A recently announced Chinese subsidy program targeting farmers has expanded it’s range of eligible items from the traditional home appliances to computers. This is an effort to spur domestic consumption. While on first reflection this seems like a good plan, note that farmers have a very low income. They have not benefited from China’s once booming economy as much as China’s urban middle class. Family members who have ventured to China’s big cities to become migrant workers are now facing grave difficulties finding employment. Many are forced to return home, causing great concern from the Chinese government. Further, conditions at the village level will not allow computer technology and knowledge to flourish. In these conditions I do not think many will be splurging on a new computer purchase.
Ryan has a great blog called Lost Laowai and writes from China. One of his readers contacted him about a dire situation he faced. The thread is documented here: What to do when your Chinese ex-wife runs away with your child?. Situations such as these seem common enough that they surface from time to time from different countries but always remain under the radar of the international news services. They apply not only to children but to adults as well. If you are living abroad, you start a family and have kids, be aware of these supposedly well known international laws or you might be in for a huge shock when this go badly wrong.
It is with no great fanfare that one marks the passing of an ox or water buffalo. No, there is no sentimentality for a beast of burden. Straining under a lifetime of heavy lifting, cut up and scarred by a heavy wooden collar, common scrapes of life as well as the constant bites by mosquitoes. Who takes a second look at a beast of burden?
___However old and ugly, the beast still pulls, pulling until it drops out of sheer exhaustion. One final look of serenity overcomes him as he rests after a full life of labour, never to pull again. If you ask him he would not complain, for he pulls for us, forever devoted to a higher cause that I cannot understand. Stupid ox, he cares not for himself.
I have always wanted to tell people about the benefits of a type of ecologically friendly living accomodation: the cave. China has lots of them in the Shanxi and Shaanxi area. It seems like Missouri does as well.
Chinese cave from Shaanxi Province, Tim Johnson/MCT
___Chinese caves, called yaodong, are ancient but became quite famous during the Long March, when Mao hid in them to escape bombing raids from American planes. After spending a significant amount of time living in a Chinese cave I would like to tell you that they are a totally awesome accommodation, but alas that would be a baldfaced lie. You may judge for yourself.
Street vendor selling juzi
I still have vivid memories of Beijing clothing vendors on a street called “Yifu Alley”. After a four year legal battle the vendors from “Silk Market” in Beijing are getting busted for copyright violation from 5 big international firms: Burberry, Gucci, Chanel, Louis Vuitton and Prada. Infuriated, they threaten to beat up the law firm that is forcing them to stop selling these goods.
I was once at a lunch with colleagues when a remarkable revelation hit me. No, the meal at our downtown Toronto Ethiopian restaurant Queen of Sheba was not that enlightening. It was that everyone at the table was Chinese.
___Here in Toronto, that alone will not a single eyebrow raise. With five distinct “Chinatowns” here, one may view wide swaths of Toronto with nary a white or non-Chinese face. A packed Chinese mall with the rare Laowai is common, and he might be the janitor. Or lost.
There is much written on the internet about Overseas Chinese (huachao, or huayi), and not so much about Chinese Overseas, as in Mainland Chinese people that visit overseas. I live in Scarborough, Ontario, Canada, a part of North Eastern Toronto. My neighborhood has many Chinese people that visit from mainland China.
___Our Chinese visitors come to stay from 3 months to a couple of years. Most are retired, called here by their married kids to help raise their grandchildren. For the most part, these visitors from China are devoted to their families and add a lot of flavour to Toronto culture. They bring with them traditional Chinese values and thinking from an era of China that may be long gone, or at least buried deep in the past.
TThere is no question that contributing on the web in China is fraught with a level of personal risk not seen in the West. Here, no one really cares what you write, provided it is not racist and does not defame anyone.
___In China, blogs and blog service providers get shut down on a regular basis. No explanations or warnings are given. This is what happened with a large Chinese blog provider Bulldog.cn last month. A blog that has run for one year is considered to be long lived. Search for the most popular blogs in China and you’ll find many that are posted on local blogrolls no longer exist. Here today, gone tomorrow. You’ll find previously vibrant URLS shuttered, all content gone, no comments allowed, no explanation given. It’s all very subtle.
Overwhelming is an understatement when I describe available news on the Internet. Just get on Google’s news section and search for something. If it is anything remotely general, mountains of pages of links will topple out of your monitor and cascade onto your head like a pile of bricks. You then grit your teeth and dig your way out.
