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Conversations
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,..."
Videos
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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?
In a very insightful work, The Brutal Truth About Asian Branding, Joseph Baladi reveals just what is wrong with the way not just Chinese companies, but the government, promotes China and Chinese products. The Government’s approach to handling relgious groups and political dissidents is clumsy and unfortunate and casts China in a very bad light overseas.
Living in China I feel just as free to do what I like in my own country, Australia, but the way in which the government focuses on relativel unimportant issues like public chruch gatherings and ensure they become world-wide issues is simply beyond belief. What the Chinese Government needs is a top Public Relations company to manage their image and advise them against pursuing such ridiculous issues as church gatherings when most people are concerned about four major five major isses: inflation, house prices, traffic jams, nuclear pollution from Japan and, of course, corruption.
My read on it is that the authorities will not tolerate any organization/gathering that is (a) potentially influential, (b) not administered/controlled at some level by the gov., and (c) displays an allegiance to anything higher than the CCP/gov. authorities. That’s why they’re willing to let a lot of technically illegal (“b” in my list above) stuff slide, just so long as it stays well-marginalized and out of the public consciousness. If they have to allow it legally, they have the control to keep them so marginalized that they pretty much stay off the radar of the average citizen, which is what I see happening with the legal, state-sanctioned churches. Shouwang gets three strikes on (a), (b) and (c).
[...] Was the Shouwang Church right to meet publicly? [...]