in a variety of curious ways.
I first became aware of the book’s impact on a 2002 visit to the great Jifeng Books branch located in a Shanghai subway station, which is among my favorite places to go when in the city to browse the shelves, buy new texts, and check out publishing trends. “Oh,” I thought, when my eye caught a Chinese edition of the management guide, “so they’ve decided to translate that, have they?” But no sooner had the words formed than I saw five or six other books that riffed on the title. I thought this strange, and then soon after returning to the U.S. enjoyed reading a lively July 2007 piece by Sheila Melvin in the International Herald Tribune, “Chinese Smile and Say ‘Cheese,’” that was devoted to “the cheese phenomenon” in the PRC. Melvin said that no fewer than “50 copycat versions” and plays on the title of the original had appeared in China, including ones like I Won’t Move Your Cheese and Who Dared to Move My Cheese? Strangest of all, perhaps, was one with the unlikely title of Attractive and Alluring Cheese (“cheese” entering the lexicon for “profit,” while “moving cheese” signified change).
The Chinese cheese-moving story doesn’t end there, however, for the book’s title has also inspired newspaper articles. People’s Daily, for example, ran a piece not long ago on American complaints about China’s economic rise called “Who Moved Americans’ Cheese?” And Beijing Daily News played on the term in an article about revised versions of one of the best-loved Chinese novels of all time, Journey to the West (also called The Monkey King, something that the author Wolf King of the Plains might have had in mind, or Monkey, for short): 谁动了我们的《西游记》(Who Moved Our “Journey to the West”)？
One of the curious features of this situation is how insignificant the actual food product in question, cheese, is in China. (Living in Shanghai in the mid-1980s, it was a rare thing to be able to find any variety for sale, though we sometimes managed to get a chunk of fairly strange Mongolian cheese or some canned cheese from New Zealand. Now, the situation is quite different and many more varieties—and higher quality ones!—but it is still hardly a central part of the diet of most Chinese.) This is something Melvin noted as an irony in her article, even quoting a publisher in China who joked about the temptation to change the title of the original to “Who Moved My Pickled Cabbage?”
And yet, isn’t it possible at least that it is precisely the exoticness of the “cheese” in the title that adds to the book’s cachet, as a provider of wisdom coming from afar? If so, this would just be a West-to-East variant of an East-to-West how-to guide phenomenon that has grown to curious proportions, shows no sign of going away, and depends in part on the “exoticness” involved (in this case its link to ancient China). I mean, of course, what might be called the “Sun Tzu Fever,” which has led to a dizzying number of English language websites, books, and newspaper articles that use allusions to Sun Tzu’s The Art of War to help Western readers understand a current issue (like John McCain’s campaign strategy), succeed in business (without trying too hard), or win at video and computer games.
Note: I link to Danwei.org pieces at various points in this and my previous post on Wolf Totem, but this is not enough credit to give--the site is simply invaluable to anyone trying to keep track of what is being written, talked about, and published in the PRC.
5/09/2008
Taelspin: The Spirit of May Fourth
"Hope cannot be said to exist, nor can it be said not to exist. It is just like roads across the earth. For actually the earth had no roads to begin with, but when many people pass one way, a road is made." - Lu Xun
This past week marked the 89th anniversary of the May 4th demonstrations, the defining event of a decade of intellectual vitality and ideological debate as teachers, students, authors and scholars drew on a panoply of ideas to make sense of the world, their nation, and how best to build a strong and vital society.
At the heart of this movement was a true marketplace of ideas. Young intellectuals rushed to read the latest issues of their favorite journals, of which there were hundreds, pages brimming with the back-and-forth of open minds at work.
The question in the hearts of these youthful, educated elite: How to save
Whether one was a follower of John Dewey, Bertrand Russell, Herbert Spencer, or Karl Marx (among many others), or an academic focused on using new methodologies to mine China’s past and cultural heritage, or sought elsewhere for a way to unite a nation against the forces arrayed against her, what made the May Fourth era so special was the free expression of ideas, and the willingness of the intellectual elite to listen, discuss, and then accept or reject different viewpoints on the merits of the arguments presented.
It is a legacy of which
And it wasn’t only between the pages. The young people of the May 4th generation organized, demonstrated, boycotted, loved, and lived according to a myriad of competing ideals.
In the PRC, May 4 is celebrated as “Youth Day” and as this important anniversary approached this year (with the added convenience of a May Day holiday), the self-conscious heirs to the May 4th generation organized their own series of demonstrations and boycotts to mixed success.
Like their May 4th predecessors, the young people of
But something is missing: That marketplace of ideas.
Today in China, even with the government tirelessly trying to limit access to alternative perspectives, bookstores and the Internet still abound with news, essays, translations, history, and philosophy, providing young people with an access to information far beyond the wildest dreams of the May 4th students. But the desire to find out more, the craving to challenge assumptions and formulate multiple perspectives on complex issues is woefully absent. The youth of today write more than ever, more than any generation in recent memory, terabytes of opinion available online—but the anger and passion and fire of the May 4th generation are now enlisted in support of a single worldview and a single perspective on a range of issues. A whole generation whose arguments are hard-wired: an authoritarian success story.
The actions of netizen fenqing and “Pro-China” protesters along the Olympic torch route around the world are strikingly antithetical to the spirit of May 4. For too many, it is no longer about expressing one’s own views, supported with the best argument and the most relevant available evidence; it is about using mob psychology, ridicule, intimidation, ad hominem attacks, and a variety of other means to silence those with whom they disagree. And the reasons for their disagreeing are for the most part anti-intellectual: I don't like you, what you say is not what I've heard or learned, and those ideas make me uncomfortable--ergo, you're wrong.
On the more extreme end of the spectrum, in the last few weeks we have seen physical violence in
That’s a shame. The CCP was founded by key members of the May 4th movement, including Chen Duxiu, and the Party is proud of this heritage. The May 4th demonstrators make up one of the iconic images on the Monument to the People’s Heroes in
5/08/2008
The Fur is Flying—Or, There’s More than One Way to Skin a Wolf
Every once in a while, a book linked to China comes along that garners such widely varying reviews that I begin to wonder if the reviewers all had the same text in front of them. I had this experience last with Mao: The Unknown Story, a book that I reviewed myself (hint as to my take: George W. Bush claimed to think the tome excellent; he and I rarely see things the same way; this instance was no exception). And now, along comes Wolf Totem. And, once again, disagreements are not just about one aspect of the book but about many.
One veteran reviewer of China books, Jonathan Mirsky, for example, calls Wolf Totem “the best Chinese book I've read for many years,” and presents it as both a gripping tale and one with a nicely subversive anti-authoritarian political edge. He sums up his fondness for it by saying it is “enlightening, poignant, mysterious…a miracle.” Another writer with a long engagement with China, Linda Jaivin, by contrast, noting that the book’s fans liken it to Herman Melville’s best known novel, writes that the prose is “so bloated with banality, repetition and cliché, that comparisons to Moby Dick, to my mind, relate only to the ratio of blubber to ambergris.” As for its politics, she finds these worrisome enough to inspire the rhetorical question: “Is sentimentality the last refuge of the crypto-fascist?”
I’m not going to enter the reviewing fray here, but do I think, given how much interest the book has generated, a quirky sort of list of five is in order. By the time readers get to number 5, they will have more than enough links to get a sense of the incredible diversity of the responses Wolf Totem has generated. And it is a book worth coming to terms with, even if one agrees with Jaivin’s assessment of it, since it is a rare work of fiction that sparks interest at four different points in time. Wolf Totem did so first when the Chinese edition became a runaway bestseller. Second, when Penguin announced it would pay more for its English language rights than had ever been paid for a Chinese novel. Third, when it was nominated for and then won the first Asian Man Literary Prize . Fourth, when the English language translation appeared earlier this spring, just after Nicole Barnes published her “Coming Distractions” review of it here on China Beat. And that’s not even counting the smaller bursts of interest that came along when news broke that the author, who wrote under the pseudonym of Jiang Rong, was in fact Lu Jiamin ; when a young adult version of the book came out in Chinese; and when word circulated about film and manga versions being in the works.)
1) London Calling. One intriguing thing about the Wolf Totem affair is the frequency with which Jack London is invoked in reviews—Jaivin’s, for example, and also the one Ursula K. Le Guin did for the Guardian —as a point of comparison and a likely inspiration for Lu. One of the most thoughtful reviews of the English language edition, that Pankaj Mishra did for the New York Times, is even titled “Call of the Wild”—though the reviewer takes Lu Xun rather than Jack London as his starting point (as is particularly fitting for a review that appeared on May 4th). And I’m pleased to learn (from a Google search that led me to an online copy of her c.v.) that a doctorial student at the University of Heidelberg, Lena Henningsen, has already presented a scholarly paper on the Jack London to Jiang Rong progression in lupine literature. I’ll look forward to reading this when it appears, as this is a particularly rich subject for exploration, due not only to London’s canine concerns, but also his Social Darwinism (something that some see at play in Wolf Totem’s vision of ethnicity), his popularity in China (something Le Guin notes in her review), and the fact that he wrote both fiction and essays that dealt with Chinese themes.
2) A Hundred Blooming Puns. For some reason, perhaps the animals involved, writers have been having a field day with clever turns of phrase in their writings about Wolf Totem. (This made it hard, in fact, to come up with a title for this posting, as many of the best bits of word play I could think of had already been used.) My favorite turn of phrase appears in an introduction to the Danwei.org reposting of Linda Jaivin’s Australian Literary Review piece. The introduction’s author, Geremie Barmé, refers to “Wolves in chic clothing”—a phrase that stings and sums up a lot when read in context. Runner-up (and winner in the title of a review that sums up the reviewer’s main point subcategory) is the Seattle Times piece on the book: “Wolf Totem is a prizewinner—but it’s still kind of a dog."
3) Imitation is the Sincerest Form of Flattery. What do Wolf Totem and the Harry Potter books have in common, besides high sales figures? Why they’ve each inspired fakes and knock-offs in China, of course .
4) A Man Bites Dog Story? One of the trickiest things to unpack about the whole Wolf Totem phenomenon is how it can simultaneously involve a tale so subversive that the author needed to remain anonymous, and yet find the novel being promoted in the official press. In a sense this just reveals how far removed from, say, the Soviet situation in Cold War times the Chinese mix of market and Communist Party forces can be. Still, it is an interesting thread of what Mao might call “contradictions” to try to unravel, and a good place to start pondering the complexities is with Beijing Review’s story about the book. This story describes a surreal-sounding global launch of the English language edition that will include such things as a “seminar on nomadic culture in Melbourne” and “an eco-friendly tour to Inner Mongolia where author Jiang Rong once lived,” but never mentions (though the news was out well before it went to print) that we now know the author’s actual name (he is just referred to as “Jiang Rong” throughout) and that he had a tie to the Tiananmen protests of 1989.
5) Novel Aspects of the Novel. What was perhaps most striking of all about the book as a reader (full disclosure: I didn’t try to read it in Chinese, just waited for it to come out in English, and didn’t get very far in it when it did, finding the pace far too slow for my tastes) was simply how unlike a typical work of fiction it is. Its peculiarities are summed up neatly by Financial Times reviewer Donald Morrison (whose piece ends up stressing above all the ecological themes of the book) in the opening to his review: “The bestselling novel in modern Chinese history features lengthy lectures on anthropology, agriculture and husbandry - but no sex, hardly any women, a leading character with overlarge teeth and not a single word of dialogue.” That is not quite as snappy as Linda Jaivin’s opening—“Boy meets wolf. Boy loses wolf. Boy writes Wolf Totem, wins inaugural Man Asian Literary Prize”—but it does convey a lot about the book’s distinctive style.
One veteran reviewer of China books, Jonathan Mirsky, for example, calls Wolf Totem “the best Chinese book I've read for many years,” and presents it as both a gripping tale and one with a nicely subversive anti-authoritarian political edge. He sums up his fondness for it by saying it is “enlightening, poignant, mysterious…a miracle.” Another writer with a long engagement with China, Linda Jaivin, by contrast, noting that the book’s fans liken it to Herman Melville’s best known novel, writes that the prose is “so bloated with banality, repetition and cliché, that comparisons to Moby Dick, to my mind, relate only to the ratio of blubber to ambergris.” As for its politics, she finds these worrisome enough to inspire the rhetorical question: “Is sentimentality the last refuge of the crypto-fascist?”
I’m not going to enter the reviewing fray here, but do I think, given how much interest the book has generated, a quirky sort of list of five is in order. By the time readers get to number 5, they will have more than enough links to get a sense of the incredible diversity of the responses Wolf Totem has generated. And it is a book worth coming to terms with, even if one agrees with Jaivin’s assessment of it, since it is a rare work of fiction that sparks interest at four different points in time. Wolf Totem did so first when the Chinese edition became a runaway bestseller. Second, when Penguin announced it would pay more for its English language rights than had ever been paid for a Chinese novel. Third, when it was nominated for and then won the first Asian Man Literary Prize . Fourth, when the English language translation appeared earlier this spring, just after Nicole Barnes published her “Coming Distractions” review of it here on China Beat. And that’s not even counting the smaller bursts of interest that came along when news broke that the author, who wrote under the pseudonym of Jiang Rong, was in fact Lu Jiamin ; when a young adult version of the book came out in Chinese; and when word circulated about film and manga versions being in the works.)
1) London Calling. One intriguing thing about the Wolf Totem affair is the frequency with which Jack London is invoked in reviews—Jaivin’s, for example, and also the one Ursula K. Le Guin did for the Guardian —as a point of comparison and a likely inspiration for Lu. One of the most thoughtful reviews of the English language edition, that Pankaj Mishra did for the New York Times, is even titled “Call of the Wild”—though the reviewer takes Lu Xun rather than Jack London as his starting point (as is particularly fitting for a review that appeared on May 4th). And I’m pleased to learn (from a Google search that led me to an online copy of her c.v.) that a doctorial student at the University of Heidelberg, Lena Henningsen, has already presented a scholarly paper on the Jack London to Jiang Rong progression in lupine literature. I’ll look forward to reading this when it appears, as this is a particularly rich subject for exploration, due not only to London’s canine concerns, but also his Social Darwinism (something that some see at play in Wolf Totem’s vision of ethnicity), his popularity in China (something Le Guin notes in her review), and the fact that he wrote both fiction and essays that dealt with Chinese themes.
2) A Hundred Blooming Puns. For some reason, perhaps the animals involved, writers have been having a field day with clever turns of phrase in their writings about Wolf Totem. (This made it hard, in fact, to come up with a title for this posting, as many of the best bits of word play I could think of had already been used.) My favorite turn of phrase appears in an introduction to the Danwei.org reposting of Linda Jaivin’s Australian Literary Review piece. The introduction’s author, Geremie Barmé, refers to “Wolves in chic clothing”—a phrase that stings and sums up a lot when read in context. Runner-up (and winner in the title of a review that sums up the reviewer’s main point subcategory) is the Seattle Times piece on the book: “Wolf Totem is a prizewinner—but it’s still kind of a dog."
3) Imitation is the Sincerest Form of Flattery. What do Wolf Totem and the Harry Potter books have in common, besides high sales figures? Why they’ve each inspired fakes and knock-offs in China, of course .
4) A Man Bites Dog Story? One of the trickiest things to unpack about the whole Wolf Totem phenomenon is how it can simultaneously involve a tale so subversive that the author needed to remain anonymous, and yet find the novel being promoted in the official press. In a sense this just reveals how far removed from, say, the Soviet situation in Cold War times the Chinese mix of market and Communist Party forces can be. Still, it is an interesting thread of what Mao might call “contradictions” to try to unravel, and a good place to start pondering the complexities is with Beijing Review’s story about the book. This story describes a surreal-sounding global launch of the English language edition that will include such things as a “seminar on nomadic culture in Melbourne” and “an eco-friendly tour to Inner Mongolia where author Jiang Rong once lived,” but never mentions (though the news was out well before it went to print) that we now know the author’s actual name (he is just referred to as “Jiang Rong” throughout) and that he had a tie to the Tiananmen protests of 1989.
5) Novel Aspects of the Novel. What was perhaps most striking of all about the book as a reader (full disclosure: I didn’t try to read it in Chinese, just waited for it to come out in English, and didn’t get very far in it when it did, finding the pace far too slow for my tastes) was simply how unlike a typical work of fiction it is. Its peculiarities are summed up neatly by Financial Times reviewer Donald Morrison (whose piece ends up stressing above all the ecological themes of the book) in the opening to his review: “The bestselling novel in modern Chinese history features lengthy lectures on anthropology, agriculture and husbandry - but no sex, hardly any women, a leading character with overlarge teeth and not a single word of dialogue.” That is not quite as snappy as Linda Jaivin’s opening—“Boy meets wolf. Boy loses wolf. Boy writes Wolf Totem, wins inaugural Man Asian Literary Prize”—but it does convey a lot about the book’s distinctive style.
5/07/2008
Reading Recommendations
A couple issues have been generating a great deal of media interest lately: continued coverage of the situation in Tibet, and the political views (and demonstrations) of Chinese students. Here are a few recommendations for further reading on those two topics:
1. We referenced this piece in an earlier posting, but just in case you didn’t make the jump that time, we wanted to urge you to do it again. China Digital Times has this fascinating translation of a Qinghua student’s description of what happened when several Public Security Bureau officers dropped by his group’s Carrefour protest planning meeting.
2. James Fallows blogged recently on a Beijing exhibit on Tibetan history as a window onto how Chinese are thinking about Tibet’s historical relationship to China.
3. For a look at how one group of students (members of Guizhou University’s Kurt Vonnegut book club) are struggling with their visions of China’s future, see Mike Levy’s piece at In These Times.
4. For a great summary of the events in Tibet, see Robert Barnett’s review of Pico Iyer’s new book in the New York Review of Books.
5. There are interesting quotes about the protests from Chinese students gathered by Monroe Price at HuffPost (and he links to Jeff Wasserstrom’s recent piece at The Nation’s blog near the end).
6. And finally, this commentary by Kerry Brown at opendemocracy makes the tongue-in-cheek argument that China’s recent bad news, from Tibet to the torch relay, will have the effect of lowering expectations for the Olympics—a correction Brown argues was much-needed.
1. We referenced this piece in an earlier posting, but just in case you didn’t make the jump that time, we wanted to urge you to do it again. China Digital Times has this fascinating translation of a Qinghua student’s description of what happened when several Public Security Bureau officers dropped by his group’s Carrefour protest planning meeting.
2. James Fallows blogged recently on a Beijing exhibit on Tibetan history as a window onto how Chinese are thinking about Tibet’s historical relationship to China.
3. For a look at how one group of students (members of Guizhou University’s Kurt Vonnegut book club) are struggling with their visions of China’s future, see Mike Levy’s piece at In These Times.
4. For a great summary of the events in Tibet, see Robert Barnett’s review of Pico Iyer’s new book in the New York Review of Books.
5. There are interesting quotes about the protests from Chinese students gathered by Monroe Price at HuffPost (and he links to Jeff Wasserstrom’s recent piece at The Nation’s blog near the end).
6. And finally, this commentary by Kerry Brown at opendemocracy makes the tongue-in-cheek argument that China’s recent bad news, from Tibet to the torch relay, will have the effect of lowering expectations for the Olympics—a correction Brown argues was much-needed.
5/06/2008
Vietnam’s Youth Given a Rare Chance to Protest – Against China
By Caroline Finlay
Vietnam’s history has been intertwined with that of China for thousands of years, and it hasn’t all been pretty. Wave after wave of Chinese invaders have controlled Vietnam for more than half of the last two millennia, and the influence on Vietnamese language and culture has been stronger than that of any other neighbouring country. The Vietnamese follow Mahayana Buddhism, and Confucianism continues to influence the education system. The Mon-Khmer roots of the Vietnamese language are all but drowned under the pressure of a massive number of Chinese loan words, the adoption of Chinese tonal pronunciation, and until the Latin writing system was adopted, Chinese characters.
Perhaps it’s a human characteristic that the closer we are culturally, the greater we perceive our differences. The Chinese continue to fan the flames of World War II massacres and stoke anti-Japanese sentiment. The Vietnamese do the same – but direct their anger at China. Just as the PRC’s government has given tacit approval for anti-Japanese protests, anti-Chinese protests are the only ones likely to appear on Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh’s streets. Ask a random Vietnamese person, “Which country do you hate the most?” and the answer will most likely be, “China!” The neighbors have put aside their differences in favor of trad
e, and in 2005, seventeen years after China last invaded northern Vietnam, China became Vietnam’s biggest trading partner.
The Vietnamese have had another opportunity to vent their anti-Chinese feelings with the visit of the Olympic flame to Ho Chi Minh City, but unlike anti-Chinese protests in the West, their complaints have nothing to do with Tibet. Popular democracy and freedom protests tend to not be covered in Vietnam’s state-controlled media, and mention of Tibet and of the monks’ protests in Burma was minimal. Instead, the Vietnamese are fixated by the Spratly and Paracel islands, of almost negligible land area but with potential oil deposits, located in the South China Sea between Vietnam, China, Taiwan and the Philippines. All four powers claim and occupy a few of these bits of land sprinkled across one of the most travelled seas in the world.
Anti-China protests are led by Vietnam’s youth, who also make extensive use of the internet. The pressure from pro-Spratly youth led to reports of famous singer My Tam refusing to carry the Olympic torch. The following was posted as a picture file, not text, because net censors and their search engines cannot read it – showing bloggers are aware of Vietnam’s increasing internet censorship. I will refrain from posting the blogger’s name or url.
“Lo ngai về tình hình bất ổn chính trị liên quan đến ngọn đuốc, MT đã bị ép buộc cầm đuốc trong ngày 29/4. . . .Vì tin tức MT từ chối rước đuốc đã nhanh chóng lan truyền trên mạng internet, forum...t
rên đài truyền hình và báo chí nước ngoài gây nên 1 làn sóng xôn xao và hoang manh rất lớn. Tin tức cho biết MT sẽ kh được duyệt xét xuất cảnh trong thời gian rước đuốc cũng như có thể gặp khó khăn sau này.”
“You should be very worried about the current state of affairs and the unacceptable policy regarding the torch relay - MT [My Tam] will be forced to carry the torch on 29/4... Because the news of MT refusing to carry the torch spread quickly through the internet and on forums...on television and in foreign newspapers, it caused a tumultuous and alarming impact wave. The news told us that MT will not be able to get permission to leave the country during the torch procession and that she may face difficulties in the future.”
The government’s reaction to popular internet dissent was to nip it in the bud and make a point of having My Tam carry the torch. The pop artist was later pictured smiling on April 29th when she took her turn on the streets of Ho Chi Minh City between the Chinese guards in their blue jumpsuits.
Protests were also a possibility during the torch relay, but they were very small and easily controlled.
Blogger haivuong63 posted this article outlining an effective protest at the torch relay. Again, the cautious language shows haivuong63 is aware of net censors and of promoting protests.
“theo tôi mục đích cần xác định rõ hòng có thái độ thích hợp... là lên tiếng về sự xâm lấn biển đảo nước ta của nhà cầm quyền Trung Hoa...cụ thể là Hoàng Sa và Trường Sa thân yêu. Vậy không nên lầm lẫn với việc ngăn cản buổi rước đuốc...Hãy xác định đây là cuộc biểu tình ôn hoà vì Hoàng Sa - Trường Sa. Chúng ta không nên phản đối ngọn đuốc thể thao dù đã bị bắc kinh lợi dụng...”
“According to me, the protest must have a clear goal and an appropriate manner, which is to raise our voices about China’s invasion of Vietnam’s sea and land areas... specifically in our beloved Spratly and Paracel islands. Because of this we shouldn’t act wrongly by hampering the torch procession...We must intend this to be a gentle protest for Spratly and Paracel. We shouldn’t oppose the Olympic torch even though it has been taken advantage of by Beijing.”
Many Vietnamese people remain deeply suspicious of their increasingly powerful northern neighbours, shown by blogger Ngu Yen’s stinging reply to vuonghai63:
“Con thấy mình có biểu tình cũng không thể lấy lại được 2 quần đảo, vì nhà nước mình đã chấp nhận im lặng, và tụi TQ thì quá mạnh về quân sự. Thật ra nếu nó muốn đánh chiếm VN, nó đã có thể. Hơn nữa, bộ trưởng quốc phòng mới của TQ là một kẻ kiêu căng ngạo mạn, lại hiếu chiến. Nhà nước mình không thể thay đổi được gì vì gián điệp Trung Quốc đầy rẫy và nắm các chức vụ chủ chốt trong bộ máy nhà nước. . .”
“I feel that if we have a protest that we still wouldn’t be able to get the two island chains back because our country has already silently accepted the situation and because gang-like China’s military is too strong. Truthfully, if it wanted to invade Vietnam, then it could. Furthermore, China’s new defense minister is an arrogant, self-important and trigger-happy man. Our country can’t do a single thing [about Spratly and Paracel] because China’s spies are everywhere and hold key posts in the government’s machinery.”
The Vietnamese people feel empowered at the opportunity to protest a historically bellicose neighbour, but that highlights the fact that protests at home are few and far between, and any protest can be dangerous. Blogger Dong A SG protested for Spratly and Paracel in January 2008 and was arrested and held incognito for alarming the blogging community. The official reason for the arrest was tax evasion, but shortly before being arrested, bloggers reported Dong A SG had visited pro-Spratley and Paracel blogger Dieu Cay.
Now that Vietnam has entered the WTO it doesn’t face the international human rights pressure it used to, and at the same time Vietnam is under pressure from trade partner China. This is a combination that may even eliminate the one doorway for Vietnamese youth to practice activism—anti-Chinese activism.
Perhaps it’s a human characteristic that the closer we are culturally, the greater we perceive our differences. The Chinese continue to fan the flames of World War II massacres and stoke anti-Japanese sentiment. The Vietnamese do the same – but direct their anger at China. Just as the PRC’s government has given tacit approval for anti-Japanese protests, anti-Chinese protests are the only ones likely to appear on Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh’s streets. Ask a random Vietnamese person, “Which country do you hate the most?” and the answer will most likely be, “China!” The neighbors have put aside their differences in favor of trad
e, and in 2005, seventeen years after China last invaded northern Vietnam, China became Vietnam’s biggest trading partner.The Vietnamese have had another opportunity to vent their anti-Chinese feelings with the visit of the Olympic flame to Ho Chi Minh City, but unlike anti-Chinese protests in the West, their complaints have nothing to do with Tibet. Popular democracy and freedom protests tend to not be covered in Vietnam’s state-controlled media, and mention of Tibet and of the monks’ protests in Burma was minimal. Instead, the Vietnamese are fixated by the Spratly and Paracel islands, of almost negligible land area but with potential oil deposits, located in the South China Sea between Vietnam, China, Taiwan and the Philippines. All four powers claim and occupy a few of these bits of land sprinkled across one of the most travelled seas in the world.
Anti-China protests are led by Vietnam’s youth, who also make extensive use of the internet. The pressure from pro-Spratly youth led to reports of famous singer My Tam refusing to carry the Olympic torch. The following was posted as a picture file, not text, because net censors and their search engines cannot read it – showing bloggers are aware of Vietnam’s increasing internet censorship. I will refrain from posting the blogger’s name or url.
“Lo ngai về tình hình bất ổn chính trị liên quan đến ngọn đuốc, MT đã bị ép buộc cầm đuốc trong ngày 29/4. . . .Vì tin tức MT từ chối rước đuốc đã nhanh chóng lan truyền trên mạng internet, forum...t
rên đài truyền hình và báo chí nước ngoài gây nên 1 làn sóng xôn xao và hoang manh rất lớn. Tin tức cho biết MT sẽ kh được duyệt xét xuất cảnh trong thời gian rước đuốc cũng như có thể gặp khó khăn sau này.”“You should be very worried about the current state of affairs and the unacceptable policy regarding the torch relay - MT [My Tam] will be forced to carry the torch on 29/4... Because the news of MT refusing to carry the torch spread quickly through the internet and on forums...on television and in foreign newspapers, it caused a tumultuous and alarming impact wave. The news told us that MT will not be able to get permission to leave the country during the torch procession and that she may face difficulties in the future.”
The government’s reaction to popular internet dissent was to nip it in the bud and make a point of having My Tam carry the torch. The pop artist was later pictured smiling on April 29th when she took her turn on the streets of Ho Chi Minh City between the Chinese guards in their blue jumpsuits.
Protests were also a possibility during the torch relay, but they were very small and easily controlled.
Blogger haivuong63 posted this article outlining an effective protest at the torch relay. Again, the cautious language shows haivuong63 is aware of net censors and of promoting protests.
“theo tôi mục đích cần xác định rõ hòng có thái độ thích hợp... là lên tiếng về sự xâm lấn biển đảo nước ta của nhà cầm quyền Trung Hoa...cụ thể là Hoàng Sa và Trường Sa thân yêu. Vậy không nên lầm lẫn với việc ngăn cản buổi rước đuốc...Hãy xác định đây là cuộc biểu tình ôn hoà vì Hoàng Sa - Trường Sa. Chúng ta không nên phản đối ngọn đuốc thể thao dù đã bị bắc kinh lợi dụng...”
“According to me, the protest must have a clear goal and an appropriate manner, which is to raise our voices about China’s invasion of Vietnam’s sea and land areas... specifically in our beloved Spratly and Paracel islands. Because of this we shouldn’t act wrongly by hampering the torch procession...We must intend this to be a gentle protest for Spratly and Paracel. We shouldn’t oppose the Olympic torch even though it has been taken advantage of by Beijing.”
Many Vietnamese people remain deeply suspicious of their increasingly powerful northern neighbours, shown by blogger Ngu Yen’s stinging reply to vuonghai63:
“Con thấy mình có biểu tình cũng không thể lấy lại được 2 quần đảo, vì nhà nước mình đã chấp nhận im lặng, và tụi TQ thì quá mạnh về quân sự. Thật ra nếu nó muốn đánh chiếm VN, nó đã có thể. Hơn nữa, bộ trưởng quốc phòng mới của TQ là một kẻ kiêu căng ngạo mạn, lại hiếu chiến. Nhà nước mình không thể thay đổi được gì vì gián điệp Trung Quốc đầy rẫy và nắm các chức vụ chủ chốt trong bộ máy nhà nước. . .”
“I feel that if we have a protest that we still wouldn’t be able to get the two island chains back because our country has already silently accepted the situation and because gang-like China’s military is too strong. Truthfully, if it wanted to invade Vietnam, then it could. Furthermore, China’s new defense minister is an arrogant, self-important and trigger-happy man. Our country can’t do a single thing [about Spratly and Paracel] because China’s spies are everywhere and hold key posts in the government’s machinery.”
The Vietnamese people feel empowered at the opportunity to protest a historically bellicose neighbour, but that highlights the fact that protests at home are few and far between, and any protest can be dangerous. Blogger Dong A SG protested for Spratly and Paracel in January 2008 and was arrested and held incognito for alarming the blogging community. The official reason for the arrest was tax evasion, but shortly before being arrested, bloggers reported Dong A SG had visited pro-Spratley and Paracel blogger Dieu Cay.
Now that Vietnam has entered the WTO it doesn’t face the international human rights pressure it used to, and at the same time Vietnam is under pressure from trade partner China. This is a combination that may even eliminate the one doorway for Vietnamese youth to practice activism—anti-Chinese activism.
Caroline Finlay is a writer for Southeastern Globe, an English-language publication in Cambodia, and has also written for Global Voices.
Images taken from the following websites (follow links for more):
Spratly-Paracel Islands Map
AFP Photo of My Tam from VOA website
Spratly-Paracel Islands Map
AFP Photo of My Tam from VOA website
5/05/2008
Top Five language and literature sites:
Two weeks ago, we published a list of websites that provide lesson plans and other resources for teaching on China. This week, we promised an equally solid list of links for Chinese language and literature resources. Chinese language learning has been increasing in the U.S. in recent years and websites that offer resources for Chinese language learning are also increasing, though American interest in Chinese does not yet match Chinese excitement for English-language learning.
1. Few websites have made Chinese-language learning as approachable (and palatable) as Chinesepod. Its “newbie” to “advanced” podcasts are available for free at its website or through iTunes (one must become a monthly subscriber to access transcripts, worksheets, flashcards and other content), and the active user community further enhances the learning experience for dedicated listeners. Chinesepod’s success points to the desire among language learners for up-to-date content that covers current events (though the program steers clear of controversial political topics), pop culture, and slang.
2. For those interested in Chinese literature (in translation) or who want to use bits of primary documents in teaching Chinese history, the Internet East Asian History Sourcebook provides hundreds of links to translations of historical documents from ancient to contemporary China, as well as maps and images. This site could have fit equally well in last week’s list, but because of its emphasis on literature, we decided to include it here.
3. Those learning Chinese in the US will also learn the pinyin Romanization system. Pinyin.info has a variety of references to help with pinyin learning, as well as their interesting blog (which has further references for those interested in learning more about the “Crazy English” program discussed in the recent New Yorker article—link to this above under “Chinese excitement for English-language learning”).
4. Zhongwen.com offers a variety of tools for language learning as well as a learner-friendly feature of a handful of classic Chinese literary sources which are cross-referenced with a dictionary (in other words, as you read, if you don’t recognize a character, you can click on it and the definition appears on the right side of the screen). The website also provides a space where you can paste in Chinese text and the website will provide the same cross-referencing.
5. John Pasden helps with the intermediate and advanced lessons at Chinesepod, as well as keeping his own website, Sinosplice, which offers a variety of language resources.
These are only a small selection of available Chinese language resources on the web. Please share your own recommendations and experiences in the comments section.
1. Few websites have made Chinese-language learning as approachable (and palatable) as Chinesepod. Its “newbie” to “advanced” podcasts are available for free at its website or through iTunes (one must become a monthly subscriber to access transcripts, worksheets, flashcards and other content), and the active user community further enhances the learning experience for dedicated listeners. Chinesepod’s success points to the desire among language learners for up-to-date content that covers current events (though the program steers clear of controversial political topics), pop culture, and slang.
2. For those interested in Chinese literature (in translation) or who want to use bits of primary documents in teaching Chinese history, the Internet East Asian History Sourcebook provides hundreds of links to translations of historical documents from ancient to contemporary China, as well as maps and images. This site could have fit equally well in last week’s list, but because of its emphasis on literature, we decided to include it here.
3. Those learning Chinese in the US will also learn the pinyin Romanization system. Pinyin.info has a variety of references to help with pinyin learning, as well as their interesting blog (which has further references for those interested in learning more about the “Crazy English” program discussed in the recent New Yorker article—link to this above under “Chinese excitement for English-language learning”).
4. Zhongwen.com offers a variety of tools for language learning as well as a learner-friendly feature of a handful of classic Chinese literary sources which are cross-referenced with a dictionary (in other words, as you read, if you don’t recognize a character, you can click on it and the definition appears on the right side of the screen). The website also provides a space where you can paste in Chinese text and the website will provide the same cross-referencing.
5. John Pasden helps with the intermediate and advanced lessons at Chinesepod, as well as keeping his own website, Sinosplice, which offers a variety of language resources.
These are only a small selection of available Chinese language resources on the web. Please share your own recommendations and experiences in the comments section.
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