Archive
June 3, 2005
Via chriswaugh_bj's LJ I arrived at EastSouthNorthWest's recent entry on poverty in China. I don't really have a good handle on this subject, because 1) China is so big that I hesitate to draw general conclusions, and 2) I haven't travelled much around China, relative to the amount I think I would have to travel in order to draw any sort of conclusion. Still, there are a couple of passages I reacted to:
About this, Zhang Baohua who grew up in the relatively rich Hong Kong sighed: "I cannot help but wonder why even as the country developed economically, the peasants are not receiving any benefits? Today, Shanghai can claim to be one of the most modernized and developed cities of the world. Yet nobody cares about the happiness or pain of these peasants and their children ... When people's lives are worth less than those of pigs or dogs, when people's existence has no value, what hope is there for society?"
Shanghai can claim to be one of the most modernized and developed cities of the world
??? This is becoming one of the most trite and overused China-myths in the modern media, and now people are actually repeating it back to the papers that initially propagated it in the first place. It's especially surprising coming from a Hong Kong resident; when I compare Hong Kong to Shanghai I can always find some areas where the cities are comparable but in the end certain basic differences like average standard-of-living, the conditions of the roads, cleanliness, and zoning/urban planning (oh, planning!) push Shanghai into a very firm second place. And that's not even comparing it to your average American city.
Also:
"Our family makes only 200 yuan a year. I don't have anything to eat for several months of the year, and we have to rely on assistance from the government and others," a Yi tribe woman told me.
There is no fertile land by the mountain. They live by rearing animals. Many of the people do not own any cows or sheep. Fortunately, the local Red Cross and Salvation Army bought cows and sheep for them and then they have some way of making a living and survive.
I visited some Yi villages on my China trip last summer, even wandering past a Yi funeral, so I have some picture of the people and area they are talking about.
What I find frustrating about these paragraphs is what I conclude when I run a little thought experiment: what would happen if the government, Salvation Army and Red Cross had not come in and offered assistance to these people? Might they have moved to the city and found better housing and jobs? Would they still be living in sub-freezing temperatures, dressed in rags and walking four hours to school and four hours back? I'm guessing not. Hooray for damning these people to poverty through dependence on paltry charitable aid.
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June 6, 2005
On her/his LJ, цагаан толгой writes:
THEN, at six, I get to go to a party at my Mongolian teacher's apartment. She's gonna feed us terribly yummy Mongolian meat dumplings, some steamed and some fried. Oh Mongolia. How can the American versions of your food be so delicious? I'll tell you how. Mongols here use regular beef instead of GIANT CHUNKS OF UNADULTERATED MUTTON FAT.
Pretty much the same thing could be said of Chinese food. Asa keeps raving about New York City, and I would say it's all about California.
Oh, and check out the other posts on that LJ. This guy/girl is pretty hard-core about Mongolia. One example: I'm taking third year Chinese AND second year Russian in the fall! Woo wee! And I'm taking third year Mongolian! And classical Mongolian!
Yikes. Studying Mongolia, so learning the languages of its two neighbors as well? Pretty hard-core, if you ask me.
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June 7, 2005
May fruits: Asa and I just shared some bayberries/杨梅 tonight.
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June 14, 2005
From a source I'm going to keep anonymous right now, check this out:
There is a problem between China Telecom and CNC right now.
Their in ability to get contracts sorted out and start to work as a "unit" as opposed to treatign each others networks like fortified LAN's is also a problem.
We have noticed that about from not being able to get reverse DNS setup due to the problem. We are having many packets from our data centre (fibre to CNC) taking the logn way around and bouncign between cnc and china telecom multiple times to get anywhere.
This has led us to the discovery of "Good IP" and "Bad IP". I know - it's pathetic - but this is China.
>From the same host with two IP's bound to the same NIC. A transfer to our HK server takes about 5-9K/sec with the "Bad IP". A "good IP" does it at a rate of 332K/sec!
Needless to say the good IP's are in short supply and we hold them close to our chests....
Ah, the pains of competition.
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June 22, 2005
Humor on Walter Hutchens' weblog?? Impossible!
Let me offer a list of other inbound deals bankers can try to put together:
Hehe. How about Tongrentang buys Pfizer Inc.? Or more realistically, Yonghe Doujiang buys Winchells?
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June 24, 2005
Some bloggers don't post very much, but that doesn't mean they aren't busy writing for other projects, forums, or mailing lists. And when they do, it's the usual witty stuff:
A word of warning - I've learned from frustrating experience not to rely on cafe / bar wireless for anything critical. The staff rarely know how it works, and if it stops it may well stay stopped till the man who knows how to fix it turns up ( I suspect there are any number of 'men with keys' from the last few decades being retrained as 'men who know how the computer works' so they can continue their mission of not being where you need them to be.
Key men. Heh.
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June 25, 2005
By the end of next year, the People's Square metro station will turn into a triangle interchange for lines 1, 2, and 8, according to the latest Shanghai Morning Post:
晨报讯到明年年底，市民如果乘坐轨道交通1号线在人民广场站换乘2号线时，将不用再走220米的长通道，步行路程将缩短到50米之内。在昨天召开的上海城市地下空间国际研讨会上，上海市城市规划管理局副总工程师沈人德透露，到明年年底，人民广场站地下一、二层将建成大型换乘大厅，届时在人民广场交会的轨道交通1号线、2号线和8号线之间换乘，步行路程将在50米之内。
I have it from my landlords that a new metro station is being built in the nearby Caoyang New Estates. If I wasn't so unsure about the level of my income in the next year, I'd be very tempted to stay in my current apartment right next to the Jingshajiang Rd light rail stop. Shanghai rail transport just keeps getting more and more exciting.
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June 26, 2005
There's a (thankfully, moderated) discussion on etiquette for China travellers happening on the Oriental List. Here's an interesting tidbit about Shanghai, and Taiwanese businesses:
>>It is also true that there seemed to be a lack of anger or rancor in the
>>actions or affect of others, rather that there was not time to waste.
>
>This was the amazing thing to me as a New Yorker (well, suburban NJ). Taxi
>drivers are incredibly aggressive, even by NY standards, but don't get
>upset when they are cut off. They just shrug and keep going.
What is good manners is also well known in China, people know well what it is, but at the same time they experience daily that good manners don't pay. Since there is basically no tipping, even in the service industries it is all about customer abuse.
Glorious exceptions are private businesses. In case of at least one rather large bar/restaurant in Shanghai, however, I know, that out of total desperation with the Chinese staff, the owner replaced the Chinese waiters entirely with Philippinos for the busy weekends.
In case of Taiwanese run businesses in Shanghai you will find extremely friendly and top professional service, too. That is not to say that Taiwanese are good people because they behave, among their businessmen are just superbly inhuman slave drivers.
Could the business mentioned by Luna in Xintiandi? I know that when I went there to buy tickets for Miss Kittin, I was greeted by the most friendly Philipino greeter ever, who engaged me in an intelligent conversation about Southern California—definitely not the usual "California! Great weather, eh."
Also, whenever the girls at my office talk about their low salaries, the default sigh is "Taiwanese owners, hmm." I wonder, though, if these businesses can get away with it because they tend to be more honest and less of a hassle to work for than local businesses.
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