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Fair Trade iPhones (
12)
Trestle Rider: "
Chip is more than right, although conditions in..."
Forget marketable skills, in China you get paid to be white (
5)
Seth: "
Is it really that easy to get “teaching”..."
Political inoculation and personal empathy in China (
5)
reppac: "
Hi Joel, just came across your blog and it makes for a..."
Foreign baby in China essentials: IMPORTED BABY FORMULA (
29)
Katy: "
This UK website http://www.britishshoppingo..."
“Chairman Mao is like a god to us!” (
9)
Harland: "
Well, I suppose that excuses the fact that he..."
Defining You (Pt. 2): Pick your poison (
2)
Joel 大江: "
Do you have a link for that? I’d like to see..."
C.: "
There’s a guy at the Shanghai Expat site that has a..."
Split-pants vs. Diapers: which do you use? Parents, share your split-pants experience! (
25)
Katrijne: "
I live in Holland and did elimination communication..."
Why Chinese moms are superior mothers, and why their kids need serious therapy (
16)
Andre M. Smith: "
I checked Asian. I had heard it was harder to..."
Chinese “evil cult” propaganda in our Canadian mailbox (
6)
Joel 大江: "
Gives the impression they are well-funded,..."
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Chinese take-out
Good good study, day day up!
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
InterWǎng Debris
Recent China internet 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:
- 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:
- 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:
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
What's this?
I hope that China will soon become the most important nation in the world if only because then it could finally shed this annoyingly insecure nationalism. Who in the UK waves the Union Jack, complains about national dignity, and dreams of the world bowing down to its national greatness? The BNP, basically, and other assorted idiots. Even in the United States you have pockets of people in New York and maybe San Francisco who don’t idiotically chant U-S-A at every chance. In China, however, across the board everyone shares this childish nationalism. Please, China, achieve your goals and grow up.
No doubt the view of the writer is a popular one. But just judging from our very limited experience here and the little bit of reading we do on and offline, I’d say the diversity in opinion on the Mainland regarding issues linked to nationalism is broader than Mainland media or Western media suggests. The Mainland media is herded toward projecting a sense of “harmony” for the sake of “social stability,” and the major Western news media… I guess there’s a lot of reasons why our different countries’ media don’t convey a wider variety of Mainland opinion.
I feel your annoyance; we bump into this insecurity often (see here and here for examples). Although I don’t think “the West” deserves all the blame for the state of things in China, many Western nations did have a significant historical hand in shaping the way things are today. See here for bit of the official narrative.
Thanks for your response. I’m sure I am completely wrong in saying that people across the board in China have a childish nationalism. Something as complex as people’s feelings about their own country couldn’t possibly be that simple. The Western press has been particularly bad in portraying the feelings of the Chinese people. As just one example, I remember how they simplified and misrepresented the thoughts and feelings of the students in June, 1989. Saying they were ‘pro-Western’ completely missed the story. I experienced more nostalgia for Mao and the Party of the early 1950′s when I was living in Jilin City at the time than love or admiration of the West.
Good point about the West having a historical hand in shaping current Chinese nationalistic feelings.
Yes we (not really “we” so much as those who happened to be born in the same country but a century or so before) share some blame for screwing them over in the midst of what should have been just the next transition between Dynasties.
But is it our fault that China managed to import and embrace so many of the West’s very worst ideas? nationalism, communism/Marxism-Leninism….
I’m not qualified to decide which parties get how much blame. I assume that (1) people are ultimately responsible for their own actions/decisions/responses, (2) Western nations aren’t completely innocent bystanders when it comes to China, (3) there’s probably plenty of blame to go around.
Chris – we you in China in 1950?
By the way, there’s a discussion of this essay at Fool’s Mountain: The Chinese essay BBC was dared to publish (contrasting argumentation styles)
No, I was in Jilin City in 1989. I wasn’t clear with that sentence.
My point was that there was a huge disconnect between what I would read in Western newspapers and what I experienced. Everyone from the NYTimes to the Guardian gave the impression that the Chinese who supported the students were ‘pro-democracy’ and compared them to the East Germans on the eve of the wall falling. Everyone I knew, however, agreed that corruption was a problem but wanted to return to the pre-Great Leap days of the Communist Party.
I had the same realization when I finally started to take a closer look at those events. It was much less organized and focused than the popular-level rendition I grew up hearing in North America.
By the way, the Fool’s Mountain discussion I linked to above is turning out to be more civilized than most. If you’re interested in ‘Chinese’ (loosely defined) reactions to that article (in English), I suggest you check it out.
thanks, Joel. I will definitely check it out. I didn’t mean to come across as so abrasive by saying ‘grow up’ in my initial e-mail. I was in a bit of crotchety mood at the time.
I would love to join in a civil, cool-headed discussion about nationalism and other China topics.
well, “civil, cool-headed” discussion might be a little too generous. The reason they’re not yelling at one another over there is because most of them share similar views. They’re still a ways off from really connecting with a normal English-speaking Westerners.
your “grow up” comment… at this point it’s doomed to be counterproductive, but I feel where you’re coming from, and I do an awful lot of tongue-biting myself some days.