'Toy factory dispute settled'--wait, what? But in that photo...

This was the leading photo in yesterday's China Daily for a story headlined, 'Toy factory dispute settled.' Taken in southern Guandong Province, this car had been overturned when 500 employees rioted after being laid off with only one month's compensation.

The workers started rallying at the gate, but were soon joined by others. "About 1,000 police and security guards were called in to disperse the crowd. This infuriated the protesters, who overturned a police vehicle, smashed at least four police motorcycles and broke windows and damaged computers in the company's office building," according to the article. READ THE STORY HERE.

Regardless of this actual story, which apparently got resolved and workers were justly compensated, this photo knocked me out. The image was in the center spot of page 4, with a teaser on page 1. It took up one-third of the page! It looks so much like something out of Iraq that I actually laughed out loud when I read the headline, 'dispute settled.'

I think my journalism friends will agree that this photo just doesn't scream "resolved."

I see this in the China Daily all the time: a glaring disconnect between the headline and the photo, or the headline and the actual article. I think it's fair to say the placement of this photo was poor, but there may be several reasons for this.

1) There is no competition for the China Daily, the Party paper, so they don't have to be good.
2) This paper uses a journalism of assertion. This Party report tells you the problem is fixed. Maybe this is why the editors didn't see the disconnect between the photo and the report as a problem; the gov't is saying it's resolved, so it's resolved.
3) The audience for the China Daily largely consists of expats who are on rotation in China; when they leave after two years, different expats come in. They're not the kind of audience to even get the daily paper, let alone demand higher quality from their paper.

It's certainly a different kind of journalism.

What's in a name?

Since meeting my student Dracula in Shanghai, I've been consistently surprised and usually amused by the English names Chinese and Korean students choose. These students, like any foreign language students, pick English names based on how they sound, what they mean and the translation or transliteration of their original name. However, my favorite names are the ones chosen by students who want to live more colorfully through their English names than their original names permit. I've compiled a list of several English names chosen by my and other American teachers' students. Hope you enjoy them as much as I do!

Red
Paradox
Insomnia
Quicker
Lock Lee
Jummpy (yes, with two m's)
Theory
Runner
Bright
Wolf
Silence
Pluto
Skip
Hawke
Beonly
Sharper
Pizza
Alien
Dictionary
Wood
Rocky Cefinil
PP
Worm

BLOCKED: Web sites I can't load in China

In the past two weeks, I experienced first-time problems accessing many Web sites. I lost access to every communication tool that uses the Internet and my blog last week, which is why this is the first blog post in two weeks. Here's the full list of sites I couldn't access:

1) Skype. I downloaded it in America in May and have used it in China until last week when it stopped working. My Taiwanese-American friend lost his Skype a month ago; the rest of the Americans in my building lost it last week. Those who figured out how to make it work had to uninstall the international Skype and redownload the Tom.com, Chinese formatted Skype program.
2) Call2. I started using Call2 when the Internet in China was too slow to run Skype. It hasn't worked for a week either.
3) Google Gchat video. After Skype and Call2 stopped working, I thought I'd try the new Gchat application, google video chat. It doesn't work here, but that could be for a few reasons: the shoddy Internet connection, Google hasn't made a format Chinese authorities have agreed to allow, etc.
4) My blog. I couldn't access my blog either in my apartment through my Internet connection, any of my neighbors' Internet connections, or through the Internet connection at my favorite coffee shop. The last post I wrote was about the changing political landscape in Taiwan.
5) Wikipedia. Doesn't work anymore without using my proxy, but I was told to expect this.
6) Google. Seriously. The most popular search engine in America, and likely one of the most popular in the world, could not load for several days. It works now, but I think not being able to access Google for several days made me feel more isolated than anything else since I've been in China.

I think it's likely that a combination of Internet connection problems, software formatting problems and government censorship are blocking these sites. My question is, why now? Has anyone has read articles (that I may not have seen on the Internet over here) on Internet issues in China? Did the Great firewall of China get updated last week? I wrote this post hoping I could find out why I lost access these sites now, not before, and what I can do to communicate with family back home. So if anyone has suggestions, HELP! I'm feeling a little boxed in lately.

Taiwan: changing political landscape

The changing relations between Taiwan and the mainland are essential news around here. Improvements in diplomacy seemed to be heading full steam ahead with direct flights to Taiwan, elimination of heavy taxes on items shipped between Taiwan and the mainland and Taiwan even offering to acknowledge the credentials of college graduates educated on the mainland.

Now this: TAIPEI (from Reuters) - Former Taiwan president Chen Shui-bian, a strong advocate of independence from China, was formally arrested on Wednesday over money-laundering allegations he has described as political persecution.

Read the Reuters article HERE.

Here's the mainland government's response: (from China Daily) BEIJING - A Chinese mainland official on Wednesday refuted Taiwan former leader Chen Shui-bian's claims of being persecuted by the Kuomintang and the Communist Party of China as "a sheer fabrication".

Read the China Daily article HERE.

He'll leave your ass for a white girl

I'm working for an expat entertainment and lifestyle magazine in Tianjin now. I was recently assigned to rewrite an interview with one of Tianjin's leading steel development expats for the Japanese version of the magazine.

The source decided we should do it over dinner.

I checked with my American editor first to see if this was kosher behavior, and found that he and the rest of the staff already RSVP'd. At dinner, I took the wine offered me, but kept pace with what my editor was drinking until he started doing shots with our source. When the source started asking me, "Elizabeth, who's the most attractive man at the table?" I tried to keep my grace and abstain from answering.

But none of this decorum saved me when Jessica, whom I had been introduced to as my source's Chinese personal assistant, began screaming at her boss, my source. You've been talking to her all night, you like white women better, the foreigner better watch out, she yelled.

I crawled into a cab to escape with a coworker, but the source joined us. "She knows it's just a contract, I don't love her and she knows I do prefer white women," said the source, an American scoundrel in the greatest.

Jealousy between white, foreign women and Asian women is common. In just one Google search I found a blog titled White Women Suck. One post addressed why white women tend to look down on interracial relationships between white men and Asian women. It's an inflammatory read, check it out here.

I had heard of tensions going the other way, Chinese women confronting foreign women, but this was my first introduction. It's not unlike the Black women White women issues I saw growing up in Gary, Ind. Once, a white girl friend faced a group of black women threatening to beat her up if she didn't split with "the brother" she was dating.

It's all very interesting, but there's one more detail to this story that really takes the cake.

Jessica, the Chinese personal assistant and my source's vigilante mistress, is technically dead in Latvia. Apparently she married the last man she worked for and had to die to escape.

Church in China

Father Francis Jose Cruz is a Filipino man with a Spanish name, educated in Boston who evangelizes in China.

"And the strangest thing is that we're official!"

Father Francis is referring to the official appointment he enjoys from the Religious Bureau of the Patriotic Church (the Communist Party's religious arm) and the Catholic Patriotic Association (which, despite it's name, has actual ties to the government and no actual ties to the Catholic Church).

Father Francis found himself in Tianjin because Beijing was looking for an English-speaking priest to hold service at Tianjin's "Official Olympic Church." The government wanted to have an English-language mass available for foreigners wishing to worship during their Olympic vacation, never mind that it might be a Catholic mass for a Mormon.

Cruz is preparing for his first Christmas in China and finds himself struggling with first time issues like how to keep people out of Christmas Eve mass.

Many non-Catholics and non-religious Chinese people attend service because the cathedral is like a museum from a strange culture, Father Francis said. He would like Christmas Eve to have some of the dignity and solemnity it would other places. But considering Christmas Eve is a bit of a sideshow to the hundreds and hundreds of Chinese people who flood the church on the 24th, Father Francis is worried there won't be seats for those actually hoping to worship.

But he says he feels company in these and other struggles.

"Many of the foreigners who worship here aren't Catholic and that's very strange for a Catholic Priest," Father Francis said. "But we're all struggling in the fact that you are looking for something familiar because we want to feel comfortable. If you don't get that sense of home, than we can't get that sense of Christian community."

Photos: Our Lady of China at St. Joseph's Cathedral is the largest and most well-attended Patriotic Church in Tianjin. Above: The French Catholic-style cathedral is at the Southern end of Bin Jiang Dao, the largest pedestrian shopping street in Tianjin. Right: Father Francis from afar. Bottom right: Inside St. Joseph's.

Clean Kanye MC'd to sitting fans, soldiers' orders

No cursing, no standing and your curfew is 9 p.m.! No, that's not your father speaking, it was the orders of the Chinese soldiers managing Kanye West's Glow in the Dark tour show on Nov. 1 at the Worker's Stadium in Beijing.

I admit, I didn't see the show--Kanye priced his tickets at 780 kuai a pop, more than a quarter of my monthly salary. However, I did celebrate the day after Halloween about a short distance away and saw the disappointed fans filter onto bar street, Sanlitun.

Kim, an American from Massachusetts, said she was ordered to sit down by a armed soldier after standing up to dance during "All Falls Down."

The Beijinger reviewers were pretty tough on the show too, calling Kanye's performance half-hearted and sanitized. (Kanye didn't swear, didn't perform "Jesus Walks" and didn't speak to the crowd once.) Read the review here.

If this is indicative of Western musicians performances in China, I think I'll wait to see them back home.

CCTV anchor burps on TV

The Beijinger expat Web site is abuzz with the news that another CCTV news anchor has been caught on TV and put on trial on the web doing making a blooper.

"Zhang Hongmin's burp is the latest in a long line of gaffes from CCTV presenters and below we’ve gathered together clips and images of some recent on-air bloopers that have led many to bemoan the decline in standards over at CCTV."--taken from the Beijinger Be sure to watch this video.

For a country that assesses the proficiency of your language speaking based on how well the anchors of CCTV speak, this on-air deterioration of decorum is a social humorous crisis.

"What makes him so...?"

Sitting in my office hours, I was expecting students to ask questions about their persuasive essay due next week. When Fatima (featured in the middle, wearing a purple jacket) walked in her first question was:

"So Mr. Obama, what makes him so.....charismatic?"

I was rather shocked. My sophomores have a midterm 4-page persuasive paper due soon, but it was the day the election results were announced and word had spread that I ended class early to see Obama's acceptance speech.

"I decided I want to know why Americans find this man fascinating so I have printed two of his speeches. I will memorize them. Do you think it will help my English too?"

I think this summarizes the Chinese response to Obama's election: fascination in a distancing way. My students were and are interested, but I don't think they feel President Obama will greatly impact their lives or even China's policies.

That said, the headline of today's China Daily, the English language Communist party newspaper, read Change has come, with a three-fourths page close-up of Barack grinning. Below the story on Obama's election--which focused on this representing America's final departure from rascism and then moved quickly to the perpetual economic woes--was a blurb on President Hu Jintao congratulating Mr. Obama.

"China and the United States share broad common interests and important responsibilities on a wide range of major issues concerning the well-being of humanity," Hu said. (The first part said a lot, but everything pas interests is standard Chinese non-speak--like he needs an editor to eliminate the speech where he says nothing.)

Here's a China Daily article on the world response. Interestingly, Obama Japan celebrated with Obama Hope emblem rice cakes. http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/world/2008-11/06/content_7178141.htm