We often take our daughter for walks around here because it’s the neighbourhood right next to ours:

This month, the right half of the notice board is filled with what are probably the most colourful and, um, educational propaganda posters we’ve seen so far, compliments of the Tianjin City Anti-Evil Cults Association (天津市反邪教协会) and the Tianjin People’s Government Guarding-Against-and-Dealing-With-the-Evil-Cults-Problem Office (天津人民政府防范和处理邪教问题办公室). Click either picture for a bigger view:

Here’s what the posters say (mouseover the Chinese text to see the pronunciation and definition). Translation corrections welcome.

1. The “Five Musts”

To Guard Against and Resist Evil Cults, Must Do the “Five Musts”
防范和抵制邪教要做到“五要”

1. Must not listen to, not believe, not pass on;
   要做到不听、不信、不传；
2. Must actively report and expose the illegal activities of evil cults;
   要主动检举揭发邪教的违法活动；
3. Must eliminate superstitious thinking and properly treat ‘the four miseries of human life’;
   要破除迷信思想，正确对待生老病死；
4. Must properly treat the bumps in life’s road; strengthen and pursue confidence in a nice life;
   要正确对待人生坎坷；增强追求美好生活的信心；
5. Must establish becoming-rich-with-science-and-technology and becoming-rich-by-one’s-own-efforts thinking; create a nice life with your own two hands.
   要树立科技致富、勤劳致富思想，通过自己的双手创造美好生活。

Left image:

• [Yellow bubble] “Hold up science, oppose superstition” 崇尚科学，反对迷信
• [Red books] Science 科学
• [Sign board] Little demi-god 小半仙
• [Bad guy speaking] “No one at all believes in computer fortune-telling!”
  “电脑算命都没人相信了！”

Right image:

• [Blue card] ** (name of evil cult/teaching)
• [Woman speaking] “Put your hand and foot down!” “把手脚放下！”
• [Woman’s paper] Divorce 离婚
• [Red book] Law 法律

2. What is an Evil Cult?

Uphold Science, Oppose Evil Cults, Build Harmoniousness Together
崇尚科学，反对邪教、共建和谐



What an Evil Cult is 什么是邪教

An evil cult organization fraudulently uses religion, qìgōng or the name of other kinds of established things, deifies the ringleader, exploits and uses methods like creating and spreading superstitious rumours and heresy (etc.) to seduce and deceive people, and to expand control of their members and their illegal harmful-to-society organization.
邪教组织是指冒用宗教、气功或者其他名义建立，神化首要分子，利用制造、散步迷信邪说等手段蛊惑、蒙骗他人，发展控制成员，危害社会的非法组织。

Image:

• [Left] *** / *，*，* (name and slogan of the evil cult)
• [Right] Anti-science, anti-humanity, anti-society (mirrors the evil cult’s slogan) 反科学、反人类、反社会

3. The Characteristics & Dangers of Evil Cults



The Characteristics of Evil Cults 邪教的特征

1. Use the pretense of religion and science to concoct sophistry and heresy;
   打着宗教、科学的幌子编造歪理邪说；
2. Deify the gang leaders of evil cults, conduct mind control;
   神化邪教头子，进行精神控制；
3. Establish underground organizations, conduct illegal activities;
   建立地下组织，进行非法活动；
4. Scam to raise funds by any and all means;
   不择手段地骗敛钱财；
5. Oppose the government, look with hatred on society;
   反对政府，仇视社会；
6. Proclaim that “Doomsday is approaching”.
   宣扬“末日来临”。

The Dangers of Evil Cults 邪教的危害

1. Incite opposition to the government, harm ‘grass-roots political power’;
   煽动反对政府，危害基层政权；
2. Engage in illegal criminal activities, harm society;
   从事违法犯罪活动，危害社会；
3. Wreck regular production and living, harm the masses’ mental and physical health;
   破坏正常的生产生活，危害群众身心健康；
4. Corrode and poison the minds of minors.
   侵蚀和毒害未成年人。

Image:

• [Speech bubble] I want to reach a higher level! 我要上层次！
• [Blue book] ** (evil cult’s name/teaching)
• [Headband] *，*，* (evil cult’s slogan)
• [Knives] Slaughter children, chop fathers, kill mothers 宰子女，砍父，杀妻

4. Evil Cult’s Scam Tricks

Evil Cults’ Mass Deception Scam Tricks 邪教欺世骗人的伎俩



1. Use the pretense of religion or qìgōng to deceive people;
   打着宗教或气功的幌子蒙骗人；
2. Use cures and bad luck avoidance to entice people;
   用治病、免灾诱惑人；
3. Use all kinds of cheap tricks to frighten people. For example: reading facial features to tell people’s fortunes, deceiving people by pretending there are ghosts, writing characters with ants, making words appear on white paper, doing the Fu talisman trick, smearing eel blood to attract bats, circulating things like poisonous toads;
   用各种把戏吓唬人。如看相算命、装神弄鬼、蚂蚁写字、白纸显字、玩符谶把戏、抹鳝鱼血招蝙蝠、投放癞蛤蟆等东西；
4. Get close to people to rope them in;
   套近乎拉拢人；
5. Bribe people with small favours;
   小恩小惠收买人；
6. Use violent methods to coerce people.
   用暴力手段胁迫人。

Image:

• [Bottom left] Reading ants 蚂蚁识字
• [Bottle] Honey 蜜
• [Clothes] Divine 神

5. The Main Differences Between Religions & Evil Cults

The Main Differences Between Religions and Evil Cults 宗教与邪教的主要区别



1. 1, Our nation’s religions advocate that their believers fit into society, serve society, benefit the people, defend society’s harmoniousness, support the leadership of the Communist Party of China, and support the socialist system. The essence of evil cults is anti-societal; they poison and inflame members to look with hatred on society, they harm society even to the point of having wild political schemes, they agitate for and inflame people to overthrow the Chinese Communist Party’s leadership and the socialist system.
   一、我国宗教倡导信徒融于社会，服务社会，造福人群，维护社会和谐，拥护中国共产党的领导，拥护社会主义制度。邪教本质是反社会的，它们蛊惑、煸动成员仇视社会，危害社会，甚至带有政治野心，鼓吹、煸动推翻中国共产党的领导和社会主义制度。
2. 2, The things religions believe in and worship are each religion’s specially designated god, which are fixed and don’t change. Religions believe in opposing people who compare themselves to deities and boast about possessing “spiritual powers”. An evil cult, by contrast, worships the founding person himself.
   二、宗教信仰和崇拜的对象是各个宗教特定的神，是固定不变的，宗教信仰反对人自比神明和自吹具有“神力”。邪教崇拜的则是教主本人。
3. 3, Our nation’s religions have lawfully registered organizations and activity locations. Religious citizens’ collective religious activities are held at registered religious activity locations.
   三、我国宗教有合法登记的团体组织和活动场所，信教公民的集体宗教活动在经登记的宗教活动场所举行。

Bottom bar:

• Tianjin People’s Government Guarding-Against-and-Dealing-With-the-Evil-Cults-Problem Office 天津人民政府防范和处理邪教问题办公室。
• Tianjin City Anti-Evil Cults Association 天津市反邪教协会。

Image:

• Guilty of unpardonable evil 十恶不赦。
• *** (name of the evil cult’s founder)

6. Five Reasons the Common Masses Follow Evil Cults

Five Reasons the Common Masses Mistakenly Enter the Evil Cult Wrong Road
普通群众误入邪教歧途的五种诱因



1. The first is that when people meet sudden misfortune in life, they have a desperate state of mind toward real life, and evil cults will then enter by taking advantage of this weakness, they will use vague and illusory devious heresy to mislead, and cause people to be taken in and cheated;
   一是当生活中遇到突然变故，对现实生活产生绝望情绪时，邪教便会乘虚而入，利用虚无缥缈的歪理邪说进行诱导，使其上当受骗；
2. The second is that when people meet special difficulties in life, evil cults will seize the opportunity to show a helping-in-trouble and assisting-the-poor appearance, they’ll use small favours or help in a short-term difficulty, thereby people are filled with thankfulness psychologically and join an evil cult organization;
   二是当生活中遇到特殊困难时，邪教会趁机以济困助穷的面目出现，施以小恩小惠，帮其暂度难关，从而怀着感恩的心理加入邪教组织；
3. The third is when people suffer illness and are unable to get well for a long time and are suffering, evil cults will, by introducing ancient traditional secret recipes and by promoting some kind of qìgōng extra-sensory-perception abilities, lure people into taking the bait;
   三是当身患疾病、久治不愈、饱受折磨时，邪教会以介绍祖传秘方、宣传某种气功的特异功能为由，引诱其上钩；
4. The fourth is when people need to make their health and bodies stronger, some evil cults will seize the opportunity to proclaim some qìgōng methods’ mystical capabilities, luring people through group exercise over a long period of time, etc., cause people to unwittingly become members of an evil cult;
   四是当有强身健体需求时，一些邪教会趁机宣扬某功法的神奇功能，引诱其通过长时间集体练功、会功等，使其在不知不觉中成为邪教成员；
5. The fifth is the psychology of blindly following. They see the people around them practicing some kind of qìgōng method and they are caused to follow the crowd, the “hurry after the crowd” effect, so they confusedly become members of an evil cult.
   五是盲从心理。看到周围的人在练某一种功法，受到他人怂恿或随大流、“趋众”影响，糊里糊涂地成为邪教成员。

7. How to Report an Evil Cult



Methods for Exposing and Reporting the Discovery of Evil Cults’ Illegal and Criminal Activities 发现邪教违法犯罪活动的揭发检举手段

1. Report to the lowest-level Party organization. 向基层党政组报告；
2. Make the situation known to the local police station. 向派出所反映情况；
3. If you meet a public trouble-causing gathering, etc., you can immediately call 110 and report it to the police.
   遇有公开聚集滋事等情况可直接打110报警。

Image: (A man turns over some evil cult materials that he found in his mailbox to the Anti-Evil Cults Committee 反邪教委员会。)

8.



Left image:

• “The fire-fighters are great!” “消防宫兵们真棒！”
• “Look! As soon as I use my kungfu powers, the fire is extinguished!”
  “瞧！我这一发功，雨就下了，火也灭了吧！”

Right image:

• “You only have to believe our **, and this bracelet is yours.”
  “只要相信我们**，手镯就是您的了。”

9.



Left image:

• [On clothing] Kingdom of Heaven 天国； *，*，* (evil cult’s slogan)； perfection 圆满； divine 神； look with hatred on society 仇视社会； Doomsday is approaching 末日来临； Reach a higher level 上层次。
• [Underneath] illegal activity 非法活动

Right image:

• [On clothes] *，*，* (evil cult’s slogan)
• [Papers] Don’t need to take medicine 不用吃药； qìgōng healing 气功治病； use kungfu powers to avoid disaster 发功免灾； divine 神。

10.



Image:

• [On building] Local Police Station 派出所
• [Arm band] “On duty” (a member of the Neighbourhood Committee 居委会)
• [On prisoner] “****” (name of the evil cult)

These posters most definitely have a specific “evil cult” in mind; they name it repeatedly in the pictures, just not in the main text. In the picture on the right, this group’s name is written on the “faithful running dog” (忠实走狗) of Uncle Sam (山姆大叔), who isn’t directly named but is clearly insinuated by the tall skinny legs and striped pants. In other words, they’re insinuating that the U.S. uses this group to try and destabilize China.

This group is among the top three most hated/least tolerated groups in China, and were one of the biggest China stories of the 90′s. They’re the people who were outside the Chinese consulate in Vancouver when my parents went to get their visas, who my mom didn’t know about and almost walked in to apply for a Chinese visa with their material in hand (my dad made her leave it in the lobby). I didn’t translate the parts of the posters that identity this group specifically because those terms are just too sensitive for the Chinese internet.

I’m not blogging this for the politics so don’t go writing or linking about them explicitly in the comments. I’m blogging it for the Chinese practice and to show what normal people in one average Tianjin neighbourhood like ours are getting propagandized with (each neighbourhood seems to choose its own posters; I’ve only seen this particular kind of poster in two or three different neighbourhoods; it’s not a city-wide thing). If you want to know more about this particular “evil cult”, read the third chapter of Ian Johnson’s Wild Grass: Three Portraits of Change in Modern China. I do, however, wonder if this kind of “evil cult” rhetoric will begin to appear in the increasingly tense on-going showdown in Beijing. There are alarming similarities between both situations, but also crucial differences.

And if you just can’t get enough of translated propaganda posters, here’s one more:

• Behaving yourself… with Tianjin characteristics
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A while back the news said some Chinese cities had started using web cameras to shame citizens into better public behaviour. I have no idea if this is directly related or not, but today we discovered these signs on the side of our building:

“Warning: Up and to the side there’s a web cam. Your defecation behaviour will be uploaded to the internet and displayed!”
警告：侧上方有摄像头，你的排便行为将会被传上网络展示！
and
“Warning: Up behind there’s a web cam. Your defecation behaviour will be uploaded to the internet and displayed!”
警告：后上方有摄像头，你的排便行为将会被传上网络展示！

And sure enough, two cameras have been installed:

We’ve seen signs before about cleaning up after your dog/self…

“Civilizedly lead your dog. Don’t bring your dog to in front of the window to take a dog poo.”
文明迪狗：不带狗到窗前拉狗屎
and
“Defecating is strictly prohibited”
严禁大便

… but this is the first time we’ve seen them threaten to put offenders’ pictures online!

And, for the record, I’ve never noticed any conspicuous amount of… evidence of bad behaviour on this side of our building. And our daughter wanders around back here several times a week. But apparently someone is fed up! Too bad they didn’t list the website.

You can see pictures and translation from the last major campaign to curb undesirable public behaviour here: Behaving yourself… with Tianjin characteristics.

(P.S. — Blue sky day!!!)

Watching the street vendors and the chéngguǎn do their little dance at the street market near our apartment provides an interesting anecdote for two crucial Chinese cultural concepts: 人情 and 面子。

There’s a colourful, bustling, crowded and filthy street market near our neighbourhood (see here for more photos), and I suspect its days are numbered.

Every time I go recently in the late afternoon there are chéngguǎn (城管：”city management” by-law enforcers) cooperatively hassling the illegal vendors who choke the roads leading to the Jade Spring Road Vegetable Market (玉泉路菜市场). By “cooperatively” I mean it’s a big game. The chéngguǎn deliberately and obviously drag their feet. Their van inches around the corner at the far end of one street, giving the vendors plenty of time to yell, bundle up their stuff, and, sometimes laughing, sometimes running, make a show of clearing off. Or they cover up their produce and act like they’re just hanging out… next to closed boxes full of tomatoes. The chéngguǎn take their sweet time pulling around, parking, and getting out. Then they saunter up the street, and as soon as they’ve passed by the vendors roll their sacks back out on the pavement and re-stack their cabbages, fish, rabbits, fruit, or whatever. The day I took the following photo, three of the chéngguǎn were sitting on the side of the road having tea with a couple vendors who had boxed up their stuff and had it stowed away right there beside them. I would have taken their photo, but we had our daughter with us and they were smiling and making faces at her. In the picture below, a chéngguǎn (on the left) ignores a vendor who has obediently folded up her produce in blankets in a pile beside her. She’s just waiting for them to leave so she can uncover her vegetables and start selling again.

I have seen a chéngguǎn in this market get a little mean (it was the guy in the picture above, about 30 seconds before I took the picture), and it was when a cucumber seller decided to ignore him and not make a show of clearing off as he approached. That seemed to make this particular chéngguǎn a little angry and he lunged for the guy’s wooden vegetable box, which was quickly yanked out of reach by a rope and dragged off down a side street. No attempt to pursue, even though he would have easily had it in about two or three steps.

“Humanity” 人情 and “Face” 面子

I described all this to one of my Chinese coworkers, and he explained it with two terms: 人情 and 面子。 “Human feelings” 人情 is how he explained why the chéngguǎn carry out their orders to the absolute bare minimum ‘letter of the law’ degree, and how they can sit down and chat over tea with the same people they’re supposed to be hassling. They recognize a lot of these people, he said, and don’t want to stop them from trying to make a living; they personally couldn’t care less whether there’s a street market here or not. It’s nothing personal. But they have their orders, and the point of orders in China is to do just enough so that you can tell your superiors that you did them. The actual purpose of the order, the ‘spirit of the law’, is entirely beside the point, especially when your superiors are only giving you the order because their superiors gave it to them and they want to make their superiors happy because they’re working on a promotion.

The other key term he used was “face” 面子。 Why do they bother with the silly charade of bundling up their cabbages in full view of the chéngguǎn (who’s walking toward them maybe only a few meters away), and scooting off down an alley only to come back a few minutes later? It gives face to the chéngguǎn. It’s an acknowledgment of who’s in charge. Chéngguǎn can give these kinds of people all kinds of trouble if they want to; sometimes they can be brutal (see here, here, here and here). Sometimes the vendors fight back. The vendors are almost all illegal migrants near the bottom of society and without legal protection. They’ll yell and run and make a sincere effort to clear off as quickly as possible when they sense that they need to; they aren’t always laughing and you do sense fear sometimes, depending on the circumstances. But at least for now, in our particular street market, all the chéngguǎn require is a little “face”, a show of deference, a lack of defiance, tails between legs, and they’re satisfied.

These streets are easily the most lively (热闹) in our area, but with the consistency of the harassment, half-hearted as it appears, I bet it’s only a matter of time before this one goes they same way as the street markets near our old place.

There are more street market photos in the Our Tianjin 2010 photo gallery, which I just now finally finished uploading. So if you’ve seen it before there’s some new stuff (like sheep brains and an explosive dog). You can also see video of what it’s like to try and ride a bike through this market here: Tianjin Street Market Dash video.

Related stuff from the blog:

• Tianjin Street Market Dash video
• Our Tianjin 2010 photo gallery
• Before & After: Tianjin’s transformation at ground level
• Making Our Neighbourhood More ‘Civilized’

Related stuff from the web:

• Photos: chengguan officers blocked by hundreds of citizens for attacking several young men in Changsha
• A Killer the Nation Has Pity For
• A practical handbook for beating street vendors
• Chinese training manual offers advice how to beat offenders without leaving marks
• Above the Law? China’s Bully Law-Enforcement Officers

Here are some photos from around our neighbourhood during the Tomb Sweeping Festival 清明节 from the end of March to the beginning of April 2011 (blogged here). For more about the Tomb Sweeping Festival see:

• Tomb Sweeping Day (清明节) 2010 in Tianjin [photos]
• Tomb Sweeping Day [info]

You can leave comments below!

Last night was The Lantern Festival 元宵节, the final night of Spring Festival 春节 and that means the last night of fireworks(!), so this morning it’s finally all quiet on the eastern front.

We joined the happy crowds last night on Tianjin’s frozen Haihe river 海河 near Ancient Culture Street 古文化街 and launched a couple “wish lanterns” 许愿灯 (usually called 孔明灯) — the candle-powered sky lanterns you’ve probably seen pictures of.

These pictures aren’t great, but it was actually a pretty fun scene. Hundreds, maybe thousands of lanterns were floating around, fireworks up and down the river, lots of people having fun, etc.

Ok, the pictures really aren’t that great, but all those little dots in the sky are lanterns. It looked cool, I promise. Just look at the photos and use your imagination.

You can actually see it better in the video clip below.

Some of the flaming lanterns got stuck in trees, and every so often one would come hurtling down to the ice in a blazing arc of glory. We even launched a couple:

These were the only lanterns to be found at Tianjin’s Ancient Culture Street 古文化街，which was a bit of a disappointment considering it was the LANTERN Festival, but it was still fun to launch fire hazards into the night sky from down on the river. We’ll definitely do this again next time we get the chance!

You can browse the rest of our Spring Festival fun here.

What better way to celebrate than by blowing the place up? This is Tianjin city, China, at midnight on Chinese New Year’s Eve. We’re staying at friends’ house on the edge of the city, and this is the view from the third floor roof at midnight, looking north toward the city.

The photo and video don’t do it justice; what you see here is only about 1/10 of the cityscape that was exploding, but it’s still worth a look. The video clip (YouTube, sorry) gives you a better idea:

Happy Rabbit Year! 兔年快乐！See more about Spring Festival and Chinese New Year here.

Other fireworks posts:

• A little taste of Chinese New Year in our neighbourhood
• Fireworks

We’re in a Chinese hospital for an ultrasound to confirm our first pregnancy. The examining room is a bit of gong show — there’s no privacy, and forget lining up; a group of women are elbowing each other for position, crowding the examining area, each trying to shove her paperwork in the doctor’s face ahead of the others while the doctor’s busy seeing Jessica. But we don’t care, it’s a spiritual moment for us: we’re going to hear our child’s heartbeat for the first time, see his or her first picture, get real live confirmation that there definitely is a baby growing inside Jessica and that we are indeed parents. Awestruck doesn’t even begin to capture our feelings. “I want to abort it,” a woman says bluntly in Chinese, in front of everyone, as she thrusts her paperwork at the doctor. That was our first personal encounter with abortion in China.

China’s Abortion Epidemic

That was two years ago. As our language ability develops and abortion becomes increasingly ubiquitous and brash in China, we’re running into it more often. If I take a taxi and the radio’s on, chances are I’ll hear a commercial about once every 30 minutes that always starts with the same unflinching dialogue:

“Oh no! I’m pregnant! What about my career? What will I do?”
“Don’t worry! It’s no problem. You can just go to blah-blah hospital and get a 3-MINUTE, PAINLESS abortion!”

Only once have I heard them use the euphemism of “woman’s surgery” for abortion; usually they’re just unapologetically explicit. Students have told me how they were “supposed to have a baby brother” but didn’t, and most of them assume we’re planning to have more than one child because we didn’t get a boy the first time. In a country with an on-going legacy of post-birth infanticide, killing babies before they’re born doesn’t carry near if any the stigma that it does in North America, as our taxi driver last week demonstrated by bringing it up in casual conversation:

Driver: “How many kids do you have?”
Me: “Just one, but we hope to have more later.”
Driver: “Yeah, then you can have a boy!”
Me: “We don’t really care if it’s a boy or a girl.”
Jessica: “Besides, you can’t really choose that anyway.”
Driver: “Sure you can! You just wait until the belly’s big enough” [he gestures] “and then you can see. If it’s a girl you can get rid of it, but if it’s a boy, ‘Oh! We want it!’” [thumbs up sign].

Sex-selective abortion may be small talk fodder for some in China, but pre-marital pregnancy is another story:

“The moral outrage over having a child before marriage in our society is much stronger than the shame associated with abortion,” said Zhou Anqin, the manager at the clinic in Xi’an, which performs about 60 abortions each month, mostly on students aged 24 or younger.
[...]
“Luckily, in Chinese culture people generally feel that before the actual birth, you don’t yet have an actual person, so we have cases of induced abortion at seven and eight months along,” Li said. “I think this is to China’s advantage from a population control point of view … China has absolutely no need for the so-called ‘right to life’ argument, no need to introduce ideas about abortion as murder and so on.” [Full article]

The Chinese abortion epidemic is even skewing gender ratios in North America. In my hometown of Surrey, B.C., Canada where our daughter was born, there were signs taped to the walls in the ultrasound clinics telling us that the techs and doctors would absolutely not tell us the gender of our baby. I later confirmed what the nurses in the NICU had told us: too many baby girls were being killed. Turns out that a school board administrator in the 1990′s noticed that the gender ratios in greater Vancouver elementary schools were skewed in areas with large East Asian and Indian communities (see Canada’s Missing Daughters and Ultrasound ads promote female abortion). (In Canada you can abort your child for any and no reason because a person’s legal status depends on her physical location relative to a few inches of birth canal (or, it used to); if she’s on the inside, then she has not yet magically transformed from a not-a-person into a baby. Arbitrarily disallowing minority women who have a gender preference to know the gender of their not-a-baby seems just a TAD hypocritical to me.)

I try not to share the nastiest parts of our China experience on the internet. It’s rude and misleading to show up in someone else’s country and make a big deal out of the absolute worst or exceptional and freakish experiences. All our societies have brutal, inhuman aspects to them, but China takes it to a whole nother more explicit level by foregoing the faux-moral fig leaves to which Western societies still hypocritically cling. In blunt, unapologetic ‘honesty’ China carries some things further toward their logical conclusions than North Americans are currently willing to go or admit to (in the West we’re still in denial about being unable to grow Judeo-Christian moral absolute apples — like the inherent value and dignity of people — from secular, relativistic trees).

I could share some things, with photos, that people do and accept/tolerate in China that are so mind-blowingly brutal and animalistic that they make ubiquitous abortion look minor by comparison, even to the hardest-core pro-lifers — but I wont. I will, however, translate something below, because abortion in China is invading everyone’s consciousness here with increasing regularity. And since it actually invaded our home this week, I’m blogging it as a significant aspect of our China experience that we can’t ignore.

Magical Abortions… at a discount!

If you buy a pregnancy test today in Tianjin, China (we’re not pregnant), it comes with one of these (below), because if you’re potentially pregnant in China the first thing you’re apparently supposed to do is consider killing your baby. And judging from the amount of advertising, pre-birth infanticide is not only much more convenient than traditional infanticide, it’s a cash cow:

This is an abortion discount card for a local hospital. Mouseover the Chinese text below to see the pronunciation. The front says:

“PAINLESS ABORTION Assistance Card” 无痛人流援助卡
“Assistance amount: $50 援助金额：326元
Tianjin City Family Planning [Government-]Appointed Hospital 天津市计划生育定点医院
Painless Abortion Assistance Hotline 无痛人流援助热线

And then it has the address, bus routes, and website. The back is worse:

The back compares three kinds of abortion: abortion via drugs 药物流产, ordinary abortion 普通人工流产, and (in the pink column) “Blah-blah Hospital’s Hysteroscopy Obtain Embryo Surgery” XX医院宫腔镜取胚术 (a Tianjin City Women’s Federation Designated Medical Treatment Aid Hospital 天津市妇联指定医疗救助医院). Here’s what the pink column says:

• Surgery eligibility 适应症 (“medical indication”):
  • “up to and including the 11th week.”
• Surgery time 手术时间:
  • “three minutes” 3分钟。
• Anesthetic 麻醉:
  • “short-term effect I.V. anesthetic” 短效静脉麻醉。
• Patient’s surgery experience 手术者感受:
  • “sweet dreams during the surgery, wake up promptly, cozy and cheerful after the surgery” 术中甜梦、术后即醒、舒适愉悦。
• Harmful side-effects 不良反应:
  • “very few complications, won’t affect subsequent pregnancies, can go to work the next day” 并发症极少、不影响再次怀孕、转天即可上班。

Under the chart it says you can get:

1. “a free ‘early avoidance early pregnancy detection’/ultrasound exam (valued at $20 USD)”
   免早早孕检测/免费B超检查（价值126元）。
2. “$30 USD off an abortion (Please present this card when visiting)”
   凭此卡可抵扣人流手术费200元（就诊时请出示此卡）。

Related blog posts:

• When the news is real life
• October’s propaganda: anti-”gendercide”

Related news links:

• Chinese Academy of Social Sciences publishes the latest and most negative data on sex-selective abortion in China
• China’s abortion numbers grow
• Largest Gender Gap Seen in China’s Youngest Generation
• The worldwide war on baby girls
• India’s unwanted girls
• Mothers in China — Sobs on the night breeze: The centre of global gendercide
• Rise in abortions in China, young women targeted
• Abortion adverts come to a college campus
• Canada’s Missing Daughters
• Ultrasound ads promote female abortion
• Asian ‘Gendercide’ Migrates to North America

Canada’s “fourth trimester abortion”:

• Fourth Trimester Abortion
• Infanticide conviction nets Alberta woman suspended sentence
• Thrown Over the Fence — Infanticide, Canadian Style

On the Kermit Gosnell scandal:

• It is All About Abortion
• Gosnell Headlines? Gone, Baby, Gone!

We stepped off the Great Wall onto a terraced mountainside, and then followed a narrow farmers’ path through a corn jungle down to a village in the valley. Along the way we were invited into a mountainside home to look around and take photos. You can follow our hike from top to bottom in these pictures.

Descriptions and info are in the captions. You can comment at the bottom of this page.

We stepped off the Great Wall onto a terraced mountainside, and then followed a narrow farmers’ path through a corn jungle down to a village in the valley.

Photo Gallery: Mountainside Great Wall Corn Jungle Village Hike

Along the way a woman invited us into her hillside home to have look around.

Click a photo to go to the photo gallery.

We’ve done this hike before, but never when the crops were above our heads. The previous galleries have better village shots and people shots, especially this one: Happy Forest village — 2008 June 6

Summer is just about done, so here’s a photo gallery of “our” Tianjin covering the first half of 2010 (Spring Festival to present): Tianjin 2010 — Spring & Summer. There’s lots to see, like these grandmas in the park having a group eyeball-rubbing session:

The photos come from all over: partially abandoned and bulldozed hutongs in Tianjin’s less developed districts, the Great Wall in northern Tianjin, street markets, etc.

Click a photo to go to our Tianjin 2010 — Spring & Summer gallery.