Made in China deal: Half off abortions with your student ID

Since this is my first blog post in months I wanted to come back with a bang. (The reason I haven't written on my blog is because Blogger blogs have been blocked by the Internet police here in China since March and are still blocked. But now that I have my new visa, I'm not as fussed about blogging even though using and accessing this site while in China is technically banned.)

Anyway, this was snagged from the Shanghaiist:

This latest ad has managed to shake ever our most jaded "This is China" hearts. A hospital in Chongqing is offering half price abortions if you show your student ID.

According to the ad:

"Students are our future, but when something happens to them, who will help and protect them? Chongqing Huaxi Women's Hospital has started Students Care Month, where those students who come to get an abortion can get 50% off if they show their student ids. Abortion surgeries are the most advanced in the world, won't stretch (your womb), won't hurt, it's quick, and you can do what you want afterwards, it won't affect your studies or your work."

We get that, having stayed in the U.S., we may have a more cautious opinion of abortions than regular Chinese folk but this seems way too morbid even for a country that gets 13 million abortions a year.

When it rains it pours: the Tianjin annual flood

Located a couple hundred kilometers East of the Gobi Desert, Tianjin has been suffering a drought for several years. Blame the approaching desert, the several-times rerouted Yellow River or Climate Change, but Tianjin does not get much rain. The average annual rainfall of Tianjin is around 550-680 millimeters (21-26 inches), 80 percent of which falls during the Summer, according to information from the tourism bureau. I'm pretty sure most of the yearly amount fell today. Take a look at this video Aaron Forisha, a friend and fellow Nankai University teacher, filmed. The rain started around 1:15 p.m. after the afternoon sky turned dark as midnight. A friend who was downtown at the time the storm started, said a storefront window actually shattered during the storm, though he wasn't sure if it was due to thunder, wind, lightning or armageddon. Throughout the day, the sky would morph from bruise colored skies, to rainforest fogs to downpours you just couldn't see through. It was so spooky, I was ready for it to rain frogs.

**This is my first blog post in months. I've been trying to wait for the Internet cops here to unblock blogger blogs, or Youtube for that matter, but I think we'll all be waiting several more months. In the meantime, this video was too timely to wait.

An uncommon story of love in Asia: Victoria and LY

She literally fell at his feet.

It was fall 2005 and Liu Yu and Victoria Stockton were both teachers at the Tianjin Experimental High School. After months of inventing excuses to visit his office, Liu was finally coming to observe Stockton’s English class.

But Stockton mentally mixed up the times and was running late, physically running late. She was sprinting in “tall shoes and a gray jacket,” Liu still remembers, until he appeared in the classroom door right in the middle of her path.

Stockton gasped, threw her hands in the air and did an awkward pirouette slamming to the ground and sliding to a stop just under Liu’s feet.

Shortly after that he fell in love with her.

In July 2008, the couple, an American woman and a Chinese man, were wed in South Africa at the confluence of two oceans, celebrating the union of their two foreign hearts.

Theirs is a unique and true love story. Unique because a foreign woman with a Chinese man is rare. True because this is far from the defining aspect of their relationship.

Read the rest of my column on the Post-Tribune's Web site here

Beijing back alley art

A 20-minute cab ride away the uber-hip art district of 798, an alley way cigarette shop adds its own craftiness to Beijing's usually beige street-scape.

These pinwheels, folded out of used cigarette carton containers, line the cast iron* fence behind the Novotel Hotel at the Chongwenmen subway stop in Beijing. My hotel room looked out on this alley during the March week I spent in Beijing. No doubt the alley was cleaned up because of its proximity to the international-class hotel, but it's still a dusty, grey alleyway, nondescript and slightly blighted. Though the hand-folded pinwheels are not the avant-garde art shown in the now international galleries of the 798 District, this touch of beautification made a big impression on me.

**I thought this fence was wrought iron, which I misspelled. Thanks to the reader who caught my typo and corrected me--it's not wrought iron; it's cast iron.

ESL teachers do the darndest things

A fellow teacher found this on an ESL blog. I'm sure other ESL teachers can understand.

Tourist trap?

On a recent trip to Nanjing's Zijin Mountain, three friends and I took full advantage of one of China's great tourist games. For 20 RMB (roughly $3), I ran around a shallow pond in a inflated plastic ball about 10 feet in diameter. It was great fun...at first. Then I realized there was really no way to move on the water. It was nearly impossible to stand and run like an actual hamster does in a cage. I tried to crawl. I ended up somersaulting. The rest....well, you'll see.

Jacki Chan: freedom not beneficial for China

Taken from the AP story

HONG KONG - Action star Jackie Chan 's comments wondering whether Chinese people "need to be controlled" have drawn sharp rebuke in his native Hong Kong and in Taiwan .

Chan told a business forum in the southern Chinese province of Hainan that a free society may not be beneficial for China 's authoritarian mainland.

"I'm not sure if it's good to have freedom or not," Chan said Saturday. "I'm gradually beginning to feel that we Chinese need to be controlled. If we're not being controlled, we'll just do what we want."

He went on to say that freedoms in Hong Kong and Taiwan made those societies "chaotic."

Chan's comments drew applause from a predominantly Chinese audience of business leaders, but did not sit well with lawmakers in Taiwan and Hong Kong.

"He's insulted the Chinese people. Chinese people aren't pets," Hong Kong pro-democracy legislator Leung Kwok-hung told The Associated Press. "Chinese society needs a democratic system to protect human rights and rule of law."

Another lawmaker, Albert Ho, called the comments "racist," adding: "People around the world are running their own countries. Why can't Chinese do the same?"

Former British colony Hong Kong enjoys Western-style civil liberties and some democratic elections under Chinese rule. Half of its 60-member legislature is elected, with the other half picked by special interest groups. But Hong Kong's leader is chosen by a panel stacked with Beijing loyalists.

In democratically self-ruled Taiwan, which split from mainland China during a civil war in 1949, legislator Huang Wei-che said Chan himself "has enjoyed freedom and democracy and has reaped the economic benefits of capitalism. But he has yet to grasp the true meaning of freedom and democracy."

Chan's comments were reported by news outlets in Hong Kong and Taiwan, but were ignored by the mainland Chinese press.

Although Chan was a fierce critic of the brutal crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Beijing's Tiananmen Square in June 1989, which killed at least hundreds, he has not publicly criticized China's government in recent years and is immensely popular on the mainland.

He performed during the opening and closing ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics and took part in the Olympic torch relay .

Chan also is vice chairman of the China Film Association, a key industry group.