奥运会是中国的光荣，是我们中华民族的光荣，是我们经过了很多努力之后才得来的荣誉

"...the Olympics are China's glory, the glory of the Chinese people, and the honor we've earned after all the hard work we've been through.”

After reading the above statement from a Chinese blog, it got me thinking a lot about the function of the Olympics. To go back to the theory of the Olympic Spirit, it is quite easy to search for it online: the Spirit of the Olympics!

The Olympics, any Olympics, is not to prove how great the host country is and how wonderful and proud all the people of that country are for winning that honour. Sadly, it seems often to be a bit more about the financial benefit the host and corporations will get from it, but using the Olympics to promote nationalism and to use it to get face and respect from the rest of the world, that is a bit harder for some people to understand or agree with, so comments that support the Olympics as being the "Glory of China" would offend many people, including me.

Maybe some Chinese are looking for something to be proud of that does not include massive pollution, it's long term effects (cancer? lung disease?), the destruction of natural habitat, extinction of many species (Baiji river dolphin anyone?), labour exploitation, sweatshops, etc, all done in the name of "development" (read "catch up to save face AND improve people’s condition at the same time, two birds with one stone!")?

 The Olympics is much more benign and "international", so that is a good pick. But then, we should all be proud of it equally, not depending on which country it is held in or how much the “people” had to sacrifice to get it, or how great the government is for getting it. Chinese should be proud of finally being a part of making "a spirit of better understanding … and of friendship, thereby helping to build a better and more peaceful world," building more "goodwill" between countries, "improving the human race," etc, than any nationalistic spirit for a specific country.

Even if China wins the most gold medals, we all know, just like with the USSR, it was mostly because the government spent millions on training tens of thousands of kids from when they were 5 or 6 years old, putting then in athlete factories, training how many hours a day, 6 or 7 days a week? That is quite different than a sacrifice, a DIY or an "overcoming obstacles" kind of spirit; this is a "athletes can be manufactured like consumer products" kind of spirit. Is that the main aspect that China wants to project to the world? Of course, the headlines everywhere will only read “China wins record number of gold medals,” in the end is that all that the Chinese government wants?

Or maybe the Olympic commission should adjust their code? Make it be about awarding the country with the best economy who spends the most money on training top athletes “from the cradle to the gold”? To reflect the increased economic influence of certain countries? Or maybe, if China really wants to ACCEPT the Olympics for their original intention, more focus can be put on the international, free competition, goodwill building, spirit improving original intention? But then perhaps the latter has a Western bias? Wow, hard to come to a compromise!

An article of mine, titled '"Must we ourselves not become gods?" The Visual Theories of Foucault, Debord and Baudrillard in Explaining Contemporary Power Structures', and was based on an essay I worte for my Visual Culture class in Spring 2007, was just published in the International Journal of Baudrillard Studies July 2008 issue.

Take a look here!

Interesting report, but I really really wonder about her assertion that the students want to learn driving well so they don't get into accidents. I think I know how to drive "well", but that is the way people in the USA and Canada drive. If people in China followed the Chinese driving rules, which are the same as in the USA and other places, then the traffic wouldn't be so bad. If these new drivers do obey the rules they will probably get into an accident very quickly! Even foreigners in China have to drive the Chinese way or else their car will never move, and it's the same in other countries. I dobut this "learning" how to drive and taking tests will help, more traffic tickets, harsh fines for getting into accidents and maybe a provisional driving period will help.

There are things you can say,
and things you cannot say.

This is a universal.

This happens everywhere.

But this fact, and I don't use the word fact often, it raises many important issues.

Who decides what you can and cannot say? It must be a human being, or maybe a group of people, it is not Mother Nature or some gods telling us and we just obey them out of reverence for their supreme power. So we must find out which person or persons are the ones who decide what we can and cannot say!

But then I do not think that those people want us to know why we can and cannot say certain things. They want to make it seem like it does come from Mother Nature, that Zeus or Allah told us this undeniable fact, defined this innate distinction of what can be and what cannot be.

“It is common sense that we cannot say X!” they say.

“Of course you cannot say Y, you are in Z!”

This is important, for defining what we can and cannot say also defines the ways in which we can and cannot live our lives. But, again, all these are a given, I think, we all know it at some level.

A bigger problem arises when someone says, “There is freedom here! You can say whatever you want, as long as it fits your role.”

Then another question is,
who decides what roles we play,
but that’s for another discussion…

So we come back to the original problem, if we all know there are certain things we can and cannot say, then why do we sometimes lie to ourselves, to each other, and say it is not so?

This power to define what we can say and what we cannot say is such a great power, and of course this power does not want us to really find out who it is. Maybe we can never find out, and I think we accept that.

Indeed, the power hides itself behind the lie that we can say whatever we want.

But another problem comes when we can no longer talk about the fact that there are certain things we can say and cannot say. The problem comes when we promise people they can be open, they can express themselves, that they do have some freedom. The problem comes after we say all this and then turn around and lie, then the conversation goes like this:

“What did you say? You said X? Well, you should be more careful in the future!”

“So, you mean I cannot say X?”

“No, you can say whatever you want! You have freedom, after all, just use your common sense!”

“So, really you’re saying I cannot say X? How about Y or Z?”

“No, you can say anything, but you just have to think really, really carefully about it before hand, to judge the implications for what you want to say, to think how other people might misinterpret what you say, to take into consideration they might not understand at all what you say, or that they might tell someone else what you said. You don’t want to offend anyone!”

“So, really, you’re saying that I cannot say X or Y or Z? It would be nice to know so I don’t get in trouble!”…

The conversation may go around in circles like that for hours, maybe best to forget it and move on. They will never admit that there are things you can and cannot say, they will never make a list, it would break the illusion, it would unmask the simulation of choice that they use to legitimate their operations.

In the end, as long as we know that we are not in control of what we can and cannot say, as long as we know that there is another power who decides that, a power that we are both within and without of, as long as we don’t lie to ourselves about it (and ignore their lies) then I think that’s okay.

However,

what happens when knowing that we don’t control what we can and cannot say becomes something that we cannot say?

What happens when we no longer realise that saying, “You can say whatever you want!” is just one big hypocrisy used by those in power to help maintain their control?

So, on April 18th and 19th I will be in Santa Barbara, California to attend "symposium on the writings of media theorist and thinker Jean Baudrillard", you can see the website for the conference here. Not only will I attend, but I will be presenting a paper as well! The paper is called "The Establishment of the 4th Estate Myth in the USA and the UK", and I've been working on it since I finished my MA dissertation. The schedule of other speakers is here. Most of them are PhD students, it seems, with a couple of more established scholars, including Douglas Kellner, so it should be quite interesting!

After I get back, on April 23rd, I will be doing a lecture at my school (University of Nottingham, China, UNNC) for the Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies about my MA dissertation, "Manufacturing Harmony: The Effects Of Global Capitalism On The Production Of News Media In The PRC." The problem is, if I make the whole dissertation (which was over 80 pages and 23,000 words) directly into PowerPoint slides there'll be over 130 slides all together, and the lecture is only 1h long, so I have to find some way to summarize things to make it go faster...

And this is not to mention the show my band, The Sherwood Collective, will have on April 11th at UNNC (more details here)!

And I just made a poster for it:

I guess it makes up for the laziness of the Spring-Festival-crap-weather-so-I-don't-wanna-do-anything of January and February...

Today I found a message thread on Baidu.com, from the Baidu UNNC message board, that had a link to my blog! But the poster said: "个人觉得Jesse Owen 就是这种典型: who know nothing about chinese history," that he/she feels that I am the type who knows nothing about Chinese history... Not sure where that came from, I don't teach history class.

But the link above that comment was quite interesting, to a video talking about Tibet. But after watching it I am not sure how well the person who made it "knows" Chinese history either, so I made a point-by-point examination of the "facts" in the video:

o         So what China has 56 Ethnic Groups? How do those groups identify themselves? Do they think they are "Chinese"? That's the important question.

o         What do some maps showing China's ever-changing territory prove? In that case then China has legitimacy over Korea, Vietnam, Mongolia and parts of Russia and Burma too!? The relationship between Tibet and China has been changing throughout time, only recently did it come under direct control of the Chinese government. Heard of feudal or imperial systems? Not the same as a republic!

o         And if the British treated them like “slaves,” that means the Chinese freed them? And what do you mean by “slaves”? And now Tibet is like a child to China? Even the Communist Party leader in Tibet, Zhang Qingli, has said “The Communist Party is like the parent to the Tibetan people.” First slaves, now children? I would be upset too!

o         And of course it is true that the CIA funded the Dalai Lama, that was the Cold War, remember?

o         And why would the Chinese government spend so much money "developing" Tibet? Could it be all the natural resources and territory? If the Tibetan people are getting "development" then why are they so angry and went around burning Han Chinese-owned stores? What do the Tibetan people really want? Do you really think the Chinese Communist Party knows what they want?

o         Yugoslavia is not a very good example: that was a fake multi-national "country" put together by Europeans after WWI. It was only stable when Marshal Tito was running it because he was not only strong but also fair to all the different nationalities. He gave every group a lot of autonomy. After he died others tried to force all people in Yugoslavia to become Serbian, that's when the trouble started! Maybe that’s a lesson, give the other 55 ethnic groups more autonomy, real autonomy, and they won’t be such a “threat.”

o         And I think it's a great idea if all those places, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Okinawa, etc, get more independence, then the people there will have more control over their lives. That is what is the most important, no?

o         Of course, it is impossible for all the Europeans and Africans and Asians to leave North America, and it is impossible for all the Han Chinese to leave Tibet. Of course, Han Chinese migration to Tibet only started in the last 30 years... So we have to start from the fact that Tibet is currently part of the People's Republic of China, and try to solve the problems from there. Even the Dalai Lama doesn’t want Tibet to be an independent country!

o         And of course the Western news media bend the truth and distort facts, it's not only Chinese news media! If you want to lean the "truth" then don't read the news! Most people in the West don't fully believe the news, so how about Chinese?

After reading this article from Xinhua news, I just had to make a brief comment.

The article is titled “China garners broad international support over Tibet riots,” and goes on to list all the countries and leaders who supported the PRC for their handling of the riots, or protests or uprising or whatever phrase you want. The list of countries includes North Korea, Mongolia, Nepal, Bangladesh, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan (no Uzbekistan?), Georgia, Syria, Fiji, Serbia (no Kosovo?), Zambia, Sierra Leone and Benin to name a few.

The list is neither that impressive nor “broad,” in my opinion, but is certainly “international.” It is only slightly more unimpressive than a similar list made 5 years ago, that is the countries in the “Coalition of the Willing” that the USA got together to go fight in Iraq, which initially included Mongolia, Georgia (here too? what whores!) the Philippines, Japan, Australia, Afghanistan, Bulgaria, Poland, Slovakia, Romania, Kuwait, and along with Spain and the UK.

But I am sure the Chinese list is just provisional, soon Sudan, Indonesia and other countries that are also known to have to “handle riots” occasionally will issue similar statements of solidarity.

All of these countries also made statements that they “adhere to the One China Policy,” that Tibet is “an inalienable part of China,” and anything to do with Tibet is part of the “internal affairs” of China, and that the most important thing is “stability and safety.” These phrases have been repeated constantly in Chinese media for as long as I can remember, and concerning just about every event imaginable.

They also mentioned that none of them want Tibet to be independent, no one wants to ban the 2008 Olympics or make them political. It’s interesting to note that another person who doesn't want Tibet independent and doesn't want to politicize the Olympics is the Dalai Lama, and, as much as the Dalai Lama is an “outsider,” Hu Jintao is still willing to meet with him to talk, now more than ever.

In a slightly related story, Xinhua reported here about the elections in “the Chinese province of Taiwan.” The report is quite awkwardly worded, with phrases such as “leadership elections” and “Taiwan authority” (avoiding the word “government”) and a number of well placed “quotes” to instil a sense of "so-called"ness in them, such as “legislature” and “referendum.”

I find the Chinese propaganda machine isn't as well oiled at it should be. Making reports like this is quite confusing for some people and will not fool others. We all knew the USA's coalition was BS (they cannot get support from France, Germany or Italy?) and pretending to be proud of the list just made the USA look foolish. And the use of “One China Policy” when talking about Tibet is just strange!

Also, their newspeak is clumsy and inconsistent: if you want to report on elections in a “renegade province” maybe it’s better not to call them elections, but “surveys” or “polls,” and perhaps the people did not “vote” but instead “indicated their general preference.” That would be less confusing and wouldn’t give people the idea that “the President and government in the Republic of China is democratically elected.”

I was just reading several news reports about an incident that happened last week in Paris to a pair of newlywed Chinese on vacation. It's hard to know what really happened, even the reports made by the Chinese media are contradictory, and all the foreign press did was report on what the Chinese press reported.

The top story on xinhuanet.com/english on Feb 23rd was a report and a follow up on this, which have since been moved to the "We Recommend" section. In the first one, here, the Xinhua News agency focuses mostly on the apology by the management of high-end shopping mall Galeries Lafayette over an incident that happened on Feb 11th. The incident is given as this:

A newlywed couple from the eastern Zhejiang Province were accused of using a forged note while paying for a purchase at Lafayette on February 11. They were then taken to a police station where they were questioned and searched. After a bank expert identified the note was real, the couple returned to the cashier who again refused the note and insisted to claim it was counterfeit.

An unnamed Chinese official also advised that Chinese tourists avoid shopping there, perhaps as retribution or to make sure no one else looses face.

The other Xinhua story, here, focuses even more on the apology and features the same picture of the apology meeting between the shopping mall's management and Chinese journalists but doesn't add much.

These two reports alone I find quite interesting for several reasons. Discovering that Parisians are rude to tourists might seem like inventing a new cancer medicine to Chinese, but I think to most others its common sense.

Also, the store never took their money, even after it was reviewed by two specialists. This could show, in a way, a lack of trust for Chinese, probably stemming from the increasing reputation that China has for counterfeiting things, stealing patents and other intellectual property rights abuses. Whether or not it's true doesn't matter, but the perception amongst people is increasingly oriented in that direction.

The most important thing this demonstrates, in my opinion, is a further extension of the Chinese Victim Complex to tourist affairs as well. As an increasing number of Chinese travel abroad, more incidents like this will happen, so they're trying to beef up their Victim Quotient in anticipation of events like this. Usually the Chinese Victim Complex is applied to situations with Japan, Taiwan and the USA (see some examples from Asia Times Online and Higher Yearning.org), but I have seen an increasing usage in instances such as this.

For instance,  the couple with the questionable euros were treated "insultingly" and "rudely" and even "questioned and searched insultingly" according to the Xinhua reports. This report by AFP quotes Chinese media as saying "the country's consulate in France had contacted the police to protest the 'brutal' treatment of the couple." Brutal you may ask? Nothing I read about the incident could be considered brutal, no one was beaten to death or chained in a cold jail for days. It seems a bit hypocritical; if you cannot find any reports of the brutal conditions in Chinese jails then your Google must be broken. Guess some Chinese assume that all police in the world, not just Chinese police, are like that, or maybe the perception is that police stations in Paris are like luxury hotels and anything less than silk sheets on your cot is inhuman. If anything it exaggerates the situation to help them appear even more as Victims.

But it doesn't end here. I took a look at the Chinese-language reports about the incident, of which there were quite a large number. I picked this one because the title was quite arresting: "Chinese tourists strip-searched in Paris shopping mall". Strip-searched? Interesting that the other Xinhua reports didn't mention that, only that the couple was "searched insultingly". That's a new euphemism for me.

That report, from the China News Net goes into much more detail, for good and for bad. Apparently the couple's money was checked by a "professional" (their quotes) who said it was fake, at which point they were taken to the police station. They were not only strip-searched, handcuffed and imprisoned but also apparently "laughed at, insulted and humiliated," and held for over 5 hours. You can see already the Victim Quotient is increasing for the domestic news piece. They even had to hand over their money and camera and were placed with the other criminals when they were booked at the station.

This all seems plausible, I doubt anyone in a police station doesn't feel humiliated, but then the story says the women's underwear was cut with scissors... Yeah... Their money was checked again to be true and they were released. Then apparently the police tried to get a bribe from them, wanting a "tip" to be taken back to the shopping mall, half of all their money. (Wow, my Victimeter is so high now, it's hard to believe! At the same time it also reminds me of when a Chinese man insisted we give him a "tip" for showing me and my family to a hard-to-find restaurant in the hutongs of Beijing, which I thought he was doing just out of kindness.)

They proudly refused this blackmail, apparently, and took a taxi instead. And then the shopping mall refused to take their money again. The report claims they were given the run around after wanting to make a complaint and ran out of time. So the next day they went to the Chinese embassy and with in two days got a letter of apology and some compensation for their situation.

Since most of this story is quite implausible and written to inflame the readers' sense of Victimhood, I find it hard to swallow. If the writer really wants to get people's sympathy then the bare facts of a situation like this should be enough. Otherwise everyone comes out looking like a Victim of a horrible discriminatory treatment by racist Parisian police, guards and sales people who are obviously out to alienate this group. The only conclusion you can get from this story is that there's a massive conspiracy against Chinese tourists in Paris, and of course the only solution is what the unnamed Chinese official said, to boycott the Galeries Lafayette in order to make them see the error of their ways and to no longer persecute Chinese.

The last thing I'll mention is why the Galeries Lafayette management probably apologized so quickly; Chinese tourists spend the most out of any group in the mall. That's a good demonstration of the power that money has to help temper your Victimhood and to lower your Chinese Victim Quotient for at least a little while. This is also happening on an international level as well, slowly ever since the 1970's, and with the way the Chinese media treat incidents like that, I don't really see prospects for it to slow down anytime soon.

People have to realize that shitty stuff happens to everyone everywhere all the time, not only Chinese everywhere all the time. And nothing is more dangerous than a large group of people with a Victim Complex (see Nazi Germany), and while being a plausible short-term strategy for face saving does not have long-term potential to truly solve past wrongs.

Here's a story I found on my hard drive, I believe I wrote it for my Advanced Placement English class when I was a Junior in Alameda High School back in 1996. Already shows my advanced sense of humour, amazing:

"Galin the Unskillful

Vocab Story #3

By: Jesse Hearns-Branaman

Galin stepped up to the doorway. He laid his sword against the cold, stone wall. In his pocket, he remembered, was the spell he had to say to gain entry into the monolith. Pulling it forth he spoke, "Okay then, um, 'Hitherto, you will give me access to your great and powerful panacea, which will bestow upon it's drinker steadfast acuteness.'"

The set of wooden planks that had previously made the door before, separated a little in the middle and to great handles formed in the middle. Galin hated incongruous magical operations like this. After sighing he walked forward and pulled on the handle, but it wouldn't budge. "Damn you!" Galin said as he kicked the door with his armored boot. It slowly swung open.

Leaning forward, Galin heard a moaning wind, sounding like thousands of tortured souls, come out of the unlit chasm. "What a day to lose my torch in the SWAMP! Why can't haunted castles just be down the street? Urgh!" he whined as he picked his sword up and walked in.

The howling continued as he searched for the door with a picture of the much sought after talisman on it. A cold finger tapped on his right shoulder. He turned but saw no one. He felt the tap on his right shoulder again. Learning from his mistakes he turned to his left instead. Behind him was a ghastly skeleton-knight. "Leave!" it screamed as it lunged at him.

"What in blaze--ahh!" Galin yelled as he came down under the great weight of the animated bones. Galin brought his sword down on the head of his opponent but it bounced off ineffectively. With great dexterity the skeleton-knight flipped Galin over and whispered in his ear, "GO!"

"Get off of me you bonehead!" he said throwing himself up and tossing the skeleton away. "Eat steel!" he said as he swung in a circle with his sword out, but the skeleton ran away. He didn't notice and kept on spinning. The centrifugal force made Galin run sword first into a nearby door. He hit it and fell back.

He sat up and saw a symbol of a cup on a wooden plaque on the door just below his sword. He got up, opened the door and ran in. "GO!" the skeleton-knight yelled in Galin's ear as soon as he got near a pedestal in the middle of the room.

"Oh, shut up!" he said as he elbowed it in it's neck.

"Leav-glht, cough, ouch! Leave me alone!" it yelled stumbling back.

"Oh, um, sorry?" he said, not sure what to say. It fell back and laid in a heap.

Galin stepped towards the pedestal and grabbed the cup on it and turned around. The skeleton on the floor was looking up at him. "What? It's my quest! I came here for it. What do you want. You think I'm mean don't you, to steal someone else's property. Well, goddamn it, I'm English. Stealing property, and land, from their rightful owners is my job!"

"No, actually I was wondering if you could hand me my thigh bone so I can put myself back together," it responded.

"Oh, okay," he said handing it the long bone.

"Thanks. Could you leave now?"

"Well, I've got the cup...okay. Bye now."

"Bye."

Galin walked out of the room and, following the moans to the entry, walked out of the castle. "Oh! I forgot my sword! Again!" he said, turning. The doors started to shut and knocked the cup out of Galin's hands. "NO!" he said grabbing it off the ground. It was empty.

He walked up and knocked on the door, but no one answered. "Oh, great! I finally completed my first quest and I go and lose the panacea liquid and my new sword! That's it, I quit!" He took off his armor and mail, tossed it aside and started walking back to town.

But, about half way into the town, Galin, feeling the cold wind against his bare skin, remembered that he wore only his armor and mail that day."

Here's my jazz band performing at a competition in Ningbo last spring. Gets a little messy at times, I know, but I still think it's a quite interesting experiment. Features Chinese pipa and dulcimer along with violin along with standard bass, drums and piano.

I met a group of blue truck taxi drivers Wednesday evening, they'd lined up their trucks outside the Ningbo Bureau of Transportation and pasted papers all over their trucks. Apparently some of them are on a hunger strike also. Usually I don't like the blue truck taxis (they're usually very dirty and in a state of disrepair), but if a large group of people are protesting in China... so I decided to post them online to help give them some publicity.

The protestors gave me a newspaper article (available here in Chinese), even though it is from the People's Daily it does explain the story a bit. Apparently they drivers had to pay a high license registration fee, several tens of thousands of RMB (they told me 20,000rmb or US$3000), but the government changed the blue truck taxi policy to be more liberal, for there to be more competition. So the requirements for people who wanted to get the license later on was lower and the new drivers didn't have to pay such high fees. The old drivers think this is quite unfair, to waste all their money on a large fee that was then reduced and at the same time having to enter into greater competition. I guess this shows the fine line that the government has to walk along, how much regulation is too much, how little regulation is not enough. I wish them luck.

Here are some of the pictures I took:

"Hunger strike," "Give back my life savings," "Let me scrape along," "There's no way to live," "I want to survive."

"The Ningbo Traffic Department's '3 nos' policy [not clear what that is] has forced me to go on hunger strike."

"Just one notice from the government has taken away my life savings and forced me out of work. We ask, where's our livelihood? Where is the harmony? Where is the happiness?" (In case you didn't know, "harmony" is one of the key phrases for the PRC government now, always talking about making a "harmonious society.")

A long line of blue truck taxis.

Group photo of the protesters.

"Your Score: Shanghai, China

YOUR CITIZENSHIP HAS BEEN REVOKED! Pretty pathetic.

You don't deserve to remain in the good ol' USofA,
but it'd be too harsh to send you to the shittiest parts of the world too.

So, you get away with the compromise location of Shanghai, China.
You can have the red, but you've not yet earned the white or blue."

I ran across a website made by the Woodlands Junior School in Kent, UK, made to explain many aspects of English culture (excluding Wales and Scotland, apparently) and society to people who are not English. It’s quite a good resource. I was quite interested in the listing for “Acceptable Behaviour in England.”

At the end, for a suggested student activity they say “Why not make a similar list for visitors to your country?” So I thought it would be an interesting experiment to make one for China, "Acceptable Behaviour in China"...?

The part is blue is from that website and is apparently copyright ProjectBritain.com. The part is red is from me and is copyright me.

...

After finishing I noticed that, in fact, China has very few taboos such as in the UK. Chinese will say they are no polite and that they’re trying to change it, but still, in everyday life experience it’s not that way. Their term for it is "文明" which generally means "civilized" or "cultured," and you can see it on signs and posters all over most cities in many different contexts.  But I think a better translation is "polite," it sounds better to say "drive politely" than "drive in a civilized manner."

 It also got me thinking, why are/were there not so many taboos in China but in countries like the UK people pride themselves so much on ‘politeness’? And the Chinese ones seem more like superstition: Chopsticks can’t be stuck vertically in the rice? Just because it looks like funeral incense? Come on! But then why do we need to sit up straight for meals and use a knife/fork in a certain hand? Practicality only?

And why do Chinese nowadays want to emulate such politeness? Perhaps these habits, like chewing/talking loudly and pushing, are part of Chinese culture? As I always say, culture is a habit, so who is to judge that British habits are better than Chinese ones? Why cannot talking loudly, smoking and making lots of noise in a restaurant be seen as polite? After all, Chinese used to value tea houses and restaurants being 热闹, or hot and noisy. If all of them become air conditioned and quiet, then some culture is lost, no?

Of course, it sounds silly to say “Keep Traditional Chinese culture alive! Talk loudly, spit freely and don’t stand in line!” so if you come to China in 10 or 20 years and you find it very similar to the ‘polite’ West don’t be surprised!

The 40 Signs a Laowai Has Been in China Too Long

1.      You will not get drunk no matter how many cups of rice wine you drink.

2.      You like wearing slippers everywhere and often wear your pajamas to go to the convince store.

3.      When walking in the park you can sleepwalk and listen to your mp3 player at the same time.

4.      Badminton and ping pong have become your main sport activities.

5.      You smoke in elevators.

6.      You forget how to have sex in English.

7.      You discover using a western-style toilet is uncomfortable.

8.      You ask people what animal-year they are.

9.      You don't mind squatting, anywhere, anytime.

10.  You start to like moon cakes.

11.  You tell your parents that their home's fengshui is bad.

12.  You don't feel strange seeing elderly women collecting cans and bottles from garbage bins.

13.  You say "Aiya!" when you're amazed, excited, in pain or angry.

14.  You begin to believe you're quite tall, but you're really only 1.74m (5ft8).

15.  You bring large quantities of cash when you go to the hospital or store.

16.  When you eat fish you freely spit the bones on the table and no longer notice its eye is looking at you.

17.  Your cell phone’s language is set to “Chinese”.

18.  You begin to think that buying a new bike is quite stupid because those black market ones cost half as much.

19.  You bring your own TP to the bathroom.

20.  You can use chopsticks to pick up all different types of food, including peanuts, but when people praise your good ability you get upset.

21.  You like to look at what other people are buying in the store.

22.  When shopping in Carrefour, you look into other foreigners' baskets because you want to know what foreigners eat.

23.  You begin to call other foreigners laowai.

24.  You think McDonald's and KFC taste good.

25.  Your Mandarin is better than many Chinese and you often correct their bad pronunciation.

26.  You no longer like to introduce China to newcomers.

27.  When Chinese don't stare at you, you wonder why.

28.  Firecrackers can no longer wake you up.

29.  You like to have hot soup with your dinner and not a cold drink.

30.  Chinese ask you for directions.

31.  After leaving China you miss Chinese food.

32.  In summer time you roll your pants up to your knees when it’s too hot.

33.  When entering your house you change into slippers.

34.  You think it is strange to pay a lot for software.

35.  When the person sitting next to you on the bus wants to get by you don't stand up, just twist sideways.

36.  You begin to think your nose is too big.

37.  When in a taxi you hum along with the Chinese pop music on the radio.

38.  You now consider soy sauce to be a cooking ingredient, not a condiment.

39.  In the winter you carry around a tea thermos and refill it with hot water all day long.

40.  You blog only 4 times a year, and when you do you just copy other people's entries, and post it on your own with several additions and subtractions without giving them credit.

So a big news story recently is about the five Americans who were deported from China for breaking Chinese law. These members of Students for a Free Tibet decided to travel to Tibet and hold up a big banner to make some political statement, capitalizing on the new press freedoms in China and the focus the upcoming 2008 Olympics will bring.

After being brought "safely" (!) to Nepal they complained that they "feared for their lives when being held by Chinese security guards and were deprived of sleep, food and water for hours." They were put on a bus for 14h travel to the nearest city, didn't have food or water and couldn't sleep. And a guard threatened them.

This seems like a horrible abuse of human rights, right?

Let's see, you go to a foreign country under false pretenses, break their laws, get arrested and interrogated by police ... um, that seems pretty normal to me!

A long bus ride on dangerous roads? Well how do you think most people get to Mt Everest? Next time they should call ahead and reserve a well-stocked SUV for their trip to jail.

And the police interrogate and threaten them... Wait, isn't that their job? They can start complaining the day American police stop threatening to beat the shit out of suspects they are interrogating.

And they feared for their lives? Of course!

They protested in China about a sensitive political issue, what did they expect? The police would instantly switch sides and form a pro-Tibet militia? Or maybe Hu Jintao would see the error of his ways and grand Tibet independence immediately?

It's good they are expressing their thoughts, but they knew the consequences, they should not act surprised now. And the press shouldn't be reporting their hypocritical complaints so complacently, perhaps compare their situation to others arrested abroad?

These five should be thankful to get arrested, deported abroad and given an automatic press conference for the international press. It helped their reputations, their organization’s rep and now they can give all these "oh it was so scary/the seats were uncomfortable in the paddy wagon" interviews.

I think their next assignment should be to go to Saudi Arabia or Iran and protest sensitive issues against the government; they'll have far more interesting tear-jerking stories to tell when they all get their heads cut off in a public execution.

我对那种成语“入乡随俗”感兴趣！但是它太片面了，只有一个方面。如果人人入乡随俗，我们现在就没有现代医学，电脑，网络或卫星。

我认为多元化的国家是最有意思的。英国首相布莱尔说，“住在英国的穆斯林，他们应该遵从英国文化。”在法国，荷兰，穆斯林女人被禁止戴她们的面纱。

自从我来到中国，我做了很多错误的事情，说了很多忌讳的话。我的朋友们每次说“入乡随俗！文杰，你现在在中国，你应该遵从中国文化！”

中国越来越开放，社会也会变得多元化。现在很多外国人想来中国，学习或工作。中国也想要外国人来帮助中国的发展因为外国人有自己的特点和技术。可是如果我们老外都成中国人，就没有自己的特点！怎么办？

So, a couple weeks ago the Foreign Minister from Lesotho came to our campus to give scholarships to the five students we have from Lesotho. This was also connected to the African delegation that had come to China that week. He was a nice enough guy, very good and clear expression, he could also speak Russian as he had studied in Russia before, and his wife is the ambassador to...

Anyway, enough of that, today's blog is about Taiwan!

Apparently many of the big contributions that Lesotho has given to the world is their work in the United Nations, and right now they are one of the main African countries opposing Taiwan. And during his speech, one that he'd probably given all over China in the last several days, he pointed out how Lesotho supports the One China Policy. I forget in which context he mentioned this, but however he said it seemed to me to be quite rude, drew a round of applause form the mainland Chinese in the audience and left most others feeling very uncomfortable.

Perhaps he didn't know or didn't care that there were several Taiwanese students and staff in the audience... but I am sure he'd been getting that same round of applause whenever he mentions how great it was that the People's Republic of China was put onto the UN to replace the Republic of China in 1971 with the help of African countries. Back then they had said the Republic of China couldn't claim to represent the hundreds of millions of people on the mainland of China, but they failed to mention that the PRC could also not claim to represent the millions of people on the island of Taiwan.

The People's Republic of China and it’s media always proudly displays lists of all the governments around the earth that recognize the One China Policy, however they do so without mentioning the fact that unless a country does they will not be able to trade with the People's Republic of China; in fact, you can see a subtle shift in loyalties from the Republic of China to the People's Republic of China over time as the economic potential of People's Republic of China was revealed. This was also coupled with the realization that the cold civil war wouldn’t be ending anytime soon, and it’s better to stick with the one with more potential.

Anyway, what got me thinking about this again was another incident that happened at a election this afternoon. One student running for the election is from Taiwan, and he was announced as an “International Student,” the same phrase they use for people from Hong Kong, Russia, Indonesia, etc. There was no reaction until after he had given his speech and walked off stage. At that time a student in the audience got up and asked why the organizers were referring to someone from Taiwan as an International Student when it was quite clear that Taiwan is, was, and will always be an integral part of ‘China’. This was followed by a round of applause. Then the head of Student Affairs got up and started to explain that it was about different entrance examination systems, but that did not appease the heckler, who repeated his original assertion, only to sit down after the head of Student Affairs said, “It’s not the time to talk about this now, we can do it later, okay? Thanks.” I was tempted to have a conversation with the heckler after the election was over, but I knew it would come to nothing.

If you lay down the facts it takes a long time. Whenever the issue comes up, people always ask me, “Do you think Taiwan is part of China?” to which I reply, “Well, what do you mean by China?” To them the question gets a strange facial expression for it might seem quite absurd, but to me it’s the only relevant question. If China refers to the People’s Republic of China, a government established on October 1^st, 1949 when by Mao Zedong gave a speech on Tiananmen Square, then it is a simple fact that the island of Taiwan is currently not ruled or administered in any way by that government. This is because the government that runs the island of Taiwan, and apparently some islands in Fujian, is still the Republic of China. You can see it on their money and maps and passports and stamps, by their independent legislature and army and economic system.

However, if the definition of China relies more on geography and history, then the next question should be, “Who decides what area constitutes China and who says the People’s Republic of China gets to rule it?” To be pragmatic, no one can say that doesn’t have the right to rule the land it currently occupies, if you started to critically analyze the territorial acquisitions of most nation-states on earth you would find too much bloodshed and broken promises that you wouldn’t want to go any further. Several hundreds of years ago there were very few Han Chinese people in Taiwan, it was a colony, such as Hawaii was to the USA; through out the years many Han Chinese went to Taiwan and started driving away and killing the native population (who's ancestors were the same Polynesian stock as the Phillipines), taking over their land and starting mines and farms. Migration increased, as well as fighting between the natives and the Chinese, and at the same time the Qing and Ming Dynastic governments implemented many policies to further expand their territory, making sure that the island was securely under their control.

In the late 19^th Century Japan invaded Taiwan, and was administered by Japan for over 50 years until the end of WWII. After the USA defeated Japan, it came under the administration of the ‘victorious’ Nationalist Party, an ‘ally’ of the USA who had done very little to fight the Japanese. And when said Nationalist Party got their asses kicked by the Communists, they retreated to the island as their stronghold in 1949. The People’s Republic of China tried for years to invade the island, and it almost might have worked, but then in 1951 the USSR got involved. They wanted to gain influence in Korea, but at the same time not start a war with the USA. So when the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s armies started to lose and retreat to the north, the USSR was able to influence the People’s Republic of China to send millions of volunteers to help drive the USA-led United Nations force back.

This certainly soured relations between the USA and the People’s Republic of China, which despite the Mukden Incident (沈阳事变) had been getting better and better. So the trade and other exchanges so briefly started came to a close, and America furthered their policy of communist containment to include Asia. If communism-lead governments spread to all of East and South-East Asia, the economies of Western Europe and the USA would be badly hurt, and the rich people didn’t want that. So the USA decided to made sure that Japan and the Republic of Korea had strong, economies and anti-communist government, and that the People’s Republic of China’s armies could never invade Taiwan, and the stalemate has ensued to this very day.

This history is very concise, but it still very complex and took me years and years and several books to piece it all together, but I feel it’s all you need to understand and explain the historical and political reasons for the current crisis. At the same time I’m sure many people wouldn’t take the time to listen/read all of it and prefer to fall back on their former propaganda-fed assumptions. It is quite interesting that at the time when nationalistic ideas are being transformed and nation-state power structures are changing rapidly in the west (see the blurring of political and economic lines caused by the European Union), the ideas are being irrationally picked up by a government bent on revenge and face saving.

People say the “Taiwan Issue” is very sensitive. When I try to have conversations about it with normal mainland Chinese, usually students, it rarely gets very far, or by the time I get to WWII they have stopped listening or have gotten confused. Other times they say, “Okay, I don’t really care about politics like that.”  At the same time, mainland Chinese need to understand that not everyone thinks about the issue the way they do, and they should open up a dialogue to discuss it more deeply. However, if they do and examine all the evidence, they will see through the nationalistic charade very quickly, and it might cause them to change their views. And we can’t have that happening. So it’s probably best to avoid talking about it.

Oops!

A brief footnote:

Another question people ask me is, “Do you think Taiwan should come back to China?” to which I reply, “What is China?”

Once we get that cleared up I say, “The best way is to have the people who live on the island decide, otherwise I don’t think it’s very fair, and it certainly would not look very good!”

Main Sources:

Fairbanks, John K., The Great Chinese Revolution: 1800 to 1985, (Harper Perennial, 1987).

Hammond, Kenneh J., Chinese History: from Yao to Mao, (audio lecture, The Learning Company).

Roberts, J.A.G., The Complete History of China, (Sutton Publishing, 2003).

Schaller, Michael, The American Occupation of Japan: the Origins of the Cold War in Asia, (NY/Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1985).

Stueck, William Whitney, Rethinking the Korean War: A New Diplomatic and Strategic History, (Oxford, Princeton University Press, 2004). 

So now I go to the University of Nottingham, Ningbo, China, and I live in the International Students Dorm with people from many different countries, Indonesia, Malaysia, India, etc. Some are as young as 17 but some are as old as 30…

Anyway, that’s not the topic of this blog, this blog is about SEX.

Today in the lobby of the dorm building I saw a sign talking about the sexual rules in China, or the ABCs:

A - Abstain from sex for as long as possible

B - Be faithful to your partner

C - Condomize: if you cannot abstain or be faithful then use condoms

And this comes from the Youth League Committee of the University of Nottingham, which is the Communist Party for people still in school. They also have grade school kids wear the red scarves… (Hey, didn't they read Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four where all party memebers were forced into absitnance as a way to destroy interpersonal relationships?) ... Anyway, back to SEX.

So this sign actually made me really reminiscent for living in the USA, for this type of useless advice generated by the Christian Right that seems to be increasingly dished out in great quantities. But I guess I was lucky, in my High School in Alameda, California, (called Alameda High School) the councilor’s office had a basket of free condoms outside… I don’t remember any specific campaigns about safe SEX, but I’m sure it was there.

However, this Youth League sign made me laugh and gather a group of international students so we could all point and laugh in unison.

It was a good laugh.

This also came after some international students overnight guests were kicked out of their rooms in the middle of the night. Oh yeah, didn’t you know? Sex is illegal in Chinese schools! Students and teachers on campus, married or not, cannot have overnight guests of the opposite sex. So they log in and log out all our guests, and keep good track. That is, unless the front desk attendant is eating or sleeping…

Seriously, though, I think the advice on this sign is completely worthless. “Abstain as long as possible”? What does that mean? When does that moment arrive? When you go completely crazy from not allowing your natural SEXUAL instincts to be met? Most students here don’t even have the ability to do it by themselves in privacy, because they have so many roommates and pornography is forbidden, and they are also not allowed to have SEX, so where is the baby juice supposed to go?

If you cannot have SEX with yourself or anyone else, then that leads to increased anxiety, inability to focus on your tasks, etc. If students had more SEX, they’d be more relaxed and would probably focus better and get better grades. (I guess if they really want to have sex they can go off campus and rent a hotel room, but that seems really seedy and a waste of time and money to me.)

Being faithful is good advice, but I think it’s used in the wrong way because the 3^rd item says, “if you cannot abstain or be faithful then use condoms.” This means that if you are faithful then you don’t need to use condoms?

 Why isn’t the first piece of advice, “Always use condoms”? That’s a better place to start. Then say, “But really, we think you are too young and immature to do something that comes naturally to all other animals, so just keep it in your pants! Just focus on your study! What? Where do babies come from? Don’t ask me! Well, um, from garbage bins, didn’t you listen to your parents?”

Personally, I think that the message they give should be much simpler and helpful, such as this:

"We don't really care if you have sex or not,
because it’s not our business, it’s your own personal choice,
but if you do have sex then be safe and use a condom!"