China's Exports Plummet

This isn't good news for China's economy, which is utterly dependent on its exports.

From Reuters:

BEIJING, Dec 6 (Reuters) - China's exports for November fell in value compared to the same month last year, the first such decline in more than 7 years, a Chinese business newspaper reported on Saturday.

Citing an unidentified source, the 21st Century Business Herald said that according to estimates from customs authorities, China's exports in November were worth "over" $100 billion and imports worth over $70 billion, marking declines in both.

The report said the fall in November exports marked the first such monthly fall since June 2001. In November last year, China's exports were worth $108 billion.

The Chinese-language report cautioned that its trade numbers were "the product of a partial collation and may have omissions."

Read On

This shouldn't be too big of a surprise, really.

From January through June of this past year, 67,000 factories in China closed their doors. Yes, you just read that right. It's not that 67,000 employees lost their jobs. 67,000 factories closed in the beginning of 2008.

And that was before the economic crisis grabbed headlines in September. The official numbers, when released regarding what is going on now, will surely be mind boggling.

Many of my ex-pat friends here in China, knowing that I'm American, have been joking with me about how screwed America is with the crisis. I just laugh and say, "You know what, everyone's f*^%ed. If you think China or England or Australia or Canada is going to get through the coming months and years unscathed, you're a fool."

When having these discussions, I constantly think about a poster advertisement that is up on the walls of the private English training school I manage. It contains quotes from a number of famous western people. My two favorite quotes are:

"In the future, everyone will be world-famous for fifteen minutes." - Andy Warhol

"The future belongs to those who prepare for it today." - Malcolm X

Now I think it's pretty cool that these, rather quirky, quotes made it on to one of the official posters of my school. The Andy Warhol one doesn't really fit in with what I'm talking about here, but the Malcolm X one does.

I'm amazed at a lot of the nonchalance that people are having about the economic disaster that is currently engulfing the world. So many people I encounter don't seem to be attempting to wrap their minds around the absolute insanity which is going on on a daily basis.

Maybe people are just putting their heads in the sand and not paying attention. Or maybe the people who've been ribbing me don't understand the connectedness which defines our current, globalized, economy. Or maybe they're all the sane ones and I'm the one who's lost touch with reality.

For the world's sake, I hope that they're right and my pessimistic view on the near future of our world is wrong.

X's quote here gives me inspiration at this time of great uncertainty and fear. I feel as if I prepare myself for what I believe is going to happen in the coming months and years ahead, then I believe I'll be better off for it.

At the moment, I'm trying to manage my way through the stages of grief that come with the realization that the world I'd been imagining my young adult to be like just isn't going to come to fruition.

For the time being, trying to understand what is going on on a daily basis and the ramifications these actions are going to have in the future is my way of preparing myself for what is in store for us.

Ancient Marijuana Stash Found in Northwest China

Shamans in China's great northwest had, apparently, discovered marijuana's psychotropic powers nearly three millenia ago.

From MSNBC.com:

Nearly two pounds of still-green plant material found in a 2,700-year-old grave in the Gobi Desert has just been identified as the world's oldest marijuana stash, according to a paper in the latest issue of the Journal of Experimental Botany.

A barrage of tests proves the marijuana possessed potent psychoactive properties and casts doubt on the theory that the ancients only grew the plant for hemp in order to make clothing, rope and other objects.

They apparently were getting high too.

Lead author Ethan Russo told Discovery News that the marijuana "is quite similar" to what's grown today.

"We know from both the chemical analysis and genetics that it could produce THC (tetrahydrocannabinolic acid synthase, the main psychoactive chemical in the plant)," he explained, adding that no one could feel its effects today, due to decomposition over the millennia.

Russo served as a visiting professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Botany while conducting the study. He and his international team analyzed the cannabis, which was excavated at the Yanghai Tombs near Turpan, China. It was found lightly pounded in a wooden bowl in a leather basket near the head of a blue-eyed Caucasian man who died when he was about 45.

Read On

I'm not sure what to say about this one...

I went to Turpan last year, near where this stash was found.



Turpan is a really interesting place. It's rich history is based upon it being an oasis in the middle of hundreds of miles of sprawling deserts. The man-made irrigation canals which Turpan is famous for is one of the greatest engineering projects of ancient man.

To see some of my photos of Turpan from when I was there, click here.

My Fantasy Football Team... Dominating

I've been on a tear with my fantasy football team recently.

Surprisingly, I don't have any Giants, Chiefs, or Buccaneers on my team. Instead, it's populated with players from the Bolton Wanderers, Wigan Athletic, and Hull City.

No, I'm not in a fantasy NFL league. I'm in a fantasy English Premiership league.

This is my first experience playing any sort of fantasy sports, and I'm absolutely loving it.

For the month of November, I won a league that has seven English guys living in Xi'an and myself participating. We each throw down 50RMB into the pot each month for the winner. So there will be 350RMB (about $50) coming to me once I track all of these guys down!

As the only American competing in a league against eight other Englishmen, I'm quite proud of the domination I enjoyed over them in November.

Here is the results table from my league, Xi'an Yuan, for November:


My squad, named Slug Dubbin' after one of my favorite tracks by The Orb, had an incredible month. I was ranked 11,686 out of the 1,761,849 total players. That means that I was better than 99.33% of the players all over the world playing this game in November.

This is a graphic I like seeing, my ranking on the leader board for the entire country of China for the month of November:



Here is my squad as it currently stands:



In addition to having a good November, I'm doing pretty well overall as well. Being ranked 54,586, I'm beating 97% of the players worldwide.

The basic rules for this version of fantasy Premiership are as follows:

Each team owner is given £100 million to work with. Each team must have two goal keepers, five defenders, five mid-fielders, and three forwards. Each week, you can make one transaction for free (each additional transaction costs you four points). Each team can only have three players from any one team, so you can not load up on all Chelsea, Liverpool, or Manchester United players.

Without a doubt, Christiano Ronaldo has been the key pick up for me. Ronaldo was this week named "Eupopean Footballer of the Year." He is a freak. He picks up insane amounts of points in this game.

Participating in this league has been a blast so far. It's given me the chance to get reengaged with the Premier League, after not paying attention at all last year.

One of the most bizarre consequences of living in Xi'an, China for almost three years is that I have learned so much about English culture from the loads of English people whom I work with. They far outnumber Americans in Xi'an, at least from the people I've been exposed to.

Strangely, right now I could have a better conversation with an English bloke about the current state of the English Premiership than I could with an American dude about the happenings of the NFL.

China does strange things to people.

Vote for "Mark's China Blog"

I don't stand a chance, but if you like this blog, vote for it for "Personal China Blog of the Year" at the website chinalyst.net.

To vote, click here. At that page, click on the little plus sign with a number next to it.

Chinalyst is a China blog community. It aggregates dozens of China blogs making all the China blogs out there, collectively, into one blog. Pretty nice resource.

AIDS and China's Migrant Workers

On the spreading of AIDS amongst China's poor.

From Reuters:

BEIJING, Nov 30 (Reuters) - The new face of AIDS in China is a shy man with a heavy provincial accent, a weathered face and the rough hands of a manual worker.

Zhang Xiaohu, a character in an educational film for migrant workers, is part of a trend that worries Chinese officials: the potential for AIDS to spread among the estimated 200 million rural migrants driving the country's rapid economic expansion.

AIDS in China has, to date, mostly been limited to drug users, gay men, prostitutes and the victims of reckless blood-buying schemes in the 1990s.

By the end of 2007, China had about 700,000 people with HIV/AIDS -- 0.05 percent of the total population -- health officials said on Sunday, ahead of World Aids Day the next day.

"The epidemic is lowly prevalent in general but it is highly prevalent among specific groups such as migrant workers, and in some regions particularly remote areas and the countryside," said Wang Weizhen, deputy director of HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment at the Ministry of Health, according to state media.

Read On

Migrant workers in China often will leave their home for months or years on end. It's not surprising, as the article goes on to say, that in big cities like Beijing there are more and more people and places beginning to cater to the new inhabitants of those cities: ie. cheap prostitutes.

Prostitution is endemic in Xi'an. Within a twenty minute walk of my apartment, there are literally dozens of places one could go to get prostitutes. I know this from the pink lights emanating from seemingly every hair salon once night falls, not from the experience of actually having visited the women myself.

I might be completely off base here, but it seems to me as though prostitution is more acceptable in Xi'an than it is in the cities I've lived in in America: Kansas City and St. Louis. It is very possible that I'm just oblivious to America's prostitution, but I'm sure that the prostitution that goes on in the mid-west cities I've inhabited is not as blatant as it is in Xi'an. Between the loose women in dance clubs and the pink-lit salons dotting Xi'an's streets, there are literally endless opportunities for those looking to buy sex.

Since I've never visited these women, I'm not 100% sure about how much they cost. But one night in a taxi, the driver was telling me that they could be had for 50RMB, or about $7.

The plethora of cheap prostitutes found in China's enormous cities combined with millions of men working hundreds of miles away from their homes does indeed sound like the perfect recipe for debauchery and a public health crisis.