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Chinese take-out

瓜子脸

Pronounced: guāzǐ liǎn
Means: Melon-seed Face. One of the ideal Chinese face shapes.

Albert at Laowai Chinese introduces two ideal and two undesirable Chinese face shapes: The Four Faces of Chinese People (women, really)

- 2012/03/22

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InterWǎng Debris

Eating Bitterness: an intro to the unprecedented Chinese migrant worker phenomenon

If you're unfamiliar with the urban migrant phenomenon in China -- as in, the people who make the stuff you buy and their lives -- then China’s Urban Immigrants: A Diet of Bitterness is a fine overview with lots of links for further reading.

"Chinese metropolises are now home to an estimated 200 million rural-to-urban migrants . . . who occupy a precarious place in the urban hierarchy: while urbanites appreciate their labor, they are less enthusiastic about the migrants’ presence in their cities."

For more on this topic you can browse our Migrant Workers category, or if you like documentaries, see these reviews of two good documentaries on migrant workers:

• China documentaries (Pt.2): rivers, migrants & entrepreneurs
• China documentaries (Pt. 1): blue jeans and revolutions

- 2012/05/10

Chairman Mao enshrined -- literally

When one of my young, very privileged Party-family students passionately told me, "Chairman Mao is like a god to us!" I understood he meant it as a simile. And the god metaphor is common when discussing Mao and his Cultural Revolution personality cult. But as it turns out, in some incredible irony, some other Chinese mean it literally. I heard about this before, but this is the first time I've found pictures -- Mao actually enshrined in a local temple: Mao Temple in China – Chairman Mao Becomes Local God.

For more about Mao and the Mao Era, you can browse these topics:

• Cultural Revolution
• Great Leap Forward
• Liberation

- 2012/05/08

A deeper look into the dynamics of living with Chinese propaganda

Two insightful posts from Seeing Red in China, which is probably my current favourite China blog, about living in an aggressively and explicitly propagandized environment, and how Chinese try to deal with it. The propaganda still works, but in ways different than us foreigners probably tend to assume. Without further ado:

• Poisoned By Propaganda
• An Angry Father

I tell [my daughter] that she must not be afraid to take a clear moral stand. “If you see someone is being bullied,” I said, “speak up for that person.” “Be the keeper of the good.” [But] Chinese parents would have to think twice, three times, or even lose sleep, if they are to instill these values in their children, because these qualities won’t serve them very well in the Chinese society.

We've written lots on propaganda, mostly the Chinese kind, including translations of the propaganda we've encounter in China. You can find it all in our Propaganda category.

- 2012/05/06

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