Archive
September 1, 2003
Roddy of the Oriental-List gives the heads up about Hiking in Beijing by Seema Bennett, Nicky Mason, Huilin Pinnegar, three members of the Beijing Hikers club. From his e-mail:
I've just been given a copy of a new (2003, anyway) book 'Hiking Around Beijing'. It's written by members of Beijing's Beijing Hikers group, which as many of you will know loads up a bus or two with ex-pats every weekend, takes them for a nice long walk and then drops them off back at Starbucks outside the Lido Hotel.
20 routes are explained in great detail, graded for difficulty, and points of interest covered. Maps are given, which appear clear enough despite being handdrawn. Characters and pinyin are used for placenames
The book is published by the Foreign Language Press in Beijing, but is not available on Amazon. The China Daily has a review in English, and the book may be available for purchase through the Chinese Medicine Bookstore.
I'm glad to have a high-speed connection to the Internet, because it means that Ziboy loads ten times more quickly.
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September 2, 2003
The full text of the very popular underground novelization of the corruption in Beijing Mayor Chen Xitong's government The Wrath of Heaven.
—from Many Interesting Chinese Books Are Online at the American Embassy in Beijing website.
Sadly, it has not been translated yet.
On another note, today I'm digging on the China Leadership Monitor journal, for which I'm waiting until I have a mailbox in Frieze before I subscribe.
Through Sinosplice, news that Berkeley is offering a class this semester called Creating the Berkeley China Internet Weblog. One of the professors is a founder of Wired magazine.
China is currently undergoing a digital revolution. In this class, students will create a collaborative news Weblog, the Berkeley China Internet Weblog, which will cover the development of the media and technology in this complex, rapidly changing society. Students will also develop an understanding of Weblogs, a new form of online publishing that has quickly become a popular way to get news and information on particular topics.
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September 4, 2003
I got an e-mail from Roddy that I should check out his forums. Well, I'd been there before and thought I wouldn't find anything new, but behold: a thread on Squabble, Chinese Scrabble. You play characters by combining cards with the right radicals, and you can steal peple's characters by adding radicals to an already formed character. At US$ 30, it's a little expensive (plus US$ 15 for shipping from Taiwan). But if you can get your school to order it, more power to you. Maybe I can get a grant from the Center.
Also, it's worth browsing Roddy's main site, which is chock full of practical information and anecdotes about living in China.
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September 5, 2003
HK government withdraws draft security bill:
Tung noted Hong Kong is in a painful economic adjustment, especially after SARS. "We have been hit hard by SARS and we all the more require all quarters of society and all sectors of society to come together to revitalize the economy," he said.
In China, the government dictates the interests of the people. In the United States, the people dictate the interests of the government.
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September 6, 2003
The latest issue of China Leadership Monitor is out.
Kim Jong Il is still journalling. China-related? His computer is Chinese because it came with something called "Mao's pad".
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September 7, 2003
Reading somebody's weblog, I came across this post from March 2003:
So, i get up this morning and one of the first things i hear on the radio is that there's a mystery illness that's being transmitted via airline passengers.
The WHO has issued an emergency travel advisory, the illness is reported as an incurable pneumonia, and examples of it are stumbling, coughing, off planes all over the world.
[snip]
Ah well. it's probably nothing.
When did SARS start, and how does it work? Let's hear from the Genetics Science Learning Center at the University of Utah: SARS: The First New Virus of the 21st Century
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September 12, 2003
Nico's post in the comments is totally right: this is totally cyberpunk.
This morning, on my way to classes, I was biking along Chengfu Lu, minding my own business, when I heard a "Hello." I turned, and smiled, and said "Hello" back, as per my usual habit - it was a couple of high-school age kids on a bike. One of them reached into his bag and pulled out something rectangular-shaped, in a silvery plastic packet.
"You speak Chinese? OK, cool - want this? 80-gig hard disk, completely new, 200 kuai."
"Nah, thanks."
"Want RAM? Ethernet cards? Graphics cards?"
"Um, not today," I said. "Good luck selling them."
They kept on going - the one who'd been showing me their merchandise, perched on the back, waved at me as they went off.
And I continued on my way to class.
Chinese noodle restaurant owners avoid having to wash dishes by lining their bowls with plastic bags. Certain (American) persons thought that this was the most unsanitary thing. I thought it was genius. On a related note, I have found — sadly — no decent noodle places in Ann Arbor. No pho! Maybe Chicago is my only hope.
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September 14, 2003
Every couple months, Peter Cao and Targ Parsons bless the Oriental-List with accounts of their confluence hunting expeditions. This past August, Targ completed an eighteen point multi-day trek. Congrats!
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September 28, 2003
Ziboy has a picture of a metal lunch tray on his homepage right now. The tray is divided into five sections, three for food, one as a resting place for a soup bowl, and one long section for chopsticks. The largest section has a big scoop of white rice, the upper middle section has a goopy mass of boiled cabbage, and the upper left section has another goopy mass of tofu and veggies. Except for the Chinese-style spoon dug into the rice, this is pretty much exactly what I had for lunch every day at Tianjin CRIS Elementary School.
Another Ziboy connection. Can anybody tell me if there is a story behind that particular graffiti? When I lived in Madrid we would spot the name "Juan Miguel" tagged all over the city, and heard that it was all the work of some guy. In LA there is an artist who puts up posters of stark black and white faces in what some might call the Socialist fashion, often with the word Obey
beneath it. In a recent entry on the other weblog I made mention of stencil graffiti. When I was in seventh grade, the fad for a time was to invent a graffito for your name, buy a fat-tipped permanent marker, and tag your apartment, the steps of the school, the playground... this was in Spain. Kids in Spain were hooligans.
Update (2003/10/4): Volatile has the answer in bits and pieces (random):
The graffiti is the work of 18k (formerly Zhang Dali), a Beijing artist who spraypaints condemned buildings around the city. In Beijing, his work is very familiar simply because it is so common; the entire city is in the process of being destroyed and rebuilt. More photos of his work, "Dialogue".
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