Saturday, July 05, 2008

Come, Enjoy All China Has to Offer!

My Chinese employees have told me many times that, according to Chinese folklore, 2008 is an unlucky year for China.  And, from everything that’s taken place so far, that prognostication been correct.  Remember, the Chinese are among the most superstitious people on earth.  2008 is the Year of the Rat.  According to folklore, anyone born in the Year of the Rat will find any future Years of the Rat to be unlucky, and to ward off this bad luck they must wear red (a lucky color) every day of the year.  I have three employees who have worn something red, even it it’s just a cloth bracelet or something of that nature, every day since Chinese New Year.  At any rate, take a look at this.  It seems that the people have figured out what is making this year so particularly unlucky:  the five gay-looking cartoon mascots of the games, the Fuwa. 

Olympic mascots are supposed to be a merchandising dream: cute, cuddly and designed to promote friendship and peace ahead of the Beijing Games.

But the five official Olympic mascots, which are known as Fuwa, or “good luck dolls”, in Chinese, have now acquired a far more sinister reputation.

Although four of the five mascots were drawn to represent China’s favourite animals, and the fifth to embody the olympic torch, many Chinese now believe each one was a portent for the disasters the country has suffered this year.

And what disasters would those be?

The claims appeared first in the wake of the earthquake that devastated Sichuan Province last month, with people pointing out that one of the Fuwa, Jingjing, is a panda, the animal native to Sichuan.

Since then, bloggers have linked the protests that dogged the Olympic torch relay’s progress around the world to Huanhuan, who represents the Olympic flame, and the unrest in Tibet to Yingying, a Tibetan antelope. Nini, a swallow who looks like a kite, has been tied to a deadly train crash in Weifang, known as ‘kite city’, in Shandong Province on April 28.

But it was when the worst floods for 50 years swamped much of southern China last week and forced over 1.6 million people to evacuate their homes that the rumours about the cursed mascots went into overdrive. Beibei, the fish-shaped Fuwa, took the blame. “I am in Shenzhen. There is heavy rain for two days and no sign it will stop....now the curse of the final ‘fish’ has been proved correct. What shall we do?” was one, widely circulated, online comment.

Let’s not forget that, right now, the areas near Qingdao, where the sailing events are supposed to take place, are riven with algae.  I wonder which Fuwa caused that. 

“So many disasters and bad things happening in such a short space of time, it’s really rare,” said Zhang Xiaoyun, a customer services manager in Beijing for a telecommunications company. “I felt a bit scared when I heard about the curse. It’s hard to say if it is true or not. In general, I don’t believe those sorts of rumours but this year there really have been a lot of events that matched them.”

Oh, but wait, it gets better!  Not only are there all the aforementioned issues but a new, more sinister one looms on the horizon, and it’s straight out of the Bible:  locusts.

[O]fficials in Inner Mongolia are preparing to fight off a plague of locusts that may arrive in the capital city during the Olympics.

``There’s an old saying in China that good things only come after enduring a lot of hardship,’’ Jiang Xiaoyu, vice president of the Beijing organizing committee, said yesterday in Beijing. ``We expected to face many challenges so it’s not a surprise. These issues aren’t major problems.’’

So far this year, the world’s most populous nation has faced the worst winter snowstorms in 50 years, riots in Lhasa, violent protests about government policies toward Tibet along the Olympic torch relay route in Europe and North America, an earthquake and flooding.

But wait there’s more!

The northern province of Inner Mongolia has mobilized 33,000 people to repel swarms of locusts, the official Xinhua news agency reported. The locusts have come within 430 kilometers (267 miles) of Beijing and infested an area of 1.3 million hectares (5,000 square miles).

Beijing organizers said they are in contact with Inner Mongolian officials to monitor the situation and discuss contingency plans. Cooler-than-usual weather means the hatching of locust eggs in the areas closest to Beijing has been delayed until late July or August.

And what else is going on in Inner Mongolia?

A special police force was set up on Wednesday in Hohhot, capital of north China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in a bid to fight riots and terror.

The special force, affiliated with the Hohhot Municipal Public Security Bureau, is composed of 240 police officers who have undergone special training, according to Cui Haiwei, director of the bureau.

The special force will also undertake work as security guards or patrol police for important occasions, Cui said.

“It’s the first of its kind in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region,” Cui said, adding that the special force is armed with themost advanced regular and high-end weapons in the country.

Ah, yes.  Filth, pollution, paramilitary teams specially trained with the latest weaponry, a military ready to implement a crackdown on a moment’s notice… oh yeah, these games are just going to be a dump truck full of fun, aren’t they?

Damn that 2008, damn it to hell!

Update: One more point.  That bottom article is from a Chinese, and therefore government approved, news source.  Note the way they refer to demonstrators as those engaging in “riots and terror.” The use of the word terror has been very deliberate.  The US declared its “war on terror” and the Chinese have used that justification to do the exact same thing.  They just define terrorist in a slightly different meaning than we do.  But the way demonstrators and rioters are presented in the news are as “terrorists.” And, after all, who can criticize China’s war on terrorists when we’re engaged in one of our own, right?

Update 2: The Simpsons, as always, find a solution.  All they need is a shotload of locust-eating lizards.

Skinner: Well, I was wrong. The lizards are a godsend.
Lisa: But isn’t that a bit short-sighted? What happens when we’re overrun by lizards?
Skinner: No problem. We simply release wave after wave of Chinese needle snakes. They’ll wipe out the lizards.
Lisa: But aren’t the snakes even worse?
Skinner: Yes, but we’re prepared for that. We’ve lined up a fabulous type of gorilla that thrives on snake meat.
Lisa: But then we’re stuck with gorillas!
Skinner: No, that’s the beautiful part. When wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death.

Works for me,