cover of Global People, issue 145, The War between Han Han and Li Yanhong

The year 2011 has already come to an end, leaving much for us to reflect upon and discuss. Last year in China, it was never quiet in newspapers’ social news. Dramatic things happened everywhere in the country. In the culture circle, it was as well not so peaceful. Various cultural events have attracted constant attention and led to heated discussion. In reference to various media coverage and the hot topic lists from microblog websites, a list of “top ten cultural events” was drawn up as follows.

The sixth list of Richest Chinese Writers provoking controversy

On November 21st, when the 2011 Sixth List of Richest Chinese Writers hit the headlines of Huaxi Dushi Daily, it soon spread to other media forms attracting a readership of thousands. The hot topic generated enthusiastic discussions on the group of Chinese writers as well as controversies. The top three of the list were Guo Jingming (郭敬明), Nan Pai San Shu (南派三叔) and Zheng Yuanjie (郑渊洁). Márquez ranked No. 1 of the list of richest foreign writers. Voices were heard from various fields of society. It turned out the teenage groups was the main force of the readership and the canon lacked no readers. Another list of richest cartoonists also brought the groups of cartoonists under the spotlight. According to famous cartoonist A Gui (阿桂), the list of richest cartoonist was an indication the original Chinese cartoon was moving towards the front of society—a display of the power of original Chinese cartoon. It would help encourage more people to go for cartoon. Indeed, it is honorable that writing can make one rich. However, is literature “rich” yet? It is a question worth thinking about more.

Condemnation from fifty writers of Baidu’s online book archive

On March 15th, a group of nearly 50 Chinese writers signed the “315” Chinese Writers’Appeal to Baidu, including Han Han (韩寒), Guo Jingming (郭敬明), Jia Pingwa (贾平凹), Mai Jia (麦家), Yan Lianke (阎连科), Dangnian Mingyue (当年明月), Li Yinhe (李银河), Shi Kang (石康), Peng Haoxiang (彭浩翔), An Yiru (安意如) etc. The appeal accused Baidu of copyright infringement by providing almost all of the works of the above writers for free without any authorization. Once released, the appeal letter drew strong support. On the evening of March 22nd, a total of nearly 20 private book sellers attended a conference organized by China Written Works Copyright Society. Representatives were selected to have a negotiation with the company Badiu. In the Internet age, free sharing does not equal to free of charge. One can share one’s own rights, but has no right to use others’. If writers cannot get any economic returns due to online pirated versions or even make ends meet, they are very likely to change their professions. If one really loves one work, one should go to the bookstore and buy a copy to show support.

The Eighth Circuit of Mao Dun Literature Award China responding to questioning

The Eighth Circuit of Mao Dun Literature Award China started to collect works from the beginning of March and in May judges started to read entries allocated to them. Writers including Su Tong (苏童), Han Dong (韩东), Ya Zhaoyan (叶兆言), Liu Qingbang (刘庆邦), A Lai (阿来), Guan Renshan (关仁山), Hong Ke (红柯), Liu Xinglong (刘醒龙), MoYan (莫言) etc. were short-listed. In the second half of the selection, Liu Xinglong’s Tian Xing Zhe, Liu Zhenyun’s One Sentence Measures Ten Thousand, Zhang Wei’s You Are on the Plateau and Bi Feiyu’s Massage and etc. stood out. Since results of the first-round voting were made public, the Eighth Circuit of Mao Dun Literature Award China had caused considerable disputes. For example, there were quite a number of short-listed writers who were first-level provincial chairpersons and deputy chairpersons of writers’ associations. In responding to this, according to Gao Hongbo (高洪波), the deputy chairperson of China Writers’ Association, the chairperson and deputy chairperson of writers’ association were themselves competitive candidates and it was reasonable that their works ran for the award. They were short-listed because they could writer good works.

Chinese version of One Hundred Years of Solitude to be published

The publication of a book can hardly become a cultural event and the centre of attention. But the classic One Hundred Years of Solitude has made an exception. Previously when Márquez and his agent came to China, they saw different versions of the book and another one—Love in the Time of Cholera that were published unauthorized. He was so angry that once said that he “would not authorize Chinese publishing houses to publish his works in the 150 years after his death, including One Hundred Years of Solitude”. The authorization had made One Hundred Years of Solitude the headline with large amount of media coverage. The readers had great expectation and the publication was heatedly discussed online. What this had brought was millions of copies in 6 months hit the book stores in China. Márquez’s annual royalties amounted to 11 million, making Márquez the richest foreign writer in 2011.

The unusual “Internet Divine Song” Tan Te (disturbed) in full swing

It is not easy to notice that the song Tan Te (忐忑) already got popular online and spread quickly in the second half of 2010. When Gong Lingna (龚琳娜) performed the song, her eyes were wide open at one moment and made a squint at another. She also flung her head and wriggled here waist easily. Later the song spread crazily online and the famous Chinese singer Wang Fei (王菲) once said that the song “is at the beginning all gabbing and sinister, is lunatic in the middle and becomes a deep signing in the end where the secular world is abandoned by the one who rises to a deity”. However, what has made the song a real cultural event is the all kinds of adaptations of it by netizens of different ages and from all over the world. They all recorded their versions with exaggerated facial expressions and put it on the Internet. Even some celebrities followed suit, including famous Hong Kong actor Du Wenze (杜汶泽). In the video he posted, he sang with his right hand forefinger in front of the tip of his nose and pretended cocked eyes.

National Copyright Administration of the P. R. C.: new criterion for money paid to the author

According to the sixth item in the Regulations issued by the National Copyright Administration, the standard for basic remuneration is “30—100 yuan per thousand words for original work”. In terms of the lowest 30 rmb for 1000 words, some pointed out in editorial that “such a standard literally reduces brainworkers into manual laborers”. People from the National Copyright Administration explained that the standard was set up on the basis of the overall national economic level and the price of general cultural products. Recent reports say that the National Copyright Administration is currently revising the Regulation on Remuneration for Published Written Works and is going to set a new standard. The news immediately draw writers’ attention. Newspaper in developed countries pay 750-2000 US dollars for per 1000 words, so contributors and journalists can lead a decent life. Hopefully the new standard will allow all writers and editors benefit from it.

Ge Kiln from Song Dynsty—first-class historical relics in the Forbidden City damaged

On July 30^th, on Sina weibo, the popular microblog platform in China, word said that a piece of first-class historical relic Ge Kiln porcelain—one of the five official wares in Song Dynasty was broken. It was a first-class historical relic and a representative piece of Ge Kiln’s celadon. The mallow-petal plate was extremely rare. Later, media coverage revealed that the celadon was accidentally broken by staff in the Forbidden City during a damage inspection as early as July 4^th. It was broken into six pieces with irregular shapes. In the following 26 days, the Forbidden City had kept silence on this. At 9 on July 31^st, the Palace Museum confirmed with the media that lapse of the staff led to the damage of the celadon, which happened 26 days ago. An artificial mistake broke not only a precious historical relic, but tarnished a cultural heritage of thousands of years. People started to question what should be the correct way to take care of national treasures.

Beginning of The Great Revival: hundreds of celebrities seen at the premiere

In September 2009, different from previous main-theme movies, The Founding of a Republic with an all-star cast started a new type with all-star cast and highly commercialized marketing. It did not only generate a box office revenue of 420 million, but became a sensational topic back then. In memory of the 90^th anniversary of Communist Party of China, the Beginning of The Great Revival in 2011 hit the cinema with faces of more than 100 celebrities including Zhou Runfa (周润发), Liu Dehua (刘德华), Feng Kong (冯巩), Zhao Benshan (赵本山), Fan Wei (范伟), Chen Daoming (陈道明), etc. Some only appeared for seconds in the movie, leaving the audience counting the faces while watching. Thus it was not hard to imagine the hot discussion generated after its premiere.

Departed Steve Jobs; came his biography

The founder of Apple Company Steve Jobs died of cancer on October 6^th (Beijing time), aged 56. The departure of the genius left fans around the world heartbroken. On October 24^th, Steve jobs: A Biography—the only biography authorized by Steve Jobs was released simultaneously worldwide and the simplified Chinese version was also available the same day, which was hugely popular among Steve’s fans. It was an important mark in the publishing industry. According to official statistics provide by CITIC, the simplified Chinese version of the book sold 678,000 copies for the first week. What is more, there has been constant media coverage and heated discussion. In the hearts of many people, Jobs is still alive.

Jia Pingwa’s copyright issue: “one lady engaged in two marriages”

Earlier this year, the new book of Jia Pingwa (贾平凹) Old Furnace was published. According to the media, the People’s Literature Publishing House owned the copyright, but the copyright of its electronic version was given to a portal by written authorization from Jia. The two sides made it to the court, causing much attention. It was seemingly a dispute caused by conflicts between electronic copyright and hardcopy copyright, but was more of a challenge exposed to traditional publishing by digital publishing. Digital reading has become the habit of the young generation. For publishing houses, however, the priority is how to confront this new trend. For writers, it is of great significance to have a clear picture of the importance of electronic copyright of one’s works.

source: http://news.ifeng.com/opinion/gundong/detail_2011_12/15/11348602_0.shtml

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Official website

The 2011 Beijing Youth Innovation and Start-ups Fair was held in the Beijing World Art Museum from December 6 to 10. Theme of the fair went as “Innovation of the twelfth five-year plan, Innovation of new Beijing”. It was the first of its kind to feature innovations by young people and new start-ups in the capital. The fair comprised 8 achievement exhibitions and 3 service exhibitions. On display were outstanding achievements by the young generation in technological innovation, cultural creativity and social management, as well as the government’s support for youth innovation.

Policy boost

To encourage young people to start their own businesses as a way of creating more jobs, the government has built 5 service platforms with the central idea of “supporting young start-ups to stimulate employment”. The five service platforms are organization, policy, funding, training and development. Organizations such as Qingmeng alumni association, Association of Beijing Youth Entrepreneurs, Beijing Youth Chamber of Commerce, and Beijing Young Entrepreneurs’ Association provide helpful media for young entrepreneurs in different entrepreneurial stages. Activities such as lectures, forums and contests are a good way to give entrepreneurial education and successful models.

A series of government policies has been introduced to encourage young entrepreneurship. With different policies implemented by different functional departments, it is important to pool all the resources together for young entrepreneurs. These policies play a significant role in dealing with specific problems faced by young entrepreneurs. In addition to policy support, there are initiatives to provide funding for young people to start their own business. The Youth Business China has established the pattern of “funding + tutorial” to encourage nascent businesses and boost employment. Moreover, the government also has collaborations with financial institutions in Beijing to provide small-amount loans to small and medium-sized enterprises.

Training organizations such as Qingmeng Evening School—the Beijing Communist Youth League Evening School for Young Entrepreneurs are cradles of young entrepreneurs. Schools like this take the form of in-class teaching, interactive teaching, and field survey etc. to help young people gain crucial entrepreneurial skills and experiences. Furthermore, various kinds of industrial parks have been built in capital to stimulate the growth of young companies. These parks adopt youth-favored policies and provide necessary facilities for start-ups. They serve as business incubators and quickly transform new innovations into commercial outcomes. Such clusters are attracting large numbers of young entrepreneurs.

Innovations change the city

Among the 8 achievement exhibitions on the fair, the one titled “Technology Changes Life” attracted most of the audience. Exhibited here were innovated technologies and products from both state-owned and private enterprises in Beijing. There were domestic robots that could dance, add numbers and tell tongue twisters etc. Themes of the other exhibitions included agricultural produce that used new technologies and achievements of those who started businesses after studying overseas.

Li Minjie’s exhibits were artifacts such as cartoon portraits and three-dimensional robots that were made from empty cans. Several years ago, he made them as a hobbit until he saw a chance for business in them. Today his landscape paintings made of metals can sell thousands of yuan and he has set up his own workshop with more than 60 employees. Another “Happy Farm” attracted many fans, too. It was a farm that could be cultivated at home and people could plant vegetables they consume on a daily basis by applying manure and watering. In this way people could eat healthy vegetables produced by themselves. There were also many creative items invented by college students and they have a great chance of being turned into actual products.

During the fair, there were also forums in which famous entrepreneurs were invited to have discussions with young people who were interested in starting their own business and they were strongly encouraged to do so. The fair has exhibited altogether 124 entrepreneurial projects and 65 youth entrepreneurial support projects have been signed.

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In all primary and secondary schools of China, students are required to take part in a 15-minute kejiancao (课间操，intermission exercise) everyday for body fitness. When this practice goes to the Tibetan Autonomous Region, age-old Tibetan dances instead of westernized gymnastics become the norm. This video is taken by an amateur Tibetan in Biru County（比如县） of Naqu （那曲）region of TAR. 

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The door of a fashion designer

A coppery statue in section 751, the first work shop in this section was a fashion designing work shop.

Main square of the tour of designing

A perfect mix: the combination of industrial relic and modern images

Elements

Face drawn on a rusty pipe

Comparison between modern and tradition

70s: mottled wall and old fashion sewing machine

Resting on creation of a designer

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Beijing Design Week

When talking about design, people may come up with images from household items we use everyday to giant buildings standing as landmarks in the city. Yes, design is everywhere in our life. Modern designers are like magicians who are making our life full of surprises and ideas. With the rapid development of economy and advances of technology, modern society is seeing more and more great designs. Beijing, one of the oldest cities in the world, has already seen more and more modern constructions rising up in recent years from the Bird Nest and Water Cube constructed for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games to the new China Central Television Headquarters which has attracted attention as much as controversy.

Next week the 2011 Beijing Design Week & the First Beijing International Design Triennial is going to open. With Chinese design rising as a new power on the world’s stage, more international attention has been focused on the capital of China. Set against a backdrop of a rapidly growing modern city, the event is going to be a global summit on design with top designers from all over the world. The activities during the event will cover the whole landscape of Beijing including cultural hotspots both new and old. Artists from different backgrounds will bring their designs which can be applied in various aspects of life, while audience can have a taste of different modern styles in the ancient city of Beijing.

Beijing International Design Triennial

Turning  back to history

As one of the earliest civilizations in the world, China inevitably has a history of design that dates back early. Early design has had a close relationship with the country’s agriculture, handicrafts and industry, which was mostly for an empirical end. The design industry, as it still does today, has much to do with culture, society and economy, which has been a reflection of the trajectory of the Chinese society.

The earliest designs in Chinese society in primitive times were stoneware, pottery, textiles, etc.China has thus developed superb technique in making such items. Certain craftsmanship is still much hailed today. The designs from this period, as well as a long time following this, were for practical household usage. It was not until the later prosperous dynasties that design went beyond practical tools and started to boom. These included sophisticated patterns on clothes and exquisite ceramics.

Today, as globalization goes further, international ideas have permeated Chinese design while it inherits cultural traditions. With economy increasing and society advancing, design as an industry is rapidly gaining a stronger influence in modern China. China’s design industry is developing rapidly and covers a wide range of aspects and the country is seeing a lot of talented designers.

Chinese faces in an international event

For the country’s first international-level design event,China has invited an international team made up of top curators and designers from across the world to come to Beijing. The Beijing Design Week has not only invited the chairmen of renowned design weeks/festivals including London, Milan, Berlin, Helsinki and Seoul, but also established a counseling panel mixed with international faces. As for the first Beijing International Design Triennial, there will be a collaboration of Chinese and foreign curators for each of the five sub-exhibitions.

Among all the international figures on the counseling panel, architect Zhang Yonghe (张永和) is one of the three Chinese consultants. Zhang Yonghe (张永和), who has participated in the design for the famous Commune by the Great Wall, is the principle architect of Atelier Feichang Jianzhu. He has participated in many international exhibitions of art and architecture, including five times in the Venice Biennale since 2000.

He is also the winner of several international architecture awards. With his contribution, Zhang received the “Culture China·Figures in a Decade” award in June 2011. The award, which was initiated by Dongfang Daily (东方早报), was aimed at honoring leading figures from different fields of contemporary Chinese culture including music, art, literature, movie, news, architecture etc. Zhang said receiving the award, “Because architecture has more or less something to do with culture and life itself is about culture, so they are not unrelated.”

Zhang is also nominated for the Design Education Award.

Nominated for the Design Promotion Award, Ou Ning (欧宁) is a publisher and a graphic designer, whose exhibitions have hit worldwide galleries. He has a wide influence both inside and outside China. He has established Chutzpah (天南 in Chinese), a new literary magazine in 2011 and proposed the “Bishan Community Project” (璧山共同体计划) specifically designed for rural area. He was also the curator of the first 2011 Chengdu Biennial. He has significant contribution in expanding the scope of design in a traditional sense and promoting application and development in several new areas.

Ou’s works has been exhibited in different places in the world and his projects have attracted an international attention. One of his famous projects is the Da Zha Lan Project (大栅栏计划).This project is about researching and filming the area of Da Zha Lan (大栅栏), which is a slum inBeijing. The Da Zha Lan Project is an extension of San Yuan Li (the village-in-city inGuangzhou), a project that was featured in the 50th Venice Biennale in 2003. Together with an upcoming project about Caoyang Xincun in Putuo District in Shanghai (a workers’ community in Shanghai, 2006), it will make up a series of research and creative practice concerning urbanization and impoverished communities in cities in China. The project has been to various exhibitions across the world and caught much attention.

Ou loves writing as well, whose blog has been chosen by danwei.org as the most popular Chinese blog on art design and urban study for three years in a row. He has been to various seminars and lectures around the world. He established the independent music group Xin Qun Zhong (new people) and the independent movie group Yuan Ying Hui (fate movie society).

The Beijing Design Week

A map of the Designhop

The First Beijing International Design Triennial (BIDT) is an important part of the design event. The general theme of the first BIDT is Ren: Good Design (仁：设计的善意). “Ren” is one of the most important concepts in Chinese tradition which could also perfectly convey the spirit of “Good Design”. The exhibition will focus on living-friendly designs in life. A wide range of categories will be covered including product design, industrial design, dyeing clothes design, graphic design, interior and architectural design and traditional crafts such as ceramics, glass, bamboo furniture, etc.

During the Week, there will be a series of exhibitions, seminars and projects happening all around Beijing. They will cover 90 places on the map of Beijing including creative parks, exhibition venues, department stores, communities, parks, etc. The Design Week happens to coincide with this year’s Chinese National Holiday. It is a great opportunity for local residents and travelers to get to know design more closely. With London being this year’s Guest City of Honor, there will be a series of activities under the theme of London—Beijing Design Express
 in areas such as China Millennium Monument, Da Shilan, 751 Design Park, etc.

There will also be  competition among outstanding designs, individuals and organization during the Week. The award is set up to select designs, individuals and organizations who have contributed to the social, cultural, industrial development and urban construction of the capital. It will come in four categories: the Design Beijing Award, the Design Education Award, the Design Communication Award and the Design Promotion Award.

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Some recent jokes from the Courtyard Ally (胡同) columns of Beijing Daily (京华时报), submitted by readers as real life stories, translated and slightly re-adapted by SeeChina only:

1. The Little Economist (by Guo Qijian)

Not long ago, I bought a new mobile phone, which used up the last section of my monthly income, so I had to borrow 500 RMB from a colleague for daily meals.

On a Saturday, I naturally thought about visiting my brother and saving, if things went alright, some budget for meals. But as the Chinese saying goes, before I could “fully warm up the chair” of my brother’s home, my 5-year nephew showed up and asked me to take him to a toy shop, with a note of 100 RMB in his hand.

After a good round of searching and testing, the boy finally decided to buy an electric toy car, with an ostantious price tag of 160 RMB (and this is already the cheapest one out there). Biting my teeth, I took out 100 RMB from my very thin wallet and went to the cashier, when I suddenly hit upon a very brilliant idea on some basic economic education.

“Boy, I have a great idea for you. You see, you’ve already got several electric cars, why don’t you learn to make some money from your 100 RMB? If you deposit it in a bank, it will give birth to more money. And you’ll become even richer.”

“How could money give birth to more money?” My nephew seemed to be intrigued.

“Sounds fascinating, right?” My dramatic flair finally found a stage, “If you deposit your money into a bank, they will become Money Dads and Money Moms, and together they will breed new Money Babies, just wait and you’ll see that!”

“How fanastic!” Apparently fully convinced, my nephew quickly snatched the sweat-soaked 100 RMB from my hand and seriously declared, “So I decide! My note will be Money Dad, and your note will be Money Mom, and I’ll deposit them in a bank and wait till they get a Money Baby, and then we’ll come back for this electric car, OK?”

2. The Map (Xiao Mei)

While I was trying to find a place in Beijing to travel for weekend, I asked a classmate for a map. Searching over it, I realized that many bus lines and locations were absent. So I looked at the printing date of the map: 2001. Did I read this number wrong? I looked closer again, and yes, it was a map more than 10 years old.

“But we entered the university in 2008, how could you have a map of 2001?” I couldn’t help but puzzle.

“Well, this map was given to me as a gift by my uncle. He traveled in Beijing in 2001 and took this home. When I told him I was going to university in Beijing in 2008, he made a special favor of giving this to me, in a quite solumn occasion. And he made a solumn wish, too, that I MUST bring this map back home every year during vacations. This is definitely not to be lost, said he.”　　

3. Home Swap (Jia Jun)

I was in the zoo together with my niece. Upon leaving the monkeys’ mountain, my niece would say: “Oh, how I wish I could have two lovely and naughty monkeys at home!” While feeding cabbages to the zebras, she would say: “Dear zebra, come to my home and I still have more vegetable for you!” Approaching the Tigers’ and Lions’ Den, she would say again: “Come on, tigers, don’t sleep here, come and sleep at my home!”

“Now that all these animals are coming to your home, do you think you still have enough place to live for yourself?” I challenged her.

“Good question,” she thought for a while, “then let me live in the zoo instead!”

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Ever since reality TV shows such as American Idol have heralded an age of talent show competition, every now and then we are seeing commoners-turned superstars rising from obscurity. This influence has spread all the way across the Pacific Ocean to Asia with versions of different talent show contests of the west.

On the premier of China’s Got Talent season 2, the counterpart of the British television talent show competition Britain’s Got Talent, a 65-year-old grandma from Beijing wowed the judges and the audience by imitating Michael Jackson’s dance (see the video). The dancing granny with the name of Bai Shuying (白淑英) is a retired worker. She did not only surprise the crowd by her dance with power and energy, but also impressed everyone with her love for dancing and a positive attitude in life. Entering into the next round with three YES from the judge panel, granny Bai said later, “Michael Jackson’s dance makes me feel enormous youth and vitality. Life is so beautiful!”

This, however, is not granny Bai’s dancing début on TV. As early as 2004, Bai was invited to perform Hip-hop dance in another weekly dancing talent show of CCTV and she also appeared in several other dancing TV programs. A documentary program Family on CCTV even made an episode featuring granny Bai’s dancing life. Asked what had led her to Hip-hop and Michael Jackson, granny Bai told an unexpected story.

As put in Bai’s words, her passion and love for dancing served the purpose of “revenge” at the very beginning. At the age of 42, Bai’s life got devastated by the news that her husband had an ex-marital affair. The 20-year-long marriage thus ended. The harsh reality gave Bai a mental crush and despite of being hospitalized 7 times in a consecutive period of 3 years, her health seriously deteriorated. Left alone with a daughter to take care of, Bai suffered torture both physical and mental, which reduced her to desperation. When Bai in desperation was about to resort to suicide, her daughter’s words waked her up. “If my father knows how to pursue a happy life that he wants, why are you still dwelling upon the past?” The words had a thundering effect on Bai and the revelation was followed by the recovery of her health. Returning from the hospital, Bai decided to prove to her ex-husband that she could live a happy life even without him.

A happy life requires a healthy physique. Bai thus started to work out to build up fitness. With an outgoing personality, Bai joined the group of dancing elders in the park. Against a social backdrop when the country was promoting public fitness campaign, Bai was accidentally reported by People’s Daily. The coverage immensely boosted Bai’s passion for dancing and for the first time she felt genuine confidence and recognition. However, the then popular ballroom dancing was no interest to Bai, especially because the unsuccessful marriage had led to Bai’s fear of dancing with men. Just then Bai came across another form of dance—Hip-hop and she was immediately attracted by this young and energetic new art. Hip-hop was thought to be connected with youth, power and difficult movements. This might be a huge challenge for somebody at Bai’s age. Nevertheless, Bai considered it as a great opportunity to prove herself in front her ex-husband. She decided to give it a shot.

With no professional instruction, Bai had to learn the dance from scratch all on her own. Wearing thick stockings to avoid any sounds that could possibly disturb the family, Bai started her practice everyday even before dawn. With no mirror to correct her moves, Bai twisted her body to follow the dancers from the videos she bought. After one month of diligent practice, Bai went to the park wearing baggy trendy outfit to show her Hip-hop to the neighborhood. But in spite of applauding cheers, what she received were fits of laughter and ridicule. This, however, did not bring her down. Instead, she carried on her practice with even stronger determination. Once to imitate a move with high degree of difficulty, Bai almost lost her life.

It was when Bai was reaching the bottleneck of her dancing life that she ran into Michael Jackson and his moonwalk in a video store. Immediately attracted by Michael’s dance, she bought some videos and started to practice at once. Adding the Michael Jackson’s signature move—moonwalk into her dance, Bai created a new style of elderly Hip-hop. And to feel the authentic atmosphere of street dance, Bai left her home and came to the streets to practice at night.

After two or three years’ hard work, Bai’s dance gradually became recognized and she was also gaining in popularity in the neighborhood. She was often invited to give performance in local events and had her own fans and followers. However, the dancing granny had another wish yet to be fulfilled.

Bai had always wanted her ex-husband to see her dancing. By the age of 60, Bai had already become celebrated and had been invited to several CCTV programs to perform her dance. Unfortunately, before one of the programs was about to be aired, Bai got the news that her ex-husband had passed away. But it was not important anymore whether the ex-husband could see Bai on TV or not; dancing had changed Bai’s life and become an integral part of her life.

Now at 65, granny Bai stepped onto the stage of China’s Got Talent saying that dancing is the most important thing in her life. One of the judges of the show said after seeing Bai’s dancing, “She makes me feel that it is such a beautiful thing to live.” What started as a journey of “revenge” turns out to be such a beautiful life-changing experience; isn’t that another tribute that we should pay to the great Michael Jackson?

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When American parents drop off their children at grade school, the parting words are usually “have fun” rather than “work hard”, and until the internet boom created teenage millionaires out of weird nerds, the most admired students in high schools are the football captains and cheerleaders. When a high school senior chooses which colleges to apply to, he/she often asks about the party scene rather than academic standards. The Ivy League colleges would admit sportsmen, movie starlets and children of politicians with mediocre transcripts and SAT scores, in order to add “diversity” to its student population. One President of Yale University resigned to become the US Baseball Commissioner.

This does not mean that American society does not care about work, money, and merit in the sense of earning power, merely that it has different experiences about what gets one ahead. American leaders and entrepreneurs show their sparks in ways different from the rise of a salaryman in a Japanese corporation or a returned scholar in the Singapore public sector.

Yet, despite the differences in educational philosophies, Asia has been setting its higher education agenda according to American rules. Many cabinet ministers and corporate CEOS of South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand have Ivy League, MIT and Stanford degrees, as do the top professors Asian universities. Academics are promoted according to American criteria and procedures. Publishing at American conferences and journals is more likely to be valued, and even just getting a visitor from Stanford/MIT to come over, regardless of what he/she might do during the visit, is alone considered an achievement.

Largely, this is because the top American universities are thought to be good at linking education and research with business. Professors earn high consultancy fees, sit on company boards, and start their own businesses with students. It is rarely attached significance that Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Michael Dell, Larry Ellison etc never completed their college education, and Jerry Yang dropped out of his Stanford PhD programme in order to run Yahoo full time, after developing his web search engine on Stanford machines. In the same way, Bill Gates used Harvard computers to write his hardware emulator/Basic language compiler, which Paul Allen, his classmate, marketed to microcomputer companies in Arizona and California; when business began to flow in, they both dropped out of Harvard. American professors are encouraged to be enterprising in many ways; they fight for research grants from government agencies and commercial enterprises to help pay for the university running costs and their own summer salaries, and to support teams of graduate students on their projects. American students are encouraged to do their own thing like Bill Gates and Jerry Yang, rather than memorize sample answers for possible examination questions. However, in their pursuit of paper qualifications, rote learning of textbook knowledge sample answers, Asian professors and students are far away from the American style creativity and entrepreneurship. Deep and disruptive changes will have to occur before they can even come close to their American role models. One could even question whether such an objective is compatible with cultural preservation.

Even without this factor, cultural preservation is already fraught with difficulties, and policies never quite do what they intend to do. The Chinese language policy of Singapore provides a case in point.Since the early days of independent Singapore, a two-languages education policy has been in force: all school children are required to study English and the mother tongue, and the second language proficiency, as shown by examination performance, is part of the requirement for entering the local universities. For the Chinese, there has also been an annual Speak Mandarin campaign to urge the use of the common speech in place of dialects. The policy has been justified by its assumed benefit in preserving community cohesion and traditional culture, and has been maintained largely intact despite criticisms and various minor modifications.

For, almost as soon as the policy was introduced, there have been complaints that the Chinese language requirements are too hard and very stressful for the students to cope with. In reply, the officials have always pointed out that it is not particularly hard to reach the minimum proficiency standards, and in fact failure rates for English and Mathematics are usually higher. This defense has, however, largely missed the point, since for the majority of parents and students the concern is not merely to attain a minimum pass, but to obtain a good aggregate result in the highly competitive education system. Being an essential component of this aggregate result, performance in Chinese language examinations materially affects the prospect of a child. Further, a number of features of the Singapore society have combined to make this apparently commonplace matter one of the major social issues. Like other East Asian societies based on hierarchical mandarinism, Singapore uses examinations to channel youngsters into different “streams” starting from primary school or even before. The top students attend top primary and secondary schools, and those with the best A level results are given government scholarships to study in elite overseas universities and are then placed in fast track administrative careers in various parts of the public sector, with some using this as the platform to high posts in private companies or political careers. Operating in a world market, the top managerial levels, including government ministers, offer salaries comparable to those in Europe and North America, while the importation of foreign workers pegged lower class salaries near the level of the local region.

Consequently, there is a wide gap between the two ends, providing strong incentives to achieve upward mobility through education. A good examination aggregate result thus attains a far greater importance, as compared to say SAT scores for American students, and the need not to be held back by a poor Chinese language grade looms large in everyone’s thinking. Even for good students who can pick up the language easily, the stress is no less: good students are simply channelled into tougher classes teaching Chinese at a higher level. Since a good result in Higher Chinese counts more in competitive assignment to top schools/streams, the need to try hard remains, both to perform well enough to go into the higher stream, and to perform well within it.

But the need to get high marks applies to all the subjects; yet, there seems to be some factor that makes Chinese much more of a problem. Despite the success rates in terms of passing examinations, the common reaction from students has been that they hate the subject, and want to forget about it as soon as they have obtained the grade of result they need for their particular purpose. Further, passing the examination, at even the Higher Chinese level, seems to be not a good indictor of actual command of the language, since few Singaporean students can use the language at the level on which a high school graduate in China, Taiwan or even Hong Kong is able to function. The average Singaporean high school graduate has little interest in or understanding of Chinese culture, and would quickly forget the language lessons that have cost so much effort to learn. What is the problem?

The Chinese language curriculum in Singapore schools is closer to that used in China, rather than Hong Kong. Among other things, it uses simplified characters, though this is a minor issue. More significant is its concentration on the current Chinese language, rather than studying the modern language at lower levels followed by modern and classical literature subsequently. Its objective is to teach Chinese as a living language, for people who will use it actively, rather than as a cultural entity for a foreign or colonial audience, which is what the Hong Kong system is more oriented towards (though after the reversion to China, Hong Kong is trying to move away from this.)

With a curriculum on modern Chinese spanning over 10 years, the standard required at the end of the cycle is fairly advanced. On paper, a student passing the O level Chinese examination, especially if it is at Higher Chinese level, ought to be very proficient. Indeed, a perusal of the textbooks used in school would show a good standard of modern literary Chinese. Unfortunately, in the current Singapore society, where virtually all business transactions and daily activities outside private homes are conducted in English, people do not have opportunities to actually use the highly literate Chinese they learn at school. Without such practice, the proficiency they actually acquire is not so much language proficiency, but just proficiency at passing language examinations.

In other words, the curriculum is meant for active Chinese users, who live their daily lives and conduct serious, perhaps intellectual, discussions in Chinese, and learn other school lessons in that language, not people who merely do in Mandarin what they used to do in dialect: they might greet each other in Chinese, talk about simple things like what food to eat for lunch and the price of houses in Chinese, and then switch to English for anything to be talked about in depth. The tendency of people breaking out into Hokkien when having a quarrel, or to tease each other in Cantonese, shows that many have not even attained the dialect level proficiency in Mandarin. Without such daily practice, one cannot be proficient, and it becomes even harder to learn the highly literary Chinese taught at the senior secondary levels since such language learners would get the practice they need only by frequent exposure to higher level literature, something that might be commonplace in China (at least in large cities) but definitely not in Singapore.

Thus, the curriculum design has ensured that the learning of Chinese in schools is an isolated, scholastic activity detached from the life experience of the students, especially as most of the text they have to read contain moralistic lectures about family values, good citizenships, etc. Valuable as such teachings might be, the simple fact is when young people want to read Chinese writings on their own, they would go for Gongfu novels by Jin Yong and soap operas by Qun Yao. So the content of the texts can only further reinforce the feeling that Chinese lessons are irrelevant to life, like the ancestral gods that one occasionally has to kowtow to, but gets away from as quickly as possible.

So why has the situation been allowed to remain after 30 years of stressful experience? The main factor seems to lie with the Chinese community leaders, mostly business tycoons, who use mandarin and dialects in social bonding with each other, but switch to English when doing business which often requires dealing with government officials and foreigners. They frequently lobby education officials to require schools to spend more time on teaching Chinese and raise standards. Their conscious motivation is undoubtedly the need to maintain Chinese culture in the face of western influence, but there is probably the subconscious motive of political influence “show more respect for our community”. Unfortunately, the leaders as a group have limited contact with both Chinese culture (philosophy, literature, history, arts, etc) and the actual learning experiences of the school children. While the parents of the affected children complain, their concern is with school level issues like teacher performance, testing standards, greater language exposure opportunities through ECA, etc., rarely at the level of curriculum design. When international language teaching experts are consulted, the natural feedback has been that the requirements do not seem unreasonable, which is perfectly valid if one considers the lessons alone, rather than how they function within the real cultural conditions. Thus the cause of the problem remains undiagnosed.

Community cohesion is an important consideration for the Singapore Chinese, who are surrounded regionally by a very large Malay/Indonesian population, and bombarded daily by American culture. Having all Chinese school children learn Mandarin must have a positive impact on the ability of the members of the community to interact with each other. But what is the cost associated with this benefit?

First is the weakening of the dialect based community organizations. While associations of Hokkien, Tewchew and Hainan people continue to exist, they have lost the influence once exerted, and in fact have no meaningful roles to play except for some minor welfare tasks. More significant is the lack of contact across racial boundaries: different schools tend to offer different second languages, and Malay and Indian children generally go to separate schools, or separate classes within the same school, from Chinese children. While some mixing occurs again after secondary schools, the paths have already diverged for too long.

Does learning Chinese help to maintain the “Chineseness” of the community? It depends on how one defines Chineseness of course. If one wants more than just speaking a common Chinese tongue, but looks at the issue of “cultural roots”, then one can come up with various criteria. Certainly Chinese festivals are celebrated, but this can be done whether one speaks Mandarin or dialects and is little dependent on how many years of Chinese are studied at school. Buddhism is winning some converts as part of a general increase in religious adhesion, but one can question how Chinese that is. In any case, if one looks for a high level of interest in Chinese culture, especially ancient culture, then the result can only be disappointing.

What about moral standards? One could argue about whether traditional Chinese society was more moral, or merely repressive, and how well it lived up to its own lectures on filial duties and prudent behaviour, but this would be merely futile: if Chinese lessons are so intensely disliked, one would hardly expect any moral messages they convey to be taken seriously.

In fact, despite its priggish image, sexual mores in Singapore have been anything but conservative: Divorce rates are as high as those in Japan, Hong Kong and Taiwan, and rising. Each year the number of abortions performed average around 15000, and since for every teenage girl that gets pregnant, there must be another 10 who used contraception or were simply lucky, one can readily deduce that premarital sex is widespread. Reports of abandoned new born babies appear regularly in the newspaper. Crime levels are low in Singapore, but it is hard to attribute this to the Chinese lessons; besides various factors like strict law enforcement, compact city state leading to better crime detection, good economy, etc., one might thank liberal abortion policies that minimize the number of unwanted children, who would have much greater tendencies to turn out badly.

So if the objective of “maintaining cultural roots” means moral conservatism and interest in traditional culture, then the language teaching has failed to produce them. In fact, the stressful Chinese examinations have probably done the reverse: a recent survey says that 20\% of Chinese teenagers wish they were Japanese or Caucasian, whereas the percentage of Indians and Malays with such wishes was small; presumably the idea “if I were Japanese/American then I dont need to take the lessons” was not far from everyone’s mind. More generally, the stressful school experience has engendered in many teenagers sense of inadequacy: the lessons always seem a bit harder than they are capable of, and this, among other things, might provide an explanation for sexual promiscuity as teenagers with low self-esteem, especially females, frequently seek psychological compensation in such physical ways.

Another consequence has been to foster in students an attitude “it does not matter whether you know or not; just be able to bluff your way in the examination”, which is especially relevant to Chinese examinations, though the rest of the examination system does little to dispel it.

With Hollywood, MTV and McDonald blasting out the message that it is easy and fun to be like the Americans, and top students aspiring to have MIT degrees, culture preservation seems to be a lost cause, but this does not prevent it from being used to justify a variety of policies, merely that the result is often hard to predict. While I have much sympathy with the intent, I wonder how sustainable the effect is going to be.

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• The Second Academic Exhibition of Chinese Contemporary Prints (5)

The long envisaged but still unconstructed Kra Canal, across the narrow part of the Kra Isthmus of Southern Thailand, is of great interest to China, Japan, other parts of East Asia, and of course Thailand itself. It is even often featured within the context of China-Singapore relationship, since the topic gets hot among chinese journalists and bloggers whenever there is a problem between the two countries and simmers even in normal times; for example searching with “kra canal” on google returns 2.5million pages, with “kra canal singapore” returns 612,000, nearly 1/4; with 克拉运河 returns 666,000 pages, and 克拉运河 新加坡 returns 11800, again nearly 1/4.  Similar results occur if you search baidu.com or some other Chinese search engine. In other word, whenever Kra Canal is discussed there is a fairly high chance that Singapore will be mentioned.

In 2005 the then Deputy Prime Minister of Singapore Lee Hsien Loong (shortly before coming Prime Minister) made a visit to Taiwan, nominally an unofficial one; the Chinese foreign office was given prior notice of the visit and objected; when the visit took place despite the protest, complaints were made publicly, and the bloggers immediately went into overdrive, proclaiming the Kra Canal as the weapon to use for getting even with Singapore; this might be an uninformed kind of economic planning, but it reveals something about the thinking process of the vocal and IT-literate chinese population segment. In any case, China-Singapore diplomatic relationship soon went back to normal and web discussions of Kra Canal have subsided too.

There is little doubt that a canal at Kra would facilitate shipping, in particular oil transport, between MidEast/Europe and China/Japan; the question is who is willing to make the very large investment required – clearly, Japan and China can afford the capital expenditure, but might not want to be the initiator for such a significant geo-political issue on Thai territory; Thai investors do not have face the same tricky problems, but might lack the experience in carrying out the economic and environmental evaluations before project initiation, the project planning and management itself, and the canal’s continuing operation and maintenance afterwards

There was once a lower cost proposal to build a land-link only, with a pipeline to pass oil from discharging tankers on the west side to receiving tankers on the east side, and a rail line to pass containers; however, the cost and time of discharging/land movement/loading across such a link would probably be no less than sending the ships around the Malay Peninsula, though there would be some benefit in reducing congestion in the Malacca Straits. One proposal has Malaysia building a pipeline in its territory, but the length would be much longer than if built at Kra so it is hard to tell how economical the idea might be. The Malaysian government has organized a group with Malaysian, Indonesian and Saudi Arabian corporation to build a pipeline accoss northen Malaysia. The project is supposed to cost US$7B and will complete in 2014.

Right now, search news.google.com with Kra Canal, China or Kra Canal, Singapore would both yield two items

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Ma Jingtao, “lord of the roaring mode”…

Ever since the invention of that omnipresent (some say omnipotent) thing named Internet, humanity seems to have embarked on a new age of “collective creativity”, resulting in millions of new “modes of writing” in the virtual space. By blending written vernacular with local dialects, homonyms, puns and exaggerated punctuation, the Chinese “netizens” have now turned out a universal mode of writing suited to all who are not contented with their major, profession or life in general (but who on earth is?).

This mode of writing is called paoxiaoti (咆哮体), or “the roaring mode of writing”. The gist of it is to follow every sentence with at least 5 exclamation remarks, and use extraordinarily angry hallmark expressions. It is believed that this style of writing started with a group on douban.com featuring a melodramatic actor named Ma Jingtao (马景涛), who often plays the role of distressed heroes shouting out his anger with distorted facial expressions. After this group became famous for using excessive exclamation remarks, someone on renren.com started to complain about the difficulty of studying French in the university using not only exclamation remarks but also many hilarious hallmark words, and the tread immediately got viral and triggered a whole series of immitators complaining about the difficulty of English study, anthropology, arts, law, film studies, computer language, etc. Such writing soon spilled over to traditional media and even formal college  notices, and culminated in a video made by a group of students in Westerminster University in which a “big-eyed British girl and a handsome British guy” shouted out “We who live in the UK can’t afford too much hurt either!”

The video is here:   

For those who don’t understand Chinese in the video, before seechina could provide an English version, one of the jokes is: “Everybody thinks we Brits like to read books in the tube, actually that’s because we don’t have mobile signals down there!”
 
For those who are interested in further studies, some notes of the hallmark expressions:

youmuyou （有木有）,meaning “isn’t it so?” when spelled in a local Chinese dialect, it gives an explosive effect as if shouting piercing questions in the face of a large audience.

nima (尼玛), it looks like a Tibetan word, but actually is the homonym of “your mother”, a well-disguised curse now open to everyone.

beicui(悲催),pathetic.

kengdie (坑爹), intentionally misleading.

haizhi (孩纸), the Yunnan dialect for “kid”, reminiscent of those who really wanted to pronounce northern Chinese dialect with a curled tongue but just tragically overdid it. Now “haizhi” can refer to anybody, such as “kid who studies French”. 

shangbuqi (伤不起), ”can’t afford too much hurt”, widely used in paoxiaoti to describe the pathetic nature of a certain kind of people, as if arguing: “we are more hurt than you are”.  Imagine a group of losers competing who has more scars…

nimei (你妹), “your sister”, samewise, it’s a curse in a brief and civilized way.

laoniang (老娘), “me your old mother”, a vulgar way to address oneself, mostly used by girls who don’t have a boyfriend, happen to have chosen a difficult major, hard to find a job, feel desperate because she has to pretend to be sweet and helpful to people’s incessant plead for free help etc.

For clues of other representative paoxiaoti stories (in Chinese), see here: http://www.douban.com/group/topic/18130042/

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