Tuesday, September 30, 2008

A Guy’s Life

I have the entire week off work this week.  It’s the National Day holiday.  National Day is the Chinese Communist 4th of July, the day that Chairman Mao stood on Tiananmen Gate in 1949 and declared the founding of the People’s Republic of China.  Since my circle of friends are all barbarian lao wei, this means that it’s a week for us to go out and get shitfaced every night.

Take last night.  After hitting numerous watering holes of varying levels of dodginess we ended up back at my friend’s apartment.  He lives on the fifth floor of his building, which is the top floor.  (In typical Chinese “What they fuck are they thinking?” fashion the elevator only goes to the fourth floor, you have to walk from the fourth to the fifth.) At any rate, sometime between the 3am to 6am range (my memory is a tad hazy) he mentioned that there was this rooftop alcove that could only be obtained by climbing up the roof.  There were three of us there, and of course we thought this was a brilliant idea, so we walked out on his building and climbed up the tile roof to get over the other side onto the hidden balcony.  It was a moist night and the tiles, standard terra cotta roofing tiles, were moist with dew.  I was wearing Converse All-Stars (regular Chuck Taylor style) sneakers, which have a rubber sole, and thus aren’t conducive to traction on a wet terra cotta roof tile.  Without going into too much detail, let’s just say that at one point a random wire prevented me from plunging five stories to my death (or paraplegic status). 

Everything worked out well.  All three of us got to the hidden alcove with our alcoholic beverages intact.  As we climbed in through this little opening we came to a realization.  There were a number of empty concrete rooms, not big enough to stand up in.  One of them had bundled up bits of paper in the corner.  One of my friends went exploring and discovered what were, essentially, fossilized human turds in one of the other rooms.  Thus it was agreed by all three of us that the workmen who had constructed the building had used one room to shit and another one to wipe their asses.  So sitting in this dirty concrete room, with wads of used toilet paper in the corners, we smoked a massive joint and laughed our asses off.

It’s fucking great being a guy sometimes.  Women reading this won’t get it.  It was a total guy moment.  You know how you love chick flicks, and your boyfriend wonders what the fuck you see in that drivel?  Same thing, only the inverse.  You like movies where the girl ends up with the guy of her dreams after a series of setbacks, I sat in a dirty concrete room full of used toilet paper and got stoned out of my fucking mind with my two best friends, and it was awesome.

Of course I woke up this morning and all the skin is ripped off my knees from my slide down the roof tiles, even though I was wearing jeans.  Not only that but there’s a big bruise on one of my ass cheeks, God only knows what injury caused that.

So, the menu for tonight?  Pizza down in Hohai, and then Christ knows what after that.  Whatever it is, I guarantee it will be fun as hell.

Thursday, September 25, 2008

Groundhog Day Williams

The other day I discussed the Chinese custom of naming children after an event that happens at the time of or during the year of their birth.  Here’s one example of that custom in action.

A total of 7,147 residents of the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region share the same given name Guoqing, meaning the National Day in Chinese.

All the Guoqings were born on China’s National Day of Oct 1.

There are more than 400,000 residents nationwide with the given name of Guoqing.

Many Guoqings are happy with their names.

A female Guoqing said she was given a surprise birthday party when she was in college.

When she asked her roommates how they knew the day of her birthday, they replied: “You must have been born on Oct 1 because your given name is Guoqing.”

Guoqing literally means “Country Celebration.” I wonder how many babies in the US who have a birthday of July 4th are named “July Fourth Smith” or something like that.  There would have to be one or two somewhere in the country, but 400,000?  That’s a pretty good number of people, even for a country with 1.3 billion citizens.

See?  I Told You So

This was me on Sunday.

The other large company involved in the scandal, Yili, was a major sponsor of the Olympics.  On September 11 the Paralympics were still going on.  Think that could have had anything to do with governmental foot-dragging?

Today there was a newspaper article about how Chinese milk fed to zoo apes has resulted in kidney stones as well.  But the real interesting part, to me at least, is this.

The news came with the revelation that Chinese officials, suppressing “bad news” during the Olympic games, had ordered a cover-up of the scandal.

Sanlu Group, the company at the heart of the scandal, met with the government three times to explain the crisis, according to reports - but despite the warnings no recall notice was issued.

The details of the meetings, recorded in the Daily Telegraph, are the first evidence that the cover-up was a deliberate policy.

I’m shocked, I tell you… shocked!

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Yankee Doodle Yangtze

Here’s a surprisingly honest report about American perceptions of China in one of this country’s official newspapers, China Daily.

The Great Wall is the most recognized symbol of China among Americans, a survey released on Monday by US-based Perspective Resources Inc (PRI) has claimed.

Entitled “A Study of American Perceptions of China” the survey attracted 2 million US citizens, all aged 18 or above, with different social and education backgrounds. They were asked 10 questions about China.

When asked what they most associated with China, 49 percent said the Great Wall, followed by the Beijing Olympics (36 percent), rice and food (34 percent) and dragons (32 percent).

When asked to say which words they most associated with the country, the most popular answers were “highly populated”, “government or Communism”, “culture or history” and “red”.

The most famous Chinese people are Jackie Chan, Bruce Lee, Mao Zedong, Confucius, Jet Li, Yao Ming, Buddha, Lucy Liu, Genghis Khan and Chow Yun-fat, the survey found.

When asked what are the most popular Chinese dishes, nearly 60 percent said it was rice or fried rice. Others mentioned egg rolls, noodles, wonton soup, fortune cookies, egg drop soup and stir-fried food.

When it comes to places to visit, Americans think of Beijing, the Great Wall, Hong Kong, Shanghai, the Bird’s Nest, Forbidden City, Tibet and Tian’anmen Square, the revealing survey said.

Twenty-two percent of those surveyed also mentioned Singapore, which they thought was a Chinese city.

Chinese brand names are least familiar with Americans who named Samsung, Toyota, Nissan and Nike, which are not Chinese at all.

Forty-two percent of people surveyed said they could not name any Chinese brands, although 87 percent said they had used products made in China such as clothing, electronics and toys.

Asked about the most important issues in China, 39 percent said civil rights and freedom.

Others mentioned a wide range of topics such as population control, pollution, Communism and Capitalism, the economy, labor issues, sweatshops, low quality products, US debt to China and Tibet.

The survey also found that 49 percent of respondents were interested in Chinese history and culture, while 53 percent said they hoped to someday visit China.

Honestly, I’m astounded that the government permitted this article to be published, considering the mention of communism, civil rights, sweatshops, and the like.

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Strict Stones

I learned a few more fascinating things in Chinese class tonight.  I’ve really developed a good rapport with my lǎo shī—she teaches me something interesting about China’s history or culture, and in turn I teach her something she doesn’t know about English.  Last week I explained where the sandwich place Subway gets its name.  “You know what a submarine is, the ship that goes underwater?  Well the foot long sandwich is shaped like a submarine, so it’s called a submarine sandwich.  People started just abbreviating this as a ‘sub,’ so the store named itself Subway.” Tonight I explained how the unofficial motto of the United States Marine Corps, “gung-ho,” comes from the Chinese words gōng hé, meaning “work together.” (See this post for more on the USMC’s history in China.) In return she gave me the following interesting tidbits from Chinese language and culture.

First something recent, relating to the dairy milk scandal. 

Wài guó rén hē niú nǎi jiē shì le.
Zhōng guó rén hē niú nǎi jié shí le.

This translates to “Foreigners drink milk and become strong.  Chinese drink milk and develop stones.” One of the side effects of the milk poisoning is kidney stones in little babies.  Note that the sentences are pronounced almost identically in Chinese, only the accent mark over the words jie and shi are different.

Now for a little bit of Chinese history.  Next week is what is known as National Week, a weeklong national holiday in celebration of the day that Mao Zedong pronounced the formation of the People’s Republic of China.  (Think of it as a week-long Fourth of July.) Mao died in 1976.  His rule was, as we all know, totalitarian in nature.  After the years of the Cultural Revolution the new leader, Deng Xiaoping, was willing to relax a lot of the rules that Mao had implemented. 

In 1984 it was the 35th anniversary of the founding of the PRC.  My teacher was a college student at the time.  There are parades every year in Tiananmen Square to commemorate National Day.  The chairman stands at Tiananmen Gate, over the entrance to the Forbidden City, overlooking Tiananmen Square, and reviews the parade as it walks past.  Because of the new openness many of the students carried small signs saying Xiao Ping Ni Hau, meaning “Hello Deng Xiaoping.” Holding up a sign in this manner would have been unthinkable under Mao.

Then in June of 1989 that little incident thingy happened in Tianenmen Square.  (We all know what it was.) On National Day, a few months after the incident, the students marched past again as Deng reviewed the parade from Tiananmen Gate.  The students also carried signs, only this time they said Xiao Ping Ni Hau Hen.  The addition of this character at the end changes the meaning to “Deng Xiaoping Your Heart is So Strict” or something to that effect.  (There is no literal translation.)

The more time I spend here the more this country and its history fascinate me.

Monday, September 22, 2008

Baby Formula

Remember this pice of dialogue from Fight Club?

Narrator: A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don’t do one.

Business woman on plane: Are there a lot of these kinds of accidents?

Narrator: You wouldn’t believe.

Business woman on plane: Which car company do you work for?

Narrator: A major one.

China’s milk producers are obviously fans of the film.

One of the companies at the center of a food contamination scandal in which at least three babies have died knew for months that there was a problem with its products but failed to take action, a government investigation has found.

The dairy firm Sanlu was told in December that infants were falling sick after they were fed with its products, the official Xinhua News Agency reported, quoting an investigation team working for the State Council, or Cabinet.

The company finally carried out tests in June and found that the chemical melamine had been added to its milk to make it falsely appear as if it was high in protein, Xinhua reported late Monday.

“A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don’t do one.  Plus, it’s only babies we’re talking about, their parents can have another one.  My wife wants an Audi.”

Sunday, September 21, 2008

Milk Money

More on the dairy scandal.

Sanlu received complaints as early as March and tests in early August found the milk powder contained melamine. However, no recall was ordered until Sept. 11, after its New Zealand stakeholder told the New Zealand government, which then informed the Chinese officials.

The other large company involved in the scandal, Yili, was a major sponsor of the Olympics.  On September 11 the Paralympics were still going on.  Think that could have had anything to do with governmental foot-dragging?

Naah. 

Saturday, September 20, 2008

The Game of the Name

The Chinese have a peculiar (at least to us) way of naming their children.  Often they will be given names relating to current events, or some other significant event.  In the documentary mentioned below there is a child who has as one of his names 20,000.  That’s how many RMB his parents had to pay for him as a fine for violating the One Child policy.  (He has an older sibling.) To put it in western terms it would be like naming your child September Eleventh Smith or Iraq War Jones or Presidential Election Williams.

During the Cultural Revolution there were an astonishing number of children named 文革, or Wen Ge, which is the abbreviated form of the word 文化大革命, or Wén huà Dà gé mìng.  (Literally “culture change big instruction.") The Chinese like words with the smallest number of characters, usually no more than four, so when you have a long word such as this they will choose an abbreviated form which will enter common use.  For example, the soccer stadium here in Beijing, Worker’s Stadium, is officially known as Běi Jīng Gōng Rén Tǐ Yù Chǎng, literally “North Capital Work Man Group Produce Open Space.” That’s quite a mouthful, so everyone just calls it Gong Ti. 

Obviously the most significant event to happen this year was the Olympics.  The official name of the Olympics is 奥林匹克运动会, or Ào lín pǐ kè yùn dòng huì.  The first four characters are a transliteration of the word Olympic—pronounced “ow lin pih kuh.” The last three mean Games, literally “luck action meeting.” Just like with Worker’s Stadium, however, there is also an official abbreviation:  Ào yùn huì.  And just in case three characters is too long for your liking there is a two character abbreviation:  Ào yùn.

As you might imagine, there have been countless children born this year who are named Ao Yun.  The family name comes first in China so the child’s name will be something like Wang Ao Yun.  If you have a child born this year, chances are he’ll end up with a Chinese immigrant child as a classmate at some point in his life who is named Ao Yun.

So now you know.

Day and Date

I’ve said before that the most difficult thing for me about learning Chinese is the specific word order that you have to use in sentences.  One example is asking someone what the date is.  Here’s the phrase in Chinese:

Jīn tiān jǐ yuè jǐ hào?

Jīn tiān means “today.” Jǐ means “how many?” Yuè means “month.” And hào means “the day of the month.” Thus literally translated, in Chinese word order, you have to ask “Today how many month how many day of the month?” Today is September 21, so the answer to this would be Jīn tiān 9 yuè 21 hào.

Damn Chinese word order, it gets me every time.

Sammich

I found out something interesting in Chinese class the other day.  I’ve mentioned before how foreign words are either translated directly into Chinese by meaning, or transliterated by the sounds of the words themselves.  When they do a transliteration in this manner they often choose characters with specific meanings to impart an impression in the customer’s mind.  One example of this transliteration is Subway, the sandwich place. 

There is a word in Chinese for subway, dì tiě, which literally means “earth iron.” The sandwich chain, however, is sài bǎi wèi.  These three words mean “compete 100 taste.” In other words, a Subway sandwich is so delicious it can compete with 100 tastes.

I thought that was cool as hell.

Net Work

As if the milk scandal wasn’t enough…

About 190,000 MacGregor and Mitre folding soccer goals are being recalled after the death of a young child.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission says a 20-month-old boy from Texas was strangled when his head and arm became entangled in the net of one of the recalled goals.

The agency has received one other report of a child’s head becoming entangled in a net.

The Chinese-made goals were distributed by Regent Sports Corporation and sold by sports and hardware stores nationwide, including Wal-Mart and Ace Hardware. They were available between May 2002 and May 2008.

Now, I’m going to come to China’s defense in this situation.  I’d be willing to bet money that the Chinese manufacturer created the nets exactly to customer specifications.  In other words, Regent Sports designed them and gave them to a Chinese company to manufacture, thus the problem is not with the Chinese company but with the design itself. 

Interesting, isn’t it, that they mention the country of origin.  What difference does it make where the thing was made?  None, really, especially in the case of a design flaw.  Regent Sports, however, knows that if they make sure that the media know that the nets were made in China there will be an expectation in the public mind that Chinese manufacturing is the reason for the recall.  “Don’t blame us!”

Milky Palms

Here’s more on the milk story.

China ordered widespread checks on dairy products and a recall of tainted items as a scandal that began with powdered baby formula and spread to milk sparked an outcry from China’s trading partners.

Malaysia joined neighboring Singapore in banning Chinese milk imports while a dairy company in Japan pulled Chinese products from supermarket shelves following a similar move in Hong Kong after products were found contaminated with potentially deadly melamine.

China’s State Council, which ordered the comprehensive checks, vowed to punish enterprises and government leaders responsible for the scandal, the official Xinhua news agency reported late on Friday.

Allow me to translate that last paragraph from Chinese into English.

“China’s State Council, which ordered the comprehensive checks, vowed to find a few scapegoats and patsies among a central government riven with corruption.  These patsies will be tried and executed in a very public manner, after which the government will proclaim that the problem has been solved.  Regular bribery and corruption will resume shortly thereafter.”

Friday, September 19, 2008

Skin Trade

If you get a chance you need to watch China’s Stolen Children, a documentary by HBO and the UK’s Channel 4. 

Ten years after the policy-changing and award-winning film, The Dying Rooms, the same team returns to a very different China where the infamous One Child Policy has had the horrific side effect of a boom in stolen children.

With extraordinary access to devastated parents desperately searching for their stolen son; a man who brokers the deals and has sold his own offspring; and prospective parents grappling with giving up their soon-to-be-born daughter through lack of options, we are brought face to face with the crisis that such a stringent government policy has created among China’s poorest people.

Beautiful, haunting, deeply tragic, but impossible to ignore, this film takes us into the heart of modern China. A place where girl babies are being sold for 3,000-4,000 RMB (£200-270); detectives specialise in finding kidnapped children; and child traffickers are so relaxed about the trade they ply, that they allow the film-makers to covertly record them buying and selling tiny human lives.  Tens of thousands of children are now kidnapped and traded on the black market whilst the State is more concerned with keeping the story quiet than tracing Chinas stolen children.

The film is powerful, find a way to see it.  However, having lived here for almost a year now I can really appreciate the film on a level that I never would have been able to do otherwise.  So much of what you see in the film just makes sense in the context of how the Chinese do and view everything else.  ( See the baby food post below.)

What Up, Yo?

Just to give everyone a quick update on things:  I got over the pneumonia after about two weeks, and am now back at work.  As far as work goes, I just signed a six month extension on my contract, so I’ll be here through the end of April.  At that time the company and I will “reevaluate our relationship” in a significant manner.

Sacred Cows

I don’t know how much play this is getting in the news outside of China, but there’s been a huge scandal involving tainted baby food.  And by “tainted” I mean “had the nutrients intentionally left out of it.”

China’s troubles with tainted baby formula grew into a national crisis Wednesday as health officials reported that a third infant had died, the number of illnesses skyrocketed to 6,244 and products from 22 different companies tested positive for contamination with the industrial chemical melamine.

The number of infants sickened after ingesting the tainted milk powder was five times more than what the government reported Monday. The new figures showed that 1,327 babies remained in a hospital, with 158 suffering from acute kidney failure, China’s health minister, Chen Zhu, said at a news conference Wednesday in Beijing.

The Sanlu Group, a large state-owned dairy producer, has been the focus of the scandal since the issue came to public light last week. But on Tuesday, China’s General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine said that it had inspected 491 batches of baby milk powder produced by 109 companies.

The agency said two of the 22 producers that sold tainted formula — Qingdao-based Suokang and Yashili of Guangdong province — had also exported it to Bangladesh, Yemen, Myanmar, Burundi and Gabon. Test batches of those products showed no melamine.

Note that last part:  the stuff they sold outside of China wasn’t affected, only the stuff they sold to their fellow countrymen.

The latest scandal has sparked concern and anger among Chinese consumers, especially after Chinese media reported that Sanlu had been receiving complaints about its formula since March but had delayed reporting the problem to the government or issuing a recall. The two deaths were in Gansu province, a poor area in China’s northwest.

After results of the baby milk tests were reported, many people expressed outrage on the Internet.

“My goodness, look at the long list. I feel that I cannot breathe,” said one posting. Said another: “Domestic products, I really want to support all of you, but why do you treat us like this?”

Therein lies the rub.  The reason they didn’t export the bad baby formula is simple:  it would have been yet another international “faulty Chinese products” scandal, and weakened the already shaky identity of Chinese products.  Thus the good stuff was exported, and the nutritionless crap sold inside China, where such controversies can be controlled with far greater ease.  Note above that the two deaths where in an extremely poor part of China.

It wasn’t clear how many foreign brands were tested, if any. Nestle’s baby formula is on the shelves at many supermarkets, but it can cost more than double a Chinese brand.

China is a country with a powerful police force, but the police are also highly politicized.  If the child of a rich person or a party official had died the police would have flown into action.  We aren’t, however, talking about rich people or party officials.  Who buys cheap baby food?  Poor people.  And what does China have about a billion of?  Poor people.  And who has no political power or rights at all in China?  Poor people.  Thus the company, in deciding to sell nutritionless baby food, sold it to the market that they knew would be least able to do anything about it.  They intentionally sold poison that they knew would be fed to babies in their own country.

Think that could be tied into the general attitude towards babies resulting from the One Child Policy, which mandates forced abortions?  Naah, that couldn’t have anything to do with it.

One more interesting aspect to this story:  remember my post about the curse of the Fuwa, the five little gay-looking mascots of the Olympics?  The five Fuwa represented five disasters or negative incidents that had affected China in 2008.  After the close of the Olympics the Paralympics were held, and they also had a mascot:  Fu Niu LeLe, or “Lucky Cow LeLe.” (Fuwa means “lucky doll.") Here’s the picture.

As you have by now already undoubtedly guessed, the Chinese believe that this mascot is also cursed, and represents the baby food scandal, because the baby food is a dairy product.  Indeed, from the above-quoted article:

“This is a disaster to China’s entire dairy industry and a huge crisis,” said Luo Yunbo, dean of the College of Food Science and Nutritional Engineering at China Agricultural University, after learning of the test results. “The entire industry really needs serious self-examination and introspection.”

Not to mention that the Chinese government needs to stop creating accursed mascots.