China Digital Times

CHINA NEWS SECTION: Culture

• Language Schools and Carpetbaggers

  

  Danwei reports on the sudden closure of four English language schools in China, which have left in their wake stranded students, unpaid staff, and bewildered joint venture partners:

  In almost every case the founders and owners of the schools were foreigners who had been in China for over a decade, building up their businesses. They were not cowboy operators, but entrepreneurs who had based their lives in the country, owning property and sending their children to local schools. Now they have had to flee China abruptly, never to return.

  Ken Carroll, Steve Williams and Brian McCloskey of Kai En left behind millions of renminbi of unpaid wages and unreimbursed tuition fees, as did Anders and Amy Johnson of World Link. Just one of Linguaphone’s six training centres had 4 million yuan of outstanding tuition on its books.

  China has been seized with “English fever”, as the phenomenon is known in Chinese, ever since it started to open up its economy to the outside world in the late 1970s. Today, linguists put the number of Chinese now studying or speaking English at between 200 million and 350 million. English is the only foreign language tested in school, and the Chinese are unified in their belief that a good command of the language can have a transformative effect on your career, catapulting you towards wealth. One of the largest school systems with significant revenues from English learning, New Oriental, is traded on the New York Stock Exchange.

  However, despite the phenomenal popularity of English lessons, the buzz inside the industry is over which school will be the next to go bust. Since the financial crisis, young workers have lacked cash for English lessons, and an increasing number may be wondering if it is worth reaching out to the West when China’s domestic market is booming.

  See also an earlier Shanghaiist post about Kai En.

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  • March 16, 2010 8:15 PM

• Fleshing Out Life in Remote China

  

  The New York Times reviews the documentary Ghost Town:

  Zhao Dayong’s “Ghost Town,” a nearly three-hour-long visit to a remote Chinese mountain village, is hardly indifferent to social issues, but it approaches them obliquely, with open-minded curiosity and inexhaustible patience.

  From the start Mr. Zhao’s camera is an acknowledged, if discreet, presence. In the opening shots, unseen residents of the town are heard commenting on how their familiar world looks as they peer through the lens. Later some of their neighbors address it directly and with minimal self-consciousness, talking about their personal histories, religious practices and the hardships they have faced.

  What they have to say is fascinating — in particular the reminiscences of an elderly preacher who serves as the patriarch for the local Christian population — but Mr. Zhao has an exquisite ability to balance words with images. The life stories and household interactions that fill out the film’s three chapters take place against a natural background that is shot beautifully, though never ostentatiously. Green mountains and deep, shadowed valleys frame the desultory daily routines of the villagers, while the nonhuman population of dogs, chickens and pigs receives a proper and proportional share of attention.

  Watch a trailer of the film:
  

  » Read more
  • March 15, 2010 8:47 PM

• A Host of Mummies, a Forest of Secrets

  

  The New York Times reports on an important new archeological find in the Taklamakan desert of Xinjiang:

  In the middle of a terrifying desert north of Tibet, Chinese archaeologists have excavated an extraordinary cemetery. Its inhabitants died almost 4,000 years ago, yet their bodies have been well preserved by the dry air.

  The cemetery lies in what is now China’s northwest province of Xinjiang, yet the people have European features, with brown hair and long noses. Their remains, though lying in one of the world’s largest deserts, are buried in upside-down boats. And where tombstones might stand, declaring pious hope for some god’s mercy in the afterlife, their cemetery sports instead a vigorous forest of phallic symbols, signaling an intense interest in the pleasures or utility of procreation.

  The long-vanished people have no name, because their origin and identity are still unknown. But many clues are now emerging about their ancestry, their way of life and even the language they spoke.

  Their graveyard, known as Small River Cemetery No. 5, lies near a dried-up riverbed in the Tarim Basin, a region encircled by forbidding mountain ranges. Most of the basin is occupied by the Taklimakan Desert, a wilderness so inhospitable that later travelers along the Silk Road would edge along its northern or southern borders.

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  • March 15, 2010 8:34 PM

• 210,000 Netizens Vote on Han Han’s Blog

  

  The New York Times just published a profile of China’s most popular blogger Han Han. What’s more important than Han Han’s outspoken writings themselves is the fact that his words resonate with a huge, mostly young, population, creating a “Han Han phenomenon.”

  For example, while Twitter is blocked in China, sinaweibo, a microblogging service hosted by China’s internet portal sina.cn has dominated the microblogging market in China. Han Han opened his account on sinaweibo on February 4, 2010, and, before he had even sent one message, he had gathered 30,000 followers. Three days later, he simply typed one Chinese word “Wei” (Hello). This single-character post immediately generated a frenzy on sinaweibo, with more than 6500 reposts, and over 13,900 “comments” from other sinaweibo users. In Han Han’s signature combination of humor and a sharp tongue, he then said: “I meant to type ‘Hey’ instead of ‘Wei,’ but I made a typo. I didn’t correct it for fear people would blame the ‘relevant agencies’ [ie censors].” [Han Han's blog posts are often targeted by censors, and each time, such censorship generates protest from his fans, and more netizens repost his censored text in other forums.]

  On March 4, Han Han wrote a post on his blog titled, “Han Feng is a good cadre.” The post commented on the online leak of the personal diary of Han Feng, the Tobacco Bureau chief in Guangxi, which became the hottest topic in Chinese cyberspace. In Han Feng’s diary, he recorded, in a matter-of-fact way, activities such as his sexual encounters with several of his female subordinates, bribes taken in his work, and some other personal hobbies or work-related matters. (Han Feng was subsequently arrest for bribery, which was announced in a brief statement in official media after his diary became public.) Han Han’s post says that according to what Han Feng’s diary reveals, Bureau chief Han should really be considered a “good official”, since the amount of bribes and number of sexual relationships he had was peanuts compared with so many other officials in China today. Han wrote, “If his diary is true, I dare to say he is a good cadre. In six months, he only accepted bribes of 60,000 RMB. This is the first time in recent years I have seen a five-digit number after the word “bribery.” Where can you find such a clean bureau chief?”

  The following are excerpts of Han Han’s new post, entitled: “Where can I find people as good as you are?”, translated by CDT:

  In the post before my last post, I set a voting function (The two options are: 1) Han Feng is a good official, I hope that he will stay in his position, 2) Han Feng is a bad official, I hope that he will be punished severely according to the law) Over 210,000 independent IPs have voted, and the results show that 96%, which is to say, 200,000 voters, felt that Han Feng is a good cadre and hope that he will stay in his position. Less than 10,000, 4% of voters, felt that Han Feng is a bad cadre and hope that he will be punished severely according to law.

  

  Of course, from now on I will set up the voting function more often, in order to compensate everyone’s dismay that no one has seen a ballot but somehow so many representatives in National People’s Congress have been elected.

  From today on, I made a unilateral decision that I will be the strategic collaborative partner of all the main government websites. When they start to vote on some event, I will do the same on my blog. I will not write any text about those events to avoid misleading or indicating voting results, and we will see how different the results will be.

  Among voters this time, some from the bottom of his or her heart felt that Han Feng is not a bad official, since he was not that greedy. Some others sincerely felt that Han Feng was actually relatively better stock among officials; some others are just being sarcastic, and then some are only following the crowd. Nevertheless, everyone feels quite powerless. In my grandfather’s time, when people knew things were difficult, if you went to the officials, they may have even more difficulties. Later on, everyone knows that there were good cadres and bad cadres in this country. The result of the vote on Han Feng tells us that we have officially entered the era in which there are almost no cadres who are not corrupt, and the only difference is between good corrupt cadres and bad corrupt cadres. Everyone obviously thinks that Han Feng belongs to the good corrupt cadre category.

  …. (Ordinary people in this country’s) expectations for cadres are not that they will serve the people, but that they don’t make trouble for people. You can have your fabulous house, drive your luxurious car, have your mistress, we will not bother you as long as you do not step over my son, evict me from my house, or take my girl; then you are a good cadre in the eyes of ordinary people. If netizens have a problem with this, just delete their posts; if writers have a problem with it, just harmonize them; if journalists have a problem with this, just one sentence instruction — “do not report negative news.”

  » Read more
  • March 13, 2010 11:03 PM

• Yundi Li: ‘I Think I’m Not a Normal Artist’

  

  The Independent profiles pianist Li Yundi, who has not taken the spotlight of his contemporary Lang Lang, but is equally admired in the classical music world:

  As the son of a steel worker in provincial Chongqing, Yundi Li was born into a world permeated by Chinese folk music and pop, but at the age of three, he was suddenly entranced by the sound of an accordion. His parents bought him one, and two years later he won a competition with it. Then he chanced to hear someone practising the piano. “I had never heard a piano before,” he says. “And this sound, with its rich range of colour, was instantly very special for me. I hung outside the window for half an hour, drinking it in.”

  His words tumble out quickly and eagerly, with self-deprecating charm. The contrast with Lang Lang – for whom an interview is a tiresome formality prior to the more serious business of a photo-shoot – could not be greater.

  Had he been raised in Britain, Lang Lang would have been put on the abused-child register for the way his raveningly ambitious father treated him – throwing his toys out of the window when he was five, and at one point ordering him to jump to his death from a balcony when he’d been rejected by a teacher. Yundi Li’s parents, on the other hand, were devotedly supportive: his mother gave up her job to look after him while he studied at the Sichuan conservatory, but she and his father seem to have put him under no pressure: “They just tell me to enjoy my life.” He stayed from eight to 18 with the same teacher, Professor Dan Zhaoyi, during which time he won a string of competitions, including the Stravinsky Youth Competition when he was 13, the Utrecht Liszt competition at 17, and the Warsaw one the following year.

  Video: Yundi Li perform’s Chopin’s Nocturne No2

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  • March 13, 2010 9:03 PM

• How Does China Help Africa?

  

  On China Beat, Angilee Shah reviews The Dragon’s Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa:

  China is neither wholeheartedly supporting corrupt dictators, nor filled with ambitions of empire. The Dragon’s Gift, by her account, is no Trojan horse. Subtitled The Real Story of China in Africa, the book is the culmination of some 30 years of research and experience in both places.

  At one point, Brautigam warns her readers, “The level of detail on the history of the [Chinese aid] system and its component parts may be more than you want to know, particularly over the next few pages.” Though she is referring to one chapter, this lesson is true for the entire work. As Brautigam moves us beyond assumptions of exploitation and control of natural resources, a more complex story emerges.

  The truth is that China is itself a developing country that has successfully reduced its poverty from 53 to 8 percent over twenty years, while Africa’s poverty persists despite 60 years of aggressive foreign aid. Deng Xiaoping, the Communist Party leader who is credited with opening up China’s economy, once declared, “To get rich is glorious!”

  Chinese policymakers believe in this not just for themselves, but for Africa.

  Read another review of the book by Howard French.

  » Read more
  • March 12, 2010 11:26 AM

• Zhang Boshu (张博树): An Insider’s Account of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (Part II)

  

  China Geeks has translated a second article by Zhang Boshu, a political philosopher and constitutional scholar, about his experiences inside the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Part I is here:

  Zhang joined the CASS in 1991 as an Assistant Researcher after getting a PhD. By 1993, if not for political reasons, he should have been promoted to the next rank. He explains how the system works:

  The position at CASS (research grade) is comprised of four ranks: Researcher, Deputy Researcher, Assistant Researcher and Research Intern, respectively corresponding to senior, deputy senior, middle and junior ranks. According to regulations at CASS, fresh PhD graduates can join as Assistant Researcher. Two years later, they can apply for promotion to Deputy Researcher. At the end of 1993, I can apply for a Deputy Researcher position. Although I haven’t published any articles in China after 1989, I have already published one major work, one translated work and over ten articles before the ‘June Fourth Incident. In 1993, my English work was also due to be published. According to the norms at CASS, one book or just one to two influential articles would be sufficient to get you to a Deputy Researcher position. Despite my plenty of research, I was not promoted because of my insistence on political principles.

  He applied for a promotion in 1994, but was rejected again. This had financial implications, and between 1995 and 2000, he ventured into businesses, which included opening two schools and one private enterprise. But throughout this period, he was still officially affiliated with the CASS, and his plan to start a private university in 2000 made his relationship with the CASS closer. It is under this background that he applied for a promotion again in 2000, only to fail once more.

  Between October 2001 and January 2002, he went to a university in Michigan as a visiting scholar. Upon returning to China, he started working on the sensitive book From May Fourth to June Fourth. In 2004, 2005 and 2006, he made applications for promotion, which were all unsuccessful. As a result, he had been an Assistant Researcher for a total of 19 years, from 1991 to 2009.

  » Read more
  • March 11, 2010 12:25 PM

• Peter Hessler: Behind the Wheel, About to Snap

  

  On China Beat, Peter Hessler writes about the role that photography played in his trip across China that spawned his new book, Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory:

  From my perspective, the digital camera is most significant in how it’s changed the way I organize and use my notes. Digital voice recorders have never played the same role — it might be great in other places and other situations, but recording an interview in China makes people nervous. I learned that they’re far more comfortable if I’m taking handwritten notes, so that’s what I’ve always done.

  But a digital camera is quick, unobtrusive, and easy to keep in a pocket. It’s great for signs and notices — infinitely faster than my terrible Chinese handwriting. Sometimes a picture captures a key moment, and later, when I’m ready to write about the scene, I’ll put the image alongside my notes. At one point in my road trip, I was searching for a section of the Great Wall near a remote village called Temple of Peace, and an old man told me to take his grandson as a guide. The boy was twelve years old, and he jumped into the car; five other kids immediately joined him. The grandfather said nothing — he was perfectly happy to let me drive off with what was obviously a high percentage of the children in Temple of Peace.

  That was one of many moments when I understood how trusting people are in rural China. And later, when I looked at the photo I took from the driver’s seat, I recalled the silence that settled in the car when the kids suddenly realized that they were on the road with a laowai:
  

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  • March 9, 2010 3:35 PM

• After Decades of Neglect, the Site Where Chinese Laborers Were Interred Gets a Memorial

  

  The Los Angeles Times reports on recently discovered remains of Chinese railroad workers in California whose graves had been removed but who now will be honored with a monument and the preservation of their objects for educational use:

  In all, the MTA discovered 174 burial sites as well as many artifacts — including buttons, Chinese porcelain, glasses, rice bowls, jade, coins and opium pipes.

  All the bones and artifacts will now be reinterred inside Evergreen Cemetery. The process, which will take several months, will start the first week in April, the MTA says.

  The MTA spent $2 million on the project — on excavation, archaeological research, DNA analysis, construction of the memorial wall and the purchase of burial plots and coffins, said Carl Ripaldi, principal environmental specialist with the MTA.

  Members of the local Chinese community look forward to the end of the story.

  “It’s been too long for these remains to be out there in some laboratory,” said Daisy Ma, president of the Chinese American Citizens Alliance. “We do not want to wait any longer. We want closure.”

  The community has, however, expressed a desire to make educational use of what was learned when the grave sites were dug up. The MTA has promised to document the large collection of objects buried with the bodies and provide records to the Fowler Museum at UCLA. They have also had replicas made of some of the artifacts to give to the Chinese Historical Society and the Chinese Benevolent Assn.

  » Read more
  • March 9, 2010 3:52 AM

• China to Loosen Control over Book Publishing

  

  The Financial Times takes a look an expected changes in the Chinese publishing industry which will allow more room for private publishers to operate within the state-controlled system:

  China Publishing Group, which had Rmb3.9bn in revenues last year, is a cornerstone of Beijing’s policy to keep publishing under state control while allowing private investors a limited, but legal, role.

  “There will definitely be significant changes in our international operations,” Mr Nie said. “At least we can learn from some multinational publishers from developed countries, like Oxford University Press and Harper Collins … We will not just be there to propagate Chinese culture, but also to run a commercial business.”

  Last year, the General Administration of Press and Publications, the regulator, promised to dilute the state publishing houses’ monopoly by allowing private companies to produce books for the first time in more than half a century.

  Private publishers have long outperformed state rivals in spotting and producing best-selling manuscripts, but they operate in a legal grey area. Chinese law excludes them from publishing books, so they have to buy or rent International Standard Book Numbers from the state companies. Mr Nie said that he would seek to greatly expand this kind of partnership.

  » Read more
  • March 9, 2010 3:02 AM

• China Says Missing Panchen Lama Gendun Choekyi Nyima is Living in Tibet

  

  Since the Dalai Lama selected him as the next Panchen Lama 15 years ago at the age of 5, Gendun Choekyi Nyima has not been seen or heard from in public or accounted for by the Chinese government. The new governor of Tibet recently revealed some knowledge of his whereabouts, without giving details. From the Times:

  The son of a Tibetan herder, Gendun Choekyi Nyima was only 5 when he was selected by the exiled Dalai Lama as the reincarnation of the Panchen Lama. Police swooped on the boy’s village in a county to the north of Lhasa and, pro-Tibet exiles say, removed the child and his parents.

  He has not been seen or heard from since. But Tibet’s new governor, Padma Choling, revealed yesterday that the young man, now 20, is still living in Tibet, where “his brothers and sisters are at university or are doing regular work”.

  He gave no hint as to the family’s whereabouts but repeated the Communist Party’s mantra: “As far as I know, his family and he are now living a very good life in Tibet. He and his family are reluctant to be disturbed. They want to live an ordinary life.”

  The information amounts to a revelation compared with the secrecy that has surrounded the life of Gendun for the 15 years since he vanished and was described by human rights groups as the youngest political prisoner in the world.

  The man that Beijing appointed Panchen Lama gained a more public profile this week when he was appointed to the CPPCC and attended the two sessions meetings.

  » Read more
  • March 7, 2010 9:52 PM

• Are You or Your Chinese Friends 小资 (Xiaozi)? (quiz)

  

  Elliott Ng wrote on the cnreviews blog:

  The slang term 小资（xiao3 zi1) came up over dinner with my friends Min and Kai. I was discussing a Website I liked, and Min responded, “I don’t like that site. It’s too 小资.” Well, I had never heard the term. What is it? Min responded: “I don’t know how to translate it. People who are xiao zi like Western things, like to drink coffee at cafes…Shanghai is a very 小资.”
  …
  Quiz: Here’s 20 questions to determine if you or your Chinese friend is Xiaozi
  Are they jaded about Chinese national events, and resist being defined by “official” and mainstream culture?
  Do they like to sit in cafes? Do they like to drink coffee?
  Do they appreciate red wine (and really appreciate it, not mix it with Coke)?
  Do they crave outbound travel? Do they want to visit Tibet?
  Are they focused on self-expression through fashion? Do they look down on people who spend money on brands without true appreciation of fashion?
  Do they sometimes have a sense of being somehow different from the rest of society? That they are seeking something that cannot be found?
  Do they use their English name, even with other Chinese people?
  Do they like to socialize with foreigners? Do they like to date foreigners?
  Are they picky in their love life? Do they feel that most traditional members of the opposite sex don’t understand their love of life, and their need for creative self-definition? Attitude of “if I’m not in love, I’d rather die”
  Do they like foreign hobbies like Yoga? or Salza dancing?

  [Full text]

  » Read more
  • March 7, 2010 9:44 PM

• Turbine Hall Commission: Adrian Searle Profiles Artist Ai Weiwei

  

  From the Guardian:

  

  The announcement that the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei is to be the next artist to take on Tate Modern’s annual Turbine Hall commission is unsurprising – though surprise, spectacle and a kind of art that is accessible to the widest possible public are what the Turbine Hall demands, even if the spectacle is of a quiet or understated sort. Subtlety and artistic sophistication are a bonus. The most successful Unilever commissions have not necessarily been the easiest, and the Turbine Hall is a tough testing ground for any artist. Subtlety and artistic sophistication are a bonus. But Ai Weiwei’s work is as often controversial as it is provocative. It is also – undeniably – fun. He fits the bill perfectly.

  Most recent Chinese art has seemed at best secondary, at worst made cynically for the western art market, the kind of objects whose technical skill exceeds their interest. Much of the painting and sculpture one sees coming from China is mere product. Ai Weiwei is an exception, but how exceptional he is as an artist – he is also an architect, designer, curator and critic – is often obscured by his position in his homeland, where he is regarded as a sort of cultural irritant. He is an outspoken critic of government and officials, of state corruption and greed. His blog has been closed down, his bank accounts investigated, and last year he was beaten by the police for trying to testify in favour of a colleague with whom he was investigating casualties of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. He later suffered a cerebral hemorrhage. Having collaborated with Herzog and de Meuron – also the architects who transformed the Bankside power station into Tate Modern – on the Bird’s Nest stadium for the Beijing Olympics, he went on to boycott the event, and criticize western artistic involvement.

  See also past CDT posts on Ai Weiwei.

  Read also: Chinese artist Ai Weiwei makes Internet his medium from Reuters:

  Ai, 53 this year, has become an increasingly vocal critic of China’s Internet controls, helping to plan an Internet boycott on the day China was to require use of the controversial Green Dam filter, a program the government wanted installed on every new computer.

  That boycott turned into a party in Beijing’s art district after regulators seemed to back down from the filter requirement.

  Ai has never been arrested. He gets away with being outspoken because of the prestige of his father, poet Ai Qing, because he picks his battles carefully and because his own art has brought wealth and fame overseas.

  » Read more
  • March 6, 2010 12:16 PM

• China Fans Ask, Will Yao Ming’s Baby be American?

  

  From USA Today:

  Yao’s personal life is closely followed by his many fans at home, from his 2007 Shanghai wedding to fellow basketball player Ye Li to last month’s reports the couple is expecting a baby girl in July… Yao’s baby would automatically be an American citizen if born in the U.S. She also could claim Chinese citizenship as the child of Chinese nationals. However, Chinese law does not recognize dual citizenship.

  A few say it would be a betrayal of China, not to mention the China team could be denied a future basketball star. But most say they support Yao and don’t care which country claims the baby.

  “Yao Ming is an individual, not a political tool,” said one comment on popular basketball Web site Hoop China. “He has the right to choose where his child is born and what kinds of medical care and education will be available to her. His child’s citizenship has nothing to do with loyalty.”… Yao and his camp have been tightlipped on the pregnancy and have not issued any public statements on the matter. It was not clear if Yao and his wife were indeed planning to have the baby in the U.S. or how they would handle any citizenship issues.

  » Read more
  • March 3, 2010 1:20 PM

• Global Times: Profile of Uli Sigg

  

  Global Times English profiles Uli Sigg, the Swiss art collector who has one of the world’s most extensive collections of Chinese contemporary art:

  With an extensive collection of over 2,000 pieces of Chinese contemporary works, including more than 200 Chinese artists and a list of names covering the most famous like Ai Weiwei, Fang Lijun and Wang Guangyi, Sigg is by far the world’s biggest and most successful Chinese contemporary art collector.

  It has been widely reported that in his beautiful house in Switzerland, which people often refer to as “the largest private museum of Chinese contemporary art,” there are Chinese contemporary works in every corner – from the kitchen to the utility room every space is adorned with an early painting or conceptual piece by today’s most sought-after and heavily-collected Chinese artists.

  Of course Sigg did not buy the works from galleries or auction houses, where even one piece sells for millions of dollars these days, most of his precious works were bought during the 1990s, when there was no recognized contemporary art market in China and it was hard for any artist to even sell a piece of their work.

  During this time, as there was no transparency in the Chinese contemporary art scene, it was also much harder than it is today to get an overview as to what the artists were doing. Many works were created underground and connecting with the artists themselves was difficult.

  » Read more
  • March 2, 2010 9:42 PM

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