I've read a few different times that vimeo.com is a much more "artist-friendly" video sharing website than YouTube. I assume that has to do with revenue sharing and the legal protections the video site provides. I know that I've found Vimeo videos to be uniformly excellent.
Below are a few China Vimeo videos that friends either sent to me or I found through Bill Bishop's Sinocism newsletter. They're all worth a view.
The first is a beautiful big-city time-lapse video montage from three of the largest cities in China - Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Shanghai (h/t to my friend, Donnie):
I LOL'd a few weeks ago when I saw this video - China, China:
I didn't really think twice about the clip until I started the TV series Wild China on Netflix. After a few minutes of Wild China, I realized that it was the British-accented source of the viral China, China compilation.
Wild China is a six-part 2008 BBC documentary on the rugged geography and exotic peoples and animals of China. The series is broken in to six episodes:
1. Heart of the Dragon 2. Shangri-La 3. Tibet 4. Beyond the Great Wall 5. Land of the Panda 6. Tides of Change
Heart of the Dragon is mostly about the wondrous karst areas of Guangxi Province and southern China. Shangri-La is all about the intense diversity of Yunnan Province. Tibet takes place in Tibet. Beyond the Great Wall is all about the Inner Mongolian and Xinjiang Autonomous Regions. Land of the Panda focuses mostly on central China from the Qinling Mounatins to the east. And Tides of Change looks at the humongous coast line from North Korea to Vietnam through the prism of China's rapid development.
I liked this entire series. It is top-notch videography of the incredibly diverse wildlife and terrain of China. I repeatedly thought to myself, "I can't believe that still exists. I thought China had killed off every animal like that!" Wild China proves that there's still a whole lot of beauty to be found in China.
The best episodes are the first two - on the Guangxi Autonomous Region and Yunnan Provice. These two episodes will make you want to get on a plane, put on a backpack, and go explore remote parts of China. My personal favorites from this part are the features on monkeys, ethnic minorities crossing raging rivers using rope zip lines, and fly-over videography of karst mountains.
Here is a clip of the Nu Jiang rope crossing from the Shangri-La episode:
(There are several more clips from Wild China on YouTube if you search for "wild china")
The last four episodes were interesting to me, but a let down compared to the beginning of the series.
The episode on Tibet didn't feature as many towering, snow-covered Himalayan peaks as it did barren plateau. Vast lifeless expanses of land are certainly a big part of Tibet and its topography, but it didn't make for the most interesting viewing. The same is true of the grasslands of Inner Mongolia and the deserts of Xinjiang in episode four (and I say that as a huge Xinjiang nerd). Nothing really stands out from episodes five and six in my mind a few weeks after having watched it either.
I enjoyed Wild China a lot. I'd recommend it to someone wanting to learn a thing or two while killing time on Netflix.
In late 2009, a number of western media outlets ran reports on the "ghost town" that is Ordos, Inner Mongolia. I put up a blog post about the city at that time. Ordos, a city flush with natural resources and wealth, is a fascinating case study of China's method of development.
Melissa K. Chan from Al Jazeera just visited Ordos this week and has a short video clip on what it's like there now, two years later:
I've written a lot about this sort of growth in the past. Building cities with the hope that one day residents will move is, undoubtedly, a risky move.
When I was in Xi'an this summer, I saw row after row after row of apartment blocks that were finished with only a couple lights on in the entire building at night. While Ordos is the poster child for ghost cities, it's not the only place in China where this is going on.
At this point, I still can't venture a guess as to whether this is all going to work out. My gut tells me that development like what's going on in Ordos is ludicrous. But China has proven me wrong many times before and I wouldn't be shocked, in five years, to see this experiment working out.
The pace in which structures get built in China is staggering. Xi'an markedly changed in the three and a half years I lived there. I would often leave the city for a few days, come back, and be amazed to see a new building erected or road paved in the time I was gone.
This following viral video (h/t @elliotng) really captures what I'm talking about. The video is of a hotel in Changsha, the provincial capital of Hunan Province, being built in two days (literally):
This is an eye-opening video. It fits in nicely with a popular meme in the US right now: that the US is a "nation of wusses" and that China is "kicking our butts."
Last night, I hung out with Qian, my brother, and my roommate from college at our apartment. We watched the Sunday night NFL game of the week on a Tuesday night. The game in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania between the Eagles and Vikings had been pushed from Sunday night to Tuesday night because of snow.
Pennsylvania's governor, Ed Rendell, had a lot to say about the NFL delaying a football game because of bad weather:
"My biggest beef is that this is part of what's happened in this country," Rendell said in an interview on 97.5 radio in Philly. "I think we've become wussies. ... We've become a nation of wusses. The Chinese are kicking our butt in everything. If this was in China do you think the Chinese would have called off the game? People would have been marching down to the stadium, they would have walked and they would have been doing calculus on the way down."
This is a rather bombastic statement from Rendell. My old roommate from college, who lives in DC, commented that Rendell is notorious in political circles for bloviating and loves to hear the sound of his own voice.
I don't think Rendell's words are all that accurate.
Chinese people often get very worked up about weather. From my experiences of living in the middle of the US and the middle of China, Americans are not wusses when it comes to weather and braving the elements. While I get what Rendell was going for, he's off base.
First, domestic sports leagues are just not that popular and don't hold the same value in Chinese society as they do in the US. There is no comparison in China for something like an NFL night game in Philadelphia. And second, Chinese people would not pay boat loads of money to voluntarily sit in mind-numbingly hostile conditions to watch sports. I don't see any city in China packing 60,000+ people into a stadium to watch a sporting event in a blizzard.
All that said, the rapid development in China and the US' economic sluggishness scares a lot of Americans. The video above is a beautiful portrait of what the US is envious of China for. We pride ourselves on being hardworking and industrious. Seeing a different country beat us at our own game (and Communist China of all places) stirs up great emotion. I sense nostalgia for the way things were in the US post-WWII both in the media and in daily interaction with family and friends. I think Rendell is grasping for those "good old days" when the US was the economic engine of the world in his comments from the other day.
Things have changed. I don't see those heady industrialist days ever coming back to the US. That's a difficult pill for many Americans to swallow. But even if those days are gone forever, I don't think the US is done for as a country or an economic powerhouse. Although frustratingly sluggish, the US economy continues to churn. We went close to the brink, but did not collapse. We, as a nation, need to adjust our priorities, expectations, and, most importantly, education system. Wusses we are not, though.
I heard an interesting piece on Public Radio International's The World this evening about young people's frustrations with China's real estate market. You can listen to the story here. The story is a bit sensationalistic - the comments of people wanting blood and to go out with a bang and Andy Xie's comments - but I still appreciated it.
Here is the music video that is discussed in the radio piece (it's in Chinese):
I've talked many times over the past couple years about China's real estate market. I've been much gloomier about it in the past than I am now. Prices are still outrageous in big cities like Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen, but things appear to be calming down a bit. And in places like my old home Xi'an, prices aren't that insane (relatively speaking).
Things are still out-of-whack and will continue to be so throughout much of the country even if prices don't go higher. I think there is a lot of truth to the messages of 蜗居 and this music video. The masses cannot afford housing in many urban centers and rich people are buying multiple apartments and leaving some empty. This is very tough for young men wanting to marry (owning an apartment is a prerequisite for marriage), for couples wanting to settle down, and scores of other people.
But I'm becoming convinced that things will cool down and that a popped real estate market isn't going to mean the same thing to China as it has to the US. China's economy is still going to be strong, the country will continue to grow, and people's lives will continue to improve even if real estate is no longer seen as a hot speculative investment. I'm beginning to agree with what author Zachary Karabell told me last year, "a popped real estate bubble in China isn't going to be derailing."
In April, Qian and I devoured the Chinese TV show 《蜗居》- or, in English, "Dwelling Narrowness." I wrote about our experience a few weeks ago. We got through 35 episodes in just a couple weeks. Getting into a Chinese show like that was a great experience.
After finishing "Dwelling Narrowness," Qian and I were set to take on a new show. I'd heard about "Dwelling Narrowness" from my old Chinese teacher, Teacher Ma. Along with recommending "Dwelling Narrowness" to me, she also recommended the show - 《媳妇的美好时代》. Here's what she wrote:
现在比较流行的电视是《媳妇的美好时代》，我打算最近看，所以还不太了解，但是很多人都在讨论。
She's basically saying here that this new show - 《媳妇的美好时代》- is getting a lot of buzz in China right now. She hasn't watched it but is planning on doing so.
Qian and I decided to go with Teacher Ma's suggestion and began watching 《媳妇的美好时代》after finishing "Dwelling Narrowness" a few weeks ago.
As you can see from this cheesy poster, this program also has a very Chinglish/stupid English name - "A Beautiful Daughter-in-Law Era" - much like "Dwelling Narrowness" did.
"A Beautiful Daughter-in-Law Era" is about a young couple and their young marriage. There are many characters, but most of the story lines revolve around the young groom - 余味 (Yu Wei)- and young bride (and namesake of the show) - 毛豆豆 (Mao Doudou). Almost the entire show is about the young couple and how they relate with each side's family.
Yes, if you're wondering, 毛豆豆 is 海藻 海平 from 蜗居
There are a few wrinkles about Yu Wei and Mao Doudou's families that color the show.
Yu Wei's parents were divorced years ago. The wealthy dad left his neurotic wife years ago and has a young, beautiful wife now. So on top of all the pressures that are inherent in any Chinese marriage, Yu Wei and Mao Doudou have to deal with three sets of "parents." In addition to that, Yu Wei's younger sister - 余好 (Yu Hao) - is dealing with the death of her husband. He died just a few days after their wedding. She is a mess, even a couple years after the death.
Mao Doudou's family is a bit more "normal." Her parents are awesome. Her dad, in particular, is a truly special father-figure. The real thorn in Mao Doudou's side is her younger brother - 毛峰 (Mao Feng). Mao Feng is a magician/playboy/idiot (think a slightly smoother version of Gob Bluth) who consistently does idiotic things to his family and the women in his life.
That's the plot in a couple paragraphs. The show is in Beijing and it takes place in the present day.
I'll try to highlight a few of the things in "A Beautiful Daughter-in-Law Era" that I found particularly interesting:
1. The show tackled the tricky issue of divorce in China.
As I mentioned above, Yu Wei's parents are divorced. The show did a nice job of showing the heart ache and complexity that goes with a divorce in China. The things that everyone in the show had to endure because of the split up was painful.
The divorce rate of Chinese couples is rising rapidly. The rate is still relatively low compared to much of the world though. And China's is especially low compared to America's ridiculous rate - around 50%. Divorces are more common in China than they were in the past though.
There is strong cultural pressure on Chinese couples, and particularly women, not to get divorced. Looking at rising divorce rates, that cultural pressure is easing.
While it's easy to say that a rising divorce rate is a shame and there is something seriously wrong with China, I don't see a rising divorce rate as necessarily a bad thing. If a Chinese guy has an 二奶 (mistress) these days, there is actually a threat she will leave the guy! And aside from infidelity, the option to end a failed marriage can be a good thing.
Divorce is horrible. Thankfully my parents are still together. Qian and I, of course, are hoping that we'll be with each other for the rest of our lives. But in some cases, divorce the lesser of two evils when compared with an abusive, hate-filled, or loveless marriage.
2. The show touched on attitudes towards nursing homes in China.
I don't think I'm stepping out on a limb by saying that family is more important in China than it is in America. This is especially true amongst grown ups dealing with their parents. The concept of nursing homes are foreign to many Chinese and middle-aged adults living with their parents is normal in China. That is far from the case in the United States.
There is a scene where Mao Doudou, a nurse, suggests to Yu Wei's mother that she think about moving out of their apartment and into a nursing home. The shock, pain, and horror in her face after Mao Doudou's suggestion is hard to watch. Simply floating the idea was a non-starter and caused Mao Doudou significant problems with her mother-in-law.
3. Marriage between city people and migrants can be difficult.
There is a marriage in the show between a man from the city and a women from the countryside. The kind of "inter-marriage" is portrayed in some detail.
At first, the young woman from the countryside was made to look stupid. She was very quiet and appeared clueless about a lot of the basic things of city life. But as the show went on, the viewer saw that the girl wasn't stupid at all. I would go so far to say that she was, as the Chinese often say, "tricky."
One of the funnier scenes in the show was when the country-girl city-boy go to their hotel room after their wedding. The man has one thing on his mind. The woman wants to play around and not, uh, consummate the marriage quite yet. She gets out her camera phone, starts taking pictures and videos of her man, and then logs on to a computer to post the photos and videos to her blog.
The guy can't believe it. Over and over, he says: "YOU have a blog?!! A blog?!!" He can't get over that someone from the countryside would have a blog.
By the end of the show, it's obvious that the woman from the countryside is the rock of their relationship and the spoiled city boy is the clueless one.
4. Many young men don't take marriage seriously and have mistresses.
This show, like "Dwelling Narrowness" has extra-marital affairs as a central theme. I said it when talking about "Dwelling Narrowness," but I'll repeat it again: from the limited time I spent in China and the finite knowledge I have of Chinese culture, infidelity amongst men seems to be more rampant in China than in the US. This might be off-base and I may be reading too much into a few people I met/knew in China and the TV shows (soap operas, really) I'm watching now, but I've seen a lot of cheating going on from Chinese guys.
5. Shady investments/finances can tear families apart.
One of the more interesting stories of the show is an investment-gone-wrong. One of the characters hears of an opportunity to buy a section of a forest that will soon be developed. I won't get into the details, but a lot of people get burned and families are nearly ripped apart.
So many people in China are getting rich and the ones not getting rich are seeing lots of others around them striking it big. This desire to get in on "special opportunities" and make it big can lead to bad investments and scam artists.
That's about all I have on my observations.
Overall, I enjoyed, "A Beautiful Daughter-in-Law Era," but it was a struggle at times. It was not as good as "Dwelling Narrowness." It's not nearly as edgy or cool or as, I think, realistic.
In fact, there were times where Qian and I nearly stopped watching it. Qian really had real problems about halfway through the show. She repeatedly said she couldn't bear it anymore. There were certain characters - Yu Wei's mother and Mao Feng - she could not stand. I insisted that we keep watching though. Qian kept with it.
I wasn't enthralled with "A Beautiful Daughter-in-Law Era" in the way I was with "Dwelling Narrowness." But I felt it was worth watching, if for nothing else the language practice. By the end of the show (36 episodes), Qian and I generally liked it and were both glad we'd finished it.
I'm not sure what effect watching Chinese shows is having on my Chinese. Qian and I are speaking Chinese more, but still not tons. I've spoken with her family a little bit recently. I haven't really had a whole lot of practice besides that, unfortunately. We don't have people in Kansas City that we speak Chinese with and it's hard, with everything going on in my life, to keep up with people back in China.
Even if watching Chinese shows isn't helping my language out tons, it can't be hurting it. Even if I'm not getting everything just hearing the language spoken and seeing the characters flash up on the screen is good for me. For what it's worth, I understood a lot more of "A Beautiful Daughter-in-Law Era" than "Dwelling Narrowness." That might be because the language is simpler and there is less going on than "Dwelling Narrowness" as opposed to my language improving. But regardless, it feels great watching long stretches of the show without asking Qian any questions. I just hope that I don't get too used to subtitles while trying to comprehend Chinese!
Qian and I have started a new show - 手机 ("Cell Phone"). It is the number one most downloaded show on sohu.com. Qian says that it is the TV show of a movie that came out a couple years ago. She liked the movie a lot and we are both liking the show so far. The language is a lot harder for me though.
We're moving a bit slower through "Cell Phone" than we did "Dwelling Narrowness" and "A Beautiful Daughter-in-Law Era." That is probably a good thing.
Although we're not finished with "Cell Phone," I've already found the next Chinese show I want to watch. Here is the YouTube clip preview of it, from danwei.org. I should warn you that this isn't "work safe:"
Hopfrog, a frequent commenter on here, posted a link to a very worthwhile video in the comments of my last post.
The video is a program that on the Discovery Channel about ancient Chang'an and Xi'an. Chang'an is what Xi'an was known as for much of its history. For anyone who's every been to Xi'an or has any interest in the place, it is a must see.
I'm not sure the next time the program is going to air on TV. The schedule doesn't show when it'll run again (a program on the Leshan Buddha will run on Monday though). Below my summary, I've embedded the program from YouTube.
The show begins with the construction of ancient Chang'an during the Han Dynasty. This part particularly was enlightening to me. I'll admit that my Han era history is not good and learned a lot during this section.
The rebuilding of Chang'an during the Tang Dynasty is featured next. The Tang time period was the cultural apex of ancient China. The arts flourished and commerce boomed with the Silk Road during this era. Chang'an was indeed the biggest and most cosmopolitan city in the world then.
The Tang era is still celebrated a lot in Xi'an. I lived within walking distance of "Tang Paradise," a Tang-themed park with cultural shows and such. I actually taught some English classes to the tour guides at Tang Paradise when I lived in Xi'an. That was pretty cool.
My favorite part of the program was the section of the Big Wild Goose Pagoda, also in the Tang Dynasty section of the show. I lived within a five minute walk from the pagoda for over three years. I either walked or rode my bike past it every day on my way to work. It has a very special place in my heart. Learning more about it just now was awesome.
And last was the section on the reconstruction of the city (again) during the Ming Dynasty. The Ming reconstruction is still the foundation for present-day Xi'an. The city walls are featured prominently during this section. As the program says, Xi'an's city walls are the largest and best preserved city walls in the world. They are a very unique aspect of life in Xi'an.
This program makes me very proud of my Chinese 故乡 (hometown) - Xi'an. It also makes me want to go back. I can't wait to go visit again.
Hopfrog, thank you so much for pointing this show out to me.
Below are the embeds of the video, split into five sections:
Just doing a Google search on Xi'an, I found out that yesterday the local government of my hometown, Kansas City, declared July 13th to be "Kansas City-Xi'an Day."
This isn't ground-breaking stuff here, but I would like to highlight some media on the special relationship my hometown and my Chinese hometown have.
Here is a video from WDAF in Kansas City and an article Kansas City Infozine:
Kansas City, Missouri Celebrates 20-year Partnership with Xi'an, China
As part of the celebration, the City Council will adopt a resolution declaring July 13 to be "Kansas City-Xi'an Day.
Kansas City, Mo - infoZine - The City of Kansas City, Mo., will mark its 20-year Sister Cities partnership with Xi'an, China with a celebration from July 12-14. Three delegations from Xi'an, representing government, trade and tourism, will attend economic and cultural activities while visiting Kansas City.
As part of the celebration, the City Council will adopt a resolution declaring July 13 to be "Kansas City-Xi'an Day.
...
The mission from Xi'an to Kansas City represents the culmination of a three-year China strategy, which included leveraging the sister cities program as a "door opener" for trade and as an innovative economic development tool. Mayor ProTem Bill Skaggs led two successful missions to China in 2007 and 2008 focused on trade and the City's global strategy with Asia.
Kansas City and Xi'an are a perfect match for being sister cities. Both are in the central of their respective countries. Both are "Gateways to the West." And there is some significant history between the two cities in that the journalist and author Edgar Snow is from Kansas City.
Snow's work in the 1930s essentially introduced the world to Mao. His seminal book - "Red Star Over China" - is incredibly famous over here. I've asked several young people I know, and well over half have at least heard of the book. Somewhat surprisingly, a foreigner from Kansas City wrote the official history endorsed by the CCP of the Long March and the communists living in northern Shaanxi Province in the mid-1930s. Pretty interesting stuff.
I know (or have met) several of the people in that above clip. The KC/Xi'an Sister City Organization is actually the means by which how I ended up in Xi'an.
When I was a junior in college, I spent four months studying abroad in Maasticht, the Netherlands. Living abroad for the first time just blew my mind. I knew that after I graduated from college, I wanted to go abroad again. My first choice was to go to Japan via the JET Program. JET didn't want me though. I had an interview at the Japanese consulate in Chicago and then was wait-listed to go, but then never got called up to go to Japan.
After going to Japan fell through, I looked into going to Chile and Taiwan. But after I began contacting schools in those countries, a friend of my one of my parent's friends told my mom about chances to teach English in Xi'an, China. Seeing that I wasn't being blown away by any offers in Taiwan or South America, I pursued the Xi'an angle.
Needless to say, Xi'an is the path I went. And I'm happy I did it. Being rejected from the JET Program and coming to China instead has been a great thing.
For any Chinese speakers reading this, I think the idiom 塞翁失马 (sai4weng1shi1ma3) is appropriate for my path and how I ended up in China. The idiom dictionary at chinesetools.com says this idiom means "a loss may turn out to be a gain."
Seeing the way my life is going at the moment and my general level of contentment/happiness, I feel like I gained having found the KC/Xi'an Sister City Organization back in the summer of 2005.
One year ago today, China suffered an unimaginable tragedy.
I remember May 12, 2008 clearly. Here is the post I wrote on my old blog one year ago:
Until I just read on the internet that the earthquake originated from Chengdu, I was sure that it had come from Xi'an or somewhere close to Xi'an in Shaanxi Province.
Jackie and I were in my apartment when we started hearing the closed windows banging like the wind outside was howling. A few seconds later my apartment building started swaying. Jackie and I ran to the bathroom of my apartment. I told her to stand in the door frame since I remember from early elementary school that that is the safest place to be in an building during an earthquake. My recently purchased coffee plunger in the kitchen fell off the counter and shattered. A few other things fell off my walls.
Things kind of calmed down but then started up again. We were walking around the apartment trying to find our shoes so we could go outside. At this time, it felt like walking on a cruise ship on a choppy sea. It wasn't like I was about to fall over, but I did kind of hold on to the walls to keep my bearings.
After the swaying had completely stopped, we walked down the five flights of stairs to the ground floor. I heard hordes of screaming children from the elementary school behind my apartment complex. The children's wailing made this descent down my stairwell a rather surreal experience.
Jackie and I went outside where a large group of people had already congregated. Everyone was frustratedly looking at their cell phones and trying to use them to no avail. The cell phone network had gone down. It was kind of strange to look at around at scores of people and not see anybody using a cell phone. In China in 2008, this is a rare site.
After fifteen minutes of standing around, we decided to go to the store to buy groceries for dinner tonight. Along our walk to the store there were people everywhere on the sidewalks. It appeared to me that the earthquake had turned into a makeshift siesta. People all seemed in good spirits as they demonstrated how they'd handled the tremors.
At that time, I really did not understand what had happened. I had never experienced an earthquake before. I was sure that the earthquake's epicenter had been in Xi'an. And seeing that everyone around me was OK, I didn't sense the death and destruction that had just occurred.
There had, in fact, been an unthinkable amount of horror.
From The Financial Times:
When the earthquake struck, Li Hong was sitting on the couch at home in the town of Beichuan, directly above the fault line.
Seven months pregnant with her second child, all she could think of was her six-year-old daughter in the town’s elementary school as the ground shook and she struggled to escape from her third-floor apartment.
Three days later, in hospital, she found an injured girl from her daughter’s class who escaped from the rubble of the school.
“I asked her if she had seen my daughter and she said the last time she saw her was when the earthquake struck and the children ran into the playground and my daughter was one step behind her,” Ms Li says, looking down at her nine-month-old son for comfort. “The girl said when she turned around, a hillside collapsed and buried the other children.”
One year after the devastating May 12 tremor that left nearly 90,000 people dead or missing, the affected areas of Sichuan are filled with such stories.
This disaster was a natural one. But the disaster has not been limited to the natural sphere. Click through on this FT article and read the whole thing and watch the video. Ugh.
Although this earthquake happened one year ago, it will continue to haunt people for years. If you are interested in donating money or getting involved with recovery in the affected areas, I suggest that you get in touch with the following charities: The Yellow River Soup Kitchen or The Library Project. Both of these organizations have done amazing things in earthquake affected areas and in western China in general.
One week to the minute after the earthquake happened at 2:28PM on May 19th, 2008, the entire country of China shut down for a few minutes to honor those lost in the previous week's earthquke. I happened to be in Xi'an's city center next to the Bell Tower when this happened. It was an incredibly moving experience.
Thankfully, someone standing a few feet away from me took a video while it was going on and posted it to YouKu. The video can be viewed here. Skip ahead to 4:00 into the video. It is intense.
The Sichuan earthquake's is going to be felt for generations.
The Chinese are world-class copy-cats. And they have a strong tradition of counterfeiting too.
From The New York Times:
SHENZHEN, China — The phone’s sleek lines and touch-screen keyboard are unmistakably familiar. So is the logo on the back. But a sales clerk at a sprawling electronic goods market in this Chinese coastal city admits what is clear upon closer inspection: this is not the Apple iPhone; this is the Hi-Phone.
“But it’s just as good,” the clerk says.
Nearby, dozens of other vendors are selling counterfeit Nokia, Motorola and Samsung phones — as well as cheap look-alikes that make no bones about being knockoffs.
“Five years ago, there were no counterfeit phones,” says Xiong Ting, a sales manager at Triquint Semiconductor, a maker of mobile phone parts, while visiting Shenzhen. “You needed a design house. You needed software guys. You needed hardware design. But now, a company with five guys can do it. Within 100 miles of here, you can find all your suppliers.”
Technological advances have allowed hundreds of small Chinese companies, some with as few as 10 employees, to churn out what are known here as shanzhai, or black market, cellphones, often for as little as $20 apiece.
So far, however, China has done little to stop the proliferation of fake mobile phones, which are even advertised on late-night television infomercials with pitches like “one-fifth the price, but the same function and look,” or patriotic appeals like “Buy shanzhai to show your love of our country.”
Here is the video that the Times article linked up to:
Love the English in this video.
A couple weeks ago I referenced Peter Hessler's "Rivertown." A truly great book on contemporary China (even if it was written in the late 90s).
There is a fascinating passage from the book where Hessler writes about shanzhai culture in today's society as well as the long-standing tradition it has in China. From page 258 of the book:
The demand for Nalgene-knockoff bottles was much more understandable, especially in a tea-drinking city like Chengdu, where the bottles spread quickly throughout the city's social strata. They were first acquired by cab drivers, who tended to be at the forefront of such trends - cabbies had a certain maverick quality, as well as plenty of money. After that, the businessmen followed suit, and then xiaojies, and finally by summer even the old people in the teahouses were sipping their tea out of fake Nalgene bottles. Soon you could buy them for twenty yuan in any Sichuan city or town.
The bottles came with a label that described them as American-developed Taikong Pingzi - Outer Space Bottles. But they were clearly the product of Chinese factories, because they weren't quite standard and often the label was misspelled. In that regard things hadn't changed greatly from the seventeenth century, when a Spanish priest named Domingo Navarrete described the business methods in China. "The Chinese are very ingenious at imitation," he wrote. "They have imitated to perfection whatsoever they have seen brought out of Europe. In the Province of Canton (Guangdong) they have counterfeited several things so exactly, that they sell them Inland for Goods brought out from Europe."
Some things never change. Modern "Hi-Phones" are just the 21st century manifestation of something that the Chinese have honed for centuries.
I was really surprised to read that the Chinese tradition of copying goods goes back hundreds of years. There really is something long-standing about the Chinese ability to produce high-quality fakes.
This culture of counterfeiting goods passed on through generations is sociologically and anthropologically fascinating to me.
Barbie, with her blond hair and ridiculous measurements (transferred into real life, 36-18-33), is trying to make a splash in China.
Here is a video from the BBC, reporting from the six floor Barbie shop in Shanghai:
Here is a write-up from The Global Post from March on Mattel's pushing of Barbie in China:
HONG KONG — Tall, blond, impossibly large breasts. Barbie stands out anywhere, but in China, she really turns heads. And that, of course, is exactly what Mattel, the U.S. company behind the Barbie doll, wants.
On Mar. 6, Mattel is opening a six-story, 38,000-sq.-ft. Barbie superstore in Shanghai. In addition to dolls — lots of dolls — the boutique will feature a hair salon, a bar and a $15,000, adult-sized Vera Wang gown.
“This is not just a store for children” said Laura Lai, general manager of Barbie Shanghai. “Girls of all ages will love it.”
Barbie’s made-in-China makeover is part of a push to re-brand the iconic American doll on the eve of her 50th birthday. With domestic sales slumping, Mattel has set its sights on China, hoping to the weather the financial storm in the relative calm of the country's vast — and comparatively untapped — consumer market.
The plan is to turn America's favorite doll into fashion fodder for China's upwardly mobile, trend-setting elite. By moving up-market and focusing on Barbie-branded merchandise, the company hopes to widen profit margins and attract a new demographic: Chinese women.
But, will they buy it?
Summer Wang, an assistant at a film production company, certainly will. "Barbie is beautiful like a princess,” she said. “And every Shanghai girl wants to be a princess."
One isn't going to be surprised to hear that I think Barbie's penetration into the Chinese market is not a very good thing. To have little Chinese girls, and their mom's too I suppose, buying into everything that Barbie represents is not encouraging.
Whenever I think of Barbie dolls, Lisa Simpson and her crusade against Malibu Stacey comes to mind. This quote from Lisa, on the effects Malibu Stacey has on little girls, is classic:
It's not funny, Bart. Millions of girls will grow up thinking that this is the right way to act; that they can never be more than vacuous ninnies whose only goal is to look pretty, land a rich husband, and spend all day on the phone with their equally vacuous friends talking about how damn terrific it is to look pretty and have a rich husband!
Several weeks ago, a post I made on China cracking down on fake doctors garnered a small amount of attention from the China-blogosphere. That was mostly fueled by the well-trafficked website Shanghaiist linking up to my blog.
At the time of my posting, I promised to ask my good friend James whether he could find the DVD with these videos with my friends pretending to be doctors on it. He looked for a few days, but could not find anything. He said he'd keep looking, but I gave up hope.
But then the other day, James called me and told that he'd found the video! I got the DVD from him, figured out how to transfer the video from DVD to my computer, edited the video from thirty miuntes to less than ten minutes, and then converted that ten minute video to YouTube (complicated... the original was an MPEG-1 Mudex).
The video he gave me is of my English friend, Paul, acting like a US war general. The medicine is either for prostrate or impotence medicine. Maybe both. I'm not quite sure exactly what the product is.
Here is the YouTube video:
I've watched the video and took notes on some of the highlights:
0:00 - Comes right in with "Saving Private Ryan" and "Blackhawk Down" clips.
0:09 - The loss of the soldier's leg here adds an interesting effect.
0:58 - Haven't seen this movie. Some nice shots of Washington DC.
1:49 - Nice phallic imagery.
2:31 - They're saying something about Houston here.
2:53 - Soldier gettin' intimate with his lady.
3:07 - War planning.
3:14 - 9/11!!!
3:27 - The Honorable POTUS John Voight.
3:48 - Back to reality.
4:23 - My friend Paul on TV. I love that English accent on a US general!
5:01 - "I have no idea what I'm talking about."
5:27 - Close up of US Army patch.
5:37 - Pretty sweet graphic here.
This whole section - "So, what happens then..."
And then the rest of the clip is just talking by the Chinese experts on the show.
The original video is thirty minutes long. I had to cut this one down to less than ten minutes because of YouTube's uploading policies. Ten minutes of this is enough though.
I wasn't really listening to the Chinese on it. Most of it is over my head. I'd have to watch it really really slowly to try to pick it up. For anyone watching this video who can speak Chinese, more detail on the Chinese would be most appreciated.
In another matter, I'm headed down to Guangzhou tonight with Jackie for our visa interview on Wednesday. Heady times!
I'm bringing my camera and am hoping to get a sense of southern China and my first visit to the Pearl River Delta. I'm going to try to post on here as much as possible down there.
Although South China's demise may not be as bad as Dubai's, things have fallen off a cliff in former Chinese boom towns.
From The Telegraph:
In the heyday of China’s economic miracle, buyers from all over the world flocked to Yiwu, an unremarkable city in the southern province of Zhejiang.
Inside the halls of Futian Market, which sprawl over the equivalent of 800 football pitches, they haggled over hundreds of thousands of low-cost goods – everything from candles and fake flowers to eyeglasses and DVD players. Their orders would then be shipped across the globe to high street shops and supermarkets, fuelling China’s incredible growth.
Li Xuhang, the city’s deputy mayor, said: “If you spent only three minutes with each Chinese manufacturer and spent eight hours here each day, you would need over a year to make your way around the whole market.”
During the decade-long boom, Yiwu attracted buyers not only from American and European companies, but also increasing numbers of Arabs, Russians, and Africans. Scores of Pakistani, Korean and Middle-Eastern restaurants line the streets and there is even an Iraq Hotel.
But now, as the Chinese economic miracle unravels, the labyrinthine halls of Yiwu have emptied of foreign buyers. The latest figures from China’s customs office show exports plunged by 17.5 per cent in January, the biggest fall in more than a decade.
And of course when people lose everything, they have nothing to lose.
From Reuters:
HONG KONG (Reuters) - Public security will be "grim" this year given the financial downturn, with rising crime rates expected and possible instability from laid-off migrant workers, a top Guangdong police official said on Tuesday.
Guangdong, which manufactures around a third of China's exports, has in recent weeks seen the return of migrant workers, many of whom have struggled to find work given a slew of factory closures and an estimated 20 million lost jobs.
"Faced with the complicated changes in public security in society, especially given the impact of the international financial crisis, we expect the public security situation to be grim," said He Guangping, the deputy head of the Guangdong Provincial Public Security Department.
Economic crimes have risen -- including mobile phone scams, currency counterfeiters, and "black bosses" refusing to pay workers -- leading to the arrests of 5,200 people, and the recovery of more than 3 billion yuan (307.8 million pound) in ill-gotten gains last year, He said.
"All kinds of illegal and criminal activities will continue to increase ... The task of safeguarding social stability, law and order overall is still arduous," He told reporters on the sidelines of Guangdong's annual National People's Congress session in the provincial capital Guangzhou.
People, both in the West and now in China, often value their life based on their earning power and material possessions. Now that their riches are slipping, the economic tough times becomes psychological tough times.
In my mind, the only way to get through the economic crisis will be to get away from the ideas of keeping up with the Joneses and viewing material wealth as the grandest achievement in life.
Will making these adjustments be easy? No. But I believe it will be an inevitable outcome in an economy which no longer allows its citizens to consume the way it has been for decades.
I'll finish today's post with a video of economist Peter Schiff. Schiff began espousing the move away from runaway consumption years ago. Here are a few of his appearances on a number of different American financial TV shows.
If you despise the talking heads on Fox News and CNBC and the faux financial booms they cheered on over the past decade, you'll really enjoy this video:
As much as I like this video for the way Schiff handles himself and the predictions he makes, I like the video even more for the reactions of the other panelists to Schiff and the mocking tone they take with him. It'd be fun to watch this video in the same room with Art Laffer, Ben Stein, or Charles Payne today.
If only there'd been more people speaking like Schiff earlier.
Hillary Clinton's replacement in the senate is getting off on the right foot in connecting with the hordes of Chinese in New York City.
From The New York Times:
She had them at “Ni hao ma.”
When Senator Kirsten E. Gillebrand grabbed the microphone at the Lunar New Year parade in Chinatown two weeks ago, she blurted, “Ni hao ma, zenma yang?” in Mandarin, or “Hello, how’s it going?” Later that day, after wrapping up a meeting with local leaders at a senior center, she walked by a few card tables and said, “Hao bu hao?” or “Are you doing O.K.?”
It is customary for politicians eager to connect with ethnic voters to butcher a few words in Spanish, Chinese or other foreign tongues. But Ms. Gillibrand is no ordinary politician when it comes to linguistic and cultural comfort: as an Asian studies major at Dartmouth, she studied for six months in China and Taiwan, becoming proficient enough to absorb stories in Chinese newspapers, and later spent four months in Hong Kong as a corporate lawyer.
Ms. Gillibrand’s Chinese is rusty now. But she tells her 5-year-old son, “Man man yi diar,” or “Slow down a little,” and calls chopsticks “kuaizi,” out of habit. And she can still converse for a few minutes, as evidenced when a reporter from a New York City-based Chinese-language newspaper trying to learn her Chinese name unexpectedly found an enthusiastic Ms. Gillibrand on the line.
“She definitely understood what I was saying, and she had good pronunciation,” said the reporter, Yan Tai, who writes for The World Journal. “Actually, I was very impressed.”
As this article alludes to, if you are a foreigner and have made any effort towards learning Chinese, Chinese people are easily impressed. Chinese people realize that their language is hard for foreigners to get into. Most Chinese people are quite enthusiastic and supportive of foreigners who try to speak even a little.
While she knows a bit, it doesn't sound like Senator Gillebrand's level is too high. There's another world politician who's definitely got her beat: Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.
Here is a video of Rudd blingin' his Chinese on China's biggest TV night of the year, CCTV's New Year's Eve Gala:
When talking about foreigners who've can speak good Chinese, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Da Shan.
Don't recognize this guy? Nobody outside of China does. But in China, he's a mega-celebrity.
Da Shan, aka Mark Henry Rowswell, made a name for himself while studying Chinese in Beijing during the 1980s. The Canadian is famous for his Chinese because it is "better than Chinese peoples'."
He speaks all kinds of dialects and can perform the traditional Chinese dialog performing art xiangsheng (相声), which a friend told me "takes some serious Chinese skills." I've seen xiangsheng a few times. I can understand parts of it occasionally. It is loosely translated to English as "crosstalk." Da Shan said the closest thing to xiangsheng in English is the "Who's on First?" bit by Abbot and Costello.
Here is a video of his xiangsheng performance at this year's CCTV Spring Festival Gala:
From what I've heard other foreigners say about Da Shan in my three years in China, it sounds like most hate the guy. I'm not quite sure why. Sure, he's cheesy. But I, personally, admire his Chinese greatly. He's got some serious skills.
Seeing Rudd, Da Shan, and to a lesser extend Gillebrand, I'm encouraged to keep studying Chinese. It is good to know that if the effort is put in, the language can be learned. It is also good motivation to know that if my Chinese can continue to improve, it could open doors for me down the road.
Today was the official end of China's Spring Festival lunar new year celebration, the Lantern Festival. Jackie and her mom cooked me a delicious lunch, we relaxed in the afternoon, and then Jackie and I went on a walk near Xi'an's Wild Goose Pagoda at night.
Another awesome Spring Festival-related day. It's been a truly great two weeks.
I've been wanting to visually share my Spring Festival experiences on this blog. Today I finally got the chance to take out my camera and take some pictures.
The following photos help show what I experienced this evening:
This one came out pretty trippy... a lantern-face
热闹得很 - a very lively atmosphere
Hordes of people on 雁塔西路 (YanTaXiLu)
Jackie explained to me that on the Lantern Festival Eve people put up little riddles on pieces of paper
A man examining and thinking hard about this riddle
Lantern Festival toys for sale
The Big Wild Goose Pagoda
I made this panorama of the Big Wild Goose Pagoda using Canon's Photostitch
Fireworks being sold.
I've talked before about the importance of fireworks during Chinese New Year. This is my third year to experience Spring Festival and each year I'm surprised by the amount of fireworks lit that night. It seriously sounds like a war zone for hours.
Although tonight couldn't compare with New Year's Eve, there were still plenty of fireworks lit.
Here are a couple videos as evidence:
My first day in China, February 12, 2006, was Lantern Festival. So today marks my three year anniversary living in China (according to the lunar calendar).
How interesting and wonderful these three years they have been!
A man at Cambridge University has followed in the footsteps of that Iraqi reporter from December.
From The Associated Press:
CAMBRIDGE, England — A protester threw an athletic shoe at the Chinese prime minister, Wen Jiabao, during his speech at Cambridge University’s concert hall on Monday, seven weeks after a similar incident involving President Bush in Iraq. The shoe missed Mr. Wen by at least 30 feet, but security officials promptly escorted the protester from the hall.
The police arrested the man on suspicion of a public order offense. Witnesses described him as a goateed European in his 20s or 30s speaking foreign-accented English. They said he blew a whistle as Mr. Wen spoke, causing him to pause and look up. “You should be ashamed of yourselves,” the man said, according to witnesses. “How can you listen to the lies he’s telling?” he shouted, in a video of the incident shown on Sky News television.
Mr. Wen appeared unruffled. Some in the audience said he called the protest “despicable.” Others said that when he resumed the speech, to an audience of Chinese government ministers, university officials and students, he assured them that “the relations between Britain and China” would not be affected by the protest. A police spokeswoman gave no other details about the protester, Reuters reported.
I'm really not a fan of these hot new shoe protests.
George W. Bush was an awful president and I believe he permanently tarnished the United States. I absolutely loathe him. Yet I did not think that the incident where an Iraqi reporter who threw his shoe at President Bush was very funny.
I understand that many feel as though Bush is directly responsible for unimaginable amounts of violence throughout the world, yet I don't believe throwing a shoe at him is a very appropriate way to air one's grievances.
I feel the same way about today's incident as I do Bush's.
Hurling one's shoe at a world leader in front of crowds of reporters is childish and focuses all of the attention on the shoe-thrower, not the cause in which the thrower is, supposedly, concerned about. It's counter-productive and meaningless. The resulting stories about the incident are not about supposed grievances, but are instead about the thrower and the leader's security.
I will say this regarding the two incidents though: at least the Bush attacker was pretty damn accurate. This guy today missed Wen with his shoe by about thirty feet.
My buddy Taylor, who came to visit me in Xi'an at the beginning of the month, sent me this video he created on the website, Animoto.
If you've never seen an Animoto slide-show before, I highly recommend cracking a beer open and watching this video (it might actually be best after a few beers have already been ingested).
The video features Taylor's photos from Shanghai, Xi'an, and Cui Hua Shan:
Pretty amazing video, eh? Radically different than any other slide-show I've seen before.
Watching CNN Obama's inauguration yesterday from justin.tv, I saw this Cisco commercial prominently featuring Xi'an and its city wall:
It looks as if it was shot somewhere outside the south wall. Although I can't quite tell from the video whether this was really shot in Xi'an or not. It looks really clean. Maybe a bit too clean to actually be from Xi'an.
If it was shot in a studio and not in Xi'an, they did their homework. The ad features a number of bridges going over the moat surrounding the city wall which look realistic.
This is the second time Xi'an has been featured in a US television commercial. The first was this Snapple ad from a few years ago shot at Hua Shan:
Watching this ad once again, I just noticed something very interesting.
At the very end of the commercial, you see this shot of the man walking back down the mountain from his visit with the tea guru:
Now check this out.
Here is a picture I took from the exact same spot back in October:
If you look at the staircase and the shrub on the left of the path, I think the Snapple camera man was standing about ten stairs higher up than I was. He probably shot from that stair to avoid the small light post that I caught in my photo.
Craziness. Snapple and I were, obviously, in a strong agreement about this exact spot being a beautiful shot.
Below are some videos I took from Hua Shan in October:
From the South Peak. The wind up there was absolutely brutal. As you can see from my lens, rain was pouring down at that point. Probably not good for my camera, but worth the cool video.
From the East Peak. Great panoramic view.
This is from earlier on in the mountain before getting to the peaks.
Posts
