Panda watch 2008!

Meet Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan, whose combined names means reunion. These two national treasures are goodwill gifts to Taiwan, where the pandas will live in the island's most visited zoo.

A plane arrived in Chengdu, the "hometown of the Giant panda" according to the CCTV advertisements, to pick up the pandas about midday today. CCTV's foreign language news channel has been following the story since midday with hourly updates. READ MORE HERE

Two handlers will accompany Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan on their trying 3-hour flight to Taiwan with comfort food like steamed corn buns and motion sickness pills, according to Xinhua.net.

The Giant Panda, otherwise known as China's obsession, is among the most endangered animals in the world, with only about 1,500 left alive. Most pandas, or 熊猫 xiong mao (literally bear cat), live in Sichuan and areas that were hard hit by the Spring earthquake. The bear cat needs basically untouched wilderness and calm to feel comfortable mating with other bear cats. This means the earthquake has upturned the mating cycle of the already endangered animal.

It's easy to understand Chinese people's love affair with the Giant panda; I mean, they're stupidly cute. However, the extent of love for this coddled animal that would probably be extinct if left to its own devices is incredible. Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan will get a week's supply of steamed corn buns--a delicacy difficult to find in the wilderness of the Sichuanese mountains. My tutor, Liu Xiao Qian, collects everything panda-related and now is on the hunt for a back pack that actually looks like a panda is hugging you from behind. When she hasn't slept and gets dark circles under her eyes, she tells me, "Look! I look like a panda!" I've heard from at least one student and a few other friends that foreigners are compared to pandas because, like the Great Panda, we're both helpless, fat and kind of stupid.

Pandas may be cuter than foreigners, but at least we're not terrible at mating.

First snow in Tianjin!

Last night we had Tianjin's first snow fall of the year. A thick flurry of snow fell throughout the night, gaining intensity until morning, when we all awoke to find the usually dust covered city temporarily clean and white. What I like even more than Tianjin's snow bath is the enthusiasm everyone shows for the snow. It's not often that Tianjin gets snow, but when it does one of the most popular pastimes is making snow men. They're a bit different from home; instead of three separately molded and hand-patted balls, Tianjingers favor impromptu snowmen sculpted out of the piles shoveled off the sidewalks. Here's just a sample of the model men down Bin Jiang Dao. See more at my photo sharing site, www.AmericanFair.shutterfly.com.

China blocks New York Times Web site

This taken from yesterday's Wall Street Journal--

BEIJING -- China has blocked access to the New York Times Web site, the newspaper said Saturday, days after the central government defended its right to censor online content it deems illegal.

Computer users who logged on in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou received a message that the site was not available when they tried to connect on Friday morning, the paper said. Some users were cut of as early as Thursday evening, it said.

The Web site remained inaccessible from Beijing Saturday.

A spokesman for the Foreign Ministry said they do not deal with Web sites. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, which regulates the Internet, could not be reached for comment.

Earlier this week, Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao defended China's right to censor Web sites that have material deemed illegal by the government, saying that other countries regulate their Internet usage too.

During the Summer Games held in August, China allowed access to long-barred Web sites such as the British Broadcasting Corp. and Human Rights Watch after an outcry from foreign reporters who complained that Beijing was failing to live up to its pledges of greater media freedom.

The New York Times said Beijing had blocked the Chinese-language Web site of the BBC, and Web sites of Voice of America, Asiaweek, and Ming Pao, a Hong Kong newspaper, earlier in the week. But apart from Ming Pao the sites were all accessible Friday, it said.

Ming Pao's online site was still inaccessible Saturday in Beijing, but the others were accessible.

China has the most online users in the world with more than 250 million, but it has also put in place a sophisticated system to police Web sites for sensitive material and routinely blocks Web sites that are pro-Tibetan independence or the Dalai Lama.

A spokeswoman for The Times, Catherine J. Mathis, told the paper that there did not appear to be a technical issue. Users in Japan, Hong Kong, and the U.S. were also not experiencing difficulties, the paper said.

Where I find the Christmas spirit

Bin Jiang Dao, the massive pedestrian shopping street, is the only place in Tianjin that feels like Christmas. It's mostly because of the church at the south end of the street. St. Joseph's Catholic Church is an ironic anchor to Tianjin's shopping district, but it's the only place I've been where people remember and understand what Christmas feels like.

Read more about it in my column from this Sunday's Post-Tribune.

Jumping shoes!

Youngsters have exercise with their power shoes, or the jumping shoes, at the People's Square of Guiyang, capital of southwest China's Guizhou province, Dec. 8, 2008. The jumping shoes that were used in the performance of the 29th Beijing Olympics closing ceremony became very popular among youngsters in Guiyang recently. Taken from http://english.china.com/zh_cn/news/china/11020307/20081210/15228846.html

These shoes are now No. 1 on my Christmas wish list.

Dalai does it again

Photos: Top Left: a conspicuously empty Carrefour today. Bottom: an average day at Carrefour before Sarkozy's recent meeting with the Dalai Lama.

French President Nicholas Sarkozy's meeting with the Dalai Lama looks like it's sparking the second French product boycott this year.

A story on the front of today's China Daily, the communist party newspaper, quoted online comments by angry Chinese citizens urging a nationwide boycott of French products and Carrefour, the French, international version of Walmart. I have no idea if the nationwide Carrefour boycott has actually caught on, but Carrefour is usually about as busy as the Shanghai subway. However, the store I visited tonight, photographed above, was noticeably empty.

"By the way, an advice for the surprised French - do not mistake spontaneous grassroots expressions of discontent for alleged government instigation," wrote the editorial staff in Sunday's China Daily. "Government preference may determine the purchase of Airbuses, or Boeings. But it cannot force people to travel to places they dislike, be it Paris, or Provence. Nor can it make consumers buy from brand names they feel bad about, be it Louis Vuitton, or Carrefour." Read more

Sarkozy, current president of the European Union, met with the Dalai Lama Saturday just prior to scheduled talks between the EU and China on the global financial crisis. Since Saturday's meeting, China postponed the EU-China talks indefinitely.

Sound familiar? It is, but slightly different from the April riots outside Chinese Carrefours. People are angry, but the government is formally telling people to stay calm. Comments made on China Daily's Web site, Chinese netizens said Sarkozy "hurt Chinese feelings," call Sarkozy "ignorant," "arrogant," and accuse him of "using the human rights card" too many times.

This issue doesn't seem to be the talk of the town, as French-China relations were in April, but it's certainly an issue worth following.

Read the CD article here.

Merry Christma-tine's day!

In a country that doesn't celebrate Christmas, national idol Jackie Chan takes it upon himself to post directions for how to celebrate Christmas on his Web site. Christmas seems largely irrelevant to Chinese people, save the Christmas trees in malls capitalizing on a chance to push people to spend. The church on shopping street Bin Jiang Dao may be overflowing on the 24th, but it's more out of fascination for a strange culture than worship or tradition.

This much was obvious. Little did I know Christmas is for lovers.

The 25th is one of the busiest days of the year at Bin Jiang Dao's movie theaters, my friend Liu Xiao Qian told me. Couples will make a quick stop by the Catholic church on the south end of the shopping street, laughingly take pictures in front of the church and Christmas trees flashing the "V" victory sign (or the peace sign as we know it), then catch a movie or some one-on-one time, with the million other young Chinese doing the same thing.

It's like Valentine's Day, Liu said. During our discussion, Liu said people don't identify it with family or religion but more as a holiday you prepare one day in advance for, like Mother's Day or other Hallmark holidays.

From my view, it seems the only people who feel Christmas is important work in the shopping industry. Sure, when you look at it as an excuse to sing songs, decorate and buy something little, why not celebrate. This form of Christmas seems to be getting more popular as more focus and attention is given to commerialism. If this grows more popular, it will certainly change the Christmas spirit world wide.

Dealing with cold heats up issue of waste

In addition to teaching at Nankai University, I write a bi-weekly column for the Sun-Times News Group newspaper, The Post-Tribune. My old staff at the Post has been terrible at putting these columns online; however, this week they did. Here's a taste.
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For the month of October and half of November, I taught while wearing my coat, scarf, gloves and later, my hat.

When I attended Chinese classes, as I do four days a week for three hours a day, I’d wear long underwear under my pants and try to write traditional Chinese characters while wearing mittens.

owards the end of the month, my teacher, Liu Xiao Qian, thought it appropriate to teach me to say, "I urgently need to buy warm clothes" (Xian zai wo yao mai hou de yifu) and "I am cold to death," (Wo leng si le).

The reason I risked frostbite in my classrooms and ‘da de feng’ or big wind in the hallways was because there was no heat until Nov. 15.

read the rest of this article here